Part = Failure

Whole = Success

You should think about your digital presence similarly. Once upon a time, a business could have a website and claim that they were “online”. That was sufficient at that time.

Then came along blogs. Businesses added a blog to their website accordingly, thinking that the combination of a website and blog was a sufficient digital presence. Then came podcasts. Then came video, social media and mobile. And don’t forget about content marketing, directories and PR, or paid marketing opportunities such as pay-per-click advertising, online display media and sponsorships. The list goes on and on…

Today, a business needs to develop an entire digital ecosystem in order to fully maximize value to its target audience. The ecosystem should be customized for each audience, and therefore might look entirely different from one business to the next. It’s not that every business needs to be on YouTube or Twitter. Instead, understanding your audience and aligning to their interests, goals and behaviors is what should dictate your digital ecosystem.

You do NOT need to do everything and be everywhere. That’s the key. Instead, be selective. Be targeted. Prioritize. And then crush it!

What you DO need to do is understand your audience. Based on what your audience would value, define where you can be strong. Define the value you will deliver in each property or mechanism. And then execute like crazy.

For example, if you conduct events, you may want to focus on a core website, Facebook, Twitter, video, event platform, email marketing, along with Facebook ads, additional online display media, local online calendars, and partnerships with relevant third-party websites. You’ll also want any featured speakers, stars, guests, performers, etc. to be promoting the event on all of their digital properties.

If you’re in the real estate business, you may want to focus on a core website, blog, listing aggregation sites, local directories, Facebook, Craigslist, video, mobile, pay-per-click advertising, online display media, and PR to local media.

If you manage a restaurant, you may want to focus on a core website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr, FohBoh, local directories, online ordering sites, city guides, online display media, mobile, and email marketing.

So, as you can see, if you hope to be uber successful online, think of your digital presence as an ecosystem. It’s not just your website. Nor just your website, blog and Facebook Page. It’s an integrated network of digital properties working together to help you dominate the digital landscape, so that your audience connects with your brand precisely at the times that they are interested and receptive.

Remember, every business is different. Focus on your audience, be where they are, clarify your marketing priorities and execute flawlessly. And always be giving ‘em what they will value most.

To help you capitalize on the vast opportunities presented by the local market, Search Marketing Standard published an article by Digital Marketing NOW’s Tom Shapiro covering five of the most meaningful local marketing trends for 2012. Read the article and drive greater local marketing results in the coming year.

Click here to read the full article.

1. Consolidation of Power

Google powers close to 12 billion monthly searches in the US. Facebook will reach over 1 billion users in 2012. Apple battles Exxon Mobile for the title of most valuable company in the world in terms of market capitalization. Wow. Talk about power! Expect continued consolidation of power among the tech elite in 2012, including Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn and Amazon.

2. Breakneck Pace of Innovation

Innovation has been strong recently in everything from display media delivery, to tablet computing to voice recognition software. In 2011 IBM’s Watson computer thumped two “Jeopardy!” champions in a competition, and this is just a precursor to all that artificial intelligence will deliver in the future. Expect the innovation steamroller to continue, especially from companies such as IBM, Google, Apple, Facebook and Zynga.

3. Mobile Madness

There are now more than 320 million mobile subscriptions in the US. Mobile is here, right now, and in a big way. In 2010 Google had announced that its approach moving forward would be “mobile first,” and there’s a good reason for that. Their timing could not have been any better. Expect the entire mobile space, whether mobile advertising, mobile coupons, mobile search, location-awareness technologies or mobile apps, to explode with growth in 2012.

4. Video Video Video

With more than 3 billion video views daily, YouTube now ranks as the third most visited website (behind Google and Facebook), according to Alexa. YouTube has revealed that more than 48 hours of new video content is added to YouTube EVERY MINUTE. Video will only become a stronger force in the digital space in 2012, so get your Hollywood face on and start developing a killer video marketing strategy for your business!

