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The Best in Mobile Marketing APPS

Mobile apps seem to always get into our marketing conversations these days. A recent report by the analytics firm, App Annie shows the total IOS and Google Play app downloads topped more than 260 billion in the year 2014. So what’s in these apps for us? The marketer’s role has evolved dramatically over the years and is still changing. You need to be constantly forming new strategies and campaigns that will attract your audience. The problem is that you have too much competition.

 

It is important that you make sure it’s your voice being heard, every time, no matter where you are. This is where mobile apps can give you a much-needed advantage and make your life much easier.

 

Whether you’re an Apple, Windows, or an Android fan, apps can assist you in every step of your marketing activity. With a few touches, you can have all the information you need — what’s trending, how people are responding to your messages, what are the latest best practices. The right apps are truly the marketer’s best friend.

 

But which apps to choose? Here’s a list of the top three apps for each of the four key marketing areas.

 

Content distribution

Making sure your content appears at the right place, at the right time can be a tedious process. These apps will simplify this part of your job.

1. Buffer

An app that helps you share content to social media channels by letting you schedule posts to be published at ideal times. You can even let Buffer decide what time is best.

2. PixxFly

This outbound marketing app automates the distribution and syndication of all your content to various channels across the web with one simple click. PixxFly also provides analytics for each post.

3. Pagemodo

Used primarily to set up Facebook business or organization pages, Pagemodo helps you create engaging visual elements and customized features that encourage fan interaction without professional help. It allows you to schedule posts and finds the most relevant content for your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages.

 

Social-media management

Managing social media can be a tall order. Most marketers either spend too much time on social or fail to give it the attention it deserves. To strike the right balance, you need the right tools.

4. Hootsuite

Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple social media accounts, analyze traffic, track brand mentions, schedule posts, messages and tweets–  all from one interface.

5. Sprout Social

Sprout Social allows you to schedule, publish and analyze posts across all your social platforms from a single window.

6. Tint

Though not strictly a social media management tool, Tint is an exciting app that can create social hubs to engage audiences. You can pull content from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest onto your dashboard then embed them as custom feeds into websites like WordPress, Wix, or Tumblr, or on mobile apps, social pages, digital displays and video walls.

 

Social listening

When it comes to marketing in today’s social-media environment, it’s important to listen to what people are saying. This helps you measure your reach and keeps you informed on what’s trending. Social listening also helps you know when you need to act promptly. For example, if not acted upon immediately, a negative comment by an unsatisfied customer can spread like wildfire and damage your brand’s reputation. Here are the three top social listening apps to keep you well informed.

7. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo helps you take a deeper look at what’s popular or trending on social media and who’s sharing.

8. Mention

Mention helps you easily keep track in real time of what’s being said about your brand so you can react quickly. It will send you alerts showing your mentions each day.

9. Cyfe

Social listening can get overwhelming with so many different areas to track. Cyfe makes it easier by allowing you to customize your dashboard to monitor your data all from one place.

 

Employee advocacy

One of the most powerful marketing strategies is creating brand advocates inside your own company. These apps are designed to help employees share content across their own social-media profiles. We are seeing new players in this space such as social-media giant LinkedIn. There are also up and comers like TrapIt. However, based on experience and time in the market, here are three that you should be using right now.

10. Dynamic Signal

Dynamic Signal is a tool that lets you distribute either your own content or some you’ve curated from the web to employees who can then re-share it on their personal social-media profiles.

11. SoAmpli

SoAmpli encourages employees and co-workers to be brand advocates though social sharing.

12. EveryoneSocial

With its clean and simple interface, EverySocial is designed to amplify your brand presence by building a team of employee advocates to share your content on their social media accounts.

 

The following are  apps introduced in 2016 solve a variety of challenges, from data management, to message testing, to marketing automation.

 

Marketing Attribution by Bizible

B2B marketing attribution helps you make the best marketing decisions, and this app integrates with your online marketing channels from AdWords to Salesforce. Now you can optimize your campaigns and revenue with a quick app install.

 

Calendar for Campaigns by Bracket Labs

This interactive marketing calendar has inline editing, enhanced color-coding, filterable, drag-and-drop functionality to make working with campaigns easy and intuitive.

 

Lead Enrichment by Clearbit

Ensure fresh, accurate information to quickly target the leads that will convert into the highest value deals. This app searches dozens of sources in real-time to push fresh data into Salesforce automatically. Then you can prioritize top leads and guide sales to more wins.

