10 Deadly Landing Page Mistakes that are Costing You Conversions Posted on February 2, 2016June 28, 2016 by Nicci Troiani Getting visitors to your website is a chore, no doubt. But your hard work to build a social media following, rank for your top keywords, and develop a paid advertising strategy can be quickly squandered if your website isn’t doing it’s job to convert. So, how do you make sure that your landing pages are more than just a spot where potential customers and clients land when they click the link? Avoid these 10 deadly landing page mistakes that can kill your conversion rates: The Mistake: Sending All Traffic to Your Home Page If you’re sending all of your online traffic to your homepage, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to connect with more customers. Home page visitors arrive from all sorts of sources. They could be coming from an email, social media, google search, or even just by typing your web address in their browser. Home page visitors are also at various stages of the sales process. They could be a customer, a prospect doing research, or an opportunity who is ready to talk to your sales team. Because of these variables, home page messaging is a bit more general. Here’s an example of Life Time Fitness’s home page. It includes everything a visitor might be looking for, from programs & events, to finding a club, to shopping in their store. Life Time Fitness also has an Adwords campaign for the keyword “yoga classes.” They know that visitors from their “yoga classes” Adwords campaign are interested in yoga and want to sign up for a class. Life Time Fitness doesn’t waste time talking about their cardio equipment or juice bar on their Adwords landing page. Instead, they focus on getting visitors to sign up for a free intro yoga class: When running a marketing campaign, you know a lot more about where visitors are coming from and where they might be in the sales process. Instead of sending all traffic to your home page, create individual landing pages for each marketing campaign. With a dedicated landing page for each marketing channel or campaign, you can have a more relevant conversation, smoothing the path to conversion. The Mistake: Inability to Track Lead Source Did the ad you ran in your local paper generate any leads? Did you bring in any customers from your Facebook ad campaign? Without lead source tracking, you have no way of knowing the ROI of your marketing campaigns. Creating a unique landing page for each campaign is a simple, straightforward way to track the lead source of your prospects. With lead source data, you can see which campaigns are producing the most customers and how much you spent to acquire those customers. When testing a new lead channel or marketing campaign, you’ll also know right away how they’re stacking up to past efforts. With lead source tracking, you can more intelligently allocate spend to the channels that produce the most customers at the lowest cost. The Mistake: Failing to Identify the Intent of the Page The job of a landing page is to get visitors one step closer to becoming customers – but they can’t take that step unless you’re clear about what they should do next. Your landing pages should do more than inform visitors, they should help to continue the conversation. A straight-forward call to action on each landing page will help visitors take the next step in your sales process. Examples of a call to action are: Demo our software Download the ebook Schedule a consultation Start your free trial Buy now Sign up Create a new account Access the report Listen to the podcast There are a lot of distractions online, so the more quickly you can help prospects progress in the sales conversation, the more likely they are to convert. The Mistake: Messaging That’s Misaligned Each campaign has its own messaging and context, and if you aren’t adjusting your landing page content, your visitors are more likely to bounce. For example, if you’re running a Facebook ad to your Facebook followers for a free consultation, you could adjust your copy to: “Thanks for liking us on Facebook! Fill out the form to claim your free report.” This works much better than directing people who click on your Facebook ad to your home page where they may have to hunt for what they’re looking for. Relevant messaging can reinforce the content in your banner ad, email, or print ad, letting visitors know that they’re in the right place, helping them to convert. The Mistake: Distracting Navigation Too many links in the header of your landing page can distract from the main action you want visitors to take. A landing page cluttered with links in the top header and sidebar pulls attention away from the main call to action. Try sticking with just a homepage link in the main navigation. GoToWebinar does a nice job of simplifying their Adwords landing page. They remove the top navigation in favor of a logo link to their home page and a sales number to call. This helps funnel visitors into the main call-to-action of the page – sign up for a free account. GoToWebinar’s home page design GoToWebinar’s landing page with clean top navigation The Mistake: Absence of a Form Before you can convert a website visitor into a customer, you need to be able to contact them. A form on your landing page is essential to getting the conversation started with potential customers. Here’s an example of a landing page form from Kissmetrics: Landing page form tip: Align the ask with the offer. If the intent of your landing page is to download an ebook, filling out more information than a name, company and email address may deter prospects from downloading the offer. However, if the offer is for a free sales consultation, you can ask for a bit more data – like industry or number of employees for example – to help qualify leads upfront. To know for sure what works, track your forms and test. For instance, if many people are visiting your landing page, but few are completing the form, it could be that the offer and the data you’re asking for are not aligned. The Mistake: Self-Centered Copy Take yourself out of the equation, and put the user first. “What’s in it for me?” is what every visitor is asking when they hit your landing page. For example, if you’re a manufacturing company, you might want to talk about how you’re the fastest parts producer in your industry. But before you take that approach, ask yourself, “so what?” Instead of hearing about how you provide the fastest turn-around, you can tap into your prospect’s pain-point of delayed