Month: September 2021

b2b-lead-generation

What is B2B lead generation?

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For What is B2B lead generation?

Lead generation is a vital aspect of any business that sells a product or service. In marketing terms, B2B lead generation involves the identification of potential customers and conducting marketing or sales activity to encourage their interest. The greater number of leads you bring in, the more revenue you can make.

As a company operating in the B2B sector, you will have a different set of criteria of what is classed as a qualified lead and requires the collaborative and strategic working of the marketing and sales functions within the company.

Historically, sales and marketing have been known to work in silos. As buyer behavior has changed, so has the way sales and marketing departments interact with potential clients. An aligned approach is vital. Marketing strategy is designed to attract potential leads, qualify them as relevant, and push them through the funnel to sales outreach. 

Why your business needed B2B lead generation

In times gone by, sales and marketing were more concerned about telling the client about the existence of your product. But the nature of buyer behavior has changed drastically due to the internet. Inbound marketing is designed to bring your leads to you rather than pursuing them.

How to define B2B leads

Technically, any business that could benefit from your product or service could be a lead, but this doesn’t help your sales team effectively target their efforts. Instead, they should be categorized by their level of interest. These are usually defined as either a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

MQLs 

When potential clients engage with your marketing campaigns, they will be identified as an MQL. This engagement could include downloading content, attending a webinar, interacting on social media.

High-quality MQLs are vital in providing the sales team with a solid pipeline of leads. This will also increase your chance of conversion and improve ROI.

SQLs 

The next stage of the marketing funnel involves moving MQLs to SQLs. When a lead is deemed an SQL, then this is the point where your sales team will usually reach out and initiate contact.

The move from MQL to SQL usually involves more signs of real intent. This can include emailing for more information, filling in an online form, or signing up for a free trial.   

Who is responsible for B2B lead generation? 

B2B lead generation strategies and lead management is usually the joint responsibility of the sales and marketing departments. Whereas it used to be common for sales teams to be solely responsible, that is no longer the case, and the sales and marketing departments must collaborate closely to achieve targets.

Modern sales departments are usually split into separate roles to create efficiencies and focus talent in the right areas. Sales development roles identify possible leads, conduct initial engagement, and set any calls or meetings.

Business development managers are those who work at a more strategic level with leads. They communicate with prospects, give presentations and demos, and close deals. 

By running the sales function in this way, you create a very efficient department where everyone’s roles are clearly defined.

Marketers also fall into different categories when it comes to their main roles. Growth marketers are becoming popular in start-ups where revenue is needed fast and with little budget. They tend to alter strategy quickly, trying new ideas and dropping others that aren’t getting quick results. This approach works well at the start-up stage but generally can’t scale effectively, where a more sophisticated marketing setup is needed.

Inbound and demand generation marketers focus on developing strategies to engage potential clients and fill up the marketing funnel.

Depending on the size of your company, you may use one or more agency partners to handle various parts of your B2B lead generation activity.

Larger marketing departments may consist of digital specialists, content marketers, lead generation, and growth hacking.

B2B lead generation activities  

Several different B2B lead generation strategies can be conducted to bring in new business. There is still a place for traditional sales cold calling when it is targeted to the right organizations.

These include:

Outreach – the traditional approach of calling relevant people and attempting to get them to agree to a meeting, demo, or receive more information.

Email – similar to telephone outreach, this involves emailing potential leads. This can be done via personal email or an email platform.

Social – targeting and developing contacts through social media platforms and LinkedIn.

Alongside traditional sales outreach, the main b2b lead gen strategy is run by the marketing department.

Content marketing – creating and publishing interesting and informative content on a range of channels. Lead capture then pulls leads into the marketing funnel, where they become an MQL. Content can include videos, podcasts, webinars. Ebooks and blogs.

Account marketing – the buyer personas at each company are identified, and campaigns are created to target them specifically.  

Technology in B2B lead generation  

Modern sales and marketing initiatives run on technology. Aside from the platforms you choose to run your campaigns on. Internal systems allow you to capture the campaign data.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is vital to tracking and recording potential client data and your interaction with them.

Another invaluable platform is marketing automation. Save time and money by automating your entire inbound marketing strategy rather than manually handling all aspects of the funnel.  

Conclusion 

B2B lead generation is an important part of any business. Generating these leads needs strong business direction and an aligned sales and marketing department. By deploying a range of strategies across targeted marketing channels, you’re increasing your chances of attracting and converting more leads through your funnel.

Each lead generation strategy will be slightly different, and you’ll be competing with others in your industry for the attention of your target market. By defining your buyer personas and targeting your campaigns precisely, you’ll improve your ROI as wells as your conversion rate.  

linkedin-for-business

How to Use LinkedIn for Business: A Step-by-Step Guide for Marketers

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For How to Use LinkedIn for Business: A Step-by-Step Guide for Marketers

LinkedIn is an excellent place for businesses that are looking to network and grow their reach. Unlike many other popular social networks out there today, LinkedIn is aimed at job seekers and professionals. At its core, it is a professional social network. It is all about business-related activities, including industry discussions, professional connections, career development, and much more. With that being said, let’s take a look at using LinkedIn successfully for your business below.

