Web Savvy Marketers

6 Reasons Why You NEED to be on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world. Over 564 million people have accounts on the site, and more are joining every day. By now you know that you need to be on LinkedIn. If you’ve been in the business world for a while, it’s something you have heard about, probably so often that you hardly react to it anymore. Roughly only a quarter of these members log in regularly, but why? What is the real value of LinkedIn?

1. Your LinkedIn Profile Helps Build Trust:

Jeremy Schifeling, Founder and CEO at Break into Tech, explains this idea: “In the same way that an Uber or Lyft gives you verification about the person who is going to pick you up in the car, you want to know who you’re going to hire or do business with or partner with in a professional context.” Building trust is very important to everyone, from full-time workers, freelancers, and small business owners alike.

2. Gain Website Traffic and Leads

LinkedIn is more effective than any other social media platform in generating website traffic. LinkedIn is responsible for 64% of all visits from social media to corporate websites.

3. Find Talented Employees:

LinkedIn has invested greatly in improving their Talent Solutions. From a simple job posting to complete turnkey recruitment the platform is an affordable way to source candidates for any job openings you have.

4. Build Strong Relationships and Keep an Eye on your Prospects and Clients:

Did you meet someone at a business after hours or industry event? It’s a great idea to connect with them on LinkedIn afterwards. It helps you get to know each other before that first meeting.

5. Raise Exposure for Your Business:

Creating a LinkedIn page for your business allows people to find and follow your brand. By doing so they will receive any updates you post on your company page. Updates could include press releases, new products, promotional offers or information about current vacancies.

6. Get News for your Specific Industry:

LinkedIn has become a lot more than a social networking site. They have many types of industry news that you can follow.

I hope this article opened your eyes if you are not currently on LinkedIn. Using LinkedIn will open more doors and connect you with others who have similar or exact interests. Growing your business has never been this easy.

Can Manufacturing and Marketing Coexist?

With sales built on long-term relationships, why does a manufacturer need marketing? How can marketing help grow the business? It’s a common misconception that many business owners have a hard time understanding. According to TopSpot, 90% of B2B customers use the internet to find a potentional supplier. Consumers are not the only ones looking online to purchase items anymore. Here are just a few ways to reach the most potential customers with online marketing

  1. Optimize Your Website for Searches

The first step in any manufacturer marketing strategy is to ensure that your website can be easily found in searches by those who are looking for you. This is done through the process of search engine optimization. It is also important to make sure that your website is responsive. By guaranteeing that people can access your site from any device, including smartphones, desktops and tablets, you increase your visibility and leads.

  1. Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click, also known as PPC, is an advertising method that involves the placement of small ads along the top or side of search engine results. PPC ads are inexpensive and if used correctly, can have very high returns on investment for manufacturers.

  1. Create Social Media Profiles

Sometimes, manufacturing leaders are slow to use social media marketing. But social media is a great (and free!) way for manufacturers to engage potential clients and current customers online. By creating social media profiles, it helps your company get in front of decision makers

  1. Create Engaging Content

Results on search engines are more than just links to websites. When someone searches for they receive images, articles, videos, locations, and review results. By creating engaging content, it attracts visitors to your website and allows them to learn more about your products and services.

Digital marketing helps manufacturing companies build relationships. Business owners that take advantage of the internet will find that it:

  • Establishes them as a thought leader
  • Helps them build their reputation and brand awareness
  • Improves customer loyalty
  • Allows the brand to nurture their incoming leads.
  • Demonstrates the manufacturer’s capabilities

Manufacturing is a competitive market and even companies that produce superior products can find themselves struggling because they didn’t market themselves correctly. It makes sense to outsource your marketing needs to an experienced company who understands the requirements of the manufacturing industry. Here at Web Savvy Marketers we offer professional marketing services to increase awareness of your products and services.

While many manufacturers continue to focus on expanding and pushing sales, many are quickly realizing that they aren’t competing effectively. If you want to stay in business and continue your family legacy, you need to develop an effective marketing strategy. Otherwise, your company’s legacy may not last another generation.

