Archive for the ‘Social Media Marketing’ Category

How to Make an Effective Landing Page for Generating Leads?

August 7th, 2015

Want to turn traffic into conversions? Just create engaging and effective landing pages. A landing page is a primary mean of lead generation in inbound marketing. It is designed to influence a visitor to carry out a specific action. Landing pages should be carefully designed with conversion in mind.

If you look at your website home page as your landing page, then you are sadly mistaken. Why? Because a homepage is an introduction to your company’s mission, services, products, and it shows a variety of information under one roof. It would be a great intro to your business, but not very effective for eliciting specific traffic looking for a specific service or product.

Remember, when a customer searches for a specific product, it is clear that he is interested in that product. If you take your potential buyer to your home page, you are probably taking him a step backward in the purchase funnel. Providing your buyers with a simple landing page that serves their purpose of purchasing will increase your conversion rates and provide a significant ROI.

Here are a few effective tips to create effective landing pages to generate leads:

Be Simple & Straight

The landing page heading should immediately tell your audience about your services and products. This is the only job of a landing page and it must contribute toward that goal. No fluff, no catchy lines or compelling paragraphs, no links to the homepage. Just simple, but descriptive text and a prominent call-to-action.

Logo Should Be Visible

Your company’s logo should be clear and visible assuring audiences that they are in safe and reliable hands. Your company should be top-of-mind while visitors see or fill up the information on your landing page.

Visuals Should Appeal, Not Distract

Make the landing page as clutter free as possible to avoid any distraction. Use directional cues to highlight the points you want to show to your audiences, like a call-to-action. Play with some colors to lead your visitor’s eyes to the key factor of the page.

Navigation Options Should Be Limited

Too much navigation options will do no good, rather they will distract your audiences and take them elsewhere in your site. Landing pages are meant to generate qualified leads, not just for getting heavy traffic.

Add Social Proof

People understand that companies often brag about themselves, but customers never do. Social proof will allow your potential buyers to see what kind of company you are and whether or not your services are reliable. If possible, list a few partner companies along with testimonies from satisfied customers.

Ask For the Information You Really Need

Always ask for the information that really matters for your business. The form should be short and must ask for only the important details. Consider a few things like whether you really need to have two fields for names or complete street address. You need to make it as convenient as possible for your customers so that they show ”thumbs up” to your offer.

Look Legit

You surely don’t want to look like a phishing scam. That’s why, it is vital to use security seals to assure your visitors that their personal information is safe and secure. You can even try linking your privacy policy. Pay heed to every small thing like layout and design. Avoid using pop-ups.

With an effective landing page, you can grab the attention of a lot of potential customers and turn them into your certified customers. Create, test, modify and deploy your landing pages and see them generating leads and skyrocketing sales.

Difference between Categories Tags & Hash Tags

June 20th, 2015

Ever wondered what tag clouds are? Well, there’s lot of differences between just tags and full-blown categories. Let’s take an in-depth look.

Categories and tags are both very useful tools of a website to create blog posts and organize content. It is good to spend some time to understand their working and how you can use them effectively on your website. Categorization and tagging allow you to display and filter your data in more interesting ways. They help your visitors to easily find the content that interests them. Categories and tags are available in:

  • Blog posts
  • Gallery images
  • Events
  • Products

Categories are meant to describe a wide group of post topics, on the other hand, tags are used to describe a post in more specific terms. In simple terms, categories in a website are like chapters in a book and tags are like an index of a reference guide. Categories are used to organize the content into general topics related to the blog. And, the tags are used to add more keyword specific terms to individual blog posts.

Note: Tags should be of maximum 80 character and categories should be of maximum 25 character

What’s the difference between Tags and Categories?

Categories and tags will help you slice and dice your website data. Think of your visitors’ needs while shaping your data. They allow you to segregate the entire data by customer profile, by conversation type or any other way you want.

The key difference between categories and tags is that tags are a better option when you want to add flexibility to the data. Categories allow you to group and organize content by topics. Whereas, tags are very specific. Tags make it easy to filter all your data by a specific keyword.

