Let Fans Help Enhance Sales, Leads, Branding and SEO- The Basics of an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy
At this point, nearly every business has at least some presence on social media. But many of these pages are one-way streets where the company simply posts content and expects viewers to read it passively. This is simply wasting a tremendous opportunity, no matter what type of business you’re in.
To build a stronger fan base, you must offer ways for them to interact with you. Doing so creates a deeper investment of time and emotion in your users, which both facilitates their progress in the sales funnel and encourages them to share your content, thus extending your reach to new prospects.
If you’re a business-to-business operation, you may believe this arena is not relevant because most of the fan engagement campaigns seen on social media target consumers. Why, you may wonder, would a “vote for your favorite flavor” type of contest be of interest to an audience of busy executives? However, there are other methods of community building that are proven to work with professional users.
Showcase Current Customers
People love to be in the spotlight … and get their own business some free publicity at the same time. You’ll be surprised at how many of your satisfied clients would be happy to give you permission to share their experiences with your product and service. These customers can become a loyal group of fans who will forward your content about them to their own customer bases.
Case studies.
You may already have these on your website. If so, it’s a snap to convert them to Facebook posts. If not, consider adding this critical sales tool in both places. The basic format of a case study is:
- Problem (that the customer had)
- Solution (your product or service)
- Outcome (proof of how well the product or service worked)
There are many online sources you can tap for writing a great case study.
Interviews.
This informal version of a case study comes across as more authentic because it’s in the customer’s own words. You may even want to video it for posting on YouTube and, of course, a link to it on your Facebook page.
Quotes.
The interview is also a gold mine of testimonial quotes which support your marketing claims not only on social media but in every channel you use: website, brochures, sales letters, etc. Also, check any letters of appreciation you’ve received for usable quotes.
Solicited reviews.
Your very best, most enthusiastic customers may enjoy writing about you on their own social media pages or website blog (perhaps as part of a reciprocal post deal). Ask them to submit their content under a unique hashtag; this will make it easy for you to track and collect their submissions. Of course, you will link to these reviews on your own social media page.
Social media screenshots.
Your customers may already be talking about you without you even asking. Keep an eye on their Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages. When you see a nice comment about your product or service, grab a screenshot of it and post it on your own social media. Presto: a testimonial with just a couple of clicks!
Invite R&D Input
People love to give opinions. Whether you’ve got a new idea already in the works or you are looking for one, social media is an ideal – and free – way to gauge its viability and uncover problems and possibilities you may not have thought of. Plus, you’ll kill two birds with one stone by inspiring deeply engaged conversations on your social media pages.
Existing customers.
As with the above social media marketing strategy, your first line of opinion givers will be existing customers. Solicit their suggestions through email or direct mail as well as on social media so they’ll be sure to see it, and ask for responses to be posted on your social media page.
Prospective customers.
With the optimal keywords included, a request for input on your social media page can also attract a pool of prospects who never heard of you before. They’ll love feeling that they’re part of the product development process. And they’ll be half way to sold before the product even hits the marketplace!
Start Product Usage Discussions
People love to give advice. Provide your customers with a forum for sharing their creative uses of your product or bugs they’ve solved, and the conversation will never stop. Enabling customers to engage with each other as well as you build lasting relationships and lets you decide how much time you want to put into it. This user generated content is also perfect for both your SEO and your customer service team.
User tips.
For tangible products, YouTube instructional videos are the way to go. In fact, you may find some customer videos there already, an immediate source of useful links for your social media community.
Also, consider starting a YouTube channel for product demo videos. Viewers who comment here can form their own valuable community as well as joining your Facebook community. These demo videos are also highly effective in landing pages and sales presentations.
Online seminars.
The value of educational podcasts and seminars that have to be signed up for is in the relevance of the audience. So, even though the headcount is probably smaller than for a YouTube video, it’s virtually 100% seriously interested in your products and services.
Discussion forums.
One in five Americans use forums to discuss or recommend products. Register at your industry’s most popular online forums and make sure you’re getting your fair share of attention. Give as much as you get: contribute original content, not just marketing messages, to achieve maximum credibility. And be sure to respond to complaints or criticism immediately.
For an ultimate solution, start a forum on your own website. This will involve you in a lot more administration, but you’ll know it’s all about you, all the time.
Conclusion
It’s clear that social media marketing strategies do have a place in B2B marketing. In fact, because B2B customer decisions are more likely to be influenced by brand reputation and word of mouth, it may be one of your most important marketing channels. Build an active social media community by encouraging higher levels of interaction, creating thought leadership content and turning customers into brand advocates.
Any Business Can Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Let Fans Help Enhance Sales, Leads, Branding and SEO- The Basics of an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy
At this point, nearly every business has at least some presence on social media. But many of these pages are one-way streets where the company simply posts content and expects viewers to read it passively. This is simply wasting a tremendous opportunity, no matter what type of business you’re in.
To build a stronger fan base, you must offer ways for them to interact with you. Doing so creates a deeper investment of time and emotion in your users, which both facilitates their progress in the sales funnel and encourages them to share your content, thus extending your reach to new prospects.