 

Next-Generation Data Management by Krux

Zero in and connect with your customers more efficiently, no matter the channel or device. Interconnect your own data, enabling you to activate and control your marketing activities across any consumer touch point.

 

Real Time Email Response by Liveclicker

Bring email relevance to a higher order by enabling marketers to respond to each recipient’s needs and interests, in real time. Bring messages to life, amp recipient engagement, and increase clicks and conversions with a real-time email system.

 

Mobile Marketing by Localytics

25% of apps used used once are then uninstalled (source). Engagement is the key to bringing that percentage down. This app brings together user insights, smart targeting, and marketing automation to power personalized mobile engagement, such as push engagement, increased app usage, acquisition targeting, and more.

 

Message Testing by Persado

Use this app to experiment with message variations in order to determine the most impactful message. This will help drive the highest rates of engagement for your campaign. You can also randomly split your audience to test message variation performance.

 

Tactile Marketing Automation by PFL

This app works within your campaigns, and automates direct mail in conjunction with your digital efforts. Create personalized and triggered multi-channel campaigns that increase operational efficiency and drive results.

 

PopUp Alerts by Riptide

Make sure your team members are alerted to important information with popup alerts. This app gives you the ability to easily display that crucial popup alert message in Salesforce.

 

Data Quality Dashboards by Salesforce Labs

Leverage custom formula fields on many of the standard objects to record data quality and record completeness, the formulas are then depicted through dashboards to identify deficiencies in record data.

 

Mobile Engagement by Swrve

Design, deliver and measure mobile campaigns of all types, including push notification campaigns, in-app messages and conversation. Collectively, these campaign types help build brand-consumer relationships on mobile, and drive engagement, retention and revenue.

 

Apps can help marketers be more efficient, higher-performing, and goal-achieving.  Whatever may be lacking in your marketing strategy, you will certainly find an app to help fill that gap.

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Spring Cleaning Your Online Marketing

We are now in the month of April which means spring flowers, spring clothes and spring cleaning.  Not only does spring cleaning apply to your closets, but it also applies toward your business.  You will always want to clean up, clean out and refresh.  How often do you look at your website, google yourself and really look at your marketing strategy?  Has your once well-organized marketing strategy, come to resemble the jumble of stuff in your closet (not to mention the garage and the attic)? If you are like most people, each time you come across a new marketing strategy you try to adopt it and add it to your existing approach.

Strategies and tactics tend to accumulate and linger even when they may not be working as well as you’d like. Like the ill-fitting clothes that accumulate in your closet or the broken tools still in the garage, they are hard to get rid of, whether because of habit, emotional attachment or just plain not getting around to cleaning them out.

To improve your marketing, you’ll need to clean out some old ways of working. While I don’t want to get anywhere near your closet, and in fact I could use some help with mine, I can show you how to clean up your marketing so you’re ready to take advantage of the New Year to grow your business.

You may not want to review your marketing five times a week, but it is a good idea to do it at least once a year. So take out your pencil or fire up your computer and access your marketing:

Your Marketing Strategy

  1. Is your plan working to generate leads and increase sales?
  2. Do you have a well-defined marketing strategy that helps you achieve the three phases of marketing; Getting Attention, Positioning, and Selling?
  3. Do you need to write or rewrite your business plan?
  4. Do you need additional information or coaching to complete your small business marketing plans?
  5. What are you going to do to improve your marketing?

Getting Attention

  1. Does your marketing message prompt prospects to contact you?
  2. Do your ads, letters, and web site motivate prospects to contact you?
  3. What are your conversion rates?
  4. What steps can you take to improve them?

Once you have considered each of these questions, consider revisiting your website.  Are there older photos, reviews, or coupons lingering on your site?  Freshen it up with new content.  The hardest part about cleaning out your closet, attic garage or your marketing is getting started.  It may be time to straighten up or throw out some of your old marketing strategies and tactics and replace them with new and improved ones.  New leads will spring up and your sales will blossom.

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The Importance of Data

The Importance of Data: Before,
During and After an Ad Campaign

With so many advertising choices available to small-business owners, it’s important to test and track a variety of options to see which work best for you. Using a mix of print, radio, TV, website, billboard, direct mail and other media options can be too expensive for local companies, and relying on one or two methods for more than a year can lead to diminishing returns. Tracking your response through your staff, coupons and sales data will help you make more effective advertising choices.