Set up your page effectively

Many different elements come together when it comes to creating the perfect LinkedIn page. Firstly, you need to fill out your company description. This should make it evident in what your company does, the services and products you sell, your mission, and your vision. Make sure you write in your brand voice. Aside from this, a professional cover photo is needed, and you can add as many as three hashtags to your profile, which will make your profile more searchable, so select your hashtags with care.

In addition to this, you should add the locations your business is based in, i.e., your store or office locations. You need to add multiple locations, which will help you become more searchable when people do local searches on LinkedIn. In addition to this, you can manage your language.

If you have a multilingual audience or global brand, add your description, tagline, and name in more than 20 different languages. Finally, it would help if you thought about adding a custom button to your LinkedIn page. This will encourage visitors to take action. Options include the likes of sign up, register, learn more, contact us, and visit a website.

Find connections and customers that are highly targeted.

Targeting on LinkedIn is a must when it comes to using this platform effectively. The targeting on LinkedIn is unlike any other when it comes to digital advertising. Small companies can zero in on specific industries, job roles, and company sizes they know would typically be interested in their job or service.

For instance, let’s say that you sell inventory management software to small companies in New York. You can set your advertising so that you will only show your campaigns to companies in New York with less than 100 employees.

Add LinkedIn buttons across your online presence.

Aside from the suggestions that we have mentioned so far, we also recommend that you add social media icons to the footer or header of your newsletter or website, which will make it a lot easier for people to find your LinkedIn page. You can also add these buttons to your emails as well.

Consider the right time for your posts.

Use analytics to find out the optimal time to post content to reach your desired audience on LinkedIn. Some of the optimal times for posting on LinkedIn include 5.45 pm, 12.45 pm, 10.45 am, and 7.45 am, according to Hootsuite. Use your research to continue to refine your strategy, though.

Optimize posts for impact and rich

In addition to the benefits that we have mentioned so far, when it comes to posting from your business page on LinkedIn, there are several practices you should consider. The algorithm used by LinkedIn will rank posts based on several different signals, including engagement probability, interest relevance, and personal connections.

This means that you should be looking to create posts that interest people and are highly engaging. You can also notify workers if you believe they would be interested in something you have posted. As an advocate of your business, they will get the engagement started on the post and, therefore, increase its visibility.

Some of the things we recommend you do to boost your LinkedIn posts include:

  • Respond to any comments left on your post to increase engagement 
  • Write solid and robust headlines for your articles 
  • Add a few relevant hashtags to your posts, but do so in a natural manner 
  • Boost engagement and feedback with LinkedIn pools 
  • Lead with a question that encourages people to respond 
  • Tag pages and people mentioned in the post 
  • Name the type of audience you are trying to reach, for example, remote workers or working parents 
  • Include a call-to-action that is simple, clear, and eye-catching 
  • Call out key quotes, points, and statistics 
  • Keep the copy short – If the post is long, make sure it is readable by including bullet points, numbers, and paragraph breaks. 
  • Use video or imagery to capture the attention 
  • Share content that is relevant and timely

Share posts with rich media

Last but not least, another suggestion that we have for when it comes to LinkedIn marketing is to share posts that have rich media, i.e., videos or photos. Posts like this tend to perform much better across social media platforms like LinkedIn. In fact, according to the social media powerhouse themselves, posts with images generate 98 percent more comments when compared to posts that do not have any rich media.

When it comes to adding rich media to your posts, we recommend using custom photographs whenever you can. Avoiding stock imagery is a great way to stand out. You can also support your posts by uploading the likes of SlideShare presentations, PowerPoints, or PDFs.

One of the great benefits of native video on LinkedIn is that it will play automatically whenever someone scrolls by it. As a consequence, it is highly effective in terms of catching people’s attention! When compared with other types of content, videos experience five times the amount of engagement on LinkedIn.

So there you have it: some of the different approaches you can use to maximize LinkedIn when it comes to marketing your business. We hope that the ideas and suggestions mentioned above will help you make the most of this unique and exciting social media platform. 

digital-marketing-myths

5 Digital Marketing Myths Debunked

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For 5 Digital Marketing Myths Debunked

Most modern and online businesses have quickly adapted and took advantage of this fast-growing industry regarding digital marketing. Current marketing strategies like digital marketing have given small business owners and marketing teams of established businesses worldwide.

Social Media Marketing is also one of the most effective marketing strategies in the modern day, and businesses not making use of it will be left behind fast. Marketing teams in businesses should have adapted and allowed budgets to generate leads and sales on online platforms. The reach for meager costs will enable businesses to target the correct people while still in the awareness phase.

However, even with evidence and records to prove this, some individuals remain wary. This article will debunk the five most common digital marketing myths.

1 Social Media Marketing Only Works For Specific Industries

This is one of the most common myths because it’s not entirely true. For example, even though social media marketing may be more effective for fashion and retail companies, major brands in every industry have used this strategy to generate leads and sales.

That means as businesses evolve, so does social media marketing; all industries can use it effectively, so there is no need to avoid it! Furthermore, a study conducted by Gartner predicts that by 2020 up to 30% of top-performing companies will abandon their digital campaigns if they don’t start making changes now.