If you’re a business-to-business operation, you may believe this arena is not relevant because most of the fan engagement campaigns seen on social media target consumers. Why, you may wonder, would a “vote for your favorite flavor” type of contest be of interest to an audience of busy executives? However, there are other methods of community building that are proven to work with professional users.
People love to be in the spotlight … and get their own business some free publicity at the same time. You’ll be surprised at how many of your satisfied clients would be happy to give you permission to share their experiences with your product and service. These customers can become a loyal group of fans who will forward your content about them to their own customer bases.
Case studies.
You may already have these on your website. If so, it’s a snap to convert them to Facebook posts. If not, consider adding this critical sales tool in both places. The basic format of a case study is:
There are many online sources you can tap for writing a great case study.
Interviews.
This informal version of a case study comes across as more authentic because it’s in the customer’s own words. You may even want to video it for posting on YouTube and, of course, a link to it on your Facebook page.
Quotes.
The interview is also a gold mine of testimonial quotes which support your marketing claims not only on social media but in every channel you use: website, brochures, sales letters, etc. Also, check any letters of appreciation you’ve received for usable quotes.
Solicited reviews.
Your very best, most enthusiastic customers may enjoy writing about you on their own social media pages or website blog (perhaps as part of a reciprocal post deal). Ask them to submit their content under a unique hashtag; this will make it easy for you to track and collect their submissions. Of course, you will link to these reviews on your own social media page.
Social media screenshots.
Your customers may already be talking about you without you even asking. Keep an eye on their Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages. When you see a nice comment about your product or service, grab a screenshot of it and post it on your own social media. Presto: a testimonial with just a couple of clicks!
Invite R&D Input
People love to give opinions. Whether you’ve got a new idea already in the works or you are looking for one, social media is an ideal – and free – way to gauge its viability and uncover problems and possibilities you may not have thought of. Plus, you’ll kill two birds with one stone by inspiring deeply engaged conversations on your social media pages.
Existing customers.
As with the above social media marketing strategy, your first line of opinion givers will be existing customers. Solicit their suggestions through email or direct mail as well as on social media so they’ll be sure to see it, and ask for responses to be posted on your social media page.
Prospective customers.
With the optimal keywords included, a request for input on your social media page can also attract a pool of prospects who never heard of you before. They’ll love feeling that they’re part of the product development process. And they’ll be half way to sold before the product even hits the marketplace!
People love to give advice. Provide your customers with a forum for sharing their creative uses of your product or bugs they’ve solved, and the conversation will never stop. Enabling customers to engage with each other as well as you build lasting relationships and lets you decide how much time you want to put into it. This user generated content is also perfect for both your SEO and your customer service team.
User tips.
For tangible products, YouTube instructional videos are the way to go. In fact, you may find some customer videos there already, an immediate source of useful links for your social media community.
Also, consider starting a YouTube channel for product demo videos. Viewers who comment here can form their own valuable community as well as joining your Facebook community. These demo videos are also highly effective in landing pages and sales presentations.
Online seminars.
The value of educational podcasts and seminars that have to be signed up for is in the relevance of the audience. So, even though the headcount is probably smaller than for a YouTube video, it’s virtually 100% seriously interested in your products and services.
Discussion forums.
One in five Americans use forums to discuss or recommend products. Register at your industry’s most popular online forums and make sure you’re getting your fair share of attention. Give as much as you get: contribute original content, not just marketing messages, to achieve maximum credibility. And be sure to respond to complaints or criticism immediately.
For an ultimate solution, start a forum on your own website. This will involve you in a lot more administration, but you’ll know it’s all about you, all the time.
It’s clear that social media marketing strategies do have a place in B2B marketing. In fact, because B2B customer decisions are more likely to be influenced by brand reputation and word of mouth, it may be one of your most important marketing channels. Build an active social media community by encouraging higher levels of interaction, creating thought leadership content and turning customers into brand advocates.
Is Your Digital Marketing Agency a Good Fit?
Must-Haves for a Successful Partnership
Thinking about hiring or changing your digital marketing agency? You’re not alone. Last year the total value of new accounts in the ad industry was more than the previous three years combined, according to a Morgan Stanley study. Analysts said two trends contributed significantly to this increase:
1. Existing customers moving away from large, less agile, more expensive online marketing agency to smaller ones
2. Customers who didn’t previously use an agency needing help with digital media marketing
For businesses in one of these two boats, we’ve put together this checklist of what to look for when hiring your new, or first, marketing agency.
Digital Marketing Agency Credentials
Reputation.
You may be in a hurry to get the ball rolling, but that’s not a good reason for skipping your due diligence. Search online and in ad industry publications for what’s being said about the agency. Check their website for awards, testimonials, etc. Ask other business owners in your network which agencies they use and why.
Of course, you will also check the obvious resources, such as the Better Business Bureau, for warning signs. And, though we hate to sound biased, think long and hard before hiring an overseas agency. If anything goes wrong, you have little or no recourse. Even if they’re reputable, there are often problems with communication, due either to language barriers or time zone differences, or both.
