Blog Insights

 Your website is unique to your business, but it shouldn't be too unique – below are 7 pages websites should have.

Home

This is your front door. Use engaging website copy that highlights your most compelling benefits and eye-catching visuals to capture visitors' attention. (You have 8 seconds.)

About Us

Your opportunity to answer questions like 'Who owns this business and what is its history?' 'What makes you different and unique?' (Avoid generalities like "We're committed to quality.")

Products/services 

What products and services do you offer?

FAQs

The place to answer questions your customers always ask. It’s a time-saver for both you and your prospects and a great place to give information about your company.  

Testimonials

Offers “social proof” that others are pleased with your products/services. You can use quotes, statements, etc. from current customers, but video is the jackpot of testimonial credibility.

Blog

Establishes you as a thought leader in your industry, creates relationships without requiring anyone to talk to anyone else, and gives search engines more searchable material to bring people to your site.

Contact Us

Makes it easy for visitors to contact you by offering your email address, phone number, physical address, and social media links.

The way you present the content on these 7 pages can be as unique as you are –but to have an effective website, the pages aren't optional.

Your website is perfect – beautiful, easy to navigate, informative ...

But can people find it? Because if they can't, nothing else about it matters.

There are several ways to be found online:

• Organically – drawing traffic in with good SEO techniques, excellent content, and a strong social media strategy
• Earned attention – teaching people about your business through public relations and public speaking
• Paid promotion – forcing people to know about your business through advertising and pay-per-click campaigns they can't ignore

Why is the internet, your website, and being found online more important than ever? Consider these statistics:

In 2009:

• 55% of leads came from the internet
• 19% through direct mail
• 11% through email
• 15% through events

In 2010, things changed:

• 58% internet
• 21% direct mail
• 9% email
• 12% events

In 2015, things changed drastically:

• 71% web
• 14% direct mail
• 6% email
• 9% events

The internet numbers are only going to continue to go up, because the internet is easy – you can use it in front of the TV in your pajamas while eating a snack. And now that everyone has a smartphone, it's even easier! 

So I don't have to tell you that your website and online presence are VITAL to your business's success.

And we’re back with the marketing hourglass! Today we’re going to tackle the know, like, and trust steps in a prospective customer’s journey to find the perfect product/service.

Know – how do you get people to realize you exist?

• Write blogs
• Optimize content for search engines
• Ask for referrals from current customers

Like – how do you get people to like you?

• Have an easy-to-use website
• Offer helpful content
• Be relatable (by sharing your sense of humor, for example)

Trust – how do you foster trust once people know and like you?

• Get testimonials from current customers
• Do the things you say you’ll do (follow through)
• Offer helpful content

Once these 3 steps in the marketing hourglass are complete, it's time to get prospective customers through 'try' and ‘buy’ to become ‘repeat’ and ‘refer’ customers.

The next part of our marketing sophistication and maturity series is the marketing hourglass. The marketing hourglass is the process/journey/life cycle that prospective customers move through as they explore their options.  We all go through this process at some level with every decision we make.

After our last few emails, you should know if your marketing, content planning/creation, and total online presence strategies are absent, reactive, sporadic, or consistent.

Today, we’re going to talk about a calendar, and how much you need one.

So far in our series about marketing sophistication and maturity, we’ve covered strategy and content planning/creation.

This week we’re honing in on your online strategy. Your goal is to have a ‘total online presence,’ wherein you have the following elements:

• A customer-centric website
• Search engine optimization
• Directory listings
• Social media participation
• Customer reviews/testimonials

Like strategy and content planning/creation, a total online presence can be absent, reactive, sporadic, or consistent.

In the next few weeks, we’ll go deeper on each of the bullets above.

For this week, it’s about having a customer-centric website.

An absent online strategy means you designed your website with only aesthetics in mind, and you've probably never updated it.

If your strategy is reactive, your website is still design-only but has most likely been updated in the last 2 years.

With a sporadic strategy, your website has conversion plugins to help with lead generation and has been updated more recently.

And a consistent online strategy means your website is designed for the ultimate positive customer experience and is continually updated via your content strategy.

Dating. No one really likes it. So many choices, but so few that are perfect for YOU. And now you find out that finding a good Inbound marketing agency is like dating? 

Here's how to make it less painful:

Reduce the size of the candidate pool.

If you're a B2C pet food company, it doesn't make sense to go on a date with an Inbound marketing agency that focuses on the B2B realm.

Play the field.

Go on many dates, and refine your search by finding those who share your goals, vision, and culture – and don’t compromise.

Make an investment – but realize that the first investment may be a bust.

You might find an agency that you really like, but the feeling may not be mutual – and vice versa.

Find "The One." 

You'll know why every other agency didn't work out – your relationship will be based on mutual respect, appreciation, and trust.

Navigate the inevitable bumps in the road (no relationship is perfect)

Any relationship that doesn't have occasional conflict means there's no passion or deeper feelings.

Get married!

Wait, no. Hire the Inbound marketing company and live happily ever after.

Step into the partnership with clear goals, expectations, and positivity. Don't let pain from past relationships prevent you from enjoying a new one –declare a clean slate and both sides will win!

Want to read more? Check out the full blog here.

You know the mobile stats are high – 95% of Americans own a cellphone, of which 77% are smartphones, and 42% of them use a mobile device as their primary internet tool.

Have you adapted?

Here are some must-know mobile design practices to help you get started:

Prioritize content (mobile devices have less screen real estate)

• Design your website with multiple platforms in mind.  
• Remove items that don’t directly improve user experience – text, images, etc. that clutter the page and make navigation difficult
• Create a tappable menu to contain the information you don’t want to remove
• Keep the search box!

• Add your phone number so it automatically prompts a call when touched
• Code your social media icons so they open in the app versus the browser (assuming the user has the app)
• Have your email address open in the email app and autofill the recipient

• Make links bigger to avoid navigation errors – and user frustration
• Use the recommended size of at least 45 pixels in height

Failure to create an intuitive mobile site will hurt you in the long run. For one thing, it will increase bounce rates and reduce conversions; for another thing, Google will penalize you and you’ll lose ground in the search engine ranking game.

Thank you to Warren Williams, a business success coach and the founder of TurningPoint Business Coaching, for this week's tip!

Getting “stuck” is a part of life, whether it’s a loss of motivation, a business plateau, or just a general feeling of blah.

Being stuck isn’t the problem, though – staying stuck is.

Consider these 5 tips to get “unstuck”:

Change your brain food

Change the information you’re consuming. Intentionally avoid negativity – take a social media break, perhaps – and find motivational messages instead.

Examine the people you spend time with

Jim Rohn (a business philosopher) said we’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Are your five people keeping you stuck?

Do what you’re afraid of

Sometimes the things we fear most have the most potential for a positive impact. Conquer those fears – public speaking, maybe – and you’ll reap the benefits of that skill plus get unstuck.

Invest in yourself

Take a class. Hone your skills. Be intentional about increasing your knowledge, and you’ll get unstuck and learn new ways to move your business forward.

Change it up

Used to take a walk after dinner? Try taking one before work. Drive a different route to the office. Shifting your patterns/habits changes your outlook and could be the key to getting unstuck.

Here are 3 things we learned about the future of technology when we attended HubSpot’s Inbound 2017 conference.

Artificial Intelligence

A major business area for AI is customer service – it’s getting increasingly smarter, which enhances the customer experience. Gone are the days of robotic exchanges; AI can learn and write human-like responses.

Video

People are 144% more likely to buy after watching a video about your products/services (versus reading about them.) Use video to tell a compelling story about a customer going through the journey of having a problem and finding your product or service – and of course how it solved their problem. 

Photography

You can spot a stock photo from a mile away, and not in a good way. Luckily, we live in 2017 – almost everyone has a high-quality camera in their pocket. Take pictures of the environments you’re in every day and eventually you’ll have a library of images to repurpose.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of tech takeaways from HubSpot’s Inbound 2017, but they’re a good place to start.

You probably already know that marketing is about generating creative ideas, but did you know that your second idea is often more creative than your first? Problem is, we rarely explore our second ideas.

