Author: David Kauffman

Categories
Weekly Tips

How to Turn Customers into Leads

How to Turn Customers into Leads?

Collect Leads from Contact Forms

On the contact form ask prospects to provide only information that will enable you to quickly follow up.

Small contact forms with only 3 fields convert at a rate of 25% (Quick Sprout)

Follow Up Quickly.

Organize your leads so you can follow up quickly.  The quicker you follow up the better your chances of  reaching that person.

Follow up within an hour with great cusomer service.  This will help you keep prospects coming back.

Send Valuable Information

For prospects who have not completed a purchase, send them company news, a promotion, or information on a new product or service.  This will increase the chance they come back to you when they are ready to buy.

Be attentive to these leads.  It may result in 45% more in ROI. (Marketing Sherpa)

Do follow up!

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
SEO

Online Vs Offline Marketing

 Both types of marketing, online and offline, can contribute to your website’s success.  Most people concentrate on online marketing because they feel nowadays everyone is online.  As of 2012, 78% of people used the internet.  That leaves 22% who will never see your online marketing.  Here are a few ways to incorporate Offline Marketing into your plan that may help you reach those people who do not spend time online.

Trade shows- will give you the opportunity to meet people face to face and start a relationship.

Sponsor Local Events –this will give you community exposure.

Donate a prize for a raffle or contest, either a product or service, and get your business name out there.

Business Cards- Make them unique, modern and with bright colors so they stand out and look good enough to save.

Network and find a business that offers complementary services or products and work together to attract business.

If you have the budget, try a radio or TV advertisement.

Put something into the hands of prospects that is relevant to your business.  Don’t go with the normal pens, magnets, etc.  Spend some time and thought and come up with something that clearly connects to your business.

Send out notices about special promotions or new products.

Use your car/cars as a mobile billboard to advertise your business.

Join Angie’s List and put a coupon in their booklet.

Ask existing customers for testimonials that can be used in marketing materials such as brochures or freebie giveaways like tote bags.

Using a combination of online and offline marketing ensures you are reaching out to all potential prospects, those who are able to use the internet and those who are not.

 

 

 

 

 

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
Weekly Tips

Tips for Setting Business Goals

If you are running a business, learning how to set business goals is important to your success.

Use the SMART process for creating goals.

Specify, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time

1. Set clear definable goals that are achievable and stick with them.

2. Write them down.

3. Don’t Procrastinate.  Identify a specific goal, and with short term plans that are steps towards the larger goal, set a deadline to accomplish the goal.

4. Monitor and track your progress.

5. Use programs like Microsoft Excel to set up spreadsheets and keep track.

6. Reward those who have worked to achieve the goal.  It could be a financial incentive, a day off or at least a sincere thank you.

Having goals and tracking your progress will give you a better chance of success.

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
SEO Weekly Tips

Start A Contest

If you use social media and want to build a following, try this idea.

Start a Contest

Here are a few  tips to get started.

Decide what type of prize you can afford that is enticing enough to keep the buzz going.

Get people’s attention on social media by asking them to submit a great picture or caption that relates to your product or service.  Make it clear that entries must relate to your brand.  As people join in this will create excitement and help build followers as the content is shared.

Decide and make it clear where and how you will accept submissions.

Keep people informed as to when and how winners will be announced.

Announce the winner on your website and that will drive traffic.

For more details on how to set this up this article will help.

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
Customers

The World is Addicted to Smartphones

The World is Addicted to Smartphones

There is an addiction to Smartphones.

This is fact according to an IDC study which surveyed over 7000 users between 18 and 44.

Retailers need to start working on their mobile marketing strategy.

Here are some stats I found in research:

72% of smartphone owners used their devices while shopping

27% of cell owners used their phone while inside a store to look up the price of a product

28 % of cell owners used their phone while inside a store to look up reviews of a product

69% grab their phones as soon as they wake up

79% look at their phones within 15 min of waking up

Users visit FB 13.8 times throughout the day

78% of smartphone users check their email on their devices

48% use their smartphones at the gym

Guess we can call this an addiction..do you agree?

How can you thrive with this trend?

Keeping up with the latest information about optimizing mobile search and voice search is going to be a key to success in online business in the future.

Evaluating your Google Analytics to see what percentage of your traffic comes from mobile devices vs desktops. We have a few businesses that still get most of their traffic via desktop uses, and they are happy to clearly see this is true for them in the data that is collected from Google.

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
SEO

How to Get People to Read Your Content

How to Get People to Read Your Content?

Here are some interesting statistics.

79% of web visitors scan rather than read.

