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We Are Speaking Frankly

Were you to ask one hundred consumers what they find most about marketing then you are probably going to find that at least 25% of them will say the way in which the word lie is used? Consumers hate being lied to and are far less likely to take notice of marketing if someone is always telling them a lie. In fact this has led to a cynical market which has become hard to nail down through the use of conventional marketing.
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How To Become A Face In Your Community

Most offline marketing by necessity must be done in your local area in order for it to prove efficient.   So in this respect you will find it beneficial if you make yourself much more of a local face as possible without you making everybody sick of seeing you.   Getting your picture in the local paper
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Being a Big Fish in a Small Pond

For someone to be able to judge another person’s ambition they will often ask the question “Would you prefer to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond?” When it comes to you marketing your business the answer to this question should really be the first one.

Archive for Online Marketing Tips

Nov
24

Website Features

by Mike Clay

There are innumerable amounts of websites out there today, but the majority of them are simply do not have what it takes to keep their visitors engaged and coming back for more. If you are old enough to remember when the Internet became the new buzz word, you may recall when businesses started to understand the importance of having a website. There were the early adopters, those that jumped on the bandwagon in masses, and the laggards. Believe it or not, there are those nowadays who don’t think they need a website and don’t see how an Internet presence could really help their businesses. Your website lends credibility to your business and it’s clear that unless you are still counting on the yellow pages for business, you need to have a website. How many people search on the Internet for a business, product, or a solution to a problem? Show your market that you are the solution to their problems by putting your business where it will be seen.

The problem now is that most companies either still have simple a website that serves as their online business card, or they don’t have the right information on their website to keep people engaged. A good, solid website has to be engaging. Your content has to be interesting and informative enough to keep the interest of your visitors. If your purpose is to entertain, then entertain. If your purpose is to inform, then do so. Give your visitors what they are looking for in a format that doesn’t come across as a chore. Help them with their problems; don’t make them fight through extraneous information to get what they need.

However, a great website has so much more than incredible content, in order to optimize the amount of business your website brings you; you will need to have a few more things.

Here are the main points you want to have included on your website:

• It should be designed with the terms you want to be found for on the Internet (keywords)
• It should have a call to action
• It should have an offer
• It should have a form to capture visitors’ information
• It should offer frequent, relevant content
• It should have a video
• It should have solid SEO in place

Remember, you are competing against thousands, and in some cases millions, of other pages on the Internet. Make your page STAND out. The more items you have that that captivate your audience and fulfill the search engines’ criteria, the better chance you have of getting ahead of the pack and getting more traffic and customers.

0 Categories : Online Marketing Tips
Aug
6

Tips on Building an Effective Landing Page

by Mike Clay

Any page on your website can be a landing page. These are simple a page the people enter your site through that prompt for a specific offer. Any page on your webstie that someone enters through, via Organic, PPC, or Social Media. The traffic method doesn’t matter, just the fact that it is the entry point. These pages if targeted correctly can be very powerful sales toold and increase your bottom line just because of how fine tuned you can get to specific needs. The following are a list of tips to help you as you start looking at your site as a GROUP of landing pages and not a book that should be read front to back.

Study your competiotion’s design: Start paying attention to the sites you visit and especialy those who you’re competing against. Watch how they walk people through the conversion process. Take notes on what confuses you and what turns you off. Take your notes back to your site and compare. Don’t cut cornners with this as that won’t help your business. If your baby is ugly SAY SO and fix it, denial will hurt your business. Think about in detail what you can revise, edit, or just throw out to get a better conversion and effect.

Put the “Call to Action” in the upper section of the page: Everything above where you scroll is the FOLD, you need a CLEAR Call to Action (or OFFER) above the fold. Research shows that well over half will NOT scoll “below the fold”. So forget the warm fuzy sales copy that wastes space. This isn’t a mailer. Get to the point and give a high VALUE proposition that can be seen in under a second as the page loads.

K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid): don’t overdo the design. Use a single column format with nice margins and white space to allow for easy reading. One of the worst things you can do is have a website with a design that gets in the way of conversion. Also this isn’t a novel. Break up big paragraphs into smaller QUICK statments – no more than 5 lines each. Dense-looking copy doesn’t get read, period.

Be obvious not cute: I know that a nice flash site it pretty, but people get confused when it isn’t what they are used to. So what many designers, and website owners think is clever or a good design. JUST FAILS to work. Visitors that have to work to figure out your site… LEAVE..