2 SEO Is Dead

No, SEO is not dead! The reverse could be true. This marketing strategy has been around for ages and will continue to exist because it’s still one of the most effective ways to generate leads and sales online. It may not have reached its peak yet either; many other industries can benefit from an increase in search engine rankings, such as healthcare or education—both ranked among the top 20 largest U.S. industry sectors by GDP contribution (Cleveland).

Modern tools like Google Maps also provide hints on where people live, allowing businesses to target neighborhoods they want to reach out to with specific products/services based on location-based searches (Google Trends). As long as these digital marketing myths aren’t true, SEO will remain a powerful way to generate leads and sales. As long as Google considers SEO an essential part of the ranking factors for businesses worldwide, no one can say otherwise.

3 You Don’t Have To Build An Online Presence If Your Competition Isn’t Online.

This myth is not valid. Even though it may seem like the competition might be ahead of you, they’re still vulnerable to being taken over—because your competitors are also running into difficulties with modern marketing strategies.

For example, Facebook’s algorithm changes in late 2016 that led to a decrease in organic content reach meant small businesses and blogs were left behind without enough budget for increased paid ads (Bates). Additionally, since digital marketing requires constant upkeep and care, so does social media; if neglected, there will be consequences!

Of course, established companies can take advantage of this on their own or hire a Top Digital Marketing Agency in Dallas to do all the work for them. Still, no matter what needs to be done, as long as these steps aren’t followed, someone else could come in and take over before you know it.

4 Mobile Website Traffic Doesn’t Drive Conversions

This myth is also not close to being correct. Mobile website traffic has increased steadily over the years, and in fact, mobile-only users have grown to be a top priority market for most businesses. For example, according to Microsoft’s latest report on global internet usage trends (2016), more than 17% of people only use their phones, which means your business must provide easy access via mobile so they can still engage with you effectively.

This also goes for all those competitors out there; if ignored, this could mean lost opportunities when small moments become big deals—such as someone searching nearby restaurants while hungry and finding yours! These digital marketing myths aren’t true, resulting in decreased leads/sales because mobile website traffic is one of the most critical driving conversions.

In more recent years, statistics have shown that mobile users came close to being 50% of all online traffic, making sense. Smartphones have enabled individuals to browse the internet, similar to a PC, conveniently. So make sure your website is optimized for mobile use.

5 Negative Reviews Will Dramatically Decrease Your Sales

This myth is false, especially for high-quality products and services! The truth is that consumers are more likely to buy from a company they know or have heard of before than if they stumble across it randomly, so in this case, negative reviews can be good marketing because people will listen to you through word of mouth. Negative reviews may also lead to increased sales when handled correctly.

By providing customer service with a smile (and sometimes even freebies!), the unhappy customers could become repeat customers who love your business! This goes back to the importance of social media because now these disgruntled customers might spread their happiness on platforms like Facebook. This means all those new potential leads will come knocking at your door, too. Unless, of course, you don’t have the proper digital marketing strategy in place.

As long as these digital marketing myths aren’t true, SEO will remain a powerful way to generate leads and sales. However, it’s essential not to neglect other aspects of modern marketing: social media, for example! Social media platforms like Facebook are just one aspect that businesses need to utilize to get ahead, or they could end up paying the price.

Literally.

This goes back again to those potential customers who might have been interested in your business but decided against it because you didn’t show them any love on their favorite platform. So make sure all bases are covered with Industry-Leading Digital Marketing Services from Dallas Top Digital Marketing Agency today if you want a steady flow of new leads coming in! 

google-my-business

Guide to Optimizing Google My Business

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For Guide to Optimizing Google My Business

If you have a business website, why do you need to Google My Business?

Google My Business isn’t a replacement for your website. It’s a summary of your most relevant information so people can find out about you quickly and easily.

Your GMB information includes:

  • Operating hours 
  • Physical Address 
  • Contact Information 
  • Customer Reviews 
  • Who you are

As a business, you also gain crucial information from GMB – like reviews, messages, customer photos, and insights into how customers interact with your business.

Getting Started with a Google My Business Listing

Do you have GMB? Quickly find out by Googling your business name. If no listing pops up or a listing pops up that isn’t claimed, then it’s time you set one up.

Over 56% of businesses never claimed their GMB account! Don’t miss out on potential customers, and claim your business today!

5 Tips for Optimizing Google My Business

If you already have a listing, log into your account and start Google My Business optimization using these five steps. 

  1. Fill Out All Your Business Information Using SEO

GMB optimization begins with filling out your basic information on your Google business page. Carefully add as much information as possible – making sure it’s accurate and up to date. Compare the information with your website as inconsistencies negatively affect your search appearance.

Beyond your basic information, your Google My Business listing includes attributes, a description, and a business category. Fill out these portions according to how you want to be ranked in Google and what search terms you want your business to relate to.

Does your location have free Wifi? Is there onsite parking? Is your location wheelchair accessible? These attributes help your business show up when people search phrases like “Wheelchair-accessible restaurants near me” or “hair salon with wifi.”

Use SEO and keywords to get your Google listings ranked in the most relevant customer searches. Your keywords should include where you are, what you offer, and what makes you unique (your marketable quality). 

  1. Keep your information Updated.

Your business listing isn’t a one-time deal. You should continually update it with the most accurate information.

New phone number? Update GMB. 

New address? Update GMB. 