5 Low-Budget Marketing Tips to Boost Your Business

Who says that marketing has to be expensive and hard? Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most effective. Check out these 5 marketing tips to help your business stand out without breaking the bank.

  1. Be consistent with your messaging: People need to recognize you, no matter where they see you.
  2. Track your online reputation: Use social media, but you don’t need to be on every platform. Look at what your customers are using and use that.
  3. Build a network: Word of mouth is the most prevailing type of marketing, plus it’s free! So build those relationships with professionals that you would happily refer your customers to and who can send referrals your way.
  4. Update your website: If your business doesn’t have a website, you are missing out. People will be searching for you online, make sure your information is up to date and accurate.
  5. Blog: Why should people come back to your website? Be sure to give people a reason to keep coming back. Give them tips, product updates and blog!

These are just a few simple (and free!) ways to get your marketing off the ground. Which of these marketing trends are you working on incorporating into your strategy?

Take Your Business to the Next Level with Co Branding

Are you looking to introduce your brand into new markets? Perhaps you want to expand in markets that you’re already in. Or maybe you need to jump start your brand. Co-branding may be the ticket for you.

Co-branding is a concept that has continued to become more attractive over the years. The concept is described as the combining of two or more brands to create a single, unique product or service. With new products and services constantly hitting the shelves, a co-branding partnership may sound a little absurd. After all, why would you share information and resources with a potential enemy?

There are actually a lot of benefits to working with a partner vs. doing things on your own. The key to a successful partnership is to choose a brand that will best complement or enhance your product. More companies are uniting and launching co-branded partnerships, a once thought risk has been proven to be a win-win for both parties.

Check out some successful co-branding partnerships:

  • GoPro & Red Bull: “Stratos”
  • Spotify + Starbucks
  • Nike & Apple: Nike+
  • Uber & Spotify: Soundtrack for Your Ride
  • Bonne Belle & Dr. Pepper: Flavored Lip Balm
  • Pottery Barn & Sherwin-Williams: Color Your Room

Still on the fence? Here are some reasons why you should consider a co-branding partnership.

  1. Shared Customer Loyalty: In co-branding, loyal customers of one brand will display the same affection for the other.
  2. Extend Reach: Co-branding can increase the visibility and market share of both partners.
  3. Share Costs: One of the biggest benefits is that marketing costs are split between both parties, allowing for more creative ideas and opportunities.
  4. Boost Sales: Co-branding can significantly enhance the sales potential of a product or service, compared to a similar offer showcasing only a single brand.
  5. Customized Product: A successful co-branding partnership delivers a better product that fulfills the needs of the customers in a better way.

If you are looking to co-brand, be sure to choose your partner wisely. Look for someone that complements or enhances your brand AND make sure that your customers have a positive opinion about the other company, or your brand may lose some of its appeal.

What’s a Widget?

Remember when a widget was a thing you called something when you couldn’t remember what to call it?

Not anymore. WordPress turned the widget into a real thing. Or is it?

I’ve found that many new WordPress users have a little trouble understanding the Widget concept and how it fits into their website.

What is a WordPress widget?

The widget is a section under Appearances where you can add content to a section of the website. Typically and historically the widget areas were designed to be used on  parts of the website that appear on many pages. Sections like the primary sidebar or the footer area are typical places where you might want to include data on many pages. Data you may want to include on many pages might be your address, a menu, e-mail sign-up form, a contact button, Social media links…you get the idea. By using a widget you only set up the data once and it appears on in multiple locations.

When you open up your Widget area under Appearance>Widgets, you’ll see something similar to that shown above, with the Available Widgets on the left side and the Widget Areas on the right. The basic concept is to pull the widget you want to use from the available Widgets into the widget area where you want the widget to display.