Team.
If the digital marketing agency is a relatively new start-up, you may not find much about them. In that case, check the backgrounds of their team, starting with the bios which should be proudly displayed on their own website and moving on to LinkedIn if you need a more in-depth picture. They may have big-time experience which they are now offering direct to you … probably at a fraction of what their former employers with the high overhead would charge.
Proof.
As you narrow down your list of candidates, begin analyzing the results they’ve delivered to other clients. Ask for customer references and case studies.
The most important question to ask is whether the agency solved the problem it was presented with. If the challenge was to increase sales, then the case study should provide results in terms of dollars, not website hits. If the goal was to increase the brand’s social media following, the results should show the number of followers or “likes”, not number of blog articles or videos posted.
Also, what does their own website look like? Is it well designed and easy to navigate? Is it consistently updated with new content (such as this blog)? Is it easy to find on Google if you search for “web marketing companies” + your geographical area? Does it offer easy conversion routes with calls to action, links to the contact page, etc. These are all signs that the agency knows what it’s doing.
Red flags.
Beware of a digital marketing agency who promise instant results. It just doesn’t work that way in online marketing. It’s a game of attrition as your brand populates through the internet; the pattern for almost all aspects of digital marketing is slow but steady growth for the first 6 to 12 months, then a big leap. Quick fixes are usually the result of dodgy tactics such as black hat link building. Once the search engines discover and impose penalties on your website for these tactics, you’ll spend more time and money recovering than you did on the original campaign.
Relevance
Clients.
You need an agency who understands your business and your needs. The best way to get that with minimal time wasted on a learning curve is to see if they’ve already worked with other clients in your industry or similar fields. Also, how does the size of their clients’ business compare to yours: approximately the same, bigger or smaller?
Culture.
Never overlook the intangibles in choosing what will hopefully be a long-term partnership. How do they present themselves, both on their website and in person? Will you feel comfortable with their communication and work style? Are they transparent about their processes and fee structure? Do they listen as well as talk? If you’re not on the same page, it might not be a great fit.
Expertise
People.
Your agency should offer a diverse team of experts who contribute a full spectrum of skills and talents to the process of creating successful online marketing: design, brand development, SEO strategy, website building, etc.
Tools.
The online marketing agency environment is evolving at lightning speed; it’s critical to utilize the most recent technologies and strategies in order to stay on top of the game (and your competition). We’re not just talking about the tools needed to research and execute an effective online marketing plan. The agency should also have the ability to measure its marketing effectiveness, including website and social media analytics, SEO rankings, e-blast performance and online reputation tracking.
Process.
How does the agency go about getting your message out into the digital world? The first step for them should be learning what your message is, not just dreaming up one for you. Before they even begin to plan a strategy, there should be an in-depth discussion of your business, customers, market and goals.
Is there a procedure in place for timely production: setting deadlines, obtaining approvals, implementing decisions? Otherwise, your project could drag on indefinitely.
Price
Not too high.
This is one of the most frequently cited reasons for clients migrating from large to smaller agencies. You certainly should expect more reasonable pricing from an organization that has less operating costs than a Madison Avenue giant.
Not too low.
On the other hand, extremely low pricing is almost always a sign of poor quality. Spending less money up front but getting bad results will turn out to be more expensive than hiring good quality expertise to do the job right.
ACS Creative Revs Up 13 Year Old Speed Prodigy’s Website
Kaylen Frederick, known as K-Rex, races open wheel, Formula F1600 cars down a straight away, as fast as he can. He’s also only 13, and the youngest open wheel, pro race driver in the United States. Not too shabby for a middle schooler. He dreams big: winning the Indy Car and the Indy 500 among other famous car races. And those big dreams require extreme dedication, natural talent and a responsive racing websites design that lures sponsors so K-Rex can keep training at the sport he loves. His dad rolled into our office and asked us to create an impactful online presence. So we, with our toolbox of expert graphic design skills and slick code, rolled up our sleeves and joined K-Rex’s crew.
Full-throttle on the cool factor.
A lot of clients will come in asking for a cool looking website, and while we often try to get more specific on direction, with K-Rex there was no denying that this website had to look and feel as sleek as the car he drives. So what’s cool? Black with bold yellow type, much like the suit K-Rex wears. We used a combination of white and yellow type the over dark imagery to highlight his name and attributes. We also chose a thick, strong font to further convey the sleek message. Lastly, the hero shot is of K-Rex standing with his arms crossed while staring down the camera. If you read nothing else on the page, you’ll still understand one thing: this kid kicks some you know what. And that’s exactly the message the K-Rex team wants to deliver to potential sponsors. A nice win for us.
Put the wins front and center.
Since the whole purpose of our racing websites design is to position K-Rex as a winner, we created a prominent bold banner above the fold on the homepage where he can announce every achievement. Right below that announcement is a box pointing visitors to his 2016 Campaign and schedule. The Learn More link then leads to a calendar we created using race track graphics that delineate the separate events. We are especially fond of those graphics. And on every page there’s a bold box encouraging folks to subscribe to K-Rex’s news and events updates. We like to think of this website design as one slick, fan-creating machine.
