According to the LocaliQ Small Business Marketing Trends Report, which surveyed over 300 small business owners, the mood remains cautiously aggressive. The overwhelming response was that, despite recent struggles, most small businesses are keeping their marketing spend steady in 2026. In fact, some are even increasing it. Only 8% of respondents plan to cut spending this year, while 40% expect to increase it. The remaining respondents say they'll keep budgets the same. Despite that, the existing numbers tell of doing a lot with a little.

Here are some key statistics from the report:

• > 50% of small business owners said they operate on less than $1,000 per month.
• Half of small business owners do not have a dedicated marketing employee.

All of the above details are notable, particularly the 40% of owners expecting to increase marketing spend, considering two-thirds of small business owners now expect economic uncertainty to be a challenge this year, up sharply year over year. This sentiment is most notably driven by inflation and tariffs.

What's Working vs. What's Popular

With that in mind, small businesses are continuing to rely on low-cost channels, such as organic social media. In terms of social media, Facebook is still the top channel. Following organic social is paid social media, SEO, and email marketing. However, social media and online listings rank relatively low in satisfaction, suggesting they may not be delivering the results that businesses expect. On the other hand, video marketing and investing in reputation management seem to be outperforming expectations. This result is despite fewer small businesses investing in TikTok, down to 22% from 34% last year.

The Cost of Visibility and the Rise of AI

Despite the numbers, it appears that the cost of these potentially more effective marketing techniques is holding small businesses back. In fact, it seems cost is driving a shift away from search ads towards social ads, as the latter has overtaken the former in popularity. All that said, all signs point to video as the biggest marketing growth area for at least the near future. And, of course, AI continues its growth as an allegedly practical tool, with about 60% of businesses using it for content creation. However, quality must be weighed against quantity when considering this approach.

In the end, marketing comes down to preference as it always has, but that preference is increasingly divided between what works, what's easy, and what costs.

The post 40% of Small Businesses Plan to Increase Marketing Spend Despite Economic Concerns appeared first on Business2Community.

The Amazon Affiliate Program has grown over the years to become the largest network in the world, offering millions of products from vendors across the globe who use this successful e-commerce marketplace to sell their goods.

In this article, we tell you everything you need to know about the Amazon Affiliate Program including its commission rates, eligibility requirements, and how to boost your affiliate income once you become an Amazon Associate.

Let's dive right in!

What Is the Amazon Affiliate Program?

The Amazon Affiliate Program, also known as Amazon Associates, allows website owners, influencers, bloggers, and other content creators to earn commissions by linking to products on Amazon.com. It is one of the largest and most popular affiliate programs available today.

Amazon launched the program in July 1996, making it one of the oldest affiliate programs on the web. The program has grown and evolved over the years into a massive platform that accounts for a significant portion of Amazon's e-commerce revenue.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

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Affiliate marketing is a method of earning money online by promoting other companies products or services. As an affiliate marketer, you earn commissions when someone makes a purchase through your unique affiliate link.

It provides a way for companies to market their products at a low cost while affiliates get a cut of the profits.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work

Affiliate marketing involves three main parties - the merchant, the publisher, and the customer.

The merchant is the company or brand that offers a product or service for sale. They establish an affiliate program to pay commissions to marketers who help sell their products.

The publisher is the affiliate marketer who finds products they want to promote and tries to get customers to make purchases through their links. This is done by sharing links on websites, social media, videos, emails, newsletters, blogs, and more.

When a customer clicks the affiliate link and completes the desired action, like making a purchase or filling out a form, the publisher earns a commission from the merchant. This compensation is typically expressed as a percentage of the sale price.

Top Affiliate Networks

While you can apply directly to become an affiliate for certain brands or websites – i.e. the Amazon Affiliate Program – affiliate networks provide access to multiple programs in one place. Some top networks include:

• CJ Affiliate.
• ShareASale.
• Rakuten Advertising.
• Awin.
• ClickBank.
• Impact Radius.

These platforms allow you to compare and select from thousands of affiliate opportunities in various industries and niches.

Types of Affiliate Marketers

Depending on their relationship with the product, affiliate marketers can be grouped as follows:

• Unattached – these marketers simply advertise products to generate money via affiliate links but have not built a valuable connection or shared relevant content with the product’s target audience.
• Related – marketers in this category have some degree of authority in their respective niche but they may have not tried the product themselves. They just recommend it to make the most out of their influence and audience of followers. The risk comes if the product or services turns out to be of poor quality as they can lose some of that hard-earned reputation and credibility.
• Involved – this is the way how the many successful affiliate marketers often advertise their products. They test the products and communicate their findings to their followers and recommend only the best options out there or provide details reviews so consumers make more informed decisions when purchasing these goods. Their goal is to add value to the consumer by providing honest and thorough reviews about what they are advertising.

Virtually anyone can become an affiliate marketer as long as they have some way to refer traffic to merchant sites. First, you have to focus on on providing value through content to build a loyal audience.

How Does the Amazon Affiliate Program Work?

Now that we have explored how affiliate marketing works and what the Amazon Affiliate Program is, we can dig deeper into the details of this attractive program for anyone who may be interested in earning money by becoming an Amazon Associate.

#1 - Choose Products to Promote

Once approved, you can browse Amazon's massive catalog of products and choose the items you want to promote. Almost any physical product sold directly by Amazon is eligible for affiliate commissions. However, there are some restrictions on products like alcohol, gift cards, and Amazon devices.

#2 - Create Affiliate Links

After choosing which products to promote, you need to generate your unique affiliate links. These allow Amazon to track your referrals. When someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you get a commission from that sale.

The links are created in your Amazon Associates account dashboard. You simply search for the product you want to link to and click the "Get Link" button. Custom text and images can be added as well.

#3 - Promote the Links

Now it's time to drive traffic to your affiliate links! This is where your website, blog, social media accounts, and other marketing assets come into play.

You can share links on your website through product reviews, "best of" lists, comparison articles, tutorials, and more. On social media, you can link to products in your posts, stories, and profiles.

The key is to provide valuable content that gives readers a reason to click your links and make purchases on Amazon (AMZN).

#4 - Earn Commissions and Get Paid

When someone clicks your affiliate link, then makes an eligible purchase on Amazon within 24 hours, you earn a commission. Commission rates vary by product category but are typically between 4-10%.

Amazon pays commissions monthly by direct bank deposit or Amazon gift cards. The minimum payout threshold is $10.

There are a few other ways affiliates can potentially earn besides direct purchases. For example, if a customer adds an item to their cart from your link but doesn't complete checkout right away, you may still get credit when they eventually purchase.

Who Can Join the Amazon Associates?

One of the best aspects of Amazon's program is that it's open to almost anyone wanting to make money through affiliate marketing, including:

• Bloggers
• Product reviewers
• YouTubers
• Podcasters
• Influencers
• Website owners
• App developers
• Students
• Small business owners

Basically, if you have a platform that you can use to refer traffic to Amazon, you can participate, and earn commissions. That makes it one of the most accessible affiliate programs around.

The Keys to Success

Driving targeted, high-intent traffic to your links is crucial for affiliate marketing results. Here are some proven tips:

• Focus on specific niches and really understand your audience’s needs and wants.
• Provide detailed, honest reviews, and recommendations.
• Compare products head-to-head when applicable.
• Share deals, discounts, and special offers.
• Make helpful "best of" lists like best gifts under $50.
• Publish in-depth tutorials and how-to content.
• Optimize pages and posts for buyer keywords.

The more value you provide, the more clicks and conversions you will earn from loyal followers and new visitors alike.

The Amazon Affiliate Program has enabled website owners, content creators, and marketers to monetize their platforms for over 25 years. With millions of eligible products and a trusted brand like Amazon, it remains one of the top affiliate programs today.

Does the Amazon Affiliate Program Pay Well?

The Amazon Affiliate Program, also known as Amazon Associates, can definitely pay well for publishers who are able to drive a high volume of qualified traffic and generate consistent sales.

However, the commission structure and rates vary significantly depending on the types of products promoted. Some product categories earn commissions of up to 10%, while others earn less than 1%.

Amazon Affiliates is not generally considered to be the best paying affiliate program, though it isn't the worst by any means either. . Many other affiliate programs offer lower commissions per lead but they can also be much easier to generate. For example, it's much easier to get someone to sign up for an account on a crypto exchange for 0$ (assuming it's the right audience) than it is to get someone to buy a product. Each conversion will earn less but it would be easier to generate much larger volumes of them, potentially leading to greater earnings than on affiliate programs like Amazon's.

How Does the Amazon Affiliates Commission Structure Work

Amazon pays affiliates a percentage of the total sales price (excluding taxes and shipping) of eligible purchases made after a user clicks on an affiliate link. The commission percentages are fixed and predetermined based on the product’s category.

As you can see, commission rates range from 1-10% for physical products. Digital products, Kindle books, and Prime signups earn between $3-$15 per action.

Overall, categories like luxury beauty, fashion, jewelry, home goods, and furniture tend to pay the highest commissions. Electronics, media, and consumer packaged goods are on the lower end.

How Much Can Amazon Associates Make?

The earning potential through the Amazon Affiliate Program really depends on your niche, content quality, audience reach, and promotional strategies.

For example, let's say you have a home decor blog with 50,000 monthly visitors. You join the Amazon Affiliate Program and start sharing affiliate links to furniture, rugs, lighting, and other home products.

On average, you generate 500 clicks per month to Amazon and convert 5% of those visits into purchases. The average order value is $150. With a 10% commission rate on home improvement goods, you would earn:

• 500 clicks x 5% conversion rate = 25 sales
• 25 sales x $150 average order value = $3,750 in total sales
• $3,750 in sales x 10% commission = $375 per month

In this hypothetical example, the home decor affiliate is able to generate $375 per month on 25 sales.

With a larger audience and higher conversions, you could easily see how earnings could scale to over $1,000 or even $5,000+ per month. Some Amazon Associates make closer to $20,000 per year, but they often have massive audiences.

7 Tips to Boost Your Amazon Affiliate Program Earnings

Here are some tips to increase your Amazon Affiliate Program commissions:

1. Focus on high-ticket items that pay at least an 8% commission in categories like home, fashion, and beauty.
2. Create detailed, honest reviews of products you have actually used or tested. Video reviews tend to convert well.
3. Optimize affiliate content for buyer keywords like "best [product] to buy" or "where to buy [product].
4. Feature comparison articles and buying guides that recommend top product choices.
5. Promote newly launched products and timely deals/sales.
6. Leverage email lists, social media, and influencer marketing to broaden your reach.
7. Track performance data to double down on what's working.

Amazon Associate Requirements: Eligibility Requirements

The Amazon Affiliate Program has some specific eligibility criteria and requirements that publishers must meet in order to join and remain active participants. Here is a detailed breakdown of the main requirements:

• Have an Active Website or Blog

In order to join the Amazon Affiliate Program, you must have an active website, app, podcast, social media channel (Facebook (but not a personal page), Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok, and Twitch.tv only), or blog. Amazon states that it should contain original content that is publicly accessible to site visitors. Its s

Your website can cover any topic as long as it doesn't violate Amazon's guidelines. For example, you can have a website or blog focused on beauty products, tech gadgets, recipes, pet care, fashion, books, and more. The key is that you need an established online presence with an engaged audience to promote products to.

• Abide by Content Quality and Relevancy Standards

Amazon has strict content policies for affiliates. All content on your site should be high-quality, relevant, and useful for your readers.

For example, you can write detailed product reviews, how-to articles, gift guides with Amazon suggestions, interviews with influencers who use certain products, and other valuable content for your niche audience.

However, Amazon prohibits affiliates from creating fake reviews or recommendations (which are both also illegal in many places). All content should come from your genuine experiences and opinions to build trust with readers.

• Transparently Disclose Your Affiliate Relationship

As an Amazon Associate, you must clearly disclose your relationship with Amazon anywhere that affiliate links are present. This builds trust with your audience by being transparent and is a legal requirement in many places.

Most affiliates place a simple disclosure in their site's footer or sidebar stating they are a member of the Amazon Associates program. You can also call out affiliate links individually on posts and pages for greater visibility.

• Have a Comprehensive Privacy Policy

A privacy policy is required to clearly explain how you collect, use, and protect all user data. It provides transparency for your readers on how their information is handled.

You can easily create a privacy policy from scratch or use an online generator like PrivacyPolicies.com to create one automatically based on questions you answer.

• Make 3 Sales Within 180 Days of Joining

One of Amazon's application requirements is that you must generate your first affiliate sale within 180 days of joining. This ensures only serious publishers who are actively promoting products are accepted.

If you don't make 3 sales in 180 days, your account will be automatically closed. However, you can reapply once you are driving enough traffic and engagement to start earning commissions.

• Only Use Approved Product Links and Images

When promoting Amazon products, you can only use affiliate links and images provided through your Amazon Associates account dashboard. Do not try to generate your own affiliate links or pull images from other sources.

Using anything other than your approved links and assets is a violation of Amazon's terms and can get you banned from the program.

• Avoid Making Pricing Claims About Products

Since prices change frequently on Amazon, affiliates should not make any outright pricing claims like "X product costs $50 on Amazon". Simply advise readers to click your link to view the current price.

The Amazon API can be used to display accurate up-to-date pricing on your site dynamically. But don't try to manually list prices that may soon be outdated.

• Do Not Use Link Shortening Services

Affiliates must use direct Amazon affiliate links. Do not use link shorteners like bit.ly or affiliate link cloaking services. Amazon can detect these and shut down your account.

• Read and Sign All Program Participation Agreements

Thoroughly read Amazon’s Program Participation Agreement and Operating Agreement documents to understand all guidelines you must follow as an affiliate. Violating any terms can lead to account suspension or termination.

• You Cannot Promote Violent, Explicit, or Illegal Products

Any content or products deemed obscene, inappropriate, or illegal are strictly prohibited from promotion per Amazon's program policies. Make sure all products you recommend meet their guidelines.

How to Get Started with the Amazon Affiliate Program

Becoming an Amazon Associate is the perfect way to monetize your website or social media presence. Here is a step-by-step walkthrough on how to apply and get approved for this lucrative affiliate program:

Step 1 - Have an Active Website, Blog, App, YouTube Channel, or Social Media Account

The first requirement is having an established online presence to promote Amazon products and links. This can be a website, blog, YouTube channel, Facebook page, Instagram account, mobile application, or Twitch channel.

Ideally, your website or social media accounts should already have a decent amount of traffic and engagement. The larger your audience, the easier it will be to generate affiliate commissions once approved.

Step 2 - Sign Up for an Amazon Associates Account

Go to the Amazon Associates sign-up page and click the "Join Now for Free" button. You can either sign in with your existing Amazon account or create a new one specifically for managing your affiliate links.

Make sure you use an email that you can easily access since Amazon will send approval notifications and other updates to the email tied to your Amazon Associates account.