Why? Because our egos get in the way.

We don’t see our own flaws – we’re smart and creative, so of course our first idea is the best idea. But by having so much (misguided) faith in ourselves, we’re “settling” with the less valuable idea.

Flush out your ideas, be critical, and push yourself. Talk to team members about ideas and NEVER stop at one.

Not all customers are created equal.

Acquiring customers is the only way to grow your business – but acquiring customers isn’t free. So how do you determine how much it costs to acquire new customers?

Prospecting by email is challenging – and often unrewarding. High-level prospects receive hundreds of emails a day, so you won’t be surprised about how carefully you need to craft emails that recipients will open, read, and respond to.

Last week, we talked about writing amazing email subject lines. This week, we’re offering tactics to make people want to read and respond to your emails after they open them:

• Don’t write like a salesperson.
  • People don’t want to be called “sir” or “madam;” when you write casually, as if it’s an in-person conversation, you sound like a genuine person with something genuinely valuable to share.
• Make it easy.
  • Write emails that prospects can read and respond to in one minute or less by making them no longer than 5 sentences and making the offer and desired response/action blatantly obvious.
• Do some research.
  • Go deeper than a personalization token. Find a prospect’s job title or recent promotions/accomplishments, then reference a tidbit of personal information in each email. You can also demonstrate knowledge of their field by researching top trends in their market.

Another excellent buffer to put between writing and sending your email is this simple question: “If I were the prospect receiving this email, would I open it, read it, and respond to it?” If the answer is no, start over. If yes, send away!

Graymail: when you give your email address to get a discount and get endless emails.

• Segmenting your email database. 
• If a contact hasn’t opened 10 emails in 6 months, remove them from your email campaigns.
• Allowing subscribers to select their engagement level. 
• Maybe they want monthly emails, not weekly ones.

The subject line is the gateway to an email; use the wrong words and get sent straight to the trash folder. (Or worse, the spam folder.) It doesn’t matter if your email holds a funny gif, an amazing insight, or a fantastic deal on your products/services – if your subject line sucks, you might as well have sent a blank email.

You don’t have much room to grab your prospect’s attention, so avoid the following in your email subject lines and save space for the words that really count.    

• Your company name (XYZ, Inc.)
  • If the recipient has never heard of XYZ, Inc., including it in the email subject line simply reinforces that it’s a sales email – because why else would a business they've never heard of be emailing them?
• Jargon, such as “reaching out,” “connecting,” and “touching base”
  • It goes without saying that emails are reaching out/connecting/touching base; it’s practically redundant to say so.
• Time-related phrases like “15 minutes” or “quick call?”
  • What the email recipient sees in this subject line: a salesperson they’ve never met/heard of asking for a meeting. Try to find a faster a way to establish yourself as a pushy salesperson and you’ll fail.
• Mistakes
  • Incorrect grammar, punctuation, spelling, and typos make you look unprofessional and disorganized.
  • Also, avoid mistakes with personalization tokens. You’d ignore an email that said, literally, “Hi, [firstname],” right? That’s because it makes the message seem less human.

The words that send emails to your trash are likely different than those that send emails to my trash; it’s a fruitless endeavor to attempt to ferret out all the hated words and avoid them. However, you can use our advice above for starters as well as read more here.

Try this:

Millennials are more than just the biggest generation now – they're the biggest generation that spends more than $600 billion per year.

But having grown up in a world where the internet always existed, you're going to have to up your marketing game to get their attention.

Here are some ideas for marketing to the millennials:

Embrace social media

The list of social media platforms they use is long, and it's where they want to engage with each other, brands, and products.

Appeal to their values 

Millennials volunteer more than any other generation and use their purchasing power to support companies with values similar to their own.

Don’t be boring

Millennials are early adopters, and newer is better. Fresh ideas, innovative approaches, original insights and, of course, new technology will never fail to catch the millennials’ attention.

Millennials are up-and-coming, and failing to create a marketing strategy to connect with them is at the peril of your business.

Search engine optimization is constantly changing, quite often thanks to Google rearranging the 200+ signals that power its algorithms. Let us shed some light on 3 common SEO myths.  

• Having a secure (https) site isn’t important for SEO.
  • Https:// (versus http://) means that the connection to a website is encrypted so hackers can’t steal valuable data, like passwords and credit card numbers.
  • In August 2014, Google announced the addition of https as a signal in their algorithms; if you continue to use the standard http, your rankings can suffer. If you haven’t made your site secure yet, now is the time – Google says that Chrome will flag http pages as potentially unsafe starting this month.

• Good user experience is a bonus, not a requirement.
  • Look at it from the search engine’s point of view: although they didn’t create the page, they’re endorsing it by including it in their search results, and if Google repeatedly sends you to sites that offer bad user experiences, you might stop using Google.
  • Focus on things like page load time, the use of a variety of mediums, quality of content and offers, ease of navigation, and aesthetics to improve your user experience; Google’s algorithms will find those elements and your site’s rankings will improve naturally.

• SEO is all about ranking.
  • Ranking has never been a guarantee of success; you can rank well, get tons of site traffic – and never generate a lead. While there IS a strong correlation between your ranking and clickthrough rates, ranking isn’t the supreme goal it used to be.
  • Instead, optimize your site with keywords, good meta descriptions, appropriate tags, and high-quality content. It doesn’t matter where you rank if your quality is sub-par – people may come to your page, but they’ll bounce quickly.

Capitalizing on the knowledge from these busted myths will allow you to be both more effective and more efficient with your SEO strategy.

You had a niggling feeling that the two products you were looking at were identical, but you couldn't stop yourself from buying the one with the big name brand – and the bigger price tag.

Aka brand awareness.

Here's why brand awareness makes the difference between a sale and a pass:

If you’ve ever Googled your business and were disappointed with the results, it’s probably because that’s not an accurate portrayal of where you stand in Google's rankings.

Why? Because Google uses algorithms to make searches better – but better for the person searching, not better for your business.

Google says, “You want the answer, not trillions of webpages. Algorithms are computer programs that look for clues to give you back exactly what you want. [Our] algorithms rely on more than 200 unique signals or “clues” that make it possible to guess what you might really be looking for.”

Many signals are out of your control and affect how you see yourself versus how others see you – one signal takes into account your location, for exampe. So, if you were standing on a street corner and your business building was not nearby when you Googled yourself, you probably didn’t show up. That’s because it’s more useful to searchers on mobile devices to see what’s nearby.

It's not all bad, though – these things can help you improve your rankings:

• Keywords and SEO – having a keyword in the title, tags, content, meta description, etc. acts as a “relevancy signal.”
• Mobile optimization – making your site mobile-friendly will make it more likely to appear on mobile search results.
• Multimedia – using varied forms of content (e.g., text, video, AND images) acts as a “content quality signal.”

The point is this, however: you can't get an accurate picture of where you stand on Google by Googling yourself. Consider these tools instead: SEMrush and SpyFu.

Happy Googling!

My boyfriend, who is significantly older than me, doesn't blink when I ask him to set the DVR to tape one of our shows.

(Probably not that you can write wildly popular song parodies.)

My brother, who is significantly younger than me, gives me a blank look.

Why doesn't my brother know what I'm talking about?

I'm not speaking his language.

Weird Al Yankovic sang about phone books and yanking phone cords out of the wall, Jim Croce let the operator keep the dime, and the Turtles thought a dime was a great investment for calling someone you love.

The problems here are many:

• We don't "tape" shows anymore
• Phones don't have cords
• Phone calls haven't cost a dime since 1982 (not that anyone knows what it means to pay for an individual call anymore)
• No one uses operators
• Do they even still print phone books?

The potential for misused language applies to more than TV and phones, of course, but the point is this:

While the younger generations are rapidly gaining purchasing power, are you still speaking the older generations' language?

You can’t appeal to someone who doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

Still fine-tuning your social media strategy for 2017? Here are some things to consider before you finalize.