projects. Speed is nice, but the benefit to your customer is what really matters to them – never missing a project deadline again. Another example is Square. They could have listed all of the features of their software. Instead, they make it all about the user with one main benefit – start selling today. The Mistake: Taking Too Long to Get to the Point The faster you can get to the point and convey the benefits to visitors, the more likely they are to follow through on the call to action. “The fold” is that imaginary line on a webpage where visitors need to start scrolling. Your most compelling content should be accessible above the fold. At the same time, don’t try to cram everything above the fold. Use the space above the fold to hook visitors and magnify your call to action. Use the rest of the page to provide supporting details. image from http://www.sitepoint.com/retain-users-good-design/ For example, say you own a gym and are advertising 30% off memberships to local businesses. Above the fold on your landing page might have your logo, the heading “Sign Up Today to Save 30% on Employee Memberships,” a video that calls out the main benefits of signing up with your gym, a grid that shows monthly and yearly savings, and a form to capture sign-ups. Below the fold might include more detailed content, like a list of amenities, additional pricing details, and testimonials from current customers. The Mistake: Lack of Social Proof You can have stellar web copy, clean design, and an enticing call to action, but if you can’t build trust right away, visitors aren’t going to convert. Authentic customer reviews, testimonials, and even tweets lend credibility to your brand. For instance, Freshbooks uses customer testimonials and social proof from major publications to add credibility to their landing page. The Mistake: Not Following Up Once you do the hard work of getting visitors to your landing page and convincing them to convert, you want to make sure you give them every chance of becoming a customer. Integrating your landing pages with a small business CRM can help you increase the number of leads you turn into customers. Set up a follow-up workflow for each of your new leads so you can nurture them into customers – even if they aren’t ready to buy today. Creating a landing page that converts to sales may sound complicated, but with a little guidance and a few simple tricks, conversion rates will soar. Take a good hard look at your landing pages to make sure you’re avoiding these costly mistakes – and squeezing the most ROI out of your marketing campaigns.
The 4 Essential Steps of Building a White Paper that Converts Posted on January 28, 2016May 27, 2016 by Jessica Lunk White papers help businesses to earn trust and ultimately generate more sales, especially for B2B companies. In fact, nearly three-quarters of professional service companies think that whitepapers are a great way to generate leads. White papers are also the most consumed kind of marketing—more than webcasts, blogs, podcasts, reports, or any other format of information. In addition, more than half of the professionals who read white papers pass them on to colleagues. So, for every 10 people you reach with a white paper, six of them will pass it on to others, helping you get more eyeballs on your brand. Now the question is, how do you create an effective white paper that will attract the right type of buyer and ultimately convert more customers? Here are the four essential steps to building an effective white paper: 1. Decide on Your Topic White papers are a marketing tool – not a sales tool – and are most effective when they answer a burning question for your audience. The goal is to connect to prospects very early in their buying journey. For example, if your business plans corporate events, a great white paper might be “10 Ways to Stretch Your Venue Budget that Only the Pros Know.” White paper topics are built on the needs of your ideal buyer. So, if you haven’t pin-pointed who your ideal customer is, now is a great time to take a step back and build out an ideal buyer persona to help direct your marketing strategy. 2. Create Your Content Creating content can be tough for businesses with smaller teams and budgets. At the same time, don’t feel like you have to write a novel or dissertation. Instead, use your company’s unique voice paired with your expertise to create helpful, quality content. In fact, if you can break down a complex idea in a short, simple manner, all the better for your audience. If you need help getting started, download our “White Paper Template.” Finally, if you don’t have the time or skills to write your own content, there are lots of platforms that make it simple to outsource, such as Media Shower, Foxtail Marketing, Upwork and Fivvr. 3. Convert Web Traffic into Downloads A white paper is a great way to begin a conversation with top-of-the-funnel prospects who are just beginning to explore problems and solutions. To generate these leads, use a landing page form to present a short summary of your white paper and ask for contact information. Don’t overdo it on the form fields – just a few simple contact details, including name, email and company, are enough to get the conversation started. Depending on your topic, you may even be able to tease the white paper and have people register to receive it in their email before the paper is actually released. This works well for time-sensitive subjects, for instance a quarterly or yearly reports. For example, you could collect survey data from your audience and have survey takers sign up to receive the report in advance. 4. Nurture New Prospects White paper downloads don’t turn into customers on their own. Once a contact downloads your white paper, help them along their buying journey with a lead nurturing campaign. Email them relevant resources over time, and check in with a friendly phone call just to touch base and keep your brand top of mind. As they learn more about their problem, potential solutions, and how your business can help, you can put them on more targeted campaigns that begin the sales process. If you need help building email campaigns for new prospects, our content marketing grid can help you plan what type of emails to send. A whitepaper is a solid way to market your company, find out who is interested in your products and services, and turn interested prospects into new customers for your business. Building a white paper that converts starts with a compelling topic and ends with a nurturing campaign that generates sales.
