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  • Internet Marketing Tips: Conversion Funnel Optimization

    The fundamental role of a website should be to act as a business’s ultimate salesperson. Too often companies focus solely on the visual appeal of their website, and while this is important, it is not what’s going generate consistent sales. Functionality is the most important factor to consider when creating a successful website. Sales funnel optimization is a strategy that can help turn your website in to a lead generation and conversion machine.

    What is a conversion funnel? A conversion funnel is essentially a way of visualizing and understanding the process of how potential customers become paying customers. In other words, it is the steps that your potential prospects take to become first-time customers. Paths can be long, short, direct, or complicated. Understanding the different steps of your funnel will allow you to take actions to improve its flow.

    Conversion Funnel Optimization

    Analyzing your conversion funnel is the best way to figure out where you are losing customers and how to fix those issues. While the conversion funnel looks different for each website, they all have three basic principals: awareness, consideration and conversion. Let’s discuss each.

    Awareness. Brand awareness is the largest component of your funnel. During this step, prospects discover your business and visit your website for the first time. Tools like social media, PR, Internet marketing and advertising are commonly used to increase brand awareness and attract new customers.

    Consideration. Once they’ve landed on your website, a customer will evaluate it to determine if you have the goods or services they want and if they are affordable. Two critical factors in this step are sparking consumer interest in your product or service and triggering their desire to take action.

    Creating interest is important because it encourages prospects to stay on your website and look around. Inviting headlines, copy and website design elements like graphics are great factors that help generate interest in your business. Once you’ve grabbed a prospect’s attention, you can use valuable content to create a desire for your services. People most often desire a solution to a problem. Make them desire that solution. A good copywriter can be worth his or her weight in gold when turning interest into desire.

    Conversion. The final and most important step in a funnel is the action step. This is the ultimate goal of your website or, in other words, the final action you want users to take. For most websites, this action is making a sale, but for others it may be signing up for a newsletter, downloading a file or taking other actions. The easiest way to get customers to take action is to make it simple and easy for them to do so. Make the process of taking action uncomplicated for consumers so they can quickly get the information they need. Do not make them navigate through hordes of pages to purchase your project. Use icons or buttons to make it clear what they should be doing.

    Tips for successful funnel optimization: Think of your funnel as a set of filters. At each step, some prospects will be filtered out, leaving only the ones who are qualified to make it to the next level. One way to increase the number of consumers that make it to the final step is to extend your reach and bring more prospects into the funnel. User experience is one of the most important things to consider when optimizing your funnel. Carefully crafting your user experience can ensure that the user stays on task and keeps moving through the funnel, having been given just enough information and options at each step. This can increase the number of qualified prospects that make it all the way through your funnel and increase your conversions.

  • 5 Internet Marketing Tips to Make Your Website Profitable

    Competition is at an all time high. Consumers may be spending more money, but they now have more options to choose from when looking for a product or service than ever before. Consumers are turning to the Internet as their number one source of commerce. More and more brick and mortar stores are becoming showrooms for consumers to research a product before they go and buy it online. Simply having a brick and mortar store in no longer enough to survive in the market place. Companies now need to invest in their online presence to be successful.

     

    Here are five Internet marketing strategies you can use to increase brand loyalty, generate leads, and make more money from your website:

     

    Understand Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is critical for your business to stay competitive. In today’s Internet-centered world, consumers search on Google for almost everything before making a decision. SEO can help your business gain more customers and increase brand awareness. Business that fail to use SEO lose out on potential sales and new customers, allowing their competitors to take advantage of these opportunities and increase their market share. Its essential that your website ranks for relevant, high traffic keywords so that consumers who are searching for your products or services can find your business.

     

    Update Content Regularly. Updating the content on your website helps keep users interested in your business and what else it has to offer. Stores consistently update their displays, and a website shouldn’t be any different. Update the content on your website at least once a week, especially on your homepage. The homepage is the main point of entry for most of the traffic that comes to your website, so it should be continuously engaging users and showing them what your business has to offer. An engaging, updated homepage will also make consumers more likely to click through to your product pages and become customers.

