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In today’s times, marketers are looking for every possible way to connect a business with customers. As Ray Kurzweil would say, the singularity is near, but the truth is that it hasn’t arrived just yet. This means that there’s still a line between our public and private methods of communication, with SMS texting definitely falling on the latter side of the line. As a small business owner, it might seem like a good idea to be able to contact your customers and followers on their personal mobile phones, but there are many dangers and pitfalls to making SMS a part of your marketing strategy.

Why It’s Bad

To put it simply, sending a business SMS to someone’s personal phone is intrusive at best. Instead of generating new leads, the act can actually have the opposite effect of pushing potential customers in the opposite direction. When a person gets a text asking them to buy or visit a website, the first reaction is almost always to delete the message. This response generates a negative feeling towards the company that sent the SMS and may translate to a later avoidance of the company, even if their products and services fit the customer’s needs. At the same time, there are some situations where SMS might make sense in a marketing context.

Where SMS Marketing Can Work

For the time being, your decision to use SMS marketing should only be aimed at your most loyal customers and the ones that are in love with your brand. Give them the chance to opt in to receive special deals and be notified of upcoming events or special sales. One example of how this could work is by offering a special referral bonus for your top 10 customers. By sending the offer through SMS, the customer will have full details about the promotion wherever they go and be able to show the offer to their friends and colleagues. Even with your most trusted customers, SMS should be used sparingly and anytime you have a doubt about sending a new text, it is better to err on the side of caution.

One of the classic mistakes organizations make is talking too much about themselves. Quite honestly, your clients don’t really want to hear you talk or even write too much about yourself. This is where testimonials come in to play. But, not just any ol’ testimonial. A video testimonial.

Video testimonials are powerful and can really enhance your website. Here are a few reasons to integrate these videos:

• Believable – Let’s face it. If someone is willing to sit down and talk about their experience in working with your firm, then it comes across as genuine to your audience.
• Engaging – A standard quote in the sidebar or in the footer of your website can help. But, a video engages your website visitors. Their minds connect with the speaker as it is more of an experience. Video is the closest thing to synchronous communication on the web.
• Emotional – If a previous client truly had a great experience, then their emotions shine through within the video. The power of video is really evident when you see and hear the emotions of those on-camera.
• Shareable – Most often, a website visitor is looking to buy something or get more information. Furthermore, the typical website visitor is often not the only decision-maker. Well, a video testimonial is a great tool for website visitors to pass along to other decision-makers. By sharing a positive testimonial with others, your firm has the ability to put it’s best foot forward.

Before you contact your clients and ask them to be involved with a testimonial, there are some considerations. You really need to focus and ensure you get the best information from the interview. As you go and develop video testimonials for your website, here are some prompts you can use in order to get quality content from your clients:

• Describe your experience when working with our company.
• Why did you choose to work with our company?
• What were the major decision factors in selecting our company?
• Describe the benefits of using our product or service.
• Describe the results.
• Discuss why you would elect to work with our company again.
• Describe the relationship you have with our team.
• What were your overall impressions of the project?
• How is your company different now that you have worked with us?

In summary, video testimonials are a truly powerful way to connect with your website visitors. And if you ask the right questions, you can have an invaluable marketing tool to propel your organization to the next level.

About the author
522 Productions is a video production company with a strong passion for video, we also drink our own kool aid. If you’d like to see how we’ve incorporated video testimonials on our own website, check out 522 Productions.

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There’s no substitute for organic growth, but there may be some times when your business needs a little helping hand to get a leg up on the competition. In recent years, the world of paid advertising has expanded greatly and you now have many more options than just Google advertising for putting your marketing dollars at work. One of the newest entries into paid marketing is with the social network Twitter. Before jumping on the bandwagon and blindly investing in Twitter advertising, take a few minutes to learn whether this is the best use of your marketing budget.

The Good

On the plus side, there are some clear advantages to using Twitter Advertising. The first is definitely the price. While peak keywords can fetch high prices on Google or Facebook, the same terms and phrases are relatively cheap on Twitter. In addition, the format of Twitter makes it easier to send interested visitors to your specific landing page instead of staying on the social network as with Facebook. Lastly, your marketing efforts on Twitter will often be rewarded with a more diverse group of followers, especially if you choose more general keywords. After building a solid follower base with Twitter Advertising, you can then engage in more organic practices.

