Have you ever been wondering how businesses get so much attention every single day? You see them out there marketing their businesses, and all of a sudden, you start seeing their ad after ad on social media, at work, and everywhere else. So how do they get so many eyeballs on their marketing every day?
The answer is simple — they know how to develop a marketing strategy that will get them noticed. In this article, you are going to learn how to develop a marketing strategy that will get your business noticed.
Whether you are a business owner, an entrepreneur, or just getting started and looking to get your foot into the door of business, this information is for you. It’s important that your company has a marketing strategy in place, no matter what size of business currently is.
The reason for this is because a marketing strategy will help you convert your prospects into customers, and potential customers into long-term customers. In other words, a marketing strategy will help you get your business out to the people who will be most interested in it.
Let’s look at what’s involved in developing an effective marketing strategy.
An Effective Marketing Strategy is Important for any Business
A marketing strategy is essential for any business when it comes to getting their business out there. The problem with this is that many people think they can get by without one. They might believe that they have a great product, service, or idea and all they need to do is advertise it publicly and people will find them.
Well, the truth is that’s not true at all. When someone thinks in this way, they are setting themselves up for failure because there are millions of other businesses doing the same thing, which means no one will notice them.
Define Your Audience
When developing a marketing strategy, it is imperative that you first define your audience. Your marketing strategy should be tailored to them and their needs. If you are an author, for instance, your target audience may be people who enjoy reading.
This means that when creating your marketing campaign, you will want to use images of books and quotes from famous authors in order to attract these specific people. If your business is a construction company and the audience is made up of professionals in the construction industry, then you will want to place images of construction sites and building materials on your site in order to draw attention to those interested in this field.
The point here is that the more specific you are with your defined audience, the better chance you have of getting their attention.
Develop A Solid Content Marketing Strategy
An important first step for long-term growth is to develop a content marketing strategy. In order to get your business noticed, you are going to have to create a lot of content that people will want to read and share. The best way to do this is by finding content that is relevant to the people in your target demographic and then providing even more valuable information on top of it.
For example, if your business sells healthy kale chips, you could provide healthy recipes for dips other food items that are complementary to yours. By taking the time and effort to put out valuable information, you will be able to draw in readers who are interested in what you have to say.
Always Be Updating
One great way to get people looking at your marketing is by updating it. This will show prospects that you are confident in what you have to offer, and that you are constantly trying new ways to keep them interested.
For example, you might update your social media posts every day with new information about your products or services. Or, you may post a video of a new experience that is coming soon on your website. Whatever the case may be, updating your content often will get people talking about it.
Always Be Consistent
One of the biggest mistakes that a lot of businesses make with their marketing is that they are not consistent. You need to be consistent in your marketing if you want it to be effective. You need to put out content on a regular basis, whether it be once or twice per day.
You also need to use social media daily and have ads running on Facebook and other sites on a regular basis as well. The more you do this, the better chance you have of building a following and gaining trust among your target audience. One of the best ways to stay consistent is by using an editorial calendar.
An editorial calendar can help you plan ahead and know what you’re going to post when without having to think about it.
Always Be Testing
The first thing that you need to think about in your marketing strategy is how you are going to test what works and what doesn’t. In other words, you want to try different strategies to see which ones work better than others.
For instance, if you are advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, then you will want to test out different ads with different types of images and copy.
If you are doing PPC advertising then this should be pretty easy for you because you can get results very quickly. Testing both Social advertising and PPC ads is great way for you to figure out what strategy will work best for your company.
By running A/B tests and tracking the metrics like views and conversions you’ll be able to determine what method will give you the best ROI. Then you can optimize your campaigns over time so that they produce the the best ongoing results possible.
You want to always be testing so that you can find the right formula that works best for your business — there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to marketing strategies!
Always Be Watching For Trends
One of the first things that you can do to develop a marketing strategy that will get you noticed is to always be watching for trends. You never know when something might explode, and if you are not paying attention when it does, then you could end up missing out on a lot of potential customers who would have been very interested in your business.
For example, one way that people use social media is by following hashtags. When you post to Instagram use hashtags relevant to your business. If you sell custom furniture you might use hashtags like #customfurniture, #customcoffeetable, and #customchairs etc. If someone who follows these trends happens to come across your business and they see that your company offers custom chairs or custom coffee tables, they may end up contacting you and becoming a customer because they did not know that these products were available before and they live close enough to pick them up.
Look For Opportunities
Always look for opportunities to get noticed. For example, if you are the owner of a clothing boutique, the opportunity to get noticed could be as simple as placing your promotions in a high-traffic area whether it’s online or offline. This will ensure that people have an easier time finding your store.
You also need to think about other ways to get noticed, such as creating pop-up shops or even sponsorship deals for events in your area. Look at that activities of other businesses related to yours and see if there are ways to work together to benefit each other. There are plenty of opportunities for you to get noticed, but it all starts with looking for them.
Conclusion
So you’ve got your business plan complete and now you are ready to develop a marketing strategy that will get you noticed. You may be wondering where to start and all the steps that need to be followed in order to create a successful marketing strategy. The 8 tips outlined above will help you develop a strategy that will get you noticed and establish your business as the go-to in your industry.
Today, there’s an intense and growing demand for quality marketing content. Many companies are overwhelmed with the time that’s required to produce their own content, and are looking for a more cost-effective way to get the job done.
Outsourcing graphic design is an effective way to leverage the power of attention-grabbing visuals and keep up with the demands to compete online and offline.
If you find your company in this position, we’ve gathered some ideas to help you stay ahead of the curve and decide if outsourcing your graphic design needs makes sense for your company.
Leverage the Expertise of Experienced Designers That Are Too Expensive to Hire Full-time
If you don’t have design experts in-house, you should consider outsourcing your graphic design needs.
Try outsourcing a single project and compare it to what gets done in-house. You might be amazed at the difference. Then again, you might not be but it’s a good due diligence strategy to help you analyze and assess the quality level of your in-house marketing assets.
Getting multiple iterations of a design project will help you by getting you to stand back and take a good look. See the possibilities and make an informed decision by publishing multiple versions and see which designs get more attention and engagement.
Getting a Fresh Perspective Can Be An Eye Opener
There’s a lot of thought and skill that goes into designing a strong marketing asset like a brochure. And it’s important to have someone who understands the importance of marketing materials in order to create designs that resonate with your target audience.
For example, when creating a brochure for an audience in the fitness industry, you may want the design to reflect movement and athleticism.
This is something a graphic designer will be able to do for you because they understand what it takes to create the sense of motion in a printed piece.
The Design Thinking Approach
A trained modern designer uses Design Thinking, an approach that seeks to understand the problem(s) before looking for solutions. By doing so, a designer looks at the problems that the consumer faces and researches to gain an understanding of what they go through and the other things they may have tried.
This helps to deliver a more powerful design solution that communicates a message that evokes emotion and connection to the solution you are offering.
Focus on Marketing Strategy and Outsource the Creative
Marketing must be a strategic process that aligns with your business goals. Yes, you want your marketing to look good, but you need it to be functional and effective, too.
You can outsource the visual design of your marketing materials by hiring a professional graphic designer.
However, it’s important to remember that you should still have control over how this person works on the project.
For example, if you want to create a new marketing campaign for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, ask for the designer’s recommendations first.
They should suggest creative ideas and offer tips on what will work best in an online environment. Then, you can provide feedback and request revisions as needed until you’re satisfied with the final product.
Get an Outsider’s Perspective of your Business
One of the best advantages of outsourcing your design or marketing is that you can instantly get a fresh perspective from an outsider who is an expert. The new ideas that come can lead to remarkable changes to the company’s brand and growth.
Focus on what you do best and outsource the rest and you not only feel less pressure but you’ll get results that would not have been possible otherwise.
Your business needs all of its employees working towards one goal: growth. It’s hard for companies to find people who are skilled in all aspects of marketing when they will likely only need one or two people who are skilled in the specific area they want focused on.
Segmenting your team can help them become more productive and efficient—and it can also help you afford their services!
Finally, you can save money by outsourcing your design or marketing your company will be able to benefit from the expertise of talented designers without any long-term commitments.
Many organizations have a Director of Marketing but outsource the creative production. This as a great model for many companies because they have one key person who is focused developing effective marketing strategies and then they outsource the creative and technical tasks.
This helps by tapping into expert help on an as needed basis.
If you run a few ongoing marketing campaigns in a year, it doesn’t make sense to hire full-time graphic designers or CRO specialists and the like.
They might just sit around doing nothing a lot of the time if you don’t have projects for them. You won’t like that and neither will they.
Outsourcing these tasks will be far more effective because you will get experts who will do top-notch work and likely over-deliver because they will want to impress you so that you will hire them again. It’s a win-win situation.
Build Your Brand Consistently
It’s important to develop a strong, unified brand that your target audience can recognize. When you use outsourcing as your go-to graphic design resource, it allows you to create a consistent branding strategy for all of your marketing materials.
Your brand is the foundation for everything you do in marketing. It’s what draws people in and builds credibility over time.
One way to ensure that your brand remains consistent is by designating one company or individual to take on the responsibility of overseeing your marketing collateral.
By outsourcing graphic design needs, you have an opportunity to build and keep your brand fresh and up-to-date.
When you outsource graphic design content, you open yourself up to a larger pool of potential designers. This can lead to increased creativity when it comes to designing new designs for your company’s content.
This is because the more options you have, the greater chance there is of coming up with something truly unique.
With outsourcing, businesses experience higher levels of creativity while also being able to maintain their unified branding strategy through consistency across all marketing channels.
Outsource the Skills That You Don’t Have In-house
One of the best ways to leverage the power of content marketing is by presenting your company as an authority in its field. To do this, you need quality visuals that will convey the message you want to send.
Hiring a full-time professional graphic designer to create these images is expensive, time-consuming and difficult. Not only do graphic designers need time to research your industry and design concepts for your website, they also need time to create all the different versions of your logo, flyers and social media banners. This can take weeks or months before you have any tangible outputs.
If you don’t have a staff member with these skills or are unwilling or unable to outsource these services in-house, it might be worth considering outsourcing graphic design externally. It will help to produce marketing content more efficiently and effectively.
Conclusion
Graphic design is an essential part of marketing. It sets the tone for all of your marketing collateral and is the first impression for many people. But hiring a full-time designer can be expensive, and you may not have the bandwidth to handle all of your design needs.
There are many reasons to outsource your graphic design needs, but most importantly it frees up your time to focus on your marketing strategy and creates consistency across your brand.
It’s always a good idea to get a few quotes so you know whether you are getting a good price. You’ll also want to see if you connect on a personal level so be sure to reach out to a few Web Design Companies.
By outsourcing to a reliable company you’ll be able to take advantage of the expertise of experienced designers that are very expensive to hire full-time. Graphic designers are responsible for designing marketing materials like logos, banners, brochures, business cards, social graphics, email marketing templates and more.
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OCEANONE Design has been delivering quality graphic design services to some clients for over 10 years. Clients know they can count on us to deliver every single time.
Design affects everything we do, from how we communicate to how we work. Great design unites a company and sets it apart from others. It can make the difference between a company that thrives and one that struggles.
Great design helps people, not just machines. It impacts their emotions, their empathy, their understanding of the world. It is important for your business too.
Design matters for your business in many ways. It is not just about look and feel, but how it makes people feel, what it does to their emotions, empathy, and understanding of the world.
What is Good Design?
Good design is a process. It’s a way of looking at the world that shapes how we see, understand, and interact with it.
Designer Stefan Sagmeister says “It’s not just about look and feel. It’s about empathy. It’s about understanding people, not just computers. “Great design matters for your business it doesn’t just affect how something looks; it affects how people feel.”
To make sure you have great design, you first need to understand what great design really is. That means defining what good design is for your company and why it matters to you.
It’s important to not let your brand look dated. It needs a refresh once in a while.
You need to figure out what your company stands for and what values it embodies in order to shape those values into good design principles. It’ll make a big difference for the long term success of your business.
Quality design is priceless. Every business should care about it.
First Impressions Matter
People form opinions about your company in about 50 milliseconds, based on visual signals. The visual identity of your company includes all the elements that make up your branded products and their packaging.
Good design is about more than just making a good first impression. It’s about taking into consideration the needs of your customers, and creating products, services and experiences that are relevant to them. It’s about getting to know your customers better, in order to give them what they really need now and in the future.
Branding is not a one time project. It needs to grow and evolve over time to stay relevant.
Design matters for consumers because their preferences affect the brands they buy, how long they stay loyal to a brand, what products they demand in the future and how much money they are willing to spend on these products.
The number one reason consumers choose a product or service is based on its quality.
Good design makes it possible for you not only to create eye-catching visual elements but also to improve user experience. That’s why having great design in your marketing collateral matters so much for any campaigns or communications that you publish.
Great design provides a quick and effortless way for customers to recognize your products, evaluate them and decide whether or not they really want them.
The visual identity of a product adds value to it by creating a more appealing appearance, increasing its perceived quality and even making it more functional.
An attractive package is one that attracts potential buyers because it shows the value of the product, its richness in content, or because it forms an emotional connection to the buyer’s desires.
Design Thinking
In Design Thinking, the approach is to understand the problem(s) before looking for solutions.
