Internet Marketing 101

What Does Your Online Presence Look Like?

January 22, 2016 Beth Devine

Do you have a solid footing for your online presence for 2016? As another year begins to unfold with all its possibilities, once again we are confronted with goals, predictions, trends, expectations, and best-laid plans.

In order to have the competitive advantage, you need to create a strong identity online. To help you succeed in the year ahead, consider these three areas when establishing your online presence.

1. Make a Good First Impression With Your Website

An established business needs a professional website if you want to promote growth. Your site should reflect your current success as well as set you up for further advancement with a strategy that matches your business model. Your first impression is critical in attracting new clients and retaining current ones.

Your main internet tool is your website. Your customers aren’t looking you up in a phone book or the Thomas Register. A continually updated website helps with your SEO, so when people search for you online, they find you.

Does your home page address your customer needs? The immediate message should describe how your customer will benefit from your product or service. This is far more meaningful than an explanation of what the company does, what products and services are offered, and the who and when of the company’s background.

Frame your content around your customers rather than making claims about how great your company is. You’re more likely to elicit skepticism and indifference with self-promotion. Impress your customers with testimonials instead of giving them unsubstantiated claims that falsely inflate your business.

Don’t forget to keep your website updated. A good first impression will be lost if your site gets hacked through plugins that weren’t updated or you’re operating under the misconception that your small business site won’t be targeted.

2. Other Ways to Build Your Online Presence

There are many opportunities to grow your online presence once you’ve established a professional website. Does your business write white papers? Would short videos of your processes or service be of interest to your audience? Do you have a blog for sharing information with your customers? What else will help with your website activity?

When you create compelling content, you’re opening wide the doors to your website. The more you offer, the more your online presence grows. The more good content you share, the more your SEO will improve.

Remember, there’s no such thing as digital writing. Writing for SEO is dead, but writing for the reader is what’s going to help the search engines — and your readers — find you. So give your customers something to search for in addition to a well designed website.

3. Building Relationships on LinkedIn and Social Media

People want to do business with companies that share useful and relevant information. Today’s social media is a giant indicator of how important relationship building is in the business world. And for professionals, the social network is LinkedIn.

With over 380 million members, LinkedIn is growing in its B2B transactions. It’s the place to be for businesses, no matter what your expertise is. Connecting with your contacts just got a lot easier with the updated Voyager app, helping you stay informed about the conversations and content that matter the most.

Search also improved, and is 300% faster for your jobs, people, and group searches.

LinkedIn has also acquired Lynda.com, an online education company that features thousands of online video courses on a wide variety of topics. Employers can see what courses prospective employees have taken, and members can grow their skill sets.

Your online presence is incomplete without social media. Get involved in the online networking community and give your website more internet exposure.

Know Your Audience

Each of these three online areas has an important ingredient in common. To better understand your customers and their needs, all of your online strategies have to include audience awareness. Getting to know your audience’s demographics involves doing some market research. Entrepreneur defines market research as:

The process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past, present and potential customers for the product or service; research into the characteristics, spending habits, location and needs of your business’s target market, the industry as a whole, and the particular competitors you face.

The ideas you get from your market research will inform your content ideas, helping you to target your audience’s needs. With the right information you’ll be a better online communicator whose online presence will reflect your concern to meet your customer’s needs.

Why Marketing Is Essential To Your Recruitment

September 25, 2015 Beth Devine

The key component to advancing your capabilities and capacity is successful recruitment. While this pertains to all industries, it is especially true for manufacturers. How do manufacturers succeed when fighting against the raging tide of a generational skills gap that is only going to get wider as the manufacturing workforce shortage continues to increase?

It is predicted that the impact of the shortage will be felt up to 2025 and beyond. The manufacturing industry is creating new jobs from a natural expansion following the recession. Data indicates there could be 400,000 new jobs by 2020, and up to 700,000 by 2025.

The challenges that manufacturers face are:

Baby Boomers are retiring, with nearly three million workers expected to retire between 2015 and 2025.
Millennials, who are expected to assume 75% of the manufacturing workforce by 2025, aren’t interested in manufacturing work.
The incoming workers are deficient in technology, as well as basic technical and problem-solving skills.