     

    Have a User-Friendly Design. Having a user-friendly navigation structure will help users find what they are looking for, have a positive experience with your brand, and create more sales for your business. A website should be well organized so that users can find what they want in as few clicks as possible. Navigation should be structured in logical, simple way that makes sense to users. This structure should take place on all platforms that users may access your website, such as mobile or tablet. A responsive web design can provide users with a consistent, seamless experience with your website from any platform. User friendly, responsive web designs not only help your users, but will also help your SEO. Search engines prefer websites that they can navigate and index easily and quickly, and will rank your website higher in search engine results.

     

    Retarget Potential Customers. It is much more expensive to market to new consumers than it is to market ones that have already visited your website. Getting users to come back to your site is critical to generating more profits. You can market to these users is by using retargeting ads through a service like AdWords, or by using email. While it may seem outdated, email marketing is still a very effective way of bringing customers back to your website and creating long-term brand loyalty. Make sure you offer customers valuable content or offers through emails, and aren’t simply spamming them and being a nuisance. Offering exclusive online deals, discounts, or seasonal specials can help keep customers engaged with your brand and returning to your website.

     

    Create Useful Content. Creating high quality, valuable content is one of the most important factors to maintaining successful website. Valuable content will help your business stand out as an industry leader to both consumers and search engines. It will help increase your website’s stickiness, encouraging users to come back to your website, and increasing the chances of converting them to customers. Engaging content is also most likely to be shared, linked to, and written about, which can improve your SEO and brand awareness. Search engines also give high quality pages priority in search engine results. A blog can be a great way to provide valuable, fresh, and interesting content. Make sure to update your blog regularly and provide industry trends or other information that views will find insightful. Valuable content is a great way to attract new consumers, engage with current consumers, and increase sales.

     

    “Investing the time and money to develop a well designed website can take your business to a whole other level,” said financial advisor, Tom Dasher. “In addition, using the Internet marketing strategies discussed above, you can create a website that increases brand awareness, generates conversions, and increases sales to keep your business profitable and ahead of the competition.”

  • How Paid Advertisements Online Benefit Your Small Business

    If you wish to give your business an additional amount of exposure, then Internet marketing is the way to go. Although you might have to shell out a chunky amount of money to place ads and target them as per your central audience, in comparison, this amount will total to a lot lesser than what you would have had to pay using traditional media advertising.

    When it comes to excelling at Internet marketing, paid advertisements can do wonders for your small business. That is not to say that free means of promotion will be ineffective. However, when you make use of free techniques to promote your business, although they do tend to be successful, their effect isn’t as profound as paid advertisements. Pay per click – which is also abbreviated as PPC – ads on social media websites like Facebook are popular and yield results.

    Below are some reasons why you, as the owner of a small business organization, should consider using PPC and social media paid ads in order to create a successful overall Internet marketing campaign.

    Pay Per Click (PPC):

    Essentially, Pay Per Click works just like its name; the advertiser or the small business owner must pay only when a user clicks on a particular ad that has been posted by him. It is a very straightforward method to push traffic to your website by narrowing down the target audience to a particular geographical region that is most likely to be receptive to the ad. Here is why you should invest in PPC ads:

    The advertisements are viewed instantly. One of the best reasons why you must contemplate using PPC is the simple fact that the advertisement begins to show as soon as you have made the ad copy and published it. It will begin to show when a user types in the relevant keywords, thus eliminating the slow process it takes to show the results of organic SEO. Therefore, paid advertisements as part of your Internet marketing strategy can give you results instantly and that helps in boosting the possibility of increased sales and conversion rates.

    Budgeting is easy. Paid advertisements like PPC enable you to monitor the progress of your campaign and then adjust the budget accordingly, making it extremely flexible for a small business owner to use and plan out his budget at every step of the Internet marketing campaign. If you decide to place ads aggressively to attract more customers, you can increase your budget or vice versa. Usually, when the customers increase, the advertisers go easy on the ads and bring down the budget to make sure that they don’t overdo it.

    You can target the audience that you want to direct your ads to. You can do a thorough keyword research and even bring about variations in them so that your ads are directed to a specific set of audience that is most likely to respond to your ads in the positive. Therefore, PPC enables you to filter out the audience and direct only those visitors who will work for your business in terms of the conversions rates.

    Social media advertising:

    Social media has become an indispensable part of human life. Facebook, being the ever-so-popular social networking site, is seen by advertisers as one of the best places to attract potential customers to your website. This is because you get to place an ad efficiently along the sidebar of the Facebook news feed and this can help target the right audience at the right time. Below are more reasons why placing ads on Facebook and other social media networks can be beneficial for you.

