Why Offline Businesses Need Online Marketing

Your Customers Are Here, Are You?


You have a local based brick and mortar business, so no reason to invest in online marketing, right? Location based businesses couldn’t be more wrong. Do not miss out on sales and customers by ignoring or avoiding online marketing.  One of the key principles of business is to be where your target audience is looking for you. A growing number of consumers are searching online before making a purchase decision, so your business needs to be there in order for them to find you and include your company in their decision making process.
According to the BIA/Kelsey  report, 97% of consumers use online media before making local purchases.  Google Research  showed that 9 out of 10 internet searches resulted in a follow up action, such as calling or visiting the business. Mobile searches triggered an additional action or conversion 73% of the time; and 28% of mobile searches resulted in a store visit or purchase. Since mobile searches are on the rise, this behavior is only going to continue to increase. How do consumers search for businesses?

1. 90% use a search engine
2. 48% use the online Yellow Pages
3. 42% use comparison shopping websites

Embracing and online marketing can help you get the edge on your competition; especially when you take into consideration that a recent study  shows that 50% of small businesses’ online listings are incorrect and 70% of small business owners state they do not have time to keep their online listings updated. Therefore, something as simple as updating and optimizing your online listings, including the Yellow Pages, will give your business the edge over the competition.
Four takeaways for brick and mortar businesses looking to take advantage of online marketing:

1. With so much of your competition having an incorrect listing or nonexistent presence online, taking just a few minutes to fill in the data about your business in your online listing will make your business more visible to consumers searching for the products or services you sell, even if you do not sell anything online.
2. Websites for your local business should include a responsive design so that it can be easily read via mobile devices. Especially considering that tablets will outsell PCs this year, and more than half of all cell phones are smartphones. What is responsive design? The Wikipedia definition of responsive design  “is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)”. Mashable named 2013 The Year of Responsive Design and rightfully so with the growth of mobile search that results in visits to local businesses.
3. Including online sign up for appointments or reservations on your website will increase conversions and also provide an added convenience of allowing them to make appointments online 24/7. Of the consumers surveyed, 19% made appointments with a local business through the business’ website, that doesn’t include restaurant reservations; Cornell University research shows that over half of those surveyed made restaurant reservations online. If you do not have an online reservation system you have the potential to double your seatings.
4. Embracing social media will allow you to keep connected with these new customers that are tech savvy; making customer retention easier. Get social with the community, build a following host events, and engage with local consumers in an effort to stay top of mind.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-offline-businesses-need-online-marketing/62406/

Facebook Notes

Using Facebook to get a business recognized online is very effective and easy to do. Facebook users range in the millions at any given time thus making the platform for target audience almost infinite. Understanding the working of how to go about optimizing this tool will contribute to the success of any endeavour.

Just creating a profile is simply not the end to the Facebook style of launching and capitalizing on any endeavor. It entails much more than simply this and the following are some points to consider:

 After creating a suitable profile the continuous step of ensuring the line of communication is kept open at all times is important. Positioning the business platform and staying in touch with the viewers will give the site the exposure it needs.

 Unfortunate but all so true is the fact that the eye makes judgments’ long before the actual material is examined therefore presenting a pleasing file picture is very important as is the follow up information featured. This is the one chance the posting has to attract the viewer within the very slim window of opportunity.

The wall is the main platform of interaction thus the need to post relevant and interesting content. Keeping this light and entertaining will help to keep viewers come back for more.

However constant alerts may cause an annoyance so striking a comfortable balance is important. Society now is predominantly more attracted to visual stimulation and this is further broken down into the popular viewing of pictures and photos and other similar platforms when compared to the written word.

Therefore there is a need to explore the possibility of offering a well designed pictorial viewing that will help to enhance the viewer’s experience. Getting into a Facebook group is also another way to create interest in the endeavour being promoted as those within the group are usually like minded or connected to the posting in a more personal way.

4 Rules of Content Marketing: Tell a Story, Don’t Sell One

If you have any connection to online business or Internet marketing, you know that every company is striving to capitalize on content marketing. But is your content marketing strategy effective? Or are you just jumping onto the bandwagon and blindly writing blog posts?
Make sure you address these four most important rules of content marketing that many companies have overlooked when launching a “strategy.”

1) Be an Effective Storyteller

The content you create around your company should seek to draw people in, and engage them. Entrepreneur Magazine defines content marketing as, “the creation and publication of original content — including blog posts, case studies, white papers, videos, and photos — for the purpose of generating leads, enhancing a brand’s visibility, and putting the company’s subject matter expertise on display.”
Companies aren’t going to get their customers to share their content if everything comes off as a sales pitch. Going after direct sales is a narrow, short-sighted way to use your content. Instead, companies should be looking for the long-term, lasting effects that valuable content can leave on their audience.