New product? Update GMB. 

Changed holiday hours? Update GMB. 

You get the idea. Customers should know your Google local listing is reliable, or else it could negatively affect your business. 

  1. Use Pictures

People like pictures. Use them! Over 60% of customers are MORE likely to visit your business if you have an image. Images show you are a real business with live people. This knowledge builds trust in customers and makes them more willing to do business with you.

There are several types of images you should choose carefully and have added to any GMB. 

  • Logo: This image is your face and will show up the most in search results – choose it wisely! 
  • Cover Photo: Summarize WHO you are using one photo to grab people’s attention. 
  • Business Photos: Have fun with the pictures connected to your account. Show friendly interactions, quality products, and relevant images that boost your brand. 
  1. Use GMB to Interact with Customers

In a world filled with robots and automated messaging, finding a human to interact within a business is rare. Build a personal relationship with your customers by giving them that human touch.

GMB offers several ways to interact with customers. First is their messaging app. You have contact forms, email, and phone numbers for customers to use. Also, allow people to directly message you through Google to show you are serious about hearing from them.

Don’t just offer that option, but also respond – even if that means adding in an immediate automated response. Then, have customer service answer personally later. That small gesture lets customers know you are listening.

Reviews are another way to reach out to customers. Over 93% of customers will look up reviews online before deciding on a product. What people say about your business matters!

Show you also care what people are saying by responding to each review using your GMB account. Thank the people who are giving you positive reviews using genuine language. If you can add personal details in your response to prove you’re human and not a robot, add them!

You will sometimes get negative reviews. If you don’t get any negative reviews, customers might start to wonder if you’re a legitimate business. Consider negative reviews as an opportunity to showcase another aspect of your business – customer satisfaction.

Apologize to the person who wasn’t happy, and make a public declaration of your desire to right the wrong. Even if that one customer never returns, other customers know that if they aren’t happy, you’re willing to work with them. 

  1. Post events, products, and discounts

Use your business as your storefront window. Display highlights from your product lineup, discounts, and upcoming events.

The products and services listed on your page should represent the very best of your stock. Use catchy images and titles. Even if people aren’t interested in your highlighted products, the images can encourage customers to click on your website to see more.

Everyone likes freebies! Coupons and promotions are another way to encourage people to shop. When you walk into a store, how likely are you to walk straight to the bright red sign exclaiming “SALE!”? When people pull up your business, draw them in with sales and promotions.

Display your calendar of events for customers to see right there on Google. Plus, your event will add another element to rank in Google. If someone Googles “free events near me this weekend,” your event could rank and attract new customers. 

Make the Most of Your GMB Page

Optimizing your Google My Business listing isn’t an easy task. That’s why you can hire marketing experts to help with your SEO and rankings.

Agency Partner Interactive offers digital marketing services – including Google My Business optimization – through their team of experts that deliver value, accelerate revenue, and increase profits. Talk to a team member today and start getting the most out of your GMB listing. 

content-marketing

7 Latest Content Marketing Strategies Practiced by Digital Marketing Experts

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For 7 Latest Content Marketing Strategies Practiced by Digital Marketing Experts

As a part of digital marketing, content is an indispensable tool that can drive engagement, help to convert leads and make your company more visible to a wider range of people. Good content is considered an increasingly valuable asset by digital marketing experts and companies alike, with over 90% of companies surveyed recognizing it as essential.

Of course, with its importance comes one of the potential drawbacks – if we all know the importance of content marketing strategies, it’s harder to gain an advantage. So what can we do to ensure a better shot at a wider market?

Below, we will analyze seven separate content marketing approaches that digital marketing experts practice and explain how they could work for you. These are the tips that the best digital marketing services in Dallas and beyond are adopting for their own clients, and they can be effective for you, too.

Build a collective of contributors

If you have the one perfect content creator on staff, you can be sure of attracting customers who like the kind of content they create – but that doesn’t do a lot to diversify or grow your pool of leads. It simply delivers the same people each time.

That’s good for customer loyalty, but you need more than that. A wider range of content creators from different parts of your business means more diverse subject matter, a shake-up of writing styles, and the chance to do different things.

You can invite guest writers who are experts in different aspects of your business, customers who have been really pleased by your service, and more creators besides – if they have something relevant to say about your industry, the more, the merrier.

Build a content calendar

It’s useful to have a pattern to when content goes up, what type of content you publish, when, and more besides. For instance, you should have a deadline for submissions that allows time for proofing, editing, and integration before a post goes live.

You can give over different days of the week to different aspects of your business – posts about HR issues can go live on Wednesdays, while Friday can be for content about procurement. Repeat visitors will come back more often if they know when to come back – and they’ll start to gain an interest in aspects beyond their own areas of focus before long.

Look for digestible content.

The experts on the best content strategy in Dallas and elsewhere know that a diverse collection of content is the way to go. Sometimes, people will want to read deep dives on specific topics, while other times, they will want something a bit more punchy.

You can repost (with permission) other people’s content, potentially adding your own introduction to highlight the relevance of what those other people have to say. Instead of posting the entirety of their content, you can include the sections that mesh especially well with what you want to say – and then drop a link to their blog to advise readers on where they can hear more.

Give people what they want.

