If you are looking at setting up a new website or re-designing your existing website, you have no doubt been wondering whether you need a custom website design or if you can find a template that will meet your needs. Some website designers will tell you that templates are never a good choice, but I have found that simply is not true. Sometimes a template can fit your needs and may be the best option for you and your current business goals. Other times, using a template is going to lead to frustration, because it simply will not ever be able to meet your expectations, which will end up costing you more money and time in the long run to replace it with a custom website.

The template versus custom decision depends on a variety of factors including:
· Your marketing budget.
· Time you have to dedicate to the project.
· Your business goals.
· What your competitors’ websites look like.
· What you want to be able to accomplish with your website.

Pre-Coded Templates

Five years ago, templates were not a suitable alternative. Today, thousands of pre-coded templates are available and serve as a great starting point for most small businesses. Many of these pre-coded websites are responsive, meaning that they’re compatible with tablets and mobile phones. Selecting a template and customizing it so that its unique to your company can save you more-than-half of the development costs associated with building a custom website from scratch.

Custom Website Design

A custom website is completely unique to your brand and guarantees that no other company has the same look or feel. In essence, it’s a direct representation of your organization. Custom website design starts with a full discovery process, conversion planning, and goal setting, followed by the actual design of each page per the desired user experience. Your site can look precisely how you need it to, function without limitations, and be built on your preferred content management system (CMS).

The Pros and Cons

A template might be right for you if:
· You need a relatively inexpensive option.
· You need to be able to establish your website quickly.
· You don’t need any special functionality, or a bunch of intricate visual effects
· You’re one of those go-getters that can, and will, do it yourself.

However, you may want to avoid a template if:
· Your needs are unique and cannot be found in a template.
· You want to avoid having a website that looks like others in the marketplace.
· You or your staff don’t have time for the project.

A custom web-site might be right for you if:
· You want your website design to reflect other on-line and off-line branding.
· You want to tailor your website to your marketing strategy and business goals.
· You need your website to function beyond basic sales transactions or generation of sales leads.
· You are uncertain about what you need in a website and need the help of experienced professionals.

However, you might want to avoid a custom website design if:
· Your website budget is extremely limited.
· You need to get your website up and running quickly.
· You anticipate that your website will function only as an aide to your brick-and-mortar location.

So What’s the Verdict?

Overall, if you have a small budget and want to get your company website up quickly, a pre-coded template might be the route you want to take. But if at all possible, I recommend exploring your options with a custom website. In the end you will be much more satisfied working with an expert to create the look of your site custom-made to you.

At Raxa Design, we've been designing websites for more than 10 years. Our websites are intended to look great and generate results. Discover how our custom website design services can improve your brand and improve your business. Explore our website design services or request a quote.

You know that a website is critical for your business, but did you know that a poorly designed or outdated website can actually result in lost customers and missed sales?Today’s customers expect businesses to have a well-designed, modern, and responsive website. If visitors to your website find it difficult to use, they could end up at your competitors website.It can be difficult for business owners to objectively assess their own websites.So, that is why we have put together a list of questions for you to ask yourself to determine if your website is in need of a redesign:

1. Can you find your website?

Gone are the days when a local search for a local business meant that, as long as you had a website, your customers could find you.Today, even local searches can turn up businesses from distant locations and generalized searches can have hundreds of thousands if not millions of results.It can make it impossible to find your website.Use Google to search for your website and see where you are ranked, then ask yourself if you were a potential customer, would you have found your site?The reality is that most people do not make it past the first page or two of search results.Then use other search engines to run the same test.While Google is the most popular search engine available, people still use other search engines an tools like Yahoo!, Bing, Go, Ask.com, and AOL. There are a number of tactics that can improve your chances of being found in both general and location-specific searches.For example, using Google Plus in addition to your website can help increase your rank in local Google searches.You may also consider paying for advertising if you are in a highly competitive business and your search results are low.

2. Can you find your business?

Once visitors have found your website, can they use that website to find your business?If you have a brick and mortar location, they should be able to find your address, a map and/or directions, hours of operation, and a local phone number without engaging in an extensive search.If you were an out-of-town visitor searching for your location on-line, would your website give you the information you need to be an in-person customer?

3. Is your website responsive?

The “responsive” in responsive website design refers to your site’s ability to respond to the device that the visitor is using to access your site.Can your website adapt to the device (computer, tablet, smartphone, or other mobile devices) being used to look at the website in a way that maximizes the user’s experience?If not, then visitors may think you are not customer-friendly and move on to a competitor with an easier-to-use site, even if your products and pricing are superior.

