Five Reasons Why Your Website Is Still Important

The increasing popularity of social networks in the last few years has seen huge changes in the way people access the web to socialize, shop and build their online profile. It has also influenced the way
businesses of all shapes and sizes have adapted their web presence to gain an advantage

So with so much interaction taking place over social media websites, you might be forgiven for thinking a conventional website is surplus to requirements.

The following five reasons outline why your website is still the most important component in building a successful online presence for your business.

1. Maintaining Ownership

It is critical to protect your company identity by owning your business web address and website. This will avoid surrendering control of your brand to the mercy of a third party website – and their ads.

2. Your Content, Your Way

Content is still King, so being in control of how your content is presented is key to effectively getting your message across. Maintaining control of the user experience will enable you to manage content relevancy and your conversion process.

3. Create a Content Hub

Your business blog should be the focal point for all your content marketing activities – using your social media presence as a means to engage your audience and ultimately bring visitors to your website.

4. Attracting Search Traffic

A well optimised website plays a vital role in attracting valuable Search Engine traffic. Facebook after all is still a closed door to the Search Engines.

5. Monitor, Tweak, Improve

Being able to analyse website statistics to measure conversion rates, monitor backlinks and assess visitor engagement is essential to improving your online marketing activities – and ultimately achieving a return on your web investment.

In conclusion, if you want to take online marketing seriously, don’t neglect your most valuable online resource; your business website.

If you would like help improving your online presence, or planning an effective online marketing strategy, get in touch.

Landing page optimization

There are five things that always exist on a successful landing page:

1)    Headline

2)    Demonstration (if you don’t have pictures or descriptions on what the visitor has to do on the page, they will leave)

3)    Value – there has to be a reason why they should choose you instead of your competitors

4)    Support

5)    Action – tell people what they need to do. There has to be a single call to action on your landing page – if you expect someone to do four different things, they’ll do none

Every time you give someone an excuse to leave your page (like a social sign in), you’re giving them the opportunity to leave and never come back.

You have to think about why the visitor wants to interact with your content. Nobody cares about features – if you’re creating the right emotional feel for a product, you’re going to have higher conversion rates.

Things that can help your landing page:

• Bullets
• Graphics
• Emphasis (italic, bold, underline)
• Images

Many of your customers don’t think about your product in the same way you do, this is why testing is so important. Always try to find out what a potential customer would want to invest in emotionally when creating a landing page.

Test your content

If you’re selling a luxury item, you’re probably going to need to provide more content. If you’re just asking someone for an e-mail address, keep the content short. The important thing is that you test the content to see what works for you. Don’t argue with people about changing the headlines or other content – just change it, test it and use the one that performs the best.

Creating a great landing page: The Process

Phase 1

• Brainstorm content
• Design and write
• Create more content than  you need
• Create control page
• Create variations
• Test

Phase 2

• Analyze your results
• Choose new control
• Revise variations
• Test again

Phase 3

• Headline
• Call to action
• Large images
• Length of content

Your headline needs to take the visitor from “I think this is the right place” to “I know this is the right place”. Once they realize they’ve come to the right place, they have patience.

Images

Sometimes a picture of a woman works really well and sometimes a picture of a man will work. You need to test the images and choose the one that conveys the right emotion for whatever you are selling.

If you use a picture of a person on your landing page, make sure the person faces the action on the page. If they’re looking at you, you start thinking about the person in the image instead of the content on the page.

Buttons

One of the last things you need to be testing is the buttons on the landing page.  Your headline and images are more important.

Ways of expressing value

It’s a requirement that you communicate value. After the website visitor realizes they’re in the right place, you need to make sure they know that what they’re about to buy or sign up for is valuable.

Forms

Don’t create long forms that ask a visitor to give you their name, phone number, e-mail etc. Don’t use the word “submit” on your buttons. People don’t want to “submit”, they want to “buy”.

Content critique

People don’t care about you and your company; they want to know what you can do for them.

Written by: Francois Muscat ,  WSI consultant 

Content Marketing

Why do we need content marketing? Because sales are going down and marketing initiatives like cold calling no longer works, which is why you need more inbound marketing tactics.

What is content marketing? It’s about understanding what information your customers need to know about your products and services. After this, you need to give them relevant content and educational content that persuades them that you are an expert in your field.

Why do you need quality content?

• It develops trust
• Drives traffic to your web traffic
• Educates and informs

The Panda update focused on ensuring that sits that are given high SERP’s are actually relevant. It penalizes a site’s poor quality content, which are usually used to farm back links. The quantity of links isn’t important; it’s all about the quality. You need to write good quality content and you need natural links.