• Live video is going to explode – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all have live video streaming, with other apps – like Periscope – popping up and gaining in popularity; according to Facebook, users engage with live video feeds 10x more than other types of content.
• Messaging apps will be standard – People like instant gratification, and they like personalization: enter messaging apps, which brands are using to communicate one-on-one with customers and offer faster, more personalized customer service.
• Social media will be the new eCommerce – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat already offer ways for users to purchase products from directly within their apps, so 2017 will see this trend continue to grow.
• Mobile advertising will get more competitive – 80% of Facebook’s $7 billion ad revenue in 2016 came from mobile ads, and mobile internet usage will soon exceed desktop internet usage. Add social media being the new eCommerce, and it makes sense that marketers should expect to spend more money on mobile advertising in 2017.

Social media is constantly evolving, and there's no telling how drastically the game could change in the next 12 months. The real secret is to pay attention and be prepared for, well ... anything.

Want more information about social media predictions in 2017? Read this blog.

Have you ever found yourself talking about dead cow instead of prime rib?

We all sell every day. Ideas, products, ourselves ...

Often, when businesses try to sell, they use a lot of words describing what their service is (dead cow) and few words describing what their customers get (prime rib).

The problem is that dead cow is less appetizing than prime rib, and therefore using the wrong language is making your customers suddenly less hungry.

So if you find yourself talking about dead cow instead of prime rib, how do you change your approach?

The process is easy to define (but hard to do), and has three steps:

• Understand your position
• Understand your real benefits
• Use words that are relatable to your audience

Want to learn more? Read the blog here!

Content marketing: we love it. We advocate for it.

But we understand it can be tedious.

But guess what? All that content you’ve been creating? You can use it again! (But you have to spruce it up first.)

Here’s how to reuse content:

• Choose the right content
  • Reuse the blog with 500 views, not the one with 12 views.
• Update your SEO/keywords
  • Things change, including how people search. Your product/service is still relevant, so make sure your keywords are still relevant, too.
• Examine best practices
  • Cramming as many keywords as possible into a post isn’t how it’s done anymore.
• Update the content
  • Does your blog mention MySpace? That’s gotta go. Either choose blogs with always-relevant content or update the content so it’s current.

Making your old content squeaky clean again will increase your website traffic – with less work than endlessly seeking ideas for new content.

PS – Read the whole blog here, and read about other ways to reuse content here.

Google is changing their AdWords format and offering expanded text ads (ETAs) that are 50% larger! They're available on the Google Search Network and the Google Display Network, are supported by all the AdWords tools that currently support text ads, and are fully compatible with ad extensions. 

Expanded text ads differ from standard text ads by having:

• Two headline fields (up to 30 characters each)
• A single, expanded description field (up to 80 characters)
• A display URL that uses your final URL's domain
• Two optional ”Path” fields used in the ad’s display URL (up to 15 characters each)

Starting January 31, 2017, standard AdWords ads will remain “in play,” but you won’t be able to edit existing ones or create new ones – Google will only support expanded text ads beyond that date.

Luckily, you don't have to create new ads entirely from scratch – Google is allowing you to alter your existing standard ads, although you'll want to update the content to take advantage of the new character limits.

ETAs are basically Google ads on steroids, giving you more control over your message; early research has shown that the ETAs receive significantly more clicks than the standard format.

So don't wait – get started with Google's expanded text ads today!

To learn more about Google's expanded text ads, read this article.

Last week, we talked about how AI is poised to transform the way we do marketing.

To prove it to you, this week we’re offering a list of the AI that’s already out there, quietly boosting marketers’ productivity every day.

A marketing partnership is a mutually beneficial marketing relationship between you and another business; the right partnership helps each of you reach new customers and get new business.

As you look for a marketing partner:

• Ask, "Who has my next customer as their current customer?" (You'll need strong buyer personas.)
• Search for a partner who shares your values. (You'll need a clear core value statement.)
• Define a revenue goal. (What would access to 10% of a partner's customers mean to your bottom line? Is it worth it?) 

Finding a marketing partner offers 3 simple benefits:

• It’s better. Your content will be stronger when you work with a partner who knows the audience as well as, if not better than, you.
• It’s faster. Your content will spread faster because of your access to your partner's customers.
• It’s cheaper. Sharing content with your partner's customers is much less expensive than advertising to get a broader audience.

For a partnership to work, both brands must benefit. Set goals together and keep the lines of communication open and you'll have a bona fide marketing partnership on your hands.   

When marketers create content, it’s tempting to use intuition to predict what will make people click and convert. But feelings aren’t measurable, which can be detrimental to your results – you need to know what works, and guessing won’t tell you.

That’s why you need conversion rate optimization (CRO) tests. The most common type of CRO is an A/B test, and it simply tests one variable in a piece of marketing content against another – a green CTA versus a red one, for example – to see what works better.

Consider using this checklist as you plan an A/B test:

Before the A/B test

• Pick a variable to test
• Choose a goal
• Create your pieces of content (with one variation)
• Determine your sample groups and sample size
• Decide how significant your results need to be

During the A/B test

• Use an A/B testing tool
• Test both variations simultaneously
• Run the test long enough to get substantial results
• Collect feedback from users

After the A/B test

• Focus on your goal metric
• Measure the significance of your results (HubSpot has a free testing calculator!)
• Take action
• Plan your next test

There are millions of variables that affect your content. The verbiage on your CTA. The location of the CTA. The color of the font. The font itself. The use of bullets versus bolding or italicizing important text. How many questions a form has. The list is truly endless, and to get the most out of your content, you need to know what works.

And A/B testing can tell you.

For more information on this checklist, look here.

All the way back in 2014, Google said, “Make your site mobile friendly, or be prepared to go down in the rankings.” Now, 85% of websites are optimized for mobile – so Google is upping the ante for a better user experience.

On January 10, 2017, there will be a new Google decree: “Get rid of mobile pop-ups, or be prepared to go down in the rankings.”

Last week, we wrote about smart CTAs and how they can change their content to offer a relevant message based on where the visitor is in the the buyer's journey. They are extremely effective because they deliver the right message to the right prospect at the right time.

Three great examples of smart CTAs are:

And given the 7 seconds you have to capture a visitor's attention and the fact that 67% of online consumers have left sites after seeing an ad that wasn't relevant to them ... smart CTAs are the way to go.

A call-to-action (CTA) is what it sounds like – a call for someone to take action. It usually takes the form of a button on a web page that uses verbs like “download,” “learn,” “read,” etc. They’re a solid tool for inbound marketing, so you’re probably already using them to promote your landing pages.

But are you using smart CTAs? Smart CTAs are super effective for use in the buyer’s journey. Why? Because a smart CTA can change the content/text of the call-to-action depending on the visitor viewing it, giving your prospective customer a more personalized experience.

3 Benefits of Smart CTAs:

• They improve conversion rates – first times visitors might click a CTA for an eBook, but probably not one for a sales call. A smart CTA’s personalized message means better relevancy, which means more clicks. You ignore irrelevant CTAs, right?
• They improve a visitor's website experience – take Amazon as an example of this. When you visit their site, they have a section of stuff they think you’ll like. Sure, it’s just based off your old searches, but it makes you feel kind of special, doesn’t it?
• They delight your customers – when a new visitor gets to your site, try a CTA that simply welcomes them. The next time they come, the smart CTA will have changed the offer to something appropriate for that visitor. Would you prefer visiting not-so-pushy pages?

CTAs are a must-have tool for your inbound marketing. Without a “call-to-action," your site visitors may never take action! (Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration.) Even so, if you're not using CTAs, you should be, and if you are using CTAs, it's time to graduate to Smart CTAs.

Check back next week to learn how to build a smart CTA!

Last week we wrote about 3 lead generation mistakes you might be making, and we promised to revisit the topic this week to offer some solutions.