Be A Better Leader This Year Posted on January 27, 2016September 16, 2022 by Don Breckenridge Being a great leader doesn’t always come naturally. Small business owners and entrepreneurs often get started because of their passion and skills — in software development, marketing, finance or IT, for instance — but becoming a good manager or great leader requires it’s own unique skill set. Well, new year, new you, as the saying goes. Why not work toward being a better leader this year? As the owner of your business you set the tone and create the company culture, and you set an example for your up-and-coming leaders to follow. No matter how talented your team is, you are still leading it, and the better you are, the better they will be. Be open to learning the skills and strategies that enable you to inspire and motivates others. The best leaders nurture talent, encourage innovation and foster creative thinking. Here’s how to be one of them: Be transparent. Be straight with your employees and, in turn, they will be more loyal and more understanding through your business’ ups and downs. Keep them involved in as many conversations as possible about the direction of the business, growth strategies and changes in workplace policies like flexible scheduling, bonuses and vacation time. If they know where they stand within the company–and where the company stands within its market and industry–they will feel more secure and more engaged. Keeping your employees in the communication loop will help them feel unified as a team and committed to the company for the long-term. Be flexible. No one knows better than a business owner that things can change on a dime—a vendor is late with a critical component of your product, a winter storm cuts power to the manufacturing plant, your server gets hacked. You may have to brainstorm inventive work-arounds in the event of unexpected problems, but that’s the nature of a good leader—you don’t lose your cool when things start to fall apart—you get creative and you motivate others to help put the pieces back together. Don’t micromanage. You’re the owner, the CEO, the president. And in order to be effective as a leader you can’t also be overly involved with every employee’s performance. Aside from the fact that it is draining both physically and psychologically, you are also sending a message to your employees that you don’t trust them. And employees do better when they have have autonomy. Research shows that workers who believe they are free to make choices at work and be accountable for their own decisions are also happier and more productive. This is especially true, say experts, when the work is complex or requires a good deal of creativity. Use a coach. Guidance is one of the most important resources a leader can tap because as every CEO will tell you, it’s lonely at the top. Especially in a small business, when “the top” is often just you. Meeting regularly with a coach or mentor who doesn’t have an agenda and can give you objective, honest advice and feedback, is invaluable when it comes to effective leadership. Mentors and coaches aren’t the same however. If you feel you’re still learning and developing as a leader then a mentor is probably a better choice, as opposed to a coach. A mentor will help you develop your leadership skills and potential, and they are usually in it with you for the long haul. A coach, on the other hand, generally works with you for a shorter period of time and is performance driven. In this case if your goal is to manage and lead more effectively and/or strategically, a coach with help you improve your skills, acquire new ones and enhance your performance. Be a coach. Part of being a leader is developing other leaders within your organization, so that they can focus more on the day-to-day while you focus more on the long-term version. That means acting as a coach for your rising leaders. In a small business there are usually just a few senior managers, so they may not have the bandwidth to be helping younger employees cultivate leadership capabilities. Instead, meet individually and regularly with your best talent to get feedback about what they need to help them learn and grow. Give them challenging assignments that enable them to hone their skills and learn new ones. And lead by doing. If you can model the traits of a compassionate, calm and curious leader, your employees will learn to lead that way too. Reach Out to Other Leaders Hatchbuck is not the first company I’ve started, but what’s unique this time around is the camaraderie I’ve built with other entrepreneurs working on amazing and inspiring projects in the heart of midwest tech. Being part of St. Louis’ thriving tech scene and keeping our headquarters in the T-REX tech incubator in downtown St. Louis has been essential to our success. I am also a member of my local Entrepreneurs Organization chapter, which has been invaluable in connecting with other entrepreneurs. Surround yourself with great leaders to grow professionally and personally. As a business owner, you are a leader not just a boss or a manager. The way you lead draws your employees to you, builds the culture of your business, and trickles down to cultivate better sales and customer service. You cast the vision, so cast a great one.