Follow these five easy steps:

Step 1

Compare your sales before, during and after the campaign begins if your advertising campaign has a specific start date. Take into consideration that your sales won’t spike the day the campaign begins or drop the day it ends when you analyze sales reports. Test an ad campaign in a particular location to see if your sales rise in that area during the campaign, letting you know if it will likely work if you roll it out regionally or nationally.

Step 2

Use unique contact methods. Track the response to one ad or an entire campaign using a special toll-free number, website address or coupon code you use only with that ad or campaign. This is one of the easiest methods for tracking results directly to an advertisement, promotion, direct mailing or other marketing effort.

Step 3

Make personal queries of customers to determine if a particular advertising method is working. Ask your customers how they heard of you and make it a requirement that your sales staff gather this information from customers. Have them submit a weekly report to the marketing manager. Include this question on any website forms you have that customers and potential customers submit. Compare the traffic to your website and in your store before, during and after the ad campaign to determine if you see a rise in customer activity during the campaign. These visits, especially to your website, might not result in immediate purchases but can increase brand awareness and lead to future sales.

Step 4

Use coupons, discounts and rebates to track how a specific promotion performed. Include a coupon in a print publication, ask broadcast viewer or listeners to mention a particular promotion for a percentage discount or offer a rebate on a purchase when the consumer redeems a form. Don’t assume these methods represent your total response to the campaign. Many consumers might respond to your advertising but forget to use the coupon, think the amount of the coupon is not worth the trouble to clip and save it or not remember where they saw your ad.

Step 5

Use website traffic statistic tools, which come free or at a low cost with many websites or hosting packages. Track how much traffic you generate during specific times, which sites referred users, which pages were most viewed, how many unique visitors you had and how many pages they viewed while at your site. Free social media programs such as Facebook business pages also provide helpful visitor and traffic stats.

Tip

  • Don’t assume that just because your sales rose in response to an advertising campaign it means the campaign was profitable. Calculate the net profits you made from the campaign if you’re able to track the sales you generated from an advertising effort. Subtract that from the cost it took to run the campaign, which includes media buys, ad creation, discounts and staff time. Determine if increase in sales justified the expenditure, and what else you might have done with your money and staff time instead of using that advertising method.

References

 

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Wasting Money On Website Design

Why You Are Wasting Thousands of Dollars on New Website Designs!

conversion-graphic

Here is the way a lot of business people think.  My website isn’t producing properly.  We need a new design to spruce it up and bring it up to date.  Fine.  You spend thousands of dollars to get put on a designers profile and see a site you are proud of.  Except several months later, you realize the site isn’t producing.  Hmm, we must need another new design.

The problem isn’t the design, the problem is the site is functionally useless.  You might as well buy a car without an engine. 

When I ask a lot of prospective clients about working on Conversion Optimization, they say, “We are having our site redesigned right now and we will start working on conversion optimization once the site is finished.”

They think that conversion optimization is an add-on.  Conversion is a website’s goal.  A conversion is defined as a lead, a purchase, a registration, a request for a newsletter, a request for free report, etc.

Conversions are the Reason you have a website!  Stop wasting money on redesign and get your website producing the way it should!

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Inspirational Quotes

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill

Source: Top 100 Inspirational Quotes

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Adwords Campaign

I wanted to give everyone out there some important information on how to conduct an adwords campaign.  There are many companies that will set you up, but a lot of them don’t share the important information you need in order to make good marketing decisions. 

Check out this video for more!

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CRO Conversion Rate Optimization

I have been wondering what I can say or do that would motivate business owners or marketers to really look at what conversion rate optimization (CRO) can do for their companies.

Am I the only person that looks at businesses through math eyes?  I thought every business should do this.  How can you not?  Your payroll is certainly math.  Your income is math.  Your balance sheet and taxes are math. 

Hmm, let’s revisit one of these.  YOUR INCOME IS MATH!!!  Let me think about this, if I make $5,000 per month of profit from my website and my conversion rate is 1%, when my conversion rate increases to 3%, then I make $15,000 per month profit. 

If I have to pay $1,000 per month in order to achieve this, I will be $9,000 per month ahead.  Who in their right mind would not want to do this?

