The new contours of digital marketing are quickly replacing traditional marketing. And the most important element of digital marketing is content marketing.

As an entrepreneur, you are well aware that the right marketing strategy is the key to a successful business. But with traditional marketing in the backdrop, are you ready to embrace content marketing?

Here’s what you need to know about integrating content marketing into your strategy and its advantages.

The Pros of Content Marketing:

Content marketing can help you transform leads to returning customers and tap into your business’s undiscovered customer bases. Read on to find out about the benefits of content marketing. 

Higher ROI

Content marketing will always have a higher return on investment, regardless of whether you produce your own content or outsource it. 

Content marketing leads to higher ROI because it is a cost-friendly strategy. Your budget for content marketing will be less than half of that of traditional marketing, but you will end up generating three to four times more leads! 

Develop Trust and Confidence

Content marketing helps you connect with your customer base and present a more personalized and humanized face of your business. This is very helpful for gaining customers’ trust and confidence.  

Moreover, your customer base keeps on increasing as your readers share your content with their friends.

So, content marketing enables businesses to gain way more than they spend on their marketing strategy – both in material and non-material terms.

Better SEO Results

You have already carried out your keyword research for your website. It is now time to put that research to another use: Convert your SEO keywords into baselines for your blogs! 

This will help your page in acquiring organic traffic resulting in higher search engine rankings.

Designing an Effective Content Marketing Strategy: 

It is crucial to have a clear strategy in place. Even if you put out great content without a clear plan, it won’t be able to fetch you the kind of results you are hoping for. 

Designing a content marketing strategy is not as daunting as it sounds. Here’s how you can devise an effective content marketing strategy:

What are your goals? Write them down!

Identify your goals: What results do you want your content marketing to yield? Whether you want your content marketing to generate better brand recognition, higher sales or a more extensive customer base, just write it down. 

This will help you get a realistic picture of your content marketing strategy and set clear goals. 

Understand Your Audience

What kind of people do you want to reach out to? Who makes the majority of your customers? It is important that you recognize and identify your target audience and devise your content writing strategy keeping their interests in mind. 

Work on a Schedule

Put a schedule in place. You might want to consider how often you want to push out the content and then, design your plan. Remember, consistency is the key. In the world of digital content marketing, people will only remember you if you are around! 

This consistency will help you gain a loyal and returning readership, which results in loyal customers! It is always a good idea to see what kind of schedule your competitors follow before you design your own. This way, you’ll know what you are up against. 

Brainstorm

Having brainstorming sessions can help you plan ahead. Some useful pointers for your brainstorming sessions: 

• What does your audience want and like? 
• What questions does your audience usually ask or might ask? 
• What content are your competitors pushing out? 
• What are your SEO keywords? You can use them as baselines. 

Don’t limit yourself to blogs

Content Marketing is not just about writing blog posts. Although it’s true that blogs are the most prominent feature of content marketing, there’s more to it. Explore content marketing avenues on Social Media, Email Newsletters, Podcasts, Interviews and FAQs, Webinars and Videos. 

You can recycle your content on all these platforms. Write a blog about a certain topic, create videos about it after a few months and then, maybe conduct webinars or have podcasts.

Having an effective content marketing strategy will increase your brand recognition and you will be able to connect on a more personal level with your audience. 

The best thing about content marketing is that it doesn’t require an elaborate budget and so it is equally efficient and doable for small businesses as it is for large-scale companies. The key to a successful content marketing strategy is to be clear about your goals and consistent in your actions. 

Scott Hall has twenty plus years in search and ten in enterprise software and has helped drive digital growth for many small businesses. Learn more about Scott and his powerful and effective marketing techniques at ScottHall.co.

The post Content Marketing for Small Business and Entrepreneurs appeared first on Marketing Digest.

The new normal is constantly evolving and it is essential to keep up with its swift pace. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot of things in 2020 and businesses are still struggling to adjust to the changes on many levels.

It is very important to have a solid marketing plan in place to get you through this pandemic.

What kind of plan, you ask? Local SEO and Reputation Scores.

Why is Local SEO crucial for your business?

Local SEO not only helps your business by improving user experiences but also generates more data for your future marketing campaigns. It generates more leads and helps with increasing your brand recognition.

Local and small scale businesses thrive on the trust and loyalty of their customer base. SEO helps businesses to connect to their audiences and foster long-lasting relationships.

On top of all this, local SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy, making it an ideal marketing tactic for small businesses. Local SEO has made it possible for small businesses to have far-reaching effects within a budget.

The Importance of Reputation Management

Like many other businesses, you might also consider skipping this part. But, ignoring your business’ reputation management scores or not checking them at all just means that you are moving forward blindly!

More than 50% of people will stay on the website or visit it only after they read a positive view. Online customers take reviews very seriously. It’s time that you start taking them seriously, too.

Stay ahead of your game by uncovering the facts. Reputation management helps you get clarity as to where your business is excelling and what points need improvement. The time you invest in reputation management will yield leads and loyal customers.

