Tag Archives: web marketing

Case Study: Online Marketing Strategy & Website Development

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About the Company:

Florie Varga is the founder of Affinity Life and Family Coaching. She is a certified life & family coach that helps good people turn lemons into lemonade.

Specializing in parent coaching, Florie supports parents survive and thrive during the transition into the teen years.

The problem:

Florie needed to get her website up and running and start marketing herself online.

She’d been working with a branding agency and had gone through numerous iterations of her website text and the website map – but she just wasn’t happy with the end result.

One of the main problems was that she didn’t have a clear direction for her business. After three or four rounds of writing and rewriting her website text, she was feeling unclear and no closer to her goal.

What we did together: create an online marketing strategy

Before we could get clear on what Florie’s website would look like, we had to develop a strategic direction that addressed:

  • What Florie was really good at, really enjoyed and what was the most profitable aspect of her business – what services to offer and prioritize.
  • Where she wanted her business to go and how she wanted to grow – her objectives and business direction.
  • What the marketplace and demand looked like  – who her competitors and customers were, and where there was a gap between customer demand and services offered.
  • Who her ideal customers were, what they were worried about, what they wanted and hoped for, and the types of things they said to her when they were describing their situation.
  • Where were her customers online – and how to get in front of them.
  • How to position Affinity Coaching as a business that stood out from the competition and become the logical choice for her ideal client.

What we did together: create a website that attracts clients

One of things that kept popping up is that Florie knew so much about her industry, her process and her tools, she wanted to share so much of it in her website text.

We had to keep coming back to the question: “Why would your customer care about that?”

Instead of emphasizing things from Florie’s perspective, meeting the client where they are – using their language, pain points and hopes and dreams.

From there, we created a website and online brand together that Florie can be proud of.

We worked together to identify:

  • What the website map looked like, what pages we would need and which ones could wait.
  • How to lay out a lot of text in a way that was easy to digest.
  • How to build consumer trust in Affinity, despite the fact it’s a relatively new business.
  • How to use images & graphics to engage the audience
  • How to capture prospective client contact information and schedule new clients easily

The results:

Affinity Coaching has an website that is:

  • Professional and consistent with the initial branding
  • Speaks to the ideal client’s pain points and needs
  • Clearly communicates the benefits and transformation that occurs working with Florie
  • Captures interested party’s contact information.
  • Stands out from the thousands of coaching sites out there

In addition, Florie has the clarity, confidence and a structured online marketing plan to continue to market herself online in a way that works to attract clients.

What the client said:

“With Laurel’s commitment and amazing knowledge and skills, I transformed not only my website but the whole marketing approach to my business. Laurel brought a well-defined step by step strategy for shifting my business focus to the client’s need over a focus on the services offered. As an end product, I have a unique, dynamic and very client centered website.

More than this amazing deliverable, however, Laurel’s professional know-how and steadfast focus encouraged a transformation and evolution in my thinking about the purpose, reason and value of my professional services to my clients. This was a wonderful and unexpected pay-off for me as I establish this new business. One that I envision would have taken a long time to realize without Laurel’s guidance.

I cannot recommend Laurel enough! She knows her business, is always professional, and has amazing positive energy. With my website and new focus I am so excited to move forward with the outreach and growing of my business.”

In gratitude Laurel!”

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Give me 2 minutes and you’ll be a master at measuring your web marketing – Part 2 of 3

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Analytics pt1

Build it and they will come
.Said no-one ever about your website.


The more you know about your website visitors, the better you can serve them, and keep them coming back.

The most underutilized tool to help you improve your website’s performance is Google Analytics.

It’s a free tool that you can embed in your website to get a gold mine of information you can use to make better business decisions.

And in today’s video, we are going to focus on the audience section of Google Analytics and some of the reports available there and what they can do and what kind of intelligence they can provide you with.

This post will show you what metrics to look for to increase engagement and conversions from casual website browsers to actual sales.

I’ll also cover where to find important demographic and user details that might surprise you (I have website visitors from Kazakhstan? Cool! )

How is my website doing? A Snapshot of Your Audience Behavior.

The very first thing that they can provide you with is a snapshot of how your website’s doing.

So, click on Audience Overview and here it will tell you what your bounce rate is, your pages per session, and your time per session.

