Tag: branding

What’s Your Marketing Plan?

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marketing evaluation podcast

Have you got a marketing plan?

Are you sure it’s effective?

Many business owners mistake a marketing campaign for a marketing plan. If you don’t know the difference, it might be time to bring someone in to do an evaluation of your existing marketing and branding to help you grow.

In this podcast, Frank Thomas (Small Business Tips Show) and I discuss how to improve your marketing and uncover some common misconceptions.

For more tips, catch my videos on the Agapi YouTube channel, like Agapi on Facebook, or follow on Twitter.

You can listen here or download the podcast.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Better Business Bureau Accreditation Builds Consumer Confidence

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better business bureau can do for you

What the Better Business Bureau can do for you.

The Better Business Bureau is a non-profit accrediting organization that gives its stamp of approval when a business meets high standards of quality, responsibility, and trustworthiness.

So why is this BBB logo so important? Recent studies have shown that 8 out of 10 consumers recognize the BBB seal, and when they see it displayed on a website or business, it instills confidence and trust.

And those consumers are likely to purchase based on this. Reviews are important online, but 90% of consumers don’t bother hunting for a lot of reviews and will read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion.

Most of those consumers are going to go right to the Better Business Bureau first. And sometimes that one review is enough to make their decision. But what if your business is not accredited? This could actually hurt your business as becoming accredited shows that you’re a company that is accountable and can be trusted.

And a company that is trusted, makes more profit.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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How Long It Does Take to See the Results of Digital Marketing?

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digital marketing results

Are you impatiently waiting to see the results of your digital marketing efforts?

This is a frequently asked question. The answer depends on what you are looking to accomplish and the strategy that you have put together.

Are you looking for short-term results or are you planning for next year?

If immediate short-term results are your aim, then you should choose pay-per-click advertising (PPC). The results can be seen in 2 days or in a week.

Comprehensive keyword research and continuous monitoring and optimization of your PPC settings will maximize performance and yield ongoing positive results.

If your vision is for longer-term gains then consider search engine optimization (SEO). A comprehensive and thorough SEO campaign will start to yield results after a few months. This may take 4-6 months or 6-9 months.

Successful results mean not only increase your website ranking on search engine results but also receiving leads that lead to sales.

Visit our website to learn more about our marketing audit and blueprint consulting services.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Aligning Your Digital Marketing Strategy With Your Business Goals

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marketing evaluation

Your digital marketing strategy needs to be aligned with your business goals.

Nearly half of businesses (44%) don’t have a clearly defined marketing strategy. For firms that are active in digital marketing, nearly half do not have a defined digital plan or strategy (47%).

No wonder many small businesses are struggling to understand why their online marketing campaigns aren’t delivering an ROI.

Successful businesses that are running online marketing campaigns that impact their bottom line are NOT doing it merely because their competitors are doing it too, but because they have drawn a clear path to how online marketing can help achieve their business goals.

A Marketing Audit has to be performed for you if you have a digital marketing campaign currently running or had one in the past. The next step is to consult with an expert to identify your goals, budget, benchmarks, implementation plan, and targets — producing an online Marketing Blueprint in the process.

Can a building be constructed without a blueprint? Can a building stand without a foundation? No. These principles hold true for your marketing.

Here are some variables that will shape your Marketing Blueprint:

Marketing Audit
Business Goals
Budget
Benchmarks
Consulting Services
– Strategy Recommendations
Marketing Services
Backup Plan
Targets

Your marketing needs a foundation to stand on — your business goals. You need a plan for your marketing with all of the parts working together to reach new heights in line with your goals.

Your goals could be a mix in any of these categories:

Brand Exposure
Social Media Engagement
Website Traffic
Sales Targets
Target ROI

If you are willing to spend $1,000 to $3,000 a month – or $12,000 to $36,000 a year – on your marketing, doesn’t it make sense to invest in a Marketing Blueprint to ensure a spot-on marketing campaign.

Contact us today to learn more about a Marketing Evaluation and creating a Marketing Blueprint for your business.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

8 Reasons To Use Google Analytics for Your Website

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reasons to use google analytics

Here’s 8 reasons to use Google analytics!

As business owners, we must ensure that our marketing efforts are worthwhile.

We need to make sure that our website’s design and structure is at optimal levels to maximize our marketing campaigns.

Having someone on your team that can analyze your website traffic data will help ensure that your efforts are worth every little bit of time and money you spend on marketing.

Installing Google Analytics makes acquiring this information easier than ever. Understanding this information will help you strategize and improve your marketing efforts.