How To Improve Your Local Web Score

Now that you’re aware of the perks of local SEO and reputation management, you certainly won’t be thinking whether or not to optimize your business. You should be thinking about how soon you can do it. Here are a few tips:

Perform a Website Audit

If you don’t know where to begin, it would be a good idea to go for a website audit without wasting any time. This will help you understand where you stand and what improvements are needed on your website.

The website audit will provide a report which will ultimately help you improve the performance and efficiency of your website. It will most certainly present you with an exceptional opportunity for your online growth.

Research The Competition

If you really want your website to be optimized, you need to know what people are looking for. Keep a close eye on your competitors because knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors can make a major difference. Check their reviews and see what the audience wants and then, use that valuable information to give the users exactly what they want.

Answer All Reviews, Good or Bad

Responding to reviews is the most crucial part of all steps. Keep in mind that it doesn’t matter whether there are a few negative reviews because as long as the customers are talking about you, you’ll be in the spotlight.

You need to take out time for responding to reviews because it shows the users that you care. And believe it or not, most users check the reviews before making a purchase.

Responding to negative reviews will portray you as understanding and willing to be helpful. Take time to acknowledge your customers.

Business Listings

Your business listing will make it simple for local customers to find your business. It is not enough to just put the details about your business on your website. Make it easy for your customers and new users to find you. Make sure the information about your website is available across other social networks. And make sure the information is consistent and current.

Constantly Optimize Your Website

Keep your website updated. Your research and website audit will provide you with enough data to know what needs to be optimized. Make sure that the following points are being taken care of:

• Make it easy for users to contact you
• Add address and details.
• Add a map to your website
• Describe your services clearly

Final Thoughts

Reputation management is very important for all kinds of businesses, but it’s especially important for small businesses that aim to not only solidify but to also broaden their customer base.

Not only does it help businesses to improve their SEO rankings, it also establishes them as a trustworthy enterprise. Your small business arsenal should provide an appropriate amount of attention to Reputation Management and Local SEO rather than sweeping it under the rug.

Scott Hall has twenty plus years in search and ten in enterprise software and has helped drive digital growth for many small businesses. Learn more about Scott and his powerful and effective marketing techniques at ScottHall.co.

The post Small Business Reputation Management Scores Will Get You Through the Pandemic appeared first on Marketing Digest.

Every SEO specialist will know about the “obvious” factors that influence search engine rankings.

Mobile-friendliness, content relevance, link-building authority, and keywords are all some of the most important SEO metrics, and SEO marketers will be vying for dominance in each so that their respective websites will soar to the top of the SERPs.

Given that the competition is fierce in these metrics, it becomes important to look for other SEO-affecting factors that can be exploited. You’ll need every advantage you can get if you want to stand out from the crowd.

One topic that’s been of perennial interest to SEO marketers is the humble Google My Business (GMB) review and rating, and whether it has an impact on SEO performance.

It’s true that reviews and ratings strongly influence customers’ first impressions of a business and whether or not they choose to explore them, but is there more going on behind the scenes beyond this organic influence? If this is the case, how can business owners leverage and optimize their My Business listings?

We’ll explore these and other topics about GMB in this blog entry, and hopefully provide insight into how you can use it to improve your SEO standings.

What Is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a feature that allows business owners to manage the way their business appears on Google.

In their My Business panel, owners can input information that customers will find valuable, such as contact numbers, comprehensive business hours, shop locations, and more. They can also upload photos, describe some of the products and services they offer, and even indicate whether or not they deliver, and in what areas they offer delivery services.

Having complete GMB information will be of great help to your customers when they’re looking for your business. When your business appears in a search in Google, it’ll produce a Local Knowledge panel that contains all your relevant GMB information, as well as reviews and questions and answers.

On top of that, the same information will be highlighted and displayed when someone finds your business on Google Maps. This is perfect for users searching for local businesses in the vicinity.

Google My Business also allows owners to discover insights about their business. Metrics such as site visitors, directions requests, and users who called you directly through the “call” button in Google are all available for business owners.

Google My Business Reviews

As mentioned above, Google My Business also allows users to review businesses they’ve visited. These reviews consist of a star rating, from 1 to 5, as well as an optional text review for users to describe their review in more detail.

The average rating of these reviews, as well as the number of reviews, appears in Google My Business listings on both Local Knowledge panels and in Google Maps. Users will be able to see all reviews and their details, as well as a breakdown of the number of reviews for each rating from 1 to 5 stars.

Owners can respond directly to each review, which can help build trust with customers. Reviews to which the business owner has replied will show up with a label, “Response from the owner.”

Do Google My Business Reviews Impact SEO?

Google My Business itself has certain direct impacts on SEO. Simply having GMB information already highlights you in your very own Knowledge Panel, and more complete information with greater engagement has a chance of putting you in the Google carousel that appears when users search for local businesses. These are considered massive SEO benefits and will promote your site immediately.

However, reviews are a trickier subject. There’s no explicit information about how they impact search engine results—though to be fair, there is almost never any explicit information about how Google’s algorithms work.

Organic Impact

To prospective customers, GMB reviews, and indeed reviews of any kind, are very strong indicators for the quality of a business. With or without any direct algorithmic benefits to SEO, there are organic benefits that make GMB reviews a great thing for your business.