Categories and tags are for the convenience of your visitors, not just search engines. So make certain you keep your visitors’ in mind while creating categories and tags. They are about navigation and grouping the data to help visitors find relevant information without a hitch. A few things you need to know about categories and tags are:

Categories

  • Categories are your site’s table of contents.
  • They help people determine the subject of your blog.
  • They are for the convenience of your readers.
  • They help people know whether they have visited the right place or not.
  • Categories must be specific enough so that visitors can understand what information they will find within.

Tags

  • Tags are basically your website index work.
  • They are micro-data or micro-categorization of your site’s data.
  • Generally, search engines don’t reward the rel=”tag” which defines a tag.
  • You need to write at least five blog post titles on a topic otherwise it is considered as a tag not a category.
  • If various posts have the same tag, and it defines your blog purpose, it is a category.

It is ideal to have a good understanding of tags and categories before rushing off to create them. You need to make sure that all the tags and categories are directing to the content on your website. They have a significant impact on search as they help visitors find relevant content on your website. So, be mindful of what you create.

7 Ultimate Ways to Fix a Negative Business Review of Your Brand

June 15th, 2015

Did you know that one negative review can affect your business’ bottom line?

When we talk about online reputation management, business reviews and ratings take the center stage. As brands live and breathe based on their ratings on Yelp and Google, you wouldn’t want anything which can damage your sales. Here are the 7 ultimate ways to fix any negative reviews that can hurt your business reputation.

1. Revise Your Product & Services

The first step for a business that suffers serious online review issues is: Take a look in the mirror. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to look at things their way – how would you feel and react if you shared their experience dealing with your brand?

Even if you think you’re satisfactory, go an extra mile to make things right. This is an effort you put to ensure future success and a positive reputation.

A single crazy client can tarnish your name online and prejudice other clients to be critical of your company. This can result in your business losing many customers. So, the first step is to address all the issues your customers have.

2. Add Sugar to a Sour Situation

When you get a bad review, try contacting that customer and see if you can make it up to them. Making things right is an excellent opportunity to promote your business, in some cases. Even if it doesn’t turn out as expected, exhibiting a desire to make it up to dissatisfied customers reassures other potential customers that you care about delivering a good experience to them.

3. If You Make Things Right With The Customer, Ask Them To Reconsider The Negative Review

A customer may decide to revise their review or remove it. However, if customers are only unenthusiastically satisfied with your second attempt, or if they like to criticize regardless of you putting your best foot forward to please them, then your best bet is to keep silent and see how it goes.

4. If You Cannot Reverse the Process, Acknowledge It

“Fix it” approach may not always be doable, especially when the service is time-based, or when the product is no longer available.

Even if it is not feasible make it up to a dissatisfied customer for whatever reason, at least try apologizing for his or her bad experience and promise to revise your policies or serve better in the future.

Be polite or at least neutral and decent in your response. This type of expression in a public forum is beneficial because it starts to diffuse your customers’ agony a bit – they at least know their voice has been heard. It tells rest of the people that you care about your customers and value professionalism, which is great when selecting merchants.

As described in point number 2, this could be great for promoting your business.

5. The No-Nonsense Approach

You may be able to make all the unfair reviews disappear. But, unfortunately, it is very common for unhappy ex-employees or vicious competitors to post false reviews about your company.

If you can point out the false review(s), you might be able to make them disappear by getting in touch with the website and requesting intervention.

if you are in a situation where the review is abnormal or a scam, thoroughly read the website policies and if it’s not applicable, contact the site.

6. Temper Down

All companies should expect some negative reviews, but if your overall review portfolio on a website has these in a small percentage compared with positive reviews, then it doesn’t really damage your reputation in most cases. In fact, few negative reviews give your company an authentic identity on a review site.

If your business has very few or no reviews, you should encourage your customers to review you. If you have one or two negative ones, encourage pleased customers to review you to temper down the outliers. Just make sure not to offer customers incentives to post positive reviews.