This is especially important in sales and marketing, where many professionals rely on their instincts, or their past experience, or even on the latest trend to build their sales and marketing strategies. There’s nothing wrong with that, as it sometimes works; but there’s a better way.
That way is design thinking.
Thinking as a designer involves asking a lot of questions and looking at things from the customer’s point of view. It may sound like common sense but it’s not common practice.
It’s easier to start with your company goals and set a sales and marketing strategy from there, but consumers today want organizations to relate to them in a personalized way — they want to have more choices, they want to have control.
Well designed branding can increase customer satisfaction in many ways:
Unlike traditional advertising strategies, good design is a part of every aspect of your brand communication with customers and prospects including packaging, infrastructure, web pages, marketing materials and any other place where you communicate with them. Design thinking is more likely than advertising & marketing to generate repeat customers.
How to Achieve Good Design
Achieving good design is not about trying to be a designer. It’s about understanding the principles of good design and applying them to your business. It’s about understanding and appreciating the value of well-executed design.
The key to achieving good design comes from three sources: empathy, simplification, and storytelling. You need to empathize with your customer, simplify their lives, and tell them a story that connects with them on an emotional level.
Good design is intuitive and thoughtful. It helps people, not just computers understand the world around them. Great designs are those that make people feel something or care about what they see before them. The best designs are those that make you feel like the designer understood you before you even knew you needed anything designed!
Good Design Is Simple
Great design should be simple, clear, and functional. It’s not about decoration, it’s about communication. A good designer is a thoughtful collaborator who will ask the right questions to help you achieve your goals.
Emotional Design
Great design will create an emotional connection between the business and its customers.
Design connects with emotions, which helps people feel more connected to your company. For example, Starbucks cups are a big part of the company’s identity. The design of the cups evoke feelings in people—ones that they connect with Starbucks because of. We can see this as one way that great design matters for your business.
Designers have a lot of power in a company, and that power should be respected and taken seriously. Often companies think design is just something on the side or something extra to do if they have time or money left over at the end of a project.
Designers have the power to create a great experience for customers; they have responsibility to do their best work to make sure their vision is executed well and creates an emotional connection with customers. Great designers are passionate and driven; they want their designs to be successful so that people will use them and love them. They care deeply about their work and want it to be great.
User-Centered Design (UCD)
User-centered design (UCD) is the process of designing products with users in mind. UCD has been a huge success because it is a UX methodology that provides insight into what customers want, need, and expect. It helps companies understand how to build products that people value and love.
Moreover, UCD gives you a competitive edge in differentiating your products from others. It focuses on empathy, the user’s emotions, their understanding of the world, which all help businesses grow. The bottom line is that if you have a better understanding of your customer’s needs, you can create better products for them.
The Importance of Clear Communication
Communicating well is a complex process. You need to be clear and concise in your messaging, but also manage to show personality at the same time. A lot of this is based on how you design your message and how you present it.
You may want to consider hiring a professional designer who understands the nuances of communication. Professionals understand typography, color theory, aesthetics, layout, and more. They can help you craft messaging that effectively communicates your message without being overdone or cluttered.
Designers can help with everything from logos and layouts to infographics, websites, and social media graphics. They can advise on what language is most appropriate for your audience or suggest new ways for you to communicate better with customers as trends change.
Conclusion
With a clear sense of what is good design, you can create a design strategy that will help you achieve your marketing goals and reflect your brand.
Good design is anything that solves the problem that it was intended to solve.
People are more likely to be interested in a product if it looks aesthetically pleasing.
The best design results are achieved by understanding the user and designing accordingly.
Good design is simple because simplicity is elegant and timeless.
Emotional design is based on the idea of creating an emotional response in the user through visual and interactive design elements.
UCD is a user-centered approach to design, where insights from the users themselves guide the design process.
Clear communication is important in effective design because it helps people understand the message with minimal effort.
Interested in having us build a customized marketing strategy for your company?
The process of hiring new employees can be exhausting. In effect, having several interviews in a day and not finding the right employee can be torture. In like manner, when we talk about tech professionals, it is important to realize they are in high demand these days.
For that reason, as employers are continually looking for tech talent, tech professionals have set higher standards. For tech professionals, good compensation is not enough. For that reason, companies have made changes in their job offers in order to make them more attractive for tech talent.
On the other hand, hiring executives is not an easy task. It is because you have to be aware that you will be interviewing experienced candidates. Consequently, you’ll recruit an individual that will fit a top-level position in your company. As a result, they will have a lot of responsibilities on their shoulders. For that reason, different methods are required in order to make your job offer more attractive and secure a candidate who fills your needs.
Given these points, here are five crazy tactics that work when hiring tech executive employees.
Define Job Specifications
The first thing you should do when hiring executives is research. Doing research will allow you to know the nature of the job and prepare you to hire the candidate that best fits your company’s needs.
In like manner, defining the job specifications will allow aspirants to understand what you expect from them. On the other hand, when posting job vacancies, you should provide a detailed job description. In that case, you will be able to find the right candidate not only for your executive position but also for your company culture. In other words, if you need to hire tech professionals like senior software engineers it would help if you let them know what your specific requirements are for the position. In that case, you will need to let them know not only your technical requirements but also personal behavioral expectations.
Take Advantage of Employee Referrals
When recruiting executives, you can’t leave aside networks. You can use connections and relations in your existing executive team to find the right candidate. Try to find employees that can suggest a few candidates that are able to fill your position requirements. In like manner, when it’s about referrals, candidates will feel more confident and will be able to perform better during the interview. In addition to that, it is vital to be transparent during the hiring process.
Apart from that, you probably will need to go beyond to leverage social media connections. For example, when you are trying to hire proficient and experienced web developers, posting a job vacancy won’t be enough. With this in mind, it is crucial to emphasize that tech talent standards are higher these days. For that reason, sometimes you will need to be more personal.
Demonstrate Professionalism
Executive-level tech candidates know that their abilities are valuable. In that case, they like to be discrete and expect professionalism from employers. Most of the executive candidates would instead be contacted through online networks or a private email address than any other channel. However, these days social networks are popular, and tech professionals, like mobile developers, like to show their skills through social media. With this in mind, you can also contact potential executive candidates through their personal social media profiles. Under those circumstances, you’ll still need to let them know that discretion and confidentiality will be maintained during the process.
Express the Value of the Position
As the demand for tech talent has increased, tech professionals have started to be concerned with more than just a salary. In like manner, when professionals reach an executive level, their expectations are even higher. For this reason, they will demand what kind of benefits they will receive apart from their salary.
Under those circumstances, you will need to increase your benefits package and provide an attractive job offer. To put it differently, Google provides its employees with excellent benefits such as free on-site gym classes, massage therapists, medical benefits and paid paternity/maternity leave benefits. In that case, if you are looking to hire tech professionals like data scientists, for example, you will need to let them know how great their benefits are. Data Scientists have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. For that reason, they won’t accept only monetary benefits.
Go the Extra Mile
When it’s about recruiting executive tech talent, you will need to break the ice. In effect, you won’t follow the conventional hiring process. This is because you will need to make changes in order to engage them. Since tech talent is in high demand, it’s probable that they have already received other job offers.
In that case, you need to make a difference and demonstrate how committed the company is to hire them. Try different methods, allow them to spend face-to-face time with other executive team members. In like manner, implement a personalized hiring experience, make them feel at home. Showing genuine interest in candidates will allow them to feel special. For that reason, you should demonstrate that getting to know them will be meaningful for you.
The concept of cold email is incorrectly referred to as spam. In our experience, building an effective cold email strategy takes an in-depth understanding of the benefits of your product or service and knowing how to communicate the message so that it connects with the needs of your potential customers. Rather than merely sending hundreds of emails, set up a system that will allow you to customize the content. Here’s our top 10 tips for effective B2B cold email campaigns.
1. Personalize your emails
Your success rate will be much higher if you personalize the emails. Personalize the emails to your prospects by reading and understanding their preferences. Starting your email with their name, ie. “Dear Paul”, will grab the reader’s attention more often than “Dear Business Owner”. This will ensure that your emails get the attention of your potential customers. It will also show that you are interested in your prospects’ needs and can be of great help in generating higher open and click-through rates. By using this technique, you can increase your open and click-through rates by up to 50%.
While this may sound like an obvious tip, cold emails often feel unprofessional and are still considered taboo in today’s marketplace. In addition to addressing your recipient by their first name, your email should also include your contact details, including your name, website, and telephone number. Providing contact information is the first step in a cold email campaign. By adding your name, you can create a personal connection with your recipients.
2. Grab Their Attention
Write an attention-grabbing subject line. This is crucial because it is the first impression that will determine whether or not your prospect reads your email or not. It is also the best way to avoid being marked as spam if your email is too long. Moreover, a CTA is essential in cold emails because it tells the reader that you have done your research and follow industry trends. It is important to use a personalized subject line and close the message with a compelling call to action.
To increase your open rates, you should focus on the subject line. A good subject line should include the name of the person to whom you are sending the email. It will be more likely to generate a response from the recipient if they know the person. This will improve the chances of your email being opened. This is the reason why A/B testing is so important. If you want to improve your open rates, you must test your message against each other.
3. Strong Cold Email Copy
Besides a well-written subject line, the content in your email must be relevant to the audience. Your emails copy must be of high quality. Good email copy increases open rates, click-through rates and generates leads or sales. Moreover, it should be short and simple. Moreover, it should not be rambling and confusing. Unless you’ve written a good subject line, you’ll lose the interest of the recipient. If you’re targeting a B2B audience, personalizing your email campaign will make you stand out from the crowd. Here are some proven cold email templates to help write effective emails that get results.
It is important to keep in mind that the best emails are those that are targeted and that are tailored to the subscriber. By segmenting your subscribers, you can increase your revenue significantly! If you’re trying to boost your sales through email, you’ll need to create a campaign that focuses on the interests of your readers.
4. Implement A/B Testing
Effective email copy that boosts conversions is what email lead generation specialists strive for and A/B testing is always an important part of the process. Test different subject lines, different versions of the main message etc.
Choose the right software to make this process as easy as possible. Some of the best apps we recommend for cold email are: Hunter Campaigns, SmartReach, Woodpecker, Reply, and Snov. At Oceanone we have our own proprietary software that is no extra cost when you hire us to create an manage your campaigns. Lear more about our email marketing services.
5. Cold Email Lists
Generate mailing lists of contacts within your target audience and communicate with them in a strategic way. Try to get mailing lists that include the recipient’s name.
6. Monitoring
Monitor the progress of your cold email campaign and analyze the results weekly once it has been launched.
7. Do it Right and Cold Email Really Works
One cold email campaign can generate more leads than any other form of lead generation when implemented properly.
8. Write Engaging Emails
Write cold emails that will engage your prospects without irritating them in any way. Ask questions, provide statistics, give them useful information, links to tools and offer solutions to their problems. There are a lot of possibilities. You need to spend some time brainstorming and get to the core of what information your audience will appreciate.
9. Follow up
In most cases we stop sending to the same cold email recipient if they haven’t responded after 4 emails.
The most effective email campaigns can make your business stand out from the rest. For example, a social media discussion can be useful for creating a sense of community among your subscribers. Providing your email with information is one of the best ways to stay on top of your competition and gain market share. As the world of commerce continues to evolve, you must also keep your customers’ attention by providing them with useful information. An effective email campaign will provide more value to your company.
10. Use a Single Call-To-Action (CTA)
A well-crafted email has a single goal: to engage the reader. A CTA can be as simple as an offer, or as complex as a customized form. The most effective emails will have a single action. This should be the same for all recipients. If you’re selling to a B2B audience, a CTA will vary depending on the buyer’s journey stage. Regardless of the goal, email should always contain a clear instruction for your audience.
To ensure the success of your email marketing efforts, keep these things in mind.
Expert Cold Email Services
As one of the top digital strategy agencies we have mastered the art of cold emailing by developing a variety of lead generation techniques with cold email marketing strategies. Contact us for a free consultation.
Website conversion rate is a challenge that most website owners struggle with. This length of this most may seem contrary to the the title that promises to explain how to “Easily Boost Website Conversion Rate.”
However, I promise that despite the length of the post, the actual implementation of the suggested methods are very quick and simple to do. Most of the content goes into depth explaining why it works.
Are you getting enough visitors to your website, but not enough leads?
If you are getting leads, are you having trouble with converting them to actual sales?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, then the problem is “Conversions” an in particular, the Website Conversion Rate.
On Average, 98% of the visitors to a website don’t contact the business and the visitor moves on and never returns.
When your website is getting good traffic volume but visitors are leaving without a trace it can be quite frustrating and baffling.
Attracting website visitors is one thing but convincing them to convert to a lead or sale is a much different challenge.
Many marketers and business owners are puzzled by the disparity between the number of visitors they managed to drive to the website and how many converted to leads or sales.
You have to figure out why your traffic is not converting
It’s possible you’re not providing them with the offers they really want, or perhaps you’re overloading them with too much information all at once. Your lead generation efforts can be thwarted by annoying popups, distracting visuals, unclear calls to action, and weak value propositions.
In this post, we’ll explore why your lead generation efforts are failing – and ways to regain some of the 98% of visitors who don’t convert.
There are many things you can do to improve your Website Conversion Rate but this article is focused on easy ways to boost your Website Conversion Rate and trying out a few small changes can make a big difference and that’s what this post is all about.