Step 3 - Complete Account Information

Amazon will take you through a short application process to get your account set up.

You'll need to provide your name, physical address, phone number, website URL(s), details about your website niche and content, and specify how you currently make money from your site or social accounts.

Step 4 - Agree to the Amazon Affiliate Program Terms & Policies

Make sure to thoroughly read through the Amazon Affiliate Program Operating Agreement. You must agree to the terms, which outline all guidelines and policies you must follow as a member of the program.

Once you agree, you will officially submit your application for review and approval.

Step 5 - Add Payment Method

After submitting your application, you will be prompted to enter your payment information. This allows Amazon to pay your affiliate earnings either via direct deposit or check.

You can also opt to be paid in Amazon gift cards, which is the easiest method if are just starting out. Enter all required banking or tax info if selecting direct deposit or check payments.

Step 6 - Wait for Your Affiliate Account Approval

Amazon states that affiliate applications are typically reviewed within 1 business day.

Once approved, you will gain full access to the Amazon Associates dashboard where you can browse products to promote, create affiliate links, track your earnings, and more.

If your application is rejected, it simply means you need to better optimize your website or social media presence to meet the program's guidelines. But you can reapply at any time once you start driving more steady traffic.

Following these steps will get your Amazon Associates account set up so you can start generating commissions from the world's largest affiliate program!

How to Become an Amazon Affiliate: Step by Step Guide

We've come a long way in this guide. Now, let's summarize all we've learned into an actionable quickstart guide.

To become an Amazon Affiliate, follow these step-by-step instructions:

1. Create a Website or Blog: Before applying to the Amazon Associates program, you need a platform where you can promote Amazon products. This could be a website, a blog, a YouTube channel, or a mobile app.
2. Visit the Amazon Associates Homepage: Visit the Amazon Associates website and look for the “Sign Up” button.
3. Enter Your Account Information: Provide personal details such as your name, address, and phone number. This is necessary for setting up your Associates account.
4. Enter Your Website Address: Submit the URL of your website, blog, YouTube channel, or app. Amazon needs to know where you'll be advertising their products.
5. Enter Your Preferred Store ID: Choose a Store ID that is usually the same as your primary website name. It helps Amazon track your performance.
6. Explain How You Drive Traffic to Your Site: Amazon will ask about your traffic and monetization strategy. Be honest about how you plan to generate traffic, whether it’s through SEO, social media, email marketing, etc.
7. Choose Your Payment Method: Decide how you'd like to receive your earnings from Amazon. You can usually choose between direct deposit, check, or Amazon gift card.
8. Create Amazon Affiliate Links: Once your account is approved, you can start creating affiliate links. You can do this by logging into your Amazon Associate account, finding the products you want to promote, and using Amazon’s tool to generate unique affiliate links.

Remember, it’s important to comply with Amazon’s rules and guidelines for Associates, such as not using affiliate links in offline promotions, emails, or eBooks.

Keep your website content up-to-date and relevant to maintain the quality of your platform and ensure steady traffic.

Are There Better Alternatives to the Amazon Affiliate Program?

Aside from the Amazon Affiliate Program, there are affiliate networks and other retail companies that offer website and digital content creators the chance to monetize their audiences by embedding links to their products.

Here, we share 6 alternatives to the Amazon Affiliate Program that creators can consider.

Affiliate Programs from Online Retail Companies

#1 – eBay

eBay (EBAY) is one of the largest online e-commerce marketplaces in the world. Both new and used goods are offered through its platform by individuals and small businesses.

According to the company’s own stats, eBay has more than 1.4 billion listings, a global reach, and over 183 million buyers.

Through the eBay Partner Network, affiliates can earn commissions ranging from 1% to 4% of the sale.

#2 – Walmart

This affiliate program is a huge opportunity for US-based creators as Walmart is one of the largest retail companies in the country. In 2023, its website, Walmart.com, has received over 400 million visits while the company’s e-commerce unit experienced some stellar growth in 2020 during the pandemic.

Through the Walmart Affiliate Program, creators can earn commissions ranging from 1% to 10% depending on the category. The application process is reportedly fast and tracking cookies last for up to three days.

#3 – Target

Target is another titan of the United States retail industry with nearly 2,000 stores spread across the country’s territory and more than 45 in-house brands that allow it to sell affordable yet high-quality products both physically and online.

The Target Affiliate Program offers commissions ranging from 1% to 8%. They make available several different content formats for creators to advertise their products and cookies last for up to seven days, which increases the chances of monetizing visitors.

Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks are online marketplaces that creators can use to find hundreds of affiliate marketing opportunities from companies across the world in multiple niches.

They are a great alternative to websites that cater to a niche audience and, through the use of an intermediary, these websites essentially guarantee that the payouts will be handed over as long as the program’s requirements and guidelines are met.

The commissions that can be received per product or service sold vary based on who is offering the program (the publisher) and there are minimum payout thresholds that need to be attained to make withdrawals.

These are 3 of the most popular affiliate networks out there:

• Rakuten Advertising
• CJ Affiliates
• Impact

Is the Amazon Affiliate Program Worth It?

Affiliate marketing has delivered billions of dollars worth of gains to creators from all over the world who leverage their audiences and monetize them by offering third-party products and services.

The Amazon Affiliate Program is the largest of its kind globally and it offers creators the chance to make money by tapping on this gigantic e-commerce marketplace.

The commissions offered by Amazon are attractive and can be turned into thousands of dollars of side income if you have a digital asset with a loyal user or fan base.

The post How to Get Started With the Amazon Affiliate Program in 2026 appeared first on Business2Community.

What is surprising is how little of that information remains in the brain. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve suggests people lose up to half of all new information they learn within an hour, and up to 75% over 24 hours. This is a major issue for marketers who want to make a lasting impression on consumers. The challenge is only made worse with the recent technological evolutions and how people consume their information. Most people view content on mobile devices and around 91% of people say they prefer visual content over written content.

These days, a smart marketer is one who understands the importance of visual content in social media.

The Psychology of Visual Content

Roughly two-thirds of Americans are visual learners. The human brain has an easier time processing visual information over text. We process visual content about 60,000 times faster than text. It takes just milliseconds to process an image whereas it takes up to a minute to read 300 words of text. Furthermore, people only remember about 20% of the text they read, while they remember 42% of an image they see. In the battle of visual content vs text, there’s a more memorable leader.

SEO and content marketing are also more connected than you might expect. Visual appeal goes beyond just marketing. Quick Sprout conducted research in 2019 that showed most people will stop using a website or service if they have a bad experience with how it looks and seek out a more visually pleasing alternative.

Infographics are one of the most popular visual content marketing trends. One infographic from MicroCreatives highlights this by showing that 61% of marketers believe visuals are a vital part of any successful campaign. Statistics show that visual design elements such as graphics and color cause people to retain more information for longer.

The ROI for Visual Content

Need further proof of the importance of visual content in social media or online? Consider these statistics:

• Image-based content marketing increases organic traffic by 175%
• Infographics increase traffic by 12%
• Articles with plenty of visual content get twice as many social media shares
• Website click-through rates (CTRs) are up to 42% higher for websites with images
• Content containing appropriate images is viewed almost twice as much (94%)

The Key Elements of Visual Content in Marketing

Now we come to the most important questions — what is visual content marketing? How can you use it effectively? Here are the key elements of how to combine SEO and content marketing in a flawless campaign.

Use Relevant Imagery

You should stick to images that better suit your audience and chosen platform to better get the message across. This could mean using different visual content for different parts of the audience. Avoid using stock images as much as you can, but if you do use them find ones that are relevant and more personal. Of course, you should never overlook copyright laws.

Keep Things Simple

The principle of “less is more” applies to visual marketing as much as anything else. Use simple and clear images that are easy to understand. Think about the visual format involved, such as an animation, chart, or graph. Find a way to convey your information as simply and effectively as possible.

Ensure It’s Easy to Find

Visual searches were up over 27% last year. Make sure that all your images and videos are optimized for SEO and social media to bolster organic and visual searches.

Encourage Sharing

Share the visual content across all platforms and encourage readers to share it as well. Include social sharing buttons for easy sharing.

How to Create Great Marketing Visuals

Here are three things you should consider to put together amazing graphics that impress your audience and enhance your content.

Color

Color choice is key with visual content. It sets the mood and causes emotional responses. Using the right colors spreads the right message to your audience. For example, yellow is the color of creativity and optimism while blue shows trust and security. Red evokes feelings of excitement and urgency. For example, you’ll see blue used in a variety of technology and healthcare logos—industries where trust and security matter. Understanding how people respond to certain colors helps create engaging visual content.

Natural Light

Natural light is another important aspect of any good photograph, video, or other visual piece. You can still use some darker imagery to evoke different feelings, depending on your content and what you are trying to communicate. Otherwise, stick with natural lighting. A soft natural light evokes a sense of peace and puts people at ease. No mater how you use natural light, you’ll find it drastically improves the impact of your content.

Show Off Your Lighter Side

You don’t need to be so stern and rigid with your imagery, unless that’s the look your clients expect and want to see. Letting your guard down and showing off your human side goes a long way for some people. Don’t be afraid to showcase the lighter side of your business such as fun Halloween costumes and the like. Letting the audience see the humans behind the brand builds a closer connection and gets viewers personally invested.

Use the Power of Visuals

There are some of the ways you can take advantage of visual marketing and see success. Whether you’re looking to engage your audience more, convert them to your brand, keep people on your website longer, or get a boost for your SEO rankings, visual media marketing should be an integral part of your digital marketing strategy.

Read more:

• 10 Ways to Effectively Use Visuals on Your Website
• Best Cheap WordPress Hosting

The post The Power of Visuals in Online Marketing appeared first on Business2Community.

Landing pages have been around for a while and today are the primary method for converting prospects into leads. Marketers are constantly working to optimize their performance by examining buyer behaviors, load times, forms, and offers to increase conversion rates.

What Is a Landing Page?

A landing page is an independent webpage in digital marketing that is created to serve a specific purpose in a marketing campaign. It is the place a visitor "lands" when they click on a CTA link on social media, in an email, on Google, Bing, or YouTube.

via GIPHY

Most webpages focus on multiple goals, and they encourage visitors to explore more, whereas a landing page has a single goal with a single call to action.

The singular focus of landing pages makes them a great option to add to marketing campaigns to help you increase your conversion rate.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

Conversion rate optimization or CRO refers to a process that involves boosting the amount of website visitors who perform a desired action such as filling out a form, commenting on a blog post, or purchasing a product or service to become a customer.

The CRO system requires an understanding of how users navigate your site, what specific actions they take, and what prevents them from completing your end goals during their site visit.

There are two types of conversions involved in conversion rate optimization. These types of conversions are:

• Macro-conversions: Purchasing a product online, requesting a quote, subscribing to a service.
• Micro-conversions: Creating an account, adding a product to the cart, signing up for email lists.

Because landing pages are a digital medium, we have huge amounts of performance data that can be analyzed to determine their effectiveness. A/B testing and making small changes can improve performance.

Let's take a quick look at 50 landing page statistics that can help you to understand, improve, and enhance your buyer's experience and carry them on the journey from prospect to paying customer.

50 Landing Page Statistics to Inform Your 2021 Lead Generation Strategy

Here are 50 helpful landing page stats that will amaze you and help to influence the way you design and implement your marketing campaigns and landing pages.

Conversion Rate Optimization Statistics

The entire point of a landing page is to convert your prospects into leads and potentially paying customers down the road. There are best practices and testing methods to build the components of your landing pages to make them increasingly effective.

via GIPHY

Here are some statistics and best practices!

1. 48 percent of landing pages contain more than one offer (Marketing Experiments).

The first rule of landing pages is one offer per page. In fact, multiple offers can decrease conversions by up to 266 percent!

2. 58 percent offer clickable graphics related to the content (Marketing Experiments).

This seems like a good idea, but the point is to keep visitors on your landing page until they convert. Unless the graphic opens a form, leave the links off your page.

3. 84 percent of landing pages have navigation (HubSpot).

Same as above! Only 16 percent of landing pages have no navigation. This number should be much higher. Never give visitors an easy way to exit your page until they've converted.

4. Only 50 percent of all landing pages are mobile optimized (Adobe).

Mobile use is one of the fastest growing segments of the internet. If your page isn't optimized for mobile, your prospect is gone in seconds.

5. Relevant embedded video can increase conversions by 86 percent (Eyeview).

If you have explainer videos or testimonials, putting them on your landing page adds instant credibility and builds trust. Keep them relevant!

6. The average landing page conversion rate across industries is 2.35 percent, with the top 25 percent converting at 5.31 percent or higher (WordStream).

Check your current conversion rate for your site or a specific landing page to see if you fall within the average range. If you don't, you may want to amp up your landing pages and make sure they are conversion friendly.

7. Companies with 10 to 15 landing pages increase leads by 55 percent (HubSpot).

A simpler way to interpret this statistic: More landing pages means more conversions! Companies with 40 or more landing pages get 12X more leads than those with five or less.

8. A one-second delay in loading your site can lower conversions by seven percent (Neil Patel).

That number increases for every additional second. Make sure your pages are optimized to load quickly on any device, laptop, desktop, tablet, or phone.

9. Contact form landing pages usually have low conversion rates (Square2Marketing).

Contact forms may be be a boring sight to see for your visitors. They need something more than a white form that requires something for them to do. Provide them with value, and they may be more willing to give their information.

10. About 75 percent of businesses can't find someone with the expertise to optimize their landing page copy (Marketing Experiments).

Great copywriters are essential for landing pages. Optimized copywriting with top-performing keywords is a must.

11. When emotions like awe and laughter are used, conversion rates can increase (OkDork).

Landing pages should evoke emotion with color, images, copy, or video. These items are much more appealing to an audience than a formal landing page that describes facts, actions, and nothing else.

12. CTAs featuring the word "submit" can decrease conversion rates by three percent (Unbounce).

Word choice matters. Make sure your word choice for your CTAs triggers a desired response from your visitor.

13. Your conversion rate is likely to be higher when you don't ask for your visitor's age (HubSpot).

Asking for your visitor's age is usually unnecessary, unless your products have a legal requirement (e.g., alcohol).

14. CRO tools offer a 223 percent ROI on average (VentureBeat).

CRO tools are an excellent investment if you're seeking to improve your landing pages. A recent survey by ConversionXL found 55.5 percent of respondents planned on upping their CRO budgets in the coming year.

15. Landing pages with user generated content (UGC) convert more visitors than landing pages without UGC (YotPo).

Your visitors like to see people like them using or interacting with your products in some way. It helps to boost the trust they have in your brand.

Landing Page Trends Statistics

Landing pages are all about testing and analysis. By staying on top of best practices and trends, you can maximize your lead generation efforts.

via GIPHY

16. Interactive landing page content is growing (Smart Insights).

Thanks to the overabundance of static landing pages, users are quick to bounce from "sales-centric" pages. Consumers are looking for a better user experience, and interactive elements are a great way to deliver it.