Marketing To Millennials

Successful manufacturing recruitment involves targeting today’s Millennials (aged 19 to 33 years). Three things are important to this generation of workers:

Social Consciousness

This generation wants to see their career prospects concerned with making the world a better place. By highlighting your community service, environmental awareness, and sustainability development, you add value by increasing your firm’s attractiveness.

Your website, company branding, and social media presence are all important in your recruitment process. An outdated site, unattractive branding, and missing the mark on social media will work against you.

Advanced and Innovative Technology

Marketing to millenials Dispel the old image of manufacturing as “dirty, dumb, dangerous, and disappearing.” Show how work environments and skills have changed to incorporate highly advanced machines and processes requiring computer-savvy workers with multiple talents.

Develop your firm’s image by posting new product lines on your blog or publishing articles in trade magazines on new processes. Ramp up your marketing to reveal how manufacturing has evolved into a “cool” place to be.

Part of a Team Environment

Enhance your desirability in this area by marketing your organization’s need for multi-taskers with advanced skill sets. Clearly display career path information on your website and write blog posts that feature employees’ development or production breakthroughs and accomplishments.

Help your prospective employees to understand the impact and value of their work. Share the culture of your open and collaborative work environment through social media and benchmarking publications.

There are currently six out of ten skilled production positions unfilled, and by the end of 2015, there will be 9,300 manufacturing job openings statewide in fourteen job categories. In order to compete for the available workforce, demonstrate your desirability as a company to work for through marketing that reaches out to a generation in a manner that is socially conscious and technologically up to date.

The principals of Web Savvy Marketers have been assisting CT manufacturers with their business development and marketing needs for more than 25 years. Give us a call at 860-432-8756 to see if we can help you with your on-line and off-line presence.

5 Reasons To Blog for Your Business: Blogging Resistance Beware

July 28, 2015 Beth Devine

The debate continues. To blog or not to blog appears to be the ongoing content marketing hand-wringer, although the statistics show that businesses that blog are thirteen times more likely to have a positive ROI.

Your Business’ Future Depends On Machines

Still, the blogging resistance prevails. For all you blogging cynics out there, think of the future. By 2020, it’s projected that your customers will manage 85% of their relationships without ever speaking a syllable to a human.

Your customers are going to be busy researching your business online, without any direct contact with you. How are you going to personally influence them? With a blog, they can easily learn more about you.

I read an interesting dialogue in a comments section of a marketing blog recently. The commenter was making a case against blogging, asserting that it’s not for everyone. The comments were borderline caustic and appeared meant to provoke. This is the sort of behavior you sometimes see in someone whose last defenses are crumbling.

In other words, no matter how hard the commenter argued, the evidence speaks for itself. The one good point the commenter made was to maintain that blogging makes sense when you have enough time and resources.

What Will Blogging Cost You?

The one thing blogging costs you when resources are limited is your time. Instead of investing in pay-per-click to get new leads, with its requisite advertising spending of often hundreds of dollars, give blogging a try.

Your business blog will continue to work for you long after you’re done writing a post. No ad space or ad campaigns that will cost you money and time. Consider doing a blog in conjunction to your advertising expenditures.

Blogging Value Is Endless

Even when you’re at home and watching reruns of Mad Men, your blog is working for you. That’s how your blog is able to continue creating 67% more B2B leads than businesses who don’t blog. Your old blog posts are just as valuable as your favorite TV reruns.

Visitors will continue to find them when they search, long after you published them. Keep your content relevant and updated, and your post’s value will go on and on, like Monday Night Football.

That Downtime of Yours? Wanna Use It?

Is your main blogging objection lack of time? That’s like saying you don’t have any downtime. Or as Boost Blog Traffic calls it, mundane time, or weird time. Those hours you spend driving back and forth, doing mindless chores, or the unavoidable waiting you have to do for appointments and meetings and standing in line.

You may not be able to jot anything down, but you can use this downtime to think creatively about your business and the things you want to share. You can also listen to podcasts and audiobooks to help you stimulate your creative juices. Find titles related to your industry and begin making a list of potential ideas.

It’s often the idea that’s the most difficult to generate. Once you’ve nailed the topic, the process is on its way.

Get More URLs and Get Found Online

Consistent blogging helps you get found online. So you’ve heard that one before? And you’re still not blogging?

Every time you publish a blog post, you give the internet surfers searching for your content the opportunity to find you online. The more posts you write, the bigger your chances are of having new visitors to your website.