5 Clever Ways to Reward Your Customers Posted on January 26, 2016November 3, 2022 by Erin Posey Studies repeatedly show that customers want to be rewarded for their loyalty, and those rewards just make them more loyal to the business. A study by Manta and BIA/Kelsey, “Achieving Big Customer Loyalty in a Small Business World,” found that 64% of businesses with a customer loyalty program in place report it has been been effective– it makes more money than it costs to maintain. There are other benefits too. Customers that feel appreciated are far more likely to talk positively about your company and recommend it to their friends. And rewarding your customers incentivizes them to make additional purchases. That Manta report also found that repeat customers spend 67% more on a purchase than a new customer does. More than 60% of small business owners in the study say they generate the majority of their annual revenue from repeat customers. Loyalty programs and rewards points have become the standard in many industries, like airlines, hotels and restaurants, even fitness centers. But as a small business owner, you have the flexibility (and lack of bureaucracy) to take the road less traveled and reward your best customers in clever, unusual ways. Doing things differently than big companies will both engender your customers’ loyalty and give your business more cachet. Here are five clever ways to reward your customers: Partner up. Team up with other, complimentary businesses to offer gifts or reciprocal discounts. An example might be a sports clothing and accessory shop that offers a discounted membership at the local gym when a customer spends above a certain threshold. Or it could be a coffee shop that teams up with a bakery or chocolatier to offer a discount on a purchase, which also pair nicely with a cup of coffee. The partnership will be good for both businesses, incentivizing sales and giving customers of both shops a reason to try the other’s products. Hang out with them. Whether you’re a local business or you have a national presence—virtually or in reality—try to meet with your customers every month. If you can, every time you’re traveling (or one of your managers is traveling), look up customers that live in the area and offer to buy them a coffee. Hold a preview event. Create an event around a new product, a new service offering, even just an update to your software and invite your best customers to preview it and have a first crack at ordering it. You want this event to feel special and exclusive, so make the ambiance and refreshments elegant and make sure there’s ample time and room for customers to mingle with both one another, you and your staff, and to learn about the new offering. Offer your best customers your best service. For small businesses especially, sometimes a few heavy-hitting customers make up a large portion of the business’ revenue. But even if you have several very loyal and consistent customers you want to make sure you keep, offer them preferential service terms. That doesn’t just mean a good price. You could waive minimum order quantity or certain service fees, you might give them a lower interest rate for financing a large purchase or provide an after-hours service call to them. A great deal for certain customers may mean more hand-holding to help them understand how to make full use of your products and services. And sometimes, yeah, you give them a discount on the price of a large order. Write a thank you note. Yes, a real, hand-written note on a pretty card that uses your customer’s name and references recent purchases and the name of their business. Hand-written notes are so rare now they’re special, so writing a specific, personal note to a great customer is a meaningful way to let them know how much they are appreciated. These are just a few ways to reach out to your customers to show your appreciation. What are some ways you’ve went above and beyond to wow and delight your loyal customers? Let us know over on Facebook and be sure to give us a ‘Like’ while you’re there!
Tips and Tricks for Using Emojis in Email Subject Lines Posted on January 25, 2016June 3, 2016 by Jessica Lunk “When you look back at the year in language, one of the most striking things was that, in terms of written communication, the most ascendant aspect of it wasn’t a word at all, it was emoji culture.” – Caspar Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries Emojis—the little picture expressions fastened to text messages, web pages, and now emails—are everywhere. Emojis were born and thrive in the mobile environment. As Americans spend more and more time on their mobile devices, it’s hard to ignore emojis as a new marketing technique to effectively reach your audience. Emojis are succinct and fun means of expression. Feeling silly? Send the “Dancer.” Approve of a decision? “Thumbsup” it is! Having a tough day, but want to remain optimistic? The smiling “Poop” emoji might be the ideal fit. People of all ages are warming up to emojis, and now savvy businesses are including them in their email subject lines. Before getting too “Heart Eyes” over the idea, consider these tips before using emojis in email subject lines. Subject Line Emojis Offer Benefits The average Internet user is inundated with a lot of digital information: tweets, posts, comments, emails, updates, notifications, the list continues. When advertising your brand, standing out is key. Emojis, through their color and whimsy, pop in an otherwise homogeneous landscape. Studies indicate emails with emojis in their subject lines get opened 45% more often. Brevity is a cornerstone to communication. Readers get bored easily and don’t have time to waste on deciphering the complicated text. Emojis can convey ideas quickly and save text space. By shortening subject lines with emojis, you bump the odds that your clients will see the full message on their mobile devices. In this awesome post from Buffer, they attribute the rise in emoji popularity correlates with the decline of internet slang. With the decrease in internet slang, emojis are replacing them with full force as we are now effectively replacing full sentences with emoji to convey the same meaning. So instead of trying to work popular slang into your marketing, you can get the same impact easier than ever without it looking forced. …But Not Without Some Considerations Emojis are not for every business. They convey emotion, tone, and a certain degree of informality; if informality or silly tones don’t match your business, don’t use emojis—even the more restricted ones. Consider the age demographics of your audience. Millennials are the vanguard generation of emojis. They’ll feel encouraged, not alienated, by emoji use. Older generations, however, run the opposite risk; they may not understand some of them or the social connotations attached to specific emojis. Not all email reading devices know how to render all emojis. Before sending out an important email, research which emojis will translate on which platforms and which will appear as indecipherable text or code. Here’s your emoji bibile from Unicode which will show you how each emoji appears on different platforms as well as their meanings and annotations. Additional Tips Make it easy to follow. Do a test with one emoji and then test adding more in a logical order to tell a story. You must A|B test the use of the emojis on your audience! See how they work on different emailing platforms, on desktop and mobile. Test how your clients respond to emails with emojis in subject lines and those without. Also test different emojis to see which ones will work best for your messaging. Explore emoji options! Lesser used emojis may be more relevant and engaging to your message; the solution is not always the Poop emoji.