The Bad

Of course, there is a downside to using Twitter Advertising as well. The cheaper price also comes with some pretty severe limitations. The back-end of the marketing software is nowhere near as advanced as Google’s and if you’re looking for in-depth metrics to track your success, they’re simply not there. In addition, customer service may be hit and miss as the service is new and there are going to be tons of bugs to work out in the early days. You will also need to spend more time making manual adjustments to your Twitter campaign to compensate for peak hours of the day.

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As people have gotten more comfortable using the Internet to find the products and services they need, the other side of the coin is that they have also become more suspicious about each and every website they visit. This is actually a good thing as it helps to reduce the viability of scam websites, but what does it mean for your legitimate business that is trying to use the Internet to gain new customers? It means that now you have the added obstacle of getting past a BS detector that is looking for any reason to dismiss your business. To move customers through this wall, here are a few tips that will identify your business as a real company that is offering legitimate solutions to their problems.

Avoid Bait and Switch

Basically, a bait and switch tactic is when you offer one thing to get visitors to come to your website, but then change the terms once they get there. Nothing will send your customers running faster than a false promise, so you will need to be completely transparent about what you are offering and make sure that all of your calls-to-action lead to landing pages with the same offer.

Keep Text Short and Sweet

When a customer comes to one of your landing pages, what are they looking at? Is it a complex form or detailed 1,000 word article about the history of your business? If so, don’t be surprised if your conversion rates don’t match your click-through rates. A landing page is meant for quick action and your text on the page needs to be concise, clear, and give as little friction as possible to make it easier for customers to convert.

Include Contact Info

Savvy Internet users that are looking to spot scams will often look for contact info for a given website. Having no access to immediate communication is a common tactic of scams, so make sure your contact details are prominent on the landing page and easy to find in other parts of your website. Contrary to what you might think, keeping this info visible will not result in huge amounts of meaningless communication to wade through, but it will add a huge amount of credibility to your offers.

Make Your Policies Clear

On every page of your website, there needs to be a link to your business’s online policies, such as a disclaimer page and your privacy policy about sharing email addresses. A great place to add a link on your landing pages is near the field for the visitor’s email address. If they have any questions about how you will use their address, a quick click will give them the information they need and the peace of mind that you won’t be selling their address to other parties.

Add Testimonials and Reviews

Many testimonials can come off feeling contrived or even downright invented, but a good review of your business can work wonders for your credibility. When displaying testimonials on your website, the best practice is to use those that appear on external websites and give the right link for visitors to check out the source if they so desire. Social media is great for this and you can easily embed Twitter posts or link to Facebook status updates.

Use Correct Spelling and Grammar

Lastly, failing to follow proper spelling and grammar rules on your website shows a huge lack of professionalism, which automatically leads to less credibility in the eyes of your visitors. It really takes no time to run a spelling and grammar check before posting new content on your site, so make sure that you’re not letting this simple mistake push potential customers away.

On the Internet, professionalism and credibility are two of the main driving forces of converting casual visitors into customers. We can take a fine-tooth comb to your site to find areas where your credibility may be suffering. Contact us to learn more about this and other services we offer to business owners.

Facebook page design by Point Click Productions

Automation is not always all it’s cracked up to be. Countless online marketers use third-party software to send new updates to their Facebook account, but this way of posting may be penalized by how the social network operates. It seems that more than just a profile’s appearance was changed by the new Timeline feature. A recent study has shown that content posted using a third-party software is getting far less attention than content posted directly on the Facebook website. So what’s going on and should you stop using your convenient posting software?

Behind the Scenes

Like Google for search rankings, Facebook has a complex algorithm that they use to decide which content makes it to the top of a person’s feed. Called EdgeRank, it incorporates a combination of the time content was posted, the strength of the relationship between the poster and receiver, and how many other Facebook users have already interacted with the content. With all of these EdgeRank factors, a piece of content can move up and down a feed in the same way that a web page can gain or lose Google ranking positions. Content posted from a third-party program automatically appears lower on a feed than the same content if it was posted on the Facebook website.