17. Long form landing pages can generate up to 220 percent more leads (Marketing Experiments).

Long form content works. But make sure you thoroughly test elements including headlines, CTAs, and design.

18. 48 percent of the top landing pages are ranked in maps and organic listings (Nifty Marketing).

Take a look at the local SEO of your landing pages to make sure they include key items to help boost your rankings.

19. The average number of form fields on landing page conversion forms is 11 (PageWiz).

While this is the average, the fact is clear: Less is more. Shortening your form fields from 11 to four can increase conversions by 120 percent.

20. 52 percent of marketers reuse landing pages for different marketing campaigns (Marketing Experiments).

You don't have to recreate a brand new page with each campaign. You can tweak a landing page you currently have to match up with a new campaign. This can save you time and effort.

21. Personalized CTAs convert 202 percent better than a normal CTA (HubSpot).

Personalization is essential to higher conversions, and it's a hot trend right now. We all like things that apply to us and make us feel special. Make your customer feel like you get them, and they'll likely take a desired action.

22. Company branding in the title tag will remain a popular landing page tactic (Nifty Marketing).

Your brand identity matters on landing pages. You want your visitor to know they ended up on the right webpage.

Continue to make yourself known by adding your logo and other brand consistent items to your landing pages.

23. Almost half of online users look for videos related to a product before they visit a store (Hallam).

Be the first to make a video related to your product so you aren't left out of the conversation with your customer. No one can explain your products better than you.

A/B Testing Statistics

Testing is the key to success when it comes to increasing landing page results. Here are some surprising, and some not so surprising, landing page statistics around testing.

via GIPHY

24. Getting landing pages built and tested is a top five challenge for B2B marketers (Marketo).

As more developers begin to release testing software, the task should get easier.

25. 44 percent of companies use A/B or split testing software (Invesp).

Testing your landing pages is critical for increasing their effectiveness. Split testing software can make the job much easier.

26. 52 percent of businesses and marketing agencies that use landing pages test them to improve conversions (Marketing Experiments).

Using tools makes testing much easier. Optimize your page and A/B test elements including form length, images, text, and CTAs as well as other elements.

27. Testing multiple landing pages is considered an advanced and difficult methodology by marketers and business owners (Marketing Charts).

If you are manually testing, accuracy can in fact be a challenge. However, as more split testing software becomes available, this will change.

28. President Obama mastered the art of testing and raised an additional $60 million dollars for his last campaign using A/B testing (Optimizely).

Your results may vary... but this is an example that shows testing works!

29. 60 percent of companies perform fewer than five tests per month (Brilliant Web Solutions).

Whether it's landing page optimization or tweaking your lead funnel, you need to test regularly.

30. 60 percent of companies believe A/B testing is highly valuable for conversion rate optimization (Invesp).

Don't be the 40 percent that doesn't believe in the value of A/B testing for conversions!

31. Only 77 percent of marketers who test are testing headlines (Marketing Sherpa).

Your headline should reflect the page content, greet the visitor, and be specific. And it should be A/B tested to ensure it is optimized!

32. The overall amount spent on marketing campaigns can decrease when you conduct A/B testing (WordStream).

Creating marketing campaigns without testing can cause you to spend money on campaign tactics that simply don't work.

33. 42 percent of marketers think that the most difficult part of conversion optimization is analyzing the A/B test results (Crazy Egg).

A/B testing tools can help you to analyze the results by giving you insight into the actions you should take based on the data you collect.

General Landing Pages Statistics

These last landing page statistics show the concerns and challenges businesses face when it comes to understanding and optimizing landing pages.

via GIPHY

By learning and applying testing methods and using best practices, you can improve your landing page conversion rates.

34. Only 22 percent of businesses are satisfied with their current conversion rates (Econsultancy).

Part of this is the exaggerated claims found online. But once businesses see what small changes can do for conversions, it's normal to want improvement.

35. 62 percent of B2B companies that use landing pages have six landing pages or less (Marketing Experiments).

Having multiple landing pages is a must if you want to capture more leads.

36. Targeting and testing correctly can increase conversion rates by up to 300 percent (Steelhouse).

Correctly targeting your message to your buyer personas will have most impact on your landing page performance.

37. Don't neglect your headline – 90 percent of visitors who read your headline will also read your CTA (Marketing Sherpa).

The headline is the key. If they don't read it, they wont go any further down the page the majority of the time.

38. More than 20 percent of businesses report that they do not have a landing page testing strategy (Business 2 Community).

Test landing pages to make sure they can help you reach your goals. If they can't, you'll want to re-work them until they can.

39. You only have eight seconds to make an impression (Interactive Marketing).

Your headline is the most important element of your landing page. That's why testing is crucial.

40. 70 percent of marketers use CRO results to inform their other marketing initiatives (Marketing Experiments).

CRO is for more than just landing pages. Optimizing pages can lead to effective elements for other marketing initiatives, like headlines, blog content ideas, and website pages.

41. 44 percent of clicks generated by B2B companies direct users to the homepage rather than landing pages (MECLABS).

Landing pages are a more effective means of converting prospects, yet nearly half of B2B companies do not utilize them.

42. Users are 80 percent more likely to read content that is combined with bold, attention-getting imagery (Xerox).

Try using interesting imagery on your landing pages. It can make readers more comfortable and likely to act.

43. Include your contact information to increase trust and conversions (Neil Patel).

Just including a phone number can increase conversions. People feel more comfortable sharing their information if you share yours.

44. 88 percent of consumers trust testimonials and reviews (Search Engine Land).

Reviews and testimonials can up the trust quotient and increase landing page conversions.

45. 44 percent of SaaS landing pages have images that feature people (ChartMogul).

Make your product more human by adding pictures of other humans to appeal to your audience. This helps to increase the trust they have in your brand.

46. 46 percent of marketers consider form layout to have a significant impact (Marketing Experiments).

The layout of the forms on your landing page can help or hinder your conversion rate percentages. Consider them carefully and make sure you aren't requiring your visitors to fill out lengthy forms.

47. Visitors who land on product-detail pages generate half the revenue of those landing on other pages (Marketing Charts).

Details about your products on your landing page encourage your visitors to increase their knowledge. Provide some videos on your landing page to demonstrate your product to help the user to understand your product better.

48. 80 percent of a mobile visitor’s attention concentrates on the top of the page (OptinMonster).

The top of the page matters most. It's what gets people interested and encourages them to scroll further down the page. This is why hero images with succinct copy and bold images are essential to landing pages.

49. 92.6 percent of people say the visual dimension is the #1 influencing factor affecting their purchase decision (Neil Patel).

Seeing is believing. You see the data, now add meaningful images to your landing pages to help influence your site visitors.

50. Close up images are 24 percent more engaging than zoomed out images (Taboola Trends).

Get up close and personal. Make your images easy to see. Give them detail and context rather than an obscure zoomed out image. As we discussed in the previous statistic, images influence the decision making process.

Landing pages are a critical element of any inbound marketing strategy. Optimization, testing, and proper design can help you to turn your landing pages into conversion machines!

Make sure you follow all of the best practices outlined and give yourself at least a month's worth of data when testing. – a quarter is even better. From there, optimize each page by changing one item and then A/B test for performance.

Wait, re-evaluate, and retest. It takes a little time, but be patient and let the data guide you.

The post The 50 Best Landing Page Statistics (2021 Edition) That Help Drive Conversions appeared first on Business2Community.

During this pandemic, it is critical that businesses are online. Having an online presence can help you build an audience, connect with your customers, and keep them updated on your day to day activities, as well as hours of operation.

If you’re not online, how else can your customers know when you’re open or what products or services you provide? Since the stay at home order was put into place, you and your customers have been told to stay home for the protection of your health. So, if you haven’t already, then what are you waiting for? Now is the time to create your social media profile and set up your Google My Business page.

Get on Google!

Let’s start with your Google My Business page. This should be a high priority for all businesses hoping to be found online. This process is fairly simple and if you’re already an established business, chances are that you already exist in the Google My Business directory and just need to claim your listing. But if you’re a new business or have a new location, you will probably have to be added.

The process is fairly simple: Get on Google My Business, enter your business’ information (name and address), verify your business with a verification code from Google, then your listing! Our friends from Business 2 Community explain the steps in detail here.

Get Social!

Next up is your social media profile. If you haven’t created an account on one of the various platforms, then now is the time! These platforms allow your business to showcase your services and upload pictures of your products or videos of your staff. You can add an updated menu, communicate with your customers 24/7, promote daily events and highlight special offers all with a push of a button.

During these times we understand that money is tight, which is why creating and uploading content on your social media profile might be the way to go when creating your business’s online presence. It costs you nothing to create a profile on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Snapchat. Really! NOTHING!

Read more: 10 Tips for Joint Press Releases That Increase Your Online Presence

The post The Importance of Having an Online Presence is Crucial Now More Than Ever appeared first on Business2Community.

Searchers “google” your company to check your hours, get directions, read reviews and see photos of your business— and they usually get the quick answers they need by viewing that box that appears on the right sidebar of desktop or the top of mobile searches, AKA your Knowledge Graph.

By registering or claiming your Knowledge Graph inside of a Google My Business (GMB) account, you can control exactly what searchers see when viewing that helpful information box.

But what happens when your company has more than one location?

Is Google smart enough to serve the right business based on a searcher’s location?

Do you need to set up more than one GMB account to manage other offices?

We’re covering these important questions and more in this post.

Let’s start with the basics.

Key Takeaways for Efficiently Managing Multiple Locations in Google My Business

1. Unified Management through Location Groups: Control all your business locations under one master Google My Business (GMB) account, known as a location group, for streamlined updates and consistency across listings.
2. Avoid Multiple Accounts: Operating several GMB accounts for different locations complicates management and can confuse both Google and users. Consolidate to a single account to simplify access and updates.
3. Importance of Verification: Prioritize verifying your main corporate location on GMB to set the foundation for adding additional locations. Verification is crucial for authenticity and trustworthiness in Google’s eyes.
4. Solving Inaccessible Accounts: If a GMB listing is under an inaccessible account, utilize Google’s process for transferring ownership to ensure control over your business information.
5. Transferring Location Groups: Merge any existing separate location listings into your master account to unify your online presence and avoid competition between your own locations on search engine results pages.
6. Adding Secondary Locations Made Simple: Use the “Add new location” feature within your master GMB account to include new offices or stores, ensuring all your business locations are accurately represented online.
7. Role-based Access for Team Management: Assign appropriate roles (owner, manager, site manager) to team members within your GMB account for efficient delegation of tasks without compromising on security or control.

You Can (& Should) Control Multiple Locations from One Sole GMB “Location Group” Account

The good news is, Google managers wanted to make it easy to keep your business information up-to-date. That’s why they allow you to control multiple business locations from one master Google My Business account: called a location group account.

Why it’s Best to Connect any Free-floating GMB Accounts

Those of you who already have multiple accounts floating around might be wondering, “but can I have more than one Google My Business account and manage multiple business locations from individual logins?”

Well, technically, you could. But…

• It’s an unnecessary burden to log in to multiple accounts. If an employee makes an account under their personal email account and then is out of office or leaves, it’s a pain in the ass to get login access.
• Shared login credentials can create problems when employees leave. Even if you share the login credentials across your office, when a worker leaves, you have to go and change the password to protect your brand, spurring confusion all over again about the new login.
• Having multiple Google Business accounts for one main business entity can also confuse the search engine itself. The search engine may be wondering which location is accurate vs. understanding they’re different locations under one corporation. Instead of having these locations seemingly compete with each other on the search engine results pages, connect them under one hub.

By linking all your locations under one login, you are purposefully showing Google these businesses are under one corporation, working together and to be ranked based on geographical proximity to local searchers.

Register or Claim the Businesses

Use your main company email address to set up a master location groups account, if you don’t already have one. We suggest making your master login account a shared business email (like admin@whatever.com) instead of using an employee email address.*

Beginners should be sure to read our article on How to Create a Business Listing, which has some simple steps for getting set up inside GMB.

*If you have any of your GMB accounts under an individual employee email, we recommend transferring primary ownership with these Help Center instructions from Google.

If You Don’t Have Other Pre-existing Location Pages, Make Sure Your Main Location is Verified First

The most important thing you want to do is make sure that your main corporate location is verified by Google before claiming any secondary locations. Why is this so important?

First off, this is your main login hub for GMB— and since you’ll be adding additional locations to this account, it’s pertinent that the first one be approved before any others can follow suit.

Secondly, Google can take a few weeks to snail mail send you your verification card/code for your new location (yes, this is a necessary evil when verifying a business through GMB). Verify your main location ASAP, since it might take some time to get all locations locked and loaded on Google.

If an Account is Inaccessible or Under an Employee Email, Transfer Ownership

There are a few reasons an account might be inaccessible. An ex-employee could have set up the listing and left or a current employee simply forgot the password. Or, you may have no idea who set it up to begin with.

How to Get Your Business on Google's Right Sidebar offers instructions for claiming a business, should someone have previously made an account and you need to transfer ownership:

“Google makes it easy to contact the listing owner via email and get them to grant you access to the account. The search engine’s procedure involves sending the account holder an auto generated email from Google asking to make you an admin or pass over the ownership rights.It starts to get a little hairier if an unfamiliar email owns the listing and isn’t responding to your requests. Google gives the mystery maker 7 days to reply, but if they don’t, rest assured! There’s a procedure to override their ownership and gain access from inactive users.”

What to Do if You Have More than One GMB Account

If your coworkers or a previous employee made a Google My Business account to manage a separate location in the past, don’t panic.

Don’t destroy everything either… We’re just going to transfer location groups.

How to Transfer Location Groups from One GMB to Another

1. Make sure you have a location group business account first.**

If you don’t, you’ll follow all these steps and only to see this:

2. Sign in to the Google My Business of the business you want to transfer to your master login.

This may require some tracking down to get the login from individual employees or scrolling back up to find our instructions from getting access through Google support, should you be unable to gain access from the person who created the account.

Once in, look at the left side bar under the GMB logo. You’ll see a list of actions, including “Add new location” and “Manage locations.”

3. Navigate to Manage locations.

Inside of the Manage locations screen, you’ll be able to check the location you’d like to transfer.

4. Go to the Actions button in the top right hand corner and choose Transfer location.

From here you should be able to select the location group/business account that you want to receive the location. Simply click, “Transfer” to transfer that location to your main account immediately.

Adding a Secondary Location

If you already have a Google My Business account where you manage your one location but are opening a new office, you can add a second location easily inside of the same login.

Once signed in, look at the left side bar under the GMB logo.

You’ll see a list of actions, including “Add new location” and “Manage locations.” Click “Manage locations.”

From here, you’ll be served a search bar to locate a pre-existing account that Google users may have generated for you. Or, you can click “Add your business to Google” if none previously exists— and follow the steps in our Register or Claim the Businesses section above.