Before You Hire an SEO Company, Try These 16 DIY Tips Posted on January 22, 2016November 18, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick So you want to drive more online visitors to your website or increase your rankings in Google’s search engine, but don’t know where to start. Should you hire an SEO company or go at it yourself? When it comes to search engine optimization it can be an overwhelming process, but it doesn’t have to be. An SEO expert or agency can help ensure that when consumers do a web search, your website is one of the first resources to appear in the search results. But prior to paying someone else to help facilitate improved web results, you may want to enlist a few DIY tips yourself to give your SEO a boost. Here are 16 do-it-yourself SEO tips that small business owners should try before hiring an SEO firm: 1. Start with Personas Driving more visitors to your site starts with knowing the persona of your ideal buyer and understanding what makes them tick. Why? Because websites are ultimately built for humans and not robots. So dig into their challenges, understand why they buy, and create a customer persona. This will help you to best align your SEO and website strategy so you can get found online by your ideal customer. 2. Plan Your Keyword Research Before you push up a bunch of content and copy on your website, make sure you plan out your keyword strategy. Keywords are the words or phrases that your target audience searches for when looking for products and services or when trying to solve a problem in search engines like Google and Bing. Search engines, like Google, will match up the most relevant content to the search of their user and provide the most accurate results from websites, blogs, and images. There are a number of tools that give you valuable insights into which keywords you should focus on such as Wordstream, Ubersuggest and Google’s Keyword Planner. If you need a little assistance with your keyword research, here is a great article from Jason Demers at AudienceBloom that breaks it down step by step. 3. Find Gold in the Long Tail For a lot of industries, ranking for the most trafficked keywords is highly effective. At the same time, trying to rank for those highly competitive terms can be a long and costly endeavor. Instead of focusing solely on the most popular keywords, spend some time building out a targeted strategy around relevant long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are longer and more specific phrases that search engine users search on when they are closer to making a purchase or finding what they are looking for. Longtail keywords are a key to a healthy, online growth strategy.In fact they make up the majority of all search engine traffic: Image source: http://www.ohow.co/ So if you own an accounting software company, instead of trying to rank for an uber-competitive keyword such as “accounting software” with about 52 million searches and national brands vying for the top spot, try a targeted and more relevant approach such as “accounting software for real estate agents.” 4. Study your Competitors Once you have your keyword strategy in place, identify the top competitors for each keyword and what they are doing right to get ranked in the good graces of the search engine gods. SpyFu is a simple cost effective tool to gain better insights into your competitors’ paid and organic search initiatives. Keep in mind that while competitive info can help shape your SEO initiatives, be careful not to rely solely on your competitors. After all, your best website conversions will come from those visitors that are best aligned with YOUR ideal buyer. 5. Blog Consistently Pages on your website don’t change every day. So with Google always looking for new content, blogging is a great way to push up fresh, relevant content for the search engines to index. Remember as you blog, write your content for your ideal buyer and the challenges they face every day. Don’t just load your blog posts with keywords. Again, you’re ultimately trying to connect with people – not search engine robots. Avoid keyword stuffing, but do select a primary keyword for your post paired with research from Google Trends to give yourself the best chance of your content being discovered. Make sure the keyword appears in the title, body copy, URL, and meta description for the best optimization of your post. Another blogging tip is to use guest blogging in your strategy. Identify influencers and leaders in your space who write quality content and partner with them to create content that links back to your site. This is a great way to boost traffic, shares, and brand equity online. 6. Eliminate Duplicate Content One of the easiest ways to drop in the rankings and get punished by search engines is to copy content and use it on your site. When Google is presented with the same piece of content in multiple places, it will show only one page and crowd the others out of the search rankings. The goal of Google and search engines is to push original and relevant content to the top when users search on the terms they are looking for and suppress duplicate content and nonvaluable pages. So if you want to add content from another site, a simple best practice is to link to it and reference the original source or utilize 301 redirects from any duplicate pages to the original pages. 7. Distribute and Share As your content engine is humming look for ways to push out your white papers, guides, blog posts, and resources out through multiple distribution channels. Content distribution platform Outbrain breaks it down in the following ways: Earned Content Distribution: This is when third parties share or publish your content through social media, guest posts, media coverage or product reviews. Owned Content Distribution: This includes publishing content to web properties that belong to you, like your blog, email newsletter, or social media profiles. Paid Content Distribution: As the name implies, this is through paid channels, often using a pay-per-click advertising model. 8. Use Internal Links With today’s heightened focus on content, internal linking is a great strategy to boost SEO. An internal link connects one page of a website to a different page on the same website. By using internal links in your site pages and in blog posts it improves readability for your visitors, rankings for keywords, and Google’s ability to crawl your site. When you link internally try to go deep. In other words, don’t just link back to your home page but to pages that are rich in content and relevant to the topic at hand. 9. Grow your Inbound Links In addition to your internal linking strategy, external link building remains one of the cornerstones of SEO and the best way to improve your ranking in search land. The goal of inbound linking is to get outside links from sites, directories, and forums that have solid domain authority and link them back to your site. For example, if your business gets mentioned in Huffington post, which has a higher page rank than your website, it will boost your page rank, and Google and other search engines will reward you by increasing your position in search results. 