5. Search Retargeting

SEMPO reported in its 2011 State of Search Marketing Report that the North American search marketing industry would grow to $19.3 billion in 2011, a 16% increase over 2010. This means that search marketing is going to easily exceed $20 billion in 2012. And much of the growth can be expected in innovative areas such as search retargeting. By enabling you to target those who expressly are searching for your types of products/services but for whatever reason didn’t make it to your website or didn’t convert while there, it’s a logical solution.

6. Social Engagement

Marketers have been debating the best ways to measure the value of their social media efforts for several years now. Expect 2012 to bring a shift away from metrics such as followers and likes to more engagement-oriented metrics such as comments, entries and shares.

7. Integration of Social, Local and Mobile

Face it. We are social. We are local. And we are mobile. Think of all the times that you are on the go, using your smartphone to help you shop or otherwise find what you are looking for, while you either post an update to Facebook or take a quick video and share it online. Google may have declared “mobile first,” but in 2012 it’s going to be social, local and mobile first.

8. Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is on fire. There’s no end to the number of solutions being introduced to automate entire marketing processes or even just the analysis of a company’s Twitter campaigns. Whether lead generation and nurturing, or display advertising, or social media management, expect innovation in marketing automation solutions to be fast and furious in 2012.

9. A Multi-screen World

Bill Gates once dreamed of one computer on every desk and in every home. How times change! We live in a world today where it’s not just a desktop per person, but also a laptop, tablet, smartphone and additional connected appliances, accessories and devices. Some 86% of mobile Internet users are using their mobile devices while watching TV. During the last Super Bowl and Grammy Awards, 17,000 tweets were generated per minute. Wow!

10. “Big Data”

Data is everywhere, and marketers need to excel at data analysis and usage in order to make strategic decisions that will maximize their marketing results. McKinsey & Company foresees “exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future”. However, it’s not just the enterprise that can make use of big data. Small and mid-size firms will be getting more active in big data as new, lower-cost, innovative cloud solutions hit the market. So get ready for more data. Big data.

11. Verticalization

The natural extension of many marketing trends is to go from general to vertical specialties. Expect 2012 to bring with it new vertically-focused digital marketing solutions that enable companies to connect with their specific audiences more directly and efficiently.

12. Offline-Online Integration

Each customer’s day is a zig-zag experience through the online and offline worlds. Customers no longer have simply offline or simply online experiences; they have integrated brand experiences. In the future, you should assume that customers will be checking their smartphones while in your store and that they’ll be reading print magazines in hard copy and on their laptops or tablets. You should expect that your billboard will lead prospective customers to a destination website, Facebook page, or customized QR code experience. So be sure to use your magical, panoramic glasses when planning your 2012 marketing initiatives!

The coming year is sure to deliver many exciting changes to the digital marketing world. Start with these 12 hot trends to ensure you deliver hot customer experiences throughout the year.

Learn about marketing trends, social media, search marketing, digital marketing strategy, and magically magnetic content in Digital Marketing NOW articles published around the web. Recent articles have been published by MarketingProfs, Website Magazine, MediaPost Online Media Daily and Search Marketing Standard.

Five Marketing Trends That Only a CMO Contemplating Career Suicide Would Ignore
Read this article that’s been Tweeted more than 360 times, and learn about five major marketing trends that every CMO needs to know. (MarketingProfs)

25 Keys to Getting Waaaaay More Out of Your Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is all the rage, but you should learn specific ways to get more value out of it for your business. (This MarketingProfs article has been Tweeted more than 900 times!)

Pre-Search Marketing Campaigns
Learn what you MUST do prior to a Search campaign. (Website Magazine)

Develop a 5-Point Digital-Marketing Strategy
Uncover the five ways to bullet-proof your digital marketing strategy. (MediaPost Online Media Daily)

5 Lessons Harry Potter Can Teach Your Business About Magically Magnetic Content Creation
Learn content development secrets from the magic of the incredibly popular Harry Potter series. (Search Marketing Standard)

That’s why, more than likely, your competitors are already heads-down shaving milliseconds off the load times of their web pages. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got a better price and a glitzier interface to boot. If your rivals can serve up the goods faster than you, you will start losing business to them.