    You can include images for advertisements. When it comes to Facebook, you can get extremely creative in terms of coming up with interesting visuals for your advertisements at a fraction of the price that you would otherwise have to pay if you used traditional media for advertising. This makes the ad creation process on social media websites an extremely flexible one. You can also add a detailed description as part of the caption for said image thanks to the possibility of including additional characters for this purpose.

    You will easily generate a solid customer loyalty base. Essentially, when you are using Facebook as a means to direct traffic to your website with the help of paid advertisements, you can also make sure that your current customers get added to your official Facebook Fan page so that they get regular updates of the deals and discounts or any new additions that you make to your line of products. You may not realize it but such a fan page is an excellent medium to connect with your customers which helps strengthen the brand loyalty for your business and at the same time helps develop a distinct brand identity and image for your business.

    Paid ads on Facebook can be viewed several times thus helping in message retention. The fact that your Facebook ads are always available for viewership induces more engagement and eventually greater retention in the minds of the audiences. Therefore, the chances of a potential customer getting converted into an actual customer increases rapidly.

    Internet marketing via paid ads is an excellent way for small businesses to get the word out and spread awareness about their existence. It is through paid ads that you can make sure that the audiences get to know you as one of the best in the category of products or services that they are on the lookout for.

  • 5 of the best expert Internet Marketing tips for Small Businesses on a tight budget.

    As each day passes by, the Internet manages to exponentially gain importance and with new businesses mushrooming every single day, it is only natural for them to look at avenues that will help expand their growth within a short spurt of time. If that was not enough, online businesses have taken center stage and several entrepreneurs are willing to quit their day job because of the relentless opportunities the World Wide Web promises to offer. While many people are better off procrastinating, some believe in setting realistic goals and are quite critical of the Internet as a medium that will shoot a business to fame. While both manage to cling on to extremes, there is a middle ground that manages to balance it out. Truth of the matter is the fact that businesses, whether online or offline ones, need a larger part of the Internet to get the word out however, with the nearly millions of businesses targeting the strength of the Internet to catapult their business to the highest level, how will you, as a small business, with a strict restraints on your budget, manage to align yourself with these business moguls?

    The answer, although not easy, can make you sigh in relief simply because of the fact that the World Wide Web does not discriminate. To the Internet, a multimillion dollar company is on the same lines as a start up. This is simply because search engines work on numbers and links, not word of mouth. However, as a small business, this does not simplify or make you more eligible on the Internet. It is important to get the word out and let people know of your existence and since a large part of the global population has found solace in the Internet, it is only natural for you to adopt and adapt yourself to the latest Internet marketing techniques that, with consistency and patience, will help you reach your target effectively.

    Below are some of the top Internet marketing tips that have been compiled by experts who have tried and tested the techniques that work like a charm if you wish to promote your small business online.

    Know who your audience is. This is one of the prime marketing rules for a reason. If you yourself have no idea who you are selling your product or service to, chances are the people receiving the message will not know it too. Therefore, before you even begin marching into the territory of Internet marketing, you should first figure out who your audience is. This is something that can be done for absolutely no cost at all. It only involves answering basic questions that imply you use your common sense. Write down who your product has been designed for, what age group is most likely to use it and the likes. Basically, you should sell your product to a defined audience rather than everyone under the sun. For instance, a new shade of lipstick will interest women and therefore, addressing men will be futile.

    Write a blog. Your official website sells products for you while your blog offers informative content. Your blog should essentially consist of posts that offer the readers invaluable tips, tricks and solutions to problems based on that product category. Essentially, when you write up blog posts at least 2 – 3 times in a week, it automatically helps build up links for your website and this is an excellent SEO strategy appreciated by Google and all the major search engines. Providing quality content is the key and providing enlightening content on the blog should be your main priority.

    Do not underestimate the power of email marketing. Many people do away with email marketing thinking it will barely yield them any positive results. This is where they go wrong, leading to a loss of a chunk of potential customers. As a small business, you are bound to be on a limited budget and therefore, email marketing offers the most affordable way to reach out to people. Asking people to sign up for monthly newsletter can easily help you gain access to their email address. However, responsible email marketing is essential to make this a success. Spamming people’s inboxes with emails that offer no value can make your subscribers click on the unsubscribe button, causing you to lose your potential customers. Besides, one sure shot way to ensure that your email marketing campaign tastes the sweet scent of success is by linking it with other marketing efforts to generate interest among the subscribers.

