Inbound Marketing Tips for Business Owners

Yext VS CitySearch: A Fight Between Business Search Sites

Laura Hogan — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I think one of the best parts of Googling a business these days is the ability to see the reviews other customers are giving that business, especially for the service industry. Websites like CitySearch and Yext are helping businesses make it easier to manage these listings. One of our client's just asked for information on a few of these online city guide sites so I thought it would be beneficial to compare two types of platforms that your business could be a part of.

CitySearch

Citysearch is a free online website that provides information about businesses having to do with dining, entertainment, retail, travel, and professional services in various cities throughout the US. A company’s Citysearch listing includes contact information, maps, driving directions, editorial, and user reviews.

As a company, you can add business details, make changes to existing business details, and provide supportive information for customers. Citysearch tracks the people who visit your Citysearch business page and provides you with statistics about your visitors. It also allows you to publish information about special offers for your customers and add links to your website, Facebook page, and Twitter account.

The reviews are probably the most important part of citysearch. Past customers can come and leave reviews on your account listing which will reflect kindly on your business and also will show up when someone searches for you on Google.

They have a video that explains it pretty well on their about us page:

http://www.citysearch.com/aboutcitysearch/about_us

Yext

Yext allows you to create one listing with all the information you want regarding your business. Unlike CitySearch, Yext is not free but you get a lot more perks from it. Yext puts your listing on over 35+ sites like CitySearch, Yelp, Yahoo, etc. This makes it a ton easier to manage your listings. You aren't constantly logging in and out to a couple sites trying to make sure your reviews are good and your information is up to date.

Yext has a couple packages but the PowerListings Complete Package gets your business PowerListings on 35+ sites in the "Yext Network." With a combined reach of over 150 million searchers a month. This package gets you premium listings with photos, special offers and descriptions and full control on each site. The best part about this one is that you can track and report on as well as be allerted to what customers are saying about you with review monitoring.

Conclusion:

These two sites are fairly hard to compare. One is pretty large scaled and the other is small scaled. Whichever one you choose depends on what your business might need!

Photo Credit: New Boxing Gloves

Why Social Media Platforms Are Taking Over The World: Infographic

Laura Hogan — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I blog a lot about social media and what it has to offer both small and large businesses. I think this infographic is a great resource to keep handy as to why it really is so important. You'll see that the average person spends over 4 hours a week on social media sites, more than any other online activity! With stats like that you can't deny that social media platforms are the places to be!

Instagram VS Twitter: A Fight Between Social Media Platforms

Laura Hogan — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Twitter and Instagram seem like two completely different animals when you look at what they are each about. Twitter is a short text status that users say pretty much whatever they want on whereas Instagram is a more personal medium where you can share pictures. Instagram photos have been popping up all over Twitter feeds and Facebook news feeds for months. The app has become even more popular since they recently released the android version as well.

I think the biggest difference between the two applications is the visual aspect. Text statuses on Twitter are great if I want to know what kind of sandwich my friends are eating. But what’s better than actually seeing this sandwich in a cool filter that makes their BLT look like a work of art? Hopefully the sarcasm showed through there, but I actually really do love Instagram and can see why it has become so popular.

In a world where our smart phones never leave our hands, constant communication is a staple in our lives. For a long time we’ve had Facebook to let us read statuses and view pictures, Twitter to just read about what others are doing, YouTube to watch videos of what people were doing, Pinterest to find things to spend all of our money on, then of course Google+ to… I have no idea what that nonsense is claiming to be for. But Instagram is the first platform that allows you to easily focus on just pictures and people like that.

I was reading an article from PCMag about the competition between these two mediums and found out some pretty interesting stuff. “Beyond just visiting Instagram more, mobile users also spent more time on the popular photo-sharing app than they did on Twitter. Users last month spent an average of 257 minutes on Instagram via mobile compared to 169.9 minutes viewing content on Twitter” (PCMag). This is pretty good news for Instagram, being so young and a big hit in the game already. Twitter started for about 4 years prior to Instagram and is already being overshadowed by Instagram’s awesomeness.

Photo Credit: Rock em sock em

How To Not Get Overwhelmed With Social Media Marketing

Laura Hogan — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Yesterday was a big social media day in our office. Our intern Leslie has given life to our Twitter campaign again and has sparked our interest in social media engagement. We even hopped on the Instagram bandwagon and started posting our Friday Favorite pictures on there. We spent a majority of the morning trying to decide how we could stay current and part of the conversation on Twitter, what the best iPhone apps were in order to do this, and who should take responsibility.

It made me start thinking about whether or not you can spread yourself too thin when it comes to social media. We have Facebook where we generally post our blogs, pictures, offers, etc. Anything that people will want to engage in whether it be with likes, comments, or click-through to our website. Facebook isn’t something you need to be a constant presence on but constant monitoring is recommended. For OverGo, I like to post on it at least once a day. Over posting can become annoying to those who like your page.

Twitter on the other hand is something you could post on as many times a day as you would like and as long as you aren’t going so far as to be spam-worthy, it’s completely acceptable. Because Twitter feeds move so quickly, not that many people will see your post so you actually want to be posting as much as possible. Twitter also takes constant monitoring to stay current in conversations. We post about 10-15 times a day and have recently tried to ensure notifications when someone is trying to engage with us so that we can immediately follow up.

Instagram is something that really doesn’t take much activity or monitoring. Generally, I think if you post pictures whenever you please and place hashtags on them that people will be searching for, you’re good to go. There isn’t much of a conversation going on and there isn’t much monitoring needed. People can like your photo and commenting is allowed which is something that will need monitoring. Other than that, Instagram is pretty easy to keep up with.

Pinterest goes pretty hand in hand with Instagram. It’s more than just a place to post pictures, it’s easy to link back to your website and share products and services in certain categories. For this platform, you want to be gradually posting your pictures and repining other pins. Repinning and liking other people’s pins is the way to stay in the conversation on Pinterest.

We also talked about social media platforms like Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, and the list goes on and on and on. These can all become really overwhelming if you don’t know what you have time for. I think the most important part is to find one or two and really focus on being as active as you can and staying in the conversation as best as possible. If you find yourself slacking off a little and getting behind in your social media strategy then cutting back on how many platforms you’re on is the best idea. And if you find yourself with time to spare, then picking up another social media account might be a good idea for you. The main thing you want to keep in mind is to remember to monitor your accounts to make sure you stay relevant and up-to-date. Nothing is worse than a stale social media account!

Photo Credit: The Dump

6 Page Tweaks For Better Landing Page Conversions

Laura Hogan — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Are your landing pages looking a little stale? Are you not getting as many leads as you would like? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then an update might be a good idea. We recently looked into updating the landing pages on our own website and in doing so I came up with some good tweaks that might help your landing pages do better. Doing all of these, a combination of these, or just one of these suggestions could be transform your page into a hot ticket to lead paradise!

1. Add bullets

If your page doesn’t already use bullet points, add them immediately! Landing page copy should be short and to the point. Bullet points can help make it easier to read and help boost a landing pages performance.

2. Chang your headline

The page’s headline should always start with an action verb. If it doesn’t, change it to make sure it does. If it already does, try changing what verb you’re using or completely re-do the whole headline. Tell your viewers exactly what it is you want them to do and what the offer is!

3. Fix your form

Could your form possibly be too short or too long? Is it not visible enough when the visitor is on the page? Your form should ask only the necessary questions. If it’s a shorter form try adding more customized questions and if it’s a longer form, try taking some questions off! The form placement is also important. Don’t forget a form should always be placed above the fold on your landing pages. If it’s not, move it above the fold immediately! Another good edit on the form is to change the submit button wording. You should change it to include the same action verb that the headline beings with.

4. Change your hero image

A hero image is the main image on a landing page. If you don’t have one, add one that goes along with the offer. If you already have one, try changing it to be more relevant. For eBook offers we generally place an image of the eBook cover so that people know exactly what to expect.

5. Remove all unnecessary distractions

Things like the navigation menu, follow me modules, cta’s, etc. should not be on the landing page. If you have any of these on the page you should get rid of it immediately. Don’t give your visitors a way to leave the page before they convert!

6. Promote your pages

Facebook has a great feature that allows you to promote a page. We did this with some of our landing pages and got great results! This can help you get some really good leads and also increase your involvement on social media.

Landing pages are the portal to your leads and should look and perform great. If they don’t, then these tweaks can really help out performance. Don’t let your landing pages get stale! Inbound marketing is a process not a project so constant analyzing and updating is necessary!

Photo Credit: Come Back Soon by infrogmation

Why You Need To Hop On The Blog Marketing Bandwagon: Infographic

Laura Hogan — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I write a lot of blogs about blogging and as repetive as I find myself being, I can't stress enough how important blog marketing really is. There is no better way to be found organically then to write about topics that your potential customers are actually searching for. Below are some great statistics and facts to reinsure you that your efforts are not in vain or to kick start the enthusiasm for your blogging campaign!

OverGo Studio Nominated By HubSpot For Having Happiest Customers

Rick Kranz — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Here at OverGo Studio, we love a good brag so excuse us for a second while we shamelessly talk about how great we are. We know we’re awesome, we know our client’s know we’re awesome, and we know our competitors know we’re awesome. However, a couple weeks ago we were surprised and excited to be recognized for our awesomeness by Hubspot.

As I sat in my chair at dinner during the first night of Inbound 2012, I was just excited to be there. When they started to talk about an award ceremony, I thought that it was great that we could come together as an inbound marketing community and celebrate each other. The first category announced was Happiest Customers and as I sipped my wine and took in the scenery, three of our competitor’s companies were announced as the first three nominees. I looked up at the stage as the fourth nominee was announced and OverGo Studio’s logo showed up on the screen. My mouth dropped and I unintentionally spoke out “Oh my god, that’s us!” Everyone at the table laughed and congratulated us but we were too shocked to even really register what was going on. We didn’t win, but were honestly honored to be up against three other wonderful companies that we admire greatly.

They explained that the happiest customer award was based off of a company’s CHI score, or Customer Happiness Index. Basically a CHI score is how much additional traffic, leads, and sales our clients are getting month over month. It’s a way for HubSpot to measure the overall improvement in marketing results that a business is getting that is on the HubSpot platform. In this case they measure the lift in results our clients got after they enlisted OverGo's Inbound Marketing Services.

Out of all the inbound marketing agencies in the world, OverGo was recognized as one of four getting top results for their clients. I still can’t wrap my head around what an honor this was and how happy we are to be recognized for this specific award. Making sure our clients are getting results is something we take very seriously and try to go above and beyond to ensure. We really want to thank HubSpot for nominating us. But we especially want to thank our clients for supporting us, taking our advice, putting up with our marketing jargon, and trusting us to get them the results they deserve.

Guidelines To Creating The Perfect Lead Nurturing Campaign

Laura Hogan — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Lead nurturing campaigns are a great way to keep your lead moving through the sales funnel. You should be trying to stay top of mind when it comes to your prospects, which is exactly what lead nurturing campaigns can help you accomplish. We have come up with some essential things to include in the lead nurturing campaign in order to achieve your desired results.

Setting Up The LNC
The first piece of advice is to always have the same person create the lead nurturing campaign that created the landing page. This way the person creating the LNC knows what the offer consists of, what keyword it is based around, and how to cater to what the audience will want to know moving forward.

You should be creating 3-5 emails within the campaign depending on the length of the sales cycle. There are options in most LNC programs to nurture 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 40, or 60 days after the initial download. Another thing to remember is to place your company’s “About Us” information on the sidebar of the email. This should include the company information, location, and number.

Creating The LNC
The easiest thing to do is to create a general template for emails to be created on. This way your LNC’s stay consistent throughout the campaign. The first steps are to set the from name, email address, and to create an enticing subject line. Always set the salutation as Dear First Name using the First Name code. This will customize the email and put the name that they entered in the first name field on the form they filled out in place of the code.

First Email
The first email should thank your lead for downloading the offer and provide them with a link to the offer again just in case they didn’t get to see it immediately after downloading. After providing them with the offer again you should include a link to something on your website. This could be the blog page, a relevant blog post, case study, testimonial, etc. End the email with an offer for more help, a link to your contact page, and your company’s phone number. Include your signature and sign off.

Second Email
The second email should refer to the offer and reiterate that you hope they are finding it helpful in some way. Next, transition into a suggestion for reading a certain blog post and include the link. Just as with the first email, offer more help, contact information, and sign off.

Third Email
Thank them again for downloading the offer the LNC is following up on. Provide them with a chance to receive another offer. This can be another downloadable offer or possibly a free consultation. Include contact information and offer more help and then sign off.

With each of these emails make sure you are creating a plain text version as well. Most people will look at the plain text email if pictures won’t load in the normal email. Make sure the text is the same as the original email and format it correctly. The last things you should include are the social media icons. These will show up at the bottom of your email and are great portals to keep your customer connected.

Photo Credit: Business Calendar by photosteve101

3 Presentation Tips For Well Rounded Marketing Strategies

Laura Hogan — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

As a communication studies major, standing up in front of a lot of people giving a presentation was a regular thing. I don’t think I ever went one week of a semester without having to stand up and speak about one thing or another. Had I known this was going to be the case starting out in my major I most likely would have chosen something else. But looking back I think it helped me exponentially in everything I do now. I can’t say I don’t get completely and utterly nervous every time I have to speak in front of a crowd, but once I’m in it I’m fairly comfortable with it.

In a business setting, especially in regards to marketing strategies, speaking in front of people is a common occurrence. It may not be in front of as many people talking about something you really don’t care 100% about like it was in class, it’s much worse. Normally it’s standing up in front of a few people that really matter talking about something you care 500% about and depend on in order to be successful in your job. Here are some tips on how to ace a presentation in order to make a great impression.

1. Know Your Audience

The worst thing you can do in giving a presentation is to cater what you’re saying to the wrong person. Everyone wants to be entertaining and relatable, but if anyone of any importance is in this room you don’t want to be bringing up the crazy weekend you had or the episode of trashy television you watched the night before. Another point to make is that these people have given up time to be there for your presentation, so make it worthwhile. Don’t half ass any single part of your presentation if you want to be taken remotely serious.

2. Entertain and Inform

Not making the room fall asleep should be your main priority. Personal stories are a great way to break the ice and make a connection with your audience. Your second priority should be to provide legitimate information that people care to know about. I watched a presentation video from Inbound2012 by Mike Volpe that related everything throughout the presentation to his cross country road trip. This isn’t something super personal but it’s something everyone can grasp. He related the vital information to this road trip. This method didn’t necessarily keep everyone entertained, but it kept everyone following along with where he was going in his presentation. It was quite possibly the best metaphor turned easiest transition that I’ve ever seen.

3. Be Overly Energetic

There is no worse presentation than one where the presenter doesn’t even look excited to be there. I always think it’s the best when presenters look like they might collapse from excitement of being there. It’s great to see someone excited to show what they know and teach everyone something. I don’t suggest the passing out part, but excitement is key in order to keep your audience excited as well. Obviously, being excited about every little aspect of the presentation can get annoying and obnoxious. Create some ups and downs in whatever presentation you have. Is there a problem you have a solution to? Then show your audience the problem is a big issue but get excited about the solution.

Whatever you do, don’t wing any presentation. I had a few bad presentations where I thought doing the research and putting the slides together was enough practice. I got up in front of people and clearly got flustered and turned around. I couldn’t remember what I wanted to say when and in what order. No presentation will ever be perfect but if you practice enough, it can come close enough.

Photo Credit: Megaphone Man by Hazzat

Infographic: Search Engine Optimization How & Why

Stephanie Mathis — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Search engine optimization is the basis of any good inbound marketing strategy. There is no way around optimizing your website if you want to get found for the correct things. Here are some great statistics to show you how important getting found online really is.

You May Be An Inbound Marketer If…

Laura Hogan — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

You May Be An Inbound Marketer If...

You refer to relationships in terms of the sales funnel
You have stickers of marketing and social media platforms
The first thing you do when you need to ask someone a question is hop on Twitter or Facebook
Direct Mail makes you laugh uncontrollably
You know the HubSpot employees that show up on your login page by first name. “Good morning Karen, Rachel, or Rebecca.” PS- what is up with the lion costume on Adam?
You have more eBooks, webinars, and blog posts saved on your computer than you have time to look at
You visualize your HubSpot dashboard as you check your speed while you’re driving
Inbound 2012 playlist is on repeat in your office
You think of conversations in terms of keyword optimization and which words will spark interest
You ask someone their Twitter handle immediately after their name
Company lunches revolve around looking at HubSpot, Twitter, or Facebook’s apps on your iPhone
You consider two outfits as an A/B test group when picking out what to wear for the day
You are constantly reading blogs to keep up with the changes in various marketing tools
You laugh at and immediately leave websites that are not optimized or organized efficiently
You have an aversion to unicorns and rainbows

4 Terrific Tips For A Strong Call To Action

Laura Hogan — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Around this time, the networks come out with the new fall lineup of television shows. Usually there are a lot of misses and not many hits. But every once in a while there are some great shows that really hit it off with the audience. This is similar to calls to actions that you place on your website. Some of these CTA’s will be hits and get a lot of clicks and others will not. Just like with the fall television shows, you need to constantly pay attention to the ratings, click through rates, and see how they are performing. So what are the best ways to ensure a strong call to action will be effective?

1. Place them on the appropriate pages.

Calls to action should be placed where they are easily visible on the home pages. They should also be placed on the side bar of interior pages, especially the blog page. Another great place to put them is at the bottom of blog posts.

2. Make them “pop.”

This is a dreaded phrase for most graphic designers but it is very true for CTA’s. They need to pop from the page in order to get your visitors attention enough for them to be clicked on. If they blend into the page, the visitor won’t acknowledge it as a button that they can click on.

3. Use correct wording.

If you have an offer for a free consultation make sure that comes across in your CTA. If your wording isn’t clear, your CTA is not going to get clicked on.

4. Make sure to create A/B test groups.

For every CTA there should be another variation created with different wording, colors, graphics, etc. This way you can analyze both of the CTA’s and see which one is being clicked more often. This will give you insight on what kind of look attracts clicks and which one just doesn’t work for your website.

So just like the new fall television shows that are putting their best pilot episode out this fall, you need to place your best CTA’s on your website. Always be analyzing how your CTA’s are doing and which ones need to be tweaked. Your CTA’s are like gateways to your offers, you need to make sure the gate is unlocked and looks welcoming. Just follow these 4 tips and you can create great calls to actions that will attract traffic to your offers and gain leads.

Photo Credit: Well Finally by Reinis

3 Steps To Making Social Media Marketing Easy

Laura Hogan — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

You’ve heard it all before, social media is all about staying current, connected, and consistent. This is especially important when it comes to Twitter and Facebook. Both of these feeds move rather quickly and it’s important to stay top of mind and top of news feed. This can seem like quite a daunting task when it comes to social media because of all the content that everyone else puts out constantly. Well I’m here to tell you that with the scheduling tools that are now available, it’s easier than ever.

Step #1

The first step to make social media reach easier is to blog a lot. We blog 5 times a week which makes finding content to use in our social media channels very easy. If you don’t blog that often you can always use offers that you have or even other publishers articles that your audience will enjoy. Content is key, if you have nothing to share with your followers then presence on social media is hard to keep up.

If you don’t blog that often, there is a great new program called Scribit. This program allows you to search through their database of articles from certain publications and find ones that pertain to your business. You can then share them through social media and when followers click on that article, it takes them to your site where the article is hosted. This ensures that visitors are brought to your website and not a competitors, so they can click on your offers and explore your content.

Step #2

The second step is to share this content throughout your social media channels. With the new scheduling tools that are out, it has become much easier to stay connected with your followers. Facebook recently launched their scheduling tool which has proved to be beneficial. Hootsuite is also an excellent tool where you can schedule out Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. As long you have content to share then you can bulk schedule all of the posts per week. This is a great way to make sure that you are constantly updating every day.

Step #3

Then the last step is to set aside some time daily to respond to all the activity you’re receiving from the content you put out, this could be an easy 5 minutes. There is no point in being present on social media if you don’t keep up with the feedback you’re getting. Followers will catch on to you if you’re sending out information but not responding in real-time.

If you follow these 3 steps, especially using the scheduling tools, then your social media marketing campaigns will become easier to handle and keep up with. Remember, don’t forget to give your followers feedback!

Photo Credit: Steps by tuppus

Bust The Blogging For Business Blues With These Great Ideas

Laura Hogan — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

In the last month, we have upped our blogging efforts to 5 days a week in order to increase traffic to our website. You may think I’m going to talk about how awesome the plan is and how successful we’ve been doing this. Well, it is an awesome plan and I highly suggest it if you have the resources and we actually have been highly successful in our efforts with exponential increases in traffic. But what I really want to talk about is how hard it is to come up with 5 blogs a week and some great ways to get ideas on what to write about.

Writing 5 blogs a week can sound overwhelming, and at times it can be. Depending on the type of writer you are, writing in an office setting can be utterly impossible. Generally, I have to make time to write blogs after office hours which can serve as time better spent without all the distractions around. However the good thing is that most of the time, once in a writing zone, you can knock out the week’s worth of blogs in one sitting.

Another issue with writing 5 times a week is the lack of things to write about and sometimes getting stuck on one subject. Writing about what you know is the best avenue because you can generally relate any topic to something else if you’re confident in both subjects. For instance I just wrote a blog on fantasy football and how it relates to inbound marketing. I know about fantasy football and I know about inbound marketing, therefore I related the two to each other. That keeps things interesting and you can also relate sometimes boring subjects to things your audience enjoy.

Another issue with the frequency of blogging is getting stuck in a rut of writing about the same topics. I sometimes get stuck in writing a lot about blogging and social media because those are the two things I do the most within the company. You need to remember to touch on every aspect of your company and what potential customers want to learn about.

There are a few great ways to not run out of ideas. The first is what I mentioned before about finding topics you’re interested in and comparing that to your business. Another great one is to look at what your competitors are writing about. What better way than to find out what’s important to be talking about than looking at what competitors view as important? The last great way to avoid running out of content is to refer to your fellow employees. Is there something they were just reading about regarding your industry that they thought was interesting? Would they be interested in helping and writing their own blog about their specialty? These are all great ways to bust the blogging blues.

The Similarity Between Sales Funnel Marketing Strategies & Dating

Laura Hogan — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

The sales funnel is a common term used in marketing and consists of top, middle, and bottom levels. Being newly single, my jokesters of a boss and project manager continually ask me questions about my personal life. They are curious as to what stage of the sales funnel prospective dates are falling into and generally relate my personal life to any marketing term possible. This got me thinking about how similar the dating and sales funnel actually are. The sales funnel can be compared to a dating funnel in that a date, or “lead,” is also sent through a funnel during the span of a relationship. Both funnels can sometimes be a mess of nerves, awkward silences, and strained communication but can also end up happily ever after if things run smoothly. Unlike a monogamous relationship however, the ultimate goal as a marketer during the sales funnel should be to always keep it moving and full of different levels of leads. Let’s look further into the three stages and how exactly it corresponds with the dating world.

Top Of The Funnel

The top of the sales funnel is for new prospects, those that are aware and interested in learning about your services or products but aren’t yet ready to buy anything. In this stage of the sales funnel, the goal is to work on building a relationship with the new prospect and learn about their needs and expectations. An effective way to keep someone moving through this stage is to get them to download an eBook, whitepaper, or webinar offer where you receive their information and they become a lead that you can contact.

In terms of the dating world, we would consider this giving someone your number and going out on a first date. You meet someone and are interested in them and they offer you the opportunity to get your number. You are interested in them but want to find out more about who they are so you give them your information. Then they contact you and you go on a first date, obviously a little interested but unsure if you want to commit to anything just yet. The goal is to get to know the other person and to see if your personalities fit together.

Middle Of The Funnel

The middle is for those that are interested in getting to know specifics about your company’s products or services and what your company can do for them. Depending on the length of your company’s sales cycle, this could last anywhere from a week to a few months. In this state you want to engage them in even more beneficial content such as a case study, demo, or consultation.

Middle of the funnel dating is similar to a middle of the funnel sales level. After the top of funnel first date, the middle of the funnel is focused on getting to know each other more. Specific likes and dislikes are discussed while considering a commitment but not completely submerged in the relationship yet. Similar to the sales funnel, this middle of the funnel level can last from a week to a few months depending on the type of person.

Bottom of The Funnel

In this level of the sales funnel, your prospects are nurtured and considering a long-term commitment. At this point, the prospect is not completely sold on your product or service but is almost there. Generally, trust has been established and pricing has been discussed. A more in-depth and personalized consultation could be appropriate for this level. If all goes well, the prospects that make it to the bottom of the funnel will turn into customers after the necessary conversations for this funnel.

