Tag: marketing

How The Voice Of Your Customers Is A Valuable Marketing Tool

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reputation marketing is the voice of your customers

Do you care what your customers think?

Digital marketing generally means getting the word out online about your brand and getting customers to see why they should buy from your business.

But in today’s hyperconnected world, your customers can also shape the reputation of your business online in (nearly) real time. This is very important as 77% of consumers read online reviews before making a decision.

While talking about how good your products and services are is of course useful and necessary, what your customers say about your company can also be used as a marketing tool. This is called Reputation Marketing. What makes this strategy different from other types is that it puts the “voice of the customer” as the central focus.

What your customers say about your business is not something you can control, buy, or make them do, but you can use the positive reviews they do leave to shape the narrative of your business’ reputation.

It’s amazing how many business owners are keen on running all sorts of online marketing campaigns, yet they don’t take the time to have their customers write a comprehensive review about their products.

Can you imagine how many of your “would-be customers” end up buying from your competitors, all because they couldn’t find any reviews about your product or service?

It’s essential for potential customers to know that others have used your business and had a good experience doing so, giving your business a reputation of trustworthiness.

Reputation marketing today is a must.

How do you get these positive reviews for your business and strengthen your reputation? There are many ways.

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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Should You Hire A Full-time Marketing Director?

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should you hire a marketing director

Should you hire or contract the services of a Marketing Director?

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

As with any HR activity, there is additional work required of you to hiring a Marketing Director, such as;

  • Job Description Preparation
  • Job Posting/Advertising Cost
  • Interviewing
  • Background Checks
  • Qualification/Certification Checks
  • Evaluation
  • Employment Agreements
  • Onboarding
  • Training

Do you think hiring a marketing consultant to perform a marketing director role for your business at an hourly or contract rate for a few hours a month would make more sense?

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.

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Using Reputation Marketing to Gain Customer Trust

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reputation marketing strategy

Looking to gain customer trust online? Try using reputation marketing.

Any smart business that is keeping up with current business trends will know all about how reputation marketing can affect their business, and how it directly affects things like customer retention, brand awareness, and most importantly, consumer trust.

And if you aren’t taking advantage of online review sites for your business, you could be missing out on gaining more customers and clients.

Having a good reputation marketing strategy where you have someone manage the aspects of online reviews can be very rewarding especially when it comes to building trust for your brand.

Getting listed on these review sites is the first step in wowing potential customers, and at the same time showing these future prospects that you care about your brand, and care about customer experience. If you don’t do this, your competition will, and are already likely taking advantage of getting positive reviews.

Don’t wait a minute longer to find out that your business has unchecked reviews online. Take control of your reputation marketing strategy now.

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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The Whys and Hows of LinkedIn for B2B Leads

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linkedin for b2b leads

LinkedIn is a great resource for B2B leads.

It seems that in social media lists, LinkedIn is always thrown at the end as another, lesser, option to the bigger sites.

However, if you are looking to make B2B connections and grow your leads there is no more effective social media platform than LinkedIn!

Unlike the other social media channels out there, LinkedIn was specifically designed for business leaders to share ideas and make connections.

Studies have shown:

1) 92% of B2B Marketers leverage LinkedIn over all other social platforms.
2) 79% of B2B Marketers view LinkedIn as an effective source for generating B2B leads.
3) 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
4) 43% of marketers say that they have sourced a customer from LinkedIn.

So hopefully those statistics have demonstrated why using LinkedIn is an effective choice for your business. Now, let’s focus on how you can best utilize the site.

Just showing up to the party isn’t enough, you are going to have to enter the conversation. In order to do that your company needs to begin posting engaging content for your target decision makers to read and share.

Here are three points for you to think about regarding LinkedIn content:

1) 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content

Businesses are sharing tons information with one another and making connections. It is time for you to join in and boost your visibility by posting useful content for your future customers.

2) 10 pieces of content are consumed before a purchasing decision is made.

People are constantly taking in information and researching before buying, especially on LinkedIn. Now through the content you post, your business has a direct way to speak into their decision-making process.

3. LinkedIn SlideShare reaches 70M unique visitors a month.

The site is now among the top 100 most-visited websites in the world. The audience is already right there for you to reach out to!

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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Online Advertising Benefits vs. Traditional Advertising

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online or traditional advertising

What’s better? Online or traditional adverting?

There are many benefits to doing online advertising over the traditional model. One of those is the cost between the two. Traditional advertising, such as billboards or television spots (commercials) can cost quite a bit of money for a single 30-second spot.