7. Hire Services That Help You Extract More Reviews

Complaints and negative reviews on Google can harm the potential of any brand. But thankfully, there are many companies out there offering services that help businesses extract reviews from their previous and existing customers. This is particularly beneficial for those businesses that traditionally get fewer online reviews, such as doctors and lawyers. Also, it is crucial to say that there is a myth surrounding the removal of bad reviews (particularly the guaranteed removal of unwanted content). Certain reputation management service providers clarify this misunderstanding through their Guaranteed Removals review.

In some cases, these services allow you to seize a negative review before it goes public, so that you can address the issue with your customer, first.

The Final Word

Don’t ignore the importance of customer service. Pay attention to the lowest reviews as well as the average or mediocre ones. This feedback platform is a valuable source of information for your business, helping you to fine-tune it – until it is world class and makes your customers extremely pleased.

So, even though a negative review can be a real hard blow on your face, take it as a caution light and appreciate how it may be encourage your business operations to improve.

How your Tweets Help in SEO, Google Introduces Tweets to SERPs

April 4th, 2015

So, it’s official!. Google will now display Tweets in SERPs for the search engine’s results. This once again gives credibility to the fact that search engines are deeply in love with Twitter. These were already showing in certain search results like where content is well shared or liked. But this official notification will set the tongues wagging in SEO world.

Raw tweets are now showing prominently in the search results. Most of these are primarily from authority Twitter users. The most popular posts are now attached with the searches. Businesses can certainly use this facet in their online campaigns.

Pages Are Now Ranked on Facts

Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT) is a far more superior method for SERPs. The quality of pages is determined on the basis of accuracy instead of just links. The facts about a certain topic will be compared, tweets included, and relevant results are compiled. Webpages deemed factually correct are more likely to be displayed higher in the search results. When used in tandem with traditional search methodology, this method is likely to deliver more accurate results.

Up to the Minute News & Updates

Inclusion of Tweets in the searches will also help Google deliver real time news and updates. The idea here is to provide the users with live updates in the Twitter world and track a topic in real time. This not only updates the users better but also delivers news best related to a context. Conversations have a relative effect on the news since news can be manipulated but the tweets show the real world’s perspective in a more organic way.

Better Content that Stimulates Search Results

Twitter now offers more control over the content to its users, creating a huge wave of trust from its users. This helps stimulate the social content and drive further sharing of the content. New audience’s viewpoints can be better integrated into the search results. To increase its user base, Twitter has purchased ZipDial. Now, it has more than 248 million users.

No More Twitter Crawling – Faster Access to Tweets

As social content is now readily put into the SERPs, the lines between traditional content and social content is blending. The inclusion of tweets now shows that other social content will soon find its way onto the search engine’s radar. Added visibility of the tweets will lead to integration of other channels of social media with the Google’s algorithm.

It is vital to note that social and search are not that different from each other. Facebook’s Graph is a perfect example of how social search can be highly influential in building online brands. In the near future, the distinction between these two channels will dissolve further. Also, this agreement between Twitter and Google will further help cement the relationship these two brands share. In the end, it will be search marketers who will benefit the most with this strategic partnership and is bound to change the way users interact with each other in the digital social sphere.

Best Strategies to Kick Start your marketing campaign in 2015

January 23rd, 2015

2014 would be remembered as a subtle year in digital marketing. The trends were slow and predicable but impressive nevertheless. This slow change is going to be continued in the next year. And if you are a webmaster planning for 2015 marketing strategies, your branding plan has to be approached in a whole different manner.

Here are some tactics for 2015 that will define the way businesses achieve online success.

  1. Original Video Content

Videos were big time in 2014 and the trend is going to be carried over into this year as well. More and more websites are using videos not only for their YouTube channels but also on their home pages, services pages and much more. Video promotion will see big opportunities since more and more platforms now support direct video streaming and are reaching their clients on smartphones better. Whatever your brand is involved in, charity or services, a video can generate huge response within minutes.