Bottom of the funnel dating is right before you agree to begin a serious, committed relationship. Conversations about what you both want have been had and trust is established between the two people. If a date makes it down to this level of the funnel and dates continue to go well, chances are a serious relationship will occur.

Takeaway…

The sales funnel can change depending on what kind of business you are in and what your prospects need from your company. As in dating, the funnel can be catered to the type of relationship you’re looking for. What’s important is that you are constantly implementing the funnel on your prospects and making sure to nurture the relationship as best as you can as they travel through.

Blogging For Business Checklist To Help Increase Traffic To Your Site

Laura Hogan — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:18:00 GMT

Writing blogs is a task in and of itself, but actually posting them onto your website can be quite a process. If you are just starting out posting weekly blogs, there are some really important behind the scenes factors you need to know about in order to get your posts found. If you have been posting blogs for quite some time, you can also get stuck in a routine of how to do it and easily forget some really important things.

In order to keep your blogging process efficient and ensure that your posts are getting found for the appropriate keywords, we created a checklist to use for posting blogs.

Does Your Post Use A Long-Tail Keyword? Long tail keywords are defined as keyword phrases that consist of between two and five words, usually used when searching for a rather specific item.

Keyword in the title
Keyword in the URL
Keyword in the meta description
Keyword in the alt text
Keyword in the image file name

Is Your Article Title Enticing? A title such as “How to write a blog post” is sure to not get as many hits as “How to entice your audience and increase traffic with a blog post.”

Interesting title

Does Post Include Relevant Image? Is your post about social media but you have a picture of something completely irrelevant? Don’t throw your readers off by trying to be unique with the images.

Post includes relevant image

Are There Internal Links? An internal link in a blog post should like to your offers and other blog posts. If you’re writing about social media and have written a similar or relevant post in the past, link the words social media inside the blog post to another one you have written. Or if the post is on social media and you have a an eBook on social media, link it to your eBook. If your readers enjoyed your one post and want to learn more, they are more inclined to click on a link already inside the post.

1-2 links to relevant on-site pages
Use keywords to anchor text

Is A Call-To-Action Included? At the end of your blog posts you should always be including a Call To Action. Whether it’s for a free quote, an eBook, a webinar, or any kind of offer a Call To Action is very beneficial.

Article ends with CTA
CTA is actually relevant to content

Is Blog Post Organized Efficiently? Your blog post should include helpful information for your customers but unless it’s organized in the correct way, your visitor may not enjoy reading it or read it all the way through. Paragraphs upon paragraphs can sometimes turn a visitor away from the post. Bullet points, lists, and subheaders organize a blog post into content that a visitor will find easy to read.

Organize content into bullet points, lists, and subheaders
Avoid long paragraphs

Do Posts Use The Right Tags? The tags you choose for your blog posts show up on the side of your blog pages. If you wrote a social media blog post then you should have a social media tag on it, not a blogging tag. If someone wants to read a bunch of articles on blogging and there is a social media article in that category they might get thrown off. Relevant tags equal easy browsing for visitors.

Use appropriate tags
Use all the tags that apply to the post

Does Post Encourage Interaction and Sharing? Blog posts are great for starting a conversation or for sharing on various platforms. As a company, you should be facilitating this. As your visitors find your information and deem it as useful, they will also begin to facilitate the conversation as well. You want to encourage them to share the post on social media or comment on the post and give their feedback. This will start a conversation and create a community around your blogs.

Post encourage comments
Social sharing buttons are on the page

With this checklist, you will ensure that your blog post gets found by the search engines and visitors will flock to your site!

Photo Credit: The List by Sunshine City

What Fantasy Football Can Teach Us About Inbound Marketing Services

Laura Hogan — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Football season is upon us and this week starts the beginning of the NFL season which means the start of fantasy football season as well. Fantasy football is a mix of luck, player knowledge, and real athletic statistical performance of the players. Inbound marketing it actually similar to fantasy football in that aspect. Inbound marketing services require a small amount of luck, a large amount of customer knowledge and an even greater emphasis on statistical performance of every working part of the process. I have finally got my toes wet with fantasy football last year, somewhat unsuccessfully. I have much more success with the game of inbound marketing but let’s talk about why they’re so similar.

Never stop learning

In fantasy football, players are constantly getting injured, traded, let go, etc. In order to have a successful team you should be monitoring these updates as much as possible to make sure you choose the right players every week. In marketing it’s the same way. You should be monitoring the success of your blogging, CTA’s, landing pages, ads, social media campaigns, etc. This should be something you do every week to stay current and up to date on what players to keep in the game and which ones to send to the locker room to regroup.

Take calculated risks

Both marketing and fantasy football lack security and consistency. In neither game do you make a move, whether it’s choosing a player or certain copy for a page, and absolutely know it’s the best move. If you look at the facts and statistics and base your moves off of those, then that is a calculated risk worth making. You aren’t going to gamble on a 3^rd string draft pick without looking at his stats first.

Creativity

One of the best parts of fantasy football is your team name. Whether you want it to be funny, to reflect your team, or you change it weekly to intimidate your opponent is up to you. But a team name says a lot about what is coming in the next week. Marketing is similar in this aspect. Whether it be a campaign name, a social media contest name, an email subject, etc. The name of these is as important as the contents and spearheads the entire campaign.

All in all, marketing and fantasy football are all about the experience of the entire process. From the draft to the finals, you try your best week to week and never let a bad week get you down. Similarly, marketing is all about taking an idea and creating a finished product through trial and error, analytics, and editing.

Photo Credit: Football in grass by Jayel Aheram

Website Optimization Tips For Your Navigation Menu

Laura Hogan — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Organizing a website can be a daunting task. The general rule of thumb is to put the most useful content in the easiest accessible place, which is generally the website menu. Since your website is often the only chance for a first impression that you may get, you’ll want to put your best foot forward. Your page should explain what you do, how you do it, and who you do it for. This should all be placed in the menu. Here are some great website optimization tips.

Ask Yourself These Questions

What are your visitors’ pain points? You’re purpose as a company is to solve a problem that your client has, so the most important thing is to figure out what that problem is and market the solution.

What do your visitors need to know? You should present the most relevant content to your customers first. Sure, your customers want to know about your company but the first thing they need to know is what you do.

What resources can help your visitors? A business blog is great for helping your site get found as well as a great way to help your customers. If you provide beneficial information then your visitors will remember you as a helpful source and come back for more.

Analyze

Once you have your site set up and functioning, you should be analyzing your pages to make sure the ones you think are most important are actually the ones your visitors believe are most important as well. Check your pages to see which ones your visitors are going to the most and which pages have the longest viewing time. If someone stays on your page for 1-2 minutes that generally means they are actually reading your content. These are pages that you should mark as important and place in your menu.

Once you answer these 3 questions and start analyzing the traffic on your site, you will get a better idea of what works and what doesn’t. Website design is all about trial and error and testing pages to see what strategies perform the best!

Photo Credit: Compass by Walt Stoneburner

3 Popular Promotional Products For Your Marketing Strategy

Laura Hogan — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:00:00 GMT

With Inbound2012 being last week, it got me thinking about promotional items and what sort of things might be given out. I know we are all about online marketing which makes tradeshows and promotional items seem like a step in the wrong direction, but they can be beneficial. The fact is, everyone loves free stuff and if you’re logo is on this free stuff then you’re headed in the right direction. At Inbound2012 there were t-shirts, stickers, post-its, and temporary tattoos to name just a few. Here is a list of some of the best go-to items to put your logo on and why.

Clothing items: branding clothing is your best bet. I have collected as many free t-shirts as possible and will continue doing so until I have absolutely no more room in my dresser. Everyone wants a free t-shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, or hat and placing your logo on these things will only keep you on the top of these people’s minds. If I’m standing in my kitchen in a t-shirt I received from an exterminator and I see a bug, who do you think I’m going to call?
Writing utensils: pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, etc. This is essential because we are forever looking for a pen when we need one. We also use writing utensils constantly and if your logo is on something your potential clients are going to use often, you will stay fresh on their mind. Also, if a potential customer is writing all of their checks for their outbound services with an OverGo Studio pen, they may think twice about that check.
Calendars: what better way to stay top of a potential customer’s mind than having them look at your logo every day of the year? This is also good to give to current customers as well. Sometimes we have a problem getting into contact or getting things accomplished with a client. If you give them a calendar with your logo on it, they will think of your company every time they look at it which can help productivity.

These are only a few products that can be beneficial to give away during a trade show or just as promotional items. The most important thing is that you’re staying top of mind with both potential and current customers.

Photo Credit: Travel Swag Bags by The Seafarer

Blogging For Business: How To Get Your Team Involved

Laura Hogan — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:35:00 GMT

We have tried a lot of strategies here at OverGo that have failed to launch, but the most recent one is team blogging. Being responsible for your blogging for business strategy can be time consuming especially when you run out of ideas or motivation. So recently, I thought it would be a great idea to get the whole team into blogging as well. It started off as a great plan! I came up with a schedule, blog titles were created specific to each person, and a week was given for everyone to write one blog each. Unfortunately, this failed miserably.

I get it. Employees have their usual schedule and tasks which leaves little time for entertaining the silly idea of writing a blog. Some employees also just don’t have faith in their writing skills and claim to be “bad at writing.” I’m not sure how you can be bad at something that you’ve had to do your entire life, but that’s beside the point. In order for a team blogging effort to work, there has to be a team effort.

There are a few things I suggest for helping this process move along better than it did in our team.

The first is to make sure they need to do as little thinking as possible. If they are assigned a title, find an article on it to help them get their creative juices flowing. We have enough to think about throughout the day, setting this up will help ensure you actually receive a blog from them.
Assign titles that pertain to what they like to do. I write a lot about social media because I enjoy doing it. Our video specialist Tony loves music so we gave him a title about how music artists use social media strategies. He is also the only one who has stuck with me in my blogging efforts… occasionally, on some weeks, when he feels like it. Regardless, it’s important to cater to your employees specialties!
If you notice an employee doing something particularly well, address them specifically and ask them to write a blog about it. There’s no better feeling than being told that you’re good at something and should teach others about it.
Giving your employees a template will crush their “I’m not good at writing” excuse. If you have a topic and know what you’re talking about, it’s simple to fill in a template with information.

Hopefully you learn for our mistakes and your team blogging efforts will go better than ours!

Photo Credit: Blogging Readiness

How Testimonials Can Help Your Marketing Strategy

Laura Hogan — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:34:00 GMT

Testimonials are a great way for you to promote your business without having to do much of anything yourself! Whether you are selling a product or promoting a service, testimonials can help out your business exponentially. Customer testimonials are unbiased comments and can be the deciding factor during a new customer’s trip through the sales cycle. If you use testimonials on your website, you can give these potential new customers some insight that they might not have known about.

There are a few ways to display testimonials on a website: videos, text, or audio. A good way to get testimonials to display is if you create a page on your website that allows testimonial submission. This way, after you sell a product or provide a service you have a website page to direct your client’s to.

After you receive testimonials, the trick is to choose which ones work the best. The key to a good testimonial is that it provides not only recognition that the customer was satisfied but exact product or service details. People don’t want to only hear someone is satisfied, they want to hear what exactly about your company made them satisfied.

You can place the testimonials you choose in your emails, on various pages of your website, in your case studies, etc! Testimonials are a great way to reach potential customers and show off what is so great about your company! So now that you’re convinced, go ahead and create that testimonials page and start racking up some great content!

What Spiderman Can Teach You About Writing An Online Press Release

Laura Hogan — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

How to go about writing and distributing a press release has drastically changed in the last few years. Like anything else, technology played a huge part in that change. Press releases used to be written for publishing in newspapers, then video press releases came about for distribution to television stations, and now online distribution is the most popular avenue. Because online press releases are so popular it’s essential that you know Spiderman’s 6 steps of creating one that will capture your audience!

Events- Spiderman didn’t use the same moves on the Green Goblin that he did on Otto Octavius because they had different powers and required different techniques. For every event that you write a press release for, it’s important to tailor it to that audience. Some companies create press releases and think solely about the general audience of the company. But each event you talk about will be centered toward a certain group of your audience, not necessarily everyone.

Story- Spiderman didn’t save just anybody that fell down and skinned their knee, he went for the bad guys and the people that really needed his help. You want to choose an event that is interesting to your customers and create a captivating story around it. Listing facts won’t capture anyone’s attention, but creating a story around these facts will. In an online medium it’s so easy for someone to click back to the last page if something doesn’t interest them. No matter who your audience is, they want to read about something interesting so give the crowd what they want!

Headline- Think of a press release headline like a newspaper headline. For instance, Spiderman may not have helped sell as many copies of The Daily Bugle had they not released headlines such as “Spider-Man: Hero or Menace?” It’s the first thing people read and the only way they’re going to know if the article is worth reading.

Intro- This is the next thing that people will read after the headline. If you make your headline pop and then fizzle on the intro, your audience will be out of there faster than Spiderman hops into that suit of his.

Body- Sipderman had a nice one… just kidding. The body should be just as enticing as any other part of the press release. It’s important to put the facts in here without it sounding dull. Cover all your bases and include all necessary information. Don’t leave your audience asking questions!

Length- Spiderman always paid attention to how long his web needed to be, just as you should pay attention to how long your press release needs to be. The average length is between 300-800 words.

These are just a few guidelines for a great online press release. The most important thing is that you are releasing something worth reading about and informing your audience about necessary events!

Photo Credit: Spiderman by Leonid

3 Free Ways For Business Advertising Online

Laura Hogan — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

As many know, there are numerous ways to market online but most of these cost money. Facebook has ads and promoted posts, Google has adwords campaigns, and even releasing a press release online costs money. Marketing is normally the first thing to go when businesses find themselves over their head with bills. But how are you supposed to grow and reduce cost if you aren’t marketing to find new customers? It’s a catch 22 that we are here to help with! The following are some great ways to advertise online for free!

1. Local Business Listings

Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the Big Three search engines. When you search for your company in any of these, you will find your business listing with your information. This is all indexed information most likely from your website. The best thing you can do is claim these listings and build them out as much as possible. You can then ask customers to go and leave reviews on these three listings in order to increase your rating!

2. Social Media

Social media is the best free way to advertise your business because there are so many platforms that you can be on and so much activity that you can do to interact with customers. Channels like Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Facebook all allow you to reach the audience you desire. These platforms are more about engagement than advertising but in the case of social media, engagement and advertising run hand in hand.

3. Online Review Sites

There are online review sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, City Search, etc. that let your customers leave reviews of your business. Other potential customers then come on to these sites to check specifically on these reviews to see what others are saying about you. You should monitor these very carefully because both positive and negative reviews will show up and your reputation will be effected. Positive reviews generally increase the likelihood that more potential customers will actually call for your services. You can create a “Leave Behind” pamphlet to give to customers with instructions on how to get these sites and leave reviews.

With these 3 free methods of advertising, you are sure to save money and increase customers!

Photo Credit: Lollyknit

Social Media Marketing Guidelines For Client Teams

Laura Hogan — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Social media is normally one of the first things to get stripped out of inbound marketing strategies due to the time and effort it requires. Whether you are in charge of a social marketing plan as a business or an agency, there are key things to take care of to make it a priority and not let it fall by the wayside. You should be able to have employees share in the responsibility and make it a habit!

First thing is first in a social media marketing plan for a client team. You need to set guidelines on some things before you start posting across various social media platforms. Here are some key things to put into place:

What will be shared:

Basically you can share everything and anything that has to do with your business, your industry, or things that your audience will find entertaining! The easiest things to share are blogs since you should be blogging about the keywords that your audience is searching for and will be most interested in. Another great thing to share are landing pages for webinars, eBooks, conferences, events, and premium offers. By doing this, you can guarantee that you are will get new leads from social media channels. Another great thing to share is general news. This could be news about people joining the company, relevant articles, or things of interest that inspire your audience.

Frequency:

You really want to share as often as you can without overdoing it. On Twitter 4 times an hour is fine but that is probably too frequent on Facebook. At first you will have to experiment with time and frequency and analyze your click-through rates until you find the right fit for your business. You can always recycle content such as blog posts and offers. Your followers and fans aren’t going to see all the content you put out there, especially on Twitter where the feed moves so quickly so reusing it can be beneficial.

Roles & coordination:

Your employees can feed off of each other for content and updates. You should make it the author or finder’s responsibility to share what they have written or found. If you create a pride of authorship then you can capitalize on that in order to share content. Make it the team’s responsibility to post on social media channels. A good way to do this is to create a Google document and have people upload articles that they have found that would be good to share via social media. This will create a drop box for articles that your employees can access when they want to update your social media accounts.

Training is a minor investment that will help your social media strategy immensely. Showing employees how to use these social media channels better will be worth it. You will see your social media strategy work if you and your employees put in the effort!

Twitter Marketing: 3 Ways To Get More Retweets

Laura Hogan — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Recently we have increased the tweeting for one of our clients and are confused as to why they weren’t getting more retweets or new followers. In the marketing world, OverGo Studio gets retweets and new followers daily because so many other marketers are on the same platform. However, when you get into more specialized fields like some of our clients are in, it’s harder to get the recognition and growth. Even though it is more difficult, it is not impossible. So how do you do it?

We’ve compiled 3 ways to increase activity on your Twitter. These may seem obvious but if you follow these guidelines, you will see your followers grow and your tweets get rewteeted!

Talk only when you have your audience’s attention.

This seems fairly obvious right? You’re probably thinking, why would I not tweet at times I know my followers aren’t online? But the point is, do you even know when they’re online? There are tweet algorithms stating when most users are online but those don’t always apply to your business’ audience. If you’re in the IT business, your followers will be on mostly during the day at work and if you’re trying to sell a car washing product, your followers may be on mostly at night after work.

There are great applications such as Hootsuite that will help you schedule posts so that you can reach your followers at the most optimal time. They even have an option on Hootsuite for auto scheduling which will schedule your posts at whatever time they suggest for you. This is helpful but again, you need to know when your audience is online. All you have to do is consider who your audience is and plan accordingly.

Frequency is key, but don’t unlock the door too often.

You want to get your message out to as many people as possible so it’s easy to assume that you want to tweet as often as possible. Tread carefully, you really don’t want to overdo it. Twitter feeds move quickly and your tweet is visible one second and gone the next but you really don’t want to over-tweet to your followers. If you’re tweeting more than 4 times an hour, you’re most likely tweeting way too much. Your audience wants to hear from you, but not quite all the time. Plus, if you’re tweeting 4 times an hour you’re most likely tweeting repeat content which is not something your followers want to see every hour!

Don’t be selfish.

We all have amazing content that we want everyone to see, read, download, etc. But you will get so many more retweets and followers if you promote other people’s content as well! With our client who wasn’t gaining any new followers we tried tweeting out 60% of their content and 40% of other people’s while using hashtags and @ signs to promote them and started to see a real increase in activity! Other people will be more likely to promote your content if you promote there’s as well!

Now that you now these 3 tips on increasing activity on your Twitter, log in to your account and start doing these best practices! You will definitely see new followers and retweets increase!

How Social Media Networking Is Changing Your Relationships

Laura Hogan — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I grew up in the 90’s so I can’t claim to know what life without technology is like. But lately I’ve noticed how insanely technology has taken over my life. Just the other day I decided writing on my coworker’s wall was a better option than turning around to talk to her. I mean come on, really? I remember growing up when I could simply walk to my friend’s house and knock on her door to ask if she wanted to play. Now, I see young children running around with cell phones calling and texting their best friends.

So what caused this change in relationships? What makes it okay to barely even talk to someone on the phone anymore let alone face to face? Obviously it has a lot to do with technology in general but I think specifically social media has had a large effect.

Since the start of MySpace and eventually Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. we have seen a major shift in social media networking. Growing up I just had my neighborhood friends and the people I went to school with to socialize with. Once social media emerged, I could talk to the friends that my parents wouldn’t drive me to go see or friends that had moved away. As I got older, it allowed me to stay in touch with friends from home when I went away to school. And now, it always me to network in business with absolutely everybody I have ever known.

Regardless of area code, time zone, country, etc. I can talk to anyone at any time and that is a crazy concept. Our networks have grown exponentially from just the home town group of friends whose parents might help you get a job to anyone you have ever known and are connected to through LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. So when they say it’s important to be networking on social media it’s not just for business, it’s important for your personal network as well.

Facebook Promoted Posts To Boost Social Media Marketing

Laura Hogan — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Promoted Facebook posts are a somewhat new feature on Facebook that came out in May. A promoted post is a singular post that you want more of your fans to see. You pay to promote it and you can see the number of social media marketing views rise!

So what is the purpose for these promoted posts? Why can’t everyone that likes your page automatically see your posts? Why do you have to pay for them to be seen by more people? Well a majority of people that like your page on Facebook probably have a large amount of friends which means that every single thing their friends and pages post is not going to make it into the general news feed that shows up when they log in. They also may not be on Facebook at the time that you post it which means they wouldn’t see it.

Facebook has a specific news feed algorithm that decides what shows up on other people’s news feeds based on things like time and affinity. This algorithm is called EdgeRank and promoted posts are a way to push new posts to be viewed by more people. We promoted one of our ebooks in a post and got over 18,000 views! That's compared to the 100-200 views we get on most of our posts. It's outstanding!

Here are some tips when dealing with promoted posts.

You can only use promoted posts when you have over 400 likes.
Your post cannot be more than 3 days old and it will be promoted for 3 days
Your post will display a sponsored tag underneath it
You can see the performance of the post while it’s running and after the campaign
These posts will help boost your engagement with your fans
Choose the right type of post- something you want to drive traffic to

These promoted posts are a great way to connect with your fans and can have your posts seen by more people. You are sure to drive traffic to your posts if you use these promoted posts so go out and test out some posts you want to promote and start driving that traffic!

5 Tips For An Unbeatably Strong Call to Action

Stephanie Mathis — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

A call to action is a button on your website that directs visitors to one of your downloadable offers. They can go on any page of the your website in the side bar, header, main module, etc.

Step One:

The first step is to decide the topic of the Call to Action. What do you want to prompt the viewer to do? You ideally want the CTA to trigger an emotional reaction and cause the viewer to click it. Usually you will have words in the CTA that they are drawn towards like click here, buy now, download here, register, etc. If you give the viewer an incentive to click the button you’re creating an offer that they won’t refuse!

Step Two:

The second step is to decide what style the Call to Action should be. The best way to do this is to look on the client’s website and scope out their branding. Make a note of what colors and styles they use on their site before you begin creating the button. Looking at the client’s logo helps to decipher the color scheme. It’s also essential to look at a client’s business and what they offer so you can come to a conclusion on the style that fits.

Step Three:

The third step is to choose a font which is also something you can get from the client’s website or newsletters. For example, a client’s website may have a smooth edged font which means you should keep with the same style smooth edged font. It wouldn't go with the overall theme of the business if the font of the call to action had sharp edges.

Step Four:

Step four is to make sure your Call to Action has a clear message. Don't be too wordy! Too much text on a Call to Action can be confusing. You want the viewer to be able to see the Call to Action and in a few seconds know what they are clicking on. Trial and error comes into play with CTAs because you may find some just don't work as well as others. and error may be your best guide for finding the perfect call to action for your business or target market.

Step Five:

Finalize your Call to Action by double checking it goes well with the area it is being placed in. Whether it be a website, email, newsletter, blog, or social network. The Call to Action should stand out but not look out of place. Have it complement the space it is utilizing.

If you follow these 5 steps you will surely have an unbeatable call to action!

7 Facebook Page Contest Ideas To Increase Social Media Engagement

Laura Hogan — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Facebook contests are a great way to stay engaged in social media and increase activity on your page! There are some rules and regulations that go in to creating a contest on Facebook, but today we want to talk about some really fun contest ideas! If your business launches a fun and creative contest, your audience will keep coming back looking for more!

1. Ask Fans For Tips

Ask your audience the best way to use your product or service and to share it on your wall. You can then choose the most unique answer, the post with the most “likes,” or the post with the most comments. Everyone loves to share their tips and tricks and in a world where Pinterest is taking over, this contest will sure to hit the ground running.

2. Play a Guessing Game

This is a fun and simple one to keep up weekly or as often as you choose. Some suggestions are zooming in on a landmark and having people guess which one it is, scramble words relevant to your business and have fans guess it, or just ask some trivia questions! These are all easy to do on your end, but fun for your fans and something to look forward to if you do it continuously!

3. Reward Likes

We recently ran a contest for the Wheel Woolies that involved a Facebook ad campaign as well. We directed people to a landing page that said “like” our page and enter our contest to get a Wheel Woolie! We ended up increasing the “likes” by an astounding amount and had everyone engaged on the wall sharing what kind of car they wanted to use it on!

4. Submit Your Picture

This one is fun if you are selling a product! Ask your fans to submit a photo of them and how they use your product. You’ll get some interesting photos but overall your fans will love that you are featuring them and how they tailor your product to what they need.