2) Content Marketing Is a Marathon, not a Race

Good content has the potential to position your company as a subject matter expert and this can build trust with your audience. The relationship between your organization and your customers is no different than a relationship between two people — building trust takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes, it can feel like your content just isn’t having the impact you thought it would. Be patient. Your company’s blog isn’t going to become an Internet sensation with only a handful of posts. Just keep delivering quality and consistency and your efforts will pay off (eventually).

3) It’s not All About You

Many companies make the mistake of wasting the leverage they have with their blog or social media pages by using these arenas as a platform to talk about themselves. While it is a good idea to write the occasional highlight about a new hire, or publicize an aspect of company culture that your office is proud of in the blog, don’t use these spaces to just rattle off an empty sales script. Does your office have a dog-friendly policy? Blog about that! Stories that like humanize your company, and projects a positive message. Besides, who doesn’t LOVE dogs?

4) Destroy Your Ego

Instead of creating your content around what will directly benefit you think about what will directly benefit your customer. Can you provide some insightful information they would be interested in? Can you solve a problem? Ask yourself, how can your content be of service?
This is why most traditional marketers are ill-suited content producers. Nobody has a bigger ego than a marketer! When creating content that people will love, think like your demographic. What would they be most likely to share?
Think of a deeper core value within your organization that you would like to communicate with your audience through storytelling. Make it personal, and sincere. Consumer trust in advertising is at an alltime low, so if people sense a sales pitch, they will tune you out, and turn their backs to your company — AND your message.

http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/4-rules-of-content-marketing-tell-a-story-dont-sell-one-0477643

Multivariate Testing for User Experience for Online Marketing College Majors

The window to grab the visitors attention on a website is approximately 7 seconds. Everything from the design of your site, to the call to actions and navigation must work harmoniously to grab the visitor’s attention and get them further down the conversion funnel. Internet marketers have become privy to this growing demand to appeal to an audience’s interests, and are employing multivariate testing on their websites in an effort to enhance the user experience. These tests are conducted to understand what the user likes, which in turn can be used to update the website in making sound business decisions.

How the Process Begins
To thrive in the ever-changing web landscape, a business owner must always be open to change and improvement in regards to their online marketing efforts. New trends and strategies for reaching your audience are always evolving, making the task of keeping up to date a necessity. Since your audience may or may not respond favorably to these changes, webmasters often do the testing on sites so the risk of an adverse reaction is limited. The two most common type of tests are a/b and multivariate, which are similar in concept but each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Why Choose Multivariate Testing?
Both forms of testing will give you great results, however, multivariate testing is quicker and generally more efficient for large scale website. Since more changes can be implemented after each test, it accelerates the optimization process and reduces the total time needed to come up with a better version of the website. If you have a large, enterprise website, this method is recommended. In fact, eBay and Amazon use it regularly to test what visitors are responding favorably to.

Guidelines for Running Multivariate Tests
As you’ll find, conducting multivariate tests is pretty straightforward. Below you’ll find a step-by-step guide to getting started.

Site Evaluation: Review your site in determining what needs to be improved. Consult with colleagues and friends to get a second opinion – they might have spotted something you missed. Surveys are another outlet to consider in receiving anonymous opinions that are most of the time truthful.
Test Design: Group the elements that you have from the previous step into batches. Choose one of them to run your first test on, then work on designing the variations that you will be using for it.

Test Implementation: Gather up the versions of you site and start running the tests. You can do so easily with the use of software and tools, like Google’s Website Optimizer, which is available for free online. You can also employ the services of testing companies to run the tests for you.
Results and Analysis: Once you’ve completed the tests, gather the results and interpret the best solutions for implementation on your site. Based on your evaluation criteria, implement the design that satisfied requirements, such as an increase in clicks.
Site Deployment: Once you’ve determined which variation is the better version, it’s time to roll out the changes on your actual website and proceed to conducting your next multivariate test.
As you can see, multivariate testing is a simple way to ensure the design decisions you’ve chosen for your site are making a positive impression on your audience. Through these easy steps, you’ll begin to see where the design can be improved, allowing you to focus on a more enhanced user experience that ultimately leads to a much bigger bottom line for your business

http://www.collegenews.com/article/multivariate_testing_for_user_experience_for_online_marketing_college_major

Introduction to SEO: The Online Marketing Strategy

 

         

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a form of marketing through which a company’s website, or piece of content on a website, reaches a higher ranking on search engines to maximize visibility to consumers thereby creating a higher probability of traffic, which can later translate to sales and/or interaction depending on your business goals.

