Grow Your Business with Local SEO Landing Pages

July 27, 2016

[intro]Is your local business visible when people search online for goods or services “near me”? It had better be. According to Google, there are 34X more local searches today than in 2011. Here’s how to create local SEO optimized landing pages that will (A) enable your neighbors to find your business, and (B) convince them to go there.[/intro]

What Are Local Landing Pages?

Local landing pages are geared toward the business’s physical location. This is usually the city and state, but multi-branch operations can also have a separate page for each street address. The Anthropologie chain of retail stores is one example of this practice. Search “Anthropologie Washington DC” and you’ll get a list of its locations within the city. Click on the location of your choice and you’ll be taken to the landing page for that branch.

You will find that your local landing pages will rank fairly quickly depending on how many competing businesses there are in your region and how large your geo location is. It is a really good starting strategy to start driving organic traffic to a new site.

In addition to organic search results such as the Anthropolgie example above, the local landing page can receive click-throughs from your online ads, marketing emails, social media pages and any other inbound links on websites, blogs, etc.

Local SEO Optimization of Your Landing Pages

In order to be displayed in local search results, your landing pages must contain specific elements that Google and other search engines look for. Most of them are a matter of common sense and paying attention to details, yet it’s surprising how many businesses miss a step — and make themselves invisible as a result.

Include your location in SEO-critical places. This includes the landing page title, URL, meta tags and descriptions. It is especially critical that the local landing page have its own discoverable URL, not one that’s only available through a search or branch finder within your site. If Google can’t see it, Google won’t display it.
Include main keyword(s) in page title and/or meta data. What words will searchers use to find your products or services? Those words should be strategically placed alongside your business name and location.
Check consistency of usage. Is your address listed EXACTLY the same way everywhere, down to the last dot and space? Or is it S.E. 10th St. on your Google Local Business page, South East 10 Street on your Facebook page and Southeast 10th Street in your HTML coding? This one factor can make the difference between top 3 Google ranking and zero. The same goes for all the other elements such as phone number, keywords and Google Local Business page categories.
Check all inbound links. From Twitter to industry forum citations, a link that claims to take users to your local landing page had better really do that, and not throw them over to the main website homepage. Believe us, Google is keeping track.
Populate the entire site with location info. Every page on your business website should have a link to the location pages. This makes finding you easier for both the search engine and the people looking to do business with you.
Check the entire site for SEO quality. Since poor overall quality can drag down landing page performance, it’s time for a review. Does the site load quickly? Does it have responsive display for mobile devices? Is it easy to navigate? Is the content relevant and unique? Are the keywords consistent throughout? Do you know of any Google penalties in effect, such as for using black hat links?
Don’t over-optimize. There’s a temptation to get greedy and create a separate landing page for every neighborhood you service, thus hogging the entire search results page. To prevent this, Google’s Doorway Pages algorithm looks for certain behaviors, including a large number of domain names, funneling users to one page, or pages that are “substantially similar” and outside of the “browsable hierarchy”.
Provide good landing page content. As with every other page that Google crawls, relevancy and uniqueness are the major determining factors in Local SEO ranking. This is where good marketing technique comes in; and that’s what we’ll discuss next.

What Should Be on Local Landing Pages?

Here you will tell prospective customers everything they need to know to find and visit your local business. And you will give them some great reasons for doing so. As an added bonus, a quality crafted landing page will be rewarded by the search engines with higher placement in their results.

Location information. Your street address, phone number and hours of operation must all be there, naturally. A street map and “get directions” function are also pretty much standard nowadays. Depending on the nature of your local business, the email address of your sales or customer service team might be helpful.
Features and benefits of your business. Who are you, what do you do, why are you better than your competition? This is your brand’s Unique Selling Proposition, which should be consistent with your other marketing materials. Start at the top with a strong, benefit-oriented headline and you’ll be a giant step ahead of 90% of the landing pages out there.
Special offers. Local SEO landing pages are the ideal place to advertise a great deal that’s only available at a specific location. For example, a restaurant chain might feature different pricing at each branch. Of course, it’s also a terrific incentive for people to take the next step.
Credentials. Show that you are trustworthy and competent by displaying your official accreditations (i.e. Better Business Bureau), licenses, awards, customer testimonials or links to online reviews (i.e. Yelp).
Call to action. Tell viewers what you want them to do next — loud, clear and several times. You can have them click over to your website home or contact page, call you, email you, or get in their car and visit you in person. If your landing page is long enough to require scrolling down, make sure there’s at least one call to action visible at all times. Put the biggest one at the very bottom, where it’s the last thing they’ll see.