When you do the math, it’s simple. 100 posts = 100 URLs. For each blog post, you’ve created a new URL. Your website alone doesn’t do that since there are a limited number of pages a typical site should reasonably have.

For every blog post you publish, it helps you reach the right audience who is interested and searching for your valuable content. Your website traffic is tailored to the people who are interested in what you have to say, thanks to the relevant blog information you’re sharing.

If you start blogging now, you are staying ahead of the game. The future for a successful business involves more online content exposure, and 37% of marketers says blogs are the way to go with content marketing.

Begin educating your audience now and stake your claim in the world of online engagement. The resistance is caving one blog at a time.

3 Content Marketing Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make

July 23, 2015 Beth Devine

To understand what you’re doing wrong, first you need to understand what content marketing is. Here’s a definition of content marketing from HubSpot:

“Content marketing is a marketing program that centers on creating, publishing, and distributing content for your target audience — usually online — the goal of which is to attract new customers.”

Content marketing includes a wide range of examples because so many different types of content can be used. Content mediums can include blogs, infographics, web pages, ebooks, white pages, apps, videos, webinars, and podcasts. With content marketing, you own the content. By consistently creating and sharing content, you are attempting to impact the behavior of your audience.

Here are three mistakes that you don’t want to make in your content marketing:

Your topics aren’t specific enough.

One of the ways you might discover this error is as you create the content, you realize it’s way too long and extensive. So you decide to try and make it into two blog posts, or break it down into more than one video. When there are too many details or too many variations on the subject, it’s impossible to give effective answers.

Start by creating a specific title to help you stay focused. HubSpot has a great article on how to get from a topic to a working title to help you write a blog post, but it could be used to keep you on track with creating something specific for any content marketing medium.

Focused topics have more depth and meaning. And since content marketing is all about sharing content you own and telling a story in the process, it will be much more memorable when it’s specific.

Remember, you can always change your working title once you’ve completed your white pages, app, blog post, etc. It’s just supposed to help you stay specific and avoid drifting off into distracting details, like Dory the helpful surgeonfish in Finding Nemo.

You don’t know who you’re talking to.

It’s the same rule of thumb that you apply to your social media. Knowing your audience is something a successful marketer must always consider in order to have effective content. For example, I’d write “You don’t know to whom you’re speaking” if my audience was comprised of a class of degree-seeking English majors.

Ask yourself “what’s important to them?” and then connect in a way that shows you care and you’re for real. Knowing your audience entails being authentic. But what is that, really? Seth Godin asks “Is authenticity authentic?” and wonders if it’s even possible to be authentic in a world where everyone is trying to succeed.

He says that in order to get around the inevitability of inventing ourselves, we need to be consistent. Stick with the same story, the same voice, and answer their questions using the same desire to make an impact.

The best way to do this is act like a human. The best way to know if you’re human is if you can easily fill out a CAPTCHA. If you are having trouble with this task, then it might be time for an emotional overhaul.

Use your human emotions to create memorable content marketing that will connect with your audience. Show your empathy for their needs in your answers to their questions and they’ll be more likely to stick around.

You aren’t listening. (A.k.a. “Can you hear me now?”)

Knowing who you’re talking to isn’t the end game. You also have to show you’re listening. The best part about this is that you will get to know your audience even better when you’re a good listener.

How do you do this? Besides interacting with them on social media and in comment sections, keep up to date on what’s relevant. Set up Google alerts for companies, industries, and topics that are of interest. Follow your customers, prospects, and industry leaders on social media, and get involved in the discussion.

If you’re listening, you’ll want to keep the communication a two-way street. If possible, every comment directed to you should be answered, even with a thank you, and all questions warrant some kind of response.

Your content marketing strategy is a conversation in the making. Content that’s interactive is more likely to draw an audience. They are going to feel a connection to you, and this connection could help you develop a relationship. Guess who they’ll think of the next time they want to buy the very thing you sell?

Good luck with your content marketing, and stick around for more from a real human. I can even pass a CAPTCHA test without squinting.

Why Your Small Business Needs a Website

July 1, 2015 Beth Devine

small businesses need a website — “Smart cat” by Lori, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Your small business needs an online presence to survive. Without a website, people won’t be able to find you. I mean that literally. We live in a world where we Google before we shop, before we get in our car and drive anywhere new.