The mistakes were (and their solutions are):

• You don’t offer content for the whole buyer’s journey
  • There’s no one-size-fits-all offer, so you’ll need to spend time creating a variety of options that cater to every stage of the buyer’s journey.
  • New prospects, for example, might want checklists and templates. Visitors a little further down the funnel might want email courses and webinars. Prospects even further down might be ready for a demo or a phone call.
  • Want to get really fancy? Try smart CTAs.
• You’re buying leads, not generating them organically
  • If you don't want to damage your email deliverability, your email recipients absolutely must opt in.
  • Offer valuable content – webinars, blogs, free trials, etc. – in exchange for their contact information and the right to email them.
  • Bottom line? Quality email addresses aren't for sale.
• You treat all your site pages the same
  • Figure out your top 4 or 5 most popular pages, then optimize them for leads.
  • Consider keywords, CTA color and placement, image choices, etc.
  • Don’t forget lead conversion offers. Creating offers takes time, but it’s an extremely effective way to get that contact info you’re seeking.

None of these fixes will start leads growing on trees – and we wish they did too! – but they give you a place to start. (For more lead generation mistakes and their solutions, check out this blog.)

The key to making sales is generating leads – but leads don’t grow on trees, so generating them isn’t easy.

In fact, you might be making some mistakes, like these:

• You don’t offer content for the entire buyer’s journey
•  
  • Prospects visit your site at different stages in the buyer’s journey, and you need offers for every stage.
  • First-time visitors, for example, aren’t ready for a “Buy Now!” CTA, so you need less intimidating offers for them.
• You’re buying leads, not generating them organically
•  
  • The point of generating leads is to nurture them into customers; if you buy an email list, it’s likely that most recipients haven’t heard of you, don’t need your services, and/or are annoyed by your emails.
  • Whatever the reason, you’re likely to get marked as spam.
• You treat all your site pages the same
•  
  • Look at your site’s traffic stats and you’ll see that some of your pages are way more popular than others. And if your “About Us” page, testimonials page, and one or two blog posts are the most visited pages, why would you treat them like every other page?
  • The answer is, you shouldn’t – you should SEO the heck out of them, design special CTAs, and create a lead-capturing offer.     

If you’re making these mistakes, don’t worry – you’re not alone. AND you can check back next week to learn how to fix them!

We LOVE referrals. Referrals are the best leads you can get, hand downs. But.

Yes, there's a but. It’s not good to put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak – if you have a referral dry spell, you need other strategies to fall back on.

Try these (usually underutilized) alternatives:

• Guest Blogging
  • Publishing your content on other sites opens you up to a whole new audience. Figure out where your prospective customers are online – you need to target the places they’re most likely to come across your content – and write blogs that fill the content gaps in those publications.
• Paid Online Marketing
  • Budgeting some money for paid/sponsored media will give your content a boost. Again, figure out where your prospective customers are online, and devote your money to those places; Google Adwords and social media platforms are good places to start.
• Conferences and Networking Events
  • Face-to-face networking might be “old school,” but it certainly isn’t dead. Brush up on your handshake, ice breakers, and networking skills, get your business cards out, and start attending conferences and networking events where you might find prospective customers and/or industry partners.

So even if you’re crushing it in the referral department, consider these other strategies as insurance. As they say, it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it – and in this case, having it is critical to your success.

You know we believe it's impossible to overstate the benefits of blogging, but we also realize our audience wants other types of content too.

And right now, internet users are voraciously consuming video – with no end in sight.

Research studies predict that 80% of web traffic will be video by 2019, and internet user surveys back that up: 45% of respondents admitted to watching 1+ hours of video on Facebook and YouTube each week, and usage statistics indicate that users watch 8 billion Facebook videos and 10 billion Snapchat videos per day.

That's A LOT of video.

Here are some other crazy statistics about video:*

• Social video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined.
• Homepage videos can increase conversions by 20% (or more), and landing page videos can increase conversions by 80% (or more).
• The average conversion rate for websites using video is 4.8% versus 2.9% for websites that don't use video.
• 60% of people agreed with the statement that they'd rather watch a video than read a newsletter.
• Every day, Americans watch 8,061 years of video on YouTube and 713 years of video on Facebook.

So, yes, you need to start making videos.

Don't worry, there's good news – if you stay tuned for next week's email, we'll give you some tips about producing and using videos of your own!

*Our stats came from here.

 Email marketing is a big deal: research studies found that 77% of email marketing ROI in 2015 came from segmented, targeted, and triggered email campaigns.

And there’s great news – there are a ton of creative ways to segment your email lists to create campaigns that are innovative and effective and that your email recipients will enjoy.

Here are some ways to segment your email lists that you may not have thought of:

• Organization Type
  • All businesses are not created equal, so just because you’re B2B doesn’t mean there’s no way to segment further. Do you sell to franchises? Non-profit organizations? ECommerce companies? They all have different needs, so they should all receive different emails.
• Seniority Level
  • Your contact chose “marketing” as their profession, but are they the VP of marketing or a marketing coordinator? Different roles indicate different levels of experience, education, pain points, and decision-making powers, so dig deeper than “marketing” to send more meaningful emails.
• Content Format
  • Content can be consumed in different formats – blogs, eBooks, webinars, videos, etc. – and some formats are more appealing than others to your prospective customers. If you know how your email recipients prefer to consume content, make sure you’re using that content format in their emails. 

If you're not segmenting your email lists, you're losing – losing ROI, losing email subscribers, losing leads. Fortunately, it's not hard to get started; with so many options for segmenting your email lists, you can jump right in, start running tests, and choose the ones that work for you.

For more ways to segment your email lists, read this blog.

When you tell people about your company, they don’t always understand what you do - which means you need a better company description. It's never easy to write about yourself, so here are some tips.

What makes a company description bad:

• Using “corporate speak" – your customers will be, at best, unimpressed with your business jargon/buzzwords. At worst, they'll be confused.
• Forcing too much SEO into the description – a keyword or two is good (because SEO is important), but too many sounds stilted.
• Making everything about the product – don't make the customer work too hard to figure out how your product can help them. 

What makes a company description good:

• Clearly expressing your differentiation – explain to prospects why you're different from everyone else and therefore the obvious choice.
• Showing personality – aka don't be boring. No one likes boring.
• Talking to your ideal persona – tailor your language to your target market and when they search for a solution to their problem, you'll be easier to find.

You'll notice that a good company description is very customer-centric. You're writing it for them, after all – you already know what your business offers. Stick to explaining how you can help customers and why you're the best option to do so.

And make it blindingly obvious, because online – which is how prospects are finding you now – you get about 7 seconds to make a good impression.

Use other people's time on Facebook to benefit yourself.

You probably know that Facebook has a lot of users – 1.13 billion daily, to be exact – and the number gets bigger when you consider sporadic users.

So if you aren't using Facebook for lead generation, you should be.

Here are 5 of the best post ideas for Facebook lead generation:

Send people directly to landing pages. (Because subtlety doesn’t usually work.)

• Have a compelling image – not a stock photo. (And don’t forget to optimize it by sizing it and adding alt tags.)
• Make it clear where you’re sending them – use verbs like “download,” “get,” etc. – so they don’t think they’re getting a blog when really you want them to fill out a form.

Include links to landing pages in your image captions. (Because posts with images get 2.3 times more engagement than posts without images.)

• Include links in your image captions where people are sure to see them.
• Optimize the links by shortening them with some like bit.ly or ow.ly.

Use videos to promote lead generation offers. (Because the only thing better than images are videos.)

• Include a link to a landing page in the video’s description
• Also use a verbal call-to-action in the video itself, reminding people that they can click the link to receive the offer.

Pin posts that link to landing pages to the top of your feed. (Because posts can disappear awfully fast in a news feed.)

• You can pin any type of post – text, images, videos, etc.
• A pinned post stays at the top of your Timeline for up to 7 days.

These aren't the only ways to generate leads on Facebook, but they're a good place to start. Consider reading this HubSpot blog for a few more ideas.

Sometimes the idea that people will open your emails, read them, and interact with them seems mythical, doesn't it? With people's notoriously short attention spans, spam filters, and the fact that the average business person receives approximately 120 emails per day, you might be asking yourself if you should even bother trying to make that myth a reality.

The answer is YES (we know you asked yourself, but we're going to answer for you) because it is possible to increase your email engagement rate. Consider these suggestions:

Be Real

Personalize your emails by making the “from” name your company name or the name of a specific team member. If you consistently send valuable content with the same “from” name, recipients will positively associate your name with emails worth reading.