5. Best Caption

I always thought this was the best and most enjoyable contest on Facebook. You would post a picture of either something that had to do with your business or just a random funny picture. You then ask your fans to comment on it with the best caption they can think of! At the end you choose the best caption and that’s the winner!

6. Why do you deserve….

You can always ask fans a question as to why they might deserve getting your free product or service. This one might get a little depressing as people like to exaggerate their sob stories but you will also get some really great ones. You can choose which person deserves it the most and that’s the winner!

7. A Day In The Life…

This one is something I’ve been dying to do for OverGo! You have your employees tape a very short video of a day in their life. You then compile them all together and post it on your Facebook. You urge people to watch them and choose which employee’s day they like the best. That employee then gets a prize. It’s not really for the fans so much, but it looks like it would be a lot of fun and allow your fans to see what everyone really does in your company!

These great Facebook contest ideas are sure to increase your activity and your fans will keep coming back to see what new things you’re engaging in! So hop on Facebook and get some contests going!

5 Steps To Eye-Popping And Creative Infographic Design

Stephanie Mathis — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

What is an Infographic? Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge. A creative infographic design will present complex information quickly and clearly.

Step 1. What will the Infographic be about?!

Almost any topic can be made into an infographic! The first step is finding the right kind of content. You want content that can easily be displayed through graphics. A shorter post with statistics or talking about something you can depict visually is always a smart choice.

Once you find the content you want to use, start to figure out how it will be organized and how it will visually flow. Making a bubble chart for brainstorming can be very helpful. You should create a document with the same width as your blog modules are. The length can be determined by how much vertical space you may need for your text and graphic content.

Step 2. What colors should you use?

You should be familiar with what colors complement each other and what colors don’t. I like to stay consistent with the look and feel of the website overall. Some things to consider would be if you want a background color or if you just want to keep it white. A border is always important to have so that your infographic isn’t floating on the page in your blog post and the limits are clearly defined. Infographics are supposed to be playful and fun so vibrant colors that pop are good. Sticking to about 3-4 colors will keep it looking interesting but not too crazy.

Step 3. What graphics should you use?

Always, always, always choose eye-catching graphics! People are attracted to images more than text, that’s why infographics are so appealing. Use graphics to represent as much of the information as possible and only use text when necessary.

Step 4. Make it simple and clean!

Don't have the text too wordy. Graphics will help you with this because you can represent some text with images. You don't want it too busy or it will get confusing, defeating the purpose of the entire thing! It’s also important to make sure you have a cohesive font throughout the body. You can use fun fonts for headers if you like but make sure the body of the text is clear to read.

Step 5. Edit!

Make sure the text and images flow in the end and that the whole infographic is a consistent theme. You don't want anything to look like it doesn't make sense or doesn't belong.

Overall, infographics are supposed to be a creative way to give information to the viewer. An infographic can easily be shared online and can be a great marketing tool.

Photo Credit: 5 Years by Michael Ruiz

Social Media Marketing Strategies: Music Artists Use Them Too!

Tony Stanford — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Next time you are in your car, flip on your area's Top 40 radio station and have a listen to some of the popular music being (over) played today. Many of them are going to follow this format: High tempo, electronic synth progressions, a deep kick drum, and a melodic male/female on vocals. This is no coincidence. Over the past few years an explosion has taken place in the genre known as Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and all types of music artists want to get in on the action. Why has such a rapid growth occurred in recent years you ask? In part, because of social media marketing strategies.

Dance music has been around in the United States for decades; disco in the 70's, house/techno music in the 80's, and electronica in the 90's. Despite the prevalence of this music, it remained largely underground and found mostly in nightclubs. Fast forward to today and you will find that dance music is all over the airwaves, concert venues are selling out EDM shows at an astounding rate, and dance music festivals are more popular than ever (reflected in their ever-increasing prices, but let's not get into that).

Obviously, social media is not the sole catalyst for the sudden emergence of the previously-unconventional dance music culture. Advancements in technology have opened up an infinite number of doors for up-and-coming music producers, who no longer need a studio filled with racks of synthesizers, keyboards, hard drives, mixing boards, and monitors. Some modern day producers admit to using their laptop, a piece of downloadable software, and a pair of headphones to create songs. But what happens when the song is made? How do you get it out to the masses? THAT is where social media marketing comes into play in the music industry.

Here are a few of the strategies that I have seen used recently:

Song Posts- Probably the most direct marketing strategy, this one is pretty self-explanatory. Music artists will post a song to their Facebook wall or twitter feed and allow their fans to listen to it. This may be a new song that the artist has recently released, a song that they are particularly fond of at that time, or a teaser video for their latest production. This allows their network of friends and fans to then re-share the song/video.
Like Us and Follow Us For... The possibilities of the ways to complete this sentence are pretty endless. "...For a chance to win tickets to our next show." "...For a chance to fly with us to Spain" "...For a chance to win the T-shirt I sweated in during our last performance." I've seen some crazy stuff. The important part to realize is that music artists are giving back to their fans for the price of a mouseclick, and at the same time, they are expanding their audience.
The Fame Game- Everyone wants to say they've been in contact with a "celebrity," regardless of how brief or insignificant the experience may have been. Twitter is an easy way for fans and music artists to interact and is a win-win for music artists trying to market themselves. Something as simple as retweeting a fan will not only make that fan's day, but will give the artist free exposure.
Live Streaming- Large music festivals and even some smaller concerts have taken to the internet, live streaming on YouTube or other sites such as UStream for the public to see. This gives fans who were not so lucky to buy tickets the chance to view the concert online. It's not uncommon for music artists to use this technique in combination with the "Like Us and Follow us" approach. "Like us and follow us for a special code to live stream our next concert online!" Technology, for the win!

It's not just EDM artists that are using these types of social media marketing strategies; hop on to any recording artist's web page and I can almost guarantee they will have links to their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube channel, etc.

The important thing to take away here is that social media can provide you with a vast audience. And that vast audience can expand if you play your cards correctly.

Photo Credit: Bonnaroo Gate by adamiweb

Beginner Blog Marketing Tips For The New Business Blogger

Laura Hogan — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Blog marketing is the staple of any inbound marketing strategy. Without a blogging process your website will not get found by the search engines. There are a lot of various aspects to blogging such as keyword research, creating titles around those keywords, and then of course actually writing the blogs. But in this article we want to cover just the basics of blogging.

So what is blogging? Blogging is a tool that allows you to quickly and easily create and publish new content. A blog is a place for visitors to go to for resources and to help get you found by the search engines. It’s a tool that provides a forum for readers to leave feedback on that content as well as react to feedback from others.

So why is blogging important? Blogging is important mainly because of one thing… Google. Google absolutely loves blogs! They look at blogs as activity on your website. Posting a blog provides your website with new content and links as opposed to a static brochure. If you blog, you will be successful in a Google search and if you don’t blog, your competitors will be successful instead.

So what are the components of a blog? There’s the sidebar, header, post, and comments. The post is the dominant aspect of the blog. It’s the meat and potatoes with all the information. Make sure you set a good tone and connect the reader with useful information. The comments help make the blog more interactive and allow an open forum for potential and current customers. Then there is the sidebar of your blog. This is a great place to display CTA’s for current offers, show popular blog tags and posts, etc. Then there is the header of your blog. This is an excellent place for branding, contact information, and to add visual appeal.

Overall, your blog needs to provide your readers with helpful information and help your site get found on the search engines. Bloggers need to have time, passion for what they write about, and knowledge of your company’s products and services.

Photo: A Blog & A Hanful Of Quarters by DonkeyHotey

Simple Social Media Marketing Tips To Reach Your Customers

Laura Hogan — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

As you’ve probably heard a thousand times, being present on social media is a must in today’s marketing society. I know personally one of the first places I look for a business if on Facebook. It’s so easy to find a company on Facebook and be provided with all of the information I need in one place. It beats going to their website and searching around from page to page to find their hours, prices, location, etc. If a company is on Facebook I don’t need to do all that, because it’s all on their business page.

Now I know I’m not the only person who uses Facebook to search for the companies their interested in, so many people are doing it! That’s why you need to be present on Facebook so that your business can get found by people like me! Now here are some simple tips on social media marketing that you should be aware of!

If people form a community around your stuff, be pleased! Whether or not it’s on your site under your control or on your social media site, you have something to work with.
Be humble! If someone posts great things about your company on your wall thank them, like the post, or comment back and say something pleasant. Customers who see that the company is interacting with them even when it’s not completely necessary really show how involved and thankful the company is.
Listen and acknowledge people’s participation. If someone is taking the time to reach out to your company, you should be taking the time to reach back.
Be where your community is. Are your customers on Facebook but not Twitter? Then spend your time focusing on where your customers are. Don’t join a social media because you heard that’s what everyone else is doing. Pay attention to your audience and try to reach them on the best platforms.
Equip instead of sell! You should be part of the recipe by giving information to your customers on social media. Whatever you do, don’t try and sell your product!
Celebrate them. Your social media followers love to be acknowledged and celebrated. Try running a simple contest or posting fun pictures on your social media accounts. Show them that you are there for their benefit and entertainment!
Play as a team! Social media community maintenance is hard to outsource. Nobody knows your business like the people connected to it directly. Try and keep your social media posting internal!

Now that you have these simple tips, go out on your social media platforms and try and reach out to all of those interested in your business in the best way!

Photo Credit: Customer Service by Dell's Official Flickr Page

Blog Marketing Tips To Spruce Up Your Blog Titles

Laura Hogan — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I’m sure your parents always told you never to judge a book by its cover. That’s all fine and good but when it comes to blog titles, you need that cover to have bright neon flashing words and glitter all over it. If your titles don’t sound interesting then readers won’t think your content is going to be interesting either. Obviously your title is everything and the content inside is the most important part, but the title must catch the reader’s attention in order to get them to read what’s inside.

Here are some key aspects to a blog title:

Action Inducing
Concise
Keyword mindful
Captivating

Action Inducing

You want your blog titles to let your potential readers to know they will learn something that they can act on after they read your blog. “How To…” blog titles are great action titles and people like to read them. If you create a “How To…” title, your readers will immediately know they are going to learn something valuable and be informed on the best way to put it into action.

Concise

A short, precise title on what your blog is going to be about is the best way to captivate readers. If your title is long-winded, chances are readers will think your blog post will be too. Readers want to know exactly what your blog post is going to be about and that’s it. Another advantage is that shorter titles get shared more often via social networks.

Keyword Mindful

The keyword for the blog post should be decided on when you come up with blog title and that should be the focus of the title and the whole article. If you don’t have a keyword in your title, your blog is not going to get found!

Captivating

Your title should be the thing that pulls your readers in. In order to do this, it needs to be captivating and intriguing. You should get creative with your titles! We recently published a blog titled “Inbound Marketing Services: Call-To-Action Lessons From A Pop Song.” You should have fun with the titles and ultimately write about things you know!

Photo Credit: I Just Blog A Lot by JMoney

5 Webinar Tips You Need To Know

Tony Stanford — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 11:00:00 GMT

We've all had the conversation: You ask somebody what they do for a living, they start to explain, and 15 minutes later you snap out of a boredom-induced trance with drool on your chin and a head full of terms you know nothing about. It's not uncommon. Not everyone can be professional athletes, astronauts, and firefighters. Let's go ahead and call a spade a spade; sometimes, business can be downright boring.

However, if you want to expand your business, you're going to need to get people excited about your business. An easy way to get valuable information to an audience about your business is by hosting a webinar. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a webinar is just like a seminar, only you hold it online. Hence, WEBinar. It combines a slide show presentation, along with an audio delivery of the information.

There are plenty of websites that allow you to host a webinar online. A quick Google search will display a ton of them. But, before you go ahead and start sending out invites, read these 5 webinar tips that you need to know:

Start With A Concentrated Topic- If you own a window company, don't create a webinar about "windows." This topic is far too broad. Instead, choose something a little bit more concentrated like "Different Types Of Replacement Windows" or "Styles And Features Of Our Newest Line Of Windows." By choosing a concentrated topic, you let your audience know exactly what they are about to view, and you stand less of a chance to stray from the main point.
Keep It Short & Simple- No one is going to want to watch a three hour webinar, regardless of the topic (save for, maybe, a webinar on the Victoria's Secret Angels). Know what information you want to get across to your audience and deliver this information in as few words as possible. We generally suggest that webinars are kept below 25 minutes and under 13 slides. If you have any more than that, perhaps you should consider refining your topic.
Visuals DO Matter- Plain white slides with black, Times New Roman font is boring. Spice things up! Remember, the goal of webinars is to get information across to your audience without them falling asleep. Don't be afraid to check out the preset templates included in your Microsoft Powerpoint software. Also, use images! Add images to compliment your speech, use graphs to show statistical data, and use charts as compare and contrast tools.
Allow Time For Questions- At the beginning of the webinar, tell your audience to send in whatever questions they may have. After you have given your presentation, answer some of the best ones. Providing answers will help to give your audience a better understanding of the information being presented to them!
Record It!- Not everyone who will want to view the webinar may be able to do so when you are presenting live. If you have access to an audio recorder, record yourself giving the presentation. Then, you can use some simple editing software to attach your audio to the slides! Put it on YouTube for public viewing or, possibly an even better idea, use it as a piece of advanced content for your website!

Webinars should be fun to view. Follow these 5 webinar tips to create a webinar that is not only informative, but also exciting!

Photo Credit: Video Set by Racum

What Produce Can Teach You About Inbound Marketing Services

Laura Hogan — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Bananas, raspberries, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, etc. What do all of these things have in common with inbound marketing services you ask? Well that’s obvious, isn’t it? Produce, just like inbound marketing, needs time to mature and ripen. If you try to launch your inbound marketing strategy too early, your business is not going to taste very good to the search engines and it won’t look ready to the users.

So let’s look specifically at oranges. Personally I have an orange tree in my backyard and we have been waiting for these darn oranges to ripen for months. Do you know how many times I have thought about accidentally knocking the tree over and trying one? The fruit has been sitting on this tree for months, there’s no way it’s not ripe yet! Thankfully I didn’t have to knock the tree over because one orange was knocked off by either the wind or my very large, clumsy dog. Either way, I opened up the orange and it was so clearly not ripe.

This is because one reason… it wasn’t ready! So many business owners today think that they just need to be present online. But just being present doesn’t mean you’re doing anything right. The first step to any inbound marketing system is to strategize! You're supposed to let your oranges sit on your tree, but you should be watering them and making sure they are growing. Similarly, your website should not be a static brochure and you should be watering it and showing it attention with these simple things!

Here is an eBook on how to create and utilize your inbound marketing strategy with our Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing!

Photo Credit: Orange Tree by miggslives

Facebook Contest Guidelines To Follow For Social Media Marketing

Laura Hogan — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Keep It Legal

Not only do you have to follow Facebook’s Contest Guidelines rules in order to caputre leads for social media marketing, but there are also a lot of laws concerning contests, especially in the US. We suggest you sit down with a lawyer and work out the details of the contest with them. Common questions you need to answer are as follows:

What age do people have to be in order to enter?
What information do I want entrants to provide?
How long will the contest run for?
Is the contest going to be global or just limited to one country or state?

Once these questions are answered the lawyer will draft up the rules for you and you can put them in the Notes App on Facebook for everyone to see.

Set-Up The Contest

After you hammered out all of the details and have all the legalities down on paper, it is time to set-up your contest. Every Facebook Application is a little bit different in how you set it up so we’ll avoid going into too much detail here (and most will provide their own tutorial). However, just keep a few things in mind.

Make sure that the tab the contest is on is like-gated. This is essential. You want the people coming to your page to have to like the page first before they can get to the entry form. Without a like-gated tab you might as well not run the contest. People do not like to click that like button unless they are told to.

Leading the entrant to a Thank You page after the form has been filled out is also something you should do. While not as essential as the like-gate, a Thank You page shows the entrant that you appreciate them. On this page you can also encourage the entrant to write on your wall and share the contest with their friends, which you will find that plenty of them do.

Finally, make sure the designs of the pages on the tab are attractive. If you're the contest tab looks ugly, a lot of people will turn the offer away. You may want to work with a graphic designer to get that professional and sleek look everyone loves.

Launch Ads For Your Contest

After launching your contest, the final step in the process is to promote it. This is the most important step. You must get the word out that you are having this contest or all of the work you put into getting it up and running will have been for nothing. The best way to promote your contest would be through setting up some Facebook Ads. Of course, you can promote your contest the old fashioned way through word-of-mouth and cheesy flyers, but ultimately the ads you run on Facebook are going to get you the largest amount of likes.

Watch The Likes Soar

With the ads launched and the contest running, everything is in order. You can just sit back now and watch your likes soar!

Photo Credit: Facebook Business by Sean MacEntee

Get More Likes: Run A Successful Social Media Contest On Facebook

Laura Hogan — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Contests are an excellent way to promote your business through Facebook. Running a contest will increase the amount of likes on your page while at the same time doing something constructive with your page’s current fans.

If you have only recently hopped on the Social Media bandwagon, increasing your Facebook page’s likes should be one of your top priorities. The more likes you have, the greater the reach of your offers and messages. Contests are a guaranteed way to turn that single digit number next to the thumbs-up icon to a double, triple or even quadruple digit number! Even if you have thousands of fans already, contests are a surefire way to keep the masses engaged and talking about your business.

A Great Example

Do you know what a Wheel Woolie is? If you do, that’s great! However, most people don’t and that is a challenge we are currently tackling with a contest. A Wheel Woolie is a brush for cleaning the wheels of your car. We were hired by Wheel Woolies to increase the awareness of their product amongst consumers. In order to do so, we launched a contest through Facebook offering a Wheel Woolie Car Detailing Kit and the results were significant. A little less than a month had gone by and their likes had surpassed 1,000 with over 600 people talking about them! Believe it or not before the contest they only had 10 likes.

Are you wondering what steps we took to have such a successful contest? No worries, we will walk you through the process.

Follow The Rules

The first step is to get acquainted with the rules. Facebook has a lot of rules and regulations regarding contests run on their website. Naturally they just want to make sure everything stays legal and that none of their users are getting gipped out of a prize.

An important rule is that you must run the contest through an Application. At OverGo Studio we use the North Social Sweepstakes App, but there are other Apps out there that may suit your needs better. Once installed, the Application will become a tab on your page, separate from your wall. Facebook only allows contests to be administered in this way. For instance, you are not allowed to say “Like this wall post/comment on this photo/upload a photo to enter for a chance to win an iPhone!” If Facebook catches you running a contest in that manner they could potentially ban you. What you can do, however, is have someone like the page in order to get access to the app you are running the contest on.

Another important rule to keep in mind is that you must completely separate your contest from Facebook. Even though you are running the contest on their website, they want all liability to rest with you. They have no desire to get tangled up in court if you plan on breaking the law. It’s completely understandable. Basically, you must inform every entrant that Facebook is in no way sponsoring, endorsing or associated with the contest and that any information they provide goes to you and not to Facebook.

Also, you are not allowed to notify any winners through Facebook. You must contact them outside of the website via the phone or email.

Target Your Ideal Customer

The second step in order to run a successful contest on Facebook would be to figure out the type of person you want to like your page and come up with a prize that appeals to that person. For instance, if your business was maternity consulting and you wanted more mothers-to-be to know about your services, you could run a contest offering a gift card to a baby-clothing store. That would be something that appeals to expectant mothers and attracts them to your page. If you instead ran a contest offering them tickets to a heavy death metal concert, more than likely they would not be into it.

Now that you know how to get started with your Facebook contest, you're all set to actually go through the steps of setting it up!

Photo Credit: Facebook Like Button by Sean MacEntee

Social Media Marketing Success: Ted and the Red Band Trailer

Tony Stanford — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Chances are, if you have a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or any other social media account, you have been exposed to, or maybe even taken part in, social media marketing. A few weeks ago, Laura had written an article about the Insanity DVD workouts and how successful social media marketing can be. Another instance of this success can be found on the big screen; Ted, and its red-band trailer.

Ted is a recently-released comedy starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, and an adorable teddy bear voiced by Seth MacFarlane- mastermind behind the animated series Family Guy. The premise of the movie is pretty straightforward: A young John Bennett (Wahlberg) wishes that his teddy bear, Ted (MacFarlane), would come to life. He does, and the two grow into close pals. Now that the two are “grown-ups,” trouble comes about as Lori, John’s girlfriend played by Kunis, wants more from their relationship, and Ted out of the apartment.

The ironic hook of the film is that Ted, cute and cuddly as he may be, is a crude, foul-mouthed individual with the party habits of a frat boy.

On April 1^st of 2012, Universal Pictures released a red band trailer promoting the film. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, a red band trailer is your typical movie promo that you would see as a coming attraction before your feature film. But, and this is a big “but,” studios do not have to hold back anything as they are not “approved for all audiences.” Foul language, violence, nudity, and adult situations are all fair game in red band trailers… Awesome!

To date, the Ted red band trailer has over 12.5 million views on YouTube. And that’s only the official version of the video, not including re-uploads of the same trailer by various users to a myriad of YouTube channels and different video hosting sites.

The first time I came across this red band trailer was on Facebook. A friend of a friend had posted it with a comment about it “going to be the funniest movie of the year,” but I skipped over it anyway. A few days later, however, the Ted trailer was plastered all over Facebook. Some of my closest friends re-posting the video, a bunch of people who I’d had film classes with in school, even a couple of my old professors. EVERYONE was talking about this trailer. So I gave it a watch.

And I cried laughing. Any video that can make me laugh out loud while I’m sitting in a room by myself deserves an immediate re-post. So that’s exactly what I did. I copied the link and pasted it to my timeline on Facebook. I then took the link and posted it on Twitter. And in that moment, I became a cog in the machine known as social media marketing.

Ted opened in theaters on July 1^st 2012, a mere 2 months after the trailer was first released. The film banked over $50 million in its opening weekend and just under $160 million through July 15^th. Not too shabby, huh?

Obviously, I’m not suggesting that all businesses should go out and create a video littered with foul language and nudity to market themselves (though I’m certainly not going to stop you). The point I want to make is that in order for your message to be heard, you need an audience. And what better place to have an audience than some of the most popular social networking platforms in the world? If there is anything to be learned from the social media marketing strategy of Ted, it’s that once there is a buzz about something, the buzz will continue to grow!

Photo Credit: Ted by Gaulsstin

What You Should Look For In An Inbound Marketing Consultant

Carissa Dunn — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Your Inbound Marketing Consultant should be looked at as an extension of your internal workforce but one who brings an external perspective, viewpoint and resource. It is the consultants responsibility to work collaboratively and collectively with your team in crafting and executing proactive, progressive and robust inbound strategies that speak to your business objectives and target market. This open and collaborative environment allows for ongoing engagement to raise questions, provide feedback, tweak strategy, share insight and solutions. Your Consult believes in your company, your brand, and its successes – if he or she doesn’t – it is time to move on.

Your Inbound Marketing Consultant should provide you with frequent performance and analytical reporting beyond just traffic, numbers, and conversion rates. An experienced Consultant will deliver more insightful business impact reporting - outlining trends, execution of successful and unsuccessful action items, feedback and recommendations for next steps. Data is for purposes of confirming descriptive information and helps transform insight into progress. Your Consultant is there to clearly define and walk you through these action items, in efforts to uncover a solid stable of results. Raise questions, ask for clarification and engage with your Consultant – you want a Consultant who respects and appreciates your input. He or she should have the expertise in Inbound Marketing to make recommendations on achieving your business objectives, but remember, you are the expert in your business – the relationship with your Consultant is one of collaboration and a synergistic relationship is essential.

Relative to Inbound Marketing, we are consistently testing actions items, best practices and providing “risk reduced” results - this is where we find the successes for each client and your input is important in this process. Your strategy should not be stagnant and, at the minimum, tweaked monthly or as challenges increase their impact. You want your Consultant to be following the data and to always be strategizing and providing a punch-list of items for additional execution. The online and social media platforms are changing rapidly, having a Consultant one-step ahead will bring you the business you have been waiting for!

Photo Credit: Searching by NathanF

Inbound Marketing Services: Meet Our President & Founder Rick!

Rick Kranz — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:42:00 GMT

Next up in our blogging series we have our president and founder, Rick Kranz! Rick is an entrepreneur and a great boss to work for! Internet marketing is a constantly changing business and he is always looking for new ways and new opportunities to help our client's. Let's let Rick tell us a little more about what goes into being the head of OverGo's inbound marketing services!

Tell me about your career path, what led you to your business focus?

The first 13 years of my career I worked as a manager for a Fortune 500 company. It was a great learning experience. It taught me discipline and how to quickly create and analyze business plans. Eventually I grew restless and wanted to run my own show. So after 13 years I jumped into the world of small business and never looked back. The first thing I learned was that my finance background was nice but I really needed sales and marketing skills to grow my business. So I dove head first into learning everything I could about sales and marketing and figured out that marketing was my niche. Over the next 20 years I focused on marketing and created 5 different companies in different industries along the way.

