Tip #3 – Share a 360º Image 

Interactive snapshots come included with your virtual tour.  These are great for sharing on Facebook.  Simply click on the image to twirl around and take a full 360 look at a featured room or outdoor space. Now that buyer can finally envision how their eclectic collection of rather large mirrors can fit into a room – in a house which suddenly became their dream home.   

Then create a contest on social media, offering a gift card to the first one to find your hidden image.  Even after the item is found, the VR tour game is still very shareable on social media: “I found it, can you?” As visitors virtually search for the hidden-in-plain-sight mascot, they will be exploring each room of your listing, peering at every detail of your gorgeous property. Successful sellers know that leaving a lasting impression is everything.

Tip #4 – Run a Promotional Contest

Everybody loves a free raffle.  Invite followers to share the link of the virtual tour with all of their followers and friends.  Offer a fun prize or a gift certificate as an incentive to share, comment, or tag a friend on the post. Select a winner at random or choose the person who tagged the most friends.  

Matterport VR tours are the perfect platform to introduce prospective buyers to their future dream home or commercial space.  These tours showcase listings in a visually-stunning, professional, and modern way.  Maximize your impact on social media to draw attention to these captivating, immersive images and make the most of your Matterport investment.

HubSpot’s Operations Hub Unifies Your Data

HubSpot’s Operations Hub can help you unify your data without intruding on current processes. Let’s say your marketing team, sales team, and services team have been on different platforms for years and everyone in those departments is well-trained and comfortable with using those platforms. The last thing anyone wants to hear is: “Everyone, all departments are now moving to x platform. Prepare to be assimilated.” Operations Hub lets you avoid becoming public enemy number one. How?

All supported data from all supported sources can be synced to, sanitized in, and synced back out through Operations Hub to all of the original sources. Let’s say that the marketing team has 100 contacts, the sales team has 70 contacts, and the services team has 30 contacts, all on their individual platforms. You already know you don’t have a total of 200 contacts because one specific client may have separate records in each of the marketing, sales and services platforms. When all of that data is brought into Operations Hub, it can be compared, consolidated, and then synced back. If there are a total of 180 records at the end of this data consolidation process, all of the original platforms will have those 180 records. All you would need to do afterwards is communicate a data entry standard to the rest of the company so that future records will match.

HubSpot’s Operations Hub Streamlines Your Work Processes

Let’s say a site visitor fills out a contact form. The marketing department has a workflow that emails the visitor, confirming their information and establishing a follow-up. At the same time, someone else calls in because they’re interested in a product. The sales team has a workflow that marks them as a qualified lead and assigns a sales rep to them. A third person calls because they’re having a problem. The services team has a workflow that creates a ticket, emails a copy of the ticket to the client, assigns a service rep, and sets a priority. In this example, the workflow automation platforms that each department uses are different, but all are used efficiently by well-trained and capable employees. The thought of introducing Operations Hub may sound like you’d be complicating the situation by adding to the stack of platforms you already have, but in this type of situation, Operations Hub is actually a major asset.

Let’s revisit this example with Operations Hub in the picture, which means that all of your company data is now centralized and organized into the HubSpot CRM. When a site visitor fills out a form, your marketing department has two options:

• Store the contact information in the original system (which will trigger the marketing department’s existing workflow) and let Operations Hub sync the contact information to all platforms within five minutes; or,

• Store the contact information in HubSpot and let Operations Hub trigger the marketing department’s workflow in the original system, and let Operations Hub sync the contact information to all platforms.

The sales and service departments would have these options as well. 

All of the supported platforms throughout the company will have freshly synced, up-to-date contact information. Your employees can use the workflow and data management system they have always known and are good at using. Your customer experience will improve because your contact data will be unified across all departments. If a department uses a system that isn’t supported by HubSpot, you can use webhooks (a secure online method of passing information) to pull and sync data. Since Operations Hub links all of your systems together, you minimize disruption, maximize productivity, improve the customer experience, and improve communication and information sharing between your different teams.

HubSpot’s Operations Hub Paves the Way for Clear Growth Strategy

Real information helps you set realistic growth expectations and realistic company goals. When you analyze your processes, you might learn new ways to automate. This may free up work hours, allow your company to better care for clients, and reduce overhead. If the stories behind your numbers tell you that gaining 50 new contacts and 5 new clients is a realistic possibility, you might plan for 70 new contacts and 8 new clients to make sure you’re covered. As you get to know these new contacts and clients, you can uncover opportunities to provide new services or products, which can both improve your brand reputation and make your company more profitable. When you have more accurate data, your perspective will be more accurate as well, which will make your strategies and decisions more effective.