The Available Widgets may vary by theme or if there are plug-ins installed, but I’ve found that I use these types of widgets pretty frequently:

  1. Custom Html – used for placing code or scripts from another source (such as an email sign-up form
  2. Image – allows you to insert an image from your media library
  3. Navigation Menu – Adds a custom menu
  4. Text – Add text – handy for addresses, phones numbers, etc.
  5. Search
  6. Video
  7. Audio

I have used the Genesis framework frequently over the years so there are several Genesis specific widgets I like to use:

  1. Genesis Featured Page Advanced – allows you to pull information from a page into a widget area.
  2. Genesis Featured Posts – allows you to pull posts or post excerpts into a widget area.
  3. Simple Social Icons

The Widget Areas also vary by theme. Often when I use the Genesis framework, the theme home page is often set up using widget areas. This allows you to pull information to the home page dynamically, instead of having to update the home page when you create a new post or event. For example, the Testimonials Section and Marketing Tools and Tips From Our Blog section will update automatically if a new testimonial is added or if we add a new Featured post to our website.

So a Widget is a “do-hicky” or a “thing” that you use to put content into multiple places or to update content dynamically in multiple places. “Widget” seems like the perfect name for it.

More information about widgets 

 

How to import a calendar – dates and all! And how to turn off comments.

Last week we launched a newly designed website. It was a fairly large website with the Timely All-in-One calendar plug-in. There were over 2000 calendar entries that we ported over to the new site.

Initially we used the WordPress Importer (located under Tools in the dashboard) that is part of the WordPress core installation to export the data from the old site and import it into the new site. That worked – kind of – but it didn’t import the dates correctly, so they didn’t appear on the calendar. Kind of important for calendar items.

What did work was using the Timely Feed option. To do that go to the calendar on the old site, click on Subscribe, then right click Add to Timely Calendar > Copy link address. Then go to the new site, under Events>Calendar Feeds. Type the URL you just copied into the feed field, check the options you desire and click the Add new subscription.

Speaking of options. There is a checkbox for Allow comments on imported events, which I apparently did not check. Oops! It turns out the client didn’t want comments.

How to turn off comments for blog posts and events.

There is a feature in WordPress to turn off comments for all posts – including past posts.

Here’s how:

  1. Go to All Posts or in this case All Events.
  2. Click the checkbox that selects all the posts or events.
  3. Click and apply Edit under Bulk Actions dropdown.
  4. Set Comments to Do Not Allow
  5. Click Update

That should work in most cases, but it didn’t in this case. I think because of the way we imported the data through the subscription feed.

So here’s my go to fix in cases when WordPress won’t do as we’d like.

Change the display through CSS.

In this case I wanted to eliminate the display of the comment count and comment display box. To find out the CSS class that presents these options, right click on the area you want to eliminate, click “Inspect”. Look through the code to find the CSS classes that define the styles for these elements.

In this case it was  “.comment-text, .comment_meta-container, .comment_container, and .comment count”. So I added the following code to the CSS styles:

.comment-text,

.comment_meta-container,

.comment_container,

.comment-count {

display:none !important;

}

Wala! Comments section is gone.

Make sure you’re modifying your CSS by using the Custom CSS option of your theme instead of updating the themes original style sheet.

 

When Hiring a Consultant – Use Their Knowledge Wisely

One of the things I find interesting when I meet a potential client is their idea of how to best use our services. New prospects often fall into two categories, those who are placing an order and those who provide only a piece of the information we need to best serve them. These are the two most common mistakes people make when hiring a consultant.

Order Filler

This usually starts with someone saying “I don’t really know much about marketing but here’s what you need to do”. One example is of a person who informed me they needed an email campaign. I said, that’s fine but let’s take a step back and tell me know more about your company. During that discussion, I discovered what they were saying was very different from what they had on their website. The messaging was all over the place.
In this instance what they really needed was a clear message across all platforms starting with their website. Once that was in place it was time to discuss an e-mail campaign. As it turned out, they had fewer than 50 contacts. Our next step was to build up their database before initiating a campaign. I could have simply set up an e-mail campaign as requested but that would not have been in the best interest of the client.

Silo Creators

The second challenge we face as consultants are the silo creators. These are the people who provide you with only a piece of the whole picture. When working with manufacturing clients the first series of questions I ask include:

  • What’s your capacity?
  • Which product line is most profitable?
  • Are you fully staffed in the area you want to grow?