The most exciting thing was that I was there for the birth of internet marketing and jumped right into it. I saw the birth and death of many different search engines. I should have purchased stock in Google - oh well.

What made you interested in starting an inbound marketing company?

When I looked back on all of the companies I ran, my favorite tasks always revolved around marketing. I didn't enjoy operations, I found finance too dry even though it was my forte, and sales was not fun. But marketing was this magical thing where I could create a campaign, launch it, measure it, and watch the businesses grow because of it. This was really cool, especially for an entrepreneur type personality like mine!

One night I was at a charity poker event with a group of business owners that knew me very well and I floated the idea of launching a marketing company. Their response was unanimous - "do it!" So I did.

Is this different than your other business ventures?

Yes this is very different and in a good way. My other companies had to deal with things like; inventory, vendors, receivables, broken shipments, commuting, and the list could go on and on. Working here is actually fun. We have a great team of people at OverGo they are very fun to work with. And we get to pick and choose our clients so we make sure our clients are fun to work with too.

When it comes to clients, what are your top priorities? What are your biggest challenges?

My top priority is to make sure our clients are getting what they need and not just what they want. This may sound funny but I see a fair amount of business owners that are in love with their websites and value design/look over results. Every month we are looking to improve our client’s results. Ours is a process of "constant and never-ending improvement" that we apply to our client's accounts. This is a concept I have had drilled into me from way too many Tony Robbins programs (yes I am admitting to that).

What skills do you think a good leader demonstrates?

I don't know. I have read many books on this and I still don't know. I do know that if you want to lead all you need to do is take responsibility for what is going on around you and then people will follow you. I think it is important to keep your promises and always be a voice of reason.

What advice would you give to advance in this career?

Always be reading and studying the competition. Be creative and be analytical. Always be asking what could I do to improve the results? Then do it and measure it and show your boss the results you just got. Take charge don't sit around and wait for work to come to you.

What do you do when you’re not living, breathing, and teaching inbound?

I try to play golf - not a lot of time available for this when you are growing a company. I am currently a 15 handicap. I spend time at the beach with my wife and we like to watch TV programs with the whole family.

Anything else you want to share?

Yes. I have had the benefit of belonging to an organization of CEO's called Vistage for 13 years now. We meet once a month and challenge each other to improve our companies and our lives. If you’re a CEO and really want to be challenged to grow your company by a group of your peers then check it out.

Inbound Marketing Services: Meet Our Graphic Designer Tyler!

Laura Hogan — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

One of the most important inbound marketing services is definitely graphic design. The internet has gotten to be dependent on graphic design for things such as social media accounts, CTA's, and headers. Our graphic designer Tyler is a student at University of North Carolina Wilmington and is already a very talented and creative designer for all of our web-based graphic needs. Let's let him tell us more about what he does!

What made you interested in graphic design?

Growing up, art was my favorite subject in school. I loved being creative and could draw for hours. It wasn't until I got older, however, that I started to make the transition from paper to webpage. I would say I started to become interested when I got an electronic drawing pad for Christmas one year. I thought being able to draw directly on the computer was the coolest thing ever. I also had access to my dad's Photoshop and began playing around with it, creating all sorts of stuff. From that point my interest in graphic design took off. It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I actually took a graphic design class. What's funny is that I had been playing around with all of the different programs for so long, I wound up helping my teacher teach the class. It was after that class I realized I could do something great with graphic design.

When it comes to your daily work, what are your top priorities? What are your biggest challenges?

My priorities at work vary from day to day; It's mostly whatever the clients' need. Our project manager usually tells me in the morning which clients I need to focus on and what needs to be done.

I would say my biggest challenge is coming up with new and interesting designs for our clients' social media pages. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube... It's hard to design something that can be used across all of these different platforms while at the same time maintaining the feel of the client's website... Oh and also the client has to like it, which can also be tough to pull off haha.

What are the duties performed during a typical day? Do you have a set routine? How much variety is there on a day-to-day basis?

I do not have a set routine, everyday at OverGo is a surprise! When I come in to work in the morning (or occasionally afternoon) I receive a list of things to do from our lovely project manager and get to work.

What are the main or most important personal characteristics for success in the field?

In order to be a successful graphic designer the most important characteristic would be creativity. It doesn't matter how well you know your way around the design software. Even if you're an expert at Photoshop, if you lack creativity, your work will suffer. I would say that the second most important characteristic would have to be being a good listener. It's vital in the field that you are able to listen to what the client wants in order to deliver them quality work. You also need to be able to hear and be receptive of any and all criticism. Don't let your personal feelings get in the way.

Inbound Marketing Services: Meet Our Graphic Designer Stephanie!

Laura Hogan — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Stephanie is one of our very talented graphic designers. She jumped into designing for inbound marketing services without any background and is the mastermind behind some of our favorite CTA's and info-graphics!

Tell me about your career path, what led you to your business focus?

I originally majored in Painting but changed it to Design when I was at the end of my Freshman year. I felt that I didn't exactly want to be a starving artist but I loved painting so I wanted to do it on the side. I studied graphic design in college and worked at a print shop as an intern my last few years there which really helped me learn about print based graphics. Graphic Design is a way for me to show my creative side and skills.

How is working at OverGo Studio different than your past jobs?

I had never worked with web-based graphics in the past. Website graphics are very different from print based because you are trying to grab someone's attention to click on something, bringing them to an offer or to make the viewer explore the website more. It made me think about graphic use in a new way. Everyone is using the internet more and more to advertise rather than print based graphics so it was exciting to start something so new and different.

When it comes to your daily work, what are your top priorities? What are your biggest challenges?

My top priorities on a daily basis are keeping text aligned and making sense with the graphics. Spacing is a major thing as well with text and images. The colors are a big thing too because you need to make sure the colors go together with the theme of the website and not stray too far away from that. You want the graphics to pop but not be out of place on the screen. Research and brainstorming is also a top priority before I begin any CTA or info-graphic.

What are the duties performed during a typical day? Do you have a set routine? How much variety is there on a day-to-day basis?

During a typical day I will work on projects that were assigned to me, CTA's and Headers, Info-graphics, hero images. I work on the ones that are given priority over the others first, send the files over and wait for an OK or make a few text corrections as far as wording. There isn't too much of a variety, its always graphics! So dealing with color, type,and design everyday.

What are the main or most important personal characteristics for success in the field?

Success in graphic design field you need first a creative side. You definitely have to learn the programs to create the graphics in, that is a huge thing! And you need to have a hard shell because customers may not like what you do all the time, and sometimes don't even know what they want or how to say what they want. That is definitely more when it comes to print based graphics.

What do you do when you’re not living, breathing graphic design?

I work another job as a server/bartender. I also love to paint, do crafts, hanging with my boyfriend and friends. I live at the beach so getting there whenever I can is a must!

Inbound Marketing Services: Meet Our Video Production Specialist!

Tony Stanford — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Tony Stanford is our very talented video production specialist. Many would think that his good looks belong in front of the camera, but he prefers to spend more time behind it creating webinars, videos, and other offers for all of our clients. We asked Tony a few questions about what it takes to work as a video production specialist for OverGo Studio!

Tell me about your career path, what led you to video production?

Ironically enough, I never intended on studying film and video production in college. I was never one of those kids who knew what they wanted to be when they grew up; I was always changing my mind. I've always been a good writer, so in college I decided to study journalism and absolutely hated it. Wanting a change in major, I looked at writing classes in the English concentration before taking a few film writing classes, and absolutely loved them. I had always loved watching movies but I had never really considered it as a career path until my second year of undergrad. From there, what really kept me interested in filmmaking was the creative aspect of it, such as being able to take an idea or a message you want to convey, or a story you want to tell, and then having the ability to create it in whatever way you want.

When it comes to your daily work, what are your top priorities? What are your biggest challenges?

I'd have to say that the biggest challenge with what I do is being a one-man show. I feel like a lot of people who aren't familiar with the process of film and video production see it as "point the camera, record, load to YouTube, done." In all actuality, there's a ton more to it. Having to be the writer, videographer, editor, animator, sound technician, etc. can get a little overwhelming at times. On the other hand, I enjoy playing a part in all of those aspects of production, so it's not terrible. Top priorities are really dependent on what types of projects I have going on at a particular time. I'd say a big priority is getting little things out of the way to clear up my time for larger projects.

What are the duties performed during a typical day? Do you have a set routine? How much variety is there on a day-to-day basis?

Every day is different for me here at OverGo. Again, the type of projects I have on my plate really directs how the day is going to go. I'm a big fan of working late at night: no distractions, peace and quiet. It's how I got much, if not all, of my work done in school. If I've got a video that needs to be finished by Friday you can bet I'm putting the final touches on it Wednesday and Thursday night at some obscure hour of the morning.

What are the main or most important personal characteristics for success in the field?

I'd say the most important characteristic for my field of work is persistence. Film and video production isn't easy. And there are a lot of times throughout the course of a project where I'm ready to throw in the towel. Be it technical issues or not being able to do something that I'm envisioning, no project goes 100% smoothly. But when everything is all said and done and I'm sending off a final product that I'm proud of and that the client is completely satisfied with, that's what makes it all worth it.

What do you do when you’re not living, breathing, and teaching inbound?

Outside of work I'm a pretty typical guy. Hanging out with friends, playing video games and sports, going out on weekends, long walks on the beach- the usual stuff you would hear from any early-20-year-old. I'm an avid music listener and collector and recently started DJ'ing at some events and some local bars and clubs.

Inbound Marketing Services: Meet Our Project Manager!

Kelly Kranz — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

The OverGo Studio team loves their jobs! We love them so much that we're kicking off a blogging series dedicated to explaining and exploring every person's job in our team. In order for you to see what goes in to every part of the inbound marketing service process, we interviewed every member of the team and will be posting blogs dedicated to their answers.

First up, we have our energetic team cheerleader, also known as our project manager. Kelly is involved in almost every aspect of every project for every client. Her ability to multi-task is beyond average human capability and her dedication to what she does drives the rest of the team. We asked her a few questions about what it takes to be a project manager for the OverGo Studio team.

Tell me about your career path, what led you to be a project manager?

I enjoy being present at the birth of an exciting idea, molding it into a project and putting it into action! I think the entire process and end result is very rewarding. I am also a people person and as PM I work with lots of people. This is why I was attracted to a Project Management role!

When it comes to your daily work, what are your top priorities? What are your biggest challenges?

My top priority every day is to check the status of current projects. One of my biggest challenges is blogging. I manage about 15 blog sites. There are a lot of moving parts that go on behind the scenes!

What are the main or most important personal characteristics for success in the field?

You have to be a team player. Team work is the single most important thing in my opinion. I would not be a successful PM if it weren't for the talented team I work with. The ability to multitask comes in handy too. I always have my hands in a bunch of different things at one time!

What is the most satisfying aspect of your job?

The most satisfying aspect of my job is seeing the results. Inbound marketing really works and the results that come in from the work we execute is mind blowing. Sometimes I feel like saying "WOW was I really apart of that?"

What do you do when you’re not living, breathing, and teaching inbound?

What are you talking about? The inbound way of life is the only way of life! I love the beach - living in a small town in NC right next to the ocean is amazing- I spend my weekends with my toes in the sand! I'm also a huge TV fanatic. To list all the shows I'm a fan of would be excessive but I can tell you that I cannot go a day without watching an episode of Frasier or the Golden Girls.

Social Media Marketing: Tips For Your Timeline

Laura Hogan — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Are you trying to get adjusted to the Facebook Timeline feature? Our infographic can help you understand the Facebook best practices when it comes to your social media marketing and Facebook Timeline!

Blogging For Business Success Through Simple Guidelines

Laura Hogan — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Blogging for business is one of the most important aspects of the inbound marketing process. Here are some tips to help you stay on the track of business blogging best practices.

Post Frequency and Consistency

Consistency is key when it comes to blogging. You should be keeping your blog updated on a regular schedule in order to get found by the search engines. Keeping an updated blog will also help bring an audience back for more. If your visitors come back and see stale posts, they won’t be interested in your blog or your business.

Use a Wide Variety of Content

Frequency of posts creates a successful blog and so does using a wide variety of content. The best part about having a business blog is that you can post about all aspects of your business which allows you to get found for everything you do.

Share Your Customer’s Stories

Do you have customers that are getting traffic and leads? Great! Share their story. If someone is getting leads they want then it is obvious that what you are doing for them is working. If you create blog posts explaining why each client is successful, then you have case studies and blog posts galore!

Create a Schedule

You always want to be posting weekly so a schedule is absolutely necessary. If you organize your posts into the date they need to be posted and the title of the post then you won’t lose track and miss a posting day. It’s mostly about habit. If you get into the habit of, for example, posting as soon as you get to work every Tuesday and Thursday then you will be successful. Bulk scheduling also helps stay on a blogging schedule!

After reading these simple guidelines for blogging, you can now go out and create that great business blog! Don’t forget to blog or you won’t get found!

Photo Credit: Blog Marketing by Maria Reyes-McDavis

7 Marketing Strategies To Maximize Your Home Page

Laura Hogan — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 11:00:00 GMT

“Home is where the heart is.” This may be a cliché saying, but it should ring true in regards to your company’s home page. It’s easy to want to load your home page up with all the information somebody may want to know about your business and all the offers you may have. But you don’t want to overload them with information and confuse your customers. A busy homepage is overwhelming and personally, I will go elsewhere if I come upon a site with a busy homepage.
Below are some good marketing strategies to creating a homepage visitors will want to stick around for!

Use your keywords. Not only will this help your website get found, it will tell your customers what you value as the most important aspects of what you do.
A dab will do ya. A small amount of copy that brings visitors exactly to the point is essential. Not only do people not want to read a novel on the first page of your site, they don’t want to be scrolling farther and farther down the page and getting lost in your site.
Call the troops to action. Calls to action will direct them farther into the website and hopefully create a lead that you can nurture.
Social media buttons. Don’t be selfish! Let your visitors share you! This will also allow them to keep in constant connection with you if they like your page on Facebook or follow you on Twitter.
Update it. If your page is a static brochure, nobody will want to visit it again. Keep it current and update it with your latest offers or updated services/products.
Make it user-friendly. Everyone has been to a website that is essentially a gigantic black hole. You find yourself on a page that you don’t know how you got there or how to get home from it and you forgot to drop the breadcrumbs. Don’t be that website, keep it simple and easy.
Grab your visitor’s attention. With the internet these days, it’s so easy to get bored or confused on a website and to just hit the back button and find a better one. Keep your visitor’s attention with interesting content so you don’t lose them.

These are just a few tips to keep visitor’s interested and keep them on your website. You want your homepage to look good, be efficient, and serve its purpose.

2 Inbound Marketing Tips That Should Be Taken Seriously

Laura Hogan — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:00:00 GMT

There are some marketing tips that are viewed as clichés and get repeated so many times that you don’t even think about what they mean anymore. We’re going to go over those and figure out what they really mean and if they’re even relevant.

“Quality content is king.”

First of all, what is considered quality content? Quality content are things such as ebooks, webinars, whitepapers, etc. that your customers actually want to read or watch. This includes different kinds of content relevant to various parts of the sales funnel that customers would download.

Most of the time, content is the reason why people come to your site. You want it to reflect your brand, your services, your products, your company. You want this content to be fresh, relevant, and helpful. So this cliché still rings true. Quality content still holds the crown.

“Inbound is in, outbound is out.”

Many believe that outbound marketing is too expensive and ineffective and that inbound marketing is the next step. The truth is that the cost per lead is in fact cheaper in inbound marketing. The other difference is that people are looking for you with internet marketing instead of you looking for them like with outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is obviously effective and can grow your business. But to say that outbound is completely out is just not true. Outbound is still effective and customers are still paying attention to it. If you completely eliminate it, you’re going to miss out on potential customers. The two types of marketing actually complement each other and I would suggest ignoring anyone that tells you otherwise.

Those are just 2 that I thought would be important to address, are there any other clichés that you agree or disagree with?

Inbound Marketing Services: Call-To-Action Lessons From a Pop Song

Laura Hogan — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:56:00 GMT

Carly Rae Jepsen is a teenager whose insanely catchy song, Call Me Maybe, has made it big. Really the only lyrics in the whole song go as follows, “Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me maybe.” You probably don’t understand what’s so catchy about it if you haven’t heard the song, so let me include it so you can understand the greatness that is Call Me Maybe.

So now that you know what the song is all about. Let’s talk about the lyrics and what the heck this has to do with inbound marketing. Here’s the problem with Carly… she tells this stud muffin that she thinks is so attractive to call her… maybe. Really Carly? I give you props for giving a guy your number, but asking him to maybe call you ruins the entire thing.

Sure, it sounds great in a song and if she had said, “call me, definitely” she may have come off as a bit pushy. But as inbound marketers, we use calls to action as our version of giving out our number. We want our visitors to create a relationship with us but downloading an offer.

A catchy CTA involves telling your customers what to do. Your CTA needs to clearly identify your offer. Just like this song, you want your CTA to be catchy, direct, and stand out from your page. You want it to tell your customer what your offer is and that they need to click that CTA in order to receive it.

The goal for CTA’s is high-click through rates and conversion rates. You aren’t going to get that from asking them to do something, you need to tell them. So tell your customers “Hey I just met you, and this crazy, but here’s my CTA, so click me definitely.”

Insanity Workout: A Social Media Marketing Success Story

Laura Hogan — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:00:00 GMT

If you don’t know what insanity is, it’s a 60-day workout dvd that will whip your behind into shape. It makes you angry and yell back at the instructor like a crazy person but yet still wake up every day and pop that dvd in. I have been doing insanity for one month, two weeks, and one day. I have a love/hate relationship with Sean T. and his silly workout antics.

So as crazy as Insanity may be, they have done an amazing job at having other people market them with social media marketing.

If you go on Facebook, I guarantee at least 5 of your friends are telling everyone that may or may not care that they have started this workout. In fact, some who have done it have probably posted before and after pictures. This is called creating buzz through word of mouth marketing. Everyone loves the product so much that they want to share it with their friends, that’s a pretty strong product.

There is no buyer’s remorse. Have you bought something and then canceled the order immediately, returned it, or stuffed it in a closet and never wore/used it ever again? Well this is one product that will not give you buyer’s remorse. I posted about it on Facebook when I first started it and got probably 15 comments from people with words of encouragement and love for the product. Is that not perfect feedback to make you feel confident about buying a product?

Insanity is for lack of a better word, insane but their social media marketing is not. The influx of amazing feedback from those who have purchased and used the product make the infomercials almost unnecessary.

5 Tips: Choosing the Right Inbound Marketing Agency for Your Business

Laura Hogan — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Choosing the right inbound marketing agency can be a daunting task. It is such a growing industry that new agencies are emerging quickly. < Follow these tips to find the right agency for your business needs!

Strategy- The agency you decide on should focus on your specific business’ goals. If they don’t ask what sets you apart from your competitors, your target audience, or current business model then they aren’t the right agency for you.

Customization- You should find the agency that fits your business’ needs. If you need blogging services and they don’t provide them, they aren’t the right agency for you. They want to offer you call tracking and you don’t need it? Find an agency that will offer you a custom package if you don’t need all the things that they offer.

Integration- Will the agency your looking at guide you through strategy, design, development, and implementation of your inbound marketing plan? Do they have the necessary resources to support each of these phases? Do they understand how to integrate all of the aspects of an efficient inbound marketing strategy to meet your goals? Those answers are imperative to find out.

Gather Data- Don’t hesitate to ask for what their typical client return on investment has been for their other clients. How well have their techniques worked in the past? Gathering proof and reading testimonials can give you an insight into how they can help your company produce results as well.

Experience- You want to get a sense of what your agency has done in the past. Ask how it’s evolved and grown. You should always visit an agency’s website to see the quality of work they’ve done and what type of clients they work with. Knowing their background and where they came from will help you understand if they can help you and if you can grow with them.

In summary:
- Make sure your goals are their goals too
- Customize your package if needed
- Make sure they have the necessary resources
- Find out how they’ve helped other companies
- Read up on their history

5 Ways To Promote Infographics With Blog Marketing

Laura Hogan — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I recently got into the infographic fad. They are apparently what’s “hot” right now. Some think they’re annoying, I think they’re the lazy man’s portal to information. Anyone can make them, they’re fun, not a lot of words, a lot of facts and statistics, and did I mention not a lot of words?

Now that I convinced you to run out and create an infographic, let’s talk about how to promote them with blog marketing.

If you included someone else’s information, ask them to promote it. People love to promote themselves and what better way than to say “hey, my content made it into a cool infographic so check it out!” They’ll eat it up.
Blog it. Create an intro for it, add in the picture, and boom you’re done. Quickest blog post ever.
Share it. Social media sites, like Facebook, are increasingly visual. Post it and let all your fans enjoy the greatness that is your work.
Separate the graphic into sections. If you cut the info graphic up, you can post it numerous times throughout your various social media sites.
Submit your infographic to different sites. There are actually sites out there that are dedicated to infographics and ask people to submit their own!

Infographics are fun and useful, but if you aren’t promoting them the right way with blog marketing, you aren’t going to get any kind of traffic to look at them!

How do you promote your infographics?

Inbound Marketing Tips Every Graduating Student Needs To Know

Laura Hogan — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I just graduated from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Got to put on the gown, walk across the stage, grab my diploma, and throw my cap in the air. Actually, it went a little more like this. I had to put on an oversized, unflattering cap and gown, listen to some woman I didn’t know talk about her time in Africa, walk across the floor in front of the stage, grab a rolled up piece of paper that wasn’t my actual diploma, and nobody threw their cap. The ideal graduation compared to the real thing is similar to the ideal marketing job compared to the real thing. I’m here to tell all these graduating college students just what they actually need to know about marketing, because it goes way beyond what a textbook and a PowerPoint can teach you.

Academics:

You will have to deal with numbers. Just because you majored in communication studies and didn’t have to take statistics doesn’t mean you escaped math forever. And if you actually took some math in college and thought it was over, think again. Inbound marketing requires you to analyze everything you do every single day. You can’t escape the math, trust me I tried.
Classrooms don’t teach you half the things you really need to know, neither do internships. The marketing classes I took in school required none of the skills I use in daily work life. I repeat, none of the skills. Can you believe that? I can, it’s because marketing, inbound or outbound, isn’t about reading a textbook and knowing how to do it. It’s about constant learning and growth in the field.

Experience:

Internships don’t guarantee jobs. So you had an internship at a marketing agency over a summer in college? That’s awesome, so did almost everyone else. Don’t think experience will get you a job, you need to stress what you did during that experience. Did you just answer phones and bring coffee? Then congratulations you wasted your time. A big company’s name on your resume may guarantee an interview but if you have nothing to show for your time there, it’s ultimately worthless.
Internships do however bring on networking opportunities. Your intern director helped you through everything you needed to do and was there to bring you constructive criticism and allow you to grow. Who better to reach out to than someone who already helped you succeed? They may have an opening at their company or know somebody who does. Even after I got a job, I still keep in touch with my internship director.
“Don’t fear the man that practices 1,000 kicks, fear the man that practices 1 kick 1,000 times.” –Bruce Lee. Find your strength and focus on it. A long list of every organization you ever went to a meeting for on your resume is not going to win anyone over. Employers look for strengths, find one, practice one, flaunt one.

Marketing:

Marketing moves faster than you can learn it. What you were taught freshman year about marketing is probably no longer relevant. Things change literally every single day and in marketing you have to constantly learn and grow to stay current.
Gone are the days where the marketing department and sales department are separate. Be prepared to work in both. You should always be thinking about the return investment in everything you do. You send out a tweet, how does that benefit your company? You created an adwords campaign, how does that benefit your company? Don’t lose sight of the big picture during day to day work assignments. And that big picture is revenue.
Get familiar with html. Not only do I hate html, after 6 months I still screw things up when I use it. When I first started I had to ask coworkers what the code was to center things, I mean I knew nothing. Html is something that is generally useful to know. And if you come into the workplace able to work with it, at least in a basic way, you are already ahead of the game.

Personal:

You are going to get things wrong. I work for an inbound marketing company… I learned almost nothing I do at work in the classroom. When I started out, I thought I was terrible at everything I did. I’ve worked here for almost 6 months and I still get things wrong and mess things up. Does it bring me down? Of course, and I still probably take it much harder than I should. But the key is to turn things around to be positive and take it as a learning experience.
Never ever ever ever ever burn bridges. You may be so relieved you finally got a real job and get to quit your part-time waitressing job. Don’t just stop showing up. You never know when you may need to market to a restaurant, have an event, or even need your job back one day! Connections are great to have no matter what, and networking with these connections is also key.