I was just reading a blog that shows the top 35% of companies in CRO are testing constantly while the bottom 35% are doing very little testing.  The top 35% have 3 to 4 times better conversion rates.

Let’s do some more math.  $10,000 per month of revenue times 3.5 = $35,000 per month.  I guess that sounds like too much work.  Maybe it looks better like this:  1,500,000 X 4 = $6,000,000.  $4,500,000 is nothing to sneeze at.

Any company can achieve higher conversion rates with a little work.  Higher conversion rates = more money PERIOD!  As long as you don’t have to do any work and you make more profit than you are paying for conversion optimization, you are basically making free money. 

It’s certainly money that you wouldn’t have had if you kept going the way you were.  And the nice thing is that it’s all verifiable.  No guessing.  It’s all in black and white.

I find it funny when I call on a new prospect that they are “not interested” in that.  Really?  Not interested in making more money or increasing revenue?  Why are you in business?

So, I am asking for your help.  What should I say or do that could get the point across?  Please reply below.

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What Super Cool Sites is NOT!

What Super Cool Sites is NOT!

Premium Website Service

We are not like the phone calls you get that promise to get you to the top of Google.  We are not like the emails you get that promise 1000’s of people to your website.  We are not like Web.com or Wix.com that offer you a “Free” website.  We are not like local advertising companies that overcharge you for running web ads.

What’s wrong with being “those” companies?  They don’t base anything on the actual money you will make.  What good is it to drive a 1000 people to your website if none of them do anything?  If they charge you $1,000 per month or more to get people to your site that don’t buy, you’re just throwing your money away.

Why not know what percentage of people will buy and how much profit that means before you start throwing money into ads?  When I look at the pages that some of the companies that market local advertising puts up and the amount of money they charge, I can’t believe it.  I think (maybe) that their intentions are good, but wow, they are certainly misguided. 

We are a small company that can give you personal attention.  All though we have processes, nothing is cookie cutter.  Each company has different needs.  Some need more traffic, some need higher conversions, some need a better design, and some need social strategies and more.

We can write the content and use the graphics that will get results. Guaranteed!  Check us out!

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Inbound Marketing

Use the Power of Inbound Marketing To Unleash A Whole New Animal 

As more and more small businesses struggle to gain a competitive edge, it is becoming important to find a unique set of tools that can maximize the potential profit from every advertising dollar you spend. Forget about the old days of having to do direct mailing, expensive radio and television advertising and full-page newspaper ads. These have grown out of fashion. The Internet and its recent revelation of social media have unleashed a whole new animal that has affected small and large businesses alike – it’s called inbound marketing! 

When you consider that most direct mail isn’t even opened and the fact that most people skip TV ads to grab their favorite snack, you’ll begin to understand the power of inbound marketing as the marketing strategy for the 21st century. 

Idea

What Is Inbound Marketing? 

Why “inbound” you may be asking? 

The “inbound” has to do with reeling in customers to your company in comparison to going out and fighting for them. In this way, potential customers are already warmed up to the idea of buying your products and services. No need for hard selling! No need for begging! In other words, they want to hear more about what you have to offer. 

That sounds wonderful but how can all this actually be done? 

Inbound marketers take advantage of the latest technology of web 2.0 in order to thoroughly engage their audiences on the unique vision that their company offers. This is done with the use of blogs that publish high, quality content about their business or in the form of electronic white paper or webinars that can disseminate a large amount of info in a very short time. 

Furthermore, the use of social media in inbound marketing is used to create “buzz” and get people actively engaged, with the hope that they’ll share critical information about your company left and right in a way that it goes viral. Best of all, social media is free and there are now many tools that can allow you to manage all accounts from one location. 

Finally, SEO can be used to develop higher rankings for your company’s position in the search engines. This can be as simply as optimizing the tags of photos shared on social media platforms to complex strategies that involve PR outreach and relevant keyword research for your target market. 

With so many companies taking advantage of inbound marketing’s recent success, what are you waiting for? There is a wealth of opportunity available out there waiting to be tapped into and designed to maximize your profits, while leveling out the playing field for many small businesses.

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How To Use Basic Google Analytics

How To Use Basic Google Analytics

By Randy Kauffman, Super Cool Sites, Inc.

 This is an article that will help business owners look at Google Analytics to determine how well their website is accomplishing the desired results.