Gone are the days of phone book white pages and oversized Rand McNally road maps. When you’re looking for a place to buy the world’s best cat litter, you don’t search in outdated formats. You’re going to ask Google, use your GPS, and set course to the best deal in town.

To Beat Your Competition

So what happens if people don’t find what they’re looking for online? They’ll go to the competition, that’s what. Not having an online presence means you’re not being found, which means you’re losing out on business opportunities.

Having a website shows you’re a legitimate business. Having a professional, updated, easy-to-navigate website shows you’re the type of business who cares about your product or service. Who would you be more likely to buy from, a sloppy, outdated website, or one that reflects a business with a progressive website?

To help promote your business, make sure your business site is connected to all the relevant sites: the three top search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing; and other online directories such as Yelp, Merchant Circle, Yellow Pages, Trip Advisor, and BBB. Depending on your business, there are a variety of online sites who will list you for free.

Business discovery sites like these are what help you get found. Without a website, there is no information for indexing programs to share with potential customers who are searching online. Your first impression is often your website, so don’t give the wrong one with an unavailable URL.

Here are three good reasons why your small business needs a website:

To Give Your Customers Convenience

People shop differently in today’s digital age. Window shopping is occurring online more and more, competing with an afternoon stroll down Main Street. And when customers are ready to buy, they’re more likely to research their next purchase through the help of Yelp or Google or Shopzilla.

According to comScore’s quarterly State Of Retail report, online shopping reached a total of $61.6 billion in Q2 2014, up 13%, accounting for 11.6% of consumers’ spending for both mobile and desktop.

People want to use the internet to research, compare, and buy. And it’s not just individual customers who are doing this. The 2014 State of B2B Procurement Study shows that 94 percent of businesses are doing some type of online research as well.

It’s never been more convenient to shop when the digital world of products and services is no further away than your keyboard. Without a website, your small business isn’t providing customers with the convenience of easy shopping.

Before they can shop online, they have to find you. We already know how that’s going to work out if you don’t have a URL address. Give your customers an online printable map option, embed a Google map, and make sure you provide a street address as well as email and phone number on your website.

Think of your website as your digital business card, complete with a full-color brochure attached. Can you imagine someone showing up to your business and not handing them one or both of these? Even when a customer forgets your business card, they can find you online. You’ll never run out or misplace it, the information can be easily updated, and the content can exceed any printed format.

To Build Relationships With Your Followers

Having a Facebook page is a great way to help build relationships with your followers. But without a website to link to, you’re sending the message that you’re not that interested.

Through a website, your small business can send regular e-newsletters and stay in touch with blog posts. Sending emails is a great way to offer discounts and specials on your services or products. By establishing a relationship through these channels via your website, you can develop a relationship of trust.

One reason e-commerce won’t replace brick-and-mortar stores is due to the trust that’s forged from a perceived sense of permanence, reliability, and familiarity. In order to convey a similar degree of security to your website visitors, your website must be designed to show that you’re thinking like your customer. Studies continue to show, for example, that free shipping and speed of delivery increases online sales, not low prices alone.

Substituting online for what you can’t give tangibly in order to create a relationship involves using all the tools available, from a site designed to meet your customer’s needs, to using social media, to answering common questions with blogs and helpful site content. Don’t forget to include testimonials in strategic locations that demonstrate your customer loyalty and satisfaction.

You Need a Team of One

Your small business website needs to appear as if you have a team of professionals who are working to keep your online presence active and available. This appearance is achieved far more easily than keeping your physical storefront polished and inviting. The only team you need is you, and your web hosting company for any additional website work.

You don’t need to update your website everyday, or even every week. New content management systems like WordPress make it a quick job to stay on top of things. With the support of your web hosting company, you can present a professional and engaging website with minimal maintenance.

5 Reasons You Can’t Do Without Online Newsletters

May 19, 2015 Beth Devine

The online newsletter continues to confound and perform after decades of relentless community building and information sharing. It has been called the cockroach of the Internet, the goose that laid the golden egg, tried-and-true, a direct line of communication, old-school artifact, the workhorse of nonprofits, and, perhaps most eloquently, “hand-curated pipes for mainlining quality Internet directly into our veins.” (Thank you for that, The Kernel.)