Do not – we repeat, DO NOT – send emails from a “no reply” email address. It discourages engagement and encourages spam filters.

Don’t Be Stingy

Don’t keep all your premium content locked behind forms. Sharing a piece of premium content, no strings attached, demonstrates generosity, and people are hard-wired to react positively to generosity. You prefer to help someone or take their suggestion if they’ve been helpful or generous to you, right? Generate goodwill by giving something away, and it can lead to people taking the action you want them to.

Harness the Mob Mentality

That is, use social proof, which is a fancy phrase that means that humans are conformists. We take cues from our peers because we want to fit in and be liked – and you can use this to your advantage. Convince email recipients to take action by offering customer reviews/testimonials, case studies, Facebook “likes” and shares, retweets, etc. that prove that their peers are doing it too. (Don’t lie, though.)

Email is tough, we know, but you can't give up. Try our suggestions and check out this blog for a few more.

Your blog's looks are as important as its personality. 

We talk a lot about writing blogs – what to say, how to say it, when to post it, etc. What we haven’t talked much about, however, is blog design.

Blogs are, as you know, essential for businesses, and that means ... everyone’s blogging. And THAT means ... you need a great blog design to stand out.

Consider these important blog design elements:

A dedicated blog subscription page. Why? Because there’s nowhere else you can incorporate social proof, share examples, and fully sell the value of your blog – pop-ups and sidebars just don’t cut it.

A fast load time. Why? Because people are impatient. You have 7 seconds to catch their attention with your content, and about half of surveyed web users expect a page to load in less than 2 seconds.

Mobile responsiveness. Why? Because Google says so. (No, really.) Also because the number of people using mobile devices to surf the web is growing and will continue to grow.

Browser optimization. Why? Because some people use Safari, some people use Chrome, some people use Firefox, etc., and users should have a consistent experience no matter where they’re browsing from.

Social share links. Why? Because word-of-mouth is the most powerful marketing tool there is, and social media is its vehicle. Make it easy for people to share your content and they will.  

Does your blog measure up? To find out, download HubSpot’s blog design optimization checklist here.

Creating content can be a chore, we agree, but you need content to bring prospective customers to your website to – hopefully – become leads.

Luckily, all the content you already have has the potential to be used again, albeit in a slightly different way. Here are a few examples:

An eBook – take a series of blog posts on a related topic and combine them into an eBook.

This is great for both current and prospective customers – current customers may have already read all the content on the topic, but now you’re offering it in a convenient bundle. Prospective customers can see how much quality content you have, which might keep them on your site longer.

An Ultimate Guide – Collect the best blogs/articles you can find about a subject and give them to your visitors all in one place.

If you're running out of ideas for original content, try "borrowing" someone else’s. Don't think of it as sending prospective customers to a competitor’s page, think of it as saving your audience a lot of time – something that’s at a major premium these days.

Also. It is absolutely vital that you do not copy and paste someone else's content. That's plagiarism. Offer links instead.

A Checklist – take an instructional blog and make it even more instructional by turning it into a checklist.

Simplify it into a series of bullet points, remove anything that isn't an action, and group instructions together to make them easier to follow. (Bonus points if you create it in a printable format – people love physically checking things off lists.)

If you struggle to create original content all the time, start looking for ways to put a new spin on the content you already have – the content might not be original, but the format will be.

For 6 more ways to repurpose your content, check out this blog.

Are you considering lifetime value from the beginning of all your client relationships?

You should be, because the best way to drive long-term revenue is by keeping current clients – not getting new ones.

Consider these useful tips for improving your client retention.

• Use a project management tool – Rarely is a single person responsible for a successful client venture, and that requires organization. Use a project management tool that offers a centralized view of all tasks and deliverables. Nothing will fall through the cracks, and you'll have an audit trail.

• Be prepared for employee turnover – Create client profiles and track their activity – who’s working with whom and on what, meeting notes, contracts, proposals, etc. When an employee leaves, this allows the new account manager to step into their shoes with a smaller learning curve.

• Ask for, and use, feedback – The best way to keep clients is to stop doing things that make them unhappy, and the best way to figure out what's making them unhappy is to ask. (Don't just ask, though – once you know, do something about it.)

• Show gratitude – We know you’re thankful to have your clients’ business, but do they? Do something to show them you’re grateful to have them as clients.

It's estimated to cost between 4 and 10 times more to acquire a new client than it does to keep an existing one. Pretty easy math, right?

A Google text ad is an advertisement that appears when someone searches for your product (or a related one). It’s a small snippet of text that sits right above or below the top-ranked results.

Text ads are small. As in, Google only gives you:

• 25 characters for the headline
• 35 characters for the first descriptive line
• 35 characters for the second descriptive line
• 35 characters for the URL (well, 255 total, but only 35 will show up)

What makes a good text ad?

• Highlight what makes your brand unique
  • Do you offer shipping to multiple countries? Are you highly rated by consumers? Put it in your ad.
• Attract your ideal customers with a special offer
  • Give people something compelling to come after (free shipping, a free trial, a percentage off sale, etc.).
• Include an actionable CTA
  • An ad isn’t effective if it doesn’t prompt an action.
• Keep your ads current
  • If you’re having a sale and using a search ad to promote it, discontinue the ad as soon as the sale is over.
• Get super specific
  • Ads with statistics, discounts percentages, rankings, etc. are more likely to be clicked.
• Optimize for mobile
  • 33% of people say that their phone is their primary device – make sure your ad is as easy to use on a phone as it is on a computer.
• Watch the competition
  • See what your competitors are doing, and then create ads that are better.

Think like a customer. When you’re searching for something, what makes you more likely to click an advertisement? You probably can’t resist an eye-catching headline, unique ad copy, and an enticing offer – and neither can your potential customers.  

112.4 billion (yeah, with a b) business emails are exchanged every day, all over the world. That’s 122 emails sent and received per day – per person.

We don’t know the statistics, but we bet a whole lot of those don’t get read or responded to. Here’s why:

You Weren’t Clear About What You Wanted

The reason you sent the email should be painfully clear. What you want them to do should be painfully clear. What the deadline is for doing it should – you guessed it – be painfully clear.

You Wrote Too Much

People are busy. They don’t want to read a long, complicated email – and unless you’re their boss, they’re probably not going to. Try this:

• Stick to the issue at hand
• Use short sentences
• Stay away from $5 words
• Use bullet points to emphasize the most important parts

Bad Manners

We said shorter is better, but it doesn’t mean you have to be rude. An email that says, “I need feedback on that newsletter today.” – and that’s it – is certainly short and unambiguous, but it’s not very friendly. People like helping friendly people, so be friendly:

• Include a greeting
• Use “please” and “thank you”
• Don’t write in all caps

Too Many Email Recipients

In the non-business world, this is known as the “bystander effect.” That is, no one does anything – like call the police at the scene of an accident – because they all assume someone else is doing it. If there are too many people CC’ed in your email, you might have the same problem. (Tip: if you need that many recipients, use BCC.)

You know the cliché “treat others how you want to be treated”? Try applying it to emails – send emails you wouldn’t mind receiving, and it’s likely the recipient will feel the same.

We know that people have short attention spans and that you have approximately 7 seconds to grab their attention before they move on to another website.

A good headline is of utmost importance for grabbing attention, and headlines with numbers in them that lead to lists get the most reads.

Use numbered content lists for you because:

• The content is easy to put together
• They’re easy to share on social media
• They offer easy content extension (3 More Ways ...)

Use numbered content lists for your readers because:

• They’re easy to read
• They offer a specific promise – readers know what to expect before they even open the content
• The content is memorable

Before you start, remember this:

• Odd-numbered lists get more clicks
• “3” is more attention-grabbing than “three”

Ready to give it a try? Consider this formula:

• Odd number + adjective + mistakes/tips/insights/shortcuts + for/to + achieving/avoiding + desired outcome/disaster = headline
  • 7 Easy Ways to Grill the Perfect Steak

Numbered lists are also a great way to build authority in your area of expertise. As long as you, for example, actually have 7 great tips for grilling steak, prospective clients will know you're knowledgeable and keep coming back for more.