    Use social media to the best of its capacity. Social media is the order of the day. Millions of people hold accounts on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram and therefore, it would be a shame to not make use of these platforms for your Internet marketing endeavours. These sites can give you a global platform and a worldwide exposure that can work immensely to your benefit. Simple use of hashtags and the appropriate keywords can help you gain followers, which in turn can increase your conversion rates massively. It is a good practice to make an official page for your small business and include posts and photos that are especially behind-the-scenes so that the followers and fans can get an insight into your daily work activities.

    Targeted advertising. Offline advertising can be immensely expensive, however, when advertising on the Internet, you can use targeted keywords and Pay Per Click advertising methods that will help get good exposure for your business. This kind of Internet marketing is extremely popular as you only pay when a potential customer clicks on the link directing them to your website.

    While Internet marketing is a bridge that can connect you to customers on a more homogenous level, it is also important that you exercise some patience when doing so since the efforts put into it take some time to take effect. But rest assured, once you have Google convinced that you provide quality content consistently and that your website offers value, you will benefit immensely from it.

    ➡ Click here if you’re in need of small business SEO services

  • 5 Fundamentals of Good Web Design

    A good website is the basis of achieving success online. A professionally designed website will continue to benefit you long after it is launched. It will help improve your search engine ranking, conversion, customer engagement, and more. A great website will put your business ahead of the competition. Below are five fundamental elements that every good website should have:


    1. Purpose

    A website with purpose is a successful website. Every website should be created with the need(s) of its users in mind. It should be immediately obvious whether your website is intended to inform, entertain or sell goods or services. Making sure that every page has a clear, distinct purpose. This will help eliminate clutter and make your website easier to understand and user-friendly.


    2. Graphics

    Graphics are essential to every website. Not only do graphics communicate information in a fun and easy way, but they are more memorable than simple copy and they can leave a lasting impression. Videos and infographics are more engaging than text, so it is more likely that customers will actually view them. In addition, they have a stronger opportunity to become viral.


    3. Branding

    A website should be more than just a place to inform or sell. It should reflect your business or brand. Giving a website a “personality” will help distinguish it from the competition and make it easier for consumers to remember. With the huge variety of companies to choose from, today’s consumers want to use a business that they can relate to and that reflects the qualities they are searching for. Use fun colors and fonts (in moderation, of course) to help give your website a personality that reflects your brand and promotes your unique message.


    4. Responsive to mobile devices

    To boost your website popularity, develop a mobile-friendly website. The vastness of the online marketplace makes it incredibly cutthroat and competitive. If someone using a smartphone or tablet visits your website, it should be easier to read and navigate through. An increasing number of websites are adopting mobile responsive websites because it will be a major competitive factor in the future.


    5. Navigation

    How easy is it to find the information you need on your website? Good websites have logical, hierarchical navigation so that consumers can use them with ease and get the best experience possible. Most users will exit – or bounce – to visit a competitor’s site if they cannot find what they are looking for within three clicks on yours.



    Website design can be a challenge, check out some of our work if you need inspiration, or contact us for help.

  • 3 Simple and Effective Podcast Ideas for Marketers



    Podcasts are an excellent and fun tool to use in your marketing and management efforts. Podcasting alone may not instantly get you the large fan or customer base that you desire, but you should see positive growth to both your traffic and conversions if you use them on a consistent basis. A major benefit to using podcasts is that there is not much to them. Podcasts are essentially verbal blog articles. They are cheap and easy to make and they can be used for a variety of purposes. Below are three simple podcast ideas to add to any digital marketing strategy.

    Use your podcast for educational purposes.

    If you want to gain the trust of the consumer, do not simply toss advertisements at them. To create verbal or written content that will actually grab people’s attention, you must prove that you are a trusted source for information in your niche.

    It just so happens that podcasting is a great channel for proving that you are an expert in your industry. A good practice would be to record one 30-minute long podcast per week. During the podcast, discuss industry trends or provide tips and advice. Keep the advertising chatter to a minimum. Promote the podcast through other marketing channels (social media, paid promotions, your webpage, email, etc.) and you will start to acquire listeners. Once you have some regular listeners, start taking questions. You can answer a few listener questions at the end of your podcasts. Your listeners will appreciate the interaction. You can then throw in a little advertising talk at the end (for example: “if you need help with _______, feel free to contact me to set up an appointment.”)