Here are 8 simple ways to use Google Analytics to advance your business to next level:

1. Identify the Sources of Your Traffic

Use analytics to track the traffic on your website. This will help you understand what sources send the most traffic to your business.

2. Determine the Path that Leads to Conversions

Determine what pages are driving conversions for your business. Conversions could be making a sale, the download of a white paper, a filled out contact form on your website or one of many other actions that positively impact your business.

The quality of your traffic relies on if you’re bringing the right buyer personas to your website who are genuinely interested in your company’s offerings.

3. Understand Which Relevant Keywords Drive Traffic

Analytics informs you how your business is ranking for key search queries.

Ranking highly for the most important long-tail keyword phrases related to your business can drive quality visitors to your website on a regular basis, which is why marketing around these search phrases is essential for your business.

4. Understand Time on Site

Start by understanding how engaged your visitors are by using the engagement report to better understand their time on site.

The reason why this is so important is that the longer someone is on your website, the more likely they’ll perform an action with your business whether that’s a download, completing a transaction, etc.

5. View Multi-Channel Funnels to Locate Understand a Visitor’s Path

The multi-channel funnels report in Google Analytics is one of the most important to monitor. It provides an overview of the most common paths to conversions. Take a look at which funnels are driving the most activity for your business and try to spur more movement across these channels.

6. Know Which Device Users Drive Results

Improve the quality of your ongoing traffic by analyzing and catering to where your traffic is coming from –desktop, mobile or tablet devices.

7. New vs. Returning Visitors

This report is important to monitor regularly to see if your existing audience is continually returning to your website, while also informing your business of your audience growth over time as seen through new visitors.

Ideally, there should be a healthy balance of both new visitors and returning visitors to inform the quality of your website.

8. Manage Your Backlinks

This can help your business understand what websites are linking to your site, which is a major factor that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when ranking your website and driving traffic to your business.

Your backlink profile is a crucial factor to help ensure that only quality websites are linking to your business and that you’re building trust with your customers and the search engines.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

Important Design Elements that Your Website Needs

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design elements

Your website needs these design elements!

There’s been a lot of testing and research done over the past few years, and it’s no surprise that more people are using mobile devices to find products or services. The one thing that may or may not come as a surprise is that many businesses haven’t adapted to these changes, or even tested their website. Prioritizing user experience should be the first thing you or your website designer should do.

Any website needs to have design elements that make the website easily seen, and also make it easy to navigate should be on the top of this list. Many websites are starting to get rid of images because they take too long for mobile devices to load, if too many are used. However, if you do use images, they should be scaled down, and the images should use text, such as a card menu seen on Microsoft homepage. This one easy design element shows people what they are looking for quickly, and describes it easily.

And if you’re doing to use video or animation, then fast-loading cinemagraphs are the way to go for mobile devices. These small half-photo, half-animated clips, are quite popular, and load quickly. Make sure that your copy is relevant to the visitor quickly depending on their query, and what got them to your website in the first place. Give a quick big picture of what your site is all about, and what you offer the minute the customer gets there. Realize they may be on a mobile device, and test it, or have your website designer continually test and improve the experience.

Make your site easy to navigate, create different designs for the different sections, but use a consistent theme. Use eye-catching transitions from section to section to keep the user interested. And make sure the font for your copy can be easily seen. Visitors still do the quick scan, so if they quickly scan, make sure you grab their attention quickly. Use custom visual and iconography, or images and symbols, that tells your brand story and shows some personality of who and what your business is about.

All of these design trends are based on statistics. And with the statistics comes the realization that effective website design that makes life easier for users when they visit your site, should be the main goal of you and your website designer. Your competitors are optimizing their websites, if you don’t optimize your site, then you will be left behind.

If you would like to learn more about optimizing and using the latest design trends to improve customer experience, contact us today. We will be happy to help you deliver a great user experience.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Say Hello to the Future. Get a Virtual Storefront And Be Open 24/7.

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website virtual storefront

What does it mean to have a virtual storefront?

The information age can be great. It gives customers nearly limitless information when trying to make a purchase decision, and it gives business owners like you new and exciting ways to reach those customers. It also makes it of the utmost importance to have a solidified and well-crafted website to make your case to potential customers.

Yes, your website is your virtual storefront. Open 24/7.

Not sure where to start? We can help.

Your website needs to sell you and these six things are proven to do that in the most efficient way.

1. The way that your product or service navigation is organized must be primarily based on your potential customer’s needs, and not based on, say, alphabetization.