A successful local SEO optimized landing page brings together SEO and marketing knowhow so that each supports the other and delivers maximum results. That’s exactly what we do at ACS Creative. Call us today and find out how our teams of experts can create a powerful landing page for your business.

Easy, Effective Lead Nurturing with Drip Email

July 20, 2016

[intro]Sales and marketing pros know that very few prospects are converted into sales at the first contact. The vast majority of those leads need consistent touches over a period of weeks or months before they are convinced to make a purchasing decision. That’s why it’s so important not to give up on them and let huge potentials for new business escape (probably to your competitor).[/intro]

Get the conversation going.

By developing a drip email campaign you establish ongoing relationships with prospective buyers, you build their trust in your brand, products and services. But, as with every other relationship, you have to be there for them — how, when and where they want you to be. That means first providing them with relevant information, and then responding to their communications in a timely manner.

For a small or start-up business, keeping your brand at the top of customers’ minds is relatively doable through the unaided efforts of your salespeople. However, as you scale up, nurturing leads on a one-to-one basis will become impossible. This is where email can save your day … and your sale.

Why email?

You may have read that email marketing is so over. What they were really saying is that broadcast emails (the equivalent of delivering a flyer to every house) are not so effective. However, targeted email is still one of the best ways to reach your audience.

In one large study, the ROI for email marketing was 4,300% (Direct Marketing Association)
Email marketing is preferred over direct mail 5 to 1 by all online adults (Merkle)
Targeted emails bring in 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails (Jupiter Research)

What is drip email?

Also known as automated, lifecycle and autoresponder email, it’s the fastest, easiest way to conduct an email campaign. Once the emails are written and designed, they go into a queue which sends them out automatically on a schedule you set in advance. Drip email allow your sales team to consistently nurture hundreds of leads, instead of maybe a couple of dozen.

Step 1: Develop a schedule.

Decide whether you want to send an email every so many days, at specified stages in the sales funnel, or in response to a trigger.

A calendar-based campaign could contain:

Content from your sales literature, website or social media pages
Product usage tips, links to videos
Added value offer (white paper, first-time discount, contest entry)
Request for referrals

A trigger-based schedule might include:

Reach out to people who visited the company website
Reach out to people who mentioned you on social media
Thank you for contacting us, we’ll get back to you shortly
Appointment confirmation
Here is the information you requested
Invitation to event, trade show booth
Abandoned shopping cart or contact page
We haven’t heard from you in a while
Renewal notice
Best customer reward
Thank you for your purchase
Post-sale add-ons (related products, extended warranties)
Happy birthday

Step 2: Target the message and design.

When the content is relevant to their needs, people reading your emails are more likely to respond. Segment your lead list according to their interest in specific products and services, and customize your emails further with their name, company, purchase history, which previous emails they’ve opened, etc.

And ALWAYS include a call to action. What’s their next step into the sales funnel: visit your website, email you, call you? Don’t assume they know what to do. Tell them!

Step 3: Make it 2-way.

Nurturing a lead means listening as well as talking. Build a response method into your emails: your phone number, a link to your email address or website landing page, or simply ask them to reply to the email. What they tell you should be incorporated in the next stage of your drip campaign.

Step 4: Connect it to your other marketing channels.

A fantastic way to increase response rates is to leverage your emails on other platforms. In fact, doing so can extend the email’s reach by 77% (Salesforce Marketing Cloud & FaceBook Marketing Science).

Coordinate email delivery with blog posts and SEM ads
Use social media to announce topics and offer subscriptions to the emails
Create a dedicated landing page on your website for responders to an email offer

Step 5: See how you’re doing.

You’ll never know whether your drip email campaign is meeting its goals unless you track it. Analytics can also be automated to a great extent; you simply plug in the relevant metrics, such as click-through rate, contact requests or conversions. Google Analytics is an excellent tool for identifying behaviors and characteristics of people who click through to your website from the email. If the campaign isn’t performing as expected, consider making adjustments to the content, mailing list or delivery timing.