Checklist For Better Landing Page Conversions

Kelly Kranz — Thu, 31 May 2012 17:09:00 GMT

Creating a Landing Page has numerous different parts to it. If you don’t keep track of the things you need to do, you could end up with an ineffective page, unclear offer, and lost leads. That’s why OverGo Studio brings you… drumroll please… the Landing Page Checklist!

Page Optimization: Did I Place the AdWords Keyword First in the.....?

Page Title
URL
Meta Description
Landing Page Header -main headline *(place after action verb)
Alt Text

Landing Page Header

Does it clearly define the offer?
Does it begin with an action verb?
Does it include the keyword after the action verb?

Landing Page Content

Is it clear what the offer is?

Is it clear why the user needs the offer?
Is it clear what they need to do to get the offer?
Did I use Bullet Points?
Did I include a relevant image?
Is the content above the fold?
Did I remove the navigation and all other unnecessary links?
Did I give the image a keyword tag?

Form

Did I change the title of the form to something useful to the offer?
Did I change the submit label to match the action verb in the header?
Does the form send notification emails about downloads to the client?
Are my form fields relevant information needed?
Is the form above the fold?

Thank You Page

Did you create a Thank You page for the offer?

When the form is completed did I redirect the viewer to the thank you page?

Blink Test!

In 5 seconds can you clearly understand what the offer is, the value of it and what you need to do to get the offer?

Info Credit- HubSpot

8 Elements You Need To Know About For Landing Page Conversions

Kelly Kranz — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:59:00 GMT

Have you been creating landing pages that aren’t bringing in as many landing page converstions as you may want? That could be because you aren’t giving enough attention to every element of the landing page. We want to make sure your landing pages are giving you great results, so here are 8 elements of a landing page that you should be treating with care!

Create A Landing page for the new Offer:

1. Keyword Optimization- The main keyword for the offer used in the AdWords Campaign should come first in the following places

Page Title
URL
Meta Description
Landing Page Header *(place after action verb)
Alt Text The Images

Here is an example:

2. Landing Page Header

should clearly define what the offer is- keep keyword in the header
Header should ALWAYS start with an action verb ie: “Learn” “Jump into”

3. There are three main things a good landing page tells a user:

What, exactly, is being offered
Why the visitor can't live without that thing
What the user needs to do to get it
Use Bullet Points!
- make it very easy for someone to quickly skim the landing page
- write 3-5 bullet points on a page that explain what the visitor will receive if they complete the form
Do whatever you can to make it absolutely clear to the user what it is that's being offered, why that thing is so fantastic, and what the user needs to do to get it.
Blink Test!- Will visitors be able to understand what the offer is, its value and what they need to do in 5 seconds?

4. Go Naked!

Strip the landing page of all unnecessary links and navigation!

5. Keep the Form Simple

Only ask information the client truly needs from a lead
Never more than 7 fields
Make sure the title of your form says something useful like "Fill Out This Form to Get Your Free Guide" rather than "Contact Us."
Change the Submit button label to match action verb in the header

6. Place Content Above the Fold

Content & Form should ALWAYS be visible about the page fold

7. Include an Image

Place a relevant, interesting image on the page that will help visitors visualize what the offer is
- ie: Ebook- Show the image of the cover, Webinar- Show screen shot of a slide
- Name the Image so it is consistent with the keyword

8. Redirect to a Thank You Page

After someone completes the form on a landing page they should always be redirected to a thank you page
Give them their navigation back- Keep them on the website longer!

Now that you know how to create better landing pages, here's a landing page creation checklist that will help you out!

Info Credit- HubSpot

Photo Credit: No 8 by kristyhall

Internet Marketing: 3 Places You Should Be Using Calls To Actions

Laura Hogan — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Is your website a static brochure that offers information but no content? Are you offering content but aren’t getting great results from it? If you fall into either of these categories, your website needs some help in the department of CTA’s in order to help your internet marketing. Obviously you should be offering advanced content if you aren’t already, but once you have that content how do you market it on the internet?

Marketing your offers can make you or break you. Your CTA’s should be attractive and eye catching, but where you put them can also make a huge difference. Here are 3 places you should be incorporating CTA’s on your website:

1. Home Page

Your home page is a main area that most of your visitors will see when they enter your website. Your CTA’s on this page should cater to both first time visitors and repeat visitors. Offers such as “Request a Free Consultation” could be good for a returning customer but a downloadable eBook may be a good option for a first time visitor.

Consider both the first time and returning customer audience when coming up with offers and CTA’s and you will be converting both types of visitors into leads in no time.

2. Blog Pages

If you are blogging correctly, you should be writing about things that your audience and customers want to learn about. If you are using keywords and promoting these blog posts, then they are more than likely a place that many users will enter your website.

CTA’s should be placed at the bottom of blog posts and offer something relevant to the post. Let’s say you are looking at a blog about how to know you have an ant infestation in your home. If you place a CTA at the bottom offering rodent removal, that is not relevant to the article and won’t get clicked.

Figure out what kind of offer is relevant for each article. A simple “Request a Free Consultation” is also a great choice for the bottom of blog articles.

3. Product or Service Pages

The best thing about placing a CTA on product pages is that you know exactly what they’re looking for and can tailor the offer to exactly what they may be looking for. Giving a customer exactly what they want will add more value compared to your competition and will provide a unique opportunity to connect with your customers.

If you aren’t currently using calls to actions or don’t have them placed on the most effective pages you’re missing out on great opportunities to connect with customers. So get started creating great offers or moving your CTA’s around and seeing results!

Do you have any more ideas about other places that may be good to place CTA’s? Let us know!

4 Ways You're Losing Internet Marketing Sales And Don't Know It

Laura Hogan — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

As many people know in the sales world, you can’t win every time. But if your sales techniques aren’t the best, then you won’t even have a shot. Many businesses are losing the opportunity to make a sale before they even know that a potential customer is looking for their services. That’s why it’s so important to have your website optimized in order to stay in the running to keep those leads.

Here are 4 ways you are unknowingly losing leads and how you should fix them!

1. Your potential customers can’t even find you online.

Most people these days are going straight to search engines to find out information about products and services they need- from what a stores hours are to where they can find this product or service. Which is why it is so important to have a significant presence. If you aren’t dedicating time to find relevant keywords and write blog posts then you aren’t getting found.

No worries! The easiest way to fix this is to create a keyword strategy and start blogging around those keywords! If you target a particular audience and start blogging to them on a regular basis, you will surely get found because your topics will be of interest to them. Make sure you are also sharing your blogs across social media channels as well.

2. Your competitor has a better website.

Normally when you search for information on something, you don’t only click the first link that comes up and settle with that information. The internet is a place that allows anyone to post anything so cross-checking is something searchers have become accustomed to doing. If a customer is comparing values, information, reviews, etc. and they see that you have old content with a user unfriendly layout they are sure to go with the website that is actively updating and posting with a very user friendly website.

The only way to fix this is make sure you are actively updating your site with content and making sure it is easily accessible. Keep your site fresh and relevant to your target market and that market will surely find your site compelling and will choose yours over any competitor.

3. You have no advanced content to offer.

We say this all the time, but it’s worth repeating... the majority of visitors that come to your site aren’t ready to buy. Because of this, you have to provide them with information and content to keep your company at the tip of their tongue for when they are ready. If you aren’t offering downloadable content, they’re going to forget about you.

This is easily fixable, create content for them to download! This could be an eBook, webinar, whitepaper, video, anything that will allow you to follow up with them and stay relevant in their mind for when they’re ready to buy.

4. You didn’t follow up with them quickly enough or at all!

If you have forms that are getting filled out with information on your website, these are called leads. If you don’t nurture your leads, you’re wasting information and losing potential customers. Don’t be lazy... follow up and do it as quickly as possible! Offer them another offer or just provide them with blog articles they can read, anything will do.

If you had one or all of these problems with your website, fixing them won’t guarantee immediate results. Inbound marketing is a process not a project. It’s an ongoing process that should be analyzed and changed according to how traffic is going. But these 4 things will certainly help jump start your success!

Inbound Marketing Services Are The New Tradeshow

Laura Hogan — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:51:00 GMT

I’m sure you’ve been hearing that traditional marketing has gone to the dogs, especially trade shows. Well, what if you thought of your website as your booth at your current industry’s largest trade show. Would it attract visitors perusing by? Would it engage those visitors with content? Would it make your visitors want to leave their business card? Would it follow up with these leads after the trade show was over?

If your website doesn’t do everything well that you could do in person at a tradeshow, then your outbound marketing techniques aren’t effective. Just like trade shows, your website should be connecting visits, leads, and sales by using various inbound marketing services.

Trade shows cost a lot of money to invest in and are increasingly becoming something that companies are dropping out of. In fact, in the news recently there was a big statement made by Microsoft that they were dropping out of CES trade show after this year, 2012.

Want to know why? Because there is a 24/7 trade show and it’s on your website. In order to take advantage of this you need to follow three basic inbound marketing steps:
1. Drive traffic to your site with keyword research and blogging
2. Turn traffic into revenue with advanced content and landing pages
3. Measure results of traffic and leads

More and more companies are beginning to realize that trade shows are ineffective and costly. That is why you should focus on your online trade show. Your website should have an appealing backdrop, interesting demos, engaging opportunities, provide relevant material, and provide compelling offers.

Do you still participate in trade shows? Do you think your website is an effective alternative? Let us know!

Check out our article on what to fix if your website isn't performing well!

Photo Credit: GEOTherm2012 by ThinkGeoEnergy

3 Tips For Using Inbound Marketing Services For Social Action

Laura Hogan — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:36:00 GMT

Do you have an event that you want people to go to? Have you thought about promoting it on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter? Well social media offers a great platform to promote social events as long as you do it correctly. Before you begin your promotion, check out our pre-launch suggestions so your campaign will run smoothly.

1.      Get Organized

There are so many social media sites out there like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Photobucket, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, and the list could go on forever. In order to choose the right one, you need to decide what your target market is and figure out which platforms will help you target them. They’re not going to seek you out, you need to find them. Figure out which site will help you convey your campaign message the best.

Once you figure out which site to use, create a marketing schedule for this campaign. You need to know how many weeks or months are left until the event and decide what kind of things you will post as the event gets closer and how often you are going to post. These include social media activities, blog schedule, email campaigns, advanced content centered around the event, speaking engagements, etc. Set realistic goals and make sure to measure the response.

2.      Share & inform

When you introduce a new event you should provide all of the information that somebody viewing it may need. Don’t assume that people know what your campaign is all about, include every detail that potential attendees may need.

Use photos and videos to your advantage! Doing this will create a face for your campaign which is important in order to stand out in the crowd. Photos and videos are also easy to share across various different social media platforms which will allow for shares, retweets, likes, etc.

3.      Create a Clear Call To Action (CTA)

The most important step is to figure out what you want people to do in order to participate in the campaign and get them to do it. Do you want them to donate money? Download content? Attend an event? Sign a petition? Let your CTA convey this!

No matter what your campaign is or how you decide to market it, make sure you keep in contact with those interested in your campaign and continue to increase awareness and support. Try to follow up with those who attended and even those who didn’t by posting related blog articles, photos, status updates, etc. post-event in order to thank those who came and possibly create new interest for the next campaign. If you follow all of these steps I ensure that you will have a successful and beneficial event!

Now that you heard our suggestions, what kind of things have you done to promote a campaign or event?

Photo Credit: Untitled by Spec-Ta-Cles

Infographic: Why You Should Be Using Social Media Marketing

Laura Hogan — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:54:00 GMT

Have you been wondering why you should be using social media marketing? Our infographic will give you enough information to convince you to create a great social media profile!

Internet Marketing: How To Attract 1st Time Visitors To Your Site

Laura Hogan — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:00:00 GMT

If your inbound marketing strategy is set up correctly, then you should be bringing in all different types of visitors from blogging, lead nurturing, social media, email marketing, and first time visitors. Internet marketing is important to attract all of these types of visitors, but for now we’re going to focus on first time visitors. These are important because of their ability to help spread the word to new markets and places.

These new visitors are known as top of the funnel visitors. So how do you attract them? Easy, just show them what you know in order to start a relationship. These people probably found you because they wanted an answer to something and it led them to your website. So chances are they probably aren’t going to buy from you right then and there on that first visit.

However, if you provide them with the information they need and not try to outright sell them something then they will walk away happy with your company. So make an investment in them and provide them with information and don’t rush the sale.

So how do you do this?
Good, old, reliable Blogging! Blogging is like our security blanket that we cuddle up with during a thunderstorm. When the thunder strikes and it brings a visitor who needs information, give it to them by blogging! This is an easy way to provide visitors with information without shoving a sale down their throat.

Advanced Content like eBook, Webinars, and Whitepapers. These are longer, more detailed than a blog post but still provides an opportunity to answer your visitor’s questions. Make sure you have a CTA that brings them to a landing page with a form so you can get their information and nurture the lead for when they are ready to buy.

Blogging and advanced content are essential parts of inbound marketing and need to be focused on in order to bring new visitors to your site. If you don’t want to grow as a company and reach as many people as you can, then disregard this blog post. But if you want to be successful and reach as many people as you can then start creating that content!

These are just 2 ways to bring in new visitors, how do you do it?

Social Media Marketing: Pinterest For Business

Laura Hogan — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Pinterest is the new social media marketing fad for products and projects. You log on to scan through the page for a few minutes and all of a sudden it’s dark out, you missed dinner, and you have 35 new DIY projects pinned that you’ll never do. But how do you utilize Pinterest for marketing?

For a while, there was a huge debate over Pinterest’s terms of service. In it they said that anything pinned on their site was then theirs to sell. This was cause for concern for many companies but their updated terms of service took that out and it’s a green light for marketing on Pinterest.

So how does one marketing on this hodge podge mess of endless pictures? How do you get your content to stand out from the knitting projects and chalkboard paint ideas? Well here are a couple tips to help you stand out.

Statistics show that taller images are more repinnable so make your picture longer than the average height. In a sea of pictures, a longer image will inevitably catch a viewers eye. With pages upon pages of pictures, viewers often scan and scroll which means they quickly look over one page and then go on to the next. With a longer picture you are sure to have eyes on your pin for much longer than average.

Write a long description under your pin. Most people will write things like “love this” or “need this for my kitchen.” But what people really want to read is the details about the pin- where they can find it, how much it costs, etc. So include these details of your product or service on your pin and you have a much higher chance of a repin!

Connect your account to facebook or twitter. This gives you an opportunity to show people that you are on pinterest and share all of your pins as well as other pins that you like with your friends and followers. This will help people become aware of your pinterest presence.

Link to your product or service page.

In my opinion, Pinterest is great yet dangerous for one main reason- accessibility. I can’t tell you how many things I have purchased because the pictures link straight to the product page. Your Pinterest followers will thank you but their wallets might hate you.
Pinterest is a very new site and many social media marketers are still trying to figure out what it’s all about and the best way to market on it. These are just a few of the tips to get you started but there seem to be endless possibilities within the site. So I suggest you create that Pinterest account and take advantage of all those users who are skipping dinner just find one more thing to spend their money on.

7 Inbound Marketing Services To Fix If Your Website Isn’t Performing

Laura Hogan — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Sometimes a company may be so eager to join the inbound marketing forces that they just don’t do it correctly. If rushed in to, the entire inbound marketing process can be affected because the website is not optimized for inbound marketing. This can lead to minimal success or possibly complete failure. If this has happened to you or someone you know please call 1-800-INB-OUND and we will refund you immediately… just kidding. With inbound marketing you don’t even need refunds, because you have the opportunity to change things immediately and see results. That’s why we are giving you 7 things to change about your website if it was not optimized correctly for inbound marketing, no refund required!

1. Advanced Content
If you aren’t providing visitors anything to download, view, request, etc. then you aren’t giving them a reason to stick around. Without content to offer and a form for them to download you won’t create any leads and that’s a pretty crucial step in the whole inbound marketing process.
You can offer numerous different things: webinars, eBooks, whitepapers, videos, or email subscription to name a few. If you don’t have advanced content I want to congratulate you on creating an expensive virtual brochure!! A brochure that gives visitors no reason to come back, no information for you to know who they are, and essentially no help to anyone at all.

2. Calls To Action
So let’s say you have advanced content on your website but aren’t receiving very many downloads or views. Do you have any call to actions? CTA’s are what informs your site visitors of your content and convinces them to download it. They should be attractive, unique, and they should stand out from the page. If you have CTA’s but still aren’t getting very many clicks then change them up and create new, better ones to see how those work.

3. Landing Pages
Now that you have CTA’s in place that will catch a visitor’s eye, you should focus on the landing page that it will take them to. A landing page is a website page that contains only information about your offer and a form to receive their information. The visitor should not be able to see a menu bar or any other information, let them focus on your offer. Let your visitors know what is so great about your offer that they NEED to download it, and don’t be modest!

4. Blog

Post on post on post on post. Here at OverGo Studio we have written so many blogs about the importance of blogging. But it really is the best thing you can do for your inbound marketing plan. Blogging brings in so much traffic to your website if you do it correctly. You should be blogging on a regular basis in order to be found by search engines. I’ve read that you need to be posting between 3-5 times per week or up to 21 per week. As long as you post consistently, as much blogging as you have time for is all that matters.

If you are only blogging once every few weeks or not at all, spending time and money on other aspects of inbound marketing aren’t going to get you anywhere. This is the cornerstone of inbound and needs to be handled correctly.

5. Lead Nurturing
Let’s say someone comes on to your site looking for your product or service but they aren’t sure that they want to buy just yet. They click on your eye-catching CTA, got to your awesome landing page, fill out your form, and now it’s all up to you. These visitors may not be ready to buy but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important.
Lead nurturing allows you to follow up with these people and send them emails with new content and articles to get them to continue coming back to your site. Without lead nurturing they may forget about your site and when they are ready to buy, they’ll go elsewhere. So for every piece of advanced content you offer there should be a lead nurturing campaign going.

6. Social Media
Everyone thinks that social media is fun and wants to rush into it immediately. But beware because if all of these other things aren’t done right, social media isn’t going to get you anywhere and will be a complete waste of time. Use social media to promote your advanced content and blogging and you will increase traffic to your site.

7. SEO
Everyone hears about SEO and thinks it’s the first thing they should do for inbound marketing. But it’s quite the opposite. SEO may increase traffic to your site exponentially, but without a advanced content to offer, a CTA to have them click on, a landing page to take them to, lead nurturing campaign to follow up with, nothing is going to come out of this traffic.

So now you know how to fix your website if it’s not performing well. These steps will help increase traffic, find leads, and keep visitors coming back for more!

Photo Credit: 7 Billard Ball by Stevendepolo

And The Award For Most Effective Inbound Marketing Service Goes To...

Laura Hogan — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Blogging! This service is hands down the most beneficial to any kind of business. Here are 11 reasons why blogging is such an effective inbound marketing service!

1. Attracts an audience: Blogging will bring in traffic to your website while encouraging them to come back and read more.

2. Informs and interacts with this audience: Informed visitors become loyal customers! People research on the internet before they buy and blogging can be their go-to research spot for your company.

3. Humanizes your business: You want to get to know your customers, and you can easily do that through your blog. Make sure you are using your name because people would rather hear from a real person than a general company.

4. Links to direct traffic: You can’t beat content to attract links from other websites, forums, discussion boards, social media, etc. Links from all of these things bring attention to your blog resulting in targeted visitors and potential leads.

5. Links for SEO: These links are important in order to direct traffic from search engines. The more links you have on your website the more chance you have to be picked up by search engines.

6. Builds trust and familiarity: Building a potential customer’s trust is vital in the sales process. If you begin with providing information and encourage repeat communication you build familiarity and trust. This makes the sales process that much easier when the time comes.

7. Grows a community: If you are active on your blog and provide discussion, interaction, and comments then you forge a sense of community. Your visitors will come back and feel comfortable engaging because they know they are part of this community.

8. Offers better service: Blogging is just another service to add to the list that allows your customers or potential customers to get in touch with you. You show your approachable and knowledgeable side which allows for interaction and better customer service.

9. Branding: As long as you are continuously writing about things that reflect your company and brand, your positive image and reputation, and your voice and personality then you will be continuously branding your company through you blog.

10. Motivates your audience: A loyal audience is great but a loyal audience that is motivated to take action is even better. A blog can encourage visitors to do things and all you need is to add a call-to-action to suggest to your audience what they should do!

11. Initiate more sales: All of these reasons add up to this one- more sales! These benefits will give your company an increase of new and repeat sales from happier, involved, informed, and motivated customers.

Now you know why blogging takes the cake for the best inbound marketing service! Make sure you’re optimizing your business blog so that you are using it effectively to the best of your ability. Nothing is more important in business than building and preserving relationships and a business blog can do that for your company!

Lead Nurturing Tips For Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

Laura Hogan — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Do you have automatically-triggered lead nurturing campaigns behind your content offers? If not, you’re missing out on opportunities to move leads through your sales funnel. Check out these statistics and find out why lead nurturing can be beneficial to your inbound marketing strategy.

According to an MIT study done with InsideSales.com, 78% of sales that start with a web inquiry go to the company that responds FIRST!
According to a DemandGen report, nurtured leads produce – on average – a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.
According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead.

So what is lead nurturing you ask? It’s the process of developing a relationship with your potential customer by sending targeted, significant, and helpful messages to them. The overall goal is to get your leads to choose to become a customer with your business when the time comes. The best way to nurture a leads is through email marketing. There are ways to make lead nurturing through email marketing effective:

Give your leads options: Create Webinars, eBook, Whitepapers, etc.
Make it worth the read: Remember be relevant, personal, valuable, and consistent
Convert: Provide further engagement with a link to a contact form
Measure: See how your leads are acting by measuring Click-Through-Rate, Unsubscribe Rate, and Conversion Rate

Summary: Lead nurturing campaigns help you further educate and build relationships with non-sales ready leads in a scalable, effective way.

Want more information on email-marketing? Check out some of our other posts!

5 Inbound Marketing Services To Increase Website Traffic

Laura Hogan — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

Increasing website traffic can be a difficult task if you don’t use the right tools. If you’re having trouble increasing website traffic you should be doing these 5 key things!

1. Keyword Research is literally the key to increasing website traffic. You’ll want to come up with a list of keywords that are relevant to your specific business based on difficulty and relevance. Make sure that keywords both rank well and are relevant; otherwise you’ll be optimizing your website around the wrong keywords and bringing the wrong traffic to your site.

Try to have about 5-10 that you focus on- the more content you create around a single keyword, the higher you’ll rank for that keyword.

2. Onsite SEO – The next step is to take these keywords that you have researched and use them on your website. utilize them in page titles, meta descriptions, headings, images, domain info, blog posts, etc. Make sure you aren’t keyword stuffing! Placing keywords all over your website will not get you found! Search engines can detect this and it will not bring more traffic to your site.

3. Blogging- I can’t stress enough how beneficial blogging can be to your business. It brings in traffic, helps retain customers, produces interesting content, and allows visitors to see you as an expert. Blogging consistently and on regular basis can also train the search engines to come back and find new information every week. Not only does it do all these things but it provides various entryways into your site. Every page that you create is another chance to be found by a potential visitor.

4. Creating Original Content- Search engines are smart, they can detect when you are just regurgitating other people’s content and switching around a word or two. In order to be found organically you want to write your own articles, in your own words, from your own perspective. However, this won’t create traffic by itself; you will need to attract visitors to this content through social media.

5. Promoting your Content through Social Media- There are various different social media platforms to do this on but regardless of which one you use, this creates traffic and inbound links. Social media allows businesses to interact with prospects, cater to customers, and promote their content thus resulting in leads.

Now that you know what will help increase website traffic make sure you are focusing on these 5 inbound marketing services! These services are essential to getting your business found and producing leads.

Photo Credit: Traffic by zoonabar

7 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Inbound Marketing Services

Laura Hogan — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

You may be asking yourself, why should I use inbound marketing services? Many may even think this is just the next trend soon to be yesterday’s news like acid wash jeans or leg warmers. Well, I’m here to tell you seven benefits of these unique and valuable services and why they aren’t going anywhere.

1. They’re Measurable- With traditional marketing, the only way to know where your leads are coming from is if they tell you. This means you have no idea which service is performing the best. But with inbound marketing you can easily track where your leads are coming from which not only tell you what service is bringing in the most traffic but also what the people coming to your site are interested in.

2. Focus On Adding Value- Inbound marketing services are all about giving your prospects what they want. You do this by creating campaigns centered on solving the problems that your prospects are having which makes your business easier to find.

3. Brings In Higher Quality Leads- Traditional marketing will bring in some leads, but it often only allows you to showcase a general overview of your business. Because inbound marketing allows your business to be in front of your prospect when they really need you, it allows you to customize the benefits to what that company needs, not just showcase a general overview.