4. Does your website accurately reflect your business?

As businesses grow, they frequently change, and with brick and mortar locations, these changes tend to be naturally reflected in the environment.Websites do not naturally change and may not incorporate changes in products, services, or a company’s evolving values, mission, and vision.Information on your website needs to be accurate and informative, and any changes in the business, such as changes to location, phone number, hours of operation, should be updated.

5. Does your website highlight why you are a better choice than your competition?

Are your prices consistently lower than your competitors?Do you have any type of special guarantee?Are you a green company?Do you source products from special locations or have human resource policies that are likely to appeal to your customers?The reality is that the modern web-based consumer has an abundance of choices.Can they look at your website and tell what sets you apart from your competition?

6. Does your website feel old?

What was current in website designs and trends a decade ago can feel dated and irrelevant today.Even worse using old technology can delay loading and make it difficult for visitors to find and purchase goods and services.

7. Is your website content Search Engine Optimized?

Even more of a problem than a website that feels old is one without SEO content.The terms and content that may have helped your website’s search ranking in the past may no longer align with what modern search engines consider when tabulating search rankings.Combine that with increased competition and an outdated site could mean that potential customers cannot find you.

8. Does your website help you meet
your business goals?

Different businesses have different goals for their websites.For service providers, websites may need to provide information, generate sales leads, or allow customers to schedule appointments.For retailers, it is critical that a website allow customers to complete a purchase.What are your business goals?Does your website help you meet those goals?Could the website be structured in a way that is better-suited to reaching those goals?

9. Does your website work with social media?

Your website is not going to run your social media accounts, but your web presence should incorporate social media.Does your website reflect the same content as your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or other social media accounts?Do you use social media to drive visitors and potential customers to your website?Do your links to and from social media take you to the right part of your website?The reality is that modern internet users are likely to use social media, rather than a web search, to find your website.

10. Can you update your own website?

Professional website development and content management can be crucial to improving your website and ensuring great quality content.However, you should be able to easily update your own content, so that you can make immediate changes to your website when the need arises.

11. Does your website track visitors in
a meaningful way?

While your visitors see the front-end of your website, you should be able to find out valuable information about who visits your website.Does your website generate leads or sales?What percentage of people who look at your website go on to become customers?What is creating your traffic?Who is visiting you?What advertising is working for you?Without knowing those answers, it is impossible for you to structure your marketing and advertising strategies.

12. Does your website work with all browsers?

At first, the answer to this might seem to be an obvious “yes,” since you can probably use all browsers to access your website.However, many of us have a default browser that we prefer.Have you looked at your website using other browsers?Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari are all popular ways to access the internet.How does your website look when accessed with each of these browsers?More importantly, is functionality impaired using any of these browsers?

13. Is your content interesting?

Some websites are naturally more content-heavy than others.The right amount of content for your site is a personal decision, but websites with more of the right type of content are likely to rank higher in searches.Is the content on your site relevant, informative, and entertaining?Does it speak to your target audience?Is the tone appropriate for your site?

Graphics and formatting can seriously impact loading speeds.Visit your competitors’ websites and compare your loading speeds. Visitors will frequently abandon a website if it appears to be loading slowly.Moreover, since loading speeds can vary based on the browser and device-type used to access the page, check loading speed on several different devices.Perhaps most important, loading speed impacts search ranking, at least on Google.

Beyond reasonable doubt that your company needs a website redesign is the point at which you are so humiliated by the condition of your website that you start to rationalize to prospective clients and business partners. You may apologize for the out-of-datedness of the site. You may even lie and say your new site is under development. You may even remove your web address from your email signature line in the hopes that your website will go unnoticed. Instead of going through this experience, take the steps needed to redesign your website now before you get considerably further behind.

At Raxa Design, we've been designing websites for more than 10 years. Our websites are intended to look great and generate results. Discover how our custom website design services can improve your brand and improve your business. Explore our website design services or request a quote.

The end of the year is finally here, and yes, I’ve been saying and repeating how important it is for you to prepare your brand for the New Year. I hope you’ve taken some of the advice, but I have created a New Year’s Branding Checklist for you just in case you haven’t.

1. Elevator Pitch

Before the year is up, create and practice a thirty second elevator pitch to quickly and effectively demonstrate who your brand is and what you can do to add increased value to someone’s life. During 2014, streamline and improve your brand by getting rid of anything that detracts from your value. Your brand should always focus on quality over quantity.

2. Consistency

Always stay consistent. Whether it be your website, business cards, logo, color schemes, newsletters, e-mails, advertisements, or any other marketing collateral, stay consistent. Varying from consistent arrangements detract from the stability of your brand and can decrease your dependability factor in the eye of the consumer. Your goal is to reinforce your brand to your customers at all time, and this is achieved by remaining consistent.