Faster is ALWAYS better, and user experience is what it’s all about. Or almost all. There’s another reason you need to get a move on. The Google team is up-front about the fact that site speed helps determine search ranking.

So stop dilly-dallying. You need to get up to speed as fast as you can! Get started right away by zipping through the following 12-step program:

1. Lighten up.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the set of rules a web browser follows every time it retrieves content. Stuff like image files and extraneous code takes time to download. The more you’ve got, the slower it goes. So if your pages happen to be loading slowly at the moment, no need for the long face. You just need to lighten up!

2. Put stylesheets where they belong, in your head.

It’s not brain surgery. In HTML, the head of your web page is where basic info like the page title is stored. A stylesheet is code that describes how your web page will display on screen. If you place a link to the stylesheet in the head, the browser starts displaying content as soon as it gets it. By linking to your stylesheet in the head of the code, browsers can cache it, storing it in the background so the data will be served up faster for visits to other pages using the same stylesheet. Bingo!

3. Clean up your code.

Your content management system or publishing tools may include excess code, and the whitespace between the code on your page source can gum up the works. By cleaning up your code, removing extra characters and spaces, you can reduce the total size of your page a gazillion bytes. Minimize and minify. It may not be glamour work, but it’s gotta get done.

4. Give your JavaScript a good, swift kick in the pants.

You don’t need to embed your fancy JavaScript in the page code itself, so why do it? Put it into separate .js files where it can wait patiently in the wings, ready to go when it’s needed. No need to have it hanging around all the time, taking up space and getting in the way!

5. Reduce iFrames.

Sure, iFrames are a great way to load pages and snippets of code dynamically, without heavy-duty programming. But when it comes to iFrames, less is more. They can slow down your web page load time, big time! When in doubt, throw them out.

6. Stop kowtowing to Flash.

Flash can be problematic. Sure, Flash can be impressive. But more often than not, it’s more of a show-stopper than a showstopper. If you need to use it at all, use Flash in moderation, as a component within the page. Get on with the show!

7. Don’t forget that cookies have calories.

Eliminate unnecessary cookies, and keep ‘em as small as you can. Set the date to expire so they can do so gracefully. Exercising restraint with cookies will reduce your waistline, and your load time!

8. Configure server cashing.

Configure cashing on your server. There are a number of tools and plugins to help you do what needs to be done. For example, check out W3 Total Cache for WordPress, JotCache for Joomla and Memcached for Drupal.

9. Separate website servers from databases.

If your business depends on large databases, consider placing them on a separate server from your website. Database transactions suck up server resources like nothing else. Your website and databases will be happier apart. It’s for the best!

10. Get a hosting service with more OOMPH.

Invest in a robust, reliable hosting service. Go on the cheap and you’ll have to compete with other sites for bandwidth. As if you didn’t have enough competition already!

11. Reduce image size, but remember that one size doesn’t fit all.

No two ways about it. You gotta reduce image file size, and use the kind of compression best suited for the purpose. For example, while JPG is a standard that may degrade detail just a bit, it’s great for images with lots of colors. PNG and GIF work best for line art and images with fewer colors, but the PNG format offers a somewhat broader range of colors than GIF.

Be sure to resize images before you upload them. Don’t resize images using height and width in the HTML code. Use Photoshop or whatever else you’ve got. Forcing people to download a 1,000-pixel-wide image to fill a 150-pixel-wide thumbnail is just plain cruel. Discover your kinder, gentler self.

Keep images and any other files under 25kb whenever possible. The main reason is the iPhone, which won’t cache uncompressed files larger than 25kb.

Last but not least: give image-lazy loading a shot. Image-lazy loading is yet another clever way to speed things up. With this technique, the loading of images that will appear below-the-fold is delayed until the user scrolls down. The initial page load happens in the blink of an eye. How cool is that!

12. Don’t rest on your laurels, test load speed regularly.

Your work is never done. You gotta test, test and retest. But don’t worry, there are plenty of tools available that reduce the drudgery. For example, try out Google’s Page Speed, Yahoo’s YSlow and Pingdom Tools. Hallelujah!