4. Quick Implementation- Inbound marketing services don’t rely on printing or shipping, they’re immediate. The planning time for inbound marketing should be the same if not longer than traditional marketing because it’s such an important step. But once you create your strategy, you can implement it instantly.

5. Flexibility- With traditional marketing you generally have two options if your campaign isn’t producing the results you want- pull it or continue it. Inbound marketing allows for constant analysis, update, and improvement instantly. So if something isn’t getting the results you desire, then we can easily tweak it.

6. Greater Reach- Traditional marketing methods have you choose your audience from a list based on certain ratings. Inbound marketing still has an audience it wants to reach, but with the right services we get them to come to you. Aside from PPC, the audience size doesn’t matter because it’s not costing you any more. I also don’t see many people sharing direct mailings with their friends like they send links and blogs.

7. Control- With inbound marketing you lose a little bit of control, however it’s a good thing. Your customers are telling you want they want to know instead of you putting out information and hoping they’ll call you to learn more. Inbound marketing is about providing customers with the information they want.

As you can see, inbound marketing is easier, quicker, more valuable, and not to mention cheaper than traditional outbound methods. So now that you see the benefits of inbound marketing you can start shopping for inbound marketing service agencies!

Why Social Media Marketing Is Important For Lead Generation

Laura Hogan — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:00:00 GMT

You can’t do one thing on the internet without being bombarded with social media. Some websites now have the option to log in through Facebook, most companies have one or more social media pages, and every article or blog gives you the option of sharing it right from that page.

93% of US adult Internet users are on Facebook. Yes you read that correctly, 93%! This is a huge statistic. That gives every business a chance to connect to a vast majority of people on a site that many visit more than once per day.
Marketers who spent 6 hours a week or more using social media and engaging/sharing content on it saw 52% more leads than those who did not.
Companies that use Twitter average double the amount of leads per month than those that do not.
Both B2C & B2B companies are acquiring customers through Facebook.

These statistics and bits of information show how beneficial social media can be to both B2C and B2B companies. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. are all platforms that millions of people visit, and more importantly spend a large amount of time on, every single day. Here are some tips to make the most of your social media marketing strategy:

Allow your current and potential customers to communicate with you and your employees directly
Spread and promote your content through various social media sites
Focus on major social media players: Facebook,Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.
Brand your pages with your logo
Have fun!

Summary: Social media is an effective way to not only create exposure for your business online, but it is a proven way to significantly engage with prospects and generate leads.

Want more information on how social media can help your business? Check out our other posts on Social Media Marketing Strategies.

Social Media Marketing: Monitor Your Business's Twitter Account
Using Facebook as Part of Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Photo Credit:Image From Flickr

Why Blogging Is Important

Laura Hogan — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Are you blogging? Maybe you are, but you’re not doing so frequently enough or in a way that maximizes SEO, or maybe you’re not because time is an issue. No matter the reason, a website without a fully-optimized blog is poorly positioned to drive traffic and leads. Blogging is the most beneficial inbound marketing tool for any company whether its B2C or B2B. Don’t believe me? Check out these statistics.

B2C companies that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those who do not.
B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not.
2/3 of marketers say their company blog is “critical” or “important” to their business.

Blogging Builds Inbound Links

Blogging creates both links to direct traffic and links for SEO. Links to direct traffic will come from other websites, forums, discussions, social media sites, etc. They will lead to website traffic because of the relevant audience that it targets. Each blog on your website is a link with opportunity for SEO. Links for SEO will attract traffic from search engines and the more links you have, the better chance you have to be found by a search engine.

Blogging Attracts, Informs, and Familiarizes Your Audience

Blogging brings relevant traffic to your website and gives them a reason to come back time and time again. If you’re blogging about the right things, it also informs your audience on your products, services, and relevant topics within your industry. Lastly, it familiarizes your current and potential customers with your business by encouraging communication which builds trust.

Summary: Customers and search engines love the content generated through blogging; customers love it because it helps them stay up to date with your offerings and thought leadership and search engines love it because each post represents another page that they can index for a specific topic and feed to others searching that phrase.

Want more information on blogging for business? Check out our post on 10 Tips For Better Business Blogging

Sources:

HUBSPOT, STATE OF INBOUND MARKETING LEAD GENERATION REPORT, 2010
HUBSPOT, STATE OF INBOUND MARKETING REPORT 2011

Why Is Search Engine Optimization Important?

Laura Hogan — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

As an inbound marketer, search engine optimization (SEO) is the core of our business. SEO is what helps websites rank better than others when you enter a query into a search engine and get a list of results. People normally visit the websites at the top of the search results because they perceive them to be the most relevant. Ultimately, SEO is what helps you get found by search engines. First, let’s go over some key statistics about search engines and how people utilize them.

57% of internet users search the web every single day. With smart phones, tablets, wireless internet capabilities, etc. this percentage will continuously grow. That’s a whole lot of people you could be marketing to via search engines daily.

70% of the links search users click on are organic—not paid. This is why SEO is so important; a majority of the search engine users are clicking on the organic links and not the paid advertisements that appear at the very top and the margins of search results. PPC can be expensive, however focusing on getting found organically can be really beneficial to your company.

46% of daily searches are for info on products or services. This is great news for businesses that are marketing online! With the availability of the internet at our fingertips, more and more people are “Googling” questions, inquiries, and company, product, or service information. A user could search for a company to find out what they sell, where they are located, what their phone number is, what their hours are, etc. or specific products. Or a user could search for a specific product/service to find out who may sell it, product/service details, what it is, etc.

75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. This is ultimately why optimizing your website to rank well with search engines is so essential to being found. So how do you do this you ask?

Keywords! These will literally, be your key to search engine optimization. A keyword is a word or phrase that a customer enters into a search engine such as Google or a social media site such as Facebook. You should be optimizing your website around 3-5 keywords that are relevant to your business and have low difficulty when placed into Google Keyword Grader. More and better quality traffic will visit your website if you utilize the most relevant and effective keywords.

Summary: If your business is not ranking well for the words that describe your products and services, then you’re not getting found for them by potential customers either.
Want to learn more about keywords? Check out our blog post on Creating A Keyword Strategy!

Sources:

MARKETSHARE.HITSLINK.COM, OCTOBER 2010
MARKETINGSHERPA, FEBRUARY 2007
SRI, October 2010
MARKETSHARE.HITSLINK.COM, OCTOBER 2010

FAQ: We Answer More Of Your Inbound Marketing Services Questions

Laura Hogan — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:00:00 GMT

OverGo Studio answers more of your inbound marekting services questions! We get a lot of questions about interesting content, blogging for business, and social media marketing. So we're going to talk about how to define interesting content, the best time to blog, and the best social media site to be present on.

How do you define ‘interesting’ content?

You have probably heard the phrase “post interesting content!” Well interesting content is individual to your business. Content is anything that is public and shareable such as videos, blog posts, webinars, whitepapers, eBooks, etc. Content that people would find interesting is going to vary from business to business. Content that is thought provoking, entertaining, interesting, captivating, and informative to your audience would be what people are talking about when they say ‘interesting.’ Here at OverGo Studio, our audience is people who are interested in using inbound marketing and other inbound marketers. Therefore, we strive to publish informative and fresh content about inbound marketing for our audience.

Regardless of what kind of content your audience may find interesting, it’s something you should always strive to create. It’s a critical component of inbound marketing and can help build links to your site and be a resource for your target audience.

How often should I post blogs?
This is a common question, but the answer varies for each type of business. Blogging takes time and if you are blogging for your own business, time is money. It really all depends on how much time you want to put into blogging. I think more important than the amount of blog posts you publish is the amount of time you spend promoting these posts. If you blog 2-3 times a week and leave your blogs static with no social media promotion other than creating new content for your site, you aren’t helping your business as much as you think.

Another thing to remember about blogging is that consistency is key. You can’t simply blog 3 times a week and then come up with nothing the next week. If you can only do 4 a month, then do one a week. You want to train the search engines to come back and find you. Blogging takes time, thought, and research. OverGo Studio posts a blog twice a week because that’s what we have time for. Blog as often as you feel necessary for your business but make sure you are promoting this fresh content and posting consistently.

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn which one is the best marketing site?
There are various opinions on which social media site is the best for business. The simplest way to not miss out on the best one is to use all of them in your social media strategy. Using a combination of them can help you see which one works best for your business. Depending on your business and target audience, one may be better than another.

The first thing you need to do before you even begin using social media is to create a social media marketing goal. This would be a metric that you want to achieve using social media. Once you know what it is you can try and see which platform your potential customers are on and focus your time on that platform. Socal media will take at least one hour per day per platform. It’s all about networking- building and creating a relationship and then engaging in that network.

Different social media sites bring various things to the table. they all allow you to drive social interaction, get your message out, and receive feedback very easily. Google+ allows you to post longer messages, target them to specific circles of interest, and gives you a potential of being indexed by Google search engines which the other two don’t. Twitter is not indexed by Google and Facebook doesn’t allow it. Facebook has the most users and a better paid advertising platform than the other two. Twitter allows you to easily to scan the stream posts to find interesting content quickly because of the shortness of messages. Finally, LinkedIn is better for business to business and your time should be centered around activity in forums and groups.

So you see that all of these social media sites bring something different to the table. It would be difficult to tell you which site would work best for your company, so using all four at first would be best. However, if you’re set on using just one, I would suggest trying out all four and looking at your analytics to decide which one brings the most traffic.

We want to answer more of your questions! If you have any questions about inbound marketing services please contact us!

9 Things I Learned From Inbound Marketing Services

Laura Hogan — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT

I just started here at OverGo Studio in Decemeber and have been in the process of learning about inbound marketing. I have enjoyed learning the ins and outs of what inbound marketing is all about. I thought it would be beneficial to share the 9 things that stand out to me as the most important inbound marketing services.

1. Blog, Blog, Blog: This one stands out to me the most mainly because it’s what I have done the most here at the company. Prior to working at OverGo I thought blogging was for those stay-at-home moms trying to get their DIY projects out to other moms. Now I know that blogging is essential for business and for mainly one reason, Google. If you post blogs every Tuesday and Thursday at 10 AM, then Google search engine will recognize that, and look for your blogs every Tuesday and Thursday at 10 AM. Because of this, blogging regularly gives your business a great opportunity to be found organically.

2. Post Attractive Content: Some businesses believe that posting any kind of content to their website is beneficial. That may be true if you’re just trying to generate content, not traffic, leads, conversions, or sales. What you want to be posting are things that your target audience wants to read. Relevant blog posts, articles, webinars, etc. We wouldn’t post ’10 Things I Learned About Dell Computers’ because our target audience doesn’t care what an inbound marketer knows about Dell.

3. Create Offers: This one goes along with posting attractive content but is important to look at by itself. Creating blog posts and interesting content is very important, but creating offers is what can bring your company leads. It’s great if you can get someone to your website to read your blog, but if you don’t post an offer at the bottom of the blog then this reader can leave without getting any of their information.

4. Do Your Homework: Keyword research should be an ongoing process for your business. You should be generating appropriate keywords for your business, but don’t leave them alone. Keeping up with your keyword research will allow you to know what resonates with your customers. We are rewarded with such immediate feedback that you can assess which keywords work and which ones don’t, then focus on the ones that do.

5. Be Present in Social Media: There is a lot of hype that goes along with social media. What is important to focus on with social media is that it works, as long as you keep up with it and have a constant presence. You should be on various different social media networks and test out what kind of things work for your specific business. If someone tells you that you should focus on Facebook because that’s what worked for them, ignore them. Find out what works for your business and roll with it.

6. Search Engine Optimization: This is focused on generating traffic from the free and organic listings on search engines. Getting your website found organically is as important as putting your telephone number and address in the yellow pages used to be. Because of the amount of use search engines get, not many businesses could survive without getting their website found on search engines.

7. Nurture Your Leads: Deepening your relationship with prospects over time is vital. It allows you to know more about what your prospects need and what their goals are. You can send them content you think that they may need in order to reach those goals. This will ensure that your product or service is on the top of their mind when they decide they need it.

8. Share Customer Feedback: The best way to tell potential customers how beneficial you can be to their business is to show them. Write up some case studies on the most successful businesses that you have worked with. I suggest focusing on one B2C company and one B2B company at first if you work with both. This allows you to show potential customers that your products or services make a difference.

9. Inbound Marketing is a Process not a Project: Tracking and analyzing what you do with inbound marketing is important. Publishing content and letting it sit won’t help your business. You need to assess what is working and if it’s not you need to alter it and make it better. Not everything you do with inbound marketing is set in stone and not everything is going to work.

These are some vital aspects of inbound marketing that I have noticed in my short period of time working in the industry. All of these aspects lead in to the fact that inbound marketing services are effective and beneficial. I get to go to work and see these things, among many more, work almost immediately and produce great results.

FAQ: OverGo Answers Your Inbound Marketing Services Questions!

Laura Hogan — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Here at OverGo Studio, we get a lot of questions from clients and visitors alike about various aspects of inbound marketing services. We are going to start a series of blogs that answers all of your frequently asked questions. We get a lot of questions on what the simplest inbound marketing process is for a small company, how to use Google Analytics, and how to find out what keywords competitors are using.

What are the basic steps to creating a simple inbound marketing process for a small company?

The basic steps to creating a simple inbound marketing process would be: keyword research, blogging, creating offers, and lead nurturing. You would want to come up with the best keywords based on difficulty, search volume, and relevance to your business. Then you would create relevant content based around your keyword research that would satisfy your readers and prospects and get you found. Next, you would create a relevant offer for your visitors to download, such as a webinar or eBook. The leads that these generate would then have to be nurtured with an lead email nurturing campaign. These would be the basic steps for a small company wanting to create a simple inbound marketing process.

If you want to learn more about a creating a keyword strategy, check out our blog.

How do I use google analytics for my growing business?

Google Analytics provides insight to your business as to how customers are using your website and generating interest in your product. The service allows you to see how effective your marketing is, how attractive your products or services are, and how customers are receiving your message. The first step would be to determine what your marketing objectives are and select measurements that best express those objectives.

There are many ways to use Google Analytics. Two of the ways we like to use it are first- to quickly find the pages that are engaging readers and the pages that need improvement. We look at how much time is spent on each page by visitors. Second- we look at goal conversion tracking to see how many people are completing goals that we have set for their website based on marketing objectives. Beyond that, there are many more ways to use Google Analytics and we recommend that you go to Occam Razor’s website to learn more.

How can I find out what keywords my competitors are using?

Some common keyword tools are Wordstream, Market Samurai, and Hubspot’s Keyword SEO Tool. However these won’t tell you what keywords your competitors are using to generate traffic because nothing will. These tools can tell you what keywords your competitors have optimized their sites around and that’s about it. You then have to go to Google or Hubspot Keyword Grader to find out how it ranks. This will tell you which ones are getting the most traffic and how difficult they are to place for. Just because your competitors are using a keyword doesn’t mean it brings in traffic. The only way to know that would be to look at their analytics account which is not possible.

Want more help with keywords? Check out our blog on creating a keyword strategy!

If you have any questions for OverGo Studio, please contact us and let us know!

Expand Your Marketing Strategy: Be Mobile Friendly

Rick Kranz — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT

The mobile platform is quickly expanding. With devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and other smart phones, the importance of expanding your marketing strategy through mobile marketing is growing.

The most important thing when looking to market on a mobile platform is to optimize for mobile devices. Making sure your content is easy to view and navigate on a mobile device while providing quality and entertainment is key.

How do you optimize?

Your website, emails, and Calls-to Action need to be viewed correctly on mobile devices
Download offers should be able to be downloaded and opened on a mobile device
Your videos should be able to be viewed from mobile devices (Tip: Apple products can’t use Adobe)

Some important things to know about mobile marketing:

Keep videos short
Provide an offer to view the video quicker using Wi-Fi
Provide a text summary of the video
Create a mobile version of your website
Use mobile to retain, not acquire customers

There are other ways to market with a mobile platform. Mobile users can search the internet on their phone, but they can also download applications. There are numerous applications out there that can be beneficial for your specific business.

Mobile applications that your company could benefit from marketing with:

Foursquare: An app that allows you to check-in at local business and let your friends know where you are. Some business’s provide coupons to those who check in the most and visitors can update sale information themselves to let their friends know up-to-date information about that business.
Facebook Places: This is similar to Foursquare where you can check into any place: city, business, area, etc. Visitors can upload photos of that place and business details.
Yelp: An app that allows users to post reviews of business’s services, locations, and events. As a business you can offer coupons, update information, and promote events.

Summary

Optimize the mobile content on your website
Create a mobile version of your website
Make sure content is suitable for a mobile platform
Take advantage of promotional business applications

Let’s Hear From You!

Does your business use mobile marketing? If so, how do you optimize for a mobile platform and what kinds of applications are you involved with?

Social Media Marketing: Monitor Your Business's Twitter Account

Laura Hogan — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Twitter can be very beneficial for your social media marketing plan. Your followers will share whatever thoughts they have about your business through Twitter. It is your job to highlight good behavior (positive reviews), address problems up front (complaints), and continue to promote your content.

How to Monitor Your Twitter Page

Star your customer’s best testimonials and put them on your “favorites” tab.
Direct people who have questions about your company or product to your favorites page.

By answering questions about your industry directly, you increase your credibility.
- By answering their questions, they are 59% more likely to follow you.⁸
Any requests or complaints for support should be responded to promptly and accordingly.
You can generate 4x more retweets simply by requesting for them.⁷
- 50% of retweets contain links.⁷
Set up a separate event sign-up pages for any events that you want people to tweet-up for.
The average twitter user sends out 22 tweets per day.⁷
Tweet links to:
Landing pages:

Blog posts:

Promote new tools and apps
Facts about your industry:

Business responses can establish a relationship with the person asking the question. When businesses respond to someone’s twitter question, that person is likely to follow the business and more likely to make a purchase:

Your twitter presence should be all about transparency and convenience. Your followers should be able to easily share whatever reactions they have about your blog posts, offers, and company news so more hype and traffic start to buzz around these materials.

Let's Hear From You!

Have you kept up with your bussiness's Twitter account like you should? What kinds of content do you tweet about? Leave a comment below!

Why You Should Use Social Media Marketing for Your Business

Laura Hogan — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Social media has created quite a buzz. Some may only think of Facebook and Twitter as places for social interactions and “fun,” however they can be used as powerful inbound marketing tools. Listed below are statistics on the utility of social media and the potential impact social media could have on your company’s traffic, leads, and inevitably, sales.

Why Use Social Media?

US Internet users spend 3x more minutes on blogs and social networks than on email.
1 out of every 8 minutes online is spent on Facebook.
49% of people use Facebook to share content.
More than ½ of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks.
79% of US Twitter users are more likely to recommend brands they follow.
67% of US Twitter users are more likely to buy brands they follow.

Social media amplifies your content, your website and your brand. It allows for you to establish and foster a more personal relationship with your potential customers, and when done correctly, can generate website traffic, inbound links, and leads for you. Social media has become a major part of consumer culture, and it is time for you to capitalize on it!

Let’s Hear From You!

Why do you use social media for business? Have you noticed an impact from your presence on social media sites?

Using Twitter as Part of Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Laura Hogan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Twitter is much different from Facebook, and tends to attract a more diverse mix of active consumers waiting to learn about the newest products and latest trends. It will be pivotal for you to understand these nuances so you craft an effective and interesting Twitter presence and expand your social media marketing strategy.

How to Set Up Your Twitter Account

Use your twitter handle to promote your brand.
Use non-diminutive words such as “expert” or “guru” that show your authority and expertise for your job description.
Set up a page that lists all twitter handles of employees in your company.

It is important for you to establish a relatively casual atmosphere on your twitter account; it will create a more informal, yet personable and comfortable relationship with potential customers that encourage them to engage with you often.

Gaining Exposure and Awareness for Your Twitter Page

People on Twitter follow influencers and key experts in the industries they are interested in. It is vital for you to establish relationships with industry leaders so that industry leader’s followers (your potential customers) can learn about you brand through a resource they trust.

Connect with journalists and bloggers who cover your industry.
- Use technorati to identify and start following influencers.
Pitch to influencers on Twitter.
- Be brief and concise in your personalized pitch.
- Leave comments on influencer’s articles.
- Use your original content as an outreach tool.
- Help influencers with their research by posting useful content on their twitter page.
Do not follow too many people at once.
- Your following: follower ratio will look imbalanced.
Other useful Tools:
- Tweet Grader
- Muck Rack

Twitter has a strong presence of early adopter who tend to be the first to purchase the newest products.
- They depend on these industry experts to make that purchasing decision

Following these thought leaders will help you find the inspiration for your own content creation, while also providing you with the chance to get in touch with active consumers in your industry.

Use these tips to expand your social media marketing plan into the Twitter-verse!

Let’s Hear From You!

Is your business on Twitter or any other social media platform yet? Which social media platform do you find more beneficial and why? Leave a comment below!

Refine Your Marketing Strategy

Laura Hogan — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:10:00 GMT

Once you have all the right internet marketing strategies in place, (blogging, keywords, social media, email marketing, etc) you need to make time to ensure that they are all as efficient as they can be. One of your goals should be to get found online and generate new customers by using all of your marketing techniques the best way possible.

How can you optimize your internet marketing techniques?

Try these 5 Steps:

Implement and Analytics Program

Analytics programs such as HubSpot will help you analyze your website traffic.
Identify Opportunities

What do you want to improve? Look for new opportunities in the areas you want to improve. For instance if you want more people coming to your blog, then maybe try posting on a regular basis so that the search engines find you easier.
Set a Metric For Success

You want this to be measurable and involve a set time frame. For example, increase X website leads over the next X days.
Refine

Look at what works and what doesn’t work. Make sure you are making the appropriate changes to the things that don’t work so that they can improve.
Evaluate
Evaluate your progress; if you’ve met your metric for success then you can stick with your changes. If you haven’t met your metric for success then figure out what you could have done differently and monitor your improvements to make sure they had a positive effect.

Simply putting together a marketing strategy and putting it into place doesn’t ensure success. Your business should be evaluating in each and every step, what is working and what is not working. Make sure you are following these steps in order to have an effective and successful internet marketing campaign.

Let's Hear From You!

What opportunities do you want to improve for your business and how do you plan on doing that? What is the metric for success that you decided on for your company? Leave your comments below!

Create an Email Marketing Strategy to Nurture Leads

Laura Hogan — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 19:00:00 GMT

According to Marketing Sherpa, 70% of your leads will end up buying something from you or one of your competitors, however they won’t be doing it right away. That’s why it is so important to create an email marketing strategy to build a relationship with your leads and turn them into customers. By building a relationship, you stay on the top of their mind until they are ready to buy your product or service.

So what is lead nurturing you ask? It’s the process of developing a relationship with your potential customer by sending targeted, significant, and helpful messages to them. The overall goal is to get your leads to choose to engage with your business when the time comes that they need your product or service.

The best way to do this is through an email marketing strategy. Here is a list of things to do in order to create an email marketing strategy to nurture leads and get the most of your marketing.

Give Your Visitors Options

Create opt-in opportunities: your forms should let your visitors choose to receive emails
Give your visitors a reason to want to receive your emails: eBook, explicit info, webinar, etc
Only send emails to those who opt-in

Make it Worth the Read

Stay relevant and target interests: what were people were interested in when they visited?
Personalize: use their name and thank them for sharing your blog, reading your ebook, etc
Value: make it clear to them how you can help: solve their problem with a service
Write your message: video emailing and images should be supplementary
Consistency: Send your emails at the same time every day, month, or week

Convert

Clarity: give the email reader something to do to further engage with them like an ebook, blog, etc
Link your landing page: it’s an extension of your email and where conversion takes place

Measure

Click-Through Rate (CTR): measures how many people clicked to your landing page
- Experiment with different subject lines, CTA’s, and timing to improve CTR
Unsubscribe Rate: this will always be present but don't let it get too high
- If it gets too high, check to make sure you are only emailing those who have opted-in
Conversion Rate- measures how many clicks turned into reconversions to your landing page
Test different landing pages to improve conversion to your website

Lead nurturing is about developing relationships with your leads. Email marketing is only one way to develop this relationship.

Let’s Hear From you!

What other types of lead nurturing do you do? Which lead nurturing techniques have worked best for you? Leave your comments below.

Social Media Marketing: Monitor Your Business's Facebook Page

Laura Hogan — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Your Facebook page should strengthen existing relationships, and also forge new ones. To do this, you need to perfect the timing and composition of posting original content, and learn how to best cater to the needs of each market segment. You will need to closely monitor your Facebook page to get the most out of your social media marketing strategy and understand what your fans want.

How To Monitor Your Facebook Page

Put like or recommend buttons at the top of the blog article.
- Community will build up a reputation for the article by “liking” the content.

