Posts tagged internet marketing
Why Certifications Are Vital for SMBs
Aug 27
When it comes to choosing a company to perform a service, many consumers pay attention to certifications. Corporations and long-established businesses have them. Small companies (SMBs) and new startups need them to compete. Getting certified, or having certified employees, is a vital part of customer acquisition even in the digital business world.
Does Anyone Really Pay Attention to Certifications?
Yes! In fact, LinkedIn considers certifications as 7% of a person’s profile. Certifications build trust in your business in a world where such confidence is sorely lacking for consumers. Combining certifications with the proper liability insurance is a recipe for showing the community that your business is legit and here to stay. Keep this in the forefront of your marketing campaigns.
Displaying Your Certification
Your website should advertise that your business, especially if it’s a digital business, is certified. It should play a role both in digital and print marketing campaigns. You may want your blog to discuss the importance of hiring someone certified to perform the sort of services your company is offering. Your social media sites should also display your certifications.
Keep Up to Date
In many industries, certifications must be renewed from time to time. You cannot advertise your business as being certified unless the certification is current, so be sure to stay up to date. If your business or employees do not currently have certifications that you know your competitors have, recognize that this puts you at a disadvantage when it comes to marketing your business as the best option for consumers.
The Role of the Internet and Social Media
Online reviews are often the lifeblood of a small business. One bad review can spell disaster. Being able to display the proper certifications can fight against the effects of that one disgruntled customer who just could not be pleased by anything. This is yet another reason you want to be able to highlight for your consumers that you have certification proving that you are on the cutting edge of industry standards, especially for a digital business. If that wasn’t good enough for someone, it is not your company’s fault.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on August 27, 2015 at 5:16 pm, and is filed under Business Tech. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
Make Sure Your SEO Campaign Is Bringing in the Returns You Need
Aug 13
Tracking ROI is sometimes difficult when it comes to more abstract marketing methods such as SEO. Sure, you can tell how much traffic to the site has increased, but what has your SEO campaign meant in dollars and cents? After all, you no doubt have had expenses in connection with developing and implementing an SEO strategy. Here are some tips to help you determine your ROI.
To begin, you need to figure out how much your SEO is costing the company. To determine this, try to figure out a monthly amount. Remember the cost of in-house and outsourced efforts. For example, you may hire a freelance content writer but have an employee posting the content. Make sure you include all of the variables. Of course, it is easiest to determine this number if you just outsource everything to an SEO consulting firm or have one in-house department taking care of it.
The next thing to take note of is conversion rate. Do not just consider how many more visitors your site is getting. How many of those new guests actually become customers? Then you need to determine how much those conversions mean in a dollar figure. It is easy if you simply sell one product or service at a set cost. Determining this number may be a little more complicated if every customer has a unique order. In that case, an average figure is ideal.
Google Analytics can help you to determine how many of your site visits are organic. This number changes every month, so do not think you can just estimate. You need to know exactly how many of your visitors are being brought in by your SEO content as opposed to other forms of marketing for the website.
Now all you have to do is determine the total income—thanks to conversion by organic traffic. Compare that to your expenditures on SEO. This will let you know whether or not your SEO efforts have been worth it. Don’t give up if your ROI is not where it is supposed to be. You may just need to make some small adjustments to your SEO tactics.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on August 13, 2015 at 4:30 pm, and is filed under Branding. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
Secrets to Better Branding
Aug 6
The world is a much more difficult place for digital marketers than it once was. In the golden age of marketing, TV spots told consumers what they wanted to own and what to believe, and the public just ate it up. Now, people are skeptical of everything. They want to decide for themselves what their desires are, and no one even wants to have an ad interrupt them during TV time, whether it is on the big screen or a mobile one. Now the question is: How do you brand in a world that doesn’t want to hear about what your company does or how they do it?
The change is a small but significant one. In the past, marketers would interrupt consumers to let them know about a great new product that they absolutely had to have. Today, we need to make consumers feel empowered. We need to give them a choice about what ads to view. We need to spoon feed them what they want (which means knowing what your audience wants). And we need to do it all without pulling them out of the immersion of their experience.