Hope you stuck with the program and found the above pointers helpful. Our goal is to lighten your load and speed up your website. As Roadrunner would say: “Meep, meep!”

Faced with a few choices, everything is hunky-dory. Your site visitors feel empowered. They feel good that they were able to filter out some choices. It’s all just awesome, and they feel warm and fuzzy all over.

However, it’s true. Give ‘em too many choices, and their decision-making capabilities actually become paralyzed.

We’re not just blowing smoke here just to have something to yap about. There’s research backing this up. In 2000, Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University and Mark Lepper of Stanford University conducted an experiment about choice and its repercussions on the brain at a grocery store in Menlo Park, California. (You can check out their work here.)

They conducted the research with the recognition that many prior studies examining choice tended to focus on a very limited variance in options (e.g., offering two options vs. six). They wanted to understand how people react when given a much wider range of options (think of your most recent trip to the supermarket!).

In the study, they posed as store workers and displayed varying numbers of fruit jam for shoppers to taste. Half of the time there were six varieties, and the other half of the time there were 24. Of the shoppers who tasted the jam when only six kinds were displayed, 30% made a purchase. Of those who tasted the jam when 24 kinds were displayed, ONLY THREE PERCENT made a purchase.

The greater variety of 24 did attract more folks to their display table (60% of passers-by vs. 40% when only six kinds were displayed). And so certainly, having more choice lead to more interest. But at the same time, having less choice lead to dramatically greater conversion rates. And the bottom line in any case is sales, not interest. Without a doubt, giving fewer options lead to many more sales.

More specifically, displaying 75% FEWER options lead to approximately 6X MORE sales.

In their findings, Iyengar and Lepper point to P&G’s real-world experience in reducing the number of variations of its Head and Shoulders shampoo from 26 to 15. In doing so, P&G increased sales by 10%. Not as dramatic as their grocery store test, but certainly proof positive that providing a target audience with fewer options can lead to higher sales, not theoretically but actually.

So give your website visitors options. Just remember that they don’t need 7 million options…

Nothing is going to help you move your conversion numbers like a continual stream of solid tests. And to that end, here are a number of ways that you can test your landing pages to boost conversion rates to higher levels:

Build a Testing Plan

Instead of jumping into your testing efforts randomly, develop a methodical testing plan. Include a minimum set of data that will be required before you make any judgments and corresponding marketing decisions. That will help you avert premature decisions based on an insufficient sample size.

Be Consistent

Ensure that your ads or promotions driving traffic to the landing page use language that is consistent with what the person will find on the page. Try to make the ad copy, TITLE tag, URL, headline and web page copy as consistent as possible. This will help build an intuitive experience for the person clicking through and landing on the page.

Test Your Headlines

Your headlines are going to impact your conversion rates more than you can imagine. So test various headlines to see what drives the most conversions.

Test Your Images

Not only should you test different images on your landing page, but you should also put some logic behind those differences. For example, test males vs. females. Test the age of people in images. Test a person looking at you vs. looking at the location of the conversion event on the page. Test the inclusion of people vs. objects. Test colors. Test text included in the image itself vs. around it. Your options are really endless, so have fun with this.

Use a Clear Call-to-Action

Many companies are hesitant to reduce their Call-to-Action to something simple and direct. Yet, you can often improve the conversion rate by doing just that. The easier the page is to understand, the more likely that someone will understand what to do and will then do it. It sounds stupidly obvious, but often companies just try to do too much with each page, panicking that they may not have covered every potential type of visitor and every potential contingency. Forget the contingencies and go for the home run. Your conversion rate will likely increase.

And remember to make the Call-to-Action clear, noticeable and (when possible) exciting.

Clarify What’s In It for Me

Remember that the most important thing on the mind of your landing page visitor is, “What the heck is in it for me, pal?” Forget about how wonderful your product or service is. And instead prove how wonderful the benefits will be for your prospective customer.

Add Urgency

You can take the same exact landing page and have different results based on the level of urgency in the copy. For example, “Offer Valid for Only 24 Hours” or “Sale Ends Saturday” or “First 50 People Only”. This type of language can have a big impact.

