Marketing Your Business: Don’t Leave Out LinkedIn

It’s Not Just for Job Seekers Anymore

“LinkedIn is for finding a job. What does it have to do with marketing my business?” You may well be asking this question if the last time you visited LinkedIn was to update your resume. LinkedIn has changed as much as Facebook, and now offers huge opportunities for businesses to generate brand awareness, leads and sales … at much lower cost than traditional marketing media. It all starts with a well-planned company page, which can:

Acquire customers.

A network of your current customers, employees, vendors and partners provides the same incredible, ever-expanding reach as FaceBook; but better, because all these connections are business-related. And you can expect more and faster conversions from prospects who learn of you through LinkedIn referrals and recommendations than other media.

Although not strictly necessary, you can drive even more interested traffic to your page with LinkedIn’s paid advertising. These highly targeted ads are seen by the decision makers who need exactly what you sell.

Develop partnerships.

Forging alliances with businesses whose products and services complement yours benefits both organizations, whether by referring customers to each other or by creating joint venture products. And there’s no better place to find such partners than LinkedIn, which makes it easy to check up on reputation, performance and customer base.

Build public relations.

Your company page needn’t (and shouldn’t) be limited to “about us” type information. You can incorporate a wide variety of content to attract attention, expand brand recognition, position yourself as an industry authority, manage public opinion … and ultimately increase sales.

To achieve this particular goal requires a bigger investment of time, because you must update your page consistently with new content. To maximize your return on this investment, consider LinkedIn’s sponsored updates program, which puts your posts in front of a specified target audience and is paid for on a cost-per-click basis.

Go where your customers are.

Marketing has always been about reaching customers where they live. In the 21st century they live online; so, to effectively market your business, you need to live there, too. And LinkedIn is one of the hottest addresses you can have.

5 Ways to Market Your Business with Your Website

Like every other sales effort, it’s a means, not an end

Great, your website has gone live. But if you think your job is done, you’re missing out on huge marketing opportunities. Check out this list of proven strategies to keep your website working for you every day.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Make your site more visible to search engines like Google, so when people search for businesses like yours the site will appear in the first page or two of Google’s results. The phrase SEO typically refers to unpaid efforts (as opposed to paid ads) to drive traffic to your site, including:

  • Adding commonly searched words and phrases (“keywords”) to the site’s text and meta data
  • Ensuring that all coding is accessible and acceptable to search indexes
  • Increasing inbound links from other websites (more about this below) and cross-linking between pages within the website

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
This means paying someone to promote your site on the Internet.

  • Banner ads on search engine and social media sites, which are chosen according to the demographic you want to reach (age, profession, geographic area, etc.) and paid for in various ways such as pay-per-click or flat fee.
  • Bloggers and reviewers. You send them free samples of your product in the hope that they’ll spread the good word about you to their following.

3. Retarget
Once someone visits your site, you can have your ad appear wherever he goes on the Internet (at least, until he deletes the cookie your site placed on his computer). Since 98% of site visitors are not converted on the first visit, reminding them to come back is a great way to increase your conversion rate.

4. Place your content on other websites
This is the most controllable and effective way to populate the web with inbound links to your website. Create articles, videos, reviews, discussions, contests or whatever else you want on high traffic sites such as:

  • Social media (FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
  • Self publishers (Pinterest, YouTube, FlickR)
  • Industry-specific forums and blogs
  • News / press release distributors

5. Get your site in others’ content
This means promoting and managing public opinion so that people mention and link to your site without you paying them to do it.

  • Blogs
  • Review sites (Yelp, Trip Advisor, epinions, Amazon)
  • Social media pages of your associates and customers

Websites are Disappearing from Google and We Can Help!

I’ve been asked many times over the past week regarding how the “mobile-friendly” changes that Google has implemented recently with their search algorithm will impact websites – or, a sites ability to be found on a Google search.

Let me try to shed some light on this subject – along with a shameless promo for the remedy we can provide to you.

Every site that we’ve designed in the last 4 years has been done to display well on any mobile device. However, that does not mean that it is “mobile-friendly” by Google’s recent standards.

So, if your site is not “mobile-friendly”, or Responsive, then Google will reduce the desirability rankings of your site. And, with 66% of all searches done today are done on mobile devices, your exposure can be greatly diminished.

 

There can be no denying that mobile devices are becoming the de-facto standard for online activity and Google is intent on delivering results to searchers that will play well on their device. Even though this change in algorithm only affects searches done on mobile devices, your desktop search ranking will be effected over time.

Ultimately, you need to have a mobile-friendly site.

Not just for this recent change in Google search criteria, but because it is the smart thing to do if you don’t want to be left behind in the online marketplace.