What do you consider a conversion?
Before you can improve your conversions of course you need to decide what a conversion is for you and then measure it. Use Google Analytics to track conversions. In most case a conversion is a lead or a sale and tracking the thank you page for the either of those is the most common transactions to measure.
Think like a customer
You need to step back and visit your website from your visitors perspective. First think about what your ideal customer would be looking for. Does your site easily provide the information they would want? Do you have too many distractions or elements that could cause confusion? These are just a few of the many questions you might ask.
Look for bottlenecks in the User Experience
One way to find out how your visitors are interacting with your website is to install Hotjar which will provide you with video captures of the activity from each visitor. It will show you if visitors are experiencing confusion or decision making problems and at what point they just leave the site. It can be quite enlightening.
Why are your visitors leaving without converting?
Optimizing a user’s experience (UX) is at the heart of lead generation. Your website should immerse people from the moment they arrive, keep them browsing for as long as possible, and convert them with a compelling offer.
Don’t be greedy.
They will get annoyed if you constantly flash popups at them. Just because someone stumbled across your site by chance does not mean they’re ready to convert.
You may know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen a site that appears like this:
Multiple pop-ups will confuse the customer, and they aren’t sure where to look.
Design your website in a way that is neither distracting nor annoying. Think about the kind of offer that will persuade users to convert.
It’s possible that the lead magnets you’re offering such as an ebook or audio file are not desired by your users. Perhaps a discount code or free toolkit would be more appealing to them. Conduct A/B tests to see which causes more visitors to convert.
Keep in mind other aspects of the user experience, too:
Make visitors fill out as few form fields as possible.
Make sure you don’t use more than one call-to-action on the same page.
Landing pages should be free of distracting elements, such as navigation bars.
Don’t ask for anything in return until you’ve provided value.
It may help you avoid mistakes if you know what to avoid, but what can you do?
Focus on providing an amazing user experience
A lot of people misunderstand user experience (UX).
Creating a website that looks good is often all marketers think about. That’s part of it, but a visually appealing screen won’t make any significant impact on lead generation.
In UX, you should take into account the whole flow of your website. When visitors arrive at your site, what does the journey look like? Where are they looking for information? Which information do they expect to find?
You need to think about your conversion funnel. When a visitor lands on a blog post about how to choose a vacuum cleaner, they’re not ready to buy a vacuum cleaner yet – they’re at the top of the funnel.
A detailed comparison checklist might make a good lead magnet. Your blog post should contain the CTA, as well as an exit intent popup with the same offer.
You are dealing with someone at the bottom of the funnel if you receive a visitor from a Facebook post about a vacuum cleaner discount. Streamline the checkout process to ensure that they convert. Using exit popups as they leave is another way to steer them back.
Exit popups can grow your lead generation 5x
Pop-up exits are extremely useful, but they can also backfire horribly. If a pop-up isn’t timed right, it won’t help generate leads.
This is why targeting pop-ups on specific pages on your website is so important. Consider your conversion funnel again.
Typically, exit popups look like this:
Visitors to your website will see an exit popup when they attempt to click away and leave. You’re saying, “Wait a minute!”. Before you leave…
You must complete that sentence.
If your most popular product is on sale, you could offer a discount, or perhaps you could offer a free download that offers some benefit to the visitor.
Ideas for brainstorming:
Hold on! This $10 off coupon is available before you leave.
Just a moment! You might want to check out our free guide on [topic] before you go.
Hold on a second! Get monthly discounts by joining our email list before you leave!
It isn’t necessary to say, “Hold on!” idea. Just make sure the visitor knows you are offering something of value if they want to stay.
As long as the user experience is enhanced with genuine value, exit popups can increase your lead generation by five times or more.
Yet, exit popups frequently fail due to their lack of visual appeal and genuine value.
Take a moment to consider this. You’re shopping at a retail store, yes a real store. There may be something specific you are looking for, or you may just be browsing.
However many things you see, nothing stands out enough for you to want to stay, so you leave.
There’s a sales associate who flags you down and asks, “Hey, wanna look around for a bit?” You might find something you like!
That’s probably going to make you walk a little faster to the exit
How about if that same sales associate got your attention and said, “Hey, we’re running a half-off sale on [what you want/need].” “I can show you if you’re interested.”
In that case, you might respond differently.
In the digital world you have a visitor who has glanced around your website and decided to leave. This is your opportunity to pique their attention.
Maybe your offer looks like this:
It’s not bad at all, is it? Your prospect may go back and purchase that product with those shiny new discounts if they were considering your product but found it too expensive.
Furthermore, you’ll gain a valuable new subscriber to whom you can send other offers. That visitor that almost left without ever being seen again could turn into a repeat customer for years to come. You can show personalized messages to repeat visitors if you use a targeting feature like the pop-up software Hello Bar.
Increase immersion by using interaction
The importance of your website conversion rate in marketing cannot be overstated.
Imagine the activity you engage in on social media, for example. You know you can build relationships and trust by replying to a comment someone leaves on your Facebook post.
Visitors to your site may not always be willing to take the first step – and you can’t have hour-long conversations with everyone. Therefore, if you want to increase leads on your website, you should simulate conversations.
Returning to the exit intent popup, let’s take a look. Visitor email addresses were exchanged for a 20% discount.
Maybe it would be better to start the conversation with something a little friendlier. You can add questions to an exit intent using lead generation software like Hello Bar, for example, to warm up a visitor.
As an example, you could ask a question about your particular niche or industry:
Do you love dogs? YES / NO
This gives the visitor every chance to respond, “Yes.” Subsequently, it will be easier to receive the same response when you ask the next question.
What works as an offer?
As we mentioned, 98% of your visitors leave your site without engaging. That’s a huge number.
This statistic was used with an exit popup on the Hello Bar website to encourage people to sign up for our email list. The number of signups increased by 450 in just one week.
Using numbers allows you to show what your product is capable of, target your prospective clients’ pain points, and build trust with them.
Consider the case of someone who sells weight loss products. Not only do you want to establish credibility, you also want to remind your site visitors of their goals.
In an exit pop-up, you can use the following statistic:
This statistic will capture your visitor’s attention and spark their curiosity to know more..
Many test have proven that the number of emails collected per day had increases greatly after deploying an exit intent popup.
Using exit popups isn’t the only way to snag leads who would otherwise bounce. Visitors won’t lose the signup page because the top bars stay on top of their screen.
Put it to the test. A landing page catches your attention, then something else catches your eye. Then it is suddenly gone – and you are not going to waste time looking for it again.
Consumers think that way, so make it easier for them to sign up.
You can invite visitors to become leads by including a handy top bar to help the website conversion rate.
Regardless of how many internal links your visitors follow, they can still sign up for your e-mail list without having to search for a signup form.
Provide Multiple Communication Channels
Many visitors want to contact businesses, but in their preferred way and time.
Every user who visits your website is your potential customer, interested in your offer.
By providing your website visitors an easy way to contact you either via phone call, SMS message, Appointment, Email, or other means, a lead can be converted into a sale.
For this we have a great solution called “Lead Widget“. It’s a multi-choice contact widget that can go on every page of you website allowing visitors to reach you on their preferred platform. They can choose SMS, Email, Phone, Appointment Booking of Live Chat. For some businesses having that immediate contact is vital. In fact there is one right here in the bottom right corner of this page that says “Click to Connect” Learn more about Lead Widget!
Boost Your Website Conversion Rate
You can’t just build a landing page and cross your fingers for lead generation. You must use tools and strategies to convince people to take action.
Top bars and exit popups are ideal strategies. Communicate with your consumers whether you’re online or not. Give discounts or give incentives to gain an edge.
Interested in trying these strategies yourself?
You can try Lead Widget for 30 days for free. You can easily place it on your website and try it Free for 30 Days to see if it helps you get more leads on your website.
There is never a single solution that works for everyone so you need to be prepared to test, test some more and test again. It’s what every successful marketer does. Be sure to track your results to determine what is working and what is not.
When you find something that works, know that it won’t work forever. Website Conversion Rate Optimization is an ongoing process that needs fine tuning and adjustments along the way.
Today’s digitally oriented age can present many marketing challenges for Online Lead Generation. It will take time and input from your side, but with effort and a little bit of know-how, you can achieve the Lead Generation results you are looking for.
All the concepts of digital marketing are at your fingertips and by following these simple and easy ideas, you’ll be generating genuine, quality leads in no time.
Online Lead Generation and the Importance of Digital Marketing
The relevance of digital marketing in today’s global economy is becoming an undeniably powerful tool to promote your business and build your company’s following.
Statistics from various institutions all point towards the same thing: by increasing your contact list and heightening your online presence, your company will grow steadily.
The strategies are really all built around for methods. Visitors to your website, downloading your free products in exchange for their email, clicking on your ads and reading your newsletter or blog post.
The fundamental thing that is happening with these processes is that you were building a relationship and build trust from this potential customer. Once you have shared your knowledge and expertise on the subject they’re interested in there’s a much higher likelihood that they will buy your product or service.
When it’s done right, digital marketing is the way to online lead generation, and lead generation converts to company profits.
How the current digital market is changing
You don’t have to spend a ton of money but be prepared to invest some time to develop a good lead generation process. Many options exist outside of spending your entire marketing expenses or even your business’s whole budget.
Statistics indicate that 18.5 per cent of leads are generated through online lead, while around 40% is generated directly. These statistics are changing, however, with a proven increase in digital attention from both a company-to-company industry as well as company-to-buyer.
Implementing your best strategy for online lead generation in a competitive world
The current fast-paced marketing industry with their low attention span doesn’t allow any company or business entity much time to make an impact on the minds of readers or potential future buyers.
Step one is targeting your specific audience. Simple and understandable methods of market research can ensure that you reach the correct listeners. The ultimate goal is to achieve this through passive methods, meaning that your time, as important to you as it is, is not wasted.
You put in the work once and see it pay off without any further effort on your behalf.
How is this done?
The effects of social media
Being active on social media is the first big step. It may sound tedious, but a simple five minutes on each of your targeted platforms can make a major difference.
Always be professional in your approach but be original and have ingenuities as well.
Set aside a reasonable time to like, comment and post on each platform.
Five to ten minutes will work perfectly, depending on you or your company’s schedule. Publishing new content, doing guest posts and promoting your site through affiliate links is a very good way to monetize passively as well as gain new customers.
Professional help and consultation
Getting a marketing company involved to promote your business is a good idea if you don’t the time or enough staff to handle all the tasks.
Many professionals can give you a relevant opinion on your company’s current status and will point out where you need improvement regarding your social presence. You may gain some insight into your current marketing trends as well as your customers.
Free content and how it can bring in money
Creating an online product may take time, but in the end, its share-ability and social media impact will always exceed your expectations, if the product is relevant and well thought out.
Putting the time and effort into a “free” product is one of the best ways of generating repeat clients and, in turn, repeat revenue. Not only do you gain clients, but your analytics system, if you have one, can give you a more in-depth idea of who your target market is and how you can reach them. Apps, ebooks, videos, checklists and other digital resources all work well for this type of strategy.
Newsletters and mailing lists
Offering a way for potential customers to sign up to your newsletter is another essential way of getting them onboard. The catch is that your mailing list needs to have easy sign-up (perhaps a site pop-up) and needs to have relevant content that subscribers would want to read.
Plan your material out beforehand and make sure the quality is impeccable. With these general pointers, you should be well on your way to creating an excellent online presence and building your client base through it. Never lose faith or hope in your own amateur marketing ability; the more you implement, the more you will discover what works for your specific market.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Lead Generation
All the tactics mentioned above are long-term methods for on-going lead generation. They may not produce immediate results but they will be effective for ongoing lead generation and meeting your long-term goals.
When you need more immediate results, PPC leads are the way to go. Depending on where your audience is, this could mean Google Ads, Youtube Ads, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or Pinterest and others. If people would generally search for the products or service that you offer, then Google Search ads are going to give you the best results.
Google Search ads are the most expensive leads but also the highest quality because of buyer intent. Nobody searches for “Plumber in Chicago” unless they are looking to hire one. The buyer intent is very obvious unless they are just doing research of course. If they search for “how to fix a leaking faucet” they probably want to find out how to do it themselves and so there is not implied buyer intent but you don’t have to target that keyword.
However, you might want to consider targeting a lower buyer intent keyword because they are much cheaper per click and it does provide brand exposure. These are the kind of decisions you will have to make according to your budget and overall marketing strategy.
The amazing thing about PPC ads is that they are highly targeted and you can start getting results later today.
The cost for search ads depends on your location and the amount of competition. Google ads typically cost between $1 and $2 per click, although some ads can cost over $50 if the competition is fierce. Law firms, Plastic surgeons and Roofing Contractors are among those businesses that can expect to pay a very high CPC. Their average sale is very high so it is worth it for them. Google Ads are placed based on both an advertiser’s bid and the quality of the advertisement. You’ll therefore be less likely to outbid your competition if your ad is better.
Those are some online advertising basics but there is much more complexity to it. Understanding the platform that you choose, how to get the best ROI and writing great ad copy are some key factors in achieving successful results. That’s beyond the scope of this post and we will cover it in depth in future post. Meanwhile, if you would like to learn more about online advertising, this post from Hubspot is a great place to start. Also check out out our post about creating a marketing strategy.