It sounds simple, but it does need some fleshing out as a point, this one. There are many ways to find out what people want to read on your blog, and you should use all of those ways. Look at your own analytics, and see the search terms people have used to find your site. Look at keyword analysis tools, and see what’s popular as a search term in your niche.

With media monitoring tools, you can see what’s a hot topic in your sector right now. And then there are always follow-up posts. If one piece has done very well on your blog before, revisit it and address any potential changes in the topic, answer readers’ questions and develop the theme in a way that drives engagement and leads.

Boost your signal

Once you’ve created and published content, the next thing to promote it for all it’s worth. Tweet about it early in the day – and flag it on Instagram, Facebook, and any other social network you’re on – and then send another tweet related to it in the evening with an “ICYMI” (In Case You Missed It).

Various plugins will automatically Tweet any article you post. However, you may prefer to manually promote new posts on social media as this will allow you to add hashtags, emoji, and anything else that makes your content pop.

Also, if recent events have made any of your content more relevant, call back to it on your social channels – people who are following the trend with interest may become followers of your account.

Spread the word

If your content is good enough, then it may well grace the pages of other outlets beyond your own blog, which is something to embrace. Yes, exclusivity is nice as a way of controlling the way your content is displayed and read.

However, the more people that read it, the better. Suppose it is seen on industry blogs, private forums, and local papers much better. The one thing you must insist on is that your name and business are heavily attached to it when it is published elsewhere. You wrote it, you worked on it, and you should benefit from it in terms of your profile.

Don’t write for you

If you’re a writer, then there are probably times that you piece together bits of content in your head, constructing the guts of a post that sounds snappy and interesting to you. Don’t mistake trying to turn this into a post on your blog because a good post won’t start with a snappy line of content – it starts with an idea.

By all means, if you have a decent turn of phrase in mind, it sums up a moment, or it includes a joke or two that will be well-received by more people than just you, then you can include those throwaway lines. Just don’t build your content around things that have amused you – leave that to Sunday broadsheet columnists. It doesn’t work in digital marketing.

website-speed-optimization

9 Ways to Make Your Website Super Fast

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For 9 Ways to Make Your Website Super Fast

If you’ve used the internet at all, ever, then you have at one time, or another found yourself on the end of a slow-loading website. It’s a frustrating process for the end-user, and you’ll have either found your user experience to be dramatically compromised, or you’ll have surfed off somewhere else instead. And if the slow-loading website is your site, please bear in mind that not only will users have done exactly as you would in the situation, but it will have negatively impacted the effectiveness of your SEO. So whatever end of the process you are on, poor website speed will make your life harder.

If you want to avoid this negative impact, you, therefore, need to find a way of having a responsive website and ensuring it stays at the optimum speed for as long as it is in existence. This means knowing the right tricks to prevent lagging, and the following nine pieces of advice are an ideal place to begin.

Don’t use shared hosting

Affordability is a significant advantage of shared hosting. However, that advantage comes with a trade-off, and this is seen most clearly in speed. It is cheaper and faster when you first build a website to host it on shared servers, so that’s what many people do. As your website grows, the available bandwidth stops being enough, and website optimization suffers. If you want things to grow and work cleanly, pay more upfront for VPS or managed to host – potentially through a dedicated WordPress plan – and you’ll see the benefits.

Manage your images

It’s probably not a shock to you to learn that the most data-heavy sections of your website tend to be the images. Do you remember accessing websites over dial-up internet, and how any site with many images would take forever to load? Well, just because we’ve got faster internet, that doesn’t make it any smarter to have many big images. Ask yourself three questions about each image on your website:

  • Does that image need to be on the site? 
  • If so, does it need to be as big as it is? 
  • If so, does it need to be as high-res as it is?

The fastest thing would be to have no images on the site, but it’s understandable if you don’t feel that can work. So make the images you do have as efficient as possible – cut out extraneous space in the images, and compress them if they don’t need to be high-resolution.

Audit your plugins

For WordPress users, plugins can make life much more convenient, but they come at a price for site performance. To make a long story short, they use many files, and therefore a lot of information, to do the jobs they do. And when you carry out a website audit to see what’s holding things up, you’d be surprised how often a plugin is an answer. You can’t avoid them altogether, but you can manage the number you use. If there is a workaround to using a plugin, use the workaround. And if you haven’t seen the benefit of a plugin in the last three months, get rid of it. It isn’t essential.

Study HTTP requests

A primary reason why sites load slowly is that they make too many HTTP requests and/or that the requests they make are too large. Using a speed test tool, you can check each page on your website to see how many requests they are making and how much each of those requests are slowing down your website. Ask yourself if these requests are doing anything essential and whether they could be streamlined to demand less information.

Use minification to optimize CSS and JS files.

Not just minification, but Gzipping, too. These are handy processes that ensure the most efficient operation of CSS and JS on your site. Using the right tools, you can use minification and Gzipping to eliminate unnecessary code and commands on your website and gain an immediate advantage in terms of loading speed and efficiency of the site. There are plenty of tools for your use out there, and the best digital marketing agency will be able to help you with choosing and using the right ones.