Stabilize Your Growth Process with HubSpot’s Operations Hub

As your business grows, HubSpot Operations Hub gives you more stability. You can unify your data, streamline your work processes, and create a clear growth strategy. Most importantly, you can have a clear picture of where your business stands and the direction it is headed, and you can prepare for any challenges that may lie ahead. When all of your data is in one place, the departments within your business can work together during the growth process instead of producing at different rates. 

Many scaling businesses with major hopes and dreams ultimately fail because they weren’t properly prepared to handle the growth process. By making Operations Hub a part of your internal structure, you can turn the romance of growing your company into actual growth and progress.

Determine the Buying Stage

How people search for their topic shows you exactly where they are in the buying journey. In our exercise above, you can see how Hiking Harry progresses through the stages based on the questions he’s searching.

In the Awareness stage, the search is rather vague with ‘best hiking backpack.’ He’s searching for ‘problem-based keywords’ – he needs a backpack, so he’s looking for the best one. As he progresses down the buying stage, his next question is in the Consideration Stage, in which he searches for solution keywords (what is the best hiking backpack for a four-day backpacking trip?) He’s starting to narrow down his options based on his findings.

Short vs. Long-Tail Keywords

An important concept to remember when considering keywords is ‘long-tail keywords.’ These are narrow keyword phrases that your specific customers will be searching for. Rather than having a broad keyword such as ‘backpacks,’ use a targeted keyword phrase such as ‘mountain backpack for short hikes’ or ‘lightweight mountain backpack.’

As you’re developing your list, your buyer personas will determine the language you use. Hiking Harry will use different language than Mountaineering Molly versus Trail-Runner Terry. It’s important to keep each persona in mind as you create the list of keywords.

Long-tail keywords greatly increase your ability to rank in the top 10 search results. They are specifically targeted to the person who is trying to find you. Once you have your keywords you can optimize your web pages and content around those keywords.

If you need a hand with this process, Seapoint Digital can help. Whether it’s developing your buyer personas, determining the buyer’s journey, developing long-tail keywords, or creating content around those keywords, we’re experts in everything inbound marketing.

Why Do You Need a Buyer Persona?

Do you sometimes feel you’re throwing something at the wall (usually something that costs money and uses resources) just to see if it sticks? Whether it’s marketing dollars, product innovation money, or employee resources, minimizing waste is essential in business.

Buyer personas help you focus your energy and resources on specific activities that will actually reach your customers. Targeted ‘throwing’ and knowing it will ‘stick’ saves you money and helps you learn more about your audience.

Your buyer personas will help you identify who you want to reach. Every action the company makes is for your personas, whether it’s content, social media, web site, or even billing and finance. Every department should understand the personas and know how to interact with each of them.

How to Create Your Buyer Persona

When creating your buyer personas, the more details you have the better. However, your personas don’t ever have to be ‘done.’ These roles are forever growing and evolving as your business grows and evolves.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating your persona.

• Look through your contacts database to uncover trends
• Use forms to capture important persona information
• Identify questions to ask to identify your personas
• Create a Buyer Persona Development Worksheet for each persona. HubSpot even provides a free template you can download.

If you are having issues understanding or creating your buyer personas for your company, Seapoint Digital can help! We have resources and tools you can use to narrow down your personas and to help you focus your marketing efforts to reach the right customers for your business.

Remember to always optimize these crucial elements on every page, using appropriate keywords to show search engines what you’re all about:

• URLs
• Page headers
• Internal links
• Images (alt descriptions)
• Page content
• Meta descriptions

Set up Your NAP

Your NAP (name, address, phone number) needs to be consistently included throughout your site. One the best ways to do this is to include it in the footer of your site pages. Of course, you’ll also want to include this info on your About Us page and/or Contact Us page.

Create Local Content

Google searches for more than just precise keywords. It also looks for clues that tell it more about your business and what it does. Because of this, you should create content about local issues, other local businesses that complement your business (like your fish supplier or the local guy who hand-crafted your dining tables), and your community in general. This will reinforce your location, which is vitally important for local search, as well as what you’re all about. Besides, creating local content will create goodwill between you and your neighbors.

Create and Verify Local Profiles 

You know all those little star reviews you see when you Google a local business? Those reviews are only possible because the business has set up a local profile on Google My Business. You want reviews like that, too. So make sure you set up and verify your local profile on Google My Business. Facebook business page reviews and comments about your business also help search engines identify your business and point customers in the right direction. Both of these services are completely free, so if you don’t have both of them, there’s no reason you shouldn’t. 