For one, studies show that nearly all users read online reviews and take them into account. Alongside this, about 91% of consumers 18-34 years old will trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.

User reviews as a whole are considered an authentic indicator of a business’ performance. Customers may treat positive reviews from large publications or endorsers with some degree of suspicion, thinking about the possibility that these endorsements may have been paid for or otherwise sponsored. Online reviews can be seen as genuine evaluations from “real people” who have actually used the business in question.

Good reviews have measurable impacts on a business’s performance. An increase in rating by one star can improve revenue by as much as 9%. Indeed, 72% of surveyed consumers say that good online reviews for a business will improve their trust in it.

In addition, when a business engages with their customers by responding to reviews, it shows that the business is looking at feedback. Responses to positive reviews can be considered a form of thanks, while apologetic and reassuring responses to negative reviews show that they are always listening to customers’ needs.

Indeed, customers are 16% more likely to recommend a business, and even rate it more highly, if they see that the business is responding to reviews. This, of course, relies on responses to reviews being constructed effectively.

Conversely, negative reviews have the opposite effect on customers choosing a business. 57% of surveyed consumers, for instance, won’t use a business with less than 4 stars.

The quantity of reviews also plays a role in consumer psychology—on average, consumers won’t trust a business’s star rating unless there have been at least 40 reviews.

All of these are indirect impacts on SEO, but they nevertheless strongly affect a prospective customer’s decision to do business with you, when they see your star rating in Google search results.

Direct SEO Impact

Now comes the big question—is there any evidence that Google My Business reviews actually impact SEO? A variety of studies across the Internet provide the answers.

First up, one 60-day case study that researched the direct influence of GMB reviews indicates that increasing the number of meaningful reviews for a business listing that previously had 0-1 reviews, has a significant effect on search engine rankings after two months.

The study employed the researchers’ personal accounts, which meant that the maximum possible influence they could have had on the listings was highly limited. In real-world scenarios, a large number of reviews could have an even greater impact!

Another study, which performed research on high-ranking businesses, came to several conclusions about the impact of GMB reviews, primarily correlating positive rankings with review quality and quantity.

A lot of the important data is related to the top 3 search results. This is because the top 3 results in a local business search are presented in the form of the “Google 3-Pack,” where the top 3 listings get featured in a special box above the Web search results.

For one, the top 3 businesses in search engine results are very likely to have a higher rating than the rest of the businesses in the top 10. Specifically, 64% of all top-rated businesses are also in the top 1-3 search engine rankings.

The actual differences between the star ratings aren’t actually that high. Businesses at rankings 1-3 have 4.47 stars on average, while positions 4-6 have 4.46 stars, and positions 7-10 have 4.45 stars. From a statistical perspective, these are very low values, but they may represent the key difference that will lead a customer to choose a higher-ranked business (even if it’s rated only slightly higher) over another.

The average number of ratings for high-ranking businesses may also play a big role. The top 3 businesses have an average of 47 reviews, whereas rank 7-10 listings have 38 reviews. Local businesses have an average of 39 reviews across all industries.

A similar study conducted on over 20,000 local listings came to similar conclusions. The study showed that the three highest-ranked local businesses have 472% more reviews than those in the 4-6 spots.

At this point, there’s enough strong evidence to suggest that improving one’s GMB reviews creates a somewhat related effect in improving one’s SEO rankings. This may be because of a real relationship between ranking and reviews, or because the process of improving GMB reviews results in other SEO ranking improvements.

Moz suggests that 9% of the Google algorithm is determined by reviews. This is very much in line with Google’s preference for trustworthy and authoritative businesses, and a large quantity of diverse and positive reviews is a very strong signal for trustworthiness.

Even if all of these impacts are merely correlative and not causative, you also have to consider the organic impacts of positive reviews, which translate to improved business performance.

A Strategy For Improving Google My Business Reviews

We’ve established that there’s a strong relationship between GMB reviews and SEO performance. Now, the next question is:

How do you improve your Google My Business reviews?

Quantity

Sometimes, it’s as simple as asking the customer to review your business.

Oftentimes, the problem is simply that customers are unaware that they can leave a review, so informing them or reminding them about this opportunity to leave feedback can lead to positive results. 70% of consumers, when asked to leave a review, will do just that.

You can remind your customers to review you in your email blasts, marketing materials, landing pages and sales funnels, or by advertising your Google My Business listing and asking for reviews. Unlike Yelp, Google is actually perfectly fine with you asking for reviews from your customers, as long as you don’t incentivize them to do so.

By doing this, you can increase the number of reviews on your local business listing, increasing the trustworthiness of whatever star rating you have.

Quality

It’s a big no-no to try and artificially inflate your reviews with fake accounts or incentives. Many black-hat SEO marketers will try it anyway, and will probably crash and burn.

The most obvious way to improve quality is to simply be a better business in comparison to your competition, but you should be striving for that anyway.

One other way to improve your review standing, however, is to engage with the reviews you already have, both positive and negative. As we described earlier, engaging with reviews shows that you’re listening to feedback. This is explicitly stated by Google’s support pages!