3. Socialize

Are you keeping up with your social media accounts? Are you actively networking? Are you staying in front of your target market? Your customers are ready to check out everything you have to offer, but they can only do that if you aggressively stay in front of them. If you hold back and hope customers will notice you, your competition will overtake you. Plan your content communications and stick to your plans. It’s all part of your brand blueprint.

4. Develop a Brand Blueprint

Does your brand have a blueprint? A brand blueprint is a guideline for how every facet of your brand should interact with your customers. Start with your basic company information and move to your brand purpose. Remember, the reason your brand exists is important for achieving your brand mission. This is accomplished by developing your brand strategy and cultivating the brand experience and culture your wish to portray.

Once completed, this blueprint will assist you in every day operations while ensuring your brand consistently improves without deviating from its consistency.

5. Try Printing Again

Yes, we’re moving into an increasingly digital world, but this doesn’t mean that printed materials should be cut out completely…just utilized in moderation! Of the five human senses, touch still exists, and it isn’t going away.

6. Be Spontaneous

Stop copying what everyone else is doing and try something unique. Look for ways to separate your brand from everyone else’s, not copy them in some fashion. If you can accomplish something totally unexpected (or better yet, unable to be replicated), you will solidify yourself as a unique brand in the marketplace. This is what can propel you into rapid brand growth, so keep trying.

7. Rebrand Yourself

What if you don’t have any of what I’ve listed above? Well…it might be time to consider a rebrand of your company. Raxa is here to help you with that, should it be the case. We also offer a series on signs you may need to rebrand. You can find the beginning of that here: http://raxadesign.com/re-branding-sign-1-cover-your-logo.

And that’ll do it for your New Year’s Branding Checklist! Completing the list will prepare your brand for 2014, and I hope it makes a difference for your company. As always, if you ever have any questions or comments, give us a call. We’d love to help you in any way we can.

But for now…have a wonderful holiday season and a terrific New Year.

Sincerely,

Raxa Design

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

We’re halfway through the last month of the year. If you’re at all similar to me, you may be looking forward to the fresh start feeling that a New Year provides, but with that, I’d like to take the time to list out typical Branding Resolutions and how you can accomplish them.

1. Outline your business’ problems.

Many people come to Raxa for branding assistance without properly outlining their business goals. With competition constantly changing, along with shifts in technology and how customers behave (what they want, how they want it, etc.), the biggest issue for a company could be them not knowing exactly where their biggest issues ARE.

Businesses ask us for ad campaigns or website touch-ups without actually needing ad campaigns or website touch-ups (at least not yet!). Before any of that, I always advise people to look at their business objectively and identify glaring issues that customers see and competitors can take advantage of. Fixing these issues before launching a new campaign can save you loads of money and time in the long run, which is a terrific goal for the beginning of a New Year.

2. Discover your ROI (Return on Investment).

Many businesses today have close to zero faith in a marketer’s ability to actually deliver growth. This is because their marketers haven’t been able to prove concrete returns on investment.

To begin solving this, focus on discovering your ROI for each of your campaigns and expenditures during 2014. Be specific, monitor performance, and track your returns with great fervor. Only then will you begin seeing what brings value to your company and what can be cut.

3. Be flexible.

Branding and marketing is constantly changing as people adapt to current situations, be it current marketing tactics or general feelings from other sources. However, just because things change on an irregular (but constant) basis, does NOT mean that you can’t turn these changes into an advantage.

This is why flexibility is key. What I mean here is: Try testing many small ideas instead of focusing solely on your big idea. Use the small ideas that succeed as stepping-stones to build up to your big idea. This flexible approach will ensure that your brand and company are, at the very least, taking small steps to where you want to be instead of risking it all on one big idea and potentially failing.

4. Focus on the purpose of your brand.

While your brand SHOULD live in the mind of your customers, this does NOT mean that they completely define what your brand is. Remember this: Nothing defines your brand more than what you do as a company. At the end of the day, only you can say why your brand exists, what you stand for, and the goals you want to achieve.

Because of this, you must stay true to your purpose. A genuine brand is an effective brand. Don’t forget it.

So the end of the year is upon us. I hope you’re enjoying the holiday festivities, but don’t forget about your brand at this time. Also, check in next week for our FINAL blog of the year (sad, I know!). I’ll be outlining a Branding Checklist for the New Year. You won’t want to miss it.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

It’s December folks! We’ve been talking about this time for the better part of the past three months, and we’re here now. So, the lingering question…Have you prepared your brand for the New Year?

Of course, the goal is to increase your brand awareness and build up your brand, but if you haven’t found the time to get around to setting those benchmarks yet, I have three tips to help you solidify your branding resolutions today.