As a vein-clogging, direct line into our email inboxes, the online newsletter is a tool that will build your business and develop your brand image. Despite the Snapchatters and Whatsappers and Instagrammers out there, there is a time and a place where emailing your online newsletter is without rival.

Here are five reasons you can’t do without an online newsletter:

1. It’s easy to personalize and customize as part of your marketing plan.

Competing with Facebook isn’t so hard with a personalized newsletter. When you customize your newsletter so it contains personalized recommendations, the reader’s name, and reader-designated content, you’re more likely to keep your audience’s attention.

Newsletters tend to come before everything else in terms of self-interest. As David Carr writes in The New York Times, “It makes sense. My personal digital hierarchy, which I assume is fairly common, goes like this: email first, because it is for and about me; social media next, because it is for and about me, my friends and professional peers; and finally, there is the anarchy of the web, which is about, well, everything.”

As an addition to Facebook and other social media, the online newsletter is a way to personally connect with your audience and be an important part of your larger marketing plan.

2. It keeps your audience informed (and entertained).

Your newsletters are designed to do more than keep your readers connected. Your audience is reading to learn more and receive something valuable. Whether it’s helpful information, up-to-date news on your brand, or a discount or reward, your newsletter is an effective way to continue the relationship with ongoing communication.

By continuing to offer your audience something useful, you’re showing them that the’re valuable and haven’t been forgotten. You already know that your readers are interested because they’ve signed up for your newsletters, so be sure to give them something useful.

3. It’s a low-cost way to reach a large number of subscribers.

Small businesses and nonprofits can’t dispute the low-cost, pennies per message advantage to online newsletters. When you have a marketing budget, newsletters are the lost-cost choice over other marketing channels like direct mail and search engine advertising.

You can easily send out a new edition of your newsletter to a target audience of thousands of people, whenever you choose and as frequently as you want.

4. It’s a simple way to be mobile-friendly.

Without having to invest in new technology, you are instantly mobile-friendly with online newsletters. Email allows you to reach your audience on all types of mobile devices in an increasingly mobile-centric society.

A Forrester Research study shows that “on average, 42% of retailers’ email opens now happen on smartphones, up from 28% in 2013, while email open rates on tablets grew from 16% to 17%.”

When seeking mobile-friendly communication, texts are the competing alternative. But email newsletters are free to your audience where texts can incur a charge, and email gives much more space for your message in comparison to texts.

5. It’s the best way to grab your audience’s attention.

So what’s worth paying attention to when there is a never-ending supply of information? Most people are lazy when it comes to searching out content that interests them. By having it show up in their inboxes, reading content that your audience selected just got a lot easier.

No need to go looking for what they might like. Newsletters make sifting through the endless stream of online information easier for your readers. When your newsletter arrives, they recognize the sender, know you as a trusted source, and are confident that this is content they’re seeking.

If you like what you read, feel to share using our social media buttons!

How to Convert Website Traffic into Leads

March 18, 2015 Beth Devine

If you sell a product or service online, the big question that arises is, “How do I convert website traffic into leads?” Turning traffic into leads begins at the top of the marketing funnel, where discovery happens.

The all-important secret to your business begins right here. By understanding who your audience is and what their needs are, you can direct your website traffic. Know who your audience is and it will help you with the following ways to turn traffic into leads:

Share Content Your Audience Actually Cares About

Cater to your audience by creating content that they’re interested in. Speak to the humans who are looking for answers. Use the term “you” as if you’re talking directly to them and their personal needs.

Use blogs as an online tool to share this content, making it easier for search engines to find your brand when your topics are Googled and searched. According to research by HubSpot, the average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors, 126% more leads, 97% more inbound links, and has 434% more indexed pages.

Use social media as a no-pay way to get attention as news feeds screech to a scrolling halt when they spy your eye-catching posts. Remember to communicate on each platform in the appropriate manner, including visuals whenever you can. Share your blog post links and photos, as well as entertaining items meant to capture your brand’s identity.

Writing and sharing your content is a critical step in getting your audience’s attention. You’re letting them know where to go for future information and entertainment value.

Keywords That Cater to the SERPS

You’ve heard the terms before: relevant, targeted, and organic keywords. It means using pertinent keywords to use in your site copy so your audience will find your brand in search results and ultimately land on your website.