10. Use SEO Friendly URLs Making sure your URLs are clean and optimized is an important DIY tip if you want to rank highly on SERPs (search engine results pages). URLs are simply the address of a unique page on your website that directs online users to your site. When building URLs for your website, it’s important to make sure they are friendly, easy to read for online visitors, and include relevant words (keywords) that correlate to the copy on the page of the website. Let’s say someone is looking for red men’s socks so they search Google. By creating a descriptive, friendly URL you can increase the chances you will show up in the top search results in Google and improve your conversion chances with an easy-to-digest, relevant URL: Notice that Nordstrom is in the #1 spot and their URL is: shop.nordstrom.com/c/mem-socks/red And… Here is the URL for Saks Fifth Avenue’s page, found on page 10 of the search results: http://www.saksfifthavenue.com/Men/Apparel/Underwear-and-Socks/Socks/shop/_/N-52k84v/Ne-6lvnb5 There are two main takeaways from this example. First, the descriptive and concise URL structure that Nordstrom has created has helped it to outrank the Saks Fifth Avenue ad. Second, as a user when I click through to the two pages from the search term “men’s red socks,” the Nordstrom page shows me red socks while the Saks Fifth Avenue page just gives me men’s socks. Actually, there are no red socks on the page. Remember, Google is rewarding relevancy more and more. So, matching URLs and content together both improves your SEO and gives your conversion rates a boost. Bonus Tips: Try to keep URLs short making them easy to type and read. Also, eliminate unnecessary words such as and, the, and symbols such as @. If you need to separate words in your URL use hyphens instead of underscores as Google has a hard time recognizing them and won’t index your page. Here are 10 Helpful tips from MySiteAuditor to make sure you keep your URLs tidy and friendly: 11. Feed the Need for Speed Believe it or not, how fast your site and your pages load is critical to how Google ranks your site for SEO. Not only does it impact your search rankings, but it affects the experience your users have when they engage with your website. In a world of online options, visitors won’t stick around for pages, images, and videos to load. In fact, pages with longer load times tend to have higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates. Here is a great post from Moz to help you optimize your page speed. 12. Optimize for Mobile More and more people are using their mobile devices to search online which means it can be a major source of traffic and conversions for your business. In fact, studies show that 70% of mobile searches lead to an online action within just one hour. Recently Google launched their mobile-friendly update designed to give a nod to pages that are mobile optimized. This is a quest by the mother of all search engines to provide the best possible experience for its users when looking for products and services. If you want to find out if your pages are mobile-friendly you can simply utilize Google’s tool that checks your URL for mobile-friendliness. 13. Use Landing Pages A landing page is a stand-alone page on your website where visitors land from sources such as search engines, PPC, social, and email marketing. It is a great tool to drive focused traffic to your site and optimize conversions from search. Most landing pages typically use a form to capture and convert visitors. When creating landing pages in WordPress or one of the landing page tools such as Instapage, don’t forget to optimize for SEO with your keywords and use relevant content with a specific call to action (CTA). 14. Don’t Forget the User Most websites are still built for the way Google used to rank. They’re often overloaded with keyword jargon and not optimized for humans. But current-day search engines have put algorithms in place to measure a website’s user experience and reward sites that put UX (User Experience) into practice. Elements like clean site navigation and sitemaps help users to discover content more easily and help your website to be indexed effectively, making sure search engine bots can easily crawl your site. It’s the quality of traffic and not always the quantity of traffic that is going to grow your customer base. When you build your website around the user and focus on adding value for the user, visitors will stay on your site longer, digest more content, subscribe to your lists, and connect with you to learn more. Bounce rates will decline and conversions will climb. 15. Keep up with SEO Trends Search engine optimization is an ever-changing landscape. Staying at the top of search rankings consistently takes keeping up to date with trends, news, and new concepts. Sign up for SEO blog newsletters and check out sites such as Moz, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, and industry-leading SEO sites. Other helpful resources are Moz’s Whiteboard Friday and the Google Webmasters YouTube channel. 16. Use Analytics As you make changes to improve SEO, you need insight into what’s working and what isn’t. Google Analytics is a free tool to help you to monitor your traffic, see which sources most of your traffic is coming from, learn which landing pages are converting the most traffic into prospects for your business, and measure the overall conversion rate of your website. In addition to website analytics, you want to make sure that the traffic you’re driving eventually converts into new customers for your business. Tracking the lead source of each prospect in your CRM can tell you which sources your customers are coming from, and measure how many folks become customers by finding your website online. 16.5 Reach out to An SEO Agency The DIY tips provided here are designed to give you a solid foundation to help you build an effective SEO strategy and get found online. However, depending on the competitiveness of your industry and the resources of your business you may want to reach out to an SEO firm or consultant to help you along the path. When looking for the right SEO firm ask lots of questions, understand their linking strategy, and what analytics they will provide you with, and don’t forget to speak in depth to relevant references. Got your SEO on the right track? Now it’s time to ensure your marketing and sales efforts are headed in the right direction, too. Check out BenchmarkONE’s marketing automation and CRM tool for free and see what it can do for your bottom line.