Post articles on the weekend.
- 51% of American companies block Facebook at work.
Share original content:

Measure and Analyze

A key part of any marketing activity is measuring and analyzing the results of your efforts.

Your Facebook page should be the launching point to your home website, blog, and conversion offers. By encouraging discussions on your Facebook wall, you will be fostering a community in which your newest visitors interact with your most dedicated and loyal customers. In doing so, your existing customer’s excitement to share and interact with your material and page could impact your more casual fans’ decision to purchase your product.

Let’s Hear From You!

Has Facebook benefited your business? If so, how? Leave a comment below!

Using Facebook as Part of Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Rick Kranz — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Your social media marketing strategy should include using Facebook for business. Your Facebook business page will not be successful if you leave your fans to their own devices. It is essential for you to distribute remarkable content that your fans will want to share so that your current fans can attract more visitors to your Facebook page.

Create business goals for your Facebook

Get found by people searching for your products or services
Connect and engage with current and potential customers
Create a community around your business
Promote other content you create such as blog articles, webinars, etc.

Best Ways to Use Facebook to Gain Exposure for Your Business

To increase your Facebook exposure, you need to design offers and content that will motivate people to “like” or share your page.
- 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations.
Posts with the word “video” in them are shared 30% more on Facebook than posts that do not.

Posts that use buzzwords or business jargon like “optimize” significantly decrease the number of fans for a Facebook page.
- These pages have 100 fans, as opposed to the average page with 624 fans.
Posts with digits in the title tend to be shared more often. Lists using words like “top” make tremendously successful Facebook posts.

Promote Your Page

1. Create an engaging page

Use tools such as the discussion board and YouTube video posts to add interesting and engaging content to your page
Entice users with a reason to become a fan of your page and communicate with you

2. Utilize the news feed

The benefit of having an engaging page is that every time a fan does something in regards to your page it is immediately published to their news feed and seen by all of their friends which gives your business more visibility

3. Draw on your existing network

Let your email subscribers and blog readers know that you are present on Facebook by posting a badge on every email or post

For your customers and prospects to find your Facebook page engaging, they will need enticing materials and regular posts. Take these tips and implement them in your social media marketing strategy!

Let’s Hear From You!

What kinds of posts get’s shared the most by your friends on Facebook? Blogs, articles related to your industry, facts and statistics, etc? Leave a comment below!

Capture Leads from Site Traffic

Rick Kranz — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Once you have started attracting visitors to your site, you need to know what to do with that traffic in order to capture leads. Capturing leads involves creating a compelling offer for your customers, creating a call-to-action to promote your offer, launching a landing page with a form for visitors to submit their information to obtain the offer, and then testing it out.

1. Decide on your offer

Your offer is going to be what catches the visitor’s attention and creates that initial attraction. The offer gives the visitor a reason to fill out the form, allowing you to collect their information. Your offer should target the type of sales lead you’re trying to attract.

An attractive offer could include research reports, how-to eBooks, slide downloads, webinars, a free trial, or a personal consultation.

2. Create Calls-To-Action

A Call-To-Action is a button or link on a website that grab’s the visitor’s attention and directs them to a landing page where they fill out a form with contact information in order to receive what’s being offered.

When they submit the form, they are converted into a lead that you can then follow up with.

3. Create Landing Pages

Your landing pages are the pages that the Calls-To-Action send the visitor’s to. This page has a form on it that asks for information in order to contact them. Questions such as name, email, company, and phone number should be on this form.

After they fill out the form they should then be directed to a thank-you page where they can access the offer stated in the Call-To-Action.

4. Test Out Different Offers

Having numerous Call-To-Actions on your website will help you understand what kinds of offers work to convert traffic into leads and which ones don’t. You should have different kinds of Calls-To-Action, offers, and landing pages so that you know which ones attract the most leads.

Summary

- Come up with an offer that will attract your visitors
- Create a Call-To-Action button that will grab their attention
- Create a landing page with the necessary questions your visitors need to fill out
- See which combinations of offers and landing pages work best

If you follow these easy steps, you will be converting traffic into leads in no time and your website will be equipped with the best offers!

Let's Hear From You!

What kind of offers have been the most succesful for your company? Comment below and let us know.

How To Analyze Your Marketing Strategy

Laura Hogan — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:15:00 GMT

In order for the refinements in the analysis stage of your marketing strategy to have a big impact, you need to know exactly what the different parts of your marketing strategy should be analyzed the most and how to monitor progress.

In our blog post, Analyze and Refine Your Marketing Strategy, we gave you 5 steps to optimize your marketing techniques after you put them into place to make sure that they were as efficient as they could be. Now, we are going to focus on what your business should be monitoring and how to improve it.

Metrics to Analyze:

Website Grade: Run your website through HubSpot'sWebsite Grader and see how well it’s doing
Traffic: How many people are visiting your site
Leads: How much traffic is converting into leads
Customers: How many leads are converting into customers
Customer Acquisition: How much you are investing to draw in each new customer
New vs. Repeat Visitors: Both are good, but finding a good balance is ideal
Effectiveness by Channel: What referring sources send you the most traffic
Traffic by Keywords: What keywords draw in the most visitors

Now that you know what to analyze, the next question is how to do it!

Keywords: Try out new keywords or variations to see which ones get you found better
On-Page SEO: See if changing a page title, meta description, or heading can help boost visits
Conversion: Test different elements on a landing page to see what improves conversions
Content Strategy: See what content attracts the most traffic and refine less successful content
Social Media Promotion: Assess which social media platforms are bringing the most site visitors
Lead Nurturing: Check the success of your emails, your Calls-To-Action, etc

Knowing which metrics to anaylize is an important factor of the overall marketing strategy. Once you know what to analyze and how to do it, you can create a and thriving campaign.

Let’s Hear From You!

How often do you analyze your techniques? What has worked best and what hasn’t produced the results you wanted? Leave your comments below.

Promote Content Through Social Media Marketing

Rick Kranz — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:47:00 GMT

Participating in social media marketing is extremely important for you company because it allows your current and potential customers to communicate with you and your employees directly. It also provides your company with an easy and quick way to spread content. Your company should be focusing on two major social media players: Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook

Facebook has over 500 million users, which makes it a great platform for promoting content. Facebook allows you to create an engaging business page that can entice users to become a fan of your business page.

You should be posting new content to Facebook often. You should post: links to your blogs, facts, videos, and relevant articles to create a community around your business.

Your business community will become interested in your content and share it with all of their Facebook friends. By doing this, you can bring more and more visitors to your Facebook page and inevitably to your business’s website.

Twitter

Twitter is another social network that helps you promote content through short 140-character posts. Users can then follow your business and receive every post you publish on their timeline when they log in.

Make sure you use your business’s name in your Twitter name and your business’s logo as your picture. This will help users find you quicker and easier. Then you should brand your Twitter page with a custom background and search for industry influencers and potential customers to follow.

Similar to Facebook, you should be posting: links to your landing page, blog posts, and information about new tools, products, and facts related to your industry.

Summary

- Post new content often
- Promote content from your business’s website
- Brand your pages with your logo
- Make yourself available and communicate with your customers

Let's Hear From You!

Now that you understand that social media usage isn’t all about socializing and fun, go create and promote your business Facebook or Twitter page. What benefits have you found that social media marketing provides?

Creating a Keyword Strategy To Blow Your Competitors Out Of The Water

Rick Kranz — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:53:00 GMT

Creating a Keyword Strategy can help get your website more and better quality traffic. A keyword is a word or phrase that a customer enters into a search engine like Google or a social media site like Facebook. Customers can use keywords in search engines to find the business that they need. In order to use this to your advantage, you need to optimize your website around keywords relevant to your business.

More and better quality traffic will visit your website if you utilize the most relevant and effective keywords. Follow these 3 easy steps to create a keyword strategy.

Steps to Creating a Keyword Strategy:

1. Create a list of 3-5 keywords relevant to your business: Imagine yourself as a customer looking to find your product or service in a search engine. Consider words or short phrases that describe what your business is all about.

2. Choose keywords based on difficulty and relevance: Once you’ve come up with a list of keywords, you should choose the right ones based on difficulty and relevance. The keyword ‘marketing’ is very difficult and competitive which means there is a greater volume of searches being done on that keyword. This makes it harder for your business to be ranked well in search engine results. A keyword phrase like ‘online video marketing’ would be more specific and easier to rank well for.

Relevance to your business is also important in your choice of keywords, just because something ranks well doesn’t mean you should use it. The keyword should also be relevant to what your business does and something that a customer of your business would search for.

You can try out different keywords and see which ones work best for your business. You should have about 5 that balance out difficulty and relevance.

3. Design and optimize your website around your keywords

Once you come up with 5 or so effective keywords for your business you need to implement keywords on your website to optimize on-page SEO. Use them in page titles, meta descriptions, headings, images, domain info, blog posts, etc.

Just because keywords can allow your business to be found in search engines, doesn’t mean you should place them all over your website. Keyword stuffing will not get you more customers to your website, in fact it may deter them. Search engines can detect keyword stuffing and cannot be tricked.

Summary

Because customers are using search engines to find businesses so frequently, it’s important to understand how keywords can help get your business found and to use the best ones for your business.

- Think like a customer
- Choose based on relevance and difficulty
- Implement keywords into your site
- Don't overuse keywords

About Rick Kranz

Rick Kranz is a Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Strategist. He is the President of OverGo Studio, a NY based firm specializing in Online Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Techniques.

Blog Marketing: 10 Tips For Better Business Blogging

Rick Kranz — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:34:00 GMT

Blog marketing can seem like a daunting task when you feel like you have run out of ideas. However, the Internet is full of so much content that is available to blog about for almost any business you may be in. Blogging for business is essential because every page on your website creates an entryway into your site. For every page that you create, you are also creating a chance to be found in someone’s search. Blog posts are one of the best ways to add content on a regular basis, allowing your website to be found by more people, more often.

10 questions to ask for better blogs full of better content:

1. Do Your Customers Have Questions?

If you are having trouble coming up with content to blog about, a great place to look for topics are your customer’s questions. Obviously, if you have a lot of common customer questions then a lot of your customers want to know about the same thing which makes for a great blog post. Check your emails or with the service department and generate a list of frequently asked questions. Now you have a list of several blog posts and can create one blog for every question.

2. Do You Search Around for Different Types of Industry Information?

I’m sure there have been several occasions when you have been searching the internet and had to go to numerous different websites to gather a good amount of information regarding the industry that you’re in. A great thing to do would be to gather up that information and create one blog post. That way you have a place to refer to it and so do your customers. As always though, make sure to give credit to the websites you generated the information from.

3. Are You Bored of Writing?

When the writer’s block hits you, the next best thing is to post anything but text. Pictures that are relevant to your industry could be very interesting for your customers. Post pictures of products or services, relevant YouTube videos, statistics and graphs, or audio into a post with only small amounts of text. Limited amount of text is the perfect cure for writer’s block and also keeps your readers interested.

4. Is There Someone That May Know More Than You?

Another cure for writer’s block is to have a guest writer. Sometimes a different view on an idea you’ve posted about before from a guest writer can be very interesting. It gives your customers a chance to hear about things from another point of view and another style of writing. Or you can have your guest writer compose a blog post about something that they are knowledgeable in and you have never posted about before. Either way, it will give you a blog break and can bring in very interesting ideas into your blog.

5. Who Doesn’t Like A Simple How-To List?

Lists can be beneficial when you are coming up with blog posts. If you make a list of the most basic topics that have to do with your industry, you can often come up with an assortment of new post ideas. It’s simple to turn any kind of industry topic into a how-to or best-of list. After you make a list of these industry topics, you can create blog posts for each topic.

6. Have You Charted Your Information?

The internet is very chart and graphic friendly. People also love data in regards to their certain industry. Because of this, charts full of data are great for a blog post. Some of your company data needs to stay confidential, but others can be made into charts and provide your customers with valuable industry insight.

7. Are You Opinionated?

A fun thing to do in your blog occasionally is to take a stance on a big issue within your industry. Compose a blog post solely about your side of this issue. Posts with opinions often generate a lot more traffic and feedback than a traditional post.

8. How Well Do You Know Your Customers?

Looking at your website analytics can be a great way to come up with new blog posts. Analytics are useful for providing information about your customers. Information like geographic location can be found when viewing your website analytics. It’s important to take this information and create blog posts. If you know most of your customers come from a certain location, then you should take industry issues and concerns in that location and create blogs about them.

9. Do You Enjoy Reading?

It’s essential that you keep up with industry topics and in order to do that, you need to read industry books. When you keep up with current industry topics by reading these books, you can then blog about them using your own twist and implementing your own ideas. You can also create blog posts specifically as book reviews. You can indicate which kinds of your customers should read the book and how it can benefit their specific business. Reading an industry book is beneficial to your business, your blogging topics list, and your customer’s businesses.

10. Want To Be The First To Break The News?

Sometimes you can blog as if you are a reporter and create a blog about something that has recently impacted your business. Start your blog with an overview of the issue and then go into how it can affect your customers and the industry as a whole. Your customers may have heard about the issue already but it is important to always be thinking in terms of how things affect your business specifically.

Blogs are a great place to show that your company has a voice and to show your company’s personality while increasing traffic to your site. So grab your pen and paper, ask yourself these questions, and start cranking out those blogs!

About Rick Kranz

Rick Kranz is a Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Strategist. He is the President of OverGo Studio, a NY based firm specializing in Online Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Techniques.

Tips For Better Keyword Optimization

Rick Kranz — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:06:00 GMT

Keywords are the words and combinations of words used by Internet surfers when searching for information on any particular subject. They can also be used to provide an overall indication of what an article or document discusses. Keyword optimization is the practice of chosing the words you want to be found for and using them in the proper fashion on your website.

Search engines have become a popular first stop for most business purchasers interested in buying a product or service and looking for more information. Because this medium is such a popular tool for businesses, it is important that your business not only be found in these searches but be ranked highly in the search results. The better your ranking is the more likely it will be that you receive traffic from those who are looking for what you have to offer. Choosing proper keywords for your site may be the most important SEO work you can do and is essential to all SEO efforts.The more search terms and frequency of terms, the better. The right keywords will ensure that your business ranks high in the results for the most common terms that people search for.
Things to Remember:

You have to get on the first or second page of search results.
Shorter search phrases are searched for more often.
It is usually more difficult to get ranked on the first or second page for popular searches.

1. Create a Keyword List

First, brainstorm 3-5 words that could be potential search phrases that consumers might use to find your business or a similar business. Being equipped with numerous phrases allows you the ability to compare them to each other in order to discover the most effective.

Next, use a keyword tool to gauge how effective your phrase is in relation to your business. It is important to discover related search terms as well as how frequently they’re searched for. One like Google’s Keyword Tool will help you generate keyword ideas or filter keyword categories.

2. Combine and Analyze Your Results

Keep track of the keyword tool results that you find in a spreadsheet. After you search 2-3 of your key phrases you should have enough results to analyze and put to use. In order to find ideal keywords to apply to your business you need to figure out which ones are most effective.

Score each term on relevance to your business: A scale of 1 to 5 can be very effective
Score the terms by the number of searches
Find the best search keywords: Look for frequency and relevance

3. Pick Your Keywords and Use Them On Your Website

At the end of your analysis you should have 3-5 individual keywords as well as phrases that will be effective when used on your business’ website. You can use these keywords on your web site's page titles, URLS, meta data, and text on the pages themselves.

In Summary

Your business should strive to rank highly in search results and be found frequently
The shorter the keyword phrase, the better
Brainstorm a list of related keywords
Test those keywords with a keyword tool
Analyze results by finding the most effective and relevant
Choose keywords wisely

About Rick Kranz

Rick Kranz is a Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Strategist. He is the President of OverGo Studio, a NY based firm specializing in Online Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Techniques.

Costly Pay-Per-Click Advertising Errors

Rick Kranz — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:48:00 GMT

Here is a common error that most companies make when using pay per click advertising. I see this all of the time even when companies have previously outsourced their Pay-Per-Click (PPC) management to a professional firm.

Impact

First, let me illustrate the impact of this error. I saved one company $8,000 per month by pointing this error out to them. They were spending $10,000 per month with a very well known company that managed their account and yet they still made this error and wasted 80% of their clients money for a year - that is $96,000. And this is something very easy to check for.

You can easily check for this common mistake or have someone on your staff check for it and point it out to your PPC management company.

Why?

This mistake is rarely highlighted because it requires cross referencing your Google analytics report with your AdWords account. You can’t see this by just looking at your AdWords stats.

It happens because while running AdWords accounts we get too caught up in driving traffic and forget that the goal is to increase sales not website traffic. So we tend to focus on click-thru rates, ad performance, and bids.

What’s worse is that some PPC management companies get paid a percentage of what you spend in AdWords. The more you spend the more they get paid..hmmm. Does anyone see a conflict of interest here? (I’m going to get some angry comments for that)

So right now, you’re saying to yourself this is not happening to me because my guys/gals have conversion tracking installed. And we track which keywords are getting people to fill out our forms. OK.. What about all your leads that call in over the phone and didn’t fill out your form? How do you know which keywords are converting those visitors? You don’t know, and neither does your PPC company.

So what can you do?

Well...you can tell which keywords are not getting them to call in and eliminate all of those. How? Easy...pull out your Google Analytics report because you can’t get this info from AdWords.
Now that you have your Google Analytics report out, set the date range to include at least several thousand visits so we have a significant number to look at.
Go to Traffic Sources - Search Engines and then click on Google (cpc). If you don’t have a category for Google(cpc) then you can go to Traffic Sources - Keywords.
Now sort by avg time on site. You may have a lot keywords so you may want to export to a spreadsheet to sort and filter.

What are you looking for?

You are looking for keywords that have a lot of visits but the avg time spent is less than 10 seconds.
It could be higher or lower then 10 seconds depending on the depth of information on your site.
Use your own judgment based on how much time you think someone would have to spend on your site to before they would understand your offer.

Now what?

The premise is that you paid to send these people to your site and once they got there they left because they didn’t see what they expected based on the keyword they used. Avinash Kaushik - the Google Analytics Evangelist - refers to this as, “I came. I saw. I puked!” Now stop spending your money on those keywords and see if the amount of leads coming in over the phone or through your forms goes down. Most likely it will stay the same.

Now take that new found money and invest in making your website convert better for the keywords that do work because, “I came. I saw. I puked” is also caused by the usability of your site not just the keywords we choose. We all need to keep improving our websites’ usability.

In Summary

Too focused on click-thru rates, ad performance, and bids when the focus should be on increasing web sales, not traffic.
Many keywords don’t lead to what the searcher really wanted so they quickly leave.
Requires cross referencing your Google Analytics report with your AdWords account.
Look for keywords that have a high number of visits with a short amount of time spent on them.
Use the money saved to promote the keywords that actually do work.

What is your experience with PPC? I would like to hear.

About Rick Kranz

Rick Kranz is a Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Strategist. He is the President of OverGo Studio, a NY based firm specializing in Online Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Techniques.

The Formula for a Successful Video Marketing Video for Your Business

Tony Stanford — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:17:00 GMT

Okay, so you’ve got your video marketing survivor’s kit and you’ve set up your green screen. Great!... Now what? Well, you make a video of course! But in order for your video marketing campaign to be successful, you have to have good videos. So what constitutes a ‘good video?’

To understand what goes into making a good video, you need to understand that people consume media for two main purposes; Information and entertainment. Therefore, it is IMPERATIVE that your video is both informative and entertaining. In this day and age, if your viewers aren’t entertained by your video, all they have to do is click stop and move on to the next website. Similarly, if your video is entertaining but explains nothing about you product or service, then it hasn’t done its job, either.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when making your video in order to optimize your chances of its success.

Keep it short- Just as people don’t want to read more than a few lines of text to find out what exactly your company does, they aren’t going to want to watch a ten minute video, either. Get straight to the point! Try to keep your video between 60 and 90 seconds. Any videos longer than a minute and a half run the risk of boring your potential clients.
Know what you are going to say- In keeping with guideline number 1, you are going to need to get your point across quickly. Explain your product or service in as few words as possible. Instead of ad-libbing on the spot in front of the camera (which is a lot harder to do than you may think), prepare what you are going to say in advance, write a script, and practice reciting it. (Hint: It may help if you make some cue cards and have a partner hold them near the camera in case you get lost.)
Use visuals- One of the biggest benefits of shooting on green screen is that you can control the environment that you are in. Using visual aids is a great way to explain what you are trying to say without using words. They can also spice up an otherwise boring video. (I must mention two warnings here: The first is that programs which allow you to add elements into a video may be pricy; The second is that if you DO decide to add visual aids in post production, you need to plan ahead for what you are shooting. It defeats the purpose of pointing to something on screen to draw attention to it if it shows up nowhere near your finger, or doesn’t show up at all).
Add interactivity- The results are in: People like buttons! There’s something about pressing buttons that just sends a wave of excitement through you, no? Well, maybe that’s just me. However, if you add clickable elements into your video, people will pay attention to the video longer. If they don’t, it’s probably because they have clicked said interactive element and it has taken them to another web page that YOU have chosen! Very convenient, isn’t it? Online platforms such as Veeple.com allow you to add these elements for a very low cost.

Finding a good balance between information and entertainment is hard, but gets easier with time. Keep these tips in mind to when you are making your video to put yourself on the fast track to video marketing success!

Tony Stanford is a video marketing expert at OverGo Studio. He has a bachelor's degree in Electronic Media and Film and enjoys showing customers how to use video to market and grow their business.

How to Use LinkedIn to Create Sales Leads

Rick Kranz — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:58:00 GMT

Learning how to use LinkedIn to generate sales leads is simple as pie. So let's talk about how to leverage this professional networking site to create leads and expand your business.

First, you need to understand what "connections" are. "First connections" are people that you are directly connected with. "Second connections" are people that are connected to someone you are connected with but they are not yet directly connected to you.

How to Use LinkedIn to Create Leads
One way you can expand your network to create leads is to utilize the "Search Companies" feature by using the drop down menu found in the site's "search" box and selecting "Companies". Use relative keywords to find companies that you can connect with. For instance, if you want to find companies that are in the marketing field you could search using the keyword "marketing" or "advertising".

From your search results, you can click on each company to learn more about them and connect with, or follow, them. Each company's profile will show a list of people that work for, are connected to, that company. Reach out and make connections with them.

You will also see if you have any second connections to them. If you do, you have an opportunity to turn those people into first connections by requesting an introduction. Hovering over a name in which you are a second connection will give you several options including "get introduced". Choosing this option allows you to send a message requesting an introduction to this person from the person you have the first connection with (this is the person that you are both connected to).

Note: When asking to connect with someone it's always best to include a personal message letting them know why you would like to connect with them and what the two of you have in common. This will increase the chances of them accepting your request.

Another way to grow your connections is to check for second connections and request introductions to them from your first connections. Go to your "Network Statistics" under "Contacts" at the top of your home page. Scroll down to the bottom under "Industry Access" and click on any of the industries in your network. You will see a list of people you are connected to in each industry and whether you are a first or second connection.

You can also go through your connections and visit their profiles to find more second connections and request introductions. Another way to find second connections is to visit LinkedIn Answers. You will be shown new questions from your network and you will see if any of those are second connections that you can request an introduction to.

In Summary, you now know how to use LinkedIn to create sales leads by:

Utilizing the "Company Search" feature
Finding "Second Connections" through industries and requesting introductions
Finding "Second Connections" through "First Connections" and requesting introductions
Using LinkedIn Answers to find "Second Connections" and requesting introductions

About Rick Kranz

Rick Kranz is a Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Strategist. He is the President of OverGo Studio, a NY based firm specializing in Online Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Techniques.

5 Web Strategy Mistakes To Avoid

Janice Gentles-Jones — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:22:00 GMT

Having an effective web strategy can ultimately help your business generate the right traffic to your website and increase your overall website conversions. And if you have a good strategy in place you can expect positive results from your web efforts. Remember your website is a marketing tool and any good marketing plan always has some kind of strategy for success. So how do you know if you have a good web strategy in place? Below you'll find 5 common mistakes that can hurt your website efforts if they're not a part of your overall website planning.

#1: No Website Goals

You set goals for other aspects of your business, right? Well don’t forget to set goals for your website. Before you do anything you need to decide what role your website plays in your business and what you want it to accomplish. Do you want it to generate qualified leads? Do you want it to increase your online sales? Do you want it to build brand awareness? It’s important to define your purpose as this will be the foundation of your design, content, call-to-actions and overall website strategy.

#2: No Keyword Research

Just because you've spent $5,000 - $10,000 on a beautifully designed website doesn’t mean they’ll come. You must have a keyword strategy in place. This means you'll need to know what problems your target audience is trying to solve and what search terms they’re using to find answers to their problems. This is key to your online success. If you have a limited budget for your web project I highly recommend you put most of your budget in getting a good keyword strategy in place.