Keeping in touch with those fans.
K-Rex is a little too busy behind the wheel, and his parents are a little too busy being K-Rex’s parents to struggle with updating the site’s content. That’s where our content management system comes into play. We made it super easy for the K-Rex crew to post wins, add events, and automatically email subscribers important updates. Long gone are the days when people had to hire developers to make changes to their website. Content management systems like the one we built allow even the least tech savvy user to quickly make web content changes–almost as fast as K-Rex himself gets down that track.
Sure the site looks slick. Sure the wins look impressive. But sponsors and fans will want more juicy details on this racing kid wonder. So we put the question: Who isKaylen Frederick right on the homepage. Then added a link to an about section that explains when he got started racing, lets us know he’s also an awesome skier, and reminds us that K-Rex is still a kid—albeit a very talented one you should keep an eye on.
Getting his brand up to speed.
Of course, we couldn’t very well launch K-Rex’s new cool website design without also ensuring that his logo was up to brand snuff. So we updated his logo to match the look and feel of his website. It turned out pretty rad. Wish we had one when we were in middle school.
Getting to the finish line.
Why aren’t My PPC Landing Pages Getting Results?
Content That Kills Conversions
Imagine a PPC management company has your ads getting great click-through rates. But visitors only get as far as the landing page, and then leave. What’s happening? In this article, we’ll leave aside all the technical possibilities, such as slow page load and poor formatting for mobile devices (although you should certainly investigate them), and focus on the words and pictures that make up the content of the landing page. ACS Creative offers a dedicated team for our landing page design services, Below are some tips that we compiled, that might help your struggling landing page.
The Message
The disconnect between the ad and landing page messaging.
A surefire way to cause instant distrust is to promise something in the banner ad and not deliver it on the landing page. An example of this is a Consumer Reports PPC ad that offered a free downloadable report, but there was no way for visitors to obtain it on the landing page.
Using the same keywords in both places will ensure that your messaging is consistent and relevant. In fact, a MecLabs Institute study found increases in conversion rates of up to 144% when this was done. Added bonus: keyword consistency will also improve your SEO/SEM quality scores.
Too long or too short.
There’s conflicting opinion as to whether a landing page should be long or short. The conversion numbers support the short side of the argument; one expert says landing page copy shouldn’t exceed 200 words. But sometimes you just need more words to make your point, especially with big ticket items.
So the best advice we can give you is to make sure every word on there is really necessary. Which brings us to the next potential problem with your landing page content.
Excessive copy.
Attention spans are short; you have at best three seconds to convince your reader to take the next step. Verbose copy with lots of generic adjectives (“incredible!” “beautiful!” “delicious!”) won’t help sell your product or impress anybody. It will only cause them to lose patience and wander off.
Go back over your copy and remove anything that doesn’t directly support your selling points or promotional offer. Then weed out any repetitious sentences that make the same point in different words. (“This beautiful home is situated right on the lakefront. With its prime location, it enjoys magnificent lake views.”)
Too many messages.
The landing page is not the place to cram in every aspect of your business. Cluttering it up with multiple messages has the same effect as a room full of people all shouting to get your attention: you don’t hear any of them.
The purpose of a landing page is to get visitors to click over to your website (or whatever action you want them to take). One to three strong messages will accomplish this far better than a confusing mishmash.
Copy focuses on features, not benefits.
Face it, your prospective customers don’t care how great you are. They only care what benefit they’ll get out of doing business with you. In an often-cited Macy’s split test, two ads were identical in every way except for the headlines: one said “25% Off Boys’ Coats” and the other “25% Off Boys’ Coats to Keep Them Cozy & Warm.” The “Cozy & Warm” ad outpolled by 40%.
Go through your list of product/service features, imagine your customer saying “what’s in it for me?”, and put down your answer. Now you’re in a good position to persuade your readers, not just inform them.
The Visuals
Generic photos.
Do they really support your unique selling proposition? Or do visitors see an image of two businessmen shaking hands that you bought from a stock photography site? If a photo is going to take up valuable real estate on your landing page, it should do more than just look pretty. On the other hand, a generic image is better than no image!
Visuals compete with the message.
Even if your product is sold primarily on the basis of its appearance, the image should not be so big or so placed that it pushes your selling copy and call-to-action into a subordinate position. Remember, what you want from your landing page visitors is action, not admiration.
Also, be careful about the type and/or page colors. Nothing is more headache-inducing than trying to decipher purple text on a black background. Keep it clear and simple for your readers by making sure the text is high contrast and easy to read.
Grey text.
Studies of reader behavior have shown that long paragraphs of plain (“grey”) copy are frequently avoided. Maybe it reminds people of school textbooks! Make it easy for readers to scan quickly through your copy by breaking it up with headlines, subheads, and bullet lists. In particular, your customer benefits should really stand out, either in boldface type or bullets.
Call-to-action doesn’t stand out.