Remove Distractions

Try removing your site’s main navigation system and other navigation options. This will help keep your visitor more focused on the offer at hand.

Make It Visual

Yes, you need a great headline. Yes, you need well crafted copy. Yes, you need an effective Call-to-Action. But to maximize results, keep it highly visual.

Too many companies opt for including huge blocks of text on the page, thinking that you might miss that 33rd adjective to describe their product, without making the page easy-on-the-eyes and easy-to-scan. The visual presentation of the page should literally guide your prospective customer exactly where they should go.

Make it visual. Make it simple. Make it easy.

Test Copy Length

Yes, make it visual, but don’t forget to test different lengths of copy on the page as well. Sometimes your users will actually prefer long pages that require scrolling, with many details. The only way to know is to test.

Try Different Prices

No, we are not suggesting that you completely revamp your pricing structure based on your landing page tests. However, flip it around and you start to really see the opportunity with pricing and landing pages.

Setup a few limited tests that compare performance at one price vs. another. You may learn that a slight reduction in price leads to dramatic improvements in your conversion rates. On the other hand, don’t forget to test if an increase in your prices improves overall revenue and profits.

Build Trust

Remember to highlight why the visitor should trust you. This can be done through satisfaction guarantees, customer testimonials, customer photos, association logos, award logos, press logos, trust logos, etc.

Leverage Technology

There are so many software options out there, you really have no excuse not to be testing. For example, here is just a sampling of landing page testing software available to you: Google’s Website Optimizer, SiteSpect, LiveBall, Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer, Performable, Vertster, Unbounce, etc.

How, you ask?

Simple, just follow these five steps, and you’ll be on your way to more magical, magnificent, magnetic copy:

1. Suprise ‘Em!

Too many websites are filled with corporate technobabble and just a lot of boring text about the company. It feels as if a robot spit out the language, and you as a site visitor already know what’s coming next with every new sentence.

Instead of the same old same old, surprise your site visitors. They expect ABC. Give ‘em XYZ instead.

For example, with our own website at DigitalMarketingNOW.com, the very first copy that a new visitor sees is NOT: “We are a digital marketing and design firm. We focus on results, ensuring that you maximize your marketing ROI. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah.”

Rather, we hit you with, “Pardon my French, but this is @#$*% HOT!!!! …everything is awesome.” This is an actual client quote. Would you ever expect a website to START with this? Heck no! And we can tell you that we’ve received more positive feedback on that one line alone than Lady Gaga has outfits.

Try shakin’ things up a bit, and see what works best for your website.

2. Transform Your Headlines!

When writing a headline, whether for a blog post, article, press release or otherwise, make sure the headline is ridiculously compelling. Sure, we could have written this post’s headline as “How to Improve Your Website Copy.” However, that’s not exactly compelling and you probably would have ignored it. Let’s face it, you can’t bore someone into doing something.

Instead, try to spice up your headlines. It’s the key to getting someone to read your materials. With this post, by using the phrase “Magnetic Copy” and by adding “…in 30 Minutes or Less,” the blog post becomes intriguing (even if the actual post might totally and absolutely stink).

Effective techniques for spicing up a headline include:

• Numbered lists (e.g., “15 Tips for Crazy Good Facebook Marketing“)
• Time elements (e.g., “Add Magnetic Copy to Your Website in 30 Minutes or Less”)
• Funny twists (e.g., “The Monty Python Guide to Web Design”)

3. Tell ‘Em a Story!

When we were tiny tots, our parents read book after book to us. And we just couldn’t get enough. The hunger for stories is ingrained in us.

So give ‘em what they hunger for. Give ‘em stories.

Instead of explaining how you do things in intricate detail, try explaining through customer stories, employee stories, or similar stories that effectively make your point. Stories make topics come alive for us. They help to make information real and meaningful. And that’s the key: injecting meaning into information.

For example, imagine you’re on an office management consultancy website. And imagine you read through a few paragraphs of text about three ways that the consultancy could save your business money.