Use caching to help repeat visitors

This tip necessitates that you attract repeat visitors to your site because caching isn’t that useful for first-time visitors. But it is worth enabling caching, either in your code or using a plugin (this is one case where a plugin is certainly worth it). If your site enables caching, things like images and other data-heavy elements will only need to load once. On repeat visits, they will be stored and readily appear again to ensure a fast website.

Fewer external scripts

External scripts make HTTP requests, and – you’ve guessed it – this slows down your website. However, some external scripts are generally indispensable. You need to consider which ones are most important to you. Do you need the “Tweet this page” icon? Is the visible visitor count something you can’t live without? No one’s going to tell you to use no external scripts at all, but be critical about their use – if it’s non-essential, is it worth slowing your site down for?

Look at content delivery networks

This is a more advanced tip than others but is worth adopting if you intend for your website to grow and be viewed worldwide. Essentially, a CDN allows requests to your site to be handled by one of a worldwide network of servers – and the nearest server will handle each request. This means that a viewer in Denmark doesn’t need to wait for a server in Texas to be pinged – so things like images, CSS, and other files can be accessed quickly and make a website faster.

Strip out unnecessary or outdated elements regularly

We’ve already talked about critically viewing your images and auditing your plugins. Still, each site merits a full-out Website audit 2-3 times a year to eliminate accumulated residues in the works. Loose pieces of code used for a specific purpose and now are no longer needed, revisions that have been saved for reference, spam comments that Akismet has caught: there’s no need to keep this stuff around. It takes up space and memory, so get rid of it to avoid a slow web page.

Using some combination of the tricks above – and any others that you can think of – it is possible to take a slow-loading website and make it move much faster. You’ll see the benefits in terms of traffic and SEO in no time.

ppc-advertising

7 Powerful Benefits of Using PPC Advertising

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For 7 Powerful Benefits of Using PPC Advertising

Marketing, as you once knew it has changed. TV adverts and billboard advertising is no longer the gold standard advertising method. With the explosion of digital marketing PPC, or Pay Per Click, advertising has become one of the most strategic paid advertising methods available.

PPC advertising is a form of online marketing where you can strategically place adverts online and pay a fee each time a visitor clicks the advert. Essentially you are buying visitors to your website, and its benefits are numerous. Here are 7 of the most powerful benefits of using PPC advertising.  

It is quick and relatively easy to set up. 

Unlike many forms of digital advertising, it is a quick and efficient way to get your adverts seen, and you do not need a magnitude of technical knowledge. While some forms of digital marketing, such as SEO, require a specific skill set and a lot of dedicated time and attention, PPC advertising can be up and running the same day with just a little input from the development team.

You may need web developers to address the technical aspects such as tracking but other than that. It is a quick process. What is more, Pay Per Click advertising can provide instant gratification. You can start seeing results in days if not hours—quite the contrary to the hard slog that is SEO. 

It’s trackable

If you run paid advertising through Google Ads, you can use the Google Ads tool and Google Analytics. These tools allow you to see real-time, useful data and, in turn, remove all of the guesswork. The tools will tell you exactly how many people have seen your adverts and how many clicks and conversations are attainted from your advert.

You will effectively analyze what adverts are achieving the business goals you set out and which ones aren’t. This is a quantifiable insight rarely achieved from more traditional marketing methods such as TV adverting.   

It will achieve your business marketing goals.  

Speaking of business goals, what are yours? What about your marketing goals? Is it to sell more products? Do you want to raise brand awareness? Expand your potential reach and client base? If you sit down with a digital marketing agency and discuss what you want to achieve from PPC advertising, they can utilize PPC strategies to achieve the goals you want.

Furthermore, given that all data is trackable, you will be able to handle how well the PPC strategies are working for your business or marketing goals.  

It is extremely targeted.  

You can choose exactly who you show your ads to based on location, keywords, interest, age, gender, language, time of day, or even the device they use. This provides the obvious benefit of getting your advert in front of people who most want to see it, the people who are most likely to take action on your advert and are interested in your offering.

Say you are a Dallas-based business considering utilizing some of the top PPC services in Dallas to further your business. You might have researched the potential options online.  As a result of your web-based research, a PPC advertising company in Dallas would be able to target your device based upon your browser history and be able to show you adverts for their services.

The same services you have been considering. They are targeting you based on your location, the keywords you have researched, and the interests shown on your devices. The clever tracking bots know that this is the kind of thing you want to see and will strategically place an advert in front of you. That is the power that PPC advertising can yield.

Another example of its targeting power is the different formats PPC is available in. Perhaps you have customers who commonly leave items in their virtual baskets. You can use display remarketing to encourage the desired action, such as completing their purchase. 

It’s cost-effective

Unlike some advertising streams, you only pay a fee when your ad is actually clicked. With traditional marketing approaches, you pay for the service or advertising regardless of the results returned. The fee you pay is called a cost per click CPC, and this can vary hugely. Ranges can be from as little as a few cents to as much as $50. That said, the average fee is between $1 and $2.

The benefit of paying this repeat fee is that your ad will feature in the top spots of the search engine result. It will be the first thing people see and will rank above even the organic results. These top results drive some of the biggest percentages of clicks, so it is a price worth paying.  

You are in control

Another one of the powerful features of PPC advertising is the level of control you can exercise. You may need to pause the advertising during busy periods or only run ads at specific times. Say before your latest online course starts.  