These are some metrics to focus on improving:

Bounce Rate.

Ideally, you want your bounce rate to be as low as possible.

Typically, it will hover up at least around 30% depending on your industry If it gets any higher than, let’s say 70, then you’re doing something that you want to change, because people are coming to your site and then they are leaving right away.

Pages Per Visit.

Pages per visit ideally should be at least 4.

So, again, you want people to come to your website and be engaged and find what they’re looking for and look at multiple pages.

Time on Site.

The same rule of thumb applies for Time on Site. More is better.

You want your website visitors to spend a lot of time on your website.

I always compare last month’s results to this month’s, so I can see if the results are turning upwards or downwards.

Who are my website visitors? Your Audience Demographics:

And then there’s a whole bunch of other information that’s just fantastic under the Audience section.

One is demographic information.smartphone marketing

This section is where you can see what is the approximate age and gender of the majority of people that visited your site.

You can also find out geographic information – what countries are people coming from and how engaged are they per country.

You can also find out what website browsers they’re using as well as mobile devices <—This is a great way to test your website and make sure that it’s used and performs properly in the browsers and on the devices that your customers or future customers are using.

Demographics

 

Just because you use Internet Explorer, for example, doesn’t mean that your website  visitors do. Make sure your website performs well on the browsers and devices your audience uses.  

Are my website visitors engaged? New versus Returning.

Under the Audience section again, you want to take a look at Behavior.

Under behaviour you will see the percentage of new visitors vs returning visitors.  You’ll also see how often people return to your site, and how long new vs returning visitors are spending on your site.

Hint- You want to have a healthy percentage of returning visitors to your website.

How could this information help you make better website marketing decisions?

Tell me in the comments below!

This post is the second in a series of 3 posts on how to master Google Analytics – complete with handy videos 🙂

5 email marketing best practices to skyrocket your open, share and click rates

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5-email-marketing-best-practices
Email marketing is still one of the top most effective digital marketing techniques, according to a recent survey of small business owners.

If you’d agree, and you have an email list you’re regularly marketing to, than please accept my pat on the back!

You’re much farther ahead than so many business owners at staying in touch with existing and future customers alike.

As us marketers are so fond of saying “the money is in your list”.

Because, if you haven’t contacted your customer in 90 days, they’re not your customer.

Here are 5 best practices to help you get the money out of your list; increasing your email open and click rates.

Use your customer’s name. Repeatedly.

Your name is your favorite word of all time.

And it’s the same with your customers. Make your emails stand out from the never ending stream of emails in your customer’s inbox.

Most email marketing software companies, like Mailchimp, have a “shortcode” that you can use in the first paragraph of your email to pull your customer’s first name from your list and display it in the email you’re sending.

Mailchimp’s shortcode is [F*NAME] – use it, and watch your open rate soar.

Refine your email subject.

Watch buzzfeed.com and the front page of Reddit for trending topics. You’ll notice a pattern among so many top stories on these sites. They pique your curiosity.

Try creating curiosity in your customer, by creating an enticing headline that promises answers and solutions…as soon as they open your email.
For bonus points, use your customer’s name right in your email subject headline.

Use the Social Sharing Options.

You cannot receive what you do not ask for.

Asking for likes and shares on social media is a great way to get, you guessed it, shares and likes on social media.

Make it easy for your newsletter subscribers by taking advantage of the sharing modules provided with most email marketing providers.

Add in a little blurb explaining why someone should share that is in line with what they care about.

Recently we devised a share-line for a niche women’s boutique that was promoting an invite only event.

We crafted a line that was along the lines of “Don’t keep this secret to yourself; share with a friend. “ to appeal to the woman’s pride at having the inside scoop in a coveted industry.

Links, Links and More Links.

If your newsletter isn’t linking back to your website, it’s time to change that, like, yesterday.

With email marketing’s sophisticated tracking tools, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to see who’s engaged with your brand.

Tracking the amount of link clicks, as well as the click-ees themselves is a savvy way of determining what content appeals to who.

Create links in the text, the image as well as the headline. Make it easy for your subscribers to get to your website.

Have a call to action.

What goal do you have for your email campaign?