With the constantly shifting market and new challenges getting ahead, marketing strategy has become more difficult than ever. From product launch to store promotion, everything is constantly changing. That’s why you need a strategy that helps you make sense of the constantly shifting market.
Strategy is the complex and the simple of it all. It helps you figure out the long-term implications of your decisions and the short-term benefits. And, when you have a good strategy, everything falls into place. That’s why it’s so important to develop an effective strategy to succeed in marketing.
If you are starting to put a marketing strategy together, you may have discovered bits and pieces but haven’t found a method to pull it all together. Assuming you have decided what product or service you are going to promote, your next step is to build a marketing strategy. It will help guide you on how and where to execute your plan and keep you on track for success.
Read on to find out more about how to develop a marketing strategy and get ahead in marketing.
An effective marketing strategy guides your business’s marketing initiatives.
Now, more than ever it is important to have a focused plan so that you stick to the tactics that your business will benefit from the most. Without a strategy you will try all kinds of marketing tactics and it will be hit and miss.
An effective marketing strategy will help guide you and help you choose the marketing tactics that will have the most impact like promoting your blog posts, creating a PPC campaign or creating an affiliate program. Before we get right into it, here is some clarification on some terms that are often confused or misunderstood…
UVP vs USP?
The company’s unique value proposition (UVP) and unique sales proposition (USP) should be central to the marketing strategy. The UVP is a short statement that sums up your business and what it has to offer. It acts as a guiding principle for all of the company’s business decisions.
What’s a good example of a great UVP?
“We help non-profit organizations with awareness campaigns”.
A USP on the other hand speaks directly to your target market and tells them why they should care. A good USP comes from having a deep understanding of who your customers are, what they want and why they want it.
What’s a good example of a great USP ?
Vistaprint: Fast, Cheap Printing for Growing Businesses on a Budget
These terms are often used interchangeably but they are distinctly different. Tactics are the methods you will use to implement your marketing strategy. See “Marketing Tactics” below.
Marketing Strategy vs Marketing Plan?
These terms are also used interchangeably at times but a Marketing Plan is a document that details the various marketing activities a company conducts and outlines the budget and timeline for implementing various marketing initiatives.
Here are 4 key steps to creating a powerful marketing strategy with measurable results:
1 | Do your research
2 | Do competitive analysis and discover your target audience
3 | Position & differentiate from your competitors
4 | Set your goals
Do your research
Some say you should set your goals first but we find it effective to have some goals in mind but do some research before you lock into your goals. Why? Don’t just go with your gut here. Research is a must when it comes to building a strategy. It’s impossible to set goals and plan unless you know what you are up against with your competition. Even a little research is better than none at all but know that if you don’t know the full picture, you could fail and not understand why.
Your ultimate goal might be extremely difficult to reach so you may need to reach some other smaller, short term goals to lay the groundwork to make it easier achieve your larger goals. For instance your research may indicate that a brand awareness campaign is what you need to do first in order reach your long term goals more effectively.
Here’s a different type of example of moving forward without doing enough research. If you plan an SEO strategy, you will likely start with keyword research. You use a keyword tool and find out some long-tail keywords that have great search volume and a low KD (Keyword Difficulty) score. You think, great, I can rank high in no time and proceed to write an epic blog post. However, when you look at the first page results for that keyword, every position is filled with big brands like Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot. Your time was wasted – there is no way you will outrank them.
By the way, the example above comes from personal experience. OUCH. Time was not completely wasted though. I did learn from it. I also re-purposed the content by making a video and a downloadable cheatsheet. Then posted it in various places like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest to get social traffic and syndicated it on Medium.
The point is, do in depth research and it will pay off. Here the things you should do to prepare your marketing strategy:
Do Market Research that is Qualitative
A qualitative approach is essential for gaining a broad understanding of the underlying factors affecting consumer behaviour. This is a very large topic on it’s own and I would suggest you go well beyond this article to really understand it’s value. Here is one excellent and easy to understand article from OptinMonster called 7 Qualitative Research Methods for High-Impact Marketing.
You want to make sure you get all the vital data like demographics and consumer behaviour so that you can make solid decisions.
Do competitive analysis and discover your target audience
In a competitive analysis, you identify your competitors and analyze their strategies in order to determine if your brand has any weaknesses or strengths compared to them. An analysis of the competitors often involves a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) , which helps to develop a competition marketing strategy. Here is a great article on how to do a SWOT Analysis. This will help you decide what audience segments to target.
Visme has all kinds of helpful tools including this great collection of SWOT templates for various types of businesses.
Where are you going to keep track of all this market research information?
Not long ago I would have recommended Excel Spreadsheets but today it is much more complex. Keeping everything cohesive, manageable and accessible to teams requires a more robust approach. There are several project management applications that have evolved that do a great job helping you with this process. Monday.comClickUp.com and Asana.com are 3 of our favourites. If you do a quick search, you can find many others to suit your needs and budget.
Position & differentiate from your competitors
Perception is everything. How your brand is perceived and how you position your brand can affect how your competitors are perceived in your target market. Positioning differentiates your brand from the others.
It’s not necessary to make your competitors look bad. In fact, that rarely works anymore. It’s better to go high and point out the outstanding benefits of your products or services. Try not to go the path of a lower price point because that can lead to race to the bottom. Most companies can’t win on price if they are competing with any big retailers.
Did you know that Costco breaks even on many products? They can do this because they have the membership fees that make up the core of Costco’s profits. It’s a brilliant business model and impossible to beat on price. You can beat them on customer experience though.
Find a way to win. I know I wouldn’t go to Costco and stand in that line to get like one chicken. Find the weaknesses of your competitors and make yours better. Position your brand by consistently communicating your differentiating qualities on your website, social media and all your marketing communications.
Develop strong visuals, taglines and other marketing assets to communicate your positioning so that it becomes recognizable and memorable.
Be consistent with your brand messaging so that it becomes undeniable. Own that positioning.
Using Costco again as an example, let’s look a Trader Joe’s. They positioned themselves as a “national chain of neighborhood grocery stores.” They offer an intimate corner store type of shopping experience that is a completely different experience than going to Costco. The prices are not as cheap but it’s a successful chain of grocery stores because of how they positioned themselves.
Set your goals
To guide your marketing efforts and provide benchmarks for evaluation, you need clearly defined marketing objectives. Once you set your goals, there’s only one thing left to do: implement your strategy.
Your marketing objectives should align with the widely-used SMART criteria.
What Does the SMART Acronym Stand For?
The acronym stands for:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Relevant
T – Time-Bound
Specific — Clearly stating the desired outcome. This will answer who, what, when, how much etc. Measurable — Track progress with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Achievable — Be bold but realistic; use current growth as your benchmark. Relevant – Align you objective with your overall marketing and business strategy Time-Bound — Set a specific time frame for achieving your goal.
What is an example of a Smart Goal?
Examples of good SMART goals would be:
Increase sales revenue by 10% in the next quarter by promoting our newest product line using Facebook ads.
OR
Increase conversions on our Product landing page by 10 percent by A/B testing on four conversion-focused elements.
Here’s an in-depth guide on how to set SMART Goals.
There is so much to learn about marketing strategy and know that within your strategy there will be many tactics involved that also require expertise and each of those can take a great deal of testing.
You will need to revisit and adjust your strategy along the way as there are market dynamics involved. Your competitors will continue to adapt and new competitors can suddenly appear. Stay aware of the competition and adapt your tactics as needed but stay focused on your objectives.
The key takeaway here is that building your brand is proven to be the primary driver of long-term growth and success.
Useful Resources
qlutch.com – Excellent templates for Marketing Projects. Free to use online, only pay if you want to download them.
Marketing Sherpa – Review case studies to inspire some ideas. Incredible marketing resources , free templates and more.
Do you want to know more about Marketing Tactics?
As mentioned above there are many marketing tactics that will be used in your marketing strategy. Below is a list of several key marketing tactics. Typically these tactics would be put into separate posts but we decided to do a deep dive here.
Here are some of the Marketing Tactics (in no particular order) that you may implement in your Marketing Strategy.
Advertisement Congruence
Advertising congruence is a commonly used term now in the advertising business. The importance of congruence between ads and landing pages has been proven over and over. A mismatch or disconnect between the messaging and imagery on the ad and landing page will result in a low conversion rate. The copy and imagery in the ad must match or compliment the copy and imagery on the landing page.
There are two major channels through which this can be achieved: through primacy and through co-prime position effects. Primacy refers to the fact that a commercial has more potential strength when other similar commercials are being watched. In the past, this was usually done through measurement of previous research, but as new information becomes available it is not as useful any longer.
This can be overcome by selecting the most potent advertisement and using its previous research in a clever way to increase its current significance. A prime spot could also have more immediate benefits, for example a well-chosen phrase could make people remember a particular product more easily than a more generic one.
Co-prime positioning, on the other hand, refers to the process of placing advertisements in front of markets where they will not normally be seen. This is an especially important technique used in B2B advertising and in mobile marketing applications such as pre-roll video advertisement.
For example, it is common in movie trailers to show up at the end or beginning of the trailer so that consumers are attracted to it immediately. In the case of commercials, it is more common for the pre-roll video advertising to appear in between product scenes or between advertisements.
This makes the entire commercial more important and memorable, as people are more likely to pay attention to the product or service being advertised.
Blogging – part of a content marketing strategy
If you want to boost search rankings and make money online, you should learn how to write blog posts. Publishing a blog is a great way to build an audience and authoritative presence in a particular niche or market. When you learn to write blog posts effectively, you will be able to attract visitors to your blog with relative ease.
Writing epic blog posts with valuable content should be part of an overall content marketing strategy. If you want your posts to rank high in Google Search results, you need to be strategic about your keyword focus and write write SEO-rich articles.
What exactly are SEO-rich articles? SEO copywriting is writing copy to achieve higher visibility for your online content, usually blog posts. You should also write SEO-rich titles, SEO-rich emails, SEO-rich social posts, SEO-rich videos, SEO-rich infographics and so on so that you get the maximum SEO benefit from all your efforts.
Search engines are always looking for fresh, relevant content that they can spider through and index. So, it’s very important that you learn to optimize your articles and blog posts for specific keywords or search terms. The keywords or search phrases must rank well in the search engine results pages, or SERPs, and come highly recommended from search engine experts.
These SEO terms or search terms, when used in a blog or article, will help the search engine spiders or bots to find and index your website faster. Since the bots find these keywords easily, they can rank your page or site hire quickly, thereby pushing you up the rankings. So, it’s important that you learn to optimize your content for these keywords, to keep your site higher in the rankings.
When it comes to ranking high in search results, you need to have a good understanding how it works so you can use it to your advantage.
While nobody understands the Google algorithm exactly, we do know that some SEO factors have never changed. The title of the post, the H tags, the keyword usage and the number of quality backlinks have always been the most important ranking factors.
There are approximately 200 ranking factors but the ones just mentioned are the core factors and they are a must if you hope to rank in search results. The other factors seem to come into play depending on the competitiveness of the keyword. The next factors may include things like page speed and user experience
For instance, if you want your blog posts or website to rank higher for the keyword “home repair tips,” then you simply need to write a blog post that uses “home repair tips” in the TItle, H1, H2 tags and the body text a few times. The number of times it should be used in the body text depends on the length of the post.
You can also use plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math SEO to make sure your content has the right balance of keywords, title tags and various other elements needed to optimize your page for a specific term. It’s also important that the text all sounds natural. Don’t write awkward sounding copy just so you can force your keyword to fit in there.
If you really want to master blogging, then you’ll want learn from the greats like Ryan Robinson (@TheRyanRobinson). I have learned a lot from reading his blog posts over the years. His content is epic, he makes serious money from it and shares how to do it. I was going to include a list of great blogging tools here and then I saw Ryan’s monster post and I quickly changed my mind and decided to just share a link to his 45 Best Blogging Tools. I use most of these myself.
Boost Posts
Using Boost Posts is a great strategy for driving quality targeted traffic to your website. It is an extremely useful Facebook marketing method that should be used by all business owners with a Facebook page. There are benefits and downsides to Boost Posts and how to effectively use Boost Posts to increase your ROI. Below discuss exactly what Boost Posts is, how to make the most of a Boost Post, and whether or not boosting posts are worthwhile.
What is a Boost Post? Simply put, a Boost Post is an ad that is created within your ad manager system. When you create a Boost Post, you are creating a “feed” of content that will automatically be pushed into your news feed. This is one of the most powerful methods for driving targeted traffic to your website, and if properly implemented can help boost your organic search engine rankings.
How does Boost Posts work? When you create a Boost Post, you are simply selecting the type of ad that you would like to run. If you want to test a particular keyword or niche, you can choose specific ads that fit those needs. Then you select a targeted and highly targeted list of people who are likely to be interested in your content, and then select the demographics to gather information on where they live, how many children they have, how much they make per year, and what their income level is.
With all this information, you can then optimize your ads to reach these individuals. By selecting the right ads, and placing them in the right location, you will be able to reach more potential buyers, resulting in a higher profit margin when compared to an untargeted list of viewers.
Boosting your site’s rankings in major search engines such as Google and Yahoo by placing your Boost Posts strategically in high traffic locations will also help you generate more traffic and potentially higher sales conversions. This is because when someone clicks on your Boost Post, it will direct them to your landing page, and you will be able to offer your targeted audience more than just the product they were looking for. It will also provide more detailed advertising, and a lower cost per click than you would with untargeted traffic.