Think about these keywords as you create copy. Optimized content helps with not only being discovered, but it’s proof that you’re knowledgeable and capable in solving the problems your audience is searching for answers to.

Somewhere out there they are looking for you. Help them to find you with a roadmap of keywords.

Offer Your Audience Something Compelling

They’ve discovered you at last. So what’s next?

This is where CTAs come into play. Call-to-actions are the go-to buttons for a compelling offer. These offers can be any type of freebie from a newsletter option to an ebook. Include the CTAs on your social media platforms, your promotional emails, and your landing pages.

Ask your audience for the most minimal information, their first and last name, and their email, allowing you to make future contact while giving them the opportunity to learn more about a program, sign up for a demo, download a white paper, watch a webinar, or get the deal. See Hubspot’s great CTA examples for a terrific source of inspiration.

If you include a CTA in your social media, it’s a good idea to use a URL shortener when you post a link that takes them to the landing page or designated form. CTAs are the most straightforward way to turn traffic into leads, so include them whenever it’s appropriate.

For your landing pages, CTAs are included as part of a clear and specific form, as detailed in Get Better Form Conversion With These 10 Tips. Don’t forget to label your CTA button with something besides “submit.”

Include an Email Subscription Offer on Your Blog

You’ve worked hard on your blog posts. Don’t let that effort go to waste.

Include an offer to subscribe in all your blog posts as a logical way to continue giving value. Take this database of email addresses, add them to your marketing email program, and grow your leads and attract potential customers.

Effective CTAs in your blog will help end your post with a bang. An enticing, concise call to action invites your readers to take a specific step by clicking on a button, or on a few lines of well-written text at the end of your post.

Make the invite as seamless as possible. Try something simple: “Like what you’ve read? Join us for our email update each week by adding your email to the form on the right.”

Or try something sassy: “Pssst. Want access to our blog updates each week and be in the know before all your friends have the scoop? Sign up here with your email and we’ll keep this our little secret.”

So what are you going to work on? How will you keep your content filled with inviting ways to turn traffic into leads?

Get Better Form Conversion with These 10 Tips

February 12, 2015 Beth Devine

Lead generation is the process of collecting registration information, usually in exchange for content, so you can increase your marketing database for email follow up, which means new contacts for sales and marketing.

To successfully capture audience information with lead generation, you need successful form conversion. More form conversion means more lead generation, which is why you’ll see it called “lead gen form,” a fancy term for your contact form. Marketers love their buzzwords, especially content marketers.

Here are 10 tips to increase form conversion by making your form as straightforward and easy as possible.

1. Don’t ask for a phone number.

While it’s okay to include your business number somewhere on the page (but not on the form), it’s good to avoid asking for a phone number unless your business is based on follow-up sales calls. People are leery to divulge personal information, and are even more reluctant to receive a phone call.

2. Show your privacy policy.

Because people are unwilling to share personal information, it’s important to reassure them that their details are secure. Link your privacy policy within the form as either a footnote or just beneath a sensitive field, which could be a field for a phone number. Let your visitors know what to expect from sharing our email, and reassure them they won’t receive email spam as a result.

3. Use trust seals.

Trust seals are logos or badges tell your visitors that your business and website are trustworthy. They are best used on ecommerce sites where customers want to ensure the safety of their transactions. Choose one that is backed up by a consumer guarantee, such as a guarantee of delivery, a guarantee of consumer identity protection, or a price drop guarantee.

4. Keep your form fields to a minimum.

The more information you ask to be completed, the more your rate of completion will drop. If you only need an email address to complete the signup form for your newsletter or blog, then don’t ask for job title, firm size, etc.

With every additional form field that needs filling out, the greater the chance of your visitors losing interest. Even when a form field is indicated as optional, the form appears longer and more time consuming, and therefore less inviting.

If you must include additional form fields, then try doing a test to compare how the different forms – one with all your fields, one with the minimum number of fields, and possibly one with a middle ground amount – and compare their conversion rates.

5. Find a good location.

The internet tells us that the best form conversion spots are in the upper right hand corner of the webpage, which probably has everything to do with how our eyes scan the page. Placing your form where it’s most visible at first glance also means placing it above the fold, so viewers can see it without scrolling.

A good test is if you can see the form in the time it takes you to blink, then you’ve found a good place, and visitors are less likely to miss it and bounce off the page.