Adding Account Managers / Additional GMB Users

Now that you have your locations under one main primary owner Google My Business login, you can add additional owners, managers and site managers, all with varying levels of access to your business profile.

For instance, owners are the only ones able to add or remove other users and remove business profiles. Choose your user type wisely by reading Google’s chart on capabilities per user.

1. In the left hand menu, click “Users.”
2. At the top right, click “Invite new users” and type the email address of the user you'd like to add.
3. Select the user's role by choosing “Owner,” “Manager,” or “Site manager” and click “Invite.”

As soon as the invitation email is received and the user accepts the terms, they will immediately be granted access to the Google My Business account.

Improve Your Local Search Rankings, Fast!

Surprised how quick and easy it is to add more than one location to your Google My Business account? Optimizing your GMB for local search isn’t as complicated as you might think.

Download our Beginner’s Guide to Local SEO for some actionable tips for enhancing your online presence using Google My Business, review, citations, local on-site optimization and more.

Read more:

• How to Create Location Pages to Boost Local SEO and Drive Traffic Fast
• Best Cheap WordPress Hosting: Top 10

The post The Right Way to Manage Multiple Locations Through Google My Business in 2024 appeared first on Business2Community.

Fortunately, there are dozens of online marketing tools available now that can drive traffic for businesses of all sizes. Now, if you want to keep your business booming, you have to examine and experiment with the best marketing tools and apps.

List of top online marketing tools to boost your business

In this post, we're going to compile the list of best online marketing tools and discuss the finer details for each one to help you make an appropriate choice. Whether you are a startup founder or the owner of a large enterprise, this article will give you a better idea of different types of marketing tools available in the market and what tools to use to create and maintain strong marketing campaigns overall.

Here we go!

Team communication tool

A team communication tool is a necessity for any marketing team. Marketing campaigns include a lot of activities on various platforms of digital media. A team needs to collaborate and stay updated about all the activities. Quick access to files and data as well as a central place for discussions can be bliss for all marketing teams.

1. Chanty

Chanty is an effective communication tool for marketing teams. It facilitates a dedicated space for all your team discussions, file sharing, managing tasks. It provides unlimited message history, ability to add most important conversations to favorites as well as an intuitive mobile app.

Marketing project management tool

A marketing project management tool is designed to help you plan, organize, prioritize, assign, track, and achieve your daily to-dos. It takes the chaos out of your projects and allows you to deliver every project on time.

2. ProofHub

ProofHub is a popular project management and collaboration tool that aims to help teams communicate better and gain more control over their projects. This comprehensive tool creates a central place for all your projects, teams, and communication. It offers a series of smart features that increase visibility and accountability with your organization and thereby ensuring faster delivery time.

Search engine optimization tool

A search engine optimization tool is basically used by businesses for keyword research, backlink monitoring, rank tracking, and link building. The sole aim of such digital marketing tools is to improve your ranking across all major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout social is a tool designed to help you with almost anything regarding your business's social media channel. It comes with an attractive user interface and a suite of tools that make it easy for you to rank high in today's competitive world.

Search engine marketing tool

Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) – both are the two sides of the same coin. The purpose of these tools is to gain traffic and improve visibility across search engines using advanced techniques like PPC advertising, on page optimization, and off page optimization.

4. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is an awesome tool for finding new long tail keywords. It aggregates information using Google Suggest which offers keyword ideas for your business similar to your searches on Google.

Social media management tool

A social media management tool is what facilitates businesses to engage in social media across different communication channels. From social media monitoring to reporting, a social media management tool comes with features that allow you to generate leads and sales by reaching the company's targeted audience across all social networking, microblogging, photo sharing, and video sharing platforms.

5. Buffer

Buffer is a software application designed to help you manage accounts across various social media networks. The tool provides the means for you to schedule and analyzes posts to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other social platforms to better engage with your company's targeted community.

Pay-per-click management tool

Pay-per-click is a part of social media marketing. If you are working on a large marketing campaign, a pay-per-click management tool can help you automate intelligently and direct more traffic to your website.

6. Wordstream

Wordstream is a leading online advertising software platform that is specifically designed to support all small to medium-sized businesses. The software provides a step by step guide on how to generate more leads and revenue from paid search and paid social advertising campaigns.

Website Analytics tool

Website analytics tool is one of the most important tools to have in your project management arsenal. The tool is designed to help you gain a deep understanding of the analytics on your website. It offers insights that allow you to pick the best keywords for your website, track new opportunities for your campaign, and most importantly, gain a competitive advantage over your competitors in the market.

7. Google Analytics

Google analytics is one of the best marketing tools. It's a website traffic analysis application that provides a stats of user interaction and engagement on your website. This application enables you to get a better understanding of your website's performance and optimize it for greater results.

Email marketing tool

As the name itself suggests, email marketing tool is a specific tool that businesses use to do all their email marketing end-to-end. Message automation, advanced list maintenance, dedicated IP address, easy integration, and deliverability help, these are some of the key features that you can expect from the best email marketing service provider.

8. MailChimp

MailChimp is a marketing automation platform and an email marketing service. It is a marketing automation platform that helps you share email and ad campaigns with clients, customers, and other interested parties.

Content marketing tool

Content marketing is an essential part of your overall campaign because it has the ability to attract, engage, convince, and convert visitors into potential customers. A content marketing tool allows you to create, share, and curate content that brings optimal exposure for your product/services.

9. Canva

Canva is a tool loaded with enough easy-to-use features that anyone can use to create a variety of engaging content that gets shared. It uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals. The tools can be used for both web and print media design and graphics.

Video hosting tool

A video hosting tool allows marketing, sales, and service teams to create, host, manage, measure, and share videos to leads and customers.

10. Vimeo

Vimeo is a video-sharing platform that you can use to upload, share, and view videos. The platform was launched in 2004 and has now grown to over 70 million creators, including artists in film, animation, music, etc.

Customer Service tool

The last tool in our list of best marketing tools is a customer service tool - an online solution that facilitates professionals to foster a good experience for their existing customers. From traditional voice systems to visual chats, a customer service tool offers multiple ways to connect with customers and satisfy their requirement.

11. LiveChat

LiveChat is a help desk application designed for support and service teams. The application comes packed with features and tools for online sales, marketing, web analytics, and live customer support. It enables teams to connect with clients and potential customers in real-time.

Conclusion

Are you among the group of professionals who believe that marketing stands above everything else? If so, then with the right online marketing tools you can implement, monitor, analyze, calibrate and evaluate your marketing campaign better.

With this post, we hope you now have a better idea of the trendiest online marketing tools for small as well as large businesses and how you can use them to your advantage. Also, if you've already worked with some of the aforementioned marketing tools or have a suggestion for making the most of each one, let us know in the comments section below.

The post Top 10 Online Marketing Tools to Boost Your Business (2019) appeared first on Business2Community.

]]> Online marketing is a major concern for every business, large or small. To step into the business market, meet…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/the-no-brainers-guide-to-call-to-actions-02127152/ Thu, 11 Oct 2018 17:30:08 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/the-no-brainers-guide-to-call-to-actions-02127152/

Do you remember when you subscribed to an unplanned product and service? The countless times you downloaded Dropbox, Spotify or even Evernote? Perhaps you even signed up for an online class!

The fact is that you signed up for each of these products as a result of an effective call-to-action (CTAs).

And that’s basically all that matters in as far as generating leads is concerned. Strategic CTAs come in handy when guiding your customers to a buying expedition and you’ll be surprised, a larger percentage of all products you purchase are largely influenced by the CTAs you get daily.

The fundamental element of any successful inbound marketing strategy is a well-crafted CTA copy. You see, CTAs serve to instruct your visitors to make suitable purchase decisions. Without them, your entire website’s traffic would go to waste. In other words, a call to action translates traffic into leads. They are the conversion points where passive traffic is converted into active prospects.

With a well-crafted CTA, you can persuade your visitors to read your emails or perform specific tasks such as purchasing a product, subscribing to the mailing list and so on. Great CTAs are designed with a text placed on a button or simply a link with the right anchor text.

Kathryn Aragon describes CTAs as, “the final instruction you give to your reader.” As a marketer, you should leverage on CTAs when you want your website viewer to complete a task. Having great content on your website is good. Having people come back for more is better but until your readers take the intended action, the task stands incomplete.

As a matter of fact, great content aims at helping your readers make the right purchase decision which is why you need CTAs to achieve that purpose. Whenever a visitor takes an action based on your CTA, it is referred to as conversion—and every marketer targets excellent conversions!

You need to understand a buyer’s psychology when designing a CTA. Research shows that most people take actions based on whether it is logical and likely to benefit them. Surprisingly, so many companies miss out on forming a deeper connection with their potential customers. According to SmallBizTrends, close to 70% of startups and small businesses lack appropriate CTAs on their sites. Don’t add your business to these statistics!

Rule of the thumb: When deciding on the CTAs to use on your site, consider your site’s content and design CTAs that strongly relate to your products.

You should also seek to find out what is the greatest motivation for your visitors taking action on that content. Once you have identified your reader’s motivations, use the call-to-action to send a clear message about the benefits they stand to get when they take the intended action.

With a thousand and one distractions on the Internet today, crafting a great CTAs that will capture the reader’s attention in a split second and lead to conversions can be a daunting task.

But you don’t have to worry. We’ve done the heavy lifting for you and dissected the building block that makes up great CTAs. Here, we’ll discuss the fundamentals of excellent CTAs that will generate more leads. And the best part is that they are a low hanging fruit and so you will find they are easy to implement.

Always Have a Call-to-Action above the Fold

This one is a piece of cake but don’t be fooled—over 80% of web owners still don’t get it!

Your site visitors will scroll down to the end of your page and you’ll have all the time in the world to make a lasting impression.

WRONG!!

Let’s set the facts straight. You should always perceive your website visitors as having the worst case of attention deficit disorder and you will always be right—or at least most of the time.

You have a split second to capture the attention of your potential customers and to make a lasting impression. A split second to persuade website visitors to take action and so, having a call to action above the fold, is a smart bet.

For Longer Content Have a Follow-up Call-to-Action Toward the Bottom

When writing a long blog post, you need to place the most relevant call to actions at the bottom of the post.

Here, you’ll not need to reuse your sidebar calls to action and assume that everything’s hunky-dory. Place a CTA at the end of the very end of the post. You want the reader to take action when they are done reading the article!

Be Clear and Concise about the Offer

Take, for instance, a call to action that reads “download free black paper.”This CTA lacks a clear, concise message that the reader would understand easily. With a vague call-to-actions, you should expect a lower click-through rate.

Using Contrasting Colors That Stand Out

The point is, if your call to action colors blends perfectly with the sites background color, no one will notice it. It is like buying an ad on a blimp that is painted blue with clouds on it.

If your call-to-action button/link is not captivating to the eye, it will not attract many clicks through and that means it will not head to the conversion page.

Most Important: Make it Contextually Relevant

Let’s take, for instance, a website that sells insurance policies. So, you’ll find policies such as home insurance, health insurance, marine insurance,and stuffed pet insurance (the latter is probably not real but it ought to be).

Now, if you were the owner of such a business and wanted keyword rich content, it would make much more sense to have relevant CTAs on your website’s sidebar.

You should find contextually relevant CTAs for better conversions. As a matter of fact, Google uses the exact concept with their AdWords.

There you have it, folks! Whether you’re creating a new website or a simple blog post or social media, your journey to creating great calls to action will be easy-peasy with this guide—every visitor will thank you for it!

Read more:

• Best Affiliate Marketing Programs

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]]> Do you remember when you subscribed to an unplanned product and service? The countless times you downloaded Dropbox, Spotify…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/need-know-customer-reviews-website-01991969/ Fri, 19 Jan 2018 15:00:08 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/need-know-customer-reviews-website-01991969/ For small business owners, continuously growing your online presence is everything, especially if you have an e-commerce site. After all, how can your potential customers find you if your business doesn’t come up in their searches?

Unfortunately, the battle to better market your product isn’t over after you’ve got the site up and running, and even then, there are still a number of things you have to take care of. One major contributor to boosting your sales, however, is customer reviews.

Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur trying to grow your online community, or the CEO of a seasoned tech company with dozens of software services, including customer reviews on your site is an essential part of e-commerce.

Here are three reasons publicizing customer reviews are a must-have on your site.

3 Reasons For Including Customer Reviews in Your Site

1. Customer reviews encourage sales through unbiased testimonies

Unsurprisingly, data shows that customers tend to trust other customers more than they would initially trust the company.

A whopping 70% of consumers consult reviews or ratings before purchasing, and as many as 85% of consumers trust product reviews as much as a personal recommendation.

Testimonies from relatable consumers provide reliable insight into the product in a way the business is simply not able to. Reviews from other customers are viewed as more valuable to the fellow consumer than marketing efforts from the company.

2. Reviews build credibility and increase repeat customers

Small business owners know the importance of customer loyalty and how difficult it can be to establish that initial relationship.

You should know, then, that positive reviews make majority of customers trust a local business more. Having established that credibility with the customer and after making that initial purchase, the customer is more likely to visit your site again.

According to some studies, repeat customers also have a higher conversion rate and spend more on average compared to new online shoppers.

Including product reviews in your site not only bring credibility to your business among new customers, but they also lead the way for repeat customers who have proven to spend more than new shoppers.

3. Customer reviews boost your SEO

Making it easy for consumers to find you online is not as simple as some may think. However, ranking high in search engine results pages (SERPs) allow small business owners to better market their site while competing with larger companies.

Boosting your search engine optimization, therefore, is a must. It requires regular fresh and unique content that goes beyond standard manufacturer descriptions. User-generated posts like customer reviews have the ability to provide this regular fresh, unique content which increase the chance of ranking highly in the SERPs.

How to Handle Negative Customer Reviews

When you open your e-commerce site to accept customer reviews, however, you will have to accept BOTH positive and negative reviews. This is a major fear that business owners have: the possibility of bad reviews.

It’s true that negative reviews have a huge impact on customers; most people will hesitate to purchase from a business that has negative online reviews.

Bad reviews come with the territory of e-commerce, and it doesn’t equate to running a bad business. However, this doesn’t mean that you don’t need to do anything.

You can take action when negative reviews are posted to your site. Here are a few suggestions on how to stay on top of poor reviews.

1. Reach out to the customer

It’s important to reach out to dissatisfied customers as soon as possible. Promptly responding to a negative review allows you as the business owner to attempt to restore the relationship.

Reaching out to the dissatisfied customer allows you to understand what went wrong, and offer them a possible solution so that you can open back up the possibility of continued business with them.

Additionally, promptly responding to a negative customer review is also publicly showing other customers you value their feedback and are working on a solution.

It is recommended you directly respond to the negative review on your public review platform so that other customers have a chance to see how you handle these situations, and reinsert the customer loyalty that might be compromised.