Hysterical Ideas That Are Actually Marketing Techniques for Small Businesses Posted on January 21, 2016June 3, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Risk-taking is best embraced in the ever-changing digital marketing landscape. Daring marketing initiatives often pay off, as they capture the attention of otherwise uninterested individuals — and make them see small businesses in a new light. If your marketing strategy could use a boost, consider drawing inspiration from these small business marketing techniques that push the envelope: Made-Up Holidays Companies requiring an extra push during the slow season can benefit greatly from made-up holidays, which if given the appropriate hype, can greatly increase consumer interest. At Hatchbuck, we talked like a pirate for a day in September. Another excellent international example involves the made-up Japanese holiday of Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii, in which residents skip out on Christmas altogether and instead eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken. When this influential marketing effort first launched in 1974, it seemed crazy, but it was just out-there enough to attract attention — and now it’s one of Japan’s most notable holiday traditions. Cat Craze It’s no secret that the internet loves cats, but some clever businesses have harnessed this feline adoration and used it to drive up business. The best example of this is Uber, which celebrated National Cat Day 2013 by delivering kittens and cupcakes to people living in San Francisco, New York City, and Seattle. Although the recipients were only allowed to keep the cupcakes, they had the opportunity to spend 15 minutes cuddling with kittens. Cat delivery is not an option for most companies, but any marketing efforts involving cats can foster excitement among new and existing customers. A simple way for small businesses low on funding to accomplish this is to post a picture of a cat with a branded product on Instagram and ask followers for caption ideas. Flash Mobs Although no longer as big of a craze as they were in the early days of YouTube, flash mobs still attract attention while putting smiles on the faces of both participants and observers. Often organized for marriage proposals or just for fun, flash mobs can also be used to garner greater brand awareness. T-Mobile has certainly discovered this, as its flash mob “Life’s for Sharing” advertisement won Ad of the Year at the 2010 British Television Advertising Awards. Viral Marketing Pranks Consumers love being pranked, but only if pranks come across as fun, as opposed to malicious. Although there is a lot of gray area between acceptable and unacceptable marketing pranks, those done correctly can quickly go viral, thereby creating a new and exciting social media presence for previously unknown businesses. Marketing gurus proved the efficacy of pranks while drumming up excitement for the 2013 Carrie reboot. A group of unsuspecting coffee shop visitors were freaked out by remote-controlled tables and a stunt man seemingly thrown up against a wall by a young woman with telekinesis power gone wild. If your current marketing approach is beginning to grow stale, now is the time to mix it up with a little guerrilla marketing. Take inspiration from the aforementioned marketing efforts and don’t be afraid to get silly!