What to Do

It seems that this problem showed up during the move to the new Timeline format. The new style has several good tools for online marketers and is not going anywhere, so you should start to get comfortable with the new layout if you haven’t already. Facebook knows about the third-party software problem and are working on a solution, so this issue will probably go away with time. However, until it’s clearly fixed, you should make sure to post on the Facebook website whenever possible to make sure your content is getting the attention it deserves.

If you haven’t switched to Timeline yet, we can help you develop an attractive profile that will serve to bring tons of new visitors.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

This is the big one. The CTR measures how many people you send a marketing email actually click on a link in the email. The reason why this metric is important is because it gives you a clear idea of how people are receiving your emails and how many are trashing them without taking a closer look at what you have to say.

Conversion Rate

Moving past the CTR, the Conversion Rate is the number of people that made it through the click to either make a purchase or complete what you asked them to do with your call-to-action on the email. In other words, this metric will differentiate the percentage of customers that follow your link and actually decide to do what you have asked. It measures not only the effectiveness of your email, but also if your landing pages are doing their job.

Customer Conversion Time

It’s important to know how long a person stays as a lead before they become a customer. This metric measures exactly that. It it’s taking too long to move customers down the buying path, it may be a good idea to identify the point where most of your leads convert. Focus on the emails that are working and ditch the ones that most people skip over.

Customer Cost

This metric will tell you how much marketing money you are spending for each new customer that makes an order. Obviously, you need to know if your lead management is working and this data will tell you whether it is actually making money or if you need to think about changing up your strategy.

If you don’t know how to view or read these metrics, we can show you exactly what they mean. In addition, we can introduce you to more complex metrics that you can use in your online marketing.

The Title

It may not seem like much, but the title is pretty important. This is the first thing your customers see, so make sure it grabs their attention and makes them want to learn more. For many people, their initial decision to read an ebook will be because it has an interesting title. Make sure that your title hints at the valuable information that will be found in the text.

The Cover

Contrary to the popular adage, many people are in fact judging your ebook by its cover. Like the title, it needs to be inviting, intriguing, and it should show off the value it holds inside. Plain text on a white background obviously won’t cut it, so spice things up with a nice visual or photo that’s relevant to your ebook topic.

Author Page

People like a human connection, so make sure you create some space to talk about the person who responsible for writing the ebook. On the author page, you will need to add details about their industry expertise to add credibility to their writing and also show the relationship the author has with your business.

Table of Contents

With the ebook format, a table of contents is more important than ever. The navigational controls found on a table of contents will help a person go directly to the information they are looking for without having to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack. In addition, you should break up chapters and sections liberally to make it even easier to find the right page.

Social Media Links

Your ebook doesn’t need to be a standalone offer. Most devices now can incorporate hyperlinks that will open in a browser, so add your normal social media buttons at critical points in the text, such as at the end of each section, table of contents, and other important pages. Having these buttons in place will encourage readers to share your ebook with friends and colleagues.

Visual Cues

The new digital format of reading ebooks rather than print materials means you should use this technology properly. Part of that use is to include visual cues, such as pictures and infographics. They not only add a little flair to your ebook, but also make it easier to read by breaking up big sections of text.

Mention Your Business

Your ebook should obviously have a topic related to your business, so don’t forget to include mentions of how your company can help customers at any stage of the game. Moderation is key in this regard as dropping your business name and talking about your products and services on every page will make the ebook feel more like a sales brochure.

Call-to-Action

When your reader has made it to the last page, what to you want them to do? Add a call-to-action that tells them what their next step should be, whether it’s to check out your website, buy from your business, or just to refer the ebook to others. If you don’t ask for more from your readers, don’t be surprised when you don’t get it.

We have put together and polished many different types of books and may be of service to you for your next ebook project. Let us know what you need and we’ll turn your ebook into a digital work of art.

While word of mouth is still the most effective form of advertising, the evolution of the Internet is bringing a major change to that concept. Instead of relying on family and friends to provide recommendations, millions of people are now looking for online reviews from complete strangers to help influence their purchasing decisions. One of the trickiest aspects of online reviews is the subject of customer testimonials. Some less-than-honest companies attempt to deceive visitors to their website by creating fake testimonials, but these reviews almost always sound fake and have little credibility. If you want to get true testimonials that are both credible and shine a good light on your business, there are a few tips to help get you started.