2. Send a thoughtful response to your customer

It’s important you are thoughtful of the exact messaging you send your dissatisfied customer when crafting a response. Stay true to your branding style, but make sure you come off as a person invested in their trouble, not a corporation trying to put a band-aid over the incident.

Your customers will appreciate the efforts you make to get down to their level and view the experience as they did. Avoid sounding disinterested, disconnected, and defensive at all costs.

3. Follow up with the customer later on

Lastly, follow up with the customer on their experience to drive home the point that your company is genuinely interested in their business.

There may not be a simple resolution to the customer’s complaint, but it’s still important to make efforts toward at not leaving them with a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to your company.

This might not always end in their continued business, but it makes strides toward containing their poor experience rather than allowing it to spread throughout the community. As you know, reputation is key for small businesses, and keeping poor experiences contained is important to maintaining a good standing.

How To Start Featuring Customer Reviews in Your Website

Now you know why customer reviews are important — they can help your business thrive by using unbiased reviews to drive sales, help build trust and encourage repeat customers, and boost your SEO efforts.

The obvious follow-up question remains: how do you start putting customer reviews on your site?

The simplest first step in publishing customer reviews on your site is to integrate a reviews plugin on your e-commerce site. We recommend giving POWr Reviews a try.

Not only is it easy-to-use for non-technical business owners, you’ll also be able to seamlessly display and creatively control customer content appearing directly on your site.

Making this process as simple as possible will encourage the user to leave a review compared to something complicated and overly complex.

Next, follow up each purchase with a post-purchase automated email. On average, digital receipts sent through emails are opened 70.9% of the time, while marketing emails are only opened 17.9% of the time, according to TheGood.com. You can include promotions and discounts in this order confirmation email to highlight special sales and encourage users to return to your site.

Finally, don’t overlook the power of simply asking your customers for a review. Your customers understand that building your empire is a process, and taking a few minutes to leave a review is tremendously helpful. Lean on your customer, they may be more receptive than you can imagine!

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/roi-influencer-marketing-2-01787448/ Mon, 27 Feb 2017 16:20:27 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/roi-influencer-marketing-2-01787448/ [caption id="attachment_1787455" align="alignnone" width="750"] Calculating ROI for Influencer Marketing - www.socialpulsemarketing.com[/caption]

Digital marketers and PR professionals know that consumers these days pay less attention to a brand’s message unless it comes from a source they trust. Enter the social media influencer.

Influencer marketing, when planned out and executed properly, can generate a significant return on investment for a business. Based on a recent study by Tomoson, businesses are generating $6.50 in revenue for each $1 spent on influencer marketing initiatives. The article, and numerous studies, also highlight influencer marketing as the fastest growing form of online marketing.

Here are some highlights from a recent study performed by Tomson, a platform, that when combined with the right strategy and team to execute that strategy can be a powerful force in your marketing arsenal.

Influencer Marketing Helps Businesses Attract Better Customers

A majority of marketing professionals feel that their company is able to attract a higher-quality customer through strategically planned and properly executed influencer marketing campaigns.

This is a direct result of the shift in consumer trust, from brands to peers. A popular Nielsen study shows that 84% of consumers trust the opinions of their peers and those who they follow online.

Influencer Marketing Yields Higher Returns on Investment

Based on the same study, the average influencer marketing campaign generates a return of $6.50 for every $1 invested. 70% earn more than a $2 return on every dollar, and 13% earn more than $19 on ever dollar invested. Only 18% of influencer campaigns break even or fail to generate a positive return, but from what I have seen this can usually be avoided with the right planning and execution of an influencer marketing campaign.

Blogs and Facebook Generate the Highest ROI

With Facebook’s ever expanding focus on improving their content distribution algorithm, monetization strategies, and ad platform, it’s no wonder that 21% of marketers report the highest ROI when promoting their brands, products, and services through Facebook influencers. Even so, bloggers who have built up large audiences of loyal and trusting consumers are still at the top of the ROI ladder with 37% of marketers reporting that they see better ROI’s when working with bloggers than any other social media channel.

Influencer Marketing is Outpacing Organic Search and Email Marketing

As outlined in the graph below, marketing professionals are focusing more on their influencer marketing strategies then they are on organic search and email marketing. Marketers from around the world choose influencer marketing as their preferred channel for acquiring new customers online.

Budgets are Shifting to Influencer Marketing

Nearly 60% of marketers surveyed are increasing their budgets for influencer marketing over the next year with another 20% considering doing the same. This is the perfect time to reach out to influencers and negotiate rates before their demand grows along with their pricing.

Influencer Marketing Tied for Most Cost-Effective Online Marketing Method

Influencer marketing ties email marketing for first place as the most cost-effective form of online marketing. With 22% of marketers confirming that it is their most cost-effective tool. Email marketing received the same vote, while organic search came in third place with 19% of the vote, followed by paid search and display advertising with 10% each.

While influencer marketing is growing in popularity among large and small brands alike, the biggest challenges lie in the strategy and execution of an influencer marketing campaign.

Here are the 6 key factors that determine whether a campaign is successful or not:

1. Establish clear goals and objectives for your influencer campaign
2. Identify the appropriate social channels and blogs that will yield the highest returns for your organization
3. Select the right influencers who speak to your target audience
4. Create effective messaging that will resonate and engage your target consumers with the intention to influence their behavior
5. Distribute the messages in an authentic manner by working closely with the influencers
6. Track and measure the right data to refine your process and make changes in real-time while your campaign is running in order to maximize the benefit your brand receives.

With all the great new tools that social channels provide for business and promotion use, now is the perfect time for a company to get into the game if they haven’t already. With the right strategy and team in place to execute your next influencer marketing campaign, chances are you too will be placing more focus and allocating more budget to influencer marketing in the future.

There has never been a better time to get started with influencer marketing.

Read More:

• Maximize the ROI of Your Sales Kick Off
• Best SMS Marketing Software – 10 SMS Marketing Platforms for [cur_year]
• Best Email Marketing Software – 10 Best Email Marketing Services for your Business

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]]> Digital marketers and PR professionals know that consumers these days pay less attention to a brand’s message unless it…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/10-ways-effectively-use-visuals-website-01766621/ Tue, 31 Jan 2017 01:39:10 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/10-ways-effectively-use-visuals-website-01766621/

Visual content has always been relevant in marketing, but it’s quickly begun gaining more steam. This is probably because the average human’s attention span is now less than a goldfish's, and visual content can catch a viewer’s attention quicker—and keep it longer—than written content. Naturally, images, videos, and infographics have invaded every section of the business world—including webpages.

A web page is a key part in any business’s marketing plan, and it perfectly lends itself to visual marketing—the site’s design itself, after all, has a visual base. However, it’s important to use visuals in such a way that it attracts and engages potential consumers instead of driving them away.

Here are some ways to maximize your website’s potential.

1. Design

The most obvious place to start is with your website’s design. This is not only the first thing viewers are likely to see on a website, but it’s the thing that they’ll be the most exposed to while exploring your page. According to Peep Laja, while usability is important, a good design is actually what makes or breaks a site.

Laja notes the six areas where users are likely to spend the most time on sites, those being: the logo, the navigation menu, the search box, the header, the page’s actual text, and the bottom of the page, in that order. Of those, four explicitly relate to visuals, and the remaining two (the search box and the text) can still be arranged in visually appealing ways.

Spritz Web Solutions has several helpful suggestions on how to best maximize web design. For one, keep everything simple and clean—use visuals to aid your content, but don’t use so much that it actually takes away from it.

Color scheme plays a similarly important role, and the author suggests using only two or three colors overall for you main scheme. The colors themselves should relate to your company’s personal voice without straining a viewer’s eye; brushing up on color theory can help when choosing a scheme.

2. Use Photography

[Image source: here.]

It should come as little surprise that using stock photos gets old fast. Taking pictures yourself—or finding a professional—is a great way to enhance a website.

Spritz Web Solutions (mentioned above) notes that photographs are extremely important for online retailers, and can be a great way to create a custom header or welcome image. Celine Roque adds that, since we’re naturally more attracted to human faces, adding such images can snap our attention much quicker. Pamella Neely further expands on the use of personal photos, as they attract far more interest than stock photos.

What are some great ways to use photographs, then? Try taking pictures of your product in action. Show what it’s doing in a real-life setting to help highlight its usefulness and attract attention, all in one. Keep in mind web layout; putting it alongside text can help enforce what you’re saying, and using it as a header can constantly remind your viewers of how effective your product can be.

3. Alt Text

Alt text—text written beside an image to describe it—is not only useful in helping to explain an image or organize a page, but also to help get found.

Pamella Neely states that alt text is one of the few bits on an image a given search engine can read, meaning creating alt text is in any creator’s favor. Writing an accurate description can both help more people find your sight and help people quickly understand what your image is trying to show.

4. Quotes and Infographics

Image source: here.

Combining text and data with images can take out two birds with one stone, and is a great way to quickly catch your audience’s attention (and keep it).

Putting quotes in an image can quickly snag people’s attention, and can be used strategically, to help highlight specific parts of an article or to explain a corporation’s main goal. Infographics, similarly, can replace otherwise boring data with colorful images that explain the same concept, allowing you to show why your product’s so great with statistics without losing the reader’s attention.

There are a lot of online options for creating these visuals. Ann Smarty lists several options for creating “quote graphics,” and sites like Visme let you make beautiful infographics and presentations for your web page.

5. Animated GIFs

Movement tends to attract our attention pretty quickly, so what better way to get someone to stop and look at a section than by adding some animation?

GIFs can be used in a variety of ways. As Pamella Neely suggests, they can illustrate a step-by-step guide to using a product. They can also be used, much like infographics, to give life to otherwise boring data.

GIFs can also be potentially used to highlight specific sections of the page, drawing a user’s attention to an article or point along in the text.

A common way to use GIFs is as the header or welcome image, as they can show multiple aspects of a product over time, rather than relying on a static image to show its worth.

6. Use Visual Cues

If you want to make sure certain sections of your website attract enough attention, sometimes it’s a good idea to use visual cues to help draw focus.

Celine Roque comments that using lines or arrows can help catch a viewer’s attention and point them in the right direction.

A key point to remember is that these cues shouldn’t be obstructive; use them sparingly, so as not to clutter the page, and point them only to a few key areas, such as to certain places in the text or links in the navigation menu.

A simple way to use these arrows would be to include them only at the bottom of the page. After a viewer’s done scrolling through text, they are then directed to a specific area of the sight—perhaps one where they might learn more information or buy the product.

These visual cues don’t have to be the typical arrows and lines, either, and can actually be rather subtle. For example, try using an image related to your product to point out certain areas.

7. Avoid Bright, Eye-Burning Colors

While bright, neon colors may catch attention and are okay in small doses, when used frequently, they’re more likely just to cause headaches.

This states exactly why these can be problems: they quickly go from “surprising” to “annoying,” and can drive an individual away. Such bright colors can be obnoxious and, to some eyes, potentially childish.

Using bright colors sparingly can help alleviate the problem. If you want to use them, incorporate them with muted or darker colors, or use them in images that don’t rely on them solely.

8. Visual Storytelling

Everybody loves a good story, and using images or infographics to tell a story related to your product can quickly increase engagement.

Some methods of visual storytelling (such as showing your product in action) are already listed above. Justin Lafferty posts an infographic that gives several more great ideas to expand upon—for example, having the product in question turn users into superheroes.

You can similarly use visual storytelling to tell your product’s story from conception to release in an engaging way, or an idea of what goes on “behind the scenes” in your company.

9. Make Sure Your Graphics Relate to (and Enhance) Your Message

Using visuals are great, but using them just to use them isn’t. You might want to include that cute picture of a kitten you found, but if it bears no relation to your product, it’s likely going to be more distracting—and seem less professional—in the long run.

The ultimate goal of using visuals on a site is to engage a user and make them more interested in your product or service; thus, using images that don’t add anything are counterproductive. Think long and hard about what sort of images would be best to use in what places, and how they can improve and enhance an experience before including them.

Bonus Reason #11:

Include a Call to Action

As visual content is most often used to engage, it’s important to not only use it to enhance your message and catch attention, but also to encourage users to share your message and actively explore the site. Including this call to action in an image, rather than text, can help draw attention to it and, in turn, make it more likely users will listen.

Joydeep Bhattacharya goes over some of the best ways to implement this call to action in a visual format: easy-to-understand language that’s short, snappy, and instills a sense of urgency in the audience. This helps the reader remember (and understand) exactly what it is you want them to do.

Relatedly, if using visuals in a format where they can be shared, make sure your images are attractive enough to be shared, and include links back to your page—or, conversely, have them suggest sharing an article’s text instead.

Despite the importance of a call to action, you shouldn’t inundate a page with them; link one on the side, or put one at the bottom of the page, so as to make sure it’s there, but not constantly in a viewer’s face.

There are tons of options for creating amazing and engaging visuals for your website. Try playing around with these suggestions and see what works best for you.

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]]> Visual content has always been relevant in marketing, but it’s quickly begun gaining more steam. This is probably because…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/21-spectacular-seo-and-search-marketing-stats-and-facts-01258892/ Wed, 24 Jun 2015 16:47:19 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/21-spectacular-seo-and-search-marketing-stats-and-facts-01258892/ Social may be sexy, but search still pays the bills.

As reported below, organic search drives 51% of all visitors to both B2B and and B2C Web sites, while paid-search drives 10% (and social 5%, on average). 89% of customers begin their buying process with a search engine.

How can marketers get the most out of search? The search marketing stats and facts below provide some helpful guidance. Here are four key takeaways from this research:

• Do feed the gorilla. Search doesn’t only mean Google, but the elephant in the room can’t be ignored either. While everyone knows Google is the big dog, the magnitude of its dominance still amazes. Google accounted for nearly 40% of all U.S. digital ad spending last year, while Facebook’s share was about 8%; and Google’s advertising revenue is larger than that of the entire U.S. print industry.
• Be like Avis. As the company’s iconic slogan went, “When you’re number two, you try harder.” Or rather in the case of organic search, you need to try harder. While it’s great to be #1—the top result still generates nearly one-third of all organic search clicks—the share garnered by results two through four has increased significantly in the last decade. No matter the slot though, the key to getting clicks from any rank below #1 is to craft top-notch meta titles and page descriptions.
• Get creative. The top challenges in organic SEO are link building (easy-to-get links no longer have much value) and keyword research (the low-hanging fruit is long gone). To rank well today, use a web presence optimization (WPO) approach in order to earn high-quality links from online publications and industry influencers, and write to “be the best answer” to search queries rather than stuffing content with repetitive phrases.
• Open your wallet. Marketers spend a lot of money online; overall, U.S. marketers will spend more than $103 billion on search, display, social media, and email marketing by 2019—but search will remain the largest share of interactive spend (about 44%). And in PPC search ads, 86% of all ad impressions accrue to the top four spots.