5 of the Best Practices for Email Marketing Subject Lines to Boost Response Posted on January 20, 2016May 27, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Whether its a white paper that helps your prospects solve a nagging problem, or a special email notification of a “secret” sale, when a customer sees something from your company in their inbox, there are two things that can happen. One, the customer will be attracted and enticed by what you have to say, or two, your email efforts will go on a one-way trip straight to the trash bin, or even worse, flagged as spam. So how do you keep your email reputation clean and effective? Believe it or not, there is one sneaky little trick that every successful business email creator knows: It is all about the marketing email subject line. This is the one-liner that shows up when a message arrives in an inbox and is potentially the only chance you have to make the best impression. There are five easy-peasy ways to make sure that the subject lines of your business emails are effective enough to encourage your customers to take that next step and click to open because they want to know what more you have to say. 1. Get Local, Vocal, and Personable If you really want to catch a reader’s attention, talk to them like you would a valued, well-known customer. Head the subject line with their first name or even mention their location. You want to exude a familiar tone that comes across as personable and personal. 2. Don’t Be Generic Don’t continually use the same subject line in your emails, no matter how tempting it may be or how logical it may seem to do so. Offer something more interesting by changing the email subject line to reflect what you are going to offer once the email is opened. 3. Straight to the Point Please Remember, you may have more than enough space to get into great detail in the subject line on your end, but when this mail hits a customer’s inbox, there is a pretty good chance that they will only see the first several words. So, keep your message short and sweet. 4. Don’t Serve Up Cold Spam Spam is no good and potential customers have no time for it. The average email inbox holder gets close to 150 emails a day, every day. They will delete almost half almost immediately. With this many emails coming in every day, the slightest hint of something spammy will land you in either the trash or flagged as spam and all future emails will be sent directly, without passing go, to the spam folder. There are some catchy little things you may be tempted to use in subject lines that must be avoided. They are: The word “free” Odd letter/number combos that look like gibberish Curse words (should be logical in business, but still worth mentioning) 5. Use Your Inbox Voice You probably know that there is a voice you should use indoors, but there is a voice that is reserved specifically for email subject lines that make you an effective communicator. This voice is low-key. This voice is not screaming in ALL CAPS and does not come off sounding like you are an over-excited car salesman who is desperate to make a sale. You should be leaning more toward the same voice you would use if a customer were standing right at your counter, which would hopefully not be yelling or filled with too much excitement. At Hatchbuck, one of our core values is “Do the Right Thing.” This value applies especially well to the inbox. Every email you send furthers a conversation, so take each opportunity to be thoughtful, creative and helpful in your subject line and email. When you focus on building relationships, rather than the aggressive sales pitch, you earn trust, respect, and the sales come naturally.
Simple Tips to Make the Most of Inbound Marketing Posted on January 19, 2016May 27, 2016 by Nicci Troiani In the fast-paced and competitive small business environment, every second counts. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs spend way too much time worrying about ineffective marketing schemes instead of focusing on day-to-day business concerns. With an effective inbound marketing strategy, you can let prospective clients and customers come to you, instead of spending all of your time attempting to attract the attention of uninterested parties. If implemented incorrectly, inbound marketing can be every bit as inefficient as other marketing approaches; however, with a carefully-crafted strategy, it is possible to expedite the process and significantly grow your customer base — all with minimal effort. The following simple inbound marketing tips will make business generation easier than you ever imagined. Optimize Your Site Inbound marketing is all about search engine optimization, which is used to improve a site’s ranking on Google and other prominent search engines. The higher your site lands on Google’s front page, the more visitors it will attract. Carefully-researched keywords should be used in your site’s URL, in any content featured on the page, and in image names. Avoid the temptation to stuff your page with keywords; this could actually harm your search engine ranking. Instead, create relevant content that solves a problem for your ideal customer. Help Prospects Convert Your website is more than just an attractive brochure – it’s a handshake with new visitors that helps you to begin the sales conversation. As SEO drives traffic to your site, you should be able to capture qualified prospects with forms. Helpful resources can connect you with top-of-the-funnel leads, while a sales form can capture prospects who are interested now. Small businesses don’t need a super fancy website. Instead, focus on building a clean website that is simple to navigate and has a main objective of connecting with your ideal customer. Harness the Power of Social Media Inbound marketing efforts should not end with your company’s website. In today’s connected world, businesses can benefit from a presence on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Depending on where your ideal customer hangs out online,, your business could also benefit from maintaining an active Instagram or Pinterest account; however, the pursuit of a social media presence need not hog all of your time and resources. A strong presence on a select group of networks will allow you to better connect with existing clients and customers while also attracting the attention of new consumers. Publish Testimonials and Reviews If you’ve managed to build up a small, but very enthusiastic customer base, consider asking these satisfied individuals for feedback. They will be all too happy to have their input featured on your website or social media pages. A few favorable testimonials can go a long way toward establishing confidence among those unfamiliar with your brand. Nurture New Leads As you connect with visitors coming to your website through SEO, social media and other channels, you can keep the conversation going through email nurturing. Not everyone is ready to enter thesales process today, but they will be down the road. With email campaigns, you can automatically stay in touch with prospects to become a trusted resource, and eventually their first choice when they are ready to buy. Track Metrics Inbound marketing often involves some element of trial and error, as it is impossible to know exactly what works until you test it. Once these initial steps have been achieved, it is important to keep an eye on website analytics, which will tell you how visitors find your website, how long they stay there, and whether their browsing sessions result in conversions. You can also track lead source in your CRM to report on which channels are actually converting into customers. The best inbound marketing strategy is simple and straightforward. A good website and strong social media presence will help you to attract new leads. Email nurturing continues the conversation, turning more of your leads into customers, and tracking metrics ensures you’re focusing on the right inbound strategies for your business. When customers come to you through inbound marketing, you can avoid time-consuming marketing initiatives and instead focus on the activities that matter most to you.