I often get some strange looks, after all what does a marketing consultant need with this information? The answer is simple, I need to know what to promote.

That said, let’s look at those questions again…

  • What’s your capacity? – There’s only one thing worse than having product with no customers and that’s having customers and no product.
  • Which product line is most profitable? – Why would you want to sell product that doesn’t make you the most money?
  • Are you fully staffed in the area you want to grow? – With manufacturing employees so hard to come by, are you prepared to manage growth in the face of employees leaving?

Many years ago I was working with a manufacturer. We increased their orders through marketing and some direct sales. After a couple months I was in a meeting with the owner discussing the success of the campaign when he said “yeah we have more work but we hate that kind of work.” This is information that I could have used in advance. It’s important to educate consultants about your entire business so that they can make sound decisions on your behalf.

 

Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together.

SEO MagicHocus pocus, give me focus, make my website fast, loved and popular. Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together. Are you looking for the magic SEO potion? Ta Da! Here you go.

First, find  love.

Find out what people love about you, about your product and about your business. Find out how they’re looking for love. Where are they looking? Are they looking on Google, Linkedin, Facebook. Do they even know they’re looking? How do you find out?

  1. Use Data. Find the key to love with Analytics. It can tell you what your clients or prospects are looking for and how they’re looking for it.
  2. Anecdotal Evidence. Ask your clients. Something as simple as “How did you find me?” “What made you decide to call me?”
  3. Be bold. Ask for some love. Ask for online reviews on Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, or for a testimonials on your website. Ask people to Like your page, subscribe to your YouTube Channel, sign-up for your email newsletter, or meet for drinks.  There are so many ways to ask for love. Find the best ways for you and ask!
  4. Respond. Listen to your clients. Answer their questions. People love that.

Then swirl some love on your website content. Make sure your website content loves your clients – make sure it answers their questions. Make sure it presents your product or service so beautifully it’s impossible not to love (buy) it! Make sure it presents material that your analytics indicate will bring results.

Spread the love. Social media makes it easy. Share on the social media outlets that work best for you. Share your blog posts, events, product news, business news, even jokes, inspirations, photos and anecdotes.

Second, find speed.

No one wants to wait. Waiting frustrates people. It’s not loving. Make your website fast. Google loves speed. Give Google some love. They’ll love you back. Your page speed is known to be one of the factors (among many) in your search engine rank. So make your website zippy.

To find out fast your website is check out the links in the post The Need for Speed. How to check your website to see if it needs a speed tune-up.

Here are some of the most common recommendations you’ll find when you run a speed test:

  1. Optimize images. The first thing to do is make sure your images aren’t size larger than they appear on screen. That’s just wasting bandwidth. Please. Don’t upload a 4000 px x 4000 px image to your website, if the size is going to be viewed is 400 px x 400 px. But that’s just the start of image optimization. Check out this Image Optimization article to find out just how complicated it can get.Fortunately, there are plug-ins for WordPress users that will help you optimize the images on your website. Two of the most popular are:
    1. WP Smush
    2. Ewww Optimizer
  2. Eliminate or reduce CSS and Javascript rendering above the fold.Fixing the above the fold recommendation can get complicated too, as sometimes, depending on the theme, relocating scripts can break the website. There is a plug-in for it that’s worth trying. (I hope to test it on soon and will review it for you then). The plug-in is Optimizing Above the Fold.  Beware, the plug-in is intended for pros and is not something you can install and it will automagically fix things for you.
  3. Minify Javascript and CSS – Optimizing Above the Fold can handle this for you too, but Autoptimize is a simpler plug-in that might be easier to use for most users. As always with plug-ins make sure you back up  your database prior to installing and running, so if something doesn’t work right, (ie. it breaks your website) you can restore to a functioning version without too much trouble. 
  4. Enable caching. W3Total cache is one popular plug-in used in WordPress sites to configure caching. Be careful with it though, the wrong settings will break your website. (BACKUP prior to use). Some hosts offer their own caching systems and disallow W3 Total Cache. WPengine is one that we use that has their own object caching process.
    You could also consider a CDN. Basically a Content Delivery System  that helps serve and cache your site’s static, cacheable content from multiple worldwide server locations.
  5. Server speed is slow. Check with your web hosting provider to see if they can help you with this. You might also check your DNS settings to ensure they aren’t slowing things down.