This is the single most important element of the landing page. It’s where you tell the visitor what to do next (go to your website, sign up, call you, visit your physical location). In other words, it’s the conversion. Your visitors need to see it within three seconds of arriving at your landing page.
Here are some ways to make your call-to-action stand out:
The Visitors
Too wide an audience.
As a PPC management company we know when you try to appeal to everybody, you convince nobody. Increase conversions by targeting your best prospects: those who actually need your products and services and aren’t just there for the free incentive. Design and write your landing page so that those time- and money-wasters screen themselves out, and you’ll have more resources to devote to high-quality leads.
This is why you might want to think twice about offering a free giveaway in your PPC ad just to get click-throughs. Some companies are even experimenting with asking leads to pay a little something to start the conversion process, perhaps a small fee for a personal consultation. Landing page conversions may be lower, but sales results might be higher.
The offer is too complicated.
Making people do math to figure out how good a deal they’ll get is essentially demotivating. Amazon makes it easy for its customers: on every product page, you not only see the percentage of the discount, but also how many dollars you save and what your final cost will be.
Rather than a discount, you might offer something like a gift with purchase or free shipping. “Free” is historically the most powerful word in advertising and will outperform any discount or rebate offer.
Newly-Branded Innovative Insurance has a Website to Match with InsuraLease
In the broad industry that is auto insurance, there are endless niche companies. ACS was approached by an outfit with a new service: auto insurance that specifically targets lease here, pay here auto dealers and offers them a more convenient and economical way to ensure that their customers carry the required car insurance. These dealers spend a lot of money tracking their lease customers’ insurance premiums. Insuralease offers a way to virtually eliminate that. Now came the hard part: designing a user-friendly website that explained this new kind of insurance and encouraged adoption by the targeted dealers.
First, you need a name.
Explain and convince.
In general, website design has two main goals: 1. explain a product or service, and 2. convince people to use that product or service. With a new service like Insuralease, we had a lot of explaining to do. However, nobody wants to read long paragraphs on the web. That’s where good web design comes in. We created “The Process” tab and broke the information down into “8 Easy Steps.” Each step went into a separate blue box with a lime green icon. This graphic visual allows potential customers to quickly digest the information. It barely feels like reading. Plus the ease of the site helps convince auto dealers that engaging the service will be just as hassle-free.
Answering The Who
Part of explaining a product or service is clearly indicating who the product/service is for. We did that right on the home page in the sub-head: “For lease here, pay here dealers and their customers.” The message is quite clear. The home page also drills in the brand promise: that Insuralease is an instant and easy insurance solution that is a win win for everyone. Making sure this website prominently delivered that message was definitely a win for us.
Customers always have questions.
Our web designers recommend FAQ pages to many of our clients, and Insuralease was no different. With a new service, you want to make sure you don’t leave a zillion questions hanging out there. That bounces customers. The FAQ page we created for Insuralease has lime green questions to help them stand out, and large font answers to make them easy to read. We also added a sidebar with contact information for specific, real people and encouraged potential clients to ask questions.
Responsive leads to responses.
Overall, the project was a huge success for us. ACS is proud to have one more happy customer under our belt.
Why is My Website Traffic Declining?
Possible Causes and How to Identify Them
You’re looking at your organic search traffic in Google Analytics and you don’t like what you see, there’s probably no need to panic. But you should take action. First, you need to determine what’s behind the website traffic drop.
Website and Analytics Changes
Have you added elements that Google frowns on?
These elements could be inbound links coming from dodgy sources, keyword stuffed copy, sneaky redirects, hidden text or links, duplicate content from other sites or content with little value. If your traffic loss coincides with a drop in your SERP (search engine results page) ranking, check your Manual Actions report to see if Google is penalizing you for violating its webmaster quality guidelines.
There may be an element you don’t even know about, including hacked content, user generated spam or other security problems. Check Google Webmaster Tools for security issues, fix them, and submit your site to Google for reconsideration.
Are new pages cannibalizing the old pages?
You might have added new pages with URLs that are too similar to those you’re already using. For example, you had a page called www.mybusiness.com/products/gizmo-fix, and now you’ve added a page called www.mybusiness.com/news/fix-my-gizmo. Those pages are competing with each other, not supporting each other. Result: they both receive lower SERP placement.
Rather than adding pages on the fly as the need or opportunity arises, you should have a pre-planned content strategy that prevents this confusion from happening.
Have you restructured the site or migrated it to a new domain?
This will cause a temporary decline in traffic as Google has to crawl and index all your pages over again from scratch. You don’t need to do anything to fix this, just wait a couple of weeks and see if traffic returns to normal. However, make sure you have the 301 redirect function in place for all the old URLs.
Is your content being indexed correctly?
There could be any number of reasons why Google isn’t indexing your pages.
To see if indexing is the issue, search Google for your page URLs. If they don’t show up on the SERP, they’re not indexed. You can also check your Google Webmaster Tools index status report for a decrease in the total number of indexed URLs for your site.
Is the loss a mirage caused by changing your website traffic analysis?