Internet users spend 80% of their time looking at information on a page visible without scrolling or  what’s called “above the fold”.  They are looking for the most important and relevant information first.

Users do scroll, but they only give 20% of their attention to information below the fold.

So how do you get people to read more of your content?

1. Write less and set up your text so it’s easy to “scan”.  This may help hold their attention.

2. Get to the point right away.  Put important content first.  Users are much more likely to scroll past the fold if the first content they see captures their attention and offers a solution to their needs.

3. Use bolded headings and subheadings that make sense and include keywords of the content.

4. Use bulleted lists when you can to break up content.  Bullets are also easy to scan.

5. Image captions are read consistently so make them intriguing.

6. Use numerals on the web instead of spelling out numbers. This takes up less space and grabs the readers attention.

If you can get readers attention when skimming, by doing some of these things, they may slow down and read more carefully and take in more of your content.

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
SEO Weekly Tips

How Is Your Website Converting?

The biggest goal of any website is to get customers to take action.  Conversion Optimization is getting a higher number of visitors to take action and become a lead or a customer.

Here are some Tips to help get conversion rates up

1. Do website optimization first to get your bounce rate down. This will definitely help you get conversions. After all, if visitors don’t stay you have no chance at a conversion.

2. People buy on emotion, passion, and desire. Get them excited.

3. Sell benefits of products and services not the features.

4. Use testimonials as a way to build trust.

5. Do split testing with 2 different pages to see which performs better.

6.  Make it easy for visitors to take action with easy to locate call to action buttons.

7. Try different registration forms and ask only for data you need. Asking too much information will make them suspicious.

8. Cut down on text on your website.  Try great headlines and bulleted lists if you want them to read text.

Check out our Conversion Optimization page and SEO Calculator.

 

 

 

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
SEO Weekly Tips

Consider Writing a Press Release

Press releases have changed over the years.

Your company may be launching a new product or service, having a grand opening for a new location or sponsoring a charity event which involves a well known personality.  You may even have won an award in your industry.  Try a press release if you have a newsworthy, even weird human interest story that may catch on.

Here are a few reasons a press release may be a good way to promote your business.

1.  It is easy to publish and distribute them with a press release distribution service and you can send them out whenever you have something newsworthy.

2.  Press releases now let you use video and images to convey your message which makes them more interesting.

3.  With the Internet, smart phones, tablets and iPods people can read them anywhere.

4.  With social media today there is a chance it can go viral.

5.  If you use keywords specific to your business it can improve SEO.

If you are going to try and write one for the first time here is link to help you get started http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Press-Release

Call us if you have any questions.

 

 

 

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
SEO

What Do I Do When My Business is Slow?

What Do I Do When My Business is Slow?

Memorial day is the official start of summer.  For some businesses summer can be a slow time. What tasks should you work on during a slow season?  Here are some responses from people on yec.com

1.  Touch base with past and present clients and thank them for their business.

2.  Reorganize and refresh.  Update website, redesign marketing materials, or research a new marketing strategy.

3.  Write blog content.  Stockpile some blog content and save it for the start of the busy season when web traffic is up again.

4.  Survey customers and find out what they think of your brand and what they want.

5.  Figure out which social media might be best for you or learn how to use a new one.

6.  Reflect on your mission and purpose.  What changes could you make to be more on track with your mission and purpose?

7.  Read and learn about what’s new with technology, and social media.

8.  Revisit old ideas that you may have put aside.

There are numerous things you can be doing during slow periods.  Take advantage of the time and get geared up for busier seasons.

When someone asks you, “What Do I Do When My Business is Slow?” You’ll have a nice list of ideas to share and mastermind what to do next.

Sign Up

* indicates required
Categories
SEO Uncategorized Weekly Tips

It’s Time to Consider Mobile Marketing

If you haven’t thought about mobile websites and mobile marketing, now is the time. 

Mobile internet usage is only going to increase and is expected to overtake desktop internet usage in the next year or two.  Here are are some mobile stats I found online.

One half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices.

Global mobile traffic now represents roughly 13% of Internet traffic.

There is a huge growth rate in mobile traffic across the world especially in Asia which had an increase of 192% between 2010 and 2012.

 29% of mobile users are open to scanning a mobile tag to get coupons.

1 in 5 smartphone users scan product barcodes, and nearly 1 in 8 compare prices on their phone while in a store

From April to September in 2011, mobile email opens increased 34%, while webmail and PC opens decreased by 11% and 9.5%, respectively.

Will these stats encourage you to invest in mobile marketing?  They should.

Sign Up

* indicates required