#3: No Content Planning

Search engines love content because it’s their job to connect people with the content they desire. This means you need to have a content strategy in place. This is where you’ll determine what type of content your website will provide and how you’ll organize and optimize that content so it can easily be found by search engines and people. People don’t care about how wonderful your company is; not initially anyway. They love content that answers and address their questions and interests. Having a strong keyword and content strategy in place will help drive targeted traffic to your website.

#4: No Call-To-Actions

Most website visitors do not buy the first time they come to a site. Remember they are often looking for information. If they leave your site without contacting you it doesn’t always mean they’re not interested. They just may not be ready to buy. But the key is something on your website brought them there. Each page of your website should have an offer that drives that person to perform an action. It could be a free report, webinar or ebook that addresses a problem they’re trying to solve. Whatever it is it should provide value in exchange for their contact information. This allows you to establish credibility and can be the start of a relationship with that website visitor.

#5: No Web Analytics

It’s important to measure your website statistics. When you review your website traffic, you can find out how people are finding your website, what keywords are driving traffic to your site, what pages are working and how many of those visitors have turned into a sale... plus so much more. This is especially important if using a pay per click service to get traffic to your website. Analyzing your website traffic can tell you how much it’s costing you to get that sale and help you determine how much time and money you want to invest in your website. Remember, marketing is all about testing and measuring to see what works.

So what's the take-away here? If you don't have a good web strategy in place you may very well be making these common mistakes. You can avoid these mistakes by:

Creating website goals
Conducting a comprehensive keyword research
Creating a content plan utilizing your keywords
Adding call-to-actions within your web content
Analyzing your web traffic

If you avoid these mistakes you'll not only improve your web strategy but you'll also get your website found, provide value to your website visitors and increase your qualified leads conversion rate. If you’re serious about your online success, get your web strategy in place and at the very least you’ll be doing something different from your competitors.

Janice Gentles-Jones, is a web and technology specialist, who enjoys helping businesses create and maintain a visible, credible, profitable web presence.

Video Marketing Tips: Four Keys to a Successful Green Screen Shoot

Tony Stanford — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:00:00 GMT

If you’re reading this article, it’s probable that you have gotten all of the necessary equipment to make a successful green screen video. That’s great! Step one is complete! Now on to step two!

Even with the proper equipment, a successful green screen shoot is no easy task; It can be downright frustrating! So here are a few tips to ensure that your green screen shoots will go as smoothly as possible.

A large space- Most green screens are somewhere between 10 and 15 feet wide and most professional lights take up at least a foot or two. So unless you’re a magician or a wizard, you can’t expect to set up a green screen of that size in an office that’s 5 feet by 6 feet. (If you are a wizard, you need to get out of the video marketing business and work on something more useful like a car that gets 100 miles per gallon or a never-ending turkey club sandwich). You’re going to want to find a space that will have enough room for your green screen, lighting equipment, camera equipment, and subject.
The proper lighting set up- As I said in my first entry, in order to have a successful green screen shoot, you are going to need to light the backdrop and subject separately. To do this, you need to separate the subject from the background by at least five or six feet (another reason why a 5 by 6 office will not work). A proper lighting set up will look something like this: Lighting the backdrop separately will eliminate shadows cast by the subject and make it easier to get rid of the background in post-production!
A flat backdrop- When you receive your green screen, odds are that you are going to be removing it from a box too small to even fit both of your feet in. It is incredibly important that you take time to iron out all of the wrinkles before using your green screen; If you don’t, the lights working to eliminate shadows from your subject are going to create their own shadows and, therefore, their own problems.
A noise-free environment- Even though you have purchased a professional grade microphone, it is important that you record your online video in a quiet environment to avoid any unwanted sound in the recording. If you think trying to explain your product or service is difficult, think about how difficult it would be trying to explain your product or service with a jackhammer, a siren, four dogs, and a washing machine making noise in the background.

It is important to remember that filming anything isn’t easy, and video marketing is no exception. So don’t give up when you encounter problems! However, if you remember these four things when you set out to create a video, you will minimize hassle for yourself in the long run.

Tony Stanford is a video marketing expert at OverGo Studio. He has a bachelor's degree in Electronic Media and Film and enjoys showing customers how to use video to market and grow their business.

7 On Page SEO Tips To Get Your Content Found

Janice Gentles-Jones — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:39:00 GMT

OK…You may already know that content is king on the web, right? You may have even starting writing a blog for your business. Great! But before you click that Publish button to share your content with the world, there are a few on page SEO tips you need to know to make sure your content gets found by your audience. As you know, just because you build it they don’t always come. But…if you build it and incorporate the right elements in your content, you’ll reap the rewards of targeted visitors to your website.

The starting point of driving targeted traffic to your website is keywords. Once you’ve identified a keyword or keyword phrase for your article, strategically (and naturally) use the keywords within your article. Now I’m not talking about shady SEO tactics, just real strategies SEO experts use for on page optimization.

So, here are seven on page SEO tips that can help drive targeted traffic to your website.

Tip #1: Choose Keyword/Keyword Phrase

Choose a keyword (preferably a keyword phrase) for your article. Think about the words your audience would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it. There are many great keyword research tools to choose from such as Google Keywords, Market Samurai and WordStream. Choosing relevant keywords that have a high search volume and low competition can help your articles or blog posts rank high in the search engine results.

Tip #2: Use Keywords in Article Title

Include your primary keyword in your article title and try to keep your keyword/keyword phrase at the beginning of the title. Google places high value on article titles and displays article titles on the search results page. Keep your page title under 70 characters. That’s the maximum width visible in Google’s search results page. Be sure that your article title is also the Title meta tag for your page. Popular content management systems like WordPress, Joomla and HubSpot automatically do this. This is very important.

Tip #3: Use Keywords in Article Description

The meta tag description shows up on the search results page along with your article title. Now don’t worry…you don’t have to be an HTML guru if you’re using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla or HubSpot. Most good CMS make it easy for you to add a meta description to your article. Write your meta description with the reader in mind. Provide a quick summary of what your article is about so that they’ll click your link. For keyword prominence, include your keyword or keyword phrase in the meta description. Keep the meta description under 150 characters as that is the maximum amount of text that Google shows.

Tip #4: Hyperlink Your Keywords

Search engines give some relevance to words that are hyperlinked; so make sure that your keyword or keyword phrase is hyperlinked within your content. In the previous step I mentioned using your keyword in the first paragraph. Hyperlink that keyword from that first paragraph. When a search engine checks your site, it will see the link and is likely to associate your site with the keyword(s) embedded in link. Hyperlink your keyword to a relevant page on your website.

Tip #5: Use Headings

When you write your website content, each page should have headings. Headings are one of the best ways to give your keywords prominence. Headings also distinguish your headline so that search engines will recognize it as "important" on your web page. When headings are used, you actual make it easier for the search engine robots to determine what your web page is all about. Each article on your site should have at least a H1 and H2 heading formatting within the content. Most website editors have a formatting option for H1 and H2 headings so be sure to use them within your content.

Tip #6: Use Descriptive Images

Don’t overlook the benefits of using images in your online articles. Have a relevant article image is important to getting people intrigued to read your content. Two important on page SEO tips for images are: name images with your keywords and always include an Alternate (ALT) text for your image using your keywords. Most web content editors have an area where you can add the ALT text for an image after it’s uploaded.

Tip #7: Check Keyword Density

The best way to use article keywords is to let your keyword(s) guide your article topic. For keyword prominence, include your keyword(s) in the first paragraph of your article/blog post and also within the rest of your content. But don’t overdo it! Google may consider your content as spam if you do. Here’s a quick formula for calculating your keyword density: Keyword Density = ([Keyword Count]*100)/(Total Word Count]. Try to keep your keyword density to 3-4% so you don't appear to be a spam site.

Alright...you’ve got what you need to start writing your next traffic building content. Use these seven on page SEO tips to get your articles found. Just by using these SEO tips, you’re putting yourself ahead of those who do not and increasing the likelihood of getting your articles found by your target audience.

What other on page SEO tips do you use to drive targeted traffic? Please share your comments below.

Janice Gentles-Jones, is a web and technology specialist, who enjoys helping business owners create and maintain a visible, credible, profitable web presence.

Four Essential Items for Video Marketing Using Green Screen

Tony Stanford — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:17:00 GMT

There are few things more annoying than clicking into a website looking for information about a business and not being able to quickly discern what exactly the business does. Let’s be honest, no one wants to read more than three or four lines of text to try to figure it out.

Here at OverGo Studio we have found that an easy way to assuage this problem is to use video marketing; creating a short video that explains your product or service. One way to go about making a video is to use green screen technology. By using a green screen, you can incorporate objects to help explain your product such as text, charts, images, animations, and video.

However, just like going on a hike with no map and no water, it would be foolish to try making a video without being prepared with the proper tools. So, here is a list of things to make sure that you have before you embark on the journey that is green screening.

Green Screen- Surprise! If you’re going to make a green screen video, you are going to need a green screen. These kits can be purchased for reasonable prices on the internet from well-known sites like Amazon and Ebay. I would suggest getting a kit that contains a backdrop stand rather than clamps to avoid wrinkles in the green screen (more about this later on). Be advised that once you record your green screen footage, you will need software that will allow you to get rid of the green background. Such software is available for download online.
Camera- Again, it should come as no surprise that in order to make a green screen video, you are going to need a video recorder. By no means do I suggest you go out and buy a two thousand dollar Canon 7D (but if you do, I’d love to borrow it sometime). At the same time, you don’t want to buy something that is going to break the first time you use it. Also, you are going to want to purchase a camera that has a microphone input (see number four of this list). Shop around and see what type of video camera is going to be the most beneficial to your business. Oh, and don’t buy something that records on cassettes- it’s 2011. You want to make sure that the camera records digitally and uploads to your computer via memory card, USB, or both. And don’t forget a tripod!
Lighting kit- Contrary to popular belief, video making is not as simple as turning on a camera and recording, especially for a green screen. You need to make sure that the lighting is correct if you want to achieve optimal results. A proper lighting kit for a green screen consists of at least four lights; two for the subject and two for the backdrop. Some kits may include a fifth light to light the top of the subject’s head, but is not 100% necessary.
Microphone- even though most video cameras come with a built-in microphone, the audio quality of these microphones is not up to par for professional video making. The two types of microphones that will suit you best are the lavaliere mic or the shotgun mic. The lavaliere microphone is small and clips on to your subject whereas the shotgun microphone is larger and is pointed at your subject from a distance. Again, shop around a bit to determine which mic will work best for your needs.

So there you have it; the ‘survivor’s kit’ of video marketing. With these tools you can get started making and optimizing your own interactive videos.

Tony Stanford is a video marketing expert at OverGo Studio. He has a bachelor's degree in Electronic Media and Film and enjoys showing customers how to use video to market and grow their business.

LinkedIn for Business: 5 Tips To Optimize Your Profile

Janice Gentles-Jones — Sat, 28 May 2011 18:07:00 GMT

Are you using LinkedIn yet? Maybe you’ve been thinking about it but you’re still on the fence. Maybe you started a LinkedIn profile but that’s about it. Whatever you may be thinking about using LinkedIn for business, you may need to consider these facts (from LinkedIn’s website):

100m+ professionals around the world as of March 2011
There were nearly two billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010.
Executives from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies use LinkedIn

LinkedIn can be a great tool to market and grow your business, if you use it right. Here are 5 tips to help optimize your LinkedIn for profile so your business can get found:

#1: Completely Fill Out Your Profile

One of the most important parts of LinkedIn is your profile. It’s the foundation of your LinkedIn account and it’s the hub for all your activities within LinkedIn. It’s used to help you connect with people in your network. It’s how you get found on LinkedIn by potential customers (and you want to get found right?). And if done right it can give new people an insight about how you are, what you do and how you do it!

A LinkedIn profile often comes up as the number one result in a Google search of a person’s name, so it’s important that your profile is complete, up to date and represents your current experience and expertise.

2#: Use Keywords in LinkedIn To Get Found

Your LinkedIn profile should contain relevant keywords that you want to be found for in searches. Just like with other search engines keywords are very important to have in your profile if you want to get found. Here are a few places within your LinkedIn profile that you want to optimize with your keywords:

Your Professional Headline
This is discussed some more in tip #3.
Specialties
You can find this section at the bottom area of the Summary section of your profile. Include your keywords in the specialities you choose.
Job Titles
Include keywords in your current and past work experiences job titles.
Skills
This section comes after Experience in your Profile. Select skills with relevant keywords.
Websites
Select the option 'Other' which allows you to add a title for your website(s). Put your keywords in this title area.

#3: Be Creative With Your Professional Headline

What you write in your professional headline is very important. It should be written as a marketing slogan and not a job title. The Professional Headline field is 120 characters in size, which means you can fit about 20 words in there, so take advantage of this and make it count. It also should also include the keywords you want to be found for in searches. So be specific in your Professional headline.

Keep in mind that your Name and Professional Headline are the only two things that people will see when you answer questions in the Answers section or leave messages in the Group discussion forums. Your Professional headline also shows when someone is looking through another person’s connections.

Below are two examples of a professional headline. Which one do you think would get more responses?

Example 1: Website Designer

Example 2: Experienced Joomla Website Designer ready to give your business a professional online presence and get you found.

(I hope you choose number 2. I can vouch that it does elicit responses.)

#4: Include Your Picture

If you’re skeptical about putting your picture online, you’ve may need to rethink this. The whole purpose of using LinkedIn is to get found. Whether it’s by colleagues, friends or potential clients, you want to be found. Having your photo on LinkedIn can help people easily identify you, especially if you have a common name.

Or if you’re using LinkedIn to generate new leads having a photo makes you ‘real’. People can see a real face attached to all the credentials, info and everything that you’ve added to your profile. Don’t worry that your photo may have biased the person. If you were to meet in person that bias would be there anyway. Isn’t it better that it’s found out sooner rather than later, with minimal action on your part?

Here are three other good reasons to add your photo to your profile:

It helps people find you at in-person networking events. (They’ll know what you like from your profile)
It helps to create a positive impression of you.
(Be sure to choose a professional photo of yourself; one that you feel good about.)
It helps to start the trust process; especially when you connect with someone outside of your network.
(Remember the photo can make you feel like a ‘real’ person to the viewer and not just some words on a page.)

5#: Customize Your Profile URL

LinkedIn gives you the option to customize your profile URL. With a custom url you can customize the web address of your LinkedIn Public Profile. So instead of using the one that LinkedIn assigned to you, you can choose your own.

One of the benefits of a custom profile url is that it makes it easy for people to find your profile. You can use your full name in your custom url if you’re branding yourself or you can use your company’s name if you’re a business. Remember, as I said before, a LinkedIn profile often comes up as the number one result in a Google search.

Another benefit of a custom profile url is that it can also be helpful in regular search engines results. LinkedIn pages are ranked highly in search engines which means your profile is likely to come up in the top 10 if someone does a search for you in search engines such as Google.

OK...you've got what you need to get started on optimizing your LinkedIn profile. Using LinkedIn for business is all about getting found and once found having a profile that's ready to sell you or your business. Making these small changes can help your profile get found and help keep you above the competition.

Janice Gentles-Jones, a Website and Internet Marketing Specialist for OverGo Studio, enjoys helping business owners create and maintain a credible, profitable online presence.

5 YouTube Video Marketing Tips To Increase Website Traffic

Janice Gentles-Jones — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:00:00 GMT

YouTube can be a great marketing tool for your business and just as you would with any other marketing tool; you’ll want to have a plan in place to make the most of using YouTube as a marketing vehicle for your company. With millions of videos being uploaded to YouTube monthly, here are five video marketing tips you can easily implement to ensure an effective YouTube marketing campaign.

#1: Use Keywords In Your Title

While it may be fun to use a cute or funny title, you can really maximize your search engine optimization efforts by including your company’s top keywords in the title. If you haven’t already done so, compile a list of the top keywords phrases your target audience is searching for in search engines. Once you’ve determined your top keywords, create videos around these keywords. When you’re adding your video to YouTube use these keywords in the video title. The title of your YouTube video helps search engines know what your video is about and indexes your video accordingly. The trick is finding keywords that work for search engines and is still catchy to a viewer.

#2: Write Good Descriptions For Your Videos

Treat your video descriptions like an advertisement. The description is what the viewer will read to determine if they’ll watch your video. Avoid common mistakes like misspelling, poor grammar and overusing a keyword. Be sure to include the keyword from your title in the meta description, just don’t overuse the keyword in the description since this will appear spammy. Another important factor is to make sure that the first 60 characters of your description includes your most important text, including your website url. Google shows the first 60 characters of the description before cutting off the rest of the description and adding an ellipsis.

#3: Add Tags To Your Videos

Tags can help you label the videos you upload so that other people can find them easily and more importantly they help YouTube determine what other related videos will show up when your video is finished playing and vice-versa. Tags also help YouTube index your video which means your video can show up in a regular search engine outside of YouTube. Be sure to use quotes around tags that are phrases.

#4: Encourage Viewers To Embed Your Video On Their Website

Having other people embed your video can be great, free advertising for your website. It’s a good way to increase exposure of your video to people outside of your network. It’s also free advertising for your YouTube video channel if a viewer presses on the YouTube link on the video.

#5: Tell Viewers What You Want Them To Do

This is a common mistake made by people new to video marketing. If you want people to visit your website after the video tell them that. If you want them to embed your videos tell them that too. Having a call to action in your video is extremely important. Remember although the format is video, the rules of marketing still apply.

So remember, if you’re serious about using YouTube for marketing your businesses and generating traffic to your website, then:

Use keywords in your video titles
Write good descriptions
Add tags to your video
Encourage viewers to embed
Tell viewers what you want them to do

These steps can not only help you get found by your target audience but can increase traffic to your website. At the very least you’ll be doing something different from your competitors.

Janice Gentles-Jones, a Website and Internet Marketing Specialist for OverGo Studio, enjoys helping businesses create and maintain a visble, credible and profitable online presence.

Why You Should Use Video Email for Marketing

Rick Kranz — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:53:00 GMT

Ok, let me clarify what I mean by video email. I am really talking about a video brochure that is accessed via a link in an email. Oh..now I have to clarify what a video brochure is.

A video brochure is nothing more than a one page website with a video on it.

There really is no such thing as video email. The technology is not there yet that will allow us to insert video into an email (there are a couple of exceptions to this). It is an illusion that we create. We do this by building a one page website with a video on it. We then place the link to this page in an email.

If you are clever, you can make the link look like a video play screen. You can even do this with signature files.

So why go through all the trouble...well for two reasons.

First; according to Forrester Research, emails that contain a video link have a 2-3 times higher click-thru rate. If you have done any email marketing you know that a 2-3 times increase in click-thrus is a big deal. I have seen this first hand. When we send out our client’s email newsletters, the ones that contain video content always get much higher click-thrus, sometimes twice as many as those that don’t contain video content.

Second; according to Google Double Click, rich media creates a 400% to 700% increase in viewer engagement and response rates over static content. I have seen all sorts of facts and figures being touted by the online video industry; some believable and some - not so believable. What I can tell you from my personal experience is that video content on a website can increase your leads and sales. I say can - because the video content needs to convey your story in a compelling enough way to make the difference. If the video falls flat then the results will also be flat.

So let’s do the math. (2-3 times increase in click-thrus) x (400% to 700% response rate) = 8 to 21 times increase in leads! Wow...you mean if I send out video emails I can increase my leads 8 to 21 times more than what my regular email campaigns produce? Calm down...it’s not going to happen. That is why the stats that we like to throw around in the video marketing industry don’t always add up. But they sure sound good.

However, I can tell you that video marketing has increased leads and sales for our clients. And we do have case studies and figures that are down to earth and make sense. (video marketing case study)

My Bottom Line Recommendation - You should try incorporating video email into your marketing mix

In Summary

Here are my reasons as to why you should use video email in your marketing mix.

Video links in emails do increase click-thru rates. Our clients have experienced increases up to 2-3 times.
Web Videos (if done well) will increase your leads and sales. (see our video marketing case study)
Just don’t expect crazy multipliers. Shoot for doubling your responses. But make sure the campaign pays for itself even if you only increase your responses by 20%.

What is your experience with video email?

Try a video email example here.

About Rick Kranz

Rick Kranz is a Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Strategist. He is the President of OverGo Studio, a NY based firm specializing in Online Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Techniques.

3 Social Media Marketing Articles You Must Read Now

Rick Kranz — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:39:00 GMT

Every week here at OverGo Studio we receive a lot of questions concerning social media marketing, web marketing, and video marketing. We take the most popular questions and try to find the best blog posts to get you quality answers.

So here we go

A lot of you have asked the following questions regarding social media:

1. Why bother with Facebook and other social media marketing? You are doing very well with Google Adwords. Besides you sell B2B so how is Facebook going to help you? Well... here is an article from Jeffbullas.com that is sure to shock you. In it the author writes about how Google is making changes to incorporate social media “likes” and how Facebook’s search may challenge Google.
Google Gets More Social and Copies Facebook’s “Like” Button - “The social web has been further enhanced with Google announcing a competitor to the Facebook “like” button as Google starts rolling out its new “+1″ button that appears next to every website that is displayed in its search results pages.” read more.

2. What proof is there that all of this noise about social media marketing is not just a fad? You are still getting good results with your traditional outbound marketing efforts. Here is a list of stats from Marta Kagan of HubSpot,
12 Mind-Blowing Statistics Every Marketer Should Know - “Still, there are plenty of traditional marketing stalwarts out there who aren't buying all of the social media hype or can't convince their boss or marketing team to experiment in the brave new world of inbound marketing. So we've rounded up a dozen powerful stats that are sure to be eye-openers, if not total mind-changers.” Read More.

3. Why should I invest in inbound marketing? You spend plenty on your sales team and trade shows. You don’t see the need to spend more on Internet marketing. Again from Jeffbullas.com comes a well written piece on why internet marketing is more important now than ever.
10 Things You Should Not Ignore In Your Digital Marketing Strategy - “Marketing is moving from analog to digital and many well established companies have not woken up to this and are still persisting with what was the “tried and true” but is now becoming the expensive and ineffective. There are essentially 3 elements that have emerged in the last decade that have brought us to this generational shift...” Read more.

I hope these articles have helped to answer some of your questions and give you the information you need to move forward with your inbound marketing strategies.

About Rick Kranz

Rick Kranz is a Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Strategist. He is the President of OverGo Studio, a NY based firm specializing in Online Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Techniques.

3 Reasons To Use Video Marketing For Your Business

Rick Kranz — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:26:00 GMT

Video marketing offers multiple benefits to your business:

First, website videos help improve your organic ranking with the search engines. According to Forrester Research, “..video increases the chance of a front page Google result by 53 times.” Video is indexed right away by search engines, as opposed to web pages which may take months to be indexed. More and more I am seeing videos pop up in the organic listing of a Google search.

Second, a well made video will improve conversion rates on your website. What I mean by improving conversions rates is – that the percentage of visitors who make a purchase, fill out a form, or make a donation will increase. Internet Retailer states, “… visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not.”

Video has a tremendous ability to tell your story. Therefore, placing a video on your website can be like having a salesman working for you 24/7. Except this salesman has the ability to handle an unlimited amount of customers all at once. This is probably the most compelling reason you should be using videos for your business, but instead most business owners are focused on the glamour of driving more traffic to their site with a YouTube viral video.

Let’s think about it. As business owners we spend a lot of money and resources to drive visitors to our websites, but for what reason? What do we want them to do once they are there? In some cases it is make a purchase, or fill out a form, or something else.

Now, if for every 1,000 visitors to your website you can get 20 to do what you want them to do…then you have a typical 2% conversion rate. So if you want to double your conversions what should you do, spend more money to double the number of visitors? Instead, wouldn’t you rather increase your conversion rate to 4% without spending twice the money? That is what video can do for you. If you would like to read more about it you can Download a Video Marketing Case Study.

Third, another benefit of video is that it can get you on YouTube. Yes – the stats are in and YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine next to Google. So if you want to increase your chances of being found, you need to get listed on YouTube. Except you can’t get on it unless you have a video. Seems pretty simple.

In summary:

Web videos provide multiple marketing benefits to your business

Videos can get you a first page Google listing
Video on your website can increase your customer conversions
Your video can be uploaded to YouTube - getting you on the second largest search engine

My Bottom Line Recommendation - Get started creating product videos to upload to YouTube. This will help your search engine ranking. This is something most companies can do in house inexpensively. When you're ready to incorporate video on your website, for lead and sale conversions, seek out the help of a professional firm. Look for a video marketing firm that specializes in creating conversion videos.

What are your experiences with online video?

About Rick Kranz

Rick Kranz is a Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Strategist. He is the President of OverGo Studio, a NY based firm specializing in Online Video Marketing and Inbound Marketing Techniques.