9 Online Marketing Strategies to Increase Website Traffic and Conversions

July 13, 2016

Marketing Your Business with Your Website

You expect your sales staff to handle their own process: finding leads, making contact, presenting your USPs and ultimately closing the deal. Your website should be a self-starter, too. If the only way prospects are learning it exists is when you hand them your business card, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

Online Marketing

A good business website should not be just the first step in your sales funnel. It should be able to actively attract people needing services like yours, qualify those leads and assist conversions, all under its own power. In short, it should function like a true sales professional.

1. Update your content

Your website may have been built several years ago. Does it still reflect your current brand image, sales messaging and scope of products/services? Has it kept pace with changing market conditions and what your competition is doing? (Don’t be surprised if this exercise reveals the need for an overall marketing review.)

2. Help prospects find you

From a sales point of view, the best thing about the Internet is that it’s demand-driven: people already know they need what you sell, and are looking for it. When your website shows up on page one of their search engine results, a lot more of those potential customers will be heading your way. Online marketing and Search engine optimization (SEO), both on and off site, gets you that coveted top rank placement. This is a multi-faceted endeavor, but a few possible SEO tactics are suggested below.

3. Be mobile responsive

Since 2014, Internet usage on mobile devices has exceeded desktop computers. That’s why it’s now essential to have a responsive website that displays page formats according to the size and shape of the device loading them. This is true even of B-to-B websites, with up to 86% of executives saying they have researched a product or service for their business on their smartphone. If your site doesn’t have this capability, you’re putting a roadblock in the way of prospective customers.

4. Be a speed demon

These days Internet users’ attention span is measured in milliseconds. You need them to get your message before they lose patience and leave. There are two ways in which your website needs to be fast: page load and viewer comprehension. The first is for your techie to handle. The second is for your designer, who knows how to create simple, prioritized layouts that focus attention on the key elements. This is even more crucial for B-to-B websites targeting busy executives who won’t waste their time on a site that forces them to dig for the information they need.

5. Get Google Analytics

This website tracking tool can be a salesperson’s best friend. Find out who is visiting, what their needs are, how they found you and much more. Then you can make adjustments to your content, online advertising, etc., to reach your target audience even more effectively.

6. Choose the SEO tactics that are right for you

Certain aspects, such as site architecture and coding that make you visible to search engine crawlers, are essential for everyone. However, there are others which may not deliver a good return on investment, depending on your type of business and customer. For example, websites with embedded videos often get high search engine rankings (assuming the video is tagged correctly); but if that type of content isn’t suited to your products/services, you must weigh the possible SEO advantage against the weakening of your sales message and slowing down of your page load.

7. Pre-qualify your prospects

An important part of SEO is knowing what keywords people are using to search for what your business provides. When search engines find these keywords in your site content, they will include the site in the results they present to searchers. The trick is to choose words and phrases that accurately represent your business, so that only legitimate prospects see your site. If you’re a nail salon, using a specific phrase such as “nails manicure” would automatically screen out people searching for the kind of nails you hit with a hammer.

8. Make news

By news, we mean anything from a tweet to a major corporate announcement. The point is to post new content regularly on your site and keep visitors coming back to see what’s happening. This helps build trust in your organization. It’s also good SEO strategy, because search engines perceive frequent activity as a sign of quality and value. Bonus tip: You can set up your site so that content additions are automatically posted to your social media pages, and vice versa.

9. Tell them to take the next step

It may seem blatantly obvious that you want potential customers to contact you. And yet, many market research studies have shown that when you actually ask them to do so, response rates are significantly increased. Make sure there are plenty of in-text hyperlinks and “Contact Us Now” buttons on every page of your site, inviting them to initiate the sales process.

With these tips, your website can become a profitable member of your sales team. If doing all 9 seems daunting, then pick the ones that seem most likely to benefit your business. The main thing is to make a start, and let the results guide your next steps.
This is only the beginning of the Internet’s sales and marketing potential. Beyond your corporate website, there’s a world of opportunity in social media, review sites, networking sites, SEM and PPC ads, and more.

Why Your Brand Designer Asks So Many Questions

July 8, 2016

A Great Brand Design Is Built on a Solid Foundation?

The visual identity of a business can’t just be what someone thinks looks good. An effective brand must: accurately represent the business; engage positive customer response; and differentiate the business from its competitors.