Have you recently adjusted your Google Analytics settings to exclude search engine bots and spiders from the traffic count? If so, you may still be getting the same number of human visitors, it just looks like less.
You can tell if visitors are bots, not real people, by their behavior while on site. When the page gets high traffic but very low time on the page and low conversion rate, you’ve probably got a bot.
Did you set it and forget it?
When was the last time you updated your website with new content? Google algorithms give preference to sites that regularly add fresh or updated text, images, videos, links and/or user comments. Stagnant sites are perceived as having less value to users, and ranked accordingly.
All the above factors could affect your website’s SEO (search engine optimization), which would prevent potential visitors from finding you. Once you’ve eliminated those possibilities, it’s time to look beyond your website for causes of the traffic slowdown.
Search Engine Changes
Are paid ads pushing your website further down the SERP?
You may have noticed recently that Google no longer has paid URL placements in a right hand sidebar. That’s because they’ve all been moved to either the top or bottom of the page. There can be as many as four of these paid placements above, and another four below, the organic (unpaid) results, which means that only the very top ranked websites are visible to searchers on page one. Less visibility = less traffic.
Has Google changed its SEO algorithms?
If your organic search traffic drops immediately followed by an update, it’s a good bet this is the problem. Recent updates have focused on two areas of concern: content and incoming links. Google is constantly raising its bar to reward quality and relevance, and push spammers out of the picture.
Although it means more work in the short term to get your website up to the new standards, it will benefit you in the long run by filtering out irrelevant results and allowing the quality traffic to find you more easily.
And finally, you must consider the possibility that your declining numbers are related to market conditions, not any specific actions that can be easily remedied.
Marketplace Changes
Are seasonal or economic conditions affecting traffic?
If your decline in traffic corresponds with a general decline in relevant searches, there may not be much you can do about it, except take comfort in the fact that your competitors are probably suffering as much as you are.
Another possibility is that you’re unfairly comparing current numbers to a previous period when traffic was inflated by a specific promotional campaign, busy season or other market factor such as an unusually hot summer if you sell air conditioners.
Is your target customer affected by your or others’ actions?
If you’ve begun going after a different demographic, chances are you’re alienating your existing pool of potential customers. For example, if you’re IKEA and you introduce high-priced designer furniture, you’ll drive away your budget-conscious customers. Check Google search data for your SERP position since the start of the decline. A stable ranking while traffic falls means you’re not losing visibility, your customers are losing interest.
New competition may be taking some traffic that would have come to you before. This is bad enough, but when your own resellers start outranking you, it’s adding insult to injury. The good news: reseller cannibalization will probably only affect website traffic, not your revenues.
B2C or B2B on Social Media? Think H2H
Even B2B Companies Benefit from Interacting Like Humans
Many business-to-business companies still think social media marketing is not terribly important for them. After all, they reason, their customers are corporate decision makers who don’t have much time or desire to hang out on Facebook.
So Why Should B2B Do Social Media Marketing?
The short answer is: because if you don’t, you’ll be left behind. For the past several years there’s been a strong trend towards utilizing social media marketing to build brand, connect with sales leads and recruit employees. The numbers don’t lie:
Source: Content Marketing Institute
How Should B2B Do Social Media?
The two most common mistakes B2B organizations make in their social media posts are: (1) being too promotional and (2) being too corporate. In the first, self-serving sales messaging turns off readers. In the second, a dehumanized corporate voice fails to make a connection with readers.
The current buzzword for social media marketing is H2H: human to human. Even in the arena of fact — not emotion — based purchase decisions, personal relationships can still make the difference in closing the deal. Social media is today’s golden opportunity to initiate and maintain those relationships, on a wider scale than was ever before possible.
Be an Educator
We’re not saying you should completely abandon your brand voice and engage in tactics that would only work on a consumer audience, such as cute pictures of the CEO’s pet. (Unless your company distributes pet products and is named after said pet; then it would be an engaging, humanizing, yet relevant post.)
One of the most effective ways to generate quality leads is to provide quality content that educates the reader and positions you as a thought leader in your industry. According to an International Data Group study, 89% of IT buyers prefer to receive educational (rather than promotional) content from their social media.
Use already existing resources or create new ones, such as product demonstration videos and white papers, to demonstrate your value as a business partner. An extreme example of educational B2B marketing content is American Express, which has created its own social media forum, OPEN, where small businesses can tap a huge knowledge bank and connect with the community.
It’s all to easy for a corporate entity to be perceived as a heartless, soulless robot. A great way to counteract that is with photos of employees, either on the job or pursuing their own interests. Oracle did a memorable job of showcasing the company’s philanthropy through images of its caring, committed employees.
Thanks to the Internet, buyers have more opportunity to learn about you and your company before the first contact, through both your own content and reviews of you from other buyers. So responding quickly and consistently to both new business requests and comments from current/former customers is now critical.
Even General Electric, which receives tens of thousands of comments, makes an effort to develop engaging and informative discussions. The result has been a sizeable community of participants who see GE as a human brand.
Equally important to starting the conversation on social media is enabling prospects to take the next step. Make sure all your social media pages display a clear, functional path to your contact information.