 In this article you will discover how to analyze the most basic but important information about your website visitors and how it affects your business.

You will learn which information you should look at, and how the results can determine your new website strategy.

1. Open Google Analytics. If you have Google Analytics on your website, just go to www.google.com/analytics. Make sure you are signed into your Google account. In the header you will see a button to “Access Google Analytics”. Press that.

Access Google

You should see your company or website name as a link. Click the link.  There will be a menu on the left for viewing several different statistics about your website visitors.

The time period covered is usually the last 30 or 31 days. If you would like to change the time period just click on the dates in the upper right hand header and you can adjust them however you like.

Audience


2. Check Audience Overview. This is the first area you should see. If not, click on the “Audience Button” to expand the view.

This area gives you the basic information about how your website is doing.

Sessions – This tells you how many times your website was visited in the time period selected.

Users – This gives you the number of Unique Visitors that went to your website.  I like to divide the number of unique visitors by the number of days in the selected period to determine how many visitors per day you are getting.  This information is valuable once the value per visitor is determined.  For instructions on determining the value of one website visitor – click here.

Bounce Rate – This is a very important percentage.   A bounce is someone who comes to your site and leaves without going to any other page or interacting with your site in any way.  A high bounce rate (50% or more) means that your Home Page needs to relay better information about what the visitors are looking for.

To Reduce Your Bounce Rate
– Make Sure Your Home Page Answers These 3 Questions:

  • What is it?
  • What or Who is it about?
  • What do I get?

If these question cannot be answered immediately, you will lose a high percentage of people.

Mobile Overview – This area is important because it tells you how many people are looking at your website from a mobile device.  Make sure your website is mobile friendly to keep these visitors from bouncing, thereby helping your website convert at a higher percentage.

Mobile
Acquisition


3.  Check Acquisition Overview
This area will tell you where your visitors are coming from.

The most common areas visitors come from are:

  • Organic Search
  • Direct
  • Paid Search
  • Referral

Organic Search – These are people who find you using keywords or phrases from the search engines.  The more of these the better – it’s like free advertising.

Direct – These people went directly to your site, usually by putting your URL directly into the browser.  That means they already knew where you were.  A lot of these are returning visitors.

Paid Search – These are people that are finding your site via paid online ads like Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.  Before running any ads, you should know how much each visitor is worth to your company.

Referral – These visitors are coming from other websites that have a link to yours.  This is another great source of free visits. 

By studying the ways your website gets visitors, you can determine ways to increase traffic to your website.

Behavior

4. Check the Behavior Section – This section will tell you what visitors are doing when then are on your website and what areas they are going to the most. Under the Site Content tab, click on All Pages

Page

This will list the pages in order of popularity. Usually the Home Page is first and is designated by a backslash “/”.  The following pages are usually listed with a backslash then the name of the page, e.g.  “/contact”.  If you don’t recognize the page you will see a little double box with an arrow next to the page name. 

If you click on the double box, it will show you what the page looks like.

There is another section in behavior that I use a lot. It is a little advanced.  It’s called “In-Page Analytics”.  Here you can check where visitors click once they are on your page.   Very useful information to see what your visitors are interested in.

Conversions


5. Check the Conversions. This section might not have anything in it, but it is the most important section of all.

If you click on Conversions/Goals/Overview, you will see if any conversion goals have been set up. Here are a few common conversion goals:

  • Phone Call
  • Contact Form Use
  • Buying a product online
  • Signing up for a newsletter
  • Becoming a member of your site

If you do not have any conversion goals setup, you will see something like this:

No Conversion Goals

To learn how to set up goals, hit the “learn more” link.

If you have goals set up, you will see something like this:

Conversion Goals

The Goal Conversion Rate in this example is 10.07%. This is the number you will want to watch and how changes in the website affect the conversion number.

For example if you changed the wording on a quote form from “Get Quote” to “Request Pricing” studies have shown that the “Request Pricing” does 20% to 50% better in getting click thru’s.

Each goal should have a value assigned to it. If you don’t know the goal value, make a good guess, then adjust the value by keeping track of conversions and what you get from each kind.

In Conclusion – Your website can be a viable part of your organization and should help contribute to the bottom line.  By utilizing Google Analytics, you can make sure you are maximizing the possibilities.

If you have any questions, you can contact me at randy@supercoolsites.com.

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