This is accomplished through creation of “do follow” links within a number of different arenas. While there’s more to making a web-based company successful than just good SEO, it is a very important part of getting clicks and page views.

 For any entrepreneur, especially those just getting their businesses going, good SEO is crucial.

SEO is the best way to obtain online traffic for your business – when done properly, it’s one of the most cost-effective and powerful methods of establishing a broad client base.

Why SEO?

Search engine optimization is designed to establish your site in the top 10, but preferably the top 5, of any search engine, although Google is by far the most respected. This is done through a series of steps that require an ability to network, analysis of keyword research, and writing ability or at least a great writer on staff, among other things.
SEO requires creativity. It is an upbeat strategy that requires not only an ability to think out of the box, but for you to stay in touch with what topics are trending anywhere from where your business is based to all over the world. This marketing strategy is comprehensive and will ultimately connect your site to every concept available on the web from blogs, to forums, to business listings, to social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram.
Search engine optimization is best looked at as a perfect web, where even if you are unable to see where each strand goes at first sight, you know that there exists an intricate interconnectedness that leads to the ultimate success of the structure.

How to Employ SEO

This is not a simple step by step sort of method. It will take time as well as trial and error. One of the best tools in your box is the concept of “guest posting.” It is impossible to say just how many blogs are on the internet. It is possible to know however, how many visits a blog gets, how long visitors stay perusing the different pages, and how the blog ranks.

This is where the networking comes in. Establishing relationships with bloggers is crucial to SEO because it allows you to place links in places where they will be seen.

The main goal of marketing is exposure, which ultimately attracts clients. Take for example a television wall mount. How would a company that sells this one product distinguish themselves from every other company that sells a similar product? What would make a customer want to buy a particular wall mount over another?
Providing an article for an established blog that fits within the niche the blog caters to is going to provide exposure for your company as well as build a sense of trust between your brand and the reader. The articles and the link you want to place should always be relevant to each other so as to establish the most organic feel as well as credibility. In the case of the television wall mount, an ideal niche would be Mom blogs, sites runs by devoted mothers all over the world looking for new and innovative ways to best care for their families. “T.V. Safety and Your Child” is just one example of how to write an article for a site, that is relevant not just to what or whom you’re trying to promote, but to the host site as well.

The Importance of Social Media

The days of the Avon lady calling at the door are over, and the face of business sales has changed completely.

No matter what type of product you’re selling, you need to be able to keep up with the times if you want to actually sell your product or service.

Setting up a fan page and building followers on sites like Facebook and Twitter is something every single business owner should do. There is absolutely no excuse for not do so.
After all, these social media sites are free, and they can help you find new customers and connect with existing customers in an immediate way that was never possible before.Most business owners are still figuring out how to best utilize social media sites like Pinterest and Google+, they’re definitely a valuable tool. Once you figure out how to use them to promote your business, they very well may become more valuable and relevant than more established social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Pinterest

Pinterest is the fastest growing social media platform in the world. That statistic alone is reason enough to join and start marketing your business on Pinterest. Pinterest is particularly valuable for companies looking to advertise to women. That’s because more than half of Pinterest users are women, and many of them are mothers.
The Huffington Post published a great article on statistics of social media sites for last year.
Just a few about Pinterest:

• 63. 80% of Pinterest users are women, while 50 percent of all Pinterest users have children.
• 64% American users of Pinterest spend an average of 1 hour and 17 minutes on the site.
• 65% Pinterest referrals spend 70 percent more money than visitors referred from non-social channels.”

With statistics like this and more, there is absolutely no reason you should not be taking advantage of the free marketing Pinterest offers.

The key is to know what to pin because the highest incidence of pin are actually “repins.” Creating specific niche driven pinboards is the best way to go, and remember quality over quantity.

Google+

Google+ is a relatively new social media platform, but its potential when it comes to reaching new customers is astronomical. That’s because Google designed Google+ so that it would dominate search results. That means that you need to be on Google+ to reach your customers. If Google+ related results come up in the top five search results a considerable amount of time and your business isn’t there, you’ll be missing out on page views and potential customers.
 Aside from that, Google + has great tools that will help you run your business. Hangouts is actually a cost effective way of having meetings. A group of people can a join a hangout at one time. Creating circles allows you to group together clients, employees, and customers, thereby allowing you to send out mass messages to each group or individuals within them.

How to Get the Results You Want

SEO and use of social media are essential to success. On their own, they’re only a piece of the puzzle, and only doing one may not produce the results you want.