Pay-per-click advertising is perfect for this. You can have full control over when your adverts run, you can choose the time of day and the days of the week (again, think to target), and you can also turn your ad off as and when you wish.

Moreover, you get full control over how much you spend each day and pay per click. This is a function rarely seen in advertising, and it gives you the ultimate flexibility.

It can help your other marketing strategies

PPC advertising can also help provide metrics to improve other elements of your marketing strategies. If you are utilizing digital marketing to its fullest potential, you will undoubtedly be employing SEO or social media marketing.

By analyzing the analytics provided from your PPC advertising, you will recognize which keywords or identifiers generate results. You will then tailor your SEO, social media marketing, and or content marketing accordingly. Using the relevant keywords, locations, interests, and so on to get in front of your audience on other marketing streams.

This information is invaluable for using digital marketing to your advantage and reaching your business or marketing goals. 

social-media-branding

5 Actionable Strategies For Social Media Branding

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For 5 Actionable Strategies For Social Media Branding

To succeed in business in 2021, you want to get some critical business strategies right for marketing. Two of these are your branding and your social media strategy.  A branding strategy is not just a logo or a color scheme. Successful branding runs much deeper than that. Your branding is essential because it is your identity and your essence. It is what builds a relationship with you and your potential customers.  Good branding signifies recognition and trust. All successful businesses need strong, consistent, and relatable branding.

Social media is how your brand can reach customers. The channels in which they can identify with your brand and where you can harvest those relationships from simple awareness and recognition to loyal and repeat custom. The power of social media marketing for businesses is not to be underestimated, and if you can get your social media branding right, it will pay dividends to your business. So here are 5 actionable strategies for social media branding.

Develop a user persona

Social media is all about people, and the better you understand people, the better you can design your content and campaigns. A user persona is a fictional representation of a social media user. Developing personas is a common marketing strategy and is fast becoming a popular social media strategy. The actionable step you can take is to develop two to five user personas.

These are social media users to whom you are aiming your content at, your potential customers. Develop them in great detail. Go beyond age and gender and utilize metrics such as what social media channels they are likely to use, at what times, what their income is, where they live, their hobbies, the types of media they respond to, audio, video, or text for example. The more detailed you can be, the better.

Why?

Doing this will help you create content that will appeal to them and allow you to publish it when they are most likely to see it. It will also enable you to develop your branding to align with your identified personas and appeal to them directly.

Develop a tone of voice

Your brand’s tone of voice on social media is fundamental. You will want to develop a tone of voice that is consistent and in keeping with your business. You will want to communicate in a way that resonates with your audience. For example, if you are an educational business that needs respect, you will want your social media content to be professional, grammatically correct, formal, and authoritative.

If you are a fashion retailer aimed at younger audiences, you may want to include emojis in your content and use a playful, fun tone of voice. The actionable steps you can take are to use the personas you have already created, identify the tone of voice that would best target your audience, and think about ways to convey your brand’s tone of voice in the content you create.

For example, will light-hearted GIFs with colloquialism speak best to your personas, or will more formal, knowledgeable text pieces be more appropriate?

Why?

A consistent and well-designed tone of voice will help build trust and understanding with your audience and build authenticity. It will also help to reach the audience you most want to reach by communicating in a way that appeals to them.

Create a sociable brand

If you are going to use social media for your business, you must remember that it is exactly that, social. Social media was created and originally used as a means of socializing. For seeing what friends and family have been up to in a shared space. As time has gone on, brands have got savvy to social media and found a place for themselves and their advertising.

That said, if you want to use social media to advance your business, first and foremost, you have to treat it as a social space. It is a place to engage with potential customers, talk with them, like photos, share posts, and interact. It is not a space to plug advert after advert.

To create a sociable brand, the actionable strategy is using social media to engage with its users, not advertise. Socialize with people you have identified in your user personas using the consistent and relevant tone of voice you identified in step two. Don’t just talk about yourself.

You have to talk about the interests of those you want to attract to draw them in and engage with you. Only when you have started to build a relationship can you start to use this space for advertising. If you feel out of your depth in terms of content creation and creating a sociable brand, consider using some of the best social media services available to either advise you or take over this aspect of your social media branding on your behalf.

Why?

Brands that use social media for advertising only will turn off potential customers. Their content will not add any value to the lives of their customers and will be viewed as unengaging spam that is not worth their time.

Uniform approach

While branding is more than just a logo or an aesthetical identifier having a uniform approach to your visual branding across your social media channels. As always, consistency is paramount, and sticking with the same color palette, fonts, and tone of voice is always advised. You may, of course, want to deviate slightly depending upon the platform to fit the user but don’t stray too far from your brand’s visual essence.

Some actionable strategies are to employ the services of a design agency partner to help design the aesthetics of your social media branding consistently and appealingly to your user personas.

Why?

Consistency will help increase brand awareness and recognition and, in turn, build trust and confidence in your brand.

Metrics

Measuring the effects of your efforts on social media can be difficult, particularly given its subjective nature, but there are means to measure your success. Social media channels offer various insight tools, and you can use these to measure your engagements.

When it comes to social media success, engagement is king, and content is queen. You can use these insights to experiment with the tone of voice, types of content you share, and when you share it to see what is best received by your audience. As a general rule, the more engagement you have, the better received your approach has been.