In marketing, nurture always wins.

Nurture marketing – sometimes known as lead nurturing –  is the process of continually engaging a prospect with offers based on your unique value, and inviting them to respond for deeper engagement.

In general, only about 10% of your prospects are ready to make an immediate purchase. That leaves 90% of prospects who aren’t ready – at least for now.

Your goal is to keep your business at the top of their mind so that when they’re finally ready to make a purchase, they’ll come to you. That’s where nurture marketing comes in.

Consider these steps for successful nurture marketing:

• Offer content that builds trust and educates – newsletters, webinars, etc.
• Offer opportunities for engagement – workshops, contests, etc.
• Be consistent – engage a prospect, on average, once a month.
• Don’t be annoying – constantly bombarding them with content will lead to an “unsubscribe.”
• Don’t be boring – send a unique offer every month.

(Of course, different industries and different products may vary.)

Nurture marketing fills the gap between “I might be interested in your product” and “I’m ready to buy.” Hopefully, you’ve been nurturing these prospects so well that when they get to the “I’m ready to buy” stage, they consider no one but you.

Webinars revolutionized seminars, as that’s what they are – except you use video conferencing software and broadcast them online. This exponentially increases the number of possible attendees, allowing you to reach a far larger audience.

For a good turn out, try some of these tips:

• Choose a compelling title.
• Create a landing page so sign up is easy.
• Promote on social networks, emails, Google Ads, a newsletter, etc.
• Consider creating a short “trailer” of your webinar content. (Like for a movie.)
• Offer reminders – send out more than one email, social media post, etc. (Don’t be annoying with the promotion, either. There's a fine line.) 

Once you have attendees and the webinar is imminent, try this example agenda:

• Introduction
• Problem statement
• Things to consider in the solution
• Presentation of your solution
• Demonstration (as appropriate)
• Summary of info presented
• CTA
• Q&A and contact info

Other considerations:

• To keep the attendees engaged, make your presentation aesthetically pleasing.
• Don’t try to cram 2 hours’ worth of information into an 1 hour webinar.
• Be entertaining.
• Create a recording to send to everyone who signed up, even if they didn’t attend.
• Put the webinar on your site so people can continue to access it.

Some attendees will be competitors keeping an eye on you, and some will be individuals who are interested in the topic but may not be looking to do business with you, but many attendees offer the possibility of new business.

REFERRALS. The gold at the end of the rainbow for your marketing purposes.

We hear you saying, “but it's not that easy to get referrals!"

First things first – are you doing these things?

• Giving potential referrers a frame of reference – a position – to think of a referral within?
• Being consistent so customers always know what to expect?
• Getting customers to know, like, and trust you?

If you're not, you should be, because referrals are powerful. They offer:

• Great ROI
• A shorter sales cycle
• More qualified leads
• Fewer price issues

Who should you be asking for referrals?

• Anyone who serves your target market but doesn’t compete with you
• Current customers
• Strategic partners

Here comes the hard part – asking for, and getting, referrals.

Try this referral process:

• Set expectations
• Educate your customers on your referral process and what the perfect referral looks like
• Choose “moments of truth” to act
  • After the first meeting
  • After signing the contract
  • After critical milestones are met
• Follow up
  • Tell them the status of their referral
  • Offer to return the favor
• Reward
  • Something personal, for their business, or for the community
  • A small token “just for thinking of us”

A referral isn’t always a lead, but it can still have tremendous value as an introduction, a new partner, or a new vendor.

If we told you that groups with shared goals are more efficient than groups whose goals are at odds with each other, you'd probably think, “doesn't everyone know that?"

Well, in many companies, it seems that the sales and marketing departments have forgotten. Surveys show that marketing and sales have very different views of their own – and each other's – performance:

• 20% of marketers believe that sales follows up on 95%+ of leads, whereas 50% of sales people think they do.
• 28% of marketers believe that sales departments use fewer than 25% of their assets, whereas 97% of sales people think they use more than 25% of their sales tools.

But there are steps you can take to fix the problem:

• Have the marketing and sales teams share KPIs.
• Agree to a time frame – marketing will leave a lead with a salesperson for X days before starting the nurture marketing process.
• Clearly document service level agreements between sales and marketing.
• Measure conversion rather than just volume of leads delivered.  

Research data says that businesses that strongly align sales and marketing outperform their peers with 19% faster revenue growth and 15% higher profitability.

Marketing and sales have a shared mission – but currently, many of them are losing the battle. If they can't learn to work together, they're well on the way to losing the whole war.

Get the whole research study to learn more!

Direct mail is the ideal small business vehicle.

With it, you can:

• Target an ideal prospect
• Promote products/services that might be “outgunned” by similar but larger and more well-known products/services
• Test offers
• Easily – and objectively – measure results

Here’s how to write a piece of direct mail:

• Opening paragraph
  • Your name, company, and position
  • What you’ll help them accomplish
• Body
  • Offer to give expert opinion on how to take existing solution to a new level
  • Explain that it doesn’t have to be a costly process
• Closing
  • Let them know you’re actively seeking your ideal client and are willing to lower your prices to help them in exchange for a referral when you’re done
  • Let them know that you can solve their problem and that they are one of only a few who are in a position to take advantage of this offer
  • Ask them to reply if they’re interested

And the best part? It’s pretty inexpensive.

Direct mail fun fact: The first direct mail (catalog, in this case) was sent by Aaron Montgomery Ward. As you might guess from his name, it was a successful first venture in direct mail!

We're never done talking about testimonials.

If you read any of our content, you know how we feel about case studies and testimonials – and if you are just getting started reading our content, this is how we feel about them:

Get them, get them, get them!

So what do you need to know about getting case studies and testimonials?

• Video is better than audio, audio is better than written, and all of them are better than nothing at all.
• They're more effective when others hear them in the customer's voice (aka, get the customer to do it whenever you can).

To get the best case study/testimonial possible, ask these questions:

• How long have you worked with us?
• Do you remember why you chose us?
• What are our strengths?
• What have we done for you that others in the past don’t or haven’t?
• What one or two things have we done that made the biggest difference for you?
• What’s the one word that best describes us?
• What 3 things would you tell another business person that is looking for [X] today to make sure they understand before they buy?

Don't let the customer be vague! A case study is no good if the customer can't offer specific examples or just seems ho-hum in his enthusiasm.

Before you publish, consider these guidelines:

• Keep it to 2-4 pages in length
• Answer the 5 Ws
  • Who, what, when, why, where
  • how! (Yes, we know it's not a “w," but it's what they taught us in school about journalism.)
• Don't over-edit, or it won't sound like the customer

Now put it out there – on your website, in a blog, on a review site (like Yelp) – so people know how great you are!

Remember: the best way to get a new customer is through a referral, and case studies/testimonials are pavement on the road to referrals.

If you read last week’s marketing tip, you learned that paying for visitors isn’t always bad, and that the best way to do so is with a pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaign.

Before you get started, there are some terms, acronyms, and definitions you’ll need to know:

• Ad position – where your ad appears on the page in relation to other ads
• Ad rank – determines your ad position
• Clicks – the number of times an ad is clicked
• Impressions – the number of times your ad is shown on a search results page
• Clickthrough rate (CTR) – a ratio that shows how often the people who see your ad click it
  • clicks divided by impressions
• Cost per click (CPC) – how much you pay each time an ad is clicked
• Cost – total cost of all clicks
• Quality score – how relevant Google thinks your ads, keywords, and landing pages are
• Conversion – the number of clicks that result in a conversion
• Conversion rate – the percentage of clicks that results in a conversion
  • conversions divided by clicks
• Cost per conversion – the average cost of all conversions
  • cost per click divided by conversions

You can make PPC marketing more effective and affordable by knowing these things:

• The higher your quality score, the higher your ad rank
• The higher your ad rank, the higher you will appear on the search engine results page
  • This increases your CTR
• The higher your quality score, the less you’ll pay for each click

The whole concept of pay-per-click can be confusing, we know. But it’s worth learning because PPC is a perfect tool for putting yourself in front of your target market just when they need you. (And we can help!)