Whether it’s clicks to your website, calls to your location or social shares, you have to be explicit about what you want.
Make it easy for your subscribers to do what you ask by making the call to action the most visually prominent part of your newsletter.

I really like Mailchimp’s big orange button, for an unmistakable call to action.

Find your ideal customers on social media with these 3 tips

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social media marketingToday we are going to answer Jeff’s question, who writes, “What are three tips for finding the right customers on social media?”

That’s a great question. And if you are wondering that yourself, keep reading for the answer.

Identify your ideal customers:

If you know who your right customers are, you’re two steps ahead of many of your competitors.

The next step is to typify them in an archetype or in a demographic.
So for example, maybe your customers are typically affluent women in their thirties and forties.

Now you have concrete data you can use to research what social networks that particular demographic uses the most.

In this case of our example, that would be Pinterest. Doing a little bit of market research in the beginning will help you create the bare bones of a social media strategy and save you a lot of hassle and time making mistakes through trial and error.

Identify target location:

The second thing to do to find your ideal customers on social media, is narrowing your target down to a geographic area. Again, this provides you with a concrete benchmark, from which you can conduct more market research.

Specifically, there are hashtags that are used for each specific geographic area. Do a little bit of research and find out which are the most popular ones for both your geographic location, as well as the interests of your demographic so you can capitalize on their interests by getting involved in conversations about trending topics and more.

Pay for it:

Another thing you can do to get in front of your ideal networks is advertise.
The social media networks we participate in have amazing data collected on all of us. Thus, they’ve got very specific demographic information available for you to advertise and get in front of an audience that maybe isn’t part of your existing community.

Solicit Reviews:

The last thing that you can do is solicit referrals and recommendations on all your social media properties by having people endorse you. Endorsements not only provide new customers with a level of trust that you’re a reputable business, but this activity also provides exposure to your recommender’s network, who are much more likely to buy from you than a total stranger.

How have you found your ideal customers on social media? Share with me in the comments below.

And, if you found this valuable, please consider sharing with your network!

You can also watch this one minute tip as well as others on our Youtube page!

3 Pro Tips for Choosing your Business Domain Name

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internet marketing strategyWhatever your business or industry, choosing the right domain name for your online presence can have a big effect on your future success. While the wealth of options available to you mean there might not be one single best choice for your needs, making a bad decision can certainly hinder your efforts; your internet marketing strategy, your lead capturing, and ultimately your sales.

A good domain name should be unmistakeable and represent accurately what your company is all about, and there are certain ways to help ensure your chosen domain achieves these aims.

Once you’ve settled on what you decide to be the best domain for your business, you can even think about which others might work in your internet marketing strategy too.

Read on to find out how all this can be done.

Ease of use

Crafting the perfect internet marketing strategy, only to have it undermined by an awkward domain name, would be almost criminal in the modern business world. If you want people to remember your domain name and ensure it will always be typed in correctly, it has to be as catchy and simple as possible.

This means anything overly long should be avoided, as are aspects that can be commonly mistyped. These include double ‘L’s or ‘T’s, unnecessary points, dashes, underscores, or numerical figures.

Company initials are good for shortening long company names, easy to remember, and are very difficult to misspell. If your company’s initials are already taken, anything else you choose should be short, sweet and to the point.

Pros and .coms

For companies based in the United States, the .com domain is still the most desirable suffix for those wanting to be seen as an authority figure in their industry. Luckily, here in Canada, the .ca domain is just as recognized, and can actually be of benefit to your company image if you’re looking to serve mainly local customers.

Depending on the nature of your business, the recently released batch of new gTLDs (generic top level domains) can also help you to project the right image from the extension on your domain name. Although .gov has long been used by government sites, .edu by educational facilities and .org often used by non-profits, the options now include such evocative terms as .guru, .consulting, .world, and .ninja, extensions that are regularly played with in the world of the modern internet marketing strategy.

Smart use of any of these can result in a more memorable domain name for your business than .com ever could, meaning a little time and research before deciding on yours is highly recommended.

Domain event

If you are planning different campaigns, either as part of your internet marketing strategy or offline marketing, another tip is to create multiple domain names that include different keywords related to your business. These could be your location, your product or service, the benefit your product or service gives to your customers, or a combination of any of the above.

