Tag: marketing

How to Leverage Digital Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Your Business

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digital word of mouth

It seems many businesses are not taking advantage of online word-of-mouth marketing.

In fact, some businesses don’t understand how it can be leveraged so that they can take advantage of the huge rewards it brings.

One thing to remember when it comes to word-of-mouth is that friends and family will believe what they hear from each other over any other form of advertising. Word-of-Mouth has moved to the digital realm.

Online review sites exist for a few reasons, but one of the most popular reasons is that these reviews attract a lot of attention to businesses they are written for, and people love to read reviews.

They especially like to find reviews on a business they are thinking about doing business with. And some businesses have taken advantage of this situation like Zappos.com.

Zappos decided to do something different than other big companies and instead of spending tons of money on advertising, they invested that money into creating an exceptional customer experience by having the best customer service they could offer.

The result has been nothing short of amazing as Zappos is well known for providing the best in customer service. The reviews they get drive their bottom line because those happy customers leave reviews, and those reviews get read by other prospects. Not to mention that this form of promotion costs less to manage than other forms of advertising.

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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Follow-up with your Potential Customers through Ad Retargeting

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Get your potential customers back using ad retargeting.

When it comes to remarketing, some businesses have no idea what it means, or the benefits that it can bring by getting visitors (who left your website empty-handed) back to your website and purchasing what they were looking for.

It is important for a business to take every advantage that there is to convert a potential customer or client into a happy and satisfied customer. But this isn’t the only benefit of remarketing.

In fact, you can get some pretty interesting data by showing different ads to a customer who leaves your website and goes to another website.

This type of remarketing can serve to the visitor a reminder that they are looking for a certain product or service, and if they are moving around the web looking for this product or service from someone else, there is a good chance they might see your ad and return to convert. For example, you could show a different ad group to visitors who leave your website with a discount if they return to get what they were looking for. This strategy works so well that you are likely to see a 2-3 times increase in click-through-rates for these ad groups.

It might sound like a complicated process, but if you are already using Google AdWords, then you can take advantage of Google Ad Retargeting. These ads will be shown on other websites through the Google Content Network which are amazingly effective.

The benefits of a solid remarketing campaign strategy, and having Google Retargeting setup correctly are huge. The benefits range from having your ads in front of people when they are finally ready to buy, a much larger scale reach as these ads are shown on over 2 million websites, and much more efficient pricing, easier ad creation, and so on.

And there are many different ways to remarket with Google Adwords besides this. There is video remarketing, remarketing for mobile applications, having remarketing lists for search ads, and email-list remarketing which works by uploading your list of email addresses you have collected from your visitors.

When anyone on this list is signed into YouTube, Google Search, or Gmail, they will see your ads.

If ad targeting or remarketing is something you haven’t been doing, then don’t wait a minute longer to get started.

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 Bounce Rate Helps Measure The Success Of Your Website

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bounce rates

Bounce Rate is a way to measure the success of your website.

The ‘rate’ is the percentage of visitors who come to your site and then immediately leave (‘bounce’) instead of sticking around to view other pages.

Imagine having a storefront and measuring the number of people who come in, take one quick look around and immediately leave, versus the people who come in to browse for a bit and eventually end up buying something.

Your website’s bounce rate is a window into the effectiveness of your storefront to retain potential customers. Google Analytics is a great tool for seeing how many visitors have been to your website in the last 30 days, which pages they visited the most, and how long they spent on those pages.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you use Bounce Rates to improve your website and by extension, your business.

High Bounce Rate can highlight areas in need of improvement

You may notice that some pages have higher bounce rate than others, some with extremely high bounce rates that indicate little to no retention of traffic there. Use this as an opportunity to work on that page, and attract more visitors! Whether it be by updating it, improving the content, or perhaps assessing whether that page is really necessary.

A Low Bounce Rate means a quality entry page

Landing sites/entry pages are essential to maintaining a low bounce rate. They are your storefront – what draws the customers in! A low bounce rate on your entry page means that it is doing a good job of getting visitors to venture deeper into your site, getting them to view other pages and learn more about your business. Maintaining a quality entry page with relevant information, links to other pages, and pleasant aesthetics is key to making sure you are retaining visitors for as long as possible.

Bounce Rate should be relevant to your business’ objective

A high bounce rate on a particular page doesn’t always mean bad performance. Think about what pages on your site you want visitors to pay attention to the most. The goals of your business’ website should be in line with which pages you want to optimize for the lowest bounce rates.

Have more questions about how to use Bounce Rates to improve 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.

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Are You Wasting Money? What is Your Customer Acquisition Cost?

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What does Customer Acquisition Cost mean to you?

Your Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC, is the total cost spent on acquiring new customers (marketing/sales expense) divided by the number of new customers acquired during that particular period.

If you invested $1000 in marketing/sales in a one month period and acquired 10 new customers as a direct result of that marketing and promotion, then your acquisition cost is $100 per new client.

All successful businesses measure their acquisition costs. Luckily, most promotional activity on the web can be measured very accurately.

If you are looking to succeed and make a profit, you must make sure that the pricing of your products and services covers your CAC.

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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Your Business Needs SEO, Whether You Understand its Complexity or Not.

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Does SEO Confuse You?

You are not alone.

SEO is a complex process, indeed. Google has over 200 ranking factors!

Plenty of research is being conducted quarterly and yearly by different organizations to understand Google’s ranking factors. Here are some of the findings from a recent study:

– Between the top 3rd and 20th position in Google search results, there is a 45% difference in content length.
– Between the 1st and 10th positions, there is a 10,000 difference in referring domains.

Content and backlinks are extremely important in SEO.