 

Why “Hope” isn’t a Practical Marketing Approach

“People do business only with those they know, like and trust.” So just tell compelling, transparent, authentic stories about your brand and watch the sales roll in, right? Wrong. Hope is not an effective strategy.

Some B-to-B brands use content marketing to soft sell, essentially disguising what they’re really up to. Others have fallen victim to the “telling a good story” myth-where somehow customers start buying based on emotional pixie dust. The truth is if you want more leads and sales from content marketing, what you publish must ultimately cause customers to become so confident in themselves (as buyers) that they ask you for the sale.”

Read article »

 Source TargetMarketing.com

Integrate Email and Social Networking to Pack a Powerful One-Two Punch

When it comes to integrated marketing, email and social networking are complementary channels that you can easily pair up to deliver a knockout marketing punch for your business.

The reasons to do so now couldn’t be stronger:

Email is universal, and email use is on the rise among social media users (Nielsen)

Email is efficient, producing almost twice the revenue share relative to share of budget (Direct Marketing Association)

Social media is particularly effective at extending your email reach, improving the quality of your email communications and cultivating active advocates for your brand

If you want to boost your email marketing program or drive deeper engagement with your customers through their social networks, email–social integration is right for your business. Read more

Internet Advertising Plays Key Role in Integrated Campaigns

According to a recent LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll of 1,015 advertising decision-makers from agencies or corporations, advertisers continue to rely on a mix of media types for their marketing campaigns. But most important, the data also reveals that a compelling 80% of those surveyed say they use Internet advertising in an integrated campaign with other media at least some of the time. If you’re not already doing so, maybe it’s time to figure out how you can use Internet advertising in conjunction with the other campaigns your company runs to better meet your marketing objectives.

Putting Internet Advertising in Perspective
By far, Internet and print media draw the most favor from advertisers: About 9 in 10 advertisers say they use each type, the study reports. In contrast, about 5 in 10 advertisers say they use radio or television ads, and 4 in 10 use cell-phone digital ads. Read more

Pump Up Your Search Marketing Strategy with Social Media and Display Ads

Impressive evidence is beginning to mount up supporting the benefits of integrating social media and display advertising with search marketing efforts. According to a variety of recent studies, the effectiveness of search advertising—which businesses of all sizes have enthusiastically embraced due to its reasonable entry point, ease of execution and capability to measure ROI—can get a significant lift when you combine search campaigns with social media and display advertising.

Let’s take a look at specific findings from five recent reports. Read more

Who’s Driving Your Social Media Efforts?

Social Media 101 author, Chris Brogan, once blogged, “Social media is a set of tools and tactics that people use as part of their larger business communications efforts. … What are people doing taking titles like “social media management?” To me, this is a scary thing. Why? Because it’s like being the fax manager or the email manager. You’re naming yourself after a tool.”

But if your business is just starting to incorporate social media into a conversational marketing strategy, finding a social media marketing firm or establishing a point person to spearhead your efforts can make all the difference between “merely functional” and “highly successful.” Let’s look at the type of person best suited for a social media management role and the responsibilities that person must tackle to successfully drive your social media efforts forward. Read more

How To Convert Your PPC Traffic

Successful pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns rely on superior interplay among three key components: relevant keywords; specific, focused text ads and well-optimized landing page. Finding the right keywords that resonate with your target audience and writing compelling ad copy that get searchers to click your ad on the search results page affect how well you generate traffic to your site. But the job of convincing and converting that traffic into leads or customers falls on your landing page design. Are yours up to the task? Read more

Strategies to Stretch Your PPC Budget

Learn tactics and strategies to Stretch Your Paid Search Budget

Ever wish you had a bigger budget for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or that your existing budget would go farther and produce better results for your business? If so, then it’s time to talk to ACS creative about PPC Management and charge up your routine with some deliberate actions to stretch your budget and pump up the return on your PPC investment. Here are 10 strategies to set you off in the right direction.

1. Let ROI guide your spend

Suppose the PPC advertising cost for one of your keywords is $40 and produces $130 profit from sales, while a second costs $75 and produces $150 from sales. What’s your best strategy? Because the first’s ROI is ($130 – $40) / $40 = 2.25 or 225% and the second’s is ($150 – $75) / $75 = 1 or 100%, you can benefit from directing more of your budget to the first keyword to take advantage of the higher ROI. Read more

Award Winning Web Design, Brand Development & Online Marketing since 1986

We are web designers, developers, marketers and creative service strategists and our team can help you reach your goals through award-winning creative products. Discover more about our Company and our Culture.

Copyright © 2022 ACS Creative. All Rights Reserved.