By registering bestpizzaincalgary.com or imhungrynow.ca, you can use them as a split test to see which yields the better results, both as part of your internet marketing strategy and on print material like flyers or distributed menus.

We’re often asked ‘what’s in a name?’ When it comes to domains, with all the options out there and the pitfalls inherent in choosing a bad one, there’s actually quite a lot. Take the time to make sure you get yours right.

To watch one of our one minute tips on this same subject, follow us on Youtube!

Consumer Alert! 5 Regrets You’ll Have Web Marketing With The Yellow Book Co.

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Today we are going to talk about the 5 regrets you’ll have if you buy web marketing with the big yellow book company.

So if you are thinking about it, you definitely want to watch this video as it will give you some tips on how to avoid buyers remorse.

The number one reason you  don’t want to do your web marketing with the big yellow book company is it doesn’t make very much sense.

If I’m looking for a provider, I go to Google and type in what I’m looking for, for example, pizza, and then I select from the providers that are shown from Google;  I don’t then go and click on yellowpages.ca just to begin my search all over again.

So number one, it doesn’t make very much sense, you need to be in front of the people who are looking for what you offer, and yellowpages.ca simply just doesn’t do that.

Number two, they don’t really have that much experience do they?

NO! Up until a few years ago they were selling big yellow books, and now they’re doing web marketing? They don’t have years and years of technical experience to back their offer. They are simply capitalizing on increased demand for web marketing and consulting services.

Number three! No service!

If you’ve ever tried to get ahold of your numbered representative, you know its very difficult. Getting quality service from someone who actually cares at a large corporation is never easy.

Plus, numbered representatives tend to leave and work elsewhere so it is very difficult for this company to be accountable to you and the dollars that you are spending with them.

Number Four-No ownership!

You may not know this, but if you are getting a website from the big yellow book company, you don’t actually own it, you are leasing it.

What that means is, in order to keep that website up and your domain name up, you need to continue to pay them year after year and you cannot switch providers and keep your website or your domain name.

Number Five- No accountability!

Say you get zero results and you are angry.

Well, you can rant and rave and you can complain and you know they will not give you your money back.

Also, no matter of negative reviews online is going to impact their business in anyway.

They are not a local, small business owner that cares about their community and cares about maintaining a positive reputation.

Like this tip? Subscribe to our You Tube channel and never miss a tip!

Your turn! Tell us in the comments below what your opinion is.

Have you tried marketing with the big yellow book company? What was your experience?

 

 

The #1 Marketing Tool For Business You Need To Start Using Right Now

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Today I want to share with you the Number one most effective and free digital marketing tool that you can use as a small business owner or do it yourself marketer.

You may not be surprised to learn it is Video marketing! Just like this video here:

It is an incredibly powerful tool that is free to use, I actually filmed this on my smart phone!

3 Reasons Video Marketing is so effective.

Number 1 – Video is the next best thing to meeting someone in person.

A lot of our communication is non-verbal so watching a video of someone is a really great way to get to know them and get a sense of who they are, its very similar to meeting someone in person.

Secondly, people are much more prone to watch video or look at photos than they are to read text or a long bio about you. It is a very easy way to communicate information and have people consume it in this day in age when people have increasingly short attention spans.

Thirdly, videos are much more likely to be shared and have a much higher conversion rate in terms of people who watch the video are much more likely to act and take the next step in the buying cycle.

Lastly, not many people know this, but Youtube is owned by Google and is the second biggest search engine in the world!

So by posting videos to Youtube, you increase your exposure across the search engines and generate more traffic back to your website!

Those are all the reasons I recommend you start video marketing right now.

Never Miss A Tip- Subscribe to My Channel!

 

7 Easy Ways to Promote Your New Website

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Now that you have your new website up and running, you may be wondering how to get more people visiting your site.

There are a number of easy ways you can promote your website, without going broke or spending tons of time.

Here are 7 pro strategies to promote your website.

1. Update your existing contact information.

The easiest and most overlooked method of promoting your new website- update your contact information!

Add your website address, along with a benefit statement to all your off and online points of contact and profiles.

  • Your Email Signature

  • All social media accounts: Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, etc.

  • Your voicemail message

An example of how to add to your website link and benefit statement email signature is: “Click here to learn How to Promote Your Website, the Affordable Way”

2. Make an announcement:

The launch of a new website, especially accompanied by the launch of a local business is newsworthy!