    Make a video podcast

    If you have considered podcasting, you are probably thinking of recording audio. Well podcasts can be done via a visual format as well. Film yourself giving the podcast and put it on YouTube. YouTube is a major search engine and adding your podcast to it will extend your reach significantly. You will put a face to your company and that might make viewers eager to contact you. Make your podcast short, fun and informative. Do not go into details about the subject matter but instead offer enough information to get the viewer thinking. If they decide they want more answers on the subject that you discussed, they may reach out to you and become a customer.

    Request interviews with industry leaders.

    Interviewing authority figures in your industry can be incredibly useful if they are established and have a large following. Although you are a marketer, you will act as a journalist in this endeavor. Not only will you spark the interest of your followers, you will get the attention of your interviewee’s fans and followers as well who will learn about your organization.

    The interview itself will prove that you are personable. Ask them relevant industry questions but hold conversations with them as well. Include small talk about light or humorous subjects. Once your listeners see that you are personable, they will begin to trust you and will be more comfortable contacting you.

    Once the interview is over, do not forget to ask your interviewee – an influencer – to promote the podcast as well.

    These three podcast ideas should get you started in podcasting, but what other ways could you make use of a podcast in your marketing strategy?

    For more marketing information or to implement a marketing campaign, feel free to contact our experts.

  • Google Analytics Update Begins Filtering Bot Traffic

    Google Analytics has recently rolled out an update that will hopefully give some clarity to the traffic that your website may or may not be getting. This new update represents the first large scale effort to weed out traffic that may be coming from the most widely known bots and spiders on the web.

    The update lets Google pull out data from those bots that are present on the IAB’s International Bots and Spiders list. This list is not available to the public, but it is a well known resource that businesses have used to identify potential sources of illegitimate traffic.

    This update is still in the early stages, so not all Analytics accounts will have access to the feature, but it can be found in the view settings. Those who have been updated will see an option to “Exclude hits from known bots and spiders”. Once this option has been enabled, Google will begin gradually filtering out traffic from these known sources.

    This is a minor change as far as Analytics go, but it could end up having a huge impact on how you make decisions regarding your website. If you have been experiencing high levels of traffic but low conversion rates and interaction, that could mean your traffic is comprised largely of various bots and spiders, although it could mean you have some other website issues.

    This update to Google Analytics will not get rid of all traffic from non-human sources, but it is a good tool to help webmasters get a sense of their true levels of traffic. Much like traffic that comes from employees is not helpful for the bottom line, the bot traffic is an online issue that has resulted in over delivery of “traffic” for many years. This new change may end up making some websites look bad in the short run, but it can help accurately guide web strategy going forward. Good luck and thanks for reading!

  • Google Launches “Google My Business”

    Google is finally having an official launch for their new local business tools that used to be shared between Google Places & Google Plus. The new service, which is known as “Google My Business” is a new initiative to bring together the previous local business services that have been providing mixed results for SEO professionals and small business owners alike.

    What Has Changed?

    It used to be that local business listings could be created either within Google Places, or from the Google Plus Local Business area. Both of these programs provided a very similar, but different enough that they served their own purpose, experience for managing business listings. However, the two continued to converge until a Google Places listing was nearly indistinguishable from Google Plus page of a similar nature. This new “My Business” platform is a way to bring the two together once and for all, and finally stop the confusion for creating local listings through Google.

    Is Google My Business Better?

    There have been rumblings of updates to the local listing services offered by Google for months, and my first impression is that the new interface does provide a nice mix of the previous two services. I see a clean presentation of listing analytics, review management, site analytics (if they are connected), and YouTube data, all near a Google Plus posting box. A business really could manage their entire Google Plus presence from this single location.

    However, the new program is still getting off the ground, and it definitely shows. I encountered many 404 errors and clicked links to nowhere as I tried to move between listings and different accounts. As this change moves across all existing listings I am sure there are going to be more kinks than an old garden hose.

    The Future for Google Local

    There are new features such as an improved bulk upload option for those who will be managing multiple locations. I have not had a change to use it yet, but if it works with the same process and clean approach as for individual listings, I will consider this update to be a welcome change. If you are managing listings for clients, or have a listing for your business, check out the shiny new options that is “Google My Business“.