Making the effort to do SEO on your own is going to take work, a lot of it. Your best option is to put together a team of people each with a specialization.
Does “Social Media Expert” sound odd to you? Get used to it, because in 2013, with the economy on the rise, SEO is one industry that is going to grow by leaps and bounds with more and more corporations realizing its worth and having the budget to do something about it.

http://www.thenextwomen.com/2013/04/18/introduction-seo-online-marketing-strategy

Are You Really Ready to Build a New Website or Blog?

If I had a $1,000 for every time I heard one of the below statements, I’d be retired and sitting on a warm beach right now!

I had a website built by some guy. It’s never worked.
We have a website, we just need you to help us get more sales.
My current website is fine. However, it doesn’t show up on Google and nobody knows we exist.
Our website is fine, it really is. I just need more customers.
We don’t have budget to invest in market research, business planning, strategy development, internal training or planning right now. We just need a website and Facebook page with lots of likes.
Can we meet to talk about a strategy to generate revenue for my business? I don’t have any money because I already spent it on the last agency that built my website, Facebook pages, printed collateral and new business cards.
Will you consider revenue share? We know our website is going to kick butt but we just don’t have any money right now. You can be a millionaire with us if you just help us for free right now!
This post is not for the social faint at heart. I am going to tell you what others want to tell you but don’t have the guts. It may not be what you want to hear. Yet it is likely what many of you NEED to hear.
The others in your social business and digital marketing ecosystem may have not told you what I am about to tell you because they wanted to sell you the website, coaching, training, Facebook pages, logo, video, Google Adwords setup or who knows what. Or maybe they haven’t told you because they don’t know how to fix it.
Your current social media efforts are not working because you started at the wrong place.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Change your thinking. Think digital social fabric, not website or Facebook page.

You need to quit thinking you “need a website.” The truth is you don’t. If you don’t know your audience, and don’t have a plan, the last thing you need to do right now is build a website that will be nothing more than a band-aid to a much bigger problem you may not know you have.
You can download our POST Audience Analysis Worksheet here. It will get you off to a good start in prioritizing and analyzing your audience.
Don’t even think about building a website if you can’t answer the majority of these questions:

• Who are you?
• What are you to your target audience?
• Who is your target audience?
• What are their demographics? Psychographics?
• What are their goals? What keeps them up at night?
• Why do you need a website?
• What do you want to achieve with it?
• What are your goals, objectives? What does success look like in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year?
• What will you do to inspire, connect and engage your audience when they land on your website? What will you do to inspire them to stick around for longer than 30 seconds?
• What do you offer that the other 100 websites or businesses just like yours don’t already offer?
• Why should anyone care that your business exists? Why should they care your website exists?
• How will you nurture relationships?
• How will you communicate with them? What tone do they speak in?
• What social platforms are they hanging out on?
• Who do they hang out with?
• Why do they hang out on those platforms?
• When do they hang out on what social platform?
• How will you earn their trust, build credibility?

I could list 100 questions here but won’t. I think you get the point. We help our clients from entrepreneurs to Fortune 50, answer these questions every day with our social media and social business audits, social business and social media strategy development, consulting and execution services. I’m speaking from experience, not theory.
We often work more on the inside of organizations than we do on the digital outside because that is where most businesses need help. It’s important you start from the inside out. As Sandy Carter of IBM states, “culture eats strategy for lunch.” I agree with her statement 100% even though I am a lover and strong believer of strategy.

You are the Thread of the Social Fabric

What is the social web today? It is not a singular website, Facebook page, Twitter profile or Google + account.
It is not one singular blog post, tweet, status update, or pin. It is not one single experience but a series of experiences.
A series of conversations that weave a beautiful, relevant, vibrant, dynamic, breathing fabric that connects consumers, influencers, business leaders, moms, dads, entrepreneurs, teens, teachers, plumbers, gamers, programmers, geeks, fashion models, comedians, sailors, photographers, entrepreneurs and even grandma.
It connects them via threads of conversations, posts, pictures, pins, quotes, content, education, inspiration, laughs, prayers and even tears.
If you are not a positive contributing part of this intricately weaved social fabric the chances of you seeing any real return on your investment in your website or other digital assets are few and far between.

You need an integrated social business platform.

You need to develop an integrated business platform that will inspire, connect, entertain and attract your target customers to you. It must inspire, educate and engage them in a way that builds trust, nurtures relationships and makes them know you are relevant to their business and / or life.
I know it may not be what you want to hear from me when you fill out a web form on our website. We’ve had many business leaders asking for help making their current, broken platform work.
The truth is if your website is built on old technology, doesn’t have a user experience designed for your target audience it is often more cost efficient for us to start over than to clean up what you have. The reason is that your current digital platform is a mess. It was probably done by someone that didn’t understand or work under the constraints of what I describe in this post. They instead sold you on a random act of marketing, random act of social media or random act of website. It’s simply not how it works folks.