Actionable strategies include experimenting with the times and days you post your content and the type of content. You can then study the data insights to identify the most successful posts. This will give you a better idea of the types of posts and content that your audience enjoys.

Why?

No one wants to waste time lovingly creating content that isn’t seen or enjoyed by those aimed at.

landing-page-design

The Ultimate Guide to Landing Pages

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For The Ultimate Guide to Landing Pages

Every website owner needs landing pages to convert the traffic coming in from ads or call-to-action buttons. Once they are on a landing page, individual users may convert to leads or customers. Therefore, landing pages are an integral part of your business’s digital marketing strategy. This landing page guide will show you how to go about converting traffic to your website into customers. 

What Is a Landing Page? 

A landing page is a web page intended to convert general visitors into leads. Its preparation starts during the website design process with the inclusion of lead forms. Visitors who opt to fill the forms provide contact information, usually email addresses. 

The Purpose of a Landing Page 

A website has many sections, including the “about us” and “home” pages. These other pages have distractions such as competing links, navigation, and other options. So why would you need a special page with a form to fill out? 

With a landing page, you can direct visitors to precisely where you want them to go. In short, the purpose of a landing page is to convert leads into customers. 

Landing Page Best Practices 

Landing page design is a precise craft that involves specific steps and elements known as landing page best practices. Look at each one of them in greater detail below: 

  1. Write a Headline With Clear Benefits

As part of your landing page strategy, you should aim to reduce the bounce rate as much as possible. That means showing visitors the benefit of signing up within the first few seconds. Write a headline with clear benefits since that’s the first thing visitors will see as soon as they “land” on that page. 

  1. Write Captivating Copy

Landing page optimization is concerned with clear, concise content that guides visitors to complete the action. You should write content from a second-person perspective with words such as “you” and “your.” A perfect line should go hand in hand with captivating words to support your call to action. 

  1. Choose an Appropriate Image

Every landing page should have an image that represents the target audience. In addition, it should convey how visitors will feel after receiving the offer. You may select several images and choose the most appropriate one after split testing. 

  1. Place the Lead Form Above the Fold

As part of your landing page optimization best practices, put the lead form in the most accessible location. The visitors shouldn’t have to scan the page to see the form. Instead, they should see the form or a connecting anchor link soon after hitting the page. 

  1. Add a Strong, Standout Call-to-Action

A landing page should have a strong call-to-action (CTA) to encourage conversion. Use color contrasting page elements to make your CTA button stand out. Also, clearly state what you expect visitors to do using an action verb like “get it now,” “download,” “purchase,” or “submit.” 

  1. Request for Specific Information

Every landing page guide you read will advise you to ask for specific information about your lead and nothing more. That will depend on how much the customer knows you, the position in their buyer’s journey, and the level of trust they have for you. If it is a new lead, an email address and a name are enough. 

  1. Make a Relevant Offer

Your landing page is an integral part of your visitor’s journey to purchasing your product or service. Therefore, make an offer in exchange for getting the lead’s personal information. The offer should be compelling enough to extract contact information from a visitor and relevant to the business. 

For example, you may offer “10 Benefits of Laptops in Business” because your ultimate intention is to sell a business laptop to the lead. However, an offer about printers will only direct the lead on a completely different path. 

  1. Remove Navigation Features

The purpose of a landing page is to convert visitors into leads – period. Competing links such as those to other pages within the website can only be a distraction. Ask your web design agency to remove navigation features and other links that could sway visitors to the main objective – converting them into leads and customers. 

  1. Optimize for Search

As part of your landing page optimization best practices, you should include keywords that make it rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). That applies to organic and paid search via Google Ads. It is better than relying solely on social media, email, and other digital marketing methods. 

  1. Build a Responsive Page

Every page on your website, including the landing page, should be responsive to different customer viewing experiences. The focus of website design should be to make the entire landing page readable on mobile devices. Consequently, visitors should be able to see the lead form to convert. 

  1. Include a “Thank You” Page

You should have a page where you redirect your customers soon after filling the lead form. It may contain a straightforward “thank you” message or an offer you had promised (like a download). The page’s purpose is to interest your lead beyond the relevant content and thank them for their interest in signing up. 

Landing Page Design Prerequisites 

Landing page design is a combination of creativity, attractive pictures, colors, functionality, and direction. Pay attention to the: 

  • Landing page structure includes headlines, relevant images, lead form, CTA, copy, and description. 
  • Landing page layout, which should have the most important information on top. You should also perform a blink test, use white space, write short paragraphs with bullets, and ensure visual patterns flow to them. 
  • Landing page colors, which should rhyme with the rest of your website color. It should make your brand immediately recognizable. 
  • Landing page images, which should be relevant to the information on the page. It should set the tone of the visitor’s entire experience from beginning to end. 
  • Call-to-action (CTA) directs visitors on what you want them to do. It should have a large button with vibrant, contrasting colors, less than five words, surrounded by white space, and where the reader’s eyes are likely to be. 

Conclusion 

With this landing page guide, you should craft highly converting pages that compel visitors to provide contact information. Of course, it would help if you worked with the right web design agency and content writers to implement suggestions on the checklist above.