Reach out if you need SEO explained to you from a perspective that you care about without the technobabble. That is, how it will affect your bottom line.

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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To Hire or Not to Hire a Full-time Marketing Director?

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hiring a marketing director

Should you hire a marketing director?

To get your digital marketing performing at its optimum, you would need a Marketing Director to oversee the strategy and implementation. However, a Marketing Director would cost you $11,000 to $15,000 a month. This is a huge cost to businesses, especially for most small business owners like you.

As with any HR activity, there is additional work required of you to hiring a Marketing Director.
  • Job Description Preparation
  • Job Posting/Advertising Cost
  • Interviewing
  • Background Checks
  • Qualification/Certification Checks
  • Evaluation
  • Employment Agreements
  • Onboarding and Training

Do you think hiring a marketing consultant to perform a marketing director role for your business at a rate of $125 an hour for a few hours a month would make more sense?

This is a win-win solution. What do you think?

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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2 Simple Digital Marketing Success Stories You Can Copy

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digital marketing success stories

Digital marketing success stories.

Dacia and Facebook

Dacia is one of Europe’s fastest growing car brands.
The Goal: Their aim was to grow their brand and to generate more leads.

The Result: 60,000 extra cars sold in the last three years. That’s a huge success!

How did they do it?

1. They decided to use social media.
2. They chose Facebook to get their message across.
3. They targeted desktop-using customers and customers who primarily used their smartphones.
4. The tool they used was Facebook’s boosted posts. This allowed them to test the market and find out where their potential customers were and the best time to place an ad in front of them.

The Girl Scouts and Twitter

The Girl Scouts are well-known for making and selling their own cookies to raise funds for the local community.
The Goal: To increase downloads of their mobile app.

The Result: Nearly 20k extra downloads as a direct result of their Twitter campaign!

How did they do it?

1. They decided to use social media.
2. They chose Twitter to do their promotion.
3. They added images to the app to show how delicious and inviting their cookies were.
4. They used the Twitter App Card so customers seeing their Tweet could access the app directly from their Tweet. Simple!

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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8 Reasons Why You Need Google Analytics for Your Website Today

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8 reasons for google analytics

Why do you need Google Analytics for your website?

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.

Be sure to learn more about how to use Google Analytics to improve your website and 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.

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Marketing Hype And The ICO – What You Need To Know

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ico

The media has finally caught up with the crypto-world and now cryptocurrencies and ICO’s are getting attention.

But what is an ICO? And what can you believe about the marketing hype?

First of all, an ICO is to the crypto-world what an IPO is to the traditional stock markets. They offer an opportunity for a business to raise money, but instead of shares, investors purchase tokens.

As described in Nasdaq.com:

An Initial Coin Offering, also commonly referred to as an ICO, is a fundraising mechanism in which new projects sell their underlying crypto tokens in exchange for bitcoin and ether. It’s somewhat similar to an Initial Public Offering ( IPO ) in which investors purchase shares of a company.  Aug 10, 2017

And, just like the traditional stock market, there are shady operators who are looking for an opportunity for a ‘pump and dump’, so it’s extremely important that investors and potential investors do their due diligence. When looking at ICO options, take the following points into consideration:

1. Does the company/start-up have a viable product?

Without a product, what will sustain the business? It’s not enough to have an idea; do they have something that will actually bring value to the investors and provides a solution to an existing problem.

2. Check out their website.

What is the business’s website like? Is it aesthetically pleasing? Does it have all the pertinent details relating to the business easily accessible – things like the business, the team, a roadmap? Can you download their whitepaper for review? Or is their website all about shilling for their upcoming token sale?

3. Are they communicating with the community through social channels?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – the old standard social channels – are important to build communications and trust in the community. But the crypto world should also be engaging through channels like Redditt, Bitcointalk, Discord, and Telegram. A successful ICO is about more than hype, but it still needs to be widely seen to launch successfully.

4. What do the token metrics look like?

How many tokens will be created? How many will be circulating? How are they allocated? Is there a vesting requirement for employees? What will the coin price be at the ICO? If you are looking to get a good return on your investment, make sure the numbers work.

5. Check the ICO ratings on third-party sites.

There are many sites in existence that will provide their rating on various ICO”s. Sites like ICObench, and Cryptobriefing provide reviews by a panel of unbiased experts. See if the ICO you are reviewing rates favorably, and if not, why not.

6. Don’t fall in love with the company.

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t like what the company represents, but, like with any investment, make sure that you are looking at it with your head and not your heart. Know when to hodl them and know when to fodl them.

Bottom line is that there is a lot of interest and attention on ICO’s these days. And all of them are doing their best through their marketing efforts to get you to put your BTC or ETH with them. Cut through the marketing hype and look closely at your options. There are tons of ICO’s to choose from, so don’t be afraid that you’ll miss out.

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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Catch More Customers with a Customer-centric Web Design

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catch more customers

Looking to catch more customers?

You’ve done your research, and you know what your customers want. You worked hard to bring about a good product that you know will solve their problems, *it* is ready for the market and you know the market is ready for *it*.

Now the only question is, do you have a customer-centric website where your products can be promoted and showcased?

If the answer is no, then there are some factors you need to consider when designing a site such as…

1. Buyer’s persona – who’s the target audience for this product? Who would realize its value the most?
2. Buyer’s journey – what does your customer have to go through to finally get your product in their hands?
3. Ease-of-use – ultimately, is the website for your product easy to use? Or is it fraught with hard to navigate pages that could put buyers off?
4. Answers questions – Are there plenty of chances to learn more about your product in an easy, accessible way? Don’t be vague, customers want to know what they’re buying.

These factors and more should all be considered when designing a website where your products will be sold. Want to learn more? We’d be glad 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.

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