Use Partner Amplification
If coming up with so much new content seems daunting, you can always share what your partners are posting. These partners could be your internal staff or businesses you work with on a regular basis. As an added bonus, they’ll return the favor on their own social media pages, thus expanding your reach into new pools of prospective customers.
Steps to Success
Now that we’ve given you a few reasons why you should be using social media marketing, and a few ways to develop effective content for B2B readers, let’s quickly go over the steps you’ll take to get your social media program up and running.
Also, don’t assume that any junior employee who happens to have social media experience will know your brand’s voice and protect your company’s reputation online. That’s another reason why your social media strategy should be planned and written down for everyone involved to see.
Higher Education Reaches New Heights with Smarter Web Design
Higher education reaches the heights of web design.
The sole focus of HEP (Higher Education Publications) is to maintain the most current database of all the accredited schools, colleges and universities in the nation. That’s a tall order, especially when that database needs to list all current personnel, accreditations and major news stories for over 5,400 schools, 91,800 administrators and 22,600 accreditations. And it needs to be easily searchable, too. ACS web design to the rescue.
Used by hiring companies, marketers and journalists worldwide.
Essentially, anyone needing to inquire about an accredited school will be using this site. So will marketers wanting to push their goods to universities and journalists verifying information. HEP’s stellar reputation depends on their ability to main accurate records. So the web design needed to help people quickly find information on accredited institutions. HEP’s tagline is Authoritative, Timely, Accurate. It was our job to ensure that they could deliver on that brand promise.
HEP’s current website contained a very robust database that efficiently organized information so that it could be pulled up in nanoseconds. They call it hedConnect. This database is the equivalent of the Higher Education Directory® already published by HEP and contains all the same information. It is instantly searchable by subscribers and features 109 specific categories that allow users to drill down to exactly the information they need. Nothing else like it in the higher ed industry exists. Our job was to develop a front end website that would help promote this useful tool.
Getting subscribers.
To encourage visitors to subscribe to the database, we put the trial offer and subscription rates front and center, and highlighted the most popular package. This way no one has to dig around for information on how to access the database, and those familiar with the print directory can order and get right to searching.
Another useful component of HEP’s website is the news section. This blog compiles news stories about accredited institutions from around the country. They are free to see without a subscription. And while they appear in date order, the news posts are searchable, offering a handy tool to journalists and others who want to read the latest stories on a particular school.
The web design doesn’t stop here.
We built the HEP site to be uber useful. In addition to the database, portal and news section, visitors can request quotes for data extracts, research accrediting bodies, view state education agencies and more. Our web design made the HEP the online resource for higher ed information.
How to Increase E-Commerce Sales with SEO
Enable Your Web Store Platform to Bring in the Business
So you bought an “SEO friendly” E-commerce platform and believe it’s all taken care of for you. Unfortunately, no. All this claim means is that they’ve made it easy for YOU to implement the SEO elements that will drive your website to the top of your prospective customers’ search engine results page. But if you don’t know how search engine criteria work, you could add all the elements and still get it all wrong.
1. Content: Sidestep the Pitfalls
When Google and other search engines detect the same descriptive copy on multiple pages, it rings their alarm bells, since this is a characteristic of junk sites. However, it’s also a characteristic of retailers who carry multiple SKUs of the same item. Obviously, you can’t write a different description for every size and color of a particular area rug. But you can enable other elements on the page, such as customer reviews or a sidebar of suggested products.
Avoid duplicate content from manufacturers.
Some E-commerce sites just post whatever they receive from their vendors. Since other stores, as well as the manufacturer itself, are doing the same thing, Google will perceive this as plagiarized content. If you don’t have time to rewrite everything, the next best solution is to write a unique lead-in sentence with a reason to buy: how this product solves a problem or satisfies an emotional need of the customer.
Avoid no content.
The wrong answer to tip #1 is to simply remove the descriptions from all except the category page. Both Google and your customers won’t like landing on a page that has little but a picture and tells them nothing useful.
2. Product: Maximize the Potential
This is the next place Google will look after the home page. Fill these pages with interesting, unique content and links to the product pages within the category. Even if you’re a niche business, think how you could subdivide your merchandise into categories. For example, if you sell engagement rings, they could be subdivided by style (traditional, contemporary), carat, price or setting metal; which would also benefit shoppers by filtering for products they’re most interested in.
Don’t take down or hide out-of-stock product pages.
Those pages are still beneficial to your SEO strategy. For customer convenience, add a message with the expected date the item will be back in stock, and offer suggestions for similar products they might like to buy instead. You may also want to consider taking back orders.
Optimize new products.
Popular products that have been around for a while are pretty much guaranteed to be found and indexed by search engines. Get the same fast results for a new item by introducing it on your home page, category page and on related product pages, all with links to the item’s product page.
Optimize product pictures and videos.
Use the highest quality photography you possibly can; this not only pays off in more sales, it also increases the likelihood that the image will be shared on social media websites such as Pinterest. Since Google likes to see inbound links, it’s also an SEO bonus. Also, make sure the image file name, alt text and caption are short and keyword oriented so that Google gives them the attention they deserve.