On top of this, studies show that consumers who have left negative feedback have a good chance of a change of heart after getting a response from the business they reviewed. 33% would go on to post a positive review after getting a response, while 34% deleted their negative feedback.

A similar study from Harvard Business Review came to the same conclusion, that engaging with both positive and negative reviews has a net positive result on ratings.

Of course, as we said, this is reliant on a properly constructed response. Some tips to constructing a good review response include thanking them for the feedback (whether negative or positive) and showing empathy for their concerns.

It’s also important to offer solutions to negative reviewers, to help fix the problem they have with the business. You can also outline the concrete steps you’re taking to make sure that whatever negative experience they had doesn’t happen again.

For positive reviews, you can offer extra value, such as the chance to test out new features before they’re released publicly. Don’t advertise this, of course, or else you’ll be incentivizing positive reviews.

Conclusion

There’s certainly a definite relationship between Google My Business reviews and SEO rating, and it’s not just a minuscule factor that can be overlooked. Good reviews may end up being a key advantage in your competition for the top spot in the rankings, and you’ll do well to try and maximize them the best you can.

It’s also important to note that improving your online reviews also means doing better business in general and engaging with your customers in more meaningful ways. These are things that will have far greater positive impacts than just a better star rating.

The post Correlation And Causation: Do Google My Business Reviews Impact SERP Rankings? appeared first on Marketing Digest.

Haha, ironically, this article about a tale of three has a double meaning. I just realized that, because the initial meaning I wanted to convey was a comparison between three different types of selling something online; using an Internet Marketing model (IM) which includes a low price point to start but then offers complementary products as upsells (or sometimes one-time-offers); also an Appsumo type transaction which involves a piece of software that is usually charged per month but is offered for a special one-time fee with no monthly; and finally an award-winning suite of software by Adobe that is offered at a monthly rate, but used to cost a large one-time fee.

But when I say it also has a double meaning I mean that in the IM transaction I was involved in myself, I ended up buying three items. So that also was three transactions, although when I look back on it I guess you could say it was four. No matter. The sad part about those 3 or 4 transactions is that since I seemed unhappy about it based on some complaints I made, the product creator refunded my money and let me keep the products anyway! It turns out I really like the product.

Originally, the issue I had was being surprised by the appearance of a second sales page just as I was completing the first sale. In the IM world product creators often put up what’s called an OTO (one time offer). An OTO gets it’s name from being a scarcity device. You just made a purchase but wait! Maybe you’d also like to get this other OTO item for an additional $27 or $37. And it’s only available for a brief period of time (clock above ticking down from 6 hours – 6:00…5:59…5:58 etc.).

But so what? If you’ve been around IM long enough, you know it’s coming and can always say no. Still, upsells work, marketers know it, and it’s hard to say no to a method that increases one’s revenue by 30 to 50 percent. Honestly it can be frustrating to a buyer looking for a way to earn money online, to be just finishing one transaction and then presented with an OTO that makes it seem like the first product they just bought won’t really be good enough after all.

But the upsell I was presented with this day wasn’t an OTO. It wasn’t a requirement in order get the full impact of the original core product either. It was presented as a complementary product (not to be confused with complimentary haha), and the product creator Barb Ling pointed that out to me, and after reflecting on that whole transaction experience I admit that I carry with me a prejudice against OTOs due to being burned by them in the past. But Barb is aware of that phenomenon and tries extra hard to present upsells in a way that is friendly and not “counting down” to anything. I applaud her for that, plus she puts out some of the most unique products in the IM world, and if you know of her, you probably know that she has a rare ability to build a following around her quirkiness in chatting with her followers on her web pages, social media, and email lists. She is charming and funny, and fearless. I remember her videos featuring her bird perched atop her shoulder (a parakeet?), and that is unusual and memorable. She now has at least three birds that might appear while she shoots her videos, and one of them she knows will not stay put for long. And sure enough it flies off!

But that’s just good marketing and personal branding. What about the product? Well that depends on where you are in your marketing journey. As Kimanzi Constable said in an Entrepreneur.com article, “a lot of the advice only works if you have a huge audience.”* That’s what I thought at first about Barb’s product, since it was about increasing your affiliate income profit by crafting certain approaches for your audience.

But again, everybody knows that you’re going to need an audience. And if yours isn’t big enough, Barb provides great links to information and courses that can help a marketer grow their email list. That’s above and beyond. But not everyone in IM is like Barb Ling; in fact almost no one is, she’s that unique. Thus you should know when entering into a transaction in the IM world to stay alert, do your homework, and avoid being pushed around. Over time you’ll find certain IMers that you trust and are open to answering questions.

What About that Second Transaction Type?

Well, I’ve made quite a few of those transactions too, buying software at Appsumo because it’s usually only $49 one time for life-time access, for a product that normally has a monthly cost. Everybody knows that $20 or $30 a month is going to add up over time, and fast. Here you get to see the product in action while people buying it are reviewing it, and you can ask questions before you buy too, to be answered by the software creators. So that is a powerful incentive.