The fact is that by showing your consumers the benefits of your product without making them feel interrupted, you create “free” advertising. Bring consumers in with engaging content and let them tell all of their “friends” across social media. Yes, word-of-mouth (or maybe word-of-retweet/repost/like/favorite) has turned consumers into spokespersons.
Instead of working hard at developing ways to share your product with as many people as possible, focus on a select group who will appreciate the product and be moved to encourage others to use it. Your content will be what attracts people to your brand and drives them to share it with others on a grander scale than was ever possible. Maybe this is the golden age of digital marketing after all.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on August 6, 2015 at 4:30 pm, and is filed under Branding, Content. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
5 Elements to the Perfect Homepage for Your eCommerce Website
Jul 23
The homepage of an eCommerce website is like the window display of a brick and mortar store. Don’t let site visitors walk on by due to a boring or cluttered display. Here are five tips to keep in mind when developing the homepage for your eCommerce site. Following these tips will help reduce the website’s bounce rate and ensure that your site converts more often.
1. The Background Image. Pay attention to the background image of your site. It needs to capture the interest of your visitor without crowding out the content. Keeping the frontpage ad-free will allow the imagery to be more engaging since ads (by design) often attract the eye first due to being flashy.
2. Cross-Platform. Your site needs to be just as engaging and intuitive whether the consumer visits from their phone, tablet, or desktop. The choice of responsive design and a different mobile site can make a big difference in the mind of your consumer. Will your visitors be willing to get a stripped-down, mobile version of the website? Can your staff create a site with responsive design that actually works across varying devices and operating systems? These are important considerations.
3. The Right Font. Size and color are both important. Make sure that your content is easily readable. The font color needs to contrast with the background color. The font should be big enough to read. Do not use difficult to read scripts. A serious company should not be using a font that looks like it belongs in a comic book.
4. Simple Menus. Do not make the menu for the site so complicated that it either takes up the whole homepage or makes it impossible for a user to know how to find what they need. If someone thinks your site is going to run them in a circle for ten minutes before finding what he or she is looking for, you can bet the back button on the browser is getting clicked.
5. Branding. At a quick glance, the site should be recognizable as belonging to your brand. Proper positioning of the logo and the right fonts and colors are crucial in this regard.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on July 23, 2015 at 4:30 pm, and is filed under Digital Advertising, Mobile Marketing. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
Breaking Down Barriers Between TV and Digital Advertising
Jul 16
It is clear that the focus of the digital advertising world has shifted to digital. That having been said, TV ads are still relevant. How can your team bridge the gap between TV and digital to create a cohesive marketing strategy? Here are a few ways to get your department thinking as a team instead of feeling like you are a part of two different worlds.
Communication is the first key to getting TV and digital marketers to work together as a single unit. In the past, the objectives and approaches of the two departments were too different for teamwork. Now consumers often treat TV and digital ads the same way. They may have their tablet out while they are watching TV. Just like a digital video may get skipped if it does not attract attention immediately, a TV ad may lose out to a mobile device that steals a viewer’s attention. The advantage for your company is that the convergence of TV and digital media means that long-term cooperation on marketing campaigns is now possible. This allows the brand to put forth a united front in exposing the public to the company’s values.
Sometimes your digital viewers will need to receive a unique message. Ninety percent of the time, however, a digital ad can simply be a modified version of a TV spot. The truth is that it is not cost efficient to have an entirely separate creative team to develop the same kind of material. The main reason the TV team needs to communicate with the digital team is to ensure that their videos will display well on devices of various sizes and screen resolutions.
Communication of goals is vital so that both TV and digital departments can track the right metrics and compare notes to ensure that the maximum number of consumers are being reached with the right message. ROI is always the goal when it comes to marketing strategy, and while the convergence of TV and digital may pose challenges, there are also benefits to be had in the terms of bottom line.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on July 16, 2015 at 4:30 pm, and is filed under Mobile Marketing, Online Advertising. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
The 3 Worst Backlinking Mistakes on Your Website
Jun 25
Backlinking is an important part of getting traffic, but it is very easy to mess up. Not only can the wrong backlinks drive little to no traffic to your site, but making mistakes in backlinking can result in a ranking penalty from Google. Here are three errors to avoid.