For more insights, check out these 21 SEO and search engine marketing stats from top experts including Caroline Nicander Mohr, Laurie Sullivan, Berrie Pelser, Rob Petersen, Melissa Hoffmann, and John A. Lee.

3 General Search and Google Stats and Facts

1. Google estimates that the Internet now contains roughly five million terabytes of data – but the search giant has indexed only 0.04% of it all. (The Wonder of Tech)

2. Integrating PPC and organic SEO efforts results on average in a 25% increase in clicks and a 27% increase in profits over isolated or disconnected efforts. (Digital Marketing Philippines)

3. Google accounted for nearly 40% of all U.S. digital ad spending last year. Facebook’s share was about 8%. (eMarketer)

9 Organic SEO Stats and Facts

4. Lead generation (cited by 61% of corporate marketers) and Web site traffic (57%) are the top SEO objectives for marketers at enterprise companies in 2015. 54% want to improve traffic conversion rates. Just 24% cited attributing sales and revenue to SEO as a top goal. (MediaPost)

5. Organic search drives 51% of all visitors to business-to-business and business-to-consumer Web sites, whereas paid-search drives 10% and social 5%. (MediaPost)

6. Having video on the landing page of your site makes it 53% more likely to show up on page 1 of Google. (41 Stories)

7. A URL’s number of Google +1s is more highly correlated with search rankings than any other factor. (Ber|Art)

8. Ranking near the top of search results is great, but if you want the click, your title and description better be top-notch also. In 2005, searchers spent just under 2 seconds, on average, viewing each listing; in 2014 that has dropped to 1.17 seconds. (MarketingProfs)

9. The top organic result still captures about the same amount of click activity (32.8%) as it did in 2005. However, organic results that are positioned in the 2nd through 4th slots now receive a significantly higher share of clicks than in 2005–63% vs. 48%. (MarketingProfs)

10. 89% of customers begin their buying process with a search engine. (Biznology)

11. 72% of marketers from enterprises rate search engine optimization (SEO) as successful in achieving marketing objectives like lead generation and increased Web traffic. (MediaPost)

12. The top challenges in SEO are link building (cited by 41% of corporate marketers) and keyword research (39%). (MediaPost)

9 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Facts and Statistics

13. Google’s advertising revenue is larger than that of the entire U.S. print industry. (The Wonder of Tech)

14. 30% of companies outsource their paid search advertising, and 28% do so for display advertising. (MediaPost)

15. Total internet advertising spending is growing 16% per year. Mobile accounts for 11% of the total. (TechCrunch)

16. 61% of CMOs say search engines are an effective marketing channel. (AdWeek)

17. Nearly half of digital marketing budgets are spent on search, with 31% on paid search and 18% on SEO. (MarketingProfs)

18. In PPC search ads, 86% of all ad impressions accrue to the top four spots. (ClickZ)

19. Overall, U.S. marketers will spend more than $103 billion on search, display, social media, and email marketing by 2019 — growing at a 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) — but search will remain the largest share of interactive spend. (MediaPost)

20. U.S. spending on search marketing will reach $31.6 billion in 2015. (MediaPost)

21. U.S. spending on paid search and organic optimization will top $45 billion by 2019. (MediaPost)

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/dear-marketing-ninjas-get-human-feedback-ab-testing-landing-pages-01133932/ Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:24:36 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/dear-marketing-ninjas-get-human-feedback-ab-testing-landing-pages-01133932/ Hi there fellow marketing ninja (or just digital marketer as we used to be called)

Hope 2015 started out good for you.

My main work resolution for 2015 is to focus on people.

- I don’t care about gaining more followers if I don’t get to talk to them.
- I don’t want more email subscribers if the only thing I know about them is when and how many times they open my emails.
- And… I don’t care if my conversion rate goes up by 5% after I change the text on my CTA. I want to know “why”. Why people chose our product over others or why they are not buying from my landing page.

Talking about landing pages…

I know how time consuming building a great landing page can be.

Especially when it’s the first landing page you build for your company!

Source: Unbounce – Landing Page Optimization by the Numbers

Seriously, we need to come up with a good headline, a good call to action, gather engaging testimonials, find good graphics… And all that with a really conceptual knowledge of who our potential customers really are.

Sounds familiar? (Please tell me it’s not just me!)

The first time I designed a Landing Page for CustomerIcare I was LOST.

It was the beginning, we decided to launch some Adwords campaign and had little to no idea of what customers would really think of the product.

Sure I did some research, picked a target, looked at what our competitors where doing…

I also spent a lot of time reading about landing page optimization from the color of the perfect call to action to headline copy and page layout.

There’s just so much information out there! Even if all of us marketing folks joined hands, it would take us a lifetime to read and put everything to the test.
Without mentioning the fact that what worked for someone else might not work for you!

Join our inner circle to get a detailed list of 50 tools and websites to get feedback on your landing pages

(+ a bonus questionnaire to help you define your page's main focus)

Now I look back at those landing pages and cringe.
It’s like looking at this old awkward blog you were running with your friends in middle school (no you won’t get to see that. EVER. I think (pray) that it has been deleted).

Sorry about the personal rant.
Landing page optimization just overwhelms me!

Now stay with me, we’re getting to the helpful part (promise).

Then, I realized I wasn’t optimizing for people, I was acting like a machine

A machine with a checklist and a belief that other people had some magical knowledge of what my customers wanted to see.

People are not all programmed to be attracted to red CTA buttons.
They don’t care about the fact that your headline contains the exact same keywords as your ads.

They just want to know how you can help them!

Don’t get me wrong, A/B test is a must.
Later On.

First you’ll need to get some sort of validation of your concept.

I have one question for you today:

Do You Really Know Who Your Product Is For?

Seriously, think about it for a second.

Source: Marketing Charts

Why did you (or the CEO of your company) create the product or service you are trying to sell? Does it solve a problem for you?
For someone you know?
Or for a theoretical customer you’ve never met yet?

Let’s take Dropbox for example.

As Neil Patel says, “the value of the product is so obvious and simple, it’s genius”.

During a time when people were struggling with transferring files from one device to another, Dropbox made it simple.
Just drag and drop your file in Dropbox.
Here you go, you’re welcome!

But did the founders just woke up one morning, and think “oh I guess lots of people are frustrated with carrying USB keys everywhere”.
Well honestly I’m not in their head so I will probably never know.
But my guess would be: NO, they did not.

It’s what they did when launching that’s important:
They gathered feedback!

The Slideshare below tells their story way better than I do:

Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned from gueste94e4c

See what they did?
They first improved their landing page with the feedback they got from HackerNews.
Later on, they kept improving by looking at how their actual customers were thinking and acting.

They didn’t become successful thanks to word of mouth marketing.
They became successful because word of mouth marketing was the perfect fit for their customers.

It all starts with an assumption

That’s the honest truth.
Almost every first landing page is based on an assumption.

I’m not saying your assumption is based on nothing more than your morning shower thoughts.
What I’m saying is that marketers and entrepreneurs often have little to no knowledge of their actual customers when they get started.

For the good reason that they often have little to no customers!

The important thing is to seek validation for your assumption as early as you can.

Here you have a choice:
- you can design 20 different landing pages with different copy targeted to different people and see which one performs better
- you can design 1 or 2 and start asking people for feedback

There are things data can’t tell you

The problem with A/B tests is that you design them. You are testing YOUR ideas.

What if you missed something?
What if your customers are not who you think they are?

People will tell you that. A/B testing won’t.

Source: Mc Kinsey – The Moment of Truth In Customer Service

A/B test are meant to improve on something you know already works.
Let’s be real, in the beginning, you have no way to tell if your idea will actually work.

Where Do People Even Go To Get Feedback On Their Landing Pages?

Before we get into online resources, take a good look at your inner circle (friends, colleagues, family…).

Run a quick test with them: Ask them to look at your page for 10 seconds and ask them what the page is about after.

If they can’t tell you what you are selling, you’ve done something wrong.

You know how you start missing the most obvious things when you work on something for too long?
Always try to get the opinion of someone outside of your field of work.
If they understand what you do, your clients will get it too.

Now here’s how you can get feedback from total strangers from all around the world (sounds exciting, right?):

Ask For Feedback Directly On Your Landing Page

A great way to improve your pages “as you go” is to ask for feedback directly on your landing page.

It implies that you already have a good idea of which market you want to target. It will then help you either confirm your idea and improve on your copy or find out early on that you are maybe not targeting the right people.

Either way, it’s an amazing way to get direct feedback from potential clients and not only marketing professionals.

Here are few tools you can test out to gather this kind of feedback:

- Live Chat

We’ve received some really good feedback about our website using live chat and I now consider it an essential tool to have on any landing page.
A chat window can be a powerful lead generation tool when used right and we see more and more smaller business implementing it early on to get more insights on their target market. After noticing this, we decided to offer a free for life starter CustomerIcare plan to make it easier for smaller businesses to get started.
This will of course require you to be available to answer chats at least during few hours a day. But you’ll still be able to gather leads while offline using the integrated message form.

Want to read more about using live chat on landing pages?
Check out our Slideshare presentation: Why You Should Use Live Chat On Your Landing Pages

- Exit Intent Pop-up Window

There are many solutions out there offering this technology. OptinMonster is a rather affordable solution with a large range of features. It is primarily built to help you collect email addresses but you can customize the window which will allow you to design it for feedback collection.

- Feedback Apps

Contrary to pop-up apps that mostly specialize in lead generation, those apps are built to help you collect feedback.
One of the most popular ones is UserVoice. It’s a simple window that will show up at the bottom of your page like the chat window and ask people for feedback.
You can choose to run a survey or show a simple blank message field.

- Contact Us Form

Let’s not forget about the basics! You can easily tweak your basic contact us form to turn it into a feedback tool.
Just change its title for “Do you have any feedback for us? Anything you would change about this page?”. Sure, most visitors will ignore it but it should help you collect very useful feedback from at least a few potential customers.

Online Communities and Forums

They are going to become your best ally in this search for the perfect landing page.

Forums are far from dead!
They just matured and (much like George Clooney) turned into good looking mofos (ok some of them at least).

Since I love you, please enjoy this list of the hottest online communities as per today and my own personal judgement:

- Inbound.org

It’s the hella good looking baby of Hubspot and it’s already a huge resource for all online marketers out there.
They recently opened a group where you can post your landing page to get feedback on it.

- GrowthHackers

That’s where all the cool growth hacking kids share articles about how they increase conversions and gain new customers. But it’s also a great place to get feedback on your landing page. Just select “Ask Question” on the Submit page and ask away!

- Hacker News

Really active but extremely tech savvy community. I am not a big fan of the design but it’s definitely the number one community for all tech/startup related questions.
You can ask people to review your landing page under the Ask section. Just remember to put a clear description of what kind of feedback you’d like to hear before posting a link to your page.

- Small Today

Founded by the owner of one of the biggest small business and startup groups on Linkedin, the community has been steadily growing since its launch at the end of 2014. There’s a special category for asking for feedback called the Dragon’s Den.
You might not get as many comments there than on HN, GH or Inbound but you’re 100% sure to get reviews from experienced small business owner who’ve been through landing page designing before.

- Warrior Forum

Owned by Freelancer.com, this is one of the biggest and most active Digital Marketing forums out there. You can ask for feedback or help with your landing page on the conversion optimization category. Just remember that the principle of a community is to give before you ask for a favor. I am not familiar with Warrior Forum rules but it never hurts to show other members you actually want to be part of the community and not just leech on their knowledge.

- The Fastlane Forum

The forum focuses on helping entrepreneurs achieve success. Based on the ideas of the book “The Millionaire Fastlane”, it is a great place to meet motivated entrepreneurs. There’s a feed dedicated to Marketing, Sales, Social Media and Copywriting where people post advice but also ask for feedback.

The list could go on indefinitely but those are great starting points if you own or are working for a startup or small business. Just keep in mind that those communities are rather internet and tech oriented.

The good thing is that they are used to building and seeing landing pages.

If you are looking for more specific advice from people in your industry, you can run a quick google search for forums in your niche.
Since Google disabled the custom search for forums (discussions) you can just use a simple search structure: [insert name of your niche] + forum. For example “fashion forum”.
I’d also suggest you look for lists of the “best” forums in your niche. Just add “best” at the beginning of the search and enjoy the work of others!

If you are going ask for reviews there, just remember that forums are based on exchange and conversations so take time to answer a few other feeds before posting your question.

Forum marketing can be really beneficial for your business without mentioning all the interesting like-minded people you can meet there. But that’s a topic for another article…

Social Media Networks

Social media might not be as social as I’d wish it was but it’s still a great place to connect with people around the world.
Targeting more professional networks should help you gather quality feedback on your pages!

- Quora

I really like Quora. If you’re looking for feedback or just have a question, that’s where you should go! The crowd there is quite business minded and you’ll find a lot of successful entrepreneurs.

To get feedback on your landing page just post a new question along those lines “Need feedback on my new landing page” “What do you think about my new landing page (please be brutally honest)”. Or anything asking for help/advice/opinion…

Add the link to your landing page in the description after a small text summarizing why you are asking for feedback and few words about your company.

You’ll then be able to ask people to answer your question. Quora will probably not suggest you anyone that’s “free to ask” but know that most people still don’t require you to pay Quora credits to get their opinion. What I usually do is that I search for a topic (in that case marketing or startup…), look at the list of members and then search for their name manually in the ask people to answer window.

- Reddit

The Reddit community hates spammers but they love to help out by giving their opinion.

Check out the r/startups and r/entrepreneur subreddits to ask for feedback on your landing page. Just remember to include a short text or description explaining why you need help before you put a link.

I’ve seen people asking for feedback on both so this kind of post is actually welcome if you appear to genuinely be looking for help and not just promote your business.

- Linkedin

You can start by inmailing people in your network asking for their opinion. Don’t spam them if they don’t answer right away. It’s just a good way to collect few ideas from people you already know.

Once you’ve done that, you can search for Linkedin groups in your niche or focused on marketing.

The only problem with those groups is that most of users aren’t active commenters. Some read and a lot of them just post links to their own content making it hard to actually get noticed.

Here are 5 rather active groups where you should be able to get some feedback: Inbound Marketers, Small Business Network By Staples, Ecommerce and Online Marketing Experts, Landing Page Optimization Network, Online Lead Generation.

Include the link to your website at the end of your description and not in the title to avoid looking spammy. I also suggest you don’t show the link preview as lots of group owners might flag it as spam and never publish your post all together.

Don’t forget to regularly check on your posts and take part in the conversation. You’ll get to know way more this way and might even meet potential customers along the way.

Paid User Testing

If you have some money to invest, try running few tests on websites like User Think or User Testing.

You’ll get to choose which users you want testing your page and design a quick testing process for them with questions. Selected users will then go on your page and record themselves as they perform certain actions and answer your questions.