If you aren’t on social media and you don’t have the social share buttons on your website, you’re not giving your content the opportunity to be shared and distributed online.

Content audit

• Analyze your current content efforts
•  Size up the competition
•  Observe the social climate
•  Determine the gaps

What are your social efforts?

• How well are you using social technologies?
• Website
• LinkedIn
• Blog
• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Pinterest

How personas can improve your SEO

• Help find the right keywords for target audience
• Identify target for link building
• Help create the right content

A good way to write relevant content is to keep an eye out on the news and relate it to your business. Another thing you can do is follow the thought leaders – find the CEO’s, the people who are breaking news etc.

You should never refer to your “Facebook strategy” or your “LinkedIn strategy” – it’s all a conversation strategy.

Web property strategy

You need to own all your website properties, such as a Facebook fan page, Twitter accounts, a LinkedIn company page and so forth. Your social strategy needs to engage, inform, participate and provide behind the scenes info.

Ask yourself: Do I know what my customers are saying about me through the socialsphere? You can do a keyword search to find out where you are being mentioned, what the sentiment is and who is talking about you.

These should be your goals:

• Listen and learn about our customers: Set up alerts on Google, Twitter, Blog. Create rivers of information.
• Grow community to 5,000: Develop targeted campaigns to encourage sharing of content on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook Pinterest
• Website integration: Integrate social properties with website properties
• Reach new markets: Grow the LinkedIn group to 250+ members
• Become a resource authority: Build up your website & company’s authority and trust, both on and off-site

Openness & Transparency

Society is moving more towards full transparency as a sign of truth and trust.  That goes for corporations and individuals. You need to be transparent – if you talk a big talk, but people can’t find you online, it becomes risky to do business with you.

When you optimize a website, your home page has to be optimized for your company as a whole, not individual products. When doing keyword research, you need to move away from single keyword phrases like ‘carpet cleaning’ at some point. Do keyword research that includes questions like ‘why’ to get to the top of the funnel. Try Ubersuggest.com to broaden your results.

The content funnel

Awareness

Creating your voice. Increase knowledge, understanding & awareness of your company. E.g:

• Blog Posts
• Social Media Updates
• Infographics
• Press release

Consideration

Make people think about the value proposition of your products & services. E.g:

• EBooks
• White papers
• Webinars
• How to
• Presentations

Decision

Create confidence, purpose & conclusion around your brand. E.g:

• Case studies
• Products
• Brochure
• buy now
• services
• free demo
• loyalty scheme; packages; methodology

 Written by: Francois Muscat 

How to Leverage your existing Advertising Dollars through “Remarketing”

Conventional wisdom is that your best customer is the one you are talking with at any given time.

Why? Because unlike your next prospect, this one has at least shown some interest in your products and services…otherwise why would they be in front of you at all?

The modern interpretation of that is the prospect who took the time to seek you out and go to your website or blog or any number of other web properties. They didn’t get there by accident. They either searched for you, or clicked on an email, or interacted through some social medium. In any case it was most likely through an effort that cost you money or time.

So let’s go on the premise that they were interested enough to check you out, but like the vast majority of initial web interactions, they weren’t ready to take any action. The reality is that they will probably check out your competitors…and do nothing with them either. At least initially…

Thus the reemergence of a technology called “Remarketing”, or the process of marketing specifically to people who have recently shown interest in what you offer.

Here’s how it works:

When a consumer visits your website via a search engine result, pay-per-click ad, email link, or even an off-line advertisement, all of which you undoubtedly paid for in one fashion or another, we “tag” them. As they go about their business across the Internet over the next hours, days, weeks or months, we show them your custom banner ad. Your brand literally follows your best prospects around in the places they surf for mere cents per impression (literally a fraction of a penny).

Remarketing is designed to get the most out of the advertising dollars you’ve already spent, however a fulldisplay advertising program is designed to do that AND increase your brand awareness to specific demographics by advertising on our extensive network of hand-picked and “A-list” websites.

Written by: Chuck Bankoff, WSI Certified Research Analyst

Pay Per Click (PPC) - What is it and How dose it Work

The term “Pay Per Click,” or PPC, is one advertisers and business owners toss around a lot. Most people have minimal knowledge of PPC. Most think it sounds like a good idea, but will have no idea how it works, what it entails or if PPC is right for your business’ digital marketing strategy.

What is Pay Per Click Marketing?