Branding is so important to the success of the entire enterprise that decades of market research have quantified every detail, from colors, fonts and shapes to the number of words in a slogan (7 max). The results of that research are what we use to craft a brand that does its job, now and for years to come. Here are some of the things we need to know about your business before we begin the design process.

What is your industry?

Whether you’re in the hospitality business or the financial sector will make a big difference in the choice of brand color(s), among other things. Blue is the most popular color for businesses that want to convey stability and integrity; in fact, it’s the most common corporate color overall. Here’s a quick rundown of branding color psychology: the brand values and industry sectors associated with each.

Blue (secure, trustworthy): Finance, technology, energy, health care
Green (wealth, health): Health care, energy, agriculture
Yellow (light, happiness): Energy, hospitality, household
Orange (fun, vitality): Health care, household, technology
Red: (dynamic, passionate): Hospitality, automotive, retail
Purple (royal, creative): Technology, arts/crafts, finance
Black (sophisticated, upscale): Retail, automotive, technology
White (clean, pure): Health care, retail

What is your business?

Within an industry, there’s a wide range of products and services being marketed, and customers being marketed to. A surgical equipment manufacturer and a wellness spa are both in the health care sector, but their businesses are very different. Target and Neiman Marcus are in the same business, but their customer bases are different; that’s why Target’s logo is red and Neiman Marcus’s is black.

You may have noticed that in the color list above some sectors appear more than once. That’s because the colors can be further refined to represent your specific business. A regal deep purple gives an impression of authority, whereas a light lavender purple creates a sense of spirituality. What’s more, two colors can be combined to produce the desired effect. McDonald’s combination of red and yellow is one brilliant example.

What is your mission?

Now we delve into the nature of what you do. Is it a trendy or rapidly evolving field? Or will your offerings essentially be the same five or ten years from now? Your answers to these questions will guide the decision on how time-sensitive your brand design should look, and how often you will need to update it.

In most cases, we believe that brand identity should not be built on a passing fad, unless you plan to go out of business as soon as that fad has passed. Even for sellers of the latest must-haves, it’s better to invest in a timeless image than one that will be considered old-fashioned in the not too distant future.

Let’s look at Target and Neiman Marcus again. The Target typeface is bold, clean and modern. Neiman Marcus uses a slim, elegant script font. Each of them is a perfect choice to appeal to the tastes, lifestyles and motivations of their customers, yet both are classic designs that won’t look dated.

Who are your customers?

A brand design must meet the expectations and desires of your target audience. Choosing a whimsical cartoon drawing for your logo is great if you’re advertising to parents of small children; not so much if your prospects are corporate decision makers.

The psychological principle behind this is called cognitive dissonance. When human beings see a discrepancy between their beliefs and their perceptions, doubt is created: about the entity causing the doubt and the wisdom of doing business with that entity. Would you buy a $50,000 diamond ring from a street vendor? No, you expect to see expensive merchandise in a high end store and don’t trust its value when you see it in a different context. One of the important goals of brand development is to prevent cognitive dissonance.

Who are your competitors?

Your brand should clearly differentiate you from others selling the same goods and services. That’s why we take a thorough look at who you’re competing with, to avoid accidental duplications. And we certainly wouldn’t intentionally copy any other business’s brand, no matter how successful; not just because it’s unethical, but because doing so would only lead to customer confusion, not conversions.

What are your marketing arenas?

Your brand design should look good in multiple media, from your business cards to your website to a giant trade show display. It should be easy to read on tiny smartphones and grainy newspaper ads. It should be visible when superimposed on different colored backgrounds that you might want to use in a magazine or TV ad.

These are all reasons why “less is more” is our brand design mantra. For legibility, scalability and recognizability, minimal outperforms cluttered every time. This applies to complexity of the artwork, number of colors, number of lines and number of words per line.

We create versions of the brand design for every medium it will appear in: color and grey scale, low resolution for email ads and high resolution for printed brochures, with and without your slogan, and any special situations that come with marketing your business. Costs of using the design will also be considered: it’s cheaper to print a one- or two-color letterhead than a full-color one.

The more we know, the smarter your design.

At ACS, we ask so many questions in order to deeply understand your brand’s platform and customers. Once we’ve done that, we can apply proven marketing strategies to designing a brand that will empower your marketing campaigns, customer response and ultimate business success.

And if you’re not sure of the answers, we have decades of marketing expertise to help you define your brand. Contact us today for a complimentary consultation.