  • Emailing your personal contacts with the announcement that your website is live- don’t forget to include the link!

  • Send out a similar launch announcement message to your career contacts-clients, contractors, vendors, co workers and peers.

  • Draft a press release and send it out to any media contacts you may have

  • Ask influential people in your network to broadcast the message for you

  • Post an enthusiastic message on all your social networks announcing the launch

3. Maximize Local Listings.

Every city has multiple free listing/review websites. Take full advantage of these and add your business details to the following web properties:

  • Better Business Bureau

  • Found Locally

  • Yelp

If you’re feeling ambitious you could also add your business to free classified sites such as:

  • Craigslist

  • Facebook Marketplace

  • Kijiji

4. Coordinate & Optimize all your promotional activities:

Be sure to add a QR code, or your website address to all printed materials such as posters, brochures, signage or any other advertising you may do.

This applies to radio ads, in person networking and anything else you’re doing that is of a promotional nature.

5. Search Marketing:

If you haven’t already, consider search engine marketing. There are thousands of people searching on Google each minute of the day, and a portion of them are looking for what you’re selling.

You can get on google through Pay Per Click Ads, adding yourself and your business to Google Plus and by regularly posting new updates to your website.

Blogging is a common method of updating your website. It’s a great way to satisfy the search engines need for fresh content, and it helps educate your customers as well!

6. Social Media Marketing:

Work the network! Stay top of mind and create a community of prospective customers by being present where your target market hangs out online.

Start using social media networks like LinkedIn, LinkedIn Groups, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Pages to promote your website.

Connect with your existing contacts, and their contacts as well as influential people using these networking sites.

7. Paid Ads:

You can pay for premium space in all of the sites listed above. Bonus- you can zero in on your target market by selecting very specific demographics to display your ad to.

Consider your budget and audience, and do a trial run to see what kind of results you get.

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With these 7 tips you should create some serious buzz around, and traffic to your new website.

TIP*** Be sure to instal and use Google Analytics to measure the results of your efforts.

Where you’ll find your future customers: what social media sites are a must for your business

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You don’t need to be on every single social media website to find yourself a community of new customers.

What you do need, is to be on the right social media site for your unique business.

I’ll show you how to put forth 20% of the effort to get 80% of your results, by following this one simple rule:

Choose the social media sites your business uses based on where your target customers are active and engaged

Here is an executive summary of the demographic, or user base information on each of the major social networks.

Pick One Social Network and Get Started!

Pick One Social Network and Get Started!

If your business markets to other businesses (B2B)…

Then LinkedIn is the social media website for you! It is specifically targeted towards people who are in business and want to connect with others in business.

Both a personal account and a business page are recommended.

Is your business local based with a physical location?

If you have the ability to accept walk in traffic or by appointment, then you need to be on Google plus local -formerly Google Maps.

Is your target market ladies in their 30’s to 40’s ? If so, then you need to be on Pinterest.

To build credibility, stay up to the minute on industry news and connect with or position yourself as a thought leader then you need to be on Twitter.

If you’re marketing to moms then you absolutely to have a presence on Facebook.

If you want to get traffic from Google and show up on Google’s search engine…then you’ll also need to be on Google plus and Google plus local. These factors are becoming more more important terms where you rank on Google so you actually do have to be on Google plus now.

Instagram is a great social media network for just about everybody who is tech savvy and is a great way to generate more exposure if you’re in an image oriented business.

If you’re in any type of business where you need to build more trust, You Tube is the place to showcase your personality and expertise. (There’s no better way to communicate who you are and build trust online than video marketing.)

Video marketing is great for industries that have a bad reputation or if you’re in any kind of technology industry,  where things are complicated I require explanation.

If you’re not ready to do a full video, you can use the video capture tool on Vine and Instagram mobile apps which are 7 and 15 seconds each.

And if you’re not sure which social network your customers use, ask them using a free survey software like survey monkey.

The important thing is to pick one social network and start using it regularly. Once you get in the habit of using one,  you can add on to others.

What social network(s) do you use for your business?

Share in the comments below! And if you’ve found this article valuable, please consider sharing it with your network.

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