This will allow you to get a higher return on your investment, and bring more visitors to your website with less effort and more of an opportunity to turn a profit.
However, the best part of Boost Posts is that it is all done automatically. That’s right, you don’t have to be an expert computer programmer to set one up. All you need is access to the WordPress platform, which will allow you to install and activate all of the functions of Boost Posts with one-step ease. You can even install social plug-ins like socialpilot to benefit from the optimization benefits that Boost Posts offer.
Not only that, but you will also be able to set it up with ease from a single screen, which will save you time and frustration in the long run. You may even find that you can customize the look and design of your Boost Post without having to code it from scratch.
The bottom line is that Boost Posts gives you a great opportunity to expand the reach of your online business. You will reach more potential buyers and increase the odds that your product will sell. You will also increase the odds that you will reach a wider audience. In addition to that, Boost Posts will help you gain more popularity in search engines and give you organic traffic without any of the work. With all these benefits, it is easy to see why socialpilot has made Boost Posts so popular with small businesses around the world.
Backlinks
Backlinks are essential when you want to boost your ranking in Google search results. The relationship between rankings and links from high-quality domains is the most important off-site SEO factor. You must take care of on-site SEO first but once that is taken care of, here are some ways you can get some of those high-quality links pointing at your website.
But that does not mean you can start right away on your new unknown domain and site. Actually, even though the opinions of many internet articles you’ve read suggest that you should, you really do not need to be well known to build backlinks quickly. That said, having just a single piece of infographics or a single chart does not count as a “backlink”. So, what about this seemingly magical internet tool that some people swear by? How to create a backlink quickly with infographics and charts?
The first and most important rule to follow when trying to understand how to build backlinks is that links cannot be purchased. The beauty of the backlink concept lies in its simplicity: when someone links to your website, you are effectively “purchasing” their link. If they were to buy an anchor text linked to your site, then you would essentially be forced to pay for their link, which defeats the whole purpose. Links cannot be bought. Therefore, they cannot be purchased!
So how can you use the previously mentioned secret in order to build backlinks? One way is to start linking to other people’s blog posts. An example of this is when you see an article in a blog and you find a blog post with useful information and you would like to share the information on your own blog. Simply copy the anchor text and paste it into your own blog; do this once a month and you will start to receive traffic from people reading other people’s content.
Another great way to use blogs and guest posts is to try to rank for the search keywords you are trying to promote. In doing so, you will be able to build backlinks on almost any webpage that contains search engine friendly keywords; a few examples include YouTube, Squidoo and Google. This strategy works best for bloggers as they often have more than one video on their sites and most likely many more blog posts. In order to rank for search keywords relevant to your niche, use these two strategies:
First, you need to build backlinks that contain anchor text that is not already in use on another webpage. To find relevant places to use, go to YouTube and search for videos featuring the keyword you are promoting. For example, if your niche is dogs, then you would look for videos on YouTube about dogs, or dog training, etc.
Once you find videos that contain nofollow links (no links that are not attached to any page) that are relevant to your niche then bookmark them for later use. You can also use the same tactic with Squidoo; although it seems somewhat counter-intuitive to bookmark something that no longer exists, Squidoo is actually a very useful tool to use as it is one of the first to launch in Google and many other search engines.
Second, once you have found a video that contains nofollow or a no-link, create a post about the video on your blog or social media sites; use anchor text that is also on your site, for example your brand or URL. This will help you rank better in the search engines by being linked to your main website or blog. It may take several weeks or a few months, but eventually you should see a substantial increase in your rankings and traffic.
Remember to keep adding your links to all the major social media sites and blogs, as well as bookmarking all the nofollow backlinks you create on Squidoo, etc. as these get updated on a regular basis. Now all that is left is to submit your posts to YouTube, etc… which is pretty easy if you know how to do it.
Last but not least, when it comes to learning how to link reclamation there are two main approaches you should consider. The first approach is what I call “reciprocal linking”. Reciprocal linking basically means helping out someone in your market by providing them with a link on your website or blog.
The other approach is called “nofollow backlinking” which means that you will not provide a link to anyone’s web page unless you are the one who requested the link. So the bottom line is if you have any questions about how to re-link from either side, you should ask your web master/blogger first!
Checkout Rankpay if you want a great company who you can outsource your backlinking to. They offer a great service where they let you know how many backlinks it is going to take to get you to the top of the search results for a given keyword.
Checkout optimization
You might not be aware of it, but most eCommerce stores use checkout optimization in order to draw traffic to their website, increase conversion rates and / or convert visitors into buyers. If you dig deeper into the details, you’ll find that checkout optimization has been used to draw attention to the product(s) or service being offered by a company and to encourage customers to make a purchase. There are two ways to optimize checkout pages for the purpose of increasing sales conversions: one is to build trust with your customers by ensuring that they can easily navigate around your website; the other is to ensure that your website is easy to navigate and the entire process of purchasing a product / service can be done very quickly. While both of these aims are worthy goals, it’s important to remember that without proper checkout optimization, eCommerce stores will struggle with conversions.
So how can checkout pages help your online business increase conversions? For one, if you make it difficult for your customers to navigate quickly around your website, you are making it more likely that they will abandon the shopping cart and open up a different vendor. As such, the first thing that you should do is make sure that your website looks, feels and behaves like the page that the customer was intending to open when they arrived. By checking this out, you can reduce the chances of your customers abandoning the cart in order to visit another website, which will drastically reduce your conversion rates.
Hotjar is a great tool that we use to track all the events on a landing page so we can see the activity and figure out where people are dropping out.
One way to do this is to send out regular emails to your customers. The great thing about email is that you can customize them to suit the nature of your business. For instance, you can set up your email campaign to remind customers that you’re offering a discount if they purchase more than one item from you, or send out monthly newsletters to remind customers to check out your site’s newest products. By customizing your emails for each specific audience that you serve, you can use checkout optimization and your unique sales offers in ways that will greatly increase the chances of your customers opening and checking out all of your products and services.
Another way that checkout optimization can work in your favor is to ensure that you provide your customers with clear shipping and return information. This means providing an address, phone number, and an email address so that your customers can follow-up with you and request their merchandise directly.
If you offer clear shipping and return information on your website, you will increase your chances of getting these items opened and checked out, as well as increasing your chances of your customers staying loyal to you long enough to become true customers. Once you build trust with your customers, you can begin working on other aspects of your business to increase your conversion rates even further.
One last way that checkout optimization and your unique offers can work for you is that you can use them to build trust as a brand and as a business. By using the unique features of your checkout process and opting in to receive your free gift or money-back offer, you can set your business apart from other retailers that may be offering similar but boring products. If your customers know that they can trust you and enjoy being a customer of yours, it can really help to build your image and your reputation within the market place.
Once customers start to see how great your business is and how much you value their feedback, many of them are more than willing to tell friends about the incredible experiences that they have had while doing business with you.
These are just a few ways in which you can use checkout optimization and the unique features of your shopping cart to boost your online profits and improve your customer experience. Take advantage of all of the opportunities that are available to you, whether you are working on ecommerce or not. You can still build relationships and establish long-term customer loyalty by taking the time to optimize your shopping cart and the features of your website. By following these tips, you will be able to provide a higher level of customer service and enhance the likelihood that customers will return to purchase something else as well as increasing the number of customers that you have in your store at any given time.
Email Marketing and Automation
Email marketing is still very effective for many business owners. For some business owners, email marketing might seem old. With the popularity of social networking, and many other types of newer messaging formats, the conventional email format just feels rather ancient. But it still remains among the most powerful and well understood contemporary forms of communicating. This article will discuss a few important things about email marketing, and why it is still an important asset for many business owners.
There are a few different types of email marketing techniques that you can use to communicate with your audience. If you’re just starting out or trying to fine tune your current campaign, you should probably start with an email marketing campaign that uses a “reader optin” strategy. In this technique, you’ll build a database of subscribers who have expressed an interest in your product or service. Each email subscriber can be added to a specific list so that that you can send them content they will be interested in.
Another popular strategy is for internet marketers to use social media marketing techniques in their emails. By using this strategy, marketers can build lists of subscribers who have expressed an interest in their niche through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. This tactic can be a little tricky though as some marketers have had a lot of trouble building viable customer relationships through these social media sites.
However, most experts agree that it is important to have a viable customer relationship with any website or product. It is important to build a solid foundation and to regularly communicate with your customers. It is also important to consider building and maintaining a proper opt-in page where visitors can subscribe to your email marketing campaign. This page is a vital part of most successful email marketing campaigns and it is important to spend some time creating a page that will actually interest your visitors.
Utilize optin popups in your blog posts. People complain about them but they work. List building is a key component to nearly all online business models because you have direct access to stay in touch and market other products and services to them. When you look at the high customer acquisition cost for some businesses, the decision to give priority to email marketing is a no-brainer.
If you take the time to really consider your audience and the needs of your target audience, you will find that there are a variety of different campaigns that you can launch. In fact, you may be pleasantly surprised at all of the ways that you can use these email marketing strategies to increase the number of people who are currently reading your email lists. So take some time and consider all of your options. A well planned email automation will reap rewards over and over again.
GetResponse has become our favourite tool for building sales funnels and email automation campaigns.
Give away free stuff
Another effective strategy for businesses to gain the trust of their customers is to give away free stuff. Most customers want to feel that you are a reliable company and that they can trust what you are offering them. As many studies have shown, people are far more likely to buy from companies that they find trustworthy and dependable.
You should always remember to give away free stuff or exclusive offers to build your customer loyalty. Loyal customers are more likely to buy from you again in the future because they feel safe with you. Customer loyalty will not only build your business but it will also help you win awards from your customers. Some companies have won awards from being the best in giving out free items to customers.
In this post we give an in depth analysis of social media and why you ought to consider it as part of your online marketing strategies. If you aren’t familiar with what exactly social networking is, allow me to describe; social networking is when you utilize a particular social networking platform to link with your target audience, build relationships and drive targeted traffic to your site. A social network is like a club or a community, where people come together, form groups and interact with each other.
Facebook and LinkedIn are the best place to start. Join some groups relevant to your niche and participate by commenting on posts in the groups. The great thing about these networks is that you can build your business easily and almost effortlessly by engaging your targeted audience on a daily basis. Let’s take a look at how you can integrate social media into your online marketing campaign.
Be sure to integrate social media into your website. Use WordPress to build your site so you can start a blog. By creating a website dedicated to your brand, you are able to engage your target market on a more personal level. This could be the reason why businesses who don’t engage their target audience end up losing them to competitors.
Creating a website around your brand will not only build your brand but also keep you in front of your competitors. Write blog posts and then share them on the social platforms where your customers hang out.
There are a few reasons why a blog is important. First, a blog provides you with a platform to express and share your ideas which helps you build credibility and shows your expertise and authority on your topics. Blogging is essential if you want to rank high in Google searches because Google is hungry for new high quality content and your competitors are going to win if you don’t participate.
Even if you have a large website with lots of great static content and it ranks well, it’s only a matter of time before it starts to drop in the search results as competitors catch up. That’s just the reality of search rankings and plain old math.
Create Facebook and Linkedin pages for your business as well as professional looking branded profiles on Instagram, Twitter or whatever platforms you decide on.
You should also curate and share other people’s relevant content. This is another key to successful internet marketing. You can create content for your website in whatever format you wish, whether it be a blog post video, Instagram post or any other type of content. You then can place this content on your website alongside other keywords that are relevant to your product or service.
Internal Linking
One of the most common strategies adopted by SEO experts for improving search engine rankings is internal linking. Internal linking refers to placing one or more links within your content that lead from one URL to another on your site. Internal links are useful because they improve the ranking of your site by making it appear closer to the top of search results.
How can internal linking structure improve your website’s rankings? Internal links have two benefits. They improve the page rank of your site by improving the quality of your links and you benefit by improving your pagerank. Because links are what keep you in the top rankings, improving your pagerank and thus improving your search engine rankings are extremely important to your SEO campaign.
One way to improve your pagerank with internal links is to build links from high-ranking authority sites within your niche. The authority sites could be in your own niche, but they may also be in related niches. There are many tools available that let you identify authority sites within your niche that link to yours or those which link to them. You will then want to build as many internal links from these sources as possible.
Another way to boost authority and get links from authoritative sites is to insert your anchor text into your hyperlinks. Anchor text is the hyperlink’s keyword or anchor text. For example, if your target keyword is dog collars then you would want to include “dogs” in your anchor text, not just “dog collar.” Anchor texts are useful because they not only give your site visitors information about your site, they are great at helping search engines understand what your site is about.
One other way to boost your page rank and increase your search results is to make sure your landing pages are as useful as possible. For instance, it makes sense to add links to your landing pages that offer useful advice or tips. These pages should link to articles that are relevant to your target keyword, but it makes sense to also add a bit of SEO to these pages. This is because a quality article that is informative will have a higher click through rate than an article that has no substance. Therefore, if you want to create powerful pages for your website, make sure you also focus on SEO.