NO BLOATED PAGES: Keep is small and sweet, don’t load up on graphics and slow load time. Millions of people are still on DIAL UP (although it hurts me to think it). I try to keep it below a 10 second load time as much over this (EVEN for VIDEO) and I personaly leave, so I figure if I won’t wait neither will they. Your time is worth something and so is your visitors. Avoid unnecessary graphics. Optimize essential graphics to reduce file size and load time. I love PicNik for QUICK photo edits. I use it daily.

WHERE DO YOU THINK YOUR GOING.. I have MORE.. Keep these next ones handy and in MIND when building your pages.

Format your pages with an F-Pattern (GOOGLE IT): Google has thier search results in this pattern and have done a GREAT job at training the masses to see things in this formatt. So even though I don’t do it unless its a “SALES PAGE” put images flushed LEFT.

Think BRANDING: In everything you do stay consistant. Use the logo, color, style, EVERYTHING needs to speak the same message. Unless your rebuilding your brand stick with what your clients KNOW

I hope these quick tips on Landing pages help you get your mind on the right path to building HIGH Converting landing pages.

0 Categories : Online Marketing Tips
Aug
5

6 Things to Know about SEO

by Mike Clay

Most people know that being listed on Google’s first result page will bring them a lot of targeted visitors and that they will get a lot of sales through that listing.

Unfortunately, some people don’t know how SEO (search engine optimization) works and what they can expect. Some webmasters still expect that their website will be listed on Google’s first result page after submitting the site to Google. That might have worked eight years ago but it does not work today.

1. SEO takes time
You cannot optimize your website today and expect results tomorrow or next week. Search engine optimization takes time. Search engines have to find your new optimized pages, they have to find the new links to your website, they have to update the index, etc. This time is no longer MONTHS like it used to be because of the launch of Google Caffeine, but it still isn’t instant. Caffeine has drastically changed how fast a website is found by updating Googles index on the fly as the spiders (robots the search engines send out to find new pages, and see changes on old pages) crawl the web.
2. You must change your web pages
If you want to get high rankings for certain keywords, then these keywords must appear on your web pages. It is possible to get high rankings for a keyword that is not listed on your website if lots of other websites link to your website with that keyword. That’s the exception, though.

In general, the keywords for which you want to be found must appear on your web pages and they must appear in the right elements on your web pages. For that reason, you have to change the HTML code of your web pages to make it as easy as possible for search engine spiders to parse your site. These elements are known as ON PAGE FACTORS and if they are all wrong, then your losing business. (Our Website Marketing Review will help you see these factors)
3. You need links and you need the right links
Good backlinks are the key to high rankings on Google. Automatically created backlinks usually won’t help your rankings and they even might get you banned from Google’s index.

As a general rule, the easier it is to get a link, the less is its influence on the position of your website on Google. The links to your website should be from related websites and they should contain your keywords in the link text.

The more attractive your website is, the easier it will be to get good links. Your website should offer linkworthy content that other people can talk about. we call this LINK BAIT and lists of information is a great way to build it.
4. It’s crucial to choose the right keywords
If you optimize the website of a rock band than you might think that it would be cool if their site was found for the keyword “mp3″. That might be cool but it does not make sense.

People searching for “mp3″ can be interested in anything: mp3 players, mp3 decoders, the latest Justin Bieber song, general information about the file format, etc. If these people come to your rock band website, they won’t find the information they are looking for.

Optimize your website for keywords that attract the right kind of people. For example “unsigned rock band” or “rock band london”.
5. You must be realistic
Getting on the first result page for a highly competitive keyword such as “mp3″ is possible but your competitors will be old and established websites with a lot of backlinks. It is very difficult to outrank these pages.

If you have a website with just a few pages and your competitors have large websites with forums, communities, blogs, etc. then you must improve your website if you want to compete. Search engines want to show the best sites on the result pages.

If you absolutely want to get high rankings for a term such as “mp3″, start with less competitive keywords and then proceed to the more competitive terms. Search engines must trust your website before they give you high rankings for very competitive keywords.
6. You must set the right goals
Search engine optimization is not about getting a high Google PageRank (the green bar in Google’s toolbar). It is about getting high listings for the right keywords so that the right people will come to your website. The goal of search engine optimization is to increase your sales.

You don’t have to be listed for any possible keyword even if they are related to your business. You have to be listed for keywords that will bring buyers to your site. It usually takes some time to find the best keywords for your website. Running PPC ads and tracking their conversions will help you to find the best keywords.

0 Categories : Online Marketing Tips

 

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