Following up on a conversion is important, but sensitivity to timing might be more important. If you follow up with someone within 5 minutes of them (for example) downloading something from your website, you’ll connect with them more than 70% of the time. It’s about catching people in the moment.

But don’t make it a “sales call.” Just because they downloaded something doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy, or even engage in anything similar to a sales conversation. If, however, they ask a very specific question about pricing, they’re much further along in the buying process. It’s all about reading the buyers’ clues and taking the appropriate action.

It’s a delicate dance – follow up too aggressively by email and they may unsubscribe. Don’t follow up at all or follow up for too short a period of time and they may go to a competitor because they’ve forgotten about you by the time they’re ready to buy.

Marketing is not a “set it and forget it” part of business, and that’s never been truer than now.

Want to learn more? Read the full blog post here.

Telephone conversations are incredibly powerful – but also incredibly expensive. If you don’t approach making phone calls the right way, you’ll succumb to the decreasing ROI that is telemarketing.

Why does telemarketing have such a rapidly decreasing ROI?

• Prospects are great at hiding
• Research and brand preference are done by search
• Closed, profitable deals are rare

It’s better to approach the calls as “teleSURVEYING” calls versus “teleMARKETING" calls.

That is, use the phone to:

• Gather intelligence
• Gather contact info
• Gather sentiment
• Gather intent

You may find a lead, but that shouldn’t be your goal on the phone – use the telephone for the powerful research weapon it is and you won’t be disappointed.

If you aren’t using Google Analytics, what are you waiting for? It's the best, free method to understanding what is truly happening with your business's most important online asset – your website.

What does it do for you? Google Analytics:

• Provides you with charts that show you an overview of your site’s performance.
• Tells you when your site has peaks – the times of the day/week/month that people visit your site most.
• Tells you where you're getting the most traffic – search engines or links to your site on other websites.

It also offers a breakdown of the quality of your site's traffic, because, on the internet, not all visitors are created equal.

Traffic quality:

• Visitors who stay for 6 seconds – bad
• Visitors who stay for 60 seconds – good
• Visitors who stay for 6 minutes – better

When visiting a company's website, people decide if they can solve their problem there in less than one second. If you pass that test, you get 8 more seconds before they make another decision about staying or bouncing.

You should use Google Analytics because you should know your web stats – if you don't, how can you improve them?

Buyer personas represent your ideal customer – a narrow selection of people to aim your marketing at so they'll come flocking to your doors, and later, bring their friends.

To make that happen, your buyer persona needs a biography. Use this template to get started:

Paragraph 1

Hi, my name is _______. I'm from _______, I'm _______ years old, and I like to do _______, _______, and _______.  (These are common characteristics your ideal cilents will share.)

Paragraph 2

_______ happened, and now I need a product/service like yours. I want the product/service I choose to do _______. (What are the triggers that might set off your ideal client's need to search for a solution that should be your product?)

Paragraph 3

I went to a search engine and I'm frustrated because all the companies that offer this product/service say _______. I really want them to say _______ but I can't find anyone who says that.

Paragraph 4

In other words, what I really want is a person or company who can _______. 

Paragraph 5

Because if I get what I want, I can _______.

Remember: you are not selling to “anyone with money.” Buyer personas are narrowing your scope and saving you from wasting time marketing to the wrong audience.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: content is king.

Creating it, though? Not always easy, we know.

Consider these things about content:

• Content is anything you create, share, or curate that tells your story
• Creating content requires a mindset to create content
• Content has a cycle – producing, sharing, networking

Stuck on actually creating the content? Try these ideas:

• Talk to yourself (we bet you have more to say than you think you do!)
• Hire a journalist
• Set deadlines with others (and hold each other accountable)
• Reach out to guest bloggers
• Write FAQs (and their answers!)
• Publish excerpts from existing content
• Interview someone

The content doesn't have to be perfect, at least not at first. The goal is to get people to come to your site and engage with you, and there are scores of websites with imperfect content but high engagement rates. So just start. Put content out there. Get people interested.

Then work on perfection. 

You don’t need to wait until January to make changes in your life, but since we're here on the eve of 2017, we’re going to talk about resolutions.

Those who make resolutions spend January and February jazzed about how much better life will be when the next new year arrives. In reality, though, research shows that 88% of people abandon their resolutions.

Depressing, right? But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Start by accepting this undeniable truth about resolutions: change is hard.

Then, consider this: Einstein (supposedly) said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So you CAN make the same resolutions as last year and achieve them this year – as long as you take a different approach.

The real secret to creating lasting change is less about willpower and more about smarter goals and smarter thinking.

Try, for example, spreading out your goals. Is it really feasible to give up caffeine and smoking at the same time? While you have good intentions, your body probably can’t beat two addictions at once.

Then, change how you think about your goals – if, for example, all you do is punish yourself for failures, you'll start seeing yourself as a failure, and, if you're a failure, why bother? (Your brain says that, not us.) Positive reinforcement is the only way to make positive behavioral changes.

So make your resolutions and, while you're at it, resolve to approach them differently so you can be successful this year!

You started your business for a reason. There was something you wanted to do, something you wanted to share, people you wanted to help.

These are the 4 Ps:

• Passion: your “why”
  
• Purpose: the “why” of your business
• (Value) Proposition: the “what” of your business
  
• Personality: your purpose in action
  

Aren't sure what your 4 Ps are? Answering these questions might help:

Passion questions:

• What do you want in your life?    
• What don’t you want in your life?  
• What’s holding you back?  
• What’s your superpower? 

Purpose questions:

• What’s your purpose story?
• Who do you want to see your business as a hero?
• How can your business serve your passion?
• What are the 2-3 highest payoff activities?
• What do your clients tell you they value the most?

(Value) Proposition questions:

• How do you find a unique position for your business .….
  • doing something no one else is doing?
  • solving the frustration of consumers?
  • creating an obvious innovation?
  • creating a totally unique experience?  

Many business owners only track the number of prospects and new customers. While these are important, they aren't the only numbers you need to know.

You should also track:

A Thanksgiving meal is like your marketing.

Wait, wait, don’t leave! We know it sounds cheesy, but hear us out.

Your website is often the first thing that represents your business, so it’s the turkey. Turkey is the centerpiece of traditional Thanksgiving dinners, and it’s the centerpiece of your marketing campaign.

Turkey is boring by itself, though, so most Thanksgiving dinners feature plenty of sides to keep things interesting.

• Many people pour gravy over their whole plate, which is why it’s your SEO plan. SEO should be “poured” over your whole website, complementing it like gravy complements turkey – by helping you improve your ranking in the search engines and creating backlinks.
• Stuffing is your content strategy. It offers flavor, just like your content, language, and tone give your website its flavor. Some people like stuffing inside the turkey and some serve it separately – your website should serve its stuffing the way your buyer personas like it.
• Marketers don’t like blogging, and many people don’t like cranberry sauce, which is why cranberry sauce is blogging. You’re guaranteed to see cranberry sauce at a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, even if people don’t like it, and you need to have blogs on your website, even if you don’t like writing them.
• And can you imagine Thanksgiving without dessert? (We don’t like to!) Apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, bread pudding … the list of desserts is almost endless, and dessert is your social media. There are numerous social media platforms available, and each one serves a different buyer persona, so choose carefully. You wouldn’t, for example, give pecan pie to a diabetic.
• And leftovers. Ahhh, leftovers. They keep you satisfied for days, so we’re going to make leftovers your website visitors. They visit, download, register, convert, and buy, so you’re always happy to have them.

To enjoy your Thanksgiving meal to its fullest, moderation is key – the same as for your website. Too much of anything is a bad thing, including SEO, social media, and website content (minus blogs, you should have lots of those).

Everybody’s Thanksgiving dinner looks different. Different foods are served in the north than in the south, for example, but most people have a Thanksgiving dinner of some kind. Similarly, your website shouldn’t be identical to any other website – but you need to have one or your family (prospective customers) will go hungry.

P.S. To all our non-U.S. friends – we hope this analogy made sense to you too! (And if it didn't, please feel free to contact us with questions or comments.) 