Now, imagine if you instead read about how that same company helped Shelly, the new office manager at a large company. And how Shelly struggled to get taken seriously by anyone in the building during a corporate “saving money” initiative. And how the consultancy instructed Shelly to change their trash removal service from daily to every other day, to place recycling bins on every floor that would be picked up free by a local non-profit, and to apply energy control devices on each outlet. And how through the process, Shelly’s actions saved the company more than $1 million annually. And how because of this, she was promoted to innovation director, given an office with a great view, and tasked with teaching thousands of people how to think. Now, that would be a bit more interesting, right?

4. Keep it Quick!

Although you may want to tell everyone who stops by your website absolutely every single detail about your products or services, try giving them a shorter version. Try giving them the main benefits. Try giving them just the highlights. Try teasing them a bit.

Keep paragraphs short. Your site visitors are not looking for 20-sentence blocks of text. They will not read them. Check your web analytics data for proof.

Keep sentences short. Instead of those five commas in your endless sentence, how about scaling back your ambitions? Try a few short sentences. It will make your point much more effectively, and someone will actually read through to the end.

5. Don’t Hedge! Bet the Farm!

Be careful about trying to appeal to everyone. Sometimes by trying to appeal to everyone, we actually appeal to no one. Don’t hedge in your writing by being wishy-washy.

Instead of writing “Google might be considered to be more than a search engine,” how about “Google was once a simple search engine. However, it is now an ecosystem that is expanding into new territories with a seemingly voracious appetite.”

Ahh, now doesn’t that feel better? And it feels better because your mind received more nutrition. It’s your job as a writer to provide a good experience while on your site. Decisive language helps the reader have a better experience.

* * *

So, instead of organizing that messy sock drawer, try spending 30 minutes today making a few changes to the copy in your website. The performance improvement in your site metrics, incoming leads and sales will be worth the effort. (Your socks can wait til tomorrow…)

OK, the potential value of Facebook to your business is obvious.

So the question becomes, how can you uncover the insights you need in order to drive your Facebook marketing to new heights? To that end, you should start by digging into your current Facebook page performance, learning as much as possible, and then leveraging such insights to improve your Facebook marketing for your business.

In each business Page, Facebook provides Insights, which is a set of analytics detailing Page visitors, usage and interaction. If you are a Facebook Page admin, you’ll find the link to Insights (“View Insights”) in the right column of your Facebook Page.

Here are 25 data points that you can find in Facebook Insights, giving you a deeper understanding of your audience and arming you with a wide range of tools to make informed decisions to improve your Facebook marketing.

25 INSIGHTS TO BETTER FACEBOOK MARKETING

Use the following 25 data points within Facebook Insights to understand your customers better, to understand which content resonates more deeply, and to understand how to optimize your Facebook marketing in alignment with your audience’s interests and goals.

1. Source of traffic to your Facebook Page
2. Number of users, including daily active, weekly active and monthly active users
3. New “Likes”
4. New “Unlikes”
5. Lifetime “Likes”
6. “Like” sources (number of Likes directly from your Facebook Page, from Search, from friend recommendations, from news streams, from ads, from a Like Box, from a user profile page, etc.)
7. Unique Page views
8. Total post views
9. Impressions per post
10. Feedback per post (“Likes” and comments combined)
11. Comments
12. Page content feedback (“Likes” and comments combined)
13. Gender of your Page visitors
14. Age of your Page visitors
15. Countries of your Page visitors
16. Language of your Page visitors
17. Tab views (how many views for each individual Tab within your Facebook Page)
18. Sources for Tab views (from external websites)
19. Video views
20. Audio listens
21. Photo views
22. Reviews
23. Mentions (the number of times the name of your Page was mentioned in people’s status updates or Wall posts)
24. Claimed Deals (since March 8, 2011)
25. Check-ins to your Facebook Place (since March 8, 2011)

Facebook recently published “Facebook Insights – Product Guide for Facebook Page Owners.” It’s free. Grab a copy and read it. The more that you can understand the real performance of your Facebook page, the better you’ll be to take your Facebook marketing up a notch!

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