Sometimes it’s the WordPress theme itself that is slowing things down. If that’s the case, you might be able to speed it up using some of the tools above, but if given the chance it’s best to start with a fast theme. I found a list of 20 fast themes at https://colorlib.com/wp/fast-loading-wordpress-themes/. I haven’t had a chance to install and test their speed yet, but may test out a few for review in a later post.

Let the SEO Magic begin.

Swirl some love on your website by ensuring that it provides a good user experience with interesting, valuable content and make it load fast. That’s when you’ll begin to see some SEO magic happen.

The Need for Speed. How to check your website to see if it needs a speed tune-up.

Web Traffic SpeedometerWhen you drive a high-performance vehicle and step on the gas you can feel the acceleration. Quick acceleration makes it easy to merge onto a fast-moving freeway safely or outrun a high-speed chase (just kidding – we’re not recommending anything illegal in this blog post).

Just as it’s important to have a fast, responsive automobile on the highway to have the best driving experience, it’s also important to have a fast, responsive website on the internet if you want optimum user experience for your website visitors.

Why is website speed important?

  1. It will make your visitors happy and more likely to buy from you. Slow websites equal frustrated visitors who leave and go check out your competitors’ websites.
  2. It may improve your website rank on search engines and that will provide greater opportunity for more people to get to your zippy, refreshingly speedy website.

How do you know if your website is fast?

There are numerous free tools online that can measure the speed of your website. Here’s a few to get you started:

There are more. You could test all day long. But the important thing to do is to run a few tests and see where your weaknesses lie. Common problems that might be slowing you down are:

  1. Slow server response time
  2. Images need resizing/optimization
  3. Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the -fold content
  4. Leverage browser caching
  5. Minify CSS

So NOW WHAT?

There can be a lot of technical information to comprehend in the reports. The good news is that the reports provide you with links on how to fix the problems. But even with that it can be overwhelming for the average website owner to understand the problems and make the corrections.

Just like most people take their cars to a shop for a regular tune-up, it’s a good idea to have your website tuned up on a regular basis too. So whether you’re the kind of person who changes their own oil or you prefer to drop it off at the shop, it makes sense to run a few reports to check out your score and either make some of the improvements on your own, or give your website maintenance team a call to see what they can do to help you out.

Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together.  

New Purpose for Marketing Your Business

Traditionally, we think of marketing as a business development tool. But there’s been a change in the marketing world of late – branding for the purpose of recruitment. With the unemployment rate dropping, more and more businesses are finding it more difficult to recruit talent.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than the manufacturing world. It is estimated that by the year 2025 there will be 2.5 million unfilled positions in U.S. manufacturing. Part of the challenge is due to the “silver tsunami” – for most manufacturers, 70% of their workforce is over 50. Within the next 15 years most of those people will retire. Unfortunately, over the last few decades the younger generation has not been encouraged to pursue manufacturing as a career path. Although many of the technical high schools and community colleges are making great strides, it’s a number game. There just aren’t enough people to fill existing and future positions.

That means every manufacturer is competing for the best talent available, and many of them have realized that their image is critical to this challenge. If the top graduate from the local technical high school hears that a company is hiring and Googles them only to see an old website and no other on-line presence, they are not likely to inquire about positions available. Branding is more important than ever.

Some companies have gotten creative in their marketing. We’ve all seen the new GE campaign with the kids telling their friends and parents that they’re working for GE and what a great place it is. This is all about recruitment. Other companies are getting into the community by sponsoring sports or robotics clubs. This too is part of branding.

At Web Savvy Marketers we’ve been re-designing websites, creating content and providing our clients with unique branding opportunities. After all, as the old saying goes, “You only get one chance to make a good impression” – make sure it’s the impression you want

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