At Appsumo, software is presented in a different way: a public forum which lays it all out on the table up front, pros and cons, with product creators often asking for feedback in person, even tweaking the offer midstream while the offer’s running, based on forum feedback. What I like in this scenario is the transparency. These vendors often have a piece of software that is still young in its life cycle and needs some buzz and some maturity, and an influx of cash and real time feedback and ideas help make it happen. Recent examples include Lemlist (using Gmail to send personalized emails to prospects), Keyword Hero (which reveals the keywords used to search for your website, like Google used to do), Rocketium (an Animoto-like video creator with included music and effects), and Meet Leonard, a way to truly get the most out of LinkedIn, except for when LinkedIn clamps down and forbids its use saying it violates their TOS; so that’s a point to consider.

These are all products that are on the market already, and have been for various lengths of time. Consumers have a little time to consider the offer, at least one or two weeks, to look it over, research, and ask questions. There is still a scarcity factor, since the offer will expire at an unspecified time, but customers are there on the forum giving their opinions.

But again, buyer beware. Although it may seem too good to be true to avoid the monthly fee and get lifetime access, you need to ask yourself: will I really use this? Or am I just buying it because it’s a good deal? And to be honest, there are only so many hours in a day, and once you have 10 software products you use consistently already, the chances are you won’t use your newly purchased software as much as you think.

Speaking of $49, we are also customers of Adobe and use the Adobe Creative Suite in our business of making great graphic design, and websites. That comes to slightly over $50 per month, so there’s no lifetime offer here, but we are talking about access to the most award-winning graphic design tools ever created, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, and InDesign. And since it’s a suite of tools there’s Dreamweaver, Premier, AfterEffects, and more. Millions of lines of code, beloved by the creative world, available for about $50. The truth is we don’t use even half of those great tools. We use a few regularly though, and we love these top flight, best-in-class products. Plus, as a professional agency, it’s good to be using the industry standard tools. When it comes time to hand off our designs to a printer, they’ll know exactly what to expect when they receive Illustrator “ai” files, or the psd’s from Photoshop. Plus there’s a lot more to Acrobat Pro than printing out a pdf.

So when it comes to spending money on software, it’s very important to factor in these items:

• Is the upsell or complementary item necessary or worth it? For that matter, is the low priced core product worth it if you don’t end up using it?
• Will I benefit by getting lifetime access to a software I will barely use?
• If I’m paying a monthly fee for access to some professional software, will I really profit by having that access? Is there a cheaper way to go? A workaround?

You may think these questions are easy, but in my long experience making my living online, I will tell you that many, many IMers, marketers and entrepreneurs confess to having spent too much at some point. It’s often used as an intro to their latest offer: “When I got started I spent hundreds, even thousands on programs, coaching, and whatever bright shiny object I saw, before I figured it out.” And then they might proceed to sell you on something you also will regret later. I’m just saying it’s possible. Be wise out there. On the one hand, buying courses and products is a good way to learn, but… BUT it’s also not a solution. Only taking action by using the products you buy will get you any closer to your goals.

*https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237325

The post A Tale of Three Transactions appeared first on Marketing Digest.

In so doing though I learned what I believe are the main points people need to know about this compliance, and how you too can follow these steps for your own websites.

What does GDPR mean? General Data Protective Regulation. It’s about website visitor privacy. Thus site owners need to inform visitors when personal data is stored and collected, and explain how that data will be used. And they should be able to delete it all upon request.

On my new website offer page I am able to state this: Your new website will comply, and here’s how:

Privacy Policy

We’ve created a Privacy Policy template which we can use for your site, which we will customize with your personal details. The important factor here is that customers will see this and trust you more for having it.

SSL Certification

Included with your site will be an SSL certification which you may recognize as an https as opposed to an http. That means to the user that the connection to your site is secure, and can’t be intercepted! Again, this is all for your customers and builds trust among them. It means your site is a safer website. That’s all good, right?

Notice – We collect cookies

We create a cookie notification for your site visitors, and we’ll link it to your privacy policy. See what we did there? Your site is trustworthy, and you’re on the cutting edge of consumer safety.

You now have an Opt-in

In keeping with the spirit of informing site visitors and customers alike when their personal information is being collected, we can now add an opt-in option to be added to forms on your website. That simple tweak takes you one step closer to being golden in the eyes of the GDPR, and also your potential customers because after all, it’s all for them.

Personal Data – Be Gone!

Part of the GDPR policy is giving consumers the right to be able to say “hey, I want all personal data collected by your company about me to deleted.” This is aka the right to be forgotten. Well, your A-Train Speed Site (in addition to including personalization and great speeds to benefit SEO) will create a Form Response page where you can manage and delete all information associated with that form!

So as you can see A-Train is all over this GDPR thing for you!

To summarize, we’ll

1. Activate a customized Privacy Policy page for you
2. Activate Cookie notification
3. Update existing forms with an opt-in consent
4. Enable opt-in consent on all new contact forms
5. Set up SSL (https) for your sites

So there you have it.

In my offer page, I laid out the main points of GDPR compliance. As I mentioned, it’s about website visitor privacy. While this is more important to some than others, and while these stricter regulations are now only in place for the EU specifically, many in the USA and Canada are following suit. Consider it an opportunity to show your site visitors how much you care and that you have taken a great step to prove it.