6. Give your form some space.

Your form will attract more attention if it’s surrounded by white space and not crowded with clutter. Minimize dissonant colors and too much text, and use directional cues to help your visitor’s focus travel to your form.

7. Use power words.

When you describe your offer, include powerful, action verbs like “get,” “feel” and “have” to help compel your visitors into an active role. Include these power words in your headline to support your call-to-action. “Complete This Form” is an example of a headline that is too generic and not very compelling.

8. Never submit!

Never use the word “submit” for your form’s call-to-action button copy. Using submit will reduce your conversion rates by 3%. More specific button copy is more successful, such as “Click here for your free download,” Sign Up for Your Free Demonstration,” or “Get Your Free Copy.” This means the old standby “click here” won’t make a spectacular hit either.

9. To CAPTCHA or not to CAPTCHA?

Using CAPTCHA can mean a loss of lead generation, which means less potential sales. Unless you’re plagued with spam, it might be simpler to filter through a few spam conversions than scare away visitors. If you are going to use it, use smart CAPTCHA, which shows a human verification code only when there’s an indication of form abuse.

You can also try the honeypot CAPTCHA technique where CSS is used to hide a form field that’s meant to be left blank to human eyes, but not to a spam bot. When the form isn’t blank, you know it’s spam.

10. Make your field labels clear.

When Expedia made the mistake of including an optional field that wasn’t clearly marked, it cost them $12 million. Too many fields and too many decisions can result in more error. Make your labels clear by using specific terms your visitors will easily understand and respond to.

Indicate which fields are required with an asterisk or some other mechanism.

Do You Know These 5 Marketing Trends for 2015?

January 30, 2015 Beth Devine

It’s important to look back over the previous year and reflect on what you did that was successful, significant, or slipshod. Thinking backwards has its uses, but thinking forwards is a good opportunity to see how you fit into what’s expected.

Here are five marketing trends gleaned from the web that make the most sense for small businesses in 2015.

Content Marketing That Matters

The amount of free online content continues to overwhelm us. Your customers are probably growing bored, overstimulated, and underwhelmed. The answer is not to create more content to try and win attention.

The answer to today’s online content overload is marketing with a content strategy. Whereas the old mantra was “always be closing,” today’s could be “always be publishing,” but publishing with a focus.

Give your customers and prospects content that they can’t get elsewhere, is targeted to meet their interests, and is well-planned and well-written. Look to other industries for inspiration, including their social media pages. Check out their Pinterest, Facebook, blogs, and Twitter accounts to fuel your ideas for quality content.

Go Social or Bust

The social media landscape is continually changing. Small businesses must stay tuned to what platforms are the most relevant to your brand.

Where your brand should focus its presence is based on one simple fact: where your customers are. Knowing which platforms to avoid and which to engage in is even more critical as changes in Facebook and Twitter limit the reach of your pages and push business users to use paid advertisements.

Know the emerging technologies and where to look for your customers. Trends include messaging services like Snapchat, growing in popularity with 1 billion Snapchat stories viewed every day. The new social media darling is Instagram, the mobile photo-sharing site that is attracting users and investors by the truckload.

Watch for analytics to become available to marketers through more social platforms. As with Facebook, which offers Page Insights after you receive thirty likes, expect to see Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr do something similar.

Measure With Analytics

As the wave of social media analytics grows, it is important to take advantage of the digital data that is available. If it’s digital, it’s measurable, giving you critical understanding of product-market fit, user experience, customer behavior, and more.

Getting the right focus is the challenge. Using metrics to help you make the best decisions involves measuring many different things, including open rates, number of followers, and traffic. Focusing on what variables connect to revenue and growth is key.

Facebook recently added conversion lift to its analytics platform, allowing advertisers to measure conversion rates from digital ads. This tool is one example of how data can be used to help you focus your online efforts and your advertising dollars.

Less Words, More Visuals

Using less words and more visuals continues to be the trend for 2015. As non-professionals increasingly use smartphone cameras to shoot videos and photos with instant results, the potential for marketing also grows.

Visual storytelling is growing, and social media is quick to jump on board. Facebook was first to push video, with Instagram’s 15-second video quick to follow. Now Twitter is launching native video, giving users application-ready viewing and playing of videos as a way to add to the conversation.