Once you create a GMB profile, make sure to verify it as a local business. This process usually doesn’t take more than a few days. However, some have reported not receiving notice of verification for weeks, so you’ll want to stay on top of this and make sure you see the process through.

Our Client’s Challenge

During this phase of the trial, Hope4MCI needed to find a small group of 30 qualifying participants. These would need to be individuals from varying backgrounds to keep the results unbiased. In order to be a qualifying participant, a person would have to show symptoms of Mild Cognitive Impairment and positively scan for early signs of Alzheimer’s Disease, but should not yet have full onset dementia. The researchers estimated that 300 individuals would need to respond to the call for testing in order to vet out 30 qualifying participants.

Efficient timing was vital. The trial was set to begin 9 weeks from inception. All participants would have to be identified and assessed for qualification before the start of the trial. Because of the medical nature of the study, additional approvals would add additional steps and red tape. All ad copy and images would need to pass medical board compliance, as well as Google compliance. Both the Medical board and Google must give approval before any outreach could begin.

Strategy

With such a short window of time to work with, Seapoint Digital decided to expedite the process and broadcast on the top online advertising platforms: Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. 

Targeting and Demographics

Seapoint implemented targeted ads on Facebook and Google that focused on individuals between the ages of 34 and 65+ who lived within a specified mile radius of each testing center.  The distance was tailored to each testing center city’s geography.  For example, the Facebook ads for the New Jersey location included individuals who had posted about an interest in Alzheimer’s awareness organizations, as well as employers of organizations associated with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Both Google search and display ad campaigns were built for each of the location sites.  The Google ads targeted individuals who had recently searched for “early signs of dementia,” “symptoms of Alzheimer’s,” “Alzheimer clinical trial,” and variations of these terms.

Technical Strategy: HubSpot

Each testing center location needed its own way of outreach and contact for the ad campaign in their area. Seapoint knew an effective solution: create a custom landing page for each campaign’s geographic area. Believing in the value of the campaign, and knowing from experience that HubSpot’s suite of tools would be effective, Seapoint Digital reached out to the HubSpot team and informed them of the clinical trial and the situation that Hope4MCI found itself in. After they learned about the campaign from Seapoint, HubSpot showed their support by providing their software at a substantial discount for the limited amount of time that the campaign would require.

Campaign Results

At the time Seapoint Digital came onboard, there was an extremely limited time for the creative team to write copy, design graphics, and execute video production. Additionally, all creative assets needed to be approved by the appropriate compliance teams. The creative team focused intently on understanding the project and worked effectively with Hope4MCI for minor adjustments to the creative. Because of this, Seapoint was able to begin the project, complete production, and receive compliance approval in a single week. 

All ads successfully passed compliance and were live on the target start date.  Over 10,800 individuals clicked to view more information on the landing pages.  Of those individuals, 195 (1.8%) went on to complete the submission form that was evaluated at each testing site.  The campaign was on a trajectory to reach and exceed the goal of 300 conversions before the trial start date.

Although Hope4MCI projected that 300 respondents would be required to yield the 30 qualifying participants, the ads were targeted so effectively that all participants were secured after only 150 forms had been completed.  This brought tremendous savings in both time and money.  The campaign concluded with half of the marketing budget remaining.  

Additionally, because the campaign concluded many days before the 9 week deadline, the testing sites had ample time to confirm that each of the 30 respondents did, in fact, qualify for the trial before the start date.

Looking Forward

The Hope4MCI clinical trial of AGB101 was able to maintain its sponsorship because it obtained its needed participants, and has continued in its noble effort to relieve Alzheimer’s patients of their debilitating symptoms.  

We at Seapoint Digital are very proud to have been able to play a small part in this big step forward.

Reason #2: Time is Money

You know that each of your homes has something special, and you’ve taken the time to become familiar with the details of each property. If only there was a way you could share all these details, point them out to the right buyers, and not have to spend a moment extra of your time with the wrong prospects…

Your buyers can explore these details at their leisure in the virtual tour, which is great, because now you don’t have to repeat yourself over and over.

A VR shoot can be shared on the MLS, your website, your social media, and you can share direct links. These tours have the potential to reach thousands of buyers online.

Reason #3: An Open House Only Lasts One Day

And now, with COVID-19, you have the additional fight of either lines of people waiting to get in and rushing them with information so that the next couple can get in or out. Or missing potential buyers entirely because they don’t feel safe attending in person.

With a virtual reality tour, you won’t be limited to one Saturday to show off your house. People will be able to peruse the halls at their leisure – and isn’t it better (and safer) that way? They won’t feel pressured and will likely spend more time exploring all the cool nooks and crannies that makes the space unique.