Trust is hard to come by and difficult to earn.

Take this opportunity to be the leader in trustworthiness! It’s easy to learn these few extra steps and is something many will begin to have questions about. Hopefully, I’ve provided some answers. If you have questions contact bfallis@atraincreative.com or call Blaine at 281-235-6470.

The post Becoming GDPR Compliant appeared first on Marketing Digest.

Is Website Maintenance On Your To-Do-List?

The post Help with Maintaining Your Website appeared first on Marketing Digest.

Remarketing with AdWords has trended gradually upwards over the past five years.

Interestingly, according to Google Trends, the term retargeting is also big, but is only about half as popular as the term remarketing, and is the term of choice in Russia, China and France. There are many articles about what remarketing is. This isn’t one of them. This piece is about what makes it so fascinating, and why it works, and why it sometimes might not.

Preaching to the Choir

Most AdWords advertising attempts to select an audience by various parameters, such as demographics, geography, time of day or week. Breaking that down further it goes into language, income, education. But remarketing is unique in that it creates an audience among people who in some way already know you. They have seen your website, or your email or landing page, where they picked up a pixel.

In a sense it’s similar to a 1st level connection in LinkedIn, in that they are a person that basically knows you directly in some way. Your audience for remarketing knows something of your website or company directly, and we have proof of that. They left their fingerprint at the scene.

What happens then is that your ads are shown to this audience of people on other websites across the Google Display Network, but to them it’ll be like seeing an old friend. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” they might think, or in the case of a product ad it’ll be quite obvious. For example if you’re looking at a very specific synthesizer at GuitarCenter.com and you start seeing ads for it everywhere you go, then yeah, they are following you.

A pixel is embedded on your homepage (for example) – a pixel is a small, invisible piece of code that tells Ad Exchange to save visitors’ cookies to your “Homepage” list. As people visit your homepage, their cookie is added to the user list. You can then create a campaign in Ad Exchange that targets messages only to visitors whose cookies are on this list. Your remarketing messages is not shown to people whose cookies are not on the “Homepage” list.

Further on Down the Funnel

But your retargeted audience is much smaller than say, a wide open display network campaign whose goal is to increase brand awareness. Those campaigns don’t expect a high CTR (click through rate) because they aren’t as tightly targeted. But a remarketing campaign reaches people who have already taken a step into your world; they entered your funnel as it were, and you already have them. There was no need to capture their email and get them to convert on a landing page or sign up to a mailing list. You already have their eyeballs.

But is that enough? Just because a person has visited your website doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a good fit or even in your target market.

Super-Remarketing on Facebook and Twitter

One writer from Wordstream believes he coined this new term, which he defines as being remarketing run through Facebook and Twitter, where you can further define your market by:

• behavioral and interest targeting
• recent visitors
• AND by economic demographic targeting.

Now we’re not just remarketing to anyone who has somehow acquired the pixel. We then refine the audience further using the tools of these social media giants. You’ll be showing your ad there on Facebook to people who have visited your website, IF they further fit into your demographic, behavioral and economic criteria. I would call it remarketing plus plus.

Can you imagine if TV or radio advertising was like this? You wouldn’t have to watch yet another ad about a prescription medicine that has nothing to do with you. You’d be watching ads on the latest guitar pedal, or video game, if that’s your thing.

How Much is Too Much?

If you’ve ever been stalked by a particular company, or one of their products, then you know what I mean. Look folks, I was on your website for a completely different reason, OK? Stop following me!

On the Kissmetrics blog this topic was expliored back in 2016. The article explored the idea that retargeting could actually be sabotaging your sales. What are the elements and factors to watch out for?

Factors such as trust in the advertiser, and one’s stage in the buying process become very important. People who are still in the research phase of the buying cycle are more likely to welcome a company’s retargeted ad, vs the ones who are in a post-purchase phase. Or maybe they see that ad on an unrelated site, such as one about motorcycles, and that dentistry ad may not be too welcome.

What the article doesn’t explore though, or admit, is that ads are in general a kind of necessary evil. Some people are hostile towards ads in general as a matter of principle, and to varying degrees. In such cases it doesn’t matter that it’s a retargeted ad at all. Plus they are going to see some ad in that space one way or another. That’s the website’s choice, and visitors understand and accept that. But the article does admit to there being a fine line “between trust and privacy.”

Wordstream states that remarketing ads actually fatigue at half the rate of generic display ads, and that conversion rates actually increase with more ad impressions. Thus, while it’s good to be mindful of your audience and to avoid “abusing” them, the fact is that remarketing works. It really does pull the rabbit out of the hat as it were. To me it’s remarkable, because in general the sites I’ve been visiting are the things I’m interested in anyway, so I don’t mind seeing a retargeted ad. In fact I sort of welcome seeing that Korg synthesizer again. It’s a happy thought. And let’s face it, remarketing won’t show you ads from websites where you haven’t been. So it’s personal, it’s 21st century, and it’s here to stay.