Marketing is about thinking through who your ideal client is and then working your way through the 7 components of the marketing hourglass.

To move potential customers through the hourglass, you need to look at those components separately and develop content that will logically move a person along the continuum.

You can't just produce any old content, though, or put it just anywhere. It has to be quality content, and it has to be thoughtfully placed or it won't reach potential customers at the right spot in the buyer's journey. 

Here are the 7 components of the hourglass and the types of content/places for content recommended for each one.

• Know: social media, paid marketing, PR, referrals
• Like: website/blog, reception/staff interaction, newsletter
• Trust: search, expert content, references, testimonials
• Try: webinar, evaluation, small offers
• Buy: service team, new customer kit, finance/delivery
• Repeat: post-project survey, cross-selling, quarterly events
• Refer: results reviews, partner intros, peer2peer events

At the end of the day, the idea is to get your current clients to stay with you as well as be an advocate for your business. You can start by guiding them through the marketing hourglass.

63% of us are using artificial intelligence (AI) and don’t know it. You’d have missed that great new movie if Netflix hadn’t suggested it, and how much easier is it when Facebook tags your friends for you? And yes, those ads that appear online after you’ve done a search for something – also AI.

But before you panic about the world being taken over by robots, consider this: AI isn’t new. The term was coined in 1956 by a Dartmouth professor whose goal was to “make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve the kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves.”

Right now, AI is common in voice search, ecommerce, and customer service. As it grows, however, AI is poised to change nearly every part of marketing – in a good way.

In that vein, here are some key aspects you’ll need to know to be a successful marketer in an AI world.

• Data mining – the process of computers discovering patterns within large data sets. (Amazon, for example, uses data mining to analyze customer data and offer product suggestions through their “customers who bought this item also bought...”)
• Natural language processing – makes AI more sophisticated by enabling it to understand voice commands. (Voice searches, for example: the AI translates what it hears into text, executes the search using the text, finds the answer in text form, then formulates a sentence that it reads back to you in a human voice with human syntax.)
• Semantic analysis – the study of stringing words into phrases, phrases into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, etc. and building language in the context of culture. (This is a current shortcoming of AI – most AI programs can’t pick up on context clues or understand figures of speech.)
• Machine learning – the process of feeding data to an AI program to teach it to sort the information, learn and identify patterns, form conclusions, and generate predictions.

Imagine having a to-do list that prioritizes itself based on your work habits. Or an AI chatbot that handles simple customer service requests so you have time for the complex ones. These examples are just the beginning of how AI will affect the way marketers work.

For more info about AI, read this blog. (And this one, this one, and this one.)

Are you doing social media? If you read our marketing tips, you know we strongly believe that the answer should be YES – even if you’re a B2B business. The goal is to draw visitors to your website and convert them to leads, right? Well, if millions of people use social media ...

To get the most out of your social media campaign, ask yourself these questions:

• What are you promoting?
• You probably feel like it’s pretty obvious what you’re promoting: a blog post, an eBook, etc. But what you’re REALLY promoting is a desire for something – downloads, readers, website visitors, etc. When you know that, you can craft each social media post with a more purposeful message.
• Who is your target audience?
• Because you have buyer personas (you do, right?), you already know the needs, goals, and behavior of your potential customers. This knowledge dictates the offers you'll make and the voice you’ll use to speak to them on social media.
• Are you planning specifically for each network?
• Not all social media is created equal; different platforms attract different audiences and each has its own “secret sauce" posting schedule. Enter buyer personas again. Since you know where your prospective customers “live” online, you can plan your social media posts accordingly. 

Inbound marketing vs outbound marketing

Outbound marketing is intrusive (especially when done badly). It says, “You will see me whether you like it or not.” And more and more frequently, the desire is ... not. People hate to be interrupted, whether it's during dinner with a telemarketing call, during their web surfing with a pop-up ad, or during their favorite TV show with commercials.

In fact:*

• 84% of internet users have left a website immediately after closing a pop-up ad.
• 200 million Americans have added their phone numbers to the "Do Not Call" list.
• 86% of television watchers use a DVR device or streaming video to avoid commercials.
• 44% of direct email messages are never opened.

The secret to inbound marketing's success is letting people come to you. With a combination of SEO, content offers, referrals, and social media, you (un-obnoxiously) show prospective clients that you have the answer they seek. Publishing the right content in the right place at the right time makes your marketing relevant and helpful versus interruptive and intrusive.

Now, outbound marketing still has a place – after all, people have to be looking for you or your product/service for inbound marketing to work. But keep in mind: inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than outbound marketing. If your ideal customer is looking for you, then inbound is the way to go.

*Our statistics came from this infographic by Voltier Digital.

Do you wish your website was better but don't have the money for a complete overhaul? Utilize these tips to get your website working harder for you without a total redesign.

It's not me, it's you: Design your site and write your copy for your customers, not for yourself.

3rd grade navigation: If a 3rd grader can't use your website, it's too complicated.

Who needs blogs?: You! Blogging is the best SEO tool out there.

Entertain me: Also known as, don't be boring.

Add calls-to-action: Give your customers something to DO, not just something to look at.

Trust me: Be an expert in your field so people will look to you for information.

Be more social: If you aren't using social media, start now, and connect it to your website.

Incoming: Be a guest blogger, write columns, get listed in directories – incoming links are important.

Make it readable: Write your content at a 3rd grade reading level.

Face time: Introduce your employees to show the faces behind your name.

Leverage technology: Your website should be your best salesperson. Many customers will not speak to you or any of your people until the end of their buying process— but they'll see your website.

The sales process is evolving, and your website needs to be evolving along with it.

Choose your redesign agency very carefully.

Devote time and consideration when choosing a redesign agency. Look at their reputation. Ask for references. View samples of their work. (For a more in-depth look at this topic, read this)

Transparency of process is essential.            

What is your designer’s process? What will be done, when, how often will you check in, and what are the consequences of failure to deliver? Outline these in the contract from the very beginning to avoid confusion.

Get an example of what the designer would change and why.

Ask them how they would improve your existing website, both aesthetically and as a lead converting tool – remember, just because your website is pretty doesn’t mean it will “sell” your business.

Don’t forget your responsibilities.

The designer designs your site, but the content is yours. Don’t 1) make them wait for content and then complain it’s taking them too long or 2) ask them to create content. You should be working just as hard as your designer – it’s your website, so be ready to do your part.

Have a built-in agreement for your website review.

In your action plan, include a review process with the number of revisions allowed for any given page. That way, you’re satisfied with the results and don’t have to ask for additional changes before getting the last files for your website.

Don’t be unreasonable.

Don’t sign a contract and then ask the designer to do things that weren’t in the contract. Once you have paid and accepted the final product, the designer is technically done – any additional work will come with a price tag and a contract of its own.

Never pay 100% up front.

If you pay 100% up front, you lose a lot of your leverage and will have slower progress. Pay 50% up front and the remainder when the project is completed and you are satisfied. You could also collect a percentage of the agreed upon amount as your designer hits different milestones

Last tip ... GET A MARKETING STRATEGY.

Throw everything you just read out the window and remember that website designers are not marketers and your website redesign will not be successful unless you have a solid marketing strategy behind it.

If you need someone to paint your house, should you go to a remodeling contractor? No. Why? Because even though they offer the service, it’s not their specialty.

If you need to do marketing, should you go to a web development company? No, and for the same reason – it’s not their specialty.

Marketing never stops. Ever.

It takes effort. There are constant tweaks necessary to provide the content and website experience your potential leads are seeking. But website development companies aren’t in it for the long haul – you might get a support plan that entitles you to updates, but you need more than that.

It takes time. You may know best practices, but they’re only half the battle. What call-to-action design, color, and content will have the best click rate? You don’t know for sure, so you test. And change things. And test again. This is too long a process for a web development company.

It takes practice. To stay on top of marketing, you have to be on the cutting edge of best practices, tactics, cultural shifts, new tools and channels, and web development and design trends. Web development companies need only spend their time honing their web development and design trend knowledge.

So do you really want to trust your business’s marketing, lead generation, and fiscal future to a company that knows a lot about web development but only a little about marketing?