The Solution is Clear

With a Matterport virtual reality tour, you’re able to have the entire property showcased. The tour utilizes 3-dimensional data, combined with HDR photography to create stunning views your buyers will love. It’s a whole new way to see a home.

Does the Stock Image Match Your Content?

When you’re posting an image as an addition to a blog post or tweet, be sure that the picture helps your content rather than hindering it. The image should complement the article and not act as a distraction. If you’re posting an article about the best ways to stick to your new year’s resolutions, including an image of a checklist or a list of goals makes far more sense than an image of someone lying on a couch.

You want your image to be engaging enough to cause the viewer to stop and read the content rather than just scroll past it– a power images possess that text alone cannot. However, make sure your content still gets center stage. Remember to give just as much attention to the quality of your hashtags and description, too!

Is it a Quality Photo?

Stock photos can be a double-edged sword. They’re great for sourcing professional photography quickly, but occasionally come across as stale, staged, or impersonal. It’s always worth taking a closer look at the model’s clothing, haircut, expression, or other little details before setting your heart on an image.

Does it Fit My Company’s Branding? 

When a customer is scrolling through their Instagram feed, why will they stop at your photo? It’s because of your brand. I don’t mean your logo, but the look and feel of what you’re sharing and how that communicates your brand to your viewer.

A quick scroll through Nike’s Instagram feed shows a consistency in their images that represents their brand and their Instagram presence. While Nike is not using stock photography for their Instagram, their strategy is still helpful if stock photography is all you can get your hands on. The posts are active, often featuring one athlete doing an activity, or showing a new piece of sportswear. If a customer is quickly scrolling through his feed, he will recognize posts as belonging to Nike because of the consistency of their photographic themes.

In a similar way, be sure to have your brand’s image goals in mind as you’re searching for images to feature in your content. Some brand style guides occasionally have rules on selecting stock photography, too!

Is the Image Optimized for Each Social Network?

When posting an image to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram, make sure the image is appropriate for each social network. For instance, a more casual image may work for Instagram, but perhaps not for the more secular-oriented environment on LinkedIn. Consider where the image will be posted, the audience of each network, and the content you’re sharing. Having a solid knowledge of your audience on the various social networks will help guide you in choosing the right image.

When it comes to posting images on social networks, there are also differences in photo sizes! An image that may work on Instagram may end up getting cropped on Twitter. Be sure to have multiple sizes cropped and available when you go to post on social media, too.

Reporting that Gives Credit Where Credit is Due

Multi-touch revenue attribution reporting helps you recognize everything your marketing and sales teams did to turn a website visitor into a client. It follows details about your client’s story through web pages, landing pages, blog posts, social posts, marketing emails, sales emails, and calls. It tells you how your eventual client interacted with your company through page views, form submissions, and conversations; or clicks on social posts, CTAs, and marketing emails. Most importantly, multi-touch revenue attribution reporting helps you make balanced, well-informed decisions regarding your marketing and sales processes so you can keep the right doors open for future clients.

You might be thinking, “My site isn’t a HubSpot site, so as good as this might be, it would be too much trouble to set up.” Good news: even if your site isn’t hosted by HubSpot, you can still use the multi-touch revenue attribution report. Your developer team can add simple code to your current website’s pages so that multi-touch revenue attribution reporting will work, making it easier for you to trace your client’s journey. 

One of the biggest benefits of using HubSpot’s reporting feature is that you can configure the report yourself. The HubSpot CRM allows for all data to be stored and accessed through the same platform, so you won’t have to rely on a separate data team to gather information from different databases and piece it all together. Since you can create these reports on your own, you can have the information you need whenever and wherever you need it. That means no more waiting a couple hours (or days) for a data team to get you an answer that you need right now.

Get Insightful Reporting with HubSpot

When we read a story, our minds delve into deeper meaning and application – we don’t limit  ourselves to just reading words. Does your reporting limit you to numbers and raw data, or does it allow you to see the bigger picture? Multi-touch revenue attribution reporting is among many of HubSpot’s reporting features. It can give you useful information and insights that will help you make good decisions for your company.

Get Listed on the Major Search Engines

Claiming or creating a local business listing on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo ensures that search engines are getting the most accurate information about your local business. What are your services, hours, information, pictures? All of this information can be provided for your customers. However, as Ben Parker once said, “with great power comes great responsibility.” As algorithms change, occasionally your information may adjust with it. Be sure to keep up to date with these changes to make sure your information is always correct.

Citations, Citations, Citations

Once you have guaranteed that your local information is on your website and search engines, focus your energy on citation building. As a service provider, look to see what websites your competitors are listed on. Look for directories specific to your field. Making these detailed efforts will help your customers find you.