Ladies and Gentlemen…. REMARKET!

http://www.inskinmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/PR-Graph1.png
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/retargeting-myth/
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Reaction-to-frequency-of-retargeted-online-ads.png
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/10/01/remarketing-facts

The post What is it about Remarketing? appeared first on Marketing Digest.

When I got started in the internet business,

What a great question. The real answer was no not yet, but I took that challenge to say eventually Yes I Can.

I share this ancient story only to bring up what has kept us in business all these years, the attitude of saying yes we can, or we will learn. The next step was free training provided on the “world wide web” from Maricopa County, and then guess what? A guitar legend Steve Khan whom I’d followed since college asked me: “can you make me a website?” Um, yes. Yes, I can.

If you know any programmers, you might know that they famously say they CAN do something before they actually can, and then they scramble to learn it.

Times have changed, and programmers and Web developers need to prove themselves via GitHub and portfolios, but that attitude is still important. A kind of Captain Kirk mentality that’s fearless, and willing to go where no man has gone before. Or in the 21st century many people have gone before, but you know enough to use Bootstrap for greater efficiency, or use templates that are pre-made and you just tweak them.

Don’t get me wrong. If you’re not qualified be honest, and recommend someone who actually can do the job. But when it comes to public speaking, or doing podcasts, or making videos, what are you going to do if that’s what’s required? Most people who start a podcast didn’t start off as experts, but they have the Yes I Can spirit, and voila! I present to you Episode 1 of Yes I Can, the podcast.

For example I have a growing client that was using my Rackspace hosted email solution for their 70 employees, and one day they announced they were buying another company, essentially merging, and by the way, they already use Microsoft O365 over there so we’re gonna need to drop your hosted email and jump on theirs. If you run a small agency or internet firm you probably know that this sort of sudden change happens all of the time! And it makes the heart flutter. What to do? Can you provide O365 so that they don’t have to migrate everyone off of your system and off to the competition?

I swallowed and said “Yes I Can.” Not that I personally can, but I believe in working with strong partners, and my host had recently announced their expertise in O365, and did I want to be a reseller? So I saved the account and we created a tenant and migrated all of those email boxes onto a Microsoft server, and who’s the sole admin? I am. But my strong partner Rackspace was able to do the migration.

What I prefer to say nowadays is “Yes I can help.” That is the mentality of a consultant, a person who knows how to advise their client, but not one who is going to roll up their sleeves and do it all themselves. You’re still saying yes, and you’re helping others, but with a smarter approach.

To be a voice of authority though, one has to keep reading and researching. It’s a never-ending saga, and to keep up requires passion.

For example I discovered something new today while trying to learn how to get more leads. I recently acquired Leadworx through Appsumo and realized after not checking with it for awhile that it tells you what company was visiting your website, what page they visited, when and for how long. Google Analytics doesn’t go that far. And I was also wanting to bump up my LinkedIn skills and thought: why not connect via LinkedIn with the companies that I see have been visiting my website? It’s a place to start. Or just cold call the company, since in some cases Leadworx will tell you some names of people in that business.

And by the way if you’re not on Appsumo use my link  – it’s only worth $10 to me, but is my favorite place to shop for tools for the internet entrepreneur.

But something is finally coming into focus for me in this IM business, which I think is obvious to everyone else: Can you make a living doing this? That is the ultimate question, and the one where you’d better learn how to say Yes I Can as soon as possible. As an agency, we work with businesses, and we love it when they grow and find greater success. That’s super satisfying. But as an agency, although the client is very important, your agency is in many cases less strong of a business than the client you’re helping. Your agency needs to turn a profit just like your client wants to.

The important part to keep in mind is to provide the Yes I Can service, but doing things that are worth money to the client and will, in turn, make a profit for your agency. I recently learned of an agency that used to be the kind offering a wide menu of digital marketing services, and later found one service in particular (Reputation Marketing) that was making sense for them, and profitably so. And now that’s mainly all they do! Finding a focused area, doing it better than everyone else, and making it work for all involved.

But I propose that their agency wouldn’t have found their sweet spot if they hadn’t first been willing to try it all and say Yes We Can. They didn’t stop looking for the next best Unique Selling Proposition (USP). It came at the end of a long road of trying out various skills, and not at the beginning of the road.

So what if someone comes to me wanting the best in Reputation Marketing? I can either do it myself, or use a tool, or possibly buy an account with the agency I just spoke of and sell for a medium profit. At least I know the client will be taken care of, and so will my own agency.

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In order to define your marketing strategy, you must understand exactly what a marketing strategy is.

Simply put, a marketing strategy is a plan structured around the resources available to you to promote and grow your business, targeted to your defined ideal client.

So now that you have this definition, review the following list to measure the current status of your marketing strategy and consider where it could go by integrating a structured marketing strategy in the future promotion of your business.

The top dozen questions to define your marketing strategy:

1. First of all, what is it about your business that you are passionate about? Reflect back on what motivated you to start your company.

2. What is it that you provide to your target market in ways that differ from your competitors?

3. Just like people, businesses have – or should have – a personality. What is the dominant trait in your business that you want your customers to identify?