  1. Mobile-First Marketing

Businesses are now rising to the mobile challenge and approach has shifted dramatically. So much so that some businesses devote a major chunk of their budget only to the mobile marketing strategy. You would be hard pressed to find a business that does not pay much attention here. So, from mobile responsive websites to fast loading speed for smartphones, the trend has yielded significant returns for brands. But mobile marketing keeps you on your toes due to its highly dynamic nature. If apps were a major hit in 2014, the coming year will shift focus on more personalized approaches.

  1. Ultra personalization

Personalized ads and much more use of cookies to deliver the most relevant content will be all the rage in 2015. Algorithms are used to track more data and convert into meaningful information on a personal level to be used for personalized marketing campaigns. Location targeting and retargeting will be more in focus to achieve a cohesive Internet experience.

  1. More Millenial Targeting

Millenial generation is much more interested in online everything and they have got the money. So, the targeting will be more biased towards Millennial generation. This age group will create the largest online consumer group in the coming years and 2015 will lay the groundwork into that very direction. The spending power will be much more channeled due to more digital platforms.

  1. Don’t Neglect Local SEO

People still prefer to buy on brick and mortar business especially when it comes to larger purchases. So, do no ignore the local SEO. Make sure that your clients are better targeted at a local scale.

  1. Credibility and Authenticity

People have started to trust credible online sources much more than general sources. So, you better move in fast and build credibility. Make sure that you are well in sync with the authentic references and they support your business well.

2015 has just started. If you want to improve your exposure and get more conversion, this is the time to act. Plan your strategies and get the right people to implement it in the right manner.

Digital Marketing to Increase Revenue – 5 Simple Ways to Boost Online Growth

December 2nd, 2014

Digital marketing is increasingly becoming the quintessential weapon in any webmaster’s arsenal. With more and more customers moving online, the potential is simple limitless. It is perhaps the only way to stay ahead in these times especially when you are a small business.

Here are five simple ways that you can use to stay ahead of the curve and help grow your business in the right manner.

  1. Set Goal – Know what you want before you embark on a campaign. Whether you want more customers or build brand reputation, it is crucial that you know your goals. When you have a clear vision in your mind, you can better approach milestones and your chances of success increase significantly. Going blindly into the digital marketing arena is nothing but a suicide. Plan your strategy keeping the goals in mind.
  1. Marketing Funnel– You have got to have well-built marketing funnel to make the most out of your digital marketing strategy. You have to track your customer right from the traffic part to the final lead generation part. And when this funnel is in place, you have to encourage your visitors to move into this funnel only to emerge as your clients. Call to actions, marketing strategies and offers are examples of marketing funnels.

You have to create the right awareness about your brand. Also, then your clients must move to the interest part of the campaign. The customers must have a certain desire for your brand or product in order to take positive action. When they take action, you convert them from simple visitor on your website to a loyal customer. Furthermore, a good funnel will help you attract repeat customers as well.

  1. Call to Action – The right call to action has the potential to convert your visitors into customers quickly and effectively. It could be an image or a line of text. And the action can include buying a product, subscribe to a newsletter, watch a video or request an estimate. The concept of a CTA is also related to getting the visitor’s contact information in order to continue the marketing chain. A good CTA is magnetic in nature and creates the right sense of desire in the customer’s mind. It should also be practical and tread the fine line between fantasy and real product. Add too much sugar and you will spoil the whole dessert. Grab the attention subtly and lead them towards action.
  1. Lead Magnet -You can use a lead magnet independently or in combination with a call to action. You can think of lead magnet as some add-on to your relevant product that drives potential visitors into the funnel. For example, an offer or a discount can bring them closer to actual action.
  1. Drive Traffic – Initial traffic must be there to drive it into the funnel effectively. Traffic can be generated by using various methods including quality content, keyword strategy, website optimization and social media marketing tools. You have to get the right exposure for your brand in order to attract more and more traffic to your website. Customer engagement helps retain the traffic.

These simple online marketing methods can help put your business in the spotlight. You can make the difference using these methods consistently. If you want your brand to reach the zenith, digital marketing is your only savior.