It can be a great way to have a first external opinion about your landing page from a less tech savvy crowd.

If you are looking to run a quick test and don’t really need in-depth data, you can give Usability Hub a try. I just tried it out as a tester and really like it.
It seems free so I suppose you might not get as many testers as with the paying solutions.

Now, The Hardest Part: Getting Over Your Fear Of Feedback

You know why many of us turn to A/B testing right away? It’s nor quick, nor easy but it is comfortable.

What I mean is that it doesn’t really gets you to step out of your comfort zone.

And you know what does? Asking people what they think of your work…
The truth is you’ll get “not-so-nice” feedback and that’s what will help you improve.
Yet it doesn’t make it easier to hear.

Fast Company wrote a great article called “9 Ways To Get Over Your Feedback Fear”

Remember It’s Impossible To Please Everyone

No matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are, you will never manage to please everyone.

With that in mind, you need to have a good idea of who you want to please before you get started.

You might for example want to provide an easy solution to smaller businesses. In that case feedback from a big company asking you for a more complete and complicated solution might not be the best feedback for you.

Derek Halpern wrote an amazing article about this rightfully called “You can’t make everyone happy – stop trying”.

The truth is, we’re all affected by negative feedback.
It’s human to want to make things right and have people love us.

It’s a human thing to do, but in the long run, it might kill your business.

Use Your Flaws to Make Your Strengths Even Stronger

Successful People are not flawless, they’re just really good at one or two things.

This is true about you but it will also be true about your landing page.
You need to focus on 1 thing and do it the best you can.

Let’s say for example that you don’t have the best design skills and don’t have money to pay for a top-notch web designer. Stop focusing on all the good looking designs you don’t have and start focusing on what you can do!

No design skills might mean that you can build a simple landing page with a strong focus on the copy.

Look at SpringSled’s landing page for example.
The first thing that comes to mind is: SIMPLE.

It’s simple, yes. But effective, as it has allowed them to get tons of early sign-ups.

If you are selling to smaller businesses know that what you consider a weakness can also become a strength.

Let’s consider this for example: As a startup you’re the outsider facing giants of your industry. Well, you are not the only one feeling this way. All small business owners do.

As an outsider, you are not the “safe” choice but you are the “human” choice.

If you think for one second that customers don’t let their emotions guide their business purchases, you are lying to yourself my friends.

In both B2C and B2B, buyers are partly guided by their emotions.

If you manage to tap into that and make them feel like you are on the same boat, people might choose you for your weakness.

You Can’t Take It Personally

I know, I know, easier said than done right.
But in that case, not taking it personally is crucial.

Nothing good can come from taking feedback too personally when it comes to your work.
It would either make you doubt every single one of your choices or you’d just find a reason not to listen to the feedback you received.

If you tend to take things very personally like me (I still think about people unsubscribing from our newsletter 1 month ago), just look at feedback like a random research or A/B test.
Look at it with a scientific eye.

Instead of thinking people are bashing you and your lack of skills, look for keywords and ideas that were mentioned more than once. Instead of just reading, start classifying the feedback…

And don’t forget, it is ok to ignore some feedback!
If you receive comments like “the color is so ugly” “I don’t like your writing”, just quickly read through them and delete them.
They are stating a judgement but not bringing anything to the table whatsoever.
Ugly color doesn’t mean anything to you.
I don’t like… doesn’t tell you much.

If you have time or a lot of this kind of comments, you can ask those user for more information instead of just ignoring their contribution.

To sum it all up… Go gather feedback. NOW!

You know what, let’s make a deal:

Post a link to your landing page in the comments with a small description of what you are using it for and I’ll give you your first feedback on it!

Don’t tell me what you are selling, I just need to know from where people arrive to your page!

Sounds good?
Let’s make this your first step on your feedback quest then!

Why?
Because, I care.

Read More:

• Best SMS Marketing Software
• Best Email Marketing Software

The post Dear Marketing Ninjas, Get Human Feedback Before A/B Testing Your Landing Pages appeared first on Business2Community.

]]> Hi there fellow marketing ninja (or just digital marketer as we used to be called) Hope 2015 started out…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/12-stats-local-search-mobile-search-2014-01028690/ Mon, 06 Oct 2014 14:38:24 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/12-stats-local-search-mobile-search-2014-01028690/ Since each day hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone use search engines to find products or services that are located near them, it’s important to understand how their behavior across devices influences purchasing decisions.

A May 2014 study by Google aimed to better understand consumers’ behavior using local search on smartphone and tablet devices. Participants of the study included 5,000 smartphone and tablet users in the United States. A portion of participants completed an online survey and another completed a smartphone-use mobile diary. The results were not surprising: consumers are using their smartphones to find local information. Once they find the local information they are looking for (and it better be easy for them to do so), smartphone users are more likely to visit the local store within a day, and they are more likely to make a purchase than non-local searches.

1. Google’s gone local: 59% of consumers use Google every month to find a reputable, local business (Search Engine Watch).

2. Mobile leads to local: 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results (Search Engine Watch).

3. Local searches lead to purchases: 61% of local searches result in a purchase (Search Engine Watch).

4. Mobile users are more like to make an in-store visit, fast: 50% of mobile users visit a store within a day after conducting a local search (Google).

5. Tablet and computer visits lead to in-store visits, but less than mobile: 34% of consumers on tablets or computers will go to a store within a day of conducting a local search (Google).

6. Local searches lead to sales: 18% of local searches lead to sales, compared to 7% for non-local searches (Google).

7. Consumers take action on location-based ads: More than 60% of consumers have used location information in ads. They say it’s important to have store address and phone number in ads on computers/tablets, and directions and the call button in ads on smartphones(Google).

8. Phone numbers are important: 68% of consumers on smartphones used the
get directions or call button on a smartphone local listing (Google).

9. Making it easy for users to call matters: 70% of smartphone users think a call button is important and 77% of tablet users think a call button is important (Google).

10. Google ads need phone numbers: According to Google, about 70% of mobile searchers have used the call button directly from Google ads to call businesses (Google).

11. In fact, 61% of mobile searches result in a phone call (Google).

12. Phone calls are high quality leads: More than half of mobile callers are researching a product or service, or want to complete a purchase when they call a business directly (Google). This makes phone calls high-quality leads, leads that you should be tracking accurately using call tracking technology.

This post barely scrapes the surface of the mobile/local search explosion happening right now, as we speak. To learn more about phone calls, local search and tracking calls from local search download the free guide, “The Marketers Guide to Call Tracking for Local Search.”

Read More:

• 18% of Local Searches on Smartphones are More Likely to Drive Sales Within a Day, Says Google
• Best Email Marketing Software – Best Email Marketing Services for your Business
• Best SMS Marketing Software

The post 12 Stats About Local Search and Mobile Search in 2014 appeared first on Business2Community.

]]> Since each day hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone use search engines to find products or…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/difference-infographics-instructographics-data-visualisations-0910615/ Tue, 17 Jun 2014 18:30:07 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/difference-infographics-instructographics-data-visualisations-0910615/ Rudyard Kipling once said: “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” Data is a lot like history. There’s a lot of it, it’s impossible to remember it all and it can be very dull. However, if it’s presented in the form of a visual story, it’s a lot easier to follow - which is where infographics, instructographics and data stories come in.

Infographic is a well-known term in the marketing world, but what are data stories and instructographics? There is some debate about the differences between them all, especially when it comes to data stories, also known as data visualisations, and infographics. Whilst they hold some similarities, there are some key factors which make them quite distinct from each other.

 

What are infographics?

Credit: http://www.oneworldoneocean.com/blog/entry/plastics-breakdown-an-infographic

Infographics are created to tell a story about something. They can be about almost any topic, from how much plastic the world uses to what makes a successful mobile app; but they are always aimed at a specific audience. Essentially, if you have some interesting facts or data to share, infographics are the most accessible way to do it. They’re clear, look attractive and are therefore very shareable. Although your audience enjoys evergreens and blogs, remember that they often don’t have time to read the whole thing. An infographic provides a neat summary of the information they need to know, so they can be a welcome break from the walls of text they see all day, every day.

Creating an infographic involves a lot of manual work. Someone has taken the time to create something that looks visually interesting, so people will actually want to spend their time reading it. A particularly good infographic has the potential to go viral.

How do instructographics differ?

Credit: http://www.coolinstructographics.com/custom-art-mugs-instructographic/

You may have guessed from the name that instructographics and infographics are very similar. The only real difference between the two is that instructographics tell people how to do something. For example, an infographic might inform you about the most popular kitchen colours, whereas an instructographic would tell you how to paint your kitchen.

Instructographics usually cover a DIY task, but again, they can cover almost any topic. Just like an infographic, they have the potential to go viral and are made to look as attractive as possible. Although a well-written ‘how to’ guide can cover much more information than an instructographic, they often aren’t as visually appealing or easy to follow.

…and data visualisations?

Credit: http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/app-usage-risk-report-visualization/#

Data visualisations are much like an unrefined infographic. They present quantifiable information and so are more likely to focus on numbers. In some cases, an entire data set is shown without editing and they rarely take a lot of handiwork to produce. They are much more likely to be generated by computer programs using algorithms, as their overall look isn’t too important.

They allow people to have access to all the data in a way that makes it easier to understand. Although they often do look visually appealing, they aren’t as attractive as infographics. This is because the data is far more important that the design. Many data visualisations are interactive and although infographics can be too, they’re often static. Moreover, an infographic can contain a data visualisation, but not the other way around.

If you have a lot of data to show, a data visualisation or story is probably the best way to present it. However, if you’re looking to attract a specific audience to your website, a well-crafted infographic or instructographic is a better choice.

We all love a good story, so instead of writing a text-heavy piece of content, forge your data into something that’s visually interesting and something people will want to share on their Facebook or Twitter profiles.

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]]> Rudyard Kipling once said: “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” Data…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/77-of-online-shoppers-say-they-want-to-talk-the-e-commerce-problem-with-conversation-0588730/ Sun, 25 Aug 2013 12:30:08 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/77-of-online-shoppers-say-they-want-to-talk-the-e-commerce-problem-with-conversation-0588730/ Last week Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro joined tastytrade on their YouTube show to discuss strategies for growing business and coping with some of the big changes we see happening in e-commerce. E-commerce is wonderful, Shapiro says in his interview, but it’s leaving behind millions of customers: Millions of transactions are done online, but over 50% of commerce done in North America—with business categories like real estate, home service, insurance, and more—require an actual conversation between people before a transaction can occur.

E-commerce and Conversation

Call centers are expensive. The staffing and space aren’t cheap, and the software required to make those systems work is often an extra hassle that companies don’t want to deal with. It is for these reasons that e-commerce companies don’t always encourage phone conversations with their customers, and this is what Shapiro says is the reason that those vast amounts of customers are being left behind.

There are some interesting stats to support this. According to a survey by IMShopping, 77% of online shoppers say they have wanted to talk to a live person before buying, and another study shows that 43% of all e-commerce transactions that begin with a web search end in a telephone call—yet many e-commerce companies aren’t providing a way for their customers to get in touch with them via phone. The Contact Us form isn’t always the best substitute either: Research shows that that 55.3% of top companies don’t respond to web leads. So when customers have questions that they need answered before they purchase, what happens to your lead? Honestly, they’re disappearing into the trash. If your customers want to talk to you and you’re either not providing them a way to get in touch or you’re not responding to their inquiries, they’re going to go to your competitor.

The Abandoned Shopping Cart

Every online retailer knows the pain of the abandoned shopping cart, but not all of them connect that reality with the possibility that their customers needed to reach them but can’t. In their attempts to conquer the abandoned shopping cart, A/B tests are performed, website design is rearranged, and more. But if 77% of online shoppers say they have wanted to talk to a live person before buying, there’s a possibility that they reached the shopping cart stage and had questions…but couldn’t get answers to those questions. Adding a phone number to the checkout page may not be enough: If your phone tree is complicated or makes reaching a live agent difficult, you may frustrate your customer just enough to drive them off your website.

The Un-Call Center Solution

Some e-commerce companies already recognize the value of being available for their customers, but the issues of cost, space, and software involved with setting up a call center are too contentious. That’s where the virtual call center comes in.

With a virtual call center—or the un-call center, as we call it—everything is stored in the cloud, so there’s no need for additional software or equipment setup. Additionally, extra staff isn’t required. Any of your employees can be an un-call center agent, since any phone can be linked to the system: mobile, home, work, or even Skype. With the cost factor and the space/staffing factor nonexistent, there’s really no reason that an e-commerce company shouldn’t make itself available for customers who need to talk.

Efficient and intelligent call routing and IVR is bound to have an impact on whether online shoppers complete a transaction as well. Whether they’re calling from the shopping cart stage or picking up the phone after first landing on your website’s homepage, having a system that is capable of routing that caller directly to the agent most qualified to handle the type of inquiry they have can mean the difference between a frustrated prospect and a quick conversion.

With statistics like 77% of online shoppers wanting to talk, and 43% of all e-commerce transactions ending in a phone call, the stakes are high. Providing your shoppers with the opportunity to reach you when they need to—and a response when they do reach out—can change the business you do in a big way.

Learn more: Integrated Virtual Call Centers: How Sales Teams Use Virtual Call Centers to Close More Business

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]]> Last week Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro joined tastytrade on their YouTube show to discuss strategies for growing business and…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/how-many-ads-does-google-serve-in-a-day-0322253/ Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:26:51 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/how-many-ads-does-google-serve-in-a-day-0322253/ Ad Impression Definition

What's an ad impression? For those who need a quick refresher, impressions are the number of times an ad appears on a web page. Therefore, your AdWords ads will always have more impressions than clicks. Impressions don’t have very much to do with the success of your ad, but they are an important measurement of how many eyeballs your ad is reaching.

If you aren’t getting many clicks on your ads, maybe you aren’t getting enough impressions. If you have plenty of impressions but still don’t have many clicks, that may be a hint that your ads themselves need some work. Low click-through rates contribute to a low Quality Score.

How Many Advertising Impressions Are on Google AdWords Per Day?

According to our recent Google statistics research, Google AdWords serves an average of 29,741,270,774 impressions per day (nearly 30 billion!).

This number is a combination of impressions from Google Search and the Google Display Network:

• Google Search has 5,570,808,015 impressions per day (5.57 billion).
• Google Display Network has 24,170,462,759 impressions per day (24.17 billion).

These ad impression statistics are based on our own original research as well as data from Google and SpyFu.

Why Does the Google Display Network Have More Advertising Impressions than Google Search?

You may be wondering, Why does the Google Display Network have so many more impressions than Google Search? Over 18 billion more impressions per day, to be exact. The main reason why this happens is that Google Search ads are limited to the Google Search site. While Google is always experimenting with how many more ads they can fit onto one Google search results page, there is a limit.

On the other hand, the Google Display Network has the power to place ads on all Google web properties, including Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, and Google partner sites. The Display Network can put ads across a larger number of sites, leading to more daily ad impressions.