4. What does your ideal client look like? This, really should have been identified when you were planning your business. After all, you can’t be everything to everyone, and if you haven’t defined your client by now, your business is probably flailing.

5. You’ve heard about the “elevator speech”. What is yours? Come up with a simple 10-word message that defines, explains and excites prospects about your business.

6. How does your target market become aware of your business? Within this question, you should be able to identify where and how you can best reach your target audience.

7. How do you build trust? People do business with those they like, no, and trust. What are you doing that will build trust to your target market, assuring them that you are the best person to do business with.

8. How is your cash flow? Be realistic. If you aren’t honest with yourself about your cash resources, you can’t be realistic about what you can achieve. If you are in a position that you have assets but require interim assistance was financing projects, what revenue sources are available to help you grow your business?

9. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. By walking a mile in your clients’ shoes, you can define and refine the customer experience. Happy client not only becomes a repeat client, but also becomes a source for referrals by becoming an advocate for your business.

10. Once you have defined where you want to goal, what gaps in resources do you face? None of us are experts at everything. Define what you can do and either assign tasks to someone else in your organization in their area of expertise, or outsource to a professional.

11. Do you require partnerships with others in order to achieve your goals? In some cases, it makes sense to partner with complementary business professionals to keep costs down, share resources, and benefit.

12. Finally, now that you’ve answered all of these questions, what does the result of implementing this strategy look like? If you see any holes in the results, review the list again and refine your strategy further.

The post How To Define Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on Marketing Digest.

Cold calling may not always lead to the impression you want to create and to the goal you want to achieve. Interrupting someone to discuss a problem they may not even have is not a good way to start a relationship. You want your potential customers to find you. Enter lead generation. Below, we’ll discuss strategies to get more potential customers to find you.

Search Engine Marketing

Because the first instinct for many is to search for answers they need, Search Engine Optimisation remains at the forefront of lead generation.

In addition to SEO, it is possible to spend money to appear higher on the search engine results. By using AdWords Pay-per-click advertising, your ads show up to people for search terms you target—and pay only when your link is clicked on. In addition to having the capability to track and optimise performance, and having lower costs than print ads, another benefit is that PPC enables you to laser-target your ads so that the traffic going to your website are most likely to convert.

Yes, you can use these two approaches when it comes to Search Engine Marketing. The first one is getting organic traffic and leads through SEO, and the other is the paid route, which is through PPC.

Social Media Marketing

Leads can also come from various social media channels. Your brand’s influence on your connections and followers can be amplified by your connections’ and followers’ influence—giving you a decent organic social media traction.

When doing social media marketing, you can also use the paid method. Advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn provides opportunities for putting your brand, your products and services in front of your target audience.

The most effective channels would depend on your offerings and your target audience’s demographics, interests, and behavior.

Content Marketing

No matter what organic or paid channels you use, the goal of getting their attention, making them stick long enough to capture them as a lead requires effort.

Your search marketing, social media marketing, digital advertising will be much more effective if they are held up by content marketing.

Produce content about a problem your target customers have not identified yet. Create content about your unique solution to that problem, giving your audience tidbits of solutions they can use. In so doing, you will attract more audience and make them stick around—and submit themselves to your website as a lead somewhere along the way.

Documenting testimonials from key customers shows social proof and creates a deeper level of connection with potential leads and shows what separates you from competitors. Blogging allows you to convey knowledge regularly while creating original content ripe with keywords for search engines. This in turn draws more visitors to you; both you and your visitors can share this content on social media as well.  

Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are that pieces of content you are giving away in exchange for their contact information. The content you give performs best when it is in-depth, long-form, and comprehensive. Indeed, to get something back, you have to give up something valuable.

There are many examples of lead magnets you can use. White papers or e-books will allow you to share valuable information to your leads, information that should eventually lead to your products and services. Industry research reports, which shows trends, challenges and opportunities, do the same. In turn, you engage your audience with issues and questions about the direction of your industry, and they may return later for more information. Being a source for answers to more difficult questions attracts leads and builds trust.

Providing materials that save your potential customer’s time and research, such as a free template or worksheet for a function they may not have the know-how or hours to create, would start a healthy relationship with them. Email courses will get leads sign-up to receive bits of information on helpful topics over time. Webinars on hot topics educate attendees, who register by providing you with their information. By including tips, tools, and case studies, you lend yourself credibility. Having a quiz for visitors to take allows you the chance to get their contact info in exchange for the results.

Lead Capture Optimisation

Now, the effort you put into doing SEO, PPC, Social Media, Content Marketing & Lead Magnets will be put to waste if your method for capturing leads is not at its optimal level. When designing your website, consider factors that affect lead capture optimisation: clear benefits, calls-to-action, the visitor’s flow on pages, impact and simplicity.

Limit your lead’s input to ‘name’ fields and ‘email’, as you want to minimise opt-in resistance and foster ease-of-use throughout your site. Visitors should understand the function of your site, how to interact with it, and how to contact you without any headache.

Getting more leads requires an investment of time and money. Know which areas to put the majority of your focus into. We at Website Traffic London have been helping clients dominate their niche, acquire new customers or convert more customers. Follow these pointers, and you’ll be advancing your lead generation.

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