- Link Stuffing
Getting backlinks is great unless the site you are getting them from is churning out links like spam. Be careful about getting your site penalized by stuffing links into the comments of disreputable sites. Also, beware of sites that offer backlinking as a service. Natural backlinking is tough to fake, and Google is very unforgiving with cheaters.
- Bad Anchor Text
Which words do you choose to turn into a hyperlink? Many sites end a sentence with “click here” and make that phrase the link. It is a huge wasted opportunity. Make the link relevant, and a long-tail keyword if possible. The more highly ranked a site is that you are getting a backlink from, the more important it is to use the exact right anchor text. Do not miss out on the opportunity of gaining extremely high value from a link.
- Nofollow (Ignored) Links
This basically takes your link and renders it practically worthless. Why would a site that gives you a backlink use the Nofollow tag to make Google ignore it? It is often for the sake of the site’s rank. Backlinks lose their value if there are too many on a site. Plus, Google weighs relevance heavily. Of course, if it is a top site, then you may still get a lot of traffic from the link alone. It just hurts to succeed in getting a top site to agree to a backlink and then not get the huge ranking boost from it.
There are many pitfalls when it comes to backlinking. When in doubt, seek out a successful digital ad agency to assist you in making good backlinking decisions. That’s one of their services.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on June 25, 2015 at 4:30 pm, and is filed under Content, Digital Advertising, Online Advertising. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
Improve eCommerce Sales With These Simple Techniques
Jun 18
If online sales are relevant to your business, and it is for most modern businesses, then you need to make sure that you are taking every opportunity to improve your bottom line in your eStore just as you would in a brick-and-mortar shop. Here are a few suggestions that can help your eCommerce sales increase from your site.
Would You Like Fries With That?
It is called upselling, and McDonald’s has been successfully using it to increase sales for years. Why not apply the principle in the shopping cart of your eCommerce site? When someone adds an item to the cart, be sure to suggest similar items or items that other customers have bought when making the same purchase. Sometimes you just need to let a customer know that you have a related product that they will also want. For example, do not let someone buy a TV without suggesting an HDMI cable.
5-Star Product Reviews
Include snippets from positive reviews among the content on a sales page. You can rave about your own product up and down, but when someone who has actually purchased and used it says they don’t how they ever lived without it, you are far more likely to make a sale. Remember not to squelch negative reviews. Just do not put them front and center.
Creating a Sense of Urgency
One of the biggest issues that eStores face is that consumers do not feel the same stigma when leaving items in a cart and “walking out” as they would about doing so in a brick-and-mortar store. How can you fight against this trend? Create a reason for the consumer to make the purchase right now. Make sure that a customer knows that a sale is “one day only” or that you have “limited quantities available” of a certain product or size. H&M sets a great example in their on the ground stores. On your way out, you will notice that on the wall it says, “Grab it now. Tomorrow, it might be gone forever!” Give your consumers that same feeling about leaving your eCommerce site without making a purchase.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on June 18, 2015 at 4:30 pm, and is filed under Digital Advertising, Online Advertising, Online Sales. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
Are Slow Loading Speeds Tanking Your Website?
Jun 11
Every digital marketing guru knows it would be great if the success of your website depended solely on providing high quality and engaging content for your users. Unfortunately, that is not the only factor that you have to consider. In our world of broadband speeds and the desire for instant gratification, people do not want to wait three seconds for your page to load. The fact is that even the best of sites can fail if load times are not as fast as the average consumer expects.
Speed is a tricky thing when it comes to websites. The end result is a combination of factors including the way the site is coded, as well as how the host server functions. It means paying extra attention to choosing the right host for your site, as well as a good site architect.
Obviously, the user’s Internet connection will play a role in how fast the site loads. However, a slow connection for the user will result in every page loading slower, and so he or she is more likely to be understanding of wait times. Browsers can also affect website speed, so you have to optimize your site for use on all of the major web browsers available to users.