Twitter already figured out how short our attention span is: 2.8 seconds to be exact, or how long it takes us to read approximtely 140 characters. 90% of information that your brain receives is visual, with visuals processed 60,000 times faster than text.

If you haven’t already, begin adding more visuals to your website and social media. Your content is being consumed by people who favor images, so that’s what you have to give them.

The IoT (Internet of Things)

Mobile data is continuing to expand with user-friendly options that will include wearable devices. The technology being used to transfer data over a network in devices such as heart monitors and automobile sensors is surfacing in smart watches and exercise bands, and is expected to become more popular as new solutions develop.

The IoT is a vast communication network of more than 25 billion objects, all online and gathering information, and using sensors to correspond with each other. Collecting data and sending it has never been easier.

It’s not always about knowing how this will affect your marketing. Sometimes it’s just about being aware of the newest breed of online connection and understanding what consumers are interested in. Anticipating marketing trends will help you move towards a more connected future where you’re prepared to address challenges as early as you can.

5 More Marketing No-No’s

December 4, 2014 Beth Devine

In continuation of our previous 5 Online Marketing No-No’s, here are five more marketing mistakes to avoid. Like the wise business person you are, be sure to check this list and revamp any marketing mistakes into nonexistence.

5 More Mistakes for Your Marketing Know-How

1. Your email list is dirty

If you’re email marketing isn’t compliant with spam, you’ll get a high bounce rate, or worse, you could get your email efforts shut down. CAN SPAM carries severe penalties for non-compliant commercial email, but it’s simple to check it and stay within the law. Be sure to email only recipients that have asked to be on your marketing list, which means they’ve freely given you their email information.

It also helps your email marketing performance to separate your email list into groups, including targeting your list based on deliverability. This means paying attention to your email open rates and selecting recipients who open your emails and click on links you’ve embedded in them.

You might target your new email group by sharing only your best offers with these more interested readers, or by mailing the less responsive recipients less often.

2. Your customers need some TLC

Did you forget about those happy customers of yours? Or how about those new clients whom you’ve been ignoring due to other, more seasoned ones?

Sometimes we forget about and neglect our long-time, happy customers and the newbies who’ve just walked through the door. But both are equally valuable and deserve your attention.

It’s easier to sell a solution to an existing problem than it is to sell a positive benefit. So spend some time finding out ways you can help your happy customers to be even happier by learning what problems they continue to struggle with.

As for your new customers, they are often eager to respond to your questions when it comes to determining how you’re doing and how you could improve. If you don’t ask, you won’t know. Ask them to take a survey and give them a free beginner’s guide or offer them a free gift or holiday discount for doing so.

3. Your networking is abysmal

Okay, so you aren’t particularly social. Find someone who is and can network for you, or challenge yourself and get out there and attend one of the many events that are going on, particularly during the holidays.

Take advantage of the opportunities to meet new people, build relationships, and create new business. Better yet, sign up to speak at one of the events and really challenge your social fears. Speaking in public gets easier and the rewards of speaking at public events are like networking on steroids.

Seth Godin talks straight on the fear of public speaking, clarifying that it’s not about you. It’s really about what you have to offer. So make it about your audience and how you can help them. Isn’t that what you are trying to do anyways as you network?

4. You ignore the potential of your referrals

Referrals are your free marketing resource. Imagine getting new business and customers just from recommendations from your already satisfied customers.

Do you have a referral program working for you? Are you emailing customers after you complete a project they’re happy with to ask for a referral? Do you follow them on LinkedIn and ask them for an introduction to a potential client?

It’s that simple. When you ignore the potential of referrals, you’re missing out on an inexpensive way to market your business. So go ahead – do your part and ask.

5. You overlook the obvious: free press

Free press opportunities are an obvious method for marketing your company, but too often they’re overlooked. It’s an incorrect assumption that the press will come looking for you and your awesome product or service. You have to pitch them your grand idea to get their attention.

And they will pay attention because they are always looking for news. They want to know what’s going on with your company. Get their attention and get some press, and that will drive traffic to your website.

When you’re seeking out press options, don’t forget about small time players, such as online bloggers and local, small-town print dailies and weeklies. These formats are all thriving and open for business for your news.

Stop hiding from your marketing mistakes. It’s easy to make them, but it’s nearly as easy to correct them.