Online advertising uses a platform where you are charged by how many times an ad is clicked. This is called Pay-per-click or ‘PPC’ advertising. It’s not nearly as expensive with an average cost per click of 0.60 cents.

With online advertising, you’re getting instant traffic. You could run traditional advertising and online advertising in a race side by side, and you’ll get online customers a lot quicker than traditional.

However, the biggest benefit is that with online advertising is that you can get detailed data on everyone that sees your ads.

You can also split test ads for the same cost, find out who interacted with your ads, where they were from, which ad they liked better, and what converts and what doesn’t. You can then optimize your ads with the data you collected.

Let’s say you ran an ad and 100 people clicked it, but no one bought anything, then you would know there is a problem somewhere and be able to fix it and optimize each ad.

Once you spend money on a television ad, that’s it. No way to optimize it. Having control over your online ads such as when they are shown, and how much money you are spending is crucial for success, while not breaking the bank on ads that aren’t converting.

But running a successful online advertising campaign can be tricky. It takes some knowledge and learning how to setup everything properly to run highly successful campaigns.

There is a lot of competition, and you need every bit of experience you can get on your side.

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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Making Your Business Stand Out from the Crowd

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stand out with reputation marketing

How do you make your business stand out from the crowd online?

SEO is a great marketing tool. Social Media is a great marketing tool as well. You have Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. at your disposal.

Many businesses fill their feeds with discussions about how reliable and celebrated their products or services are. Many have the persuasive copy needed to convince people to buy from them.

All of these tactics are good. Nonetheless, self-promotion alone is not enough to make yourself known to your target market. This is where Reputation Marketing comes into play.

Reputation marketing is about building a positive online reputation, which allows you to use that stellar reputation to gain the trust of your target customers.

With reputation marketing, you now have more authentic content. Content that draws people’s attention to how reputable your business is!

As your customer is contemplating their next purchase, they go through a process to decide if they want to buy. Some of these stages include Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. For some, this process is instantaneous, and for some, it could take months. Your reputation and reviews can help them jump into action!

Use reputation marketing to validate your potential customer’s decision to buy from you!

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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What’s A Google Algorithm?

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what is a google algorithm

You’ve heard about it, but what is a Google algorithm?

Are you looking to improve traffic flow to your website? Search engine optimization is the golden key to bring more eyes to your page, and we want to help you get there.

Google’s search algorithms are responsible for displaying the most relevant search results at any given moment. These algorithms are based on keywords, search intent, location, and a hundred other ranking factors. Because some are able to “game” the system, Google has to update its algorithm to ensure the results searchers are getting are the results they need. And it’s updated frequently! Five times in 2015, eleven times in 2016, and four times so far in 2019. That’s 20 times in just 2.5 years!

At the end of the day, Google algorithm updates are good for everybody. The potential customer searching for information is able to reach relevant businesses quickly and make informed decisions. Businesses are able to display their wares or services in such a way to connect with those potential customers.

When your website is fully search engine optimized, it remains at the top of any relevant searches no matter how many future updates Google instates.

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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Get A Virtual Storefront. Open 24/7.

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be open 24-7

There’s a cost-effective way to be open 24/7!

The information age can be glorious. 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? 

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.

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.

5 Reasons You Need To Use Digital Marketing

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reasons for using digital marketing

Looking for reasons to use digital marketing?  Here are a few.

Customer behavior has changed. Now they go online to research and evaluate brands, products, and services. Your potential customers have gone digital, and so you need to as well.

1. Your prospective customers look online before buying!
Did you know that 81% conduct online research before buying? If your products and services cannot be found online, then you are missing out!

2. It works!
Thirty-three percent of mobile users have purchased from a different brand after seeing advertisements on their mobile devices. So if your website is not mobile-friendly, you’re losing 33% of buyers!

3. It levels the playing field.
If you are a small or medium-sized business, you can take on much larger competitors. To the online shopper, the size of a business is not that important online. If they see you as a business that provides better value, then that is all that matters.

4. It’s cost-effective. You do not have money to waste.
Wouldn’t it be great if every lead who viewed your product or service was a serious buyer looking to purchase? With digital marketing, all your potential customers are targeted and looking for your product or service. Google states a 2.8 times higher revenue growth for companies that use digital marketing techniques.

5. Track potential customers.
You can track customers from the first interaction. Imagine if you could follow your potential customers around and keep promoting your product. Digital marketing will do that for you.

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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