2. With featured products or services, you can quickly direct your customer to what they are most likely to need. If the weather is heating up, make sure you don’t feature coats. Make educated guesses to showcase what’s hot for each season.

3. A product or service catalog makes sure your customers know exactly what you offer. It allows them to search through and identify what aspects of your product or service that fit your needs.

4. For each product listing, make sure you identify the benefits, features and product specifications. By ensuring you answer all the customer’s questions, you help them arrive at the “yes!” more quickly.

5. FAQs are found on almost every website. Whether they’re questions about shipping times or your return policy, you want to make sure anything a customer may wonder about is clearly spelled out.

6. Testimonials take advantage of the fact that customers trust their peers more than almost anything else when it comes to buying a good or service. If you have happy customers, make sure you utilize that to sell yourself or your products to new clientele.

Feeling overwhelmed? We’re here to help!

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

Your 5-Minute Website Workshop

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website workshop

Take a 5 minute website workshop and improve your customer experience.

Your website is a vital piece of your business, and we want you to have the most traffic possible going through it every day. That is why we put together these “Must-Haves” that you need to be checking on a regular basis in order to ensure you are gaining the most customers possible.

While working through this list we suggest pulling your website up next to this window so that you can properly analyze your site.

First, we will take a look at whether or not the website is correctly designed.

Your website…

  • Must be user-friendly
  • Must set a clear path for customers to make a purchase
  • Must have trust signals
  • Name of the Business Owner
  • Address, Phone
  • Must have security
  • Use HTTPS or Secure Sockets Layer
  • Must have customer support contact information

Now let’s take a look at the answers that the customer is looking for when they get to your website. No matter what point the customer is in the buying process, they are going to have questions and concerns.

You need to have the answers to these questions readily available to them or they will quickly move on to another site that does.

  • Why should they buy from you?
  • What benefits your product/service will give to them?
  • What Features does it offer?
  • What are the technical details and specifications?
  • Where are the guides and tutorials?
  • Do you have any testimonials from real customers?

These are all things that you need to have on your website to ensure the steady flow of customers coming through your site. Even addressing one or two issues that you noticed while reviewing this list can have a major impact on the number of customers you see moving through your website.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

4 Warning Signs that Your Website Needs a Redesign

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website redesign

Time for a website redesign?

At Agapi Marketing & Consulting Ltd., we want to make sure your business looks irresistible online. Our experts have compiled a list of 4 warning signs that your website might need a total redesign.

1. Your site takes more than 3 seconds to load

If your site takes longer than two seconds to load, you can not expect people to sit around and wait for the content to show up. According to a survey from Akamai, 49-percent of consumers expect a site to load in two seconds or less. Testing the speed of your website is easy. Open your website on multiple devices such as phones, tablets, and desktop computers to check the speed.

2. Some of the features or content do not display properly

Check your website regularly to make sure logos, photos, and outside links are working properly.

3. Your site is difficult to view and navigate on mobile

Check to make sure your website is usable on a wide range of mobile devices. The last thing you want is to lose a potential customer because your website is not responsive.

4. You’re Not Seeing Any Business Results.

Is your website bringing in leads and sales? If not, then it is definitely time to consider a redesign.

If one or more of these 4 warning signs apply to your website, our experts can help you create the best version of your website.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

Is Your Business Website Fully Optimized for the User Experience?

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website ux

If your company or business website hasn’t been updated, or there are no plans to update it, you should change that strategy.

User behavior is continuously evolving, and one of the most significant changes is that more people are using their smartphone devices every day.

If you have ever used your phone to browse websites online, you may have noticed that some websites are nearly impossible to read or navigate. The reason for this is because most websites are built from a perspective that someone on a computer will visit the site. The way users access a website has already changed drastically.

But design evolution isn’t only about having your website viewable on a mobile device. User optimization encompasses a lot of different factors. Some changes that have happened over the past couple of years include websites having fewer menu options, getting rid of the menu grid or ‘hamburger’ as it’s come to be known, getting rid of bad stock images, and moving the website to a more minimalistic design.

The majority of these changes came from designers and developers constantly redesigning and changing UX (user experience) elements to see how those new designs and changes worked. Big companies such as IKEA have moved to a more minimal design with fewer menu options making it easier for their visitors to quickly find what they need. But this optimization shouldn’t end there.

The future will likely bring more design trends making it easier for visitors to get what they are looking for quickly. After all, a good user experience drives conversions.

Want us to take a look at your website to see if it’s optimized for a great user experience no matter what device your visitors are using? We can do an evaluation and get your website fully optimized.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

If you like the information you are receiving, please share this post.

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