Know your target audience
Knowing who you are trying to reach is one of the most important things you need to know when you are marketing any product or service on the internet. There are several ways you can determine your target market. To begin you should know what keywords they use to find the product or service you offer. I’ll suggest that you use Google’s keyword planner tool. This is an online keyword tool that helps you analyze your search term to understand where your customers are coming from.
By knowing who you are trying to reach, it is easier to market to them and get them to do business with you. For example, you may know your target buyers are college students, but do you know what their specific needs and interests are?
Discover and define your target audience by developing a buyer persona. Here’s a link to an excellent buyer persona tool from Hubspot https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-research. Your target audience is a group of individuals who are going to be the potential users of your particular product or service. It normally refers to a particular segment of the overall population you plan to serve.
For instance, if you are selling beauty products, your target audience definition may be young women, single women, or simply people who want to maintain their youthful appearance. If you are marketing an anti-aging product, your marketing message will be much different. The buyer persona definition will help you identify who your potential buyers are.
In order to get a better understanding of your target audience, it is important to get a detailed marketing campaign study done. You can purchase a package that contains all the tools and information you need to conduct a quality marketing research study. These packages can be found through email marketing specialist companies. Most of these packages provide everything you need for one low price. They also offer a guarantee that you will have an easy time compiling the marketing campaign’s data based on your specific demographics.
Once you have gathered all of the information you need, it is important to determine what areas of marketing appeal most to your potential customers. These will give you a good idea of what group you should target. Knowing your target audience profile will help you determine what specific segments you should focus on advertising to. There are a variety of ways you can do this. One way is through the use of television and radio ads.
Another way is to make sure that you have a strong presence on social media. Many businesses are turning to social media to attract and retain their ideal clients. One reason that it has become so popular is that it allows you to reach a wide variety of target audiences and demographic. Social media allows you to create ads that reach a specific age group, gender, location, and education level. This makes social media a great resource for your marketing campaigns.
Your target audience profile is important because it will influence which type of marketing campaigns you should consider using. If you have a niche market, the type of marketing campaigns you should use may differ from those that work better for other types of audiences. This is because the types of marketing campaigns that work best for one group may not be effective for another one. For example, there is no way that a campaign to target middle-aged men in Florida would be effective compared to a campaign targeting teens in Idaho.
Likewise, the type of marketing campaigns that work best for young adults in North Dakota will be much different than the best ones to advertise to older adults in Colorado. Knowing who you are targeting will help you determine the type of marketing campaigns that are most likely to attract your ideal client.
It is important to remember that your marketing should always come from the heart of who you are and how you want to be perceived by your ideal clients. When you know your target audience, you will be able to design an ad campaign that appeals to your potential client. With a little bit of creativity, you can create an ad campaign that your target audience will enjoy and respond to. Remember to keep your ads relevant to the nature of the business you are marketing. You want your product ads to catch the attention of your potential clients and hold their attention long enough for them to remember you.
Optimize your website
Optimize your website for search engines. Many companies make the mistake of believing that SEO is about increasing their visibility in search engine listings. This can have a desirable effect, to some, but it is not the only objective of SEO. SEO should focus not only on keywords but also on creating user experience and sharing information. The goal is to create an overall positive experience for the viewer. The amount of time visitors stay engaged on your web page is also an important algorithm that Google takes into account.
In order to optimize your website for search engines, you must first understand how SEO works. SEO starts with knowing your audience, especially what types of words they may type into the search engine search box to find you. Then you need to know your target market, because this will dictate the content of your website. Finally, you need to know and understand how people search online so that you can optimize your site for specific searches.
Optimize your website for search engines. Besides content and keywords , another important element when it comes to SEO is page speed. Search engines are known for having very strict requirements on page speed. To remain in the ranking factor, your page must load quickly. If a page takes more than a few seconds to load, then it will be penalized in the ranking process.
Optimize your website for search engines by making the necessary changes to the code. When you visit a search engine, the first thing you will see is the search results. The first search result will be at the top. This is the page that will usually show all relevant keywords in order of relevance. If you do not get listed first, there are several things that can be done to improve your page’s rankings.
In addition to finding good keywords to target, it is also important to write copy that is user-friendly and captivating. Proper website optimization requires that you learn the principles of copywriting, especially when it comes to making appealing and informative content. It is also important to research and develop keywords or keyword phrases that can be used to promote your products. There are a lot of tools online that can help you determine which terms are highly searched.
Aside from determining which terms are highly searched, SEO companies also help you in choosing which keywords or keyword phrases to use.
Optimizing a website is just one part of optimizing a website. Another important part of optimizing your website is to maximize your conversions. Conversions are the number of visitors who have clicked on your advertisement or had visited your site and had purchased a product or service.
To optimize your conversions, you need to build your list of customers who have given you their contact information. This list of customer can be made up of subscribers to your email marketing campaigns or it can be made up of subscribers who opted-in to receive your emails.
After building your list of subscribers, you should now concentrate on capturing the contact information of these subscribers. You can do this by sending out special offers to your subscribers. Another advanced strategies for website optimization is to use backlinks.
Backlinks are links that direct the reader to your site. A lot of SEO services offered today offer SEO articles that can be used to create backlinks to your site. These articles should be written well so as to attract the attention of your readers and make them want to click on the link.
The third most important advanced strategy for optimizing your website is to optimize your landing pages. A lot of times, we make the mistake of copying content from other websites and including it on our own website. Not only does this reduce your chances of getting a high ranking in the major search engines but it will also be a major turn off to your potential customers.
What you need to do is to find websites that have relevant and up-to-date content on their landing pages and use these pages as references for your own on-page SEO. By doing this you will be able to easily create backlinks to your own website and improve your ranking.
Remarketing
Remarketing, also known as promotion, is an online marketing plan that involves sending messages to those who’ve visited your site or used in your app. A well-planned and well-researched campaign will allow you to reach your audience with personalized messages at very affordable prices. Remarketing can help you save time and money. It helps you build a responsive subscriber base which can ultimately increase your conversion rate. Remarketing can be a powerful strategy for improving sales conversions.
A successful Retweeting campaign is an effective way of building brand awareness without spending thousands. Retweeting allows you to share valuable information with your social network, and you can do this through popular social networking websites. It also allows you to retarget your existing customer base. Whether you are using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or any other network, you can use Retweeting as an online marketing tool.
In addition to using Retweeting to gain leads, another benefit of the tool is that you can improve your brand’s visibility. Remarketing allows you to reach a targeted audience quickly. You can also send a personalized message to those people who are most likely to become your future customers. By doing so, you will build trust with your audience and give them a reason to visit your site or follow your lead.
Remarketing on YouTube is one of the most effective ways to advertise on the web. The website features one of the most comprehensive video advertising options anywhere online. Google has taken the video advertising option a step further by allowing businesses to run video ads on YouTube. These are known as Google AdSense ads, and they are a terrific way for you to promote your products or services.
A final advantage of Remarketing on YouTube is that you are able to generate high-quality backlinks. The Retweet function on the Facebook application allows you to quickly repost valuable content that your followers are sharing. As a result, the search engine results page will often times show your YouTube video ad next to relevant search results. This is another great benefit of using this type of online marketing strategy.
The last major benefit of this form of online marketing is that it generates fast, valuable leads. It is important to note that Google only recently began to penalize websites for taking up to five minutes to display a video ad on a website. This rule change means that businesses with a video ad that takes longer than five minutes to load will be shown with a lower ranking. Remarketing on YouTube and other websites is by far the most important aspect of a marketing campaign and it is important to utilize it.
Reputation management
Reputation management and brand building are frequently thought of as a one-way business transaction. However, in today’s era of social media, companies of all sizes experience the impact of online reviews and remarks. Positive social media mentions and positive reviews can do wonders for an individual business, while negative, unaddressed negativity on the other hand can drag down a business’s reputation. To address this issue businesses need to adopt a number of strategies for effectively managing their reputations online.
Businesses should begin by examining their social media profiles and identifying key information about their location, products and services. This step would also allow businesses to prepare statements and responses that would address issues that may arise. It is important to note that it is not in their best interest to simply respond to negative comments posted on blogs or social media sites. Instead, companies should actively monitor what their customers and other influencers are saying about their brand. If negative sentiments are noted, it is important to address those comments or post a response that has the potential to escalate the situation.
For companies that are not prepared to dedicate an employee to handle customer interactions or the monitoring of social media sites, there are numerous third party organizations that specialize in reputation management and social media monitoring tools. A reputable provider would have a team of researchers and professionals that would conduct routine checks on social accounts to identify comments that could negatively affect a business. Most third-party providers also have the technology to quickly engage with businesses that are experiencing negative posts.
Reputation management and monitoring tools to provide small businesses with a proactive way to address issues that arise from social media usage. While it may not be possible to completely eliminate negative online reviews, using social media monitoring tools can help small businesses focus their attention on the areas that need improvement. For example, if the small business owner notices that a post on a social media site contains offensive language or seems to target a certain demographic, the company could make an effort to notify the social media site that the post was poorly written or that the person posting did not have authorization to do so.
When it comes to managing social media accounts for a small business, there are several steps that can be taken to avoid making a mistake. Small business owners should be prepared to contact the person who initially posted the feedback, and should ask questions about why they wrote the review. A good reputation management tool will allow a business owner to make contact with the people who are receiving negative feedback and request that they remove the posts.
Depending on the nature of the post, the person may want to attempt to resolve the issue informally, but if that fails a company should consider their next step. If the person threatening to leave a comment or post continues to post after attempts to resolve the problem, the company should consider their next step.
Monitoring social media is becoming more important for large and small businesses all over the world. Using a reputation management service can help small businesses from having to deal with negative reviews, while larger businesses can learn how to better market their products to their clients.
A reputable reputation management service will provide businesses with the training they need to effectively deal with any negative feedback or complaints they may receive. By providing businesses with these tools, a reputation management service allows the small business owner to make smart business decisions, instead of reacting to unwarranted criticism. Reputation management is an essential component to maintaining a successful social media marketing strategy for any type of business.
Responsive website
Responsive websites are becoming more popular and if you’re looking to get started with responsive website layouts there’s a lot that you should know. Note: a responsive website isn’t the same as a mobile-friendly website. Basically, a responsive website will look great on all screen sizes, but may have fewer glitches and therefore be easier to navigate on high resolution devices while also having fewer bugs to be worked around.
One of the most important reasons why responsive websites are important for SEO is because people tend to read content in horizontal (or wide-screen) orientation. This means that the content has two versions, one for regular users, and one for the smartphones and tablets. If you want your website optimized for these devices, you’ll need to ensure that it has two versions. When designing your responsive website, make sure that you create your layout in both versions, and that you keep your navigation links consistent between the two versions.
When it comes to SEO, it’s best to create a responsive website design so that your website can be easily found on a wide range of mobile devices, rather than creating a page for each individual screen size. This will help you achieve greater SEO rankings because when someone searches for a particular key phrase on a search engine they’ll be presented with websites that are designed for the user’s experience. If your page doesn’t adapt to their experience then they won’t visit your site. So in essence having two versions is important for SEO.
To take this one step further, it’s important that you make your responsive website load faster. It’s been proven that having an initial HTML5 flash and JavaScript download for your website will decrease your bounce rate by almost 50%. So if you’re thinking that this will slow down your site it’s simply not true, in fact it’s been proven to improve user experience and so will your SEO rankings. So how do you make sure that you have your pages load faster? There are quite a few things you can do.
Firstly you need to optimize your mobile versions of your website for the different types of devices. For instance, if you have a responsive website for Android users, you should be making sure that you have Android app versions on each of your mobile devices, and if you have iOS apps, you should be optimizing them for the iPad, iPhone etc.
If you don’t do this then you’ll quickly find that your users will experience slower browsing on certain devices due to a slow Internet connection. In addition, if you don’t test your websites across all the devices you might find yourself having to update your website for each device, which can be a nightmare! So to help your users enjoy fast and smooth browsing it’s best practice to include all devices in your updates.
Another benefit of having two versions of your responsive website, is that you’ll discover that your users are more likely to share your content. As mentioned earlier, mobile viewers tend to be more patient when it comes to waiting for a page to load, and if you give them another option to go to the next screen they are more likely to take this route. They will spend a longer time enjoying your content versus having to repeat it again. And if you give them a choice they’ll more than likely chose the easier option, so make sure you’re including both versions of your site.
Use social media
Use social media to your benefit and reap the rewards. Social media helps you connect to your customers, build trust in your brand, enhance engagement, and reach new potential customers. But as you probably know, there are also some negative effects of social media like spam, trolls, and even addiction. But, if you use it ethically and constructively, you can use it to boost your business.
Engage With Your Customers: One of the most important things that you must do to build trust with your potential customers is to engage with them. When people engage with your brand they are forming a bond. This bond will increase their loyalty to your product or service and help you create a more loyal customer base. Engaging your customers helps build trust and loyalty. This process can be done through social media marketing.
Provide Advice and Tips on a Topic of Interest: In addition to engaging with your customers through social media, you need to provide them with content that they can engage with. You can use social media to help you provide tips and advice on a particular topic that concerns your product or service. You can also provide links to other relevant content on your site or blog. By engaging with your consumers through social media, you not only help build trust among your customers, but you also increase sales.
Use Social Media for Surveys and Customer Questions: Another way that you can use social media to build trust and loyalty among your customers is to use it for surveys. Surveys can be used to get customer feedback and learn what your consumers need. The information you gather from these surveys can be used to improve your product or service. However, you need to remember that you should only use social media for surveys among your customers and not among your employees or brand. If you use it for this purpose, your customers may believe that the information you gathered is biased and unreliable.