Twitter Testimonials

It may be unfortunate, but the truth is that it can be hard to trust that testimonials on a business’s website are genuine. For that reason, a better strategy is to look for external websites that already have a high degree of authority and focus on your testimonials there. An excellent example is the social network of Twitter. Because individual tweets can be embedded on your website, you can collect positive tweets about your company and display them in rotation. The advantage is that the tweets are coming from real people and anyone who is dubious can investigate for themselves to see that the testimonials are genuine.

Online Review Sites

Another way to increase the credibility of your business’s testimonials is to point visitors to an external review site to see what people are saying about you. There are review sites for nearly every niche industry and every geographical location on the planet, so there will be multiple places for true testimonials to be found. Focus on one or two of these places and encourage customers to leave their opinions at these sites. With a link on your own website, a person can easily navigate to the review site and find testimonials they can trust.

Our services can help you increase both the quantity and quality of your customer testimonials. Together, we can develop programs to show what your business has to offer through positive and accurate testimonials and to make sure that they can be found easily by your website’s visitors.

What a Newsletter Should Be

The problem with most newsletters is that they are very thinly disguised promotional material and are all about getting a new sale. Your newsletter should be much more than this, really existing as a way of sharing what is important to your business and why it should matter to your followers. Instead of focusing only on a brand new product or service, a newsletter needs to take a big picture approach and highlight several different aspects of your business in a way that makes the visitor want to learn more. If you want to talk about a new product or service, that’s fine, but make sure you are not taking a sales perspective towards your readers. If they are interested in your new offerings, they know where to find you.

Why People Unsubscribe

The biggest mistake that most companies make in their email newsletters is that they don’t do any customization to make sure that the newsletter fits the reader. When a person sees something that doesn’t look like it was intended for them, they reach for the unsubscribe button. To avoid this, you need to segment your followers by what they are interested in and then deliver a different newsletter to each segment. Obviously, there will be a decent bit of overlap, but it means that your followers won’t be getting information that is completely useless to them and will be more receptive to what you have to say.

Before sending out a new edition of your email newsletter, take a look at it and decide whether you would read it or send it straight to the trash. If the answer is the latter option, we can show you what needs to be changed. With experience in effective newsletter generation, we can help with creating an attractive layout as well as helping you choose the right subjects for your regular newsletter.

Link Building

You should already be practicing good internal and external link building strategies, but a piece of killer content deserves a little special attention to keep it at the forefront. In building external links, it may be smarter to send visitors to this specific page of content rather than just directing them to your blog or website’s home page. Using this strategy, you give visitors a great first impression with content that will blow their socks off and encourage them to take a closer look at other parts of your website. Taking this idea one step further, give a little more internal link love to increase the visibility of the content and make it a hard to miss page on your website.

Delayed Exposure

With a great piece of content on your hands, the first impulse may be to publish it everywhere – on your blog, links from social media, and maybe even a press release. While this will maximize your immediate content visibility, keep in mind that the half-life of most content is only a few hours at most. Another idea is to schedule posting for a later time or date to extend the coverage you get and bring different groups of people to the same piece of content. Starting by publishing the content on your blog, then making a status update on Facebook or Twitter a few hours or even days later will bring a more diverse group of visitors to the original posting.

Keep It Updated

If your killer content has timeless appeal, it pays to revisit the piece from time to time to see if it needs to be updated. In this way, you not only keep your content as timely as possible, but an updated post will act like a new piece of content. The important thing to remember about updating older content is to avoid overkill. If visitors are seeing a repackaged form of the same content every few weeks, they will become desensitized to it and it will lose its valuable impact. A good way to stay on top of your best content is to put a note in your editorial schedule when you publish the piece to take a second look a few months down the line.

Create a Bundled Package

When you’ve been in the game for long enough, you will have accumulated a number of pieces that fall under the category of killer content. With all this great content, one way to get full use out of it is to create a bundled offer to introduce new visitors to your business. This bundle of awesome content should be hidden behind a landing page and a person will need to fill out a form to get access to the free information. When they get the bundled package, you get a lead in return and the knowledge that the person is looking at the best content you have to offer.

If you’re tired of seeing your best content disappear down the virtual drain, we can help breathe new life into it and give it another chance to be noticed. Check out our content services to learn more about what we can do to let your best content shine.