We are not saying that marketing is unimportant. Once the website loads, your content needs to seal the deal. The point of this article is just to highlight the fact that great marketing only works if users are patient enough to let the site load. Help them along by ensuring that it loads as fast as possible.
To that end, consider the file size on graphics that you use on your website. Use online tests to see how your site compares with your competitors when it comes to load times. Optimize your servers to be as fast as possible. When someone returns to your site, he or she rightfully expects it to load even more quickly than the first time. Browser caching will help you to meet those expectations. Finally, try not to use a lot of redirection, since a redirect always results in a few extra seconds of wait time.
Increasing the speed of your site is a fast and simple way to make sure fewer people are closing the browser window without even seeing your amazing content. Everybody at a digital ad agency knows how critical this is.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on June 11, 2015 at 10:00 am, and is filed under Digital Advertising, Online Advertising. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
When Is It Time to Audit Your SEO Practices?
Jun 4
In the digital world, online presence indicates how successful a brand is. While some may still find SEO to be a complicated business arena since the field does change rather quickly thanks to Google’s continually updating algorithms, we all recognize how important our strategies are in this regard. With that in mind, here are a few reasons to look at your SEO practices with a critical eye.
If you’re site isn’t ranking number one for the searches you want, then you are losing a lot of business. Some studies report that up to 50% of Google users click on the top ranked result. Such a click results in a vast difference between being number one and number two.
Conversion rate also ties back into SEO practices. The fact is that if you are targeting the right keywords, you should be reaching an audience that is interested in your product. If you are getting a lot of web traffic from searches, but the sales are not occurring, you may just be bringing in the wrong people. Of course, the problem could be on the website’s end as well. Make sure the site is optimized to seal the deal once the content brings in a consumer.
Do you find that many people get to your site through searches but then leave without checking out any other pages besides the one that drew them in? This is called bounce rate, and usually it means that you did an excellent job getting the person to your site, and then didn’t give them any meaningful content to keep them there. SEO practices are not just about keyword stuffing. Your content has to be optimized to be interesting for humans and not just Google.
If your PPC campaigns are just a money drain, this is another good reason to audit your SEO. It could, once again, be a problem with keyword selection. You are obviously getting people to click on your ads, but you need to target people who will complete the sale.
Since SEO is constantly changing, your SEO services need to stay on top of things rather than waiting for something to go wrong before addressing it. Regular SEO checkups will ensure that your digital ad dollars are well spent.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on June 4, 2015 at 2:52 pm, and is filed under SEO. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
Reputation of the Brand
Jan 15
Reputation of the Brand: Managing Your Business’s Standing
One thing that every company needs to know about in our modern world is how to manage the reputation of the brand. Perception of a brand is a huge factor when it comes to sales, and that means you can’t run a business without knowing how to control that perception. Here are a few simple means for keeping your company in the good graces of the public eye, now ubiquitous thanks to the Internet.
Let’s start by talking about social media, since this is where a lot of brands get into trouble online. For example, how will you respond to negative remarks posted on your social media site? It’s going to happen. Deleting them is not the answer. Patience, and a well thought out business demeanor, is what will bend public opinion in your favor. This works even if the negative remarks are somewhat true. People love to see brands be down to earth instead of mighty corporate giants.
One of the biggest issues that brands face occurs when negative postings appear above favorable ones in web searches about the brand. After all, about half of searchers click on the first link. So, what can you do if those first few links are less than flattering to your company? The best thing to do is to respond to them. When people see your positive response, you have effectively diffused a negative comment.
Make sure that your company maintains a blog and does it well. This isn’t another sales tool, at least not directly. It’s a way to provide additional engagement. Offer content that keeps people coming back post after post. You can often rate the quality of your content by whether or not it creates a dialogue with your readers. These are the kinds of interactions that improve brand perception and cause people to recommend a brand to family and friends.
Don’t expect to change company perception overnight, but it only takes a little bit of continuous effort to produce positive long term results. The reputation of the brand takes time to build, but it is worth it.
| No comments | This entry was posted by EIC Social Media Team on January 15, 2015 at 4:30 pm, and is filed under Branding. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