Build Loyalty by Offering Perks for New Subscribers: One of the ways that you can build trust among your consumers is by offering perks for new subscribers. You may offer freebies and other special deals for people who sign up using social media. Your best customers are likely to be interested in different free offers. It is important to make sure that you only send out messages that are worthwhile and not ones that only put your products and service in a bad light. Offering perks can help build relationships with your loyal customers.
As you can see, there are a number of different ways that you can use social media to build trust and loyalty with your consumers. Social media is a powerful marketing tool for any brand. If you want to build trust among your customers, it is important to remember that you should always provide value to them first. If you do, they will continue to purchase your products and will eventually build trust within your brand.
Use website pop-ups
Use website, pop-up ads to engage visitors early on, influence buying decisions with incentives and ultimately convert more sales into loyal customers. Your PPC ROI could skyrocket with a few well placed ads! Paid traffic is only part of the equation but you do not need to make it that harder on yourself with a poorly managed ad campaign.
The last minute availability of a product or service is often the best and most effective way to attract new visitors to your site. It is a time when you have little control over how your website will look, but you do have plenty of control over how you are going to sell it. Ad placement is integral to this equation because if you optimize for conversions with website pop-up ads, then you will make less money overall in the process.
When considering the best way to market your business online, always consider the end user journey and the final result of the marketing mix including PPC, social media, email marketing, and other forms of marketing. Use website pop-up ads as an option for converting those PPC results to sign ups or purchases. It is the last-minute addition that really draws in the users so it should be considered at all times.
A pop-up is a small ad that appears when the user arrives at a web page. Pop-up ads offer another way for web developers to capture user journey information. They are also a way for advertisers to promote a product or service without actually having a product or service to sell on the site. The pop-up ad is designed to capture the user’s attention immediately and encourage them to proceed with the remainder of the user journey. Because the pop-up ads take up a lot of space, they have been found to bring in more sign-ins than text ads or other traditional means of promoting a product or service.
If you want to increase your sales conversion rate (the percentage of site visitors that purchase a product or service from a company website) then you should definitely use website pop-ups in your email marketing campaigns. Not only do they capture user journey information in a short period of time, but they also encourage the user to complete other actions such as signing up for mailing list or file a review or submission. This encourages the user to take that action and increases the likelihood of making that sale or obtaining that client. Therefore, you should use website pop-ups in all of your email marketing efforts.
Increasing your sales conversion rate also requires you to use website pop-ups in different ways based on the content of your website. For instance, if your website is about real estate, then you may want to position the pop-up advertisement at the very top of your page, so that it appears on the first page of every browser. On the other hand, if your site is about foreclosure, then you would probably want to position it lower down on your page so that the pop-up does not take up too much space. By changing the placement and size of your pop-up ad based on the content of your page, you can greatly improve the results that you are getting from the paid traffic that you generate through this technique.
If you’re looking for a great landing page builder for your campaigns, Unbounce is a excellent choice with lots of great templates.
Utilize videos
Video marketing has emerged as one of the most potent tools for engaging with your audience and creating a strong online presence. It is becoming more important for companies to understand their customers and how they use the Internet, and in order to do so they must be aware of what their customers look for when browsing through YouTube videos and other video websites. Using this information, companies can create powerful ads that engage with your audience while also providing information about your brand at the same time.
One great way to use videos as part of your email marketing campaign is to incorporate them into an ongoing series of emails that you send to your subscribers. Instead of simply having an email that simply sends your customer a link to a particular page in your website, you can add video links within it that provide a quick explanation of why your company is different from the competition as well as a brief overview of what you offer.
Instead of simply pushing your product and encouraging customers to sign up for your email list by clicking a link, you can show them how they will benefit by using your product. Use videos as a means to give them a summary of what your company can do for them and how they can benefit from utilizing what you have to offer.
There are many other great ways that you can use videos as part of your marketing strategy. If you have not already incorporated video into your marketing plan, you should definitely consider doing so. Video can be used in two different ways to benefit your business and its prospects. It can be used to provide information to your customers as well as to boost the amount of traffic that you receive on your website or blog.
Post a series of vlogs or videos on your blog. If you live in an area where you have a lot of weather conditions, posting videos on your blog that talk about the weather and how it effects your products or service can help you get the right type of attention. This can also be a great way to provide information to your audience when they call you about your products and services.
Vlogs can often times be very engaging and funny at the same time, which is why they have become such a staple of the internet. If you are looking for a unique way to promote your business or brand, videos may be just what you need to get your point across.
The second method that you can use video as part of your email campaign is to record yourself answering questions from a prospect. If you are marketing something, chances are that someone has asked you a question and you may have answered it on a video. Now, instead of having them wait for the recording to load in their in-box, post the video to your blog or YouTube channel. Now when a customer asks you a question via email or the phone, you can simply answer it in the video.
This is a great way for you to be more engaged with your audience because now they will actually be able to hear you!
Build Sales Funnels
What is a Sales Funnel? Here’s some insight as to why it is important in a digital marketing strategy.
The Top of the Funnel
In the Top of the funnel marketers understand that their target audience already have a need, but are often unable to identify a specific solution for this need. If they do identify a solution, it is not complete and they need to research it further.
For instance, if you just searched for “What is a good Sales Funnel for a Beauty Business?” then you would have found an article or video.
The authors of the article provides useful free information on the page and it helps them to establish authority and expertise. It is a complex process however and although they have provided valuable information, there are many more moving parts and knowledge requirements to really have a successful campaign.
That page will likely have a call to action like a free consultation. If that visitor tries to DIY their sales funnel and find it too time consuming or complicated, they are more likely to optin to the offer for a consultation than they would be if they had never seen that article.
Creating the Sales Funnel
Creating a sales funnel requires research and development. Online marketers usually look to their own experiences as well as studying what the competition is doing. They also look to what they believe is working in other online businesses. Digital marketers also look to what they want to achieve in their own online business. The end result is the sales funnel with the different stages defined in much the same way as any funnel.
In the Top of the Funnel, marketers already have a target audience. Once you identify your target audience, you need to develop a relationship with this audience. Your messaging should offer a solution to a pain-point or need that they have. Great copywriting is a whole other set of skills but the basic principle is to grab attention with your headline and then use your subheading to briefly elaborate and invoke enough curiosity to get them to want the answer and move to the next step or read more.
One of the most effective approaches is to start with a question. An example for a skincare product or service business might be: “Which One Of These Skins Problems Do You Want To Get Rid Of?” Then the funnel might take them through a quiz that takes them to possible solutions.
Another approach for the same audience could be “Discover How You Can Easily Get Rid Of Rosacea (or Acne or wrinkles etc.)” The point is the headline should grab attention by addressing a pain-point and create a desire for them to engage with your ad, video, post etc.
The sales funnel then moves into building relationships by providing useful information. When it’s cold traffic, you’ll want to use a lead magnet or some offer that will get them to provide you with their name and email. Then you have a lead. A lead that you can nurture by offering valuable information and converting them to a customer. If you do this right, you will also be able to turn them into a long-term or repeat customer.
As your business grows and more customers come in contact with your site, you will want to optimize your website to maximize your results. One way to do this is by focusing on selling to your most paying customers first. By keeping your list simple, you will not be tempted to provide too many free products or services that aren’t really relevant to your prospects. This approach will maximize your conversions as you move from the top of the sales funnel to the next level.
Selling to the Rest of your Leads
By now you should be sending regular emails or messages to your leads. However, many online marketers overlook this part of their sales funnel and never build a steady stream of customers that will buy. In the final stage of your sales funnel, you want to focus on closing the most paying customers. This will mean staying away from the lower paying sales funnel segments and focusing instead on the higher paying customers who are ready to make a purchase.
Marketing to Your Target Audience
At the end of the sales funnel, you want to be able to identify your target audience. You can do this by tracking who is opening your emails, responding to your offers, social media sharing and purchasing from you. The trick is knowing who you are marketing to and what best targets your list will be. By tracking and knowing your customers, you can focus your efforts to reach these buyers with the right offers and products.
These four stages of the sales funnel can take months or even years to learn. However, once you master them you will be able to build a list of happy, loyal customers that will pay you for years to come. You may be tempted to use auto-responders or landing pages that promise to get you the next big conversion, but I have found these approaches rarely work. If you are using email marketing, make sure you include your contact information and a way for your prospects to unsubscribe if they are unsatisfied.
It is also a good idea to set up your sales funnel correctly to avoid making common mistakes. If you apply these methods consistently, you will find yourself generating leads on autopilot and will be well on your way to becoming an internet marketing expert.
Whooh – that was a lot right? Well there is more to come. This post will evolve and grow over time so come back soon…
Knowing who you are trying to reach is one of the most important things you need to know when you are marketing any product or service on the internet. There are several ways you can determine your target market. To begin you should know what keywords they use to find the product or service you offer. I’ll suggest that you use Google’s keyword planner tool. This is an online keyword tool that helps you analyze your search term to understand where your customers are coming from.
By knowing who you are trying to reach, it is easier to market to them and get them to do business with you. For example, you may know your target buyers are college students, but do you know what their specific needs and interests are?
Know your target audience
To know your target audience, you need to know who your target market is. Discover and define your target audience by developing a buyer persona. Here’s a link to an excellent buyer persona tool from Hubspot and another resource on how to create a buyer persona by Creately. Your target audience is a group of individuals who are going to be the potential users of your particular product or service. It normally refers to a particular segment of the overall population you plan to serve.
For instance, if you are selling beauty products, your target audience definition may be young women, single women, or simply people who want to maintain their youthful appearance. If you are marketing an anti-aging product, your marketing message will be much different. The buyer persona definition will help you identify who your potential buyers are.
In order to get a better understanding of your target audience, it is important to get a detailed marketing campaign study done. You can purchase a package that contains all the tools and information you need to conduct a quality marketing research study. These packages can be found through email marketing specialist companies. Most of these packages provide everything you need for one low price. They also offer a guarantee that you will have an easy time compiling the marketing campaign’s data based on your specific demographics.
Once you have gathered all of the information you need, it is important to determine what areas of marketing appeal most to your potential customers. These will give you a good idea of what group you should target. Knowing your target audience profile will help you determine what specific segments you should focus on advertising to. There are a variety of ways you can do this. One way is through the use of television and radio ads.
Connecting with your audience
Another way of course is to make sure that you have a strong presence on social media. Many businesses are turning to social media to attract and retain their ideal clients. One reason that it has become so popular is that it allows you to reach a wide variety of target audiences and demographic. Social media allows you to create ads that reach a specific age group, gender, location, and education level. This makes social media a great resource for your marketing campaigns.
Your target audience profile is important because it will influence which type of marketing campaigns you should consider using. If you have a niche market, the type of marketing campaigns you should use may differ from those that work better for other types of audiences. This is because the types of marketing campaigns that work best for one group may not be effective for another one. For example, there is no way that a campaign to target middle-aged men in Florida would be effective compared to a campaign targeting teens in Idaho. Likewise, the type of marketing campaigns that work best for young adults in North Dakota will be much different than the best ones to advertise to older adults in Colorado. Knowing who you are targeting will help you determine the type of marketing campaigns that are most likely to attract your ideal client.
It is important to remember that your marketing should always come from the heart of who you are and how you want to be perceived by your ideal clients. When you know your target audience, you will be able to design an ad campaign that appeals to your potential client. With a little bit of creativity, you can create an ad campaign that your target audience will enjoy and respond to. Remember to keep your ads relevant to the nature of the business you are marketing. You want your product ads to catch the attention of your potential clients and hold their attention long enough for them to remember you.
Every company, no matter what size, needs to have a professional looking website. It can be overwhelming to those who have not gone through the process before. It is essential for your business so whether you intend to develop a website in-house or outsource it, gaining a good in-depth understanding of what’s important from the web design and technical perspectives is certainly worth your time.
Getting a small company site can be among the greatest obstacles that small company owners need to deal with. The job ends up being a lot harder as the choices are seemingly endless and the expenses can easily getting out of control. The web designer needs to be able to produce a website that is not only aesthetically pleasing but can drive significant and appropriate traffic to your organization to produce more leads or sales and decrease the issues that users commonly experience like slow load times, broken links, poor mobile experience etc. The possible technical problems are extensive. We won’t go into depth here but just be aware, your designer needs to be experienced or you could be in for some real unforeseen headaches.
So, let’s get into our top 12 suggestions to rock your local business website.
1. Simple but Elegant Web Design
A small company website design needs to be basic yet visually appealing. It represents your business and should therefore make a great first impression. It’s your online store front so make sure the shelves are clean there’s no letters missing on the sign LOL. Your website absolutely must convey that your company is trustworthy and professional. People instinctively pass judgement in about one second give this some attention. Get a few designs done and get feedback from people before you launch the website.
2. Check Out the Competition
We always recommend that our clients have a good look at what other successful competitors are doing with their web design. One should not just look at the site but really think about what is appealing about it. Then like magic, you will likely start to realize what the website is lacking and you’ll start to come up with ideas to beat your competition by doing it better.