Suggest related products.
A sidebar of “you may be interested in” items on each product page can improve your SEO as well as drive additional sales. Just be sure that those suggestions really are relevant for the user (based on your meta data), in stock and properly linked to their own product pages.
3. Build: User-Friendly Equals SEO-Friendly
Customers aren’t the only ones who love a user-friendly website: Google does too. They should be able to navigate easily up and down between category, subcategory and product pages. Include breadcrumbs on every page that help the user track back to higher levels.
Build for responsiveness.
Did you know that 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load? And did you know that 4 out of 5 consumers use a smartphone to shop? Two excellent reasons why your e-commerce site must be (a) fast and (b) responsive to mobile device screens. If it’s not, an update is in order ASAP.
Make page URLs search friendly.
Giving Google a clue what the page is about can almost instantly boost your ranking. Keep it simple for maximum effectiveness, include your most important keyword, but don’t cram in multiple keywords (AKA keyword stuffing). A good, clear URL structure would look like this:
SEO your internal site search.
Not all missed sales opportunities are caused by a low Google ranking. Take some time to optimize your own search engine. Use tools to see what keywords people are using to search within your site, and how often they’re finding what they looked for. If they misspell a word or use a variant phrase you haven’t ranked, do they get a “no results” response? Adjust your meta data until this never happens.
4. Users: Put Them to Work for You
You already know that allowing customers to share their opinions is like having an unpaid sales force. But did you know it’s also great for SEO? Google prefers websites that are constantly adding fresh content. So why not let your community of users do that for you too?
Link your social media sites to product pages.
Additional proof of your value can be added through posts from Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. Building these inbound links is a smart SEO strategy as well.
Use your internal search data for external results.
Analyzing the behavior of site visitors can lead to insights on how you can improve your keyword performance with Google. This information might also give you ideas for featuring the most popular products and adding new ones.
5. Process: Stay Relevant
This last one is not really a tip, but it’s perhaps the most important piece of advice we can give you. Just as your marketplace and competitors constantly evolve, so must your website’s SEO tactics to keep that results page placement right where you want it. Schedule periodic performance evaluations and use that information to plan and execute the necessary adjustments.
Child Care Aware of America
When web design has a greater purpose.
We love designing highly functioning and attractive websites for our breadth of clients. Occasionally though, an organization will ask us to help them better their online presence for the greater good— that’s what happened when Child Care Aware of America walked through our doors. This is an organization singularly dedicated to helping every family in America find and afford quality childcare. That’s a lofty goal. They were eager to extend their reach online and needed not one, but two websites:
Tight Deadline. Firm Budget. No Problem.
They needed web design done quickly, expertly and within their strict budgetary constraints —and these were not simple sites. They called for locator tools that pulled information from different databases across all 50 states as well as 508 compliancy. They also needed to be multi-lingual. We looked at their requirements and thought again about the greater good we would be doing. Taking on this project for Child Care Aware was truly a no brainer.
Website design when information is critical.
All websites convey information, some more visually than others. But for some sites, the information that needs to be made available to visitors is vast. Child Care Aware’s content was low on pictures and big on that killer of no-bouncing: words. Our web design needed to organize the content in a way that would be palatable to visitors—most of whom do not want to encounter pages of endless paragraphs. So we arranged the information accordingly. When you visit both usa.childcareaware.org and childcareaware.org, you’ll note that the text is peppered with pictures of smiling kids—who doesn’t love that? The images, along with the color scheme, make the site feel welcoming. Plus information is presented in digestible nuggets with links to more. When you glance at the navigation, you can easily see how robust and content heavy this site actually is. Conveying information in a manner that visitors won’t ignore is just good web design.
Nationwide resources at a click.
Because the mission of Child Care Aware is to provide families with quality childcare resources, the websites needed to feature locator tools that allowed visitors to pull up information for their individual state agencies. Families can search for local Child Care Resource and Referral agencies by state, zip code, county and specific address. Creating this seamless functionally was fairly difficult. But we prefer to do the hard work needed to make searching features easy for web browsers.
Website Design that accommodate everyone.
When working with federal and non-profit agencies, there are added steps to building a successful website. One of these is ensuring that the website design is 508 compliant. 508 compliancy refers to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that requires federal agencies to provide software and website accessibility to people with disabilities. These requirements include things like highlighted links and buttons that describe what they lead to rather than stating vague calls-to-action like learn more. After studying all the ins and outs, we are proud to announce that both of the childcare aware website designs are 508 compliant.
Multi-lingual sites for a multi-language audience.
Our clients translated the content for us (phew), but we were tasked with creating multi-lingual sites to expand access. The way these sites work is that the website pops up in the language the browser has been set to—a pretty neat feature. Visitors don’t have to rely on browser translators. The words come up magically in their own language.
The greater good feels good.
Now that both usa.childcareaware.org and childcareaware.org are both up and running, we are thrilled at how smoothly they function, and at the small role we’ve played in helping families across the country satisfy their childcare needs.