Ad Impressions vs. Clicks: How Many Clicks on Google AdWords Per Day?

Google AdWords gets an average of 237,914,225 ad clicks per day. This number is a combination of clicks from Google Search Ads, generating 193,232,044 clicks, and Google Display Network ads, with 44,682,181 ad clicks. Google Search ads get considerably more clicks per day than advertisements on the Google Display Network as illustrated in the infographic.

Why does Google Search receive more ad clicks than the Google Display Network?

The fact that Google Search ads receive more clicks per day than Google Display Network ads may seem surprising considering that Google Display Network dominates the number of ad impressions per day. One might think that more impressions should naturally lead to more clicks, but this isn’t a given. Internet users interact with Google Search ads very differently than they do with ads on the Google Display Network.

• Using Google Search: Google Search is used by people who are often farther along in the buying process. They are usually searching with a specific intent in mind, making them more likely to click a promising ad. It’s also possible that they don’t realize the search ads are ads rather than organic results.

• Using Google Display Network: With Google Display Network, your ad is reaching people in a very different setting. When your ad shows up in Gmail, for example, you are entering a user’s home turf, and they are rarely in the mood for ad browsing when trying to stay in touch with family and friends. On Google partner sites, your ad is also probably competing with photos and content on the partner site.

Why Advertise on the Google Display Network if My Ads Aren’t Clicked?

You may be asking, is it even worth advertising on the Google Display Network if users aren’t noticing my ads? After all, what good are impressions without clicks?

Is certainly is worth advertising on the Google Display Network, despite lower click rates than Google Search. For one, display advertising is great for raising brand awareness. Even if users claim they aren’t noticing your ads, they absolutely are to some degree, whether they realize it or not. The higher number of impressions on the Display Network ensure that your ads are being seen by people across a wide variety of networks. These impressions aren’t worthless, even if they don’t all result in clicks.

While a user might not click your ad the first time they see it, brand trust is being built with every ad impression. When users see your ad in various Google partner sites, YouTube, and even Gmail, they are becoming more familiar with your business. This brand trust continues to build so that one day, when a user’s intent matches with your ad, they will be more likely to choose your business because they have seen you ‘around town’ previously.

Google remarketing takes this to the next level by using a cookie to follow a visitor after they leave your site. Who knows why they left – maybe they got distracted by an incoming email message, or accidentally clicked off. The generated cookie remembers what page someone visited on your site, and through the Google Display Network, places your ads related to that page across Google partner sites. Remarketing tends to be very successful because visitors continue to see your ad related to an offer you already know they are interested in, while simultaneously building trust through familiarity.

As seen in our Google Search Revenue Infographic, the number of clicks and number of conversions have risen on both Google Search and Google Display Network since the previous quarter.

Currently, the average number of clicks per day for Google Search ads is 193.2 million. This is a 21.6% increase from Google search ad clicks in Q2 2012. The average number of clicks per day for ads on the Google Display Network is 44.7 million, which is a 29.1% increase from clicks per day during Q2 2012.

While the number of clicks and conversions have increased, the average cost-per-click has decreased significantly. The average cost-per-click for Google Search ads in $0.53 cents, which is a %16.5 decrease since Q2 2012. The average cost-per-click for Google Display Network ads is $0.35, which is a %18.2 decrease from the previous quarter.

With higher total clicks, a higher number of conversions, and lower CPCs across both advertising networks, this is a great time for businesses who have been holding back to begin advertising with AdWords. The recent changes in the Google economy benefit both Google and AdWords advertisers – Google gets to increase revenues, while advertisers get more impressions, clicks, and conversions at lower costs.

Where Did this Ad Impression Data Come From?

The data for this blog post came from our recent study on Google web statistics, which we consider one of the most comprehensive studies on the internal workings of Google AdWords ever conducted.

The infographic data was collected from WordStream’s AdWords Performance Grader, a free tool that lets AdWords advertisers audit their account and see where they can improve. The tool has evaluated over $1 billion in annualized spending on Google in the past year. For this report, we looked at accounts that were evaluated between July 1, 2012 and October 30, 2012.

Our research for the infographic included over 2,600 AdWords accounts that ran the AdWords Grader in Q3 2012. The accounts in aggregate represented over $250 million in annualized spend. We had accounts with a wide range of spending; some accounts were very small, spending under $100 a month on AdWords. Others were much larger, with some spending up to millions per month in AdWords. The analysis looked at accounts across every industry, and came from all countries where Google does business.

This broad range of diverse data is a great representation of the wide range of customers Google AdWords does business with, and as a result we believe our research to be more accurate than other search marketing studies that deal exclusively with large clients.

If There Are Only 2 or 3 Billion Searches on Google per Day, How Can There Be 5 Billion Ad Impressions?

It’s important to keep in mind that when we say there are 5 billion ad impressions on Google Search per day, we are discussing total ad impressions. One Google SERP can contain 12+ ads per page. Also, we are counting impressions from the Google Search Partner Network, which accounted for approximately 15% of the ad impressions in Q3.

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]]> Ad Impression Definition What’s an ad impression? For those who need a quick refresher, impressions are the number of…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/ab-testing-generates-a-98-lift-in-conversion-rate-for-dhl-0301651/ Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:25:36 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/ab-testing-generates-a-98-lift-in-conversion-rate-for-dhl-0301651/ One of (the many) favorite parts of my job is being part of the successes ion’s customer achieve in their online marketing campaigns. For several years we have worked with the folks at DHL Express. They are a group of smart marketers who are hyper-focused on improving results across the globe — 220 countries to be exact!

Earlier this year, in my “Best of A/B Testing” blog series, I showcased how A/B testing of courier ethnicity and gender increased conversion rates 15%-30% for DHL. Just a few months later, I’m back to tell you how we helped DHL to increase conversion rates over 98%!

Every test should ask the 5 W’s — who, what, where, when & why?

Who is target audience?
Businesses interested in import services, for single shipments or management of multiple global suppliers.

What was tested?
The A/B split tested a long-standing “winning” template against a Challenger. The Challenger template increased the visibility of the form, moving it into the top right corner, adjancent to the courier image. Additionally, friendly male courier image replaced the logistics image.

Control

Challenger

When did the test run?
The test launched in July and ran approximately 2-4 weeks, depending on traffic source. The tests were validated at a 95% statistical confidence.

Why was the test run?
A “winning” template had been used for several months, resulting in plateaued conversion rates. A new import campaign was the perfect opportunity to A/B test a new template for improved results.

What happened?
The Challenger landing page was determined the winner at 95% statisical confidence, resulting in over a 98+% in two countries.

The moral of the story?
Just because you found a winning landing page doesn’t mean that your work is done. Testing can enable a discipline of continuous improvement and creative experimentation that means never leaving conversions on the table.

Are you testing landing pages in all of your campaigns? If no, why not?

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]]> One of (the many) favorite parts of my job is being part of the successes ion’s customer achieve in…

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/5-of-the-biggest-and-still-the-best-online-advertising-methods-0186358/ Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:30:13 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/5-of-the-biggest-and-still-the-best-online-advertising-methods-0186358/ Last Year Internet Ad revenue hit $31bn. Q4 saw the best quarterly result ever at $9bn with a 20% increase on spend from the same period in 2010.

Figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau, which is the trade association for online advertising showed:

• 46.5% of the spend was on search advertising on websites such as Google
• About 8.1% was on online classified advertising
• 34.8% was on display advertising which includes banners and digital video commercials.

5 of the Best Online Advertising Methods Today

1. Websites and Blogs

If you want to make the best of online advertising then you need to have a website or blog. Most online advertising is geared to direct people to your website, a central hub if you will. A large percentage of internet users use the internet as their preferred choice to find information about goods and services. Your website or blog is a permanent shop window that is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Tip: Just having a website or blog does not mean you will get traffic, leads, sales. You need to be 100% clear on the purpose of your blog before starting.

2. Social Media Websites

Social Media websites such as Facebook and YouTube are constantly seeking to increase their advertising revenues. Both provide full details of their advertising possibilities on their websites;

• Facebook

Facebook allows you to select your audience by location, age and interests and to test out simple image and text based ads. It suggests that companies advertising on Facebook can:

• Advertise their own web page
• Create demand for their products by creating relevant adverts
• Publicize an event such as a product launch or anniversary.

Payment is either made by “pay per click” or by “impression” (visitors see the ad whether they click it or not). You can set a daily budget that can be adjusted up or down at any time.

• YouTube

YouTube offers a host of resources such as “how to” Guides and advertisers playbooks that will show you exactly how to set up and run your first successful marketing campaign with it.

Twitter also recently announced that it allows users to place self serve ads. You can find out more about Twitter Advertising here

Tip: Any Advertising on social media networks should only be undertaken as part of a coordinated social media strategy. if you are still unsure read this: 13 Reasons Using Social Media for Business is Non Negotiable

Read more: How Effective Is Online Advertising

3. Banners and Display Advertising

Display Banners, or Banner ads, were the first major method used for online advertising. By 2009, they had dropped to less than 23% of online advertising spend as pay per click or keyword advertising became the predominant force.

Display banners still have merit and are good for special offers or for reinforcing a brand. Banner ads are small adverts that normally come in various rectangle forms. They appear on websites and serve as a link directly to the advertiser’s website: when you click on a banner your browser instantly redirects you to that site.

The popularity of banner ads is partly due to fact that they are simple to produce and publish. They are also highly measurable. Depending on the ad and the producer or service, advertisers can calculate the cost per sale – this is the amount of advertising money that is spent to make one sale.

4. Pay Per click (PPC) or Keyword Advertising

Search engines and many websites (including social networks sites such as Facebook and YouTube), carry small adverts with embedded URL’s. When someone clicks on these adverts, the company that put them there is charged. This is considered by many to be the best online advertising method by far and has been growing at a remarkable rate. Unlike traditional advertising pay per click is user activated. Users like it, because it costs them nothing and they only use it if there is something that attracts them.

The advantage of pay per click for advertisers is that they only pay for the actual click through to their site. With other methods of advertising, both offline and online, you have no particular idea of how much it will cost you to attract each visitor. A user that clicks through into your site is likely to be interested in what you have to say, because these users are actively looking for information or researching what you have to say, your product service or offering.

The largest Pay per Click advertiser by a long way is Google and they have a large library of information available to walk small business owners through the process of starting a successful PPC campaign. Google

Tip: As promising and as exciting as having instant customers sounds, don’t think PPC is as easy as it sounds! There are many different facets that you have to consider when designing and implementing a successful PPC campaign. Which if you ignore or get slightly wrong could have a significant impact on your investment.

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With the huge increase of companies operating online and selling on the internet there has been a dramatic increase in the competition between companies to get visitors to their websites. When carrying out research most people will only look at the first page of search results and quite often only the first two or three.

An article on Search Engine Watch shows that 36.4% of people click on the first result and only 2.2% click on result number ten, the last result on the first page.

Making sure your site gets high up in the search results is important to the success of your website. There are ways to improve your search engine rankings, and search engine optimization is the method of doing this.

Tip: Search Engine Optimization is a long term strategy one that will require constant attention. ( When your website starts to move higher in the rankings, those that you displace will try to recover their ground.)

The best online advertising methods can and will only be the best if you in fact have a sound, well thought out plan for your advertising campaign; whether that is SEO or social media. The simple fact is if you go running ahead online without due care and attention you could end up with a whopping great investment of time and or money for little to no return.

What are the best online advertising strategies or methods that you use for your business? Leave a comment below.

Read more:

• Top SEO Marketing Tools
• Best SEO Software: Top SEO Tools for Keyword Research, Linkbuilding and Competitor Analysis

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]]> https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/testing-2-step-vs-1-step-conversion-forms-022833/ Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:30:40 +0000 https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/testing-2-step-vs-1-step-conversion-forms-022833/ One of the many aspects of online usability that I constantly harp on is making the conversion process as simple for users as possible. Don’t distract them. Don’t annoy or frustrate them. And make the conversion funnel seem as short and as painless as possible. That doesn’t necessarily mean "the shorter the better" for every process; it means "as short as possible yet sufficient." Users need information, trust, and confidence, and you need to give it to them as simply and efficiently as possible to encourage a conversion.

Let’s take a page out of Disney’s book. It’s impossible for them to let everyone that visits their theme park just walk on to each ride. Waiting is a necessary part of their business model. But they don’t put people in a single file line wrapping around half the park so you can’t even see the attraction you hope to (someday) experience. They curl it around. They tell you the approximate wait. They put fun distractions along the way. They even introduced Fast Pass to break up your waiting times. In essence, they don’t actually shorten the time you have to wait; they just make it SEEM easier. And that makes people happy.

This approach translates well to conversion funnels. It tells us that multi-step forms might be good, but be sure to inform users of their progress along the way. Break up tasks into chunks when possible, but not in so tedious a way as to frustrate users. Sure, Disney visitors will get the Fast Pass, but I imagine most would just roll their eyes if you could get a Faster Pass to get your Fast Pass quicker.

I’ve often wondered the actual effect on conversion rates of multi-part forms, and recently I was given a very basic opportunity to find out exactly that. A fairly simple site with one objective: get users to fill out a form to request a mailing. This simplistic setup really made the comparison quite direct. The form is located on EVERY page of the site, very prominently, as you will see the actual sizes in the image below. So, the question is: which form performed better?

The results? Users greeted by the friendly 4-field form were not only more likely to fill it out, they were more likely to finish the entire process as well. As a matter of fact, 14% more people finished the 2-step form than finished the 1-step form (94% confidence). This doesn’t even include the people who abandoned after the first step of the 2-step form (about 12% of those filling it out), so follow-ups that are able to convert make the difference even more dramatic.

Why did it happen? Without diving too far into our psyche, as that’s well outside my area of expertise, I imagine it’s because shorter forms are less daunting. It just SEEMS easier. It may be largely subconscious as well. Obviously, if people know they are submitting a request to be mailed information, they must realize they’ll need to enter an address at some point. But those simplified fields and big text just look so welcoming and easy.

So does this mean you should go break your forms into two steps? No, not necessarily. As I mentioned earlier, this was "short yet sufficient" for this particular website. If you’re selling $65k automobiles moving the e-mail address to the second page of your form is likely a misguided attempt at conversion optimization. Am I going to push to turn this into a 3-step process now? No. I can’t even think of a way to split it up without having users roll their eyes at me.

The takeaway: break the steps of your conversion process into the most reasonable slices as you can. If forms are as simple as is sufficient, you’ll see increasing form completion percentages and ultimately conversions. Not to mention starting the conversion process by getting an e-mail address can be very valuable in converting abandoned visitors (which is a discussion for another day).

Do you have a website that is ripe for testing? Want to discuss strategies or results that you’ve had? Leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail.

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]]> One of the many aspects of online usability that I constantly harp on is making the conversion process as…

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