Avoid Random Acts of Marketing!

Random Acts of Marketing (RAMs) will eat any morsel of a chance of ROI for lunch before you have time to open the fridge to see what your options are.
One of the biggest misconception is that you can just “do social media” and have overnight success. Many preach this and tout that you can just jump on Twitter or Facebook and you can be an overnight millionaire. While this may have happened for a few, it doesn’t happen for the majority. What these folks are really selling is quick fixes, band-aids and random acts of social media and marketing. I am not stating you shouldn’t hop on Twitter or Facebook. I am stating you should not expect overnight results.
If you do the double click on the folks preaching overnight success you will find many of them learned the hard way, though they may not tell you such. Many took years if not decades to finally make money online. Few of them have real business experience outside of their own internet marketing startup. Yes, they may be able to help you get where you need to go eventually based on tactics and a random set of deliverables. However, you need to know where you are going, first. This post is dedicated to those who of you who don’t know where you’re going and why you are going there in the first place.
If this post resonates with you, take a deep breath. It’s time you slow down to speed up. You may need to take a step back to take two steps forward. Quit listening to every self proclaimed “social media guru” selling you every Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + class and instead do what you know needs done.
It’s time you plan yer’ work and work yer’ plan as Granny would say! It’s time you get in the head of your target audience. It’s time to truly understand what it means to humanize your brand, story telling and your conversations.

The Language Is Changing

The social fabric is speaking a different language today than that of the days of corporate websites, collateral and traditional advertising. If you don’t learn the language you are going to be left behind in a big way. It IS the reason why your website is not working. So quit blaming it on the web developer you hired. He or she probably did what you told them to do. Stand up, take responsibility for your business and do what needs to be done, period!
If your current methods aren’t working, then fix them. We are happy to help you but we can’t help you unless you want to help yourself. Help me help you. Change your mindset and delete the notion of overnight success from your thinking.
Achieving real results is going to take commitment, research, analysis, late nights, and hard work. Quit cryin’ and do something about it. If you want help, call us. No, we can’t meet with you for free to help you plan your strategy and put a proposal the size of Texas together that you’ll try to go implement yourself. We can spot these “free lunch” seekers from a mile away ;)
For the brave and the strong we promise to work in the trenches with you. We will help you answer all of the above questions and more. We’ll help you develop and execute a strategy, plan, and integrated digital platform that will simply kick butt! If you don’t call us, call somebody. Your excuses are done. You can and will do this!

http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/are-you-really-ready-to-build-a-new-website-or-blog-0464177

Working From Home In Times Of The Global Meltdown

The recession has struck the world badly and it is going to last at least till 2010 as reports predict. Businesses are going to plummet more than they have done till now, and the ones that will bear the biggest brunt of the meltdown will be the big corporate industries. Already there have been several millions of people put out of their jobs and there will be more casualties among the service sectors of the world. What is most significant to note is that this is a global effect and very soon even the companies that seem unshakeable on the surface are going to see the effects of this worldwide phenomenon.

At the same time, analysts are putting forth several solutions to keep your daily bread and butter, so to say, in times of this great recession of the first decade of the 21st century. One of these solutions that are being spoken of very emphatically is multilevel marketing. Experts are pitching in with ideas how multilevel marketing could rise to greater prominence in these troubled times and actually be a solution to various people's financial problems.

There are many things to indicate the possible occurrence of this trend.

 

1.            Firstly, the factor that business opportunity is almost a work-at-home opportunity helps. There are no big corporate entities running the show here. The small time entrepreneurs that are hooked into most business ventures are sure to sally forth and make much more than their living.

2.            The very concept of having your own home business is a minimum-expense proposition. While other companies are trying to cut down costs, that would never affect the home business enterprises because they don't have any costs to speak of. The whole idea works through referring other people to join the network and promote the company's products. Among the scores of other costs that are saved, the savings on advertising are immense.

3.            Then there is the fact that the Internet itself is gaining prominence because it is easily accessible to everyone. People are looking for job opportunities on the Internet like never before and certainly the home business opportunities seem much too enticing to resist, whether they are for some supplementary income or even as a main source of income.

These are some indications that your own home business is going to become a greater phenomenon than it already is during the recession. The process of this has already begun, which is clearly seen with the great number of business opportunities websites that have made their appearance on the Internet since 2006.