3. Don’t Go Overboard on Style and Content
Complex style can overwhelm your audience and don’t over do the amount of text – at least on the home page. There is a temptation to please Google with a lot of text but you need to be strategic about.
One of the best strategies, which will also increase engagement, is to put an excerpt of a given topic and require the viewer to continue reading by clicking through to another page. Sidenote – this will help your “bounce rate” which is counted when someone comes to your website and doesn’t click on anything. An uncluttered overall style communicates professionalism.
Focus on web design that will give your visitors a great user experience.
4. Make it Easy for Google
An uncluttered website, clear material, appropriate URLs, sitemap, and pertinent keywords will enable online search engine like Google to index your small company site with ease. Website design for small company must consist of at least minimal SEO optimization.
Getting listed in Google My Business so that you can show up on Google maps on a local search is also essential.
Our web platform of choice is WordPress for many reasons and it’s Google friendliness is among the top reasons. You get a great selection of amazing SEO plugins to choose from like Yoast SEO or our new favorite “Rank Math”
5. Mobile Friendly Web Design
After Google’s statement of mobile-first index, it would be practically self-sabotaging not to have your local business website be responsive. This simply suggests that your website will adjust and reorganize the page layout when seen on mobile phones. A simple explanation would be that your multi-column page layout will re-flow into a single column layout. That may make it sound simple but sometimes you can spend many hours making sure that all your pages look good on all sizes of phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers.
Making a website mobile friendly can be quite daunting and there are many tools available to help with the process. One of the tools we like to use that gives us a quick preview of how a page will look on multiple devices at once is Responsinator.
6. Optimize for Incoming Leads
One of the most crucial functions of any small company site is to concentrate on the incoming leads and capture as numerous as possible. Normally prior to buying an item individuals like to do a preliminary research study and contrast, and might not be all set to purchase right away. Put some effort into finding ways to obtain your visitor’s email address. This way you can follow up with them or retarget them with ads so that if they are not ready to buy now maybe they will be later. Sometimes popups work for getting people to give you their email but it is becoming less effective. Popup Maker is a good Popup Plugin for WordPress that’s easy to use. One of the best strategies is to give away something, like a useful information, in exchange for their email. You don’t want to irritate people so don’t be too aggressive with this.
We recently discovered a powerful new pop builder tool from Adoric. It has Machine learning features, Interactive templates and tons of other features like Email collections, lead generation, content promotion and more. It’s an excellent solution for marketing leads and Conversion Rate Optimization.
7. Keep your contact information in Plain Sight
This might seem obvious however this oversight happens all the time. Your telephone number and e-mail address need to be shown plainly on the site and, if possible, at the top and bottom of every page. Develop a ‘CONTACT’ page at the end that includes not simply the contact numbers however e-mail address, physical address of the business, and a map, together with instructions to and hours of operation of your business. Make sure it gets done and you can forget about it.
8. Professional Branding is a Must
Concentrate on communicating expertise and be consistent about it. Developing a brand strategy will help you get control of this. A solid brand strategy will keep On track by providing you with a roadmap for consistent usage of messaging and the appearance of all your imagery etc. Your brand is it just your logo it is the overall feeling that people get when they interact with your company. Our company can help you with developing your brand, read more about brand strategy here. Once you have your branding in place just be consistent with all your fonts and graphics.
9. Style Should be Simple but Distinct
Whether you are developing your site by yourself or working with a small company website design business, your objective must be to produce a site that shows your brand name. The impression is the most crucial and will either draw in or fend off audiences. If you utilize any ordinary design template and your site looks like countless others on the web, you will never ever have the ability to make a lasting impression in your audience’s mind.
A bad home page could cause visitors to bounce immediately. The home page is extremely important so pay a lot of attention to getting that right and it will help to set the tone for the rest of the website.
Visitors expect a smooth easy navigation that can take them from Point A to Point B flawlessly so make sure you give that to them. Make your website work for you, not against you. A basic, easy to use, and tidy website design without unneeded gimmicks is the strategy for success. You can experiment with gimmicks later but build something solid first.
10. Showcase Products and Services Beautifully
Several small company website designs are not able to display their items successfully or they overload it with too many product or services on one page and mess it up. Keep in mind that you just have of a couple of seconds to win or lose a possible customer so work on making an irresistible first impression. If you are a business selling items online then the item images and descriptions ought to be crisp and concise. If you have a fantastic website design but don’t display your products or services well, there’s a good chance your visitors will move on to look somewhere else. NextGen Gallery is a nice plugin for displaying images in different types of gallery styles.
11. Fast Page Load Time
Viewers get restless if a website takes excessive time to load. Guarantee that your small company website design has the best server facilities and bandwidth to support it. A website that is rich with graphics and photos can take a long time to load. There are many tools and techniques to reduce the page load time and it is certainly worth the time and effort to address this right away. A good caching plugin can go along way to help and it’s fairly easy to implement. One caching plugin we use regularly is W3 Total Cache
12. Relevant, Quality Page Content
Last however not the least is the importance of the content on your local business website. This is a significant factor in getting indexed by online search engines. The more relevant your material, the simpler it is for online search engine to discover and index your website. Content relevance will play a major role in attracting the right visitors to your website. Headings are extremely important in letting your readers and Google quickly understand what the content is about so pay close attention to all your headings.
Research study reveals that there are more mobile users than desktop users now which is why it is vital to have a company site that loads quickly and presents a pleasant mobile experience. Google also uses page speed as a crucial ranking factor. According to specialists, a small company website should less than 3 seconds to fully load. The Google Page Speed Tool is an excellent way to find out if your website passes the test.
The absence of a good website can adversely affect your company. Without a site you might loose business to your competitors. For someone to purchase a product or service from a company they don’t already know is a big leap. They will usually want to know and see more about your company before committing. Always keep that in mind and it will help guide you to build a platform to showcase your company in a way that will make people feel comfortable with the idea of being your customer.
Extra Web Design Tips!
Index Your Website
Search engines such as Google, Bing and others search for particular elements to help them determine where your site should rank in a search result. There are actually over 200 ranking factors in the Google algorithm but some of the most important are Page Title, headings, structure, quality of material, keywords, URLs and sitemap. Pay attention to these to get the ranking you deserve. Check out the Google Webmaster Guidelines to understand what you must do to boost your search ranking.
There are several things to setup when you want to get into tracking all of your online activities. You’ll need Google Analytics, Google Console, Facebook Pixel and more. There is a great plugin called Site Kit by Google that makes things easier to get setup is a real time-saver.
Keep Your Website Safe
It’s truly mind boggling to know how many sites get hacked every day. There are bots just going at it all the time – it’s insane and thinking about it too much cold make you crazy.
There are solutions. First implement a backup strategy so that in case your security does fail, you will always have an up-to-date backup so your site won’t be down for long. For this we recommend a plugin called UpDraft Plus.
Now for the security, there are 2 plugins that I like to use. Wordfence and Sucuri are both excellent options and easy to setup.
We hope that the suggestions above will assist you in your web design process to build a successful Local Business Website.
OCEANONE Design offer a full range of design and marketing services so get in touch with us if you need help.
The importance of an effective, powerful value proposition is widely misunderstood. It may be just a few words (usually 10 words or less) but as a marketer it may be the most important and challenging thing you ever make. It’s important because it will serve as the foundation for all of your other messaging. It needs to be short and unique. It must also sum up the most important things customers need to know about your company or product.
A strong value proposition is a very valuable tool that must be generated from a need in the marketplace, and used to convert even the most skeptical customers.
Developing a value proposition is more of a discovery process than a writing task. It doesn’t matter how much experience you or your marketing team have, it can’t just be a written statement or declaration. It needs to be the result of the analysis of customer activity and feedback and then it must be tested.
It may start with brainstorming ideas but it is optimized and refined with a methodic approach and it’s not as complicated as you might think.
Here are the 4 steps you can use to discover your value proposition and boost conversions.
Answer this question: If I am your ideal customer, why buy from you rather than your competitors?
Compare your answer with the claims of your main competitors.
Keep fine tuning your value proposition until it can be expressed in a single, credible sentence that is immediately understood.
Once you have a few good possibilities for a strong value proposition, you need to put them to the test.
How do you test your value proposition? Test it using A/B Testing with Google Ads.
You create a series of ads and landing pages to test each one of your value propositions and see which one appeals to people the most. There is a time investment but you don’t need to a large advertising budget to get your answer.
With a solid value proposition in place you can move forward with your various advertising campaigns with confidence.
This simplified article introduces the basic principles of developing a value proposition. It’s purpose is to provide a basic overview of processes we learned from MECLABS.
If you would like to find out more about how we can help your company develop a value proposition or if you have any other questions about marketing, please don’t hesitate to book a free consultation.
There has been a growing trend in the world of business to focus on core competencies and outsource the rest of the day-to-day functions. By focusing on what the company does best many management teams have been able to realize significant cost savings and enhance the profitability of their firms.
Many companies have already discovered the value of outsourcing their manufacturing to lower cost producers, but there is money to be saved in outsourcing other services as well. For instance outsourcing marketing services can yield significant cost savings while providing better results for the company and more excitement on the part of consumers.
Small Companies Benefit from Marketing Outsourcing
Whether they are well-established companies or new startup companies, small businesses can benefit greatly by outsourcing their marketing services to qualified professionals. Many small companies will not have the funds necessary to hire and staff an entire department of creative designers and ad writers, and outsourcing those marketing services can put the small firm on an equal footing with companies many times its size.
From a marketing perspective it can be hard to tell the size of a company – good marketing looks good no matter what the size of the firm associated with the ads.
One mistake many entrepreneurs make is trying to do everything themselves. While the desire for control over the quality of the message is certainly understandable, trying to do everything on your own can backfire badly.
Unless you happen to be a marketing guru as well as an entrepreneur it may be better – and more cost effective to turn the marketing reins over to those with years of experience creating and running successful ad campaigns. By maintaining control over the finished product but outsourcing the process, entrepreneurs and business owners can have the best of both worlds.
Outsourcing marketing services also makes a great deal of sense for small companies that are undergoing periods of rapid growth. It is difficult enough to scale up vital functions like administrative duties and finding suitable office space, and ramping up the marketing department can be even more of a challenge.
By focusing on managing the growth of the company and outsourcing where they can business owners can make the transition from tiny startup to thriving small business that much easier.
Large Companies Benefit from Marketing Outsourcing
Of course it is not just small companies that can benefit from the power of marketing outsourcing. Such outsourcing is also the perfect solution for companies who are trying to do more with fewer resources. Companies who need to downsize without losing their brand identity or sacrificing their marketing prowess can look to marketing outsourcing firms to fill in the gaps and make a smooth transition.
Marketing firms can serve as either a supplement to a smaller and leaner marketing department or as a replacement for that department. This allows companies to be more flexible as they trim costs and find the right business structure in the new economy.
Large companies who are ramping up the size of their firms instead of cutting back can also benefit from outsourcing their marketing services. Rapid growth is both a blessing and a challenge for many companies, and it is important for companies to learn to manage their growth intelligently.
By focusing on the core of the business and outsourcing services like marketing smart companies can keep their brands intact even as the company continues to grow and change.
Outsourced or Full-Time Staff, what’s better?
Digital Marketing is quite complex and it has been said that it changes 8 times faster than most other industries. It’s constantly evolving, so staying up on the latest best practices is no joke and could lead to disappointing results if you’re not using the latest tactics.
Companies that provide marketing services survive by reputation and delivering successful results. For this reason alone it really makes a lot of sense for companies to go with outsourced marketing because most marketing companies will go a long way to make sure they deliver a successful campaign. A great result will keep you coming back and they can count on you to enhance their reputation and not diminish it.
A company can actually have more control of cost when outsourcing. A large full-time marketing staff can very expensive if you plan to have them do everything in-house. It is also a long-term commitment which of course it makes total sense for some businesses. However, for many companies, it makes more sense to outsource where they can set a specific budget to get projects done.
Have Teams of Experts Working on your Marketing Campaign.
When you outsource your marketing services to a good company there will likely be several highly-skilled people working on your project. A single campaign usually involves a long list of different elements that could all benefit from the input of an expert in that area.
For instance a campaign to promote your new product or service may need a list of experts such as: Marketing Strategist, Copywriter, Graphic Designer, Photographer, Video Director, Video Editor, Actors or Spokesperson, Facebook Ad specialist, Google Ads Specialist, Social Media Strategist, Social Media Campaign Manager and a Project manager who will deliver the reports to you every month.
This is an example of the various tasks that may be involved, it could certainly be a lot more or maybe less but you get the idea. You need a lot of people who know what they are doing. If you are a large enterprise it probably makes sense to have all these people on a full-time salary but for many companies it is more practical to develop a strong relationship with a good, reliable marketing company.
It can be a difficult decision but when you take some time to weigh the pros and cons, the answer should be quite clear and you can move forward with your decision.
Branding is not a one time project. It needs to grow and evolve over time to stay relevant.
Design connects with emotions, which helps people feel more connected to your company. For example, Starbucks cups are a big part of the company’s identity. The design of the cups evoke feelings in people—ones that they connect with Starbucks because of. We can see this as one way that great design matters for your business.
You may want to consider hiring a professional designer who understands the nuances of communication. Professionals understand typography, color theory, aesthetics, layout, and more. They can help you craft messaging that effectively communicates your message without being overdone or cluttered.