PPC is a powerful online advertising blueprint in which your business will pay only when a user clicks on your ad. You see PPC ads every day on search engine sites like Google and Yahoo!. It aims to place your ad high on the search engine results page through incorporating keyword rich content specific to your business. Overall, the objective of your PPC campaign will be to drive targeted traffic to your site.

How does Pay Per Click Work?

Instead of forking over a large, flat rate feel like you do for traditional advertisements in magazines or on television, PPC simply requires you to pay up every time a user clicks on your ad. And with our Keyword Analysis Report, we can ensure your PPC campaign will incorporate the specific keywords your target consumers are already using. In the end, your prospective customers will find your business first and will be attracted to your website during the critical moments in the buying cycle.

Pay Per Click Management.

Thanks to our value added tracking tools, you can ensure you monitor where every cent is spent and continue to measure your ongoing results. If used correctly and under the expertise of a digital marketing consultant, your business’ PPC campaign can prove to be both cost effective and a one-of-a-kind tool in boosting the targeted volume to your site.

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Written by: WSI Corporate

The 1-2-3’s of Landing Pages

It is typical for people to jump into landing page development without first establishing a clear digital marketing strategy, and then confirming the purpose of their landing page.  Most landing pages have no clear purpose and not surprisingly, they don’t perform as well as intended.  Let’s start with a few questions you should ask yourself before your landing page is developed.

 Is the content you’re planning to use for your landing page critical?

Much of the content on a typical website is not critical and thus should not be included in a landing page.  Some possibilities that fit this category are company mission statement, bios, job openings, and investor relations.  The most critical actions you want your landing page visitors to take are Call Us, complete a form, download our whitepaper, sign up for a free trial, etc.  If there is content that you feel will not add meaning to your desired action, don’t include it.

Who is your desired Landing Page audience?

Here are some possible visitor groups:

Ø  Prospective Clients

Ø  Current Clients

Ø  Strategic Business Partners

Ø  Media

Ø  Potential Investors

Ø  Employees

Many landing pages attempt to address the needs of all these groups, even though one group may be more important than another.  Your landing page should be developed for your most critical audience.  You should also consider building multiple landing pages if you have more than one critical group.

Understand the Desired Conversion you want to occur

Your desired action may not necessarily be to process an order.  Typically conversion actions are mini-actions that eventually may lead to an ultimate sale.  That sale may occur at a later date as you help your prospects down a path to conversion.  The most important criteria for your desired conversion is that it must be measureable.  Examples include download or print, subscriptions, click-through, form submission, phone calls and of course purchases.

Take the time to think through your Landing Page strategy and you will be rewarded with conversions!

Written by: Alison Lindemann

 WSI consultant 

Top 3 Tips for Your Business’ PPC Campaigns & Landing Pages

In spite of the size of your business, its industry or the nature of your digital marketing strategy, I am sure that we can all agree on one thing:

There is very little point in spending money attracting people to your company’s website if your pages aren’t doing the job properly!

Poorly implemented pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and ineffective landing pages will give you nothing but a high bounce rate, a nonexistent ROI, and pathetic conversion rates. So rather than wasting precious time and money (for both you and your online customers) here are 3 of my PPC campaign and landing page tips to that will work to boost your conversion rate and turn online visitors into paying customers.

3 PPC & Landing Page Tips to Attract Your Online Customers

1. Actually create a landing page!

It might seem simple enough, but using your site’s home page as your landing page is one of the most common mistakes among business owners on the Internet. Leading visitors to your home page forces them to have to search through pages and pages (…and pages) of your website to try and find the product or service you’re promoting. And if there’s one characteristic common among all Internet users, it’s that they have very short attention spans. If it’s not convenient and easy, your online visitors will lose patience, get distracted and go elsewhere.

It is much easier and more effective to create small landing page that is not a website! It will show your customers exactly what you want them to see; it will hold their attention and, ultimately, will be more likely to bring in the sales.

2. Create the relationship between your landing page and your PPC ad.

Many business owners make the mistake of creating an extremely generic landing page. Realistically, you should have a specific, distinct landing page for each of your paid ads. The fact of the matter is that someone clicked on your link because they were interested in the specific product or service in your PPC ad. So, correspondingly it’s very important to create a landing page with specific information and messaging pertaining to that product/service.

3. Make it appealing to hold visitors’ attention.

Creating a confusing and unorganized landing page is another very common mistake that many businesses make online. Whether offline or on the Internet, selling a product or service demands that you be as clear and as precise as possible. Keep your landing page simple, organized and professional. Some factors to consider might include clear call-to-actions or buttons, minimal navigation, or easy-to-scan copy.

Written by: Ron McArthur ,WSI consultant