1. Take the right branding steps.

The key to readying your brand for 2014 is minimizing missteps when preparing your company for the end of the year. You can accomplish this for your brand by analyzing your brand’s current position, strategizing for where you want to be, and achieving the small goals (or steps) needed to reach your large, end game goal.

Analyze your brand’s current position by taking an in-depth look at what you’ve accomplished this year based off of what you set out to accomplish at the beginning of 2013. If you achieved everything you want, terrific! But if you weren’t as successful as you wanted to be, find out what went wrong and how you can fix it.

Strategize for where you want to be by moving forward with what worked for you this year and discontinuing what didn’t work. Remember, improving upon your successes can develop a niche in the market to vastly improve your brand and business.

Achieve small goals to reach your end game goal by setting realistic expectations for your company each quarter. It’s okay to aim beyond what you can achieve, as long as you land at a place that’s above where you started. Like the saying, “Aim for the moon, land in the stars.” Just focus on accomplishing smaller goals to eventually build to your end game goal. Consistency is the key to success here.

2. Don’t brand alone.

You cannot build your brand alone. To accomplish effective brand building, you must have commitment from your ENTIRE team. This commitment is more important than your website, streamlined business cards, amazingly unique logo, or stellar tagline. The deal is, your brand is a sum of all parts, and the commitment from your team is the oil that makes the whole machine run smoothly. Without it, your brand will fail.

3. Don’t forget your customer.

It’s easy to lose track of time internally, but you must never lose sight of your customer. After all, they are the reason you’re working to improve your brand! Without fulfilling their needs, your brand will never succeed. Because of this, you must ensure that you focus on consistently improving the customer experience to promote your reputable brand as a company that always gets the job done.

So we’ve reached the last month of the year, and the holiday season is now in full swing. If you have yet to delegate time to preparing your brand (or perhaps you just needed a bit more help), these three tips should get you on the right track. As usual, check back next week for more information on solidifying your Branding Resolutions. See you then.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Thanksgiving is next week! The turkey dinners, family and friends, and what we’re thankful for – That’s what it’s all about. But I bet you didn’t know that research has actually shown that being thankful is GOOD for you. Consistently showing gratitude actually decreases health problems and increases levels of energy, enthusiasm, and more importantly, productivity.

So why don’t people show gratitude more often? Taking that a step farther, why don’t BUSINESSES show gratitude? The same benefits apply for them too! And today, I’m going to walk you through four simple ways to express your thankfulness.

Share It

Let your employees know you notice and acknowledge them. Sometimes, business owners can get so caught up in the craziness of their company that they disregard the people who make their business properly run. It can happen to anyone, but finding periodic ways to compliment and reinforce your employee’s work will help to sustain continuous productivity. It’s not even difficult. Send them a thank you note. E-mails work, but hand-written notes still have the most impact. Either way, let them know you appreciate them, and it will pay back dividends in the long run.

Give It

Here’s a shocker: People like free things. It doesn’t even have to be expensive things (grocery store samples, anyone?). People just like getting something for nothing. This could be a meal for you employees or gifts for your best clients. The point here is this: A gift raises the level of gratitude, AND, for your clients, they can also act as a marketing strategy if done correctly. Win-win.

Use Your Phone

Randomly calling someone to say thank you can make his or her day. It’s happened to me, and it leaves a big impression. Doing so will set you apart as a thoughtful person to do business with, especially since most phone calls today focus on sales and only sales. You don’t have to have an agenda, just say thank you. If the conversation naturally transitions into business, terrific, but if it doesn’t, don’t press anything. Just tell them you wanted to thank them for their impact on your life and business and for them to have a great day. You’ll leave a big impression, and they’ll think more highly of you.

Be Kind

Doing something for someone else “just because” can create all sorts of good will while simultaneously encouraging others to do the same. Like those Starbucks “pay it forward” trains we’ve heard about on the news (I still want to get involved in one of those, but I’ve spent way too much there to keep trying! Argh!), practicing random acts of kindness can drastically improve not only the person who you’re doing something nice for, but the world itself.

These four simple steps work in our personal lives AND for our business. The great thing about it? It’s simple to do, AND it makes you feel better about yourself! What’s not to love about that? From Raxa Design, have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Thanksgiving is two weeks away! With that, most businesses often experience a post-Thanksgiving slump in business. This is partly due to Christmas rapidly approaching, but precautions CAN be taken to prevent your business from suffering too badly during the holiday season. Last week, we gave you three steps to prepare for the New Year. Today, I'm going to talk to you about keeping your business strong DURING the holidays.

Prioritize Your Time

Before you do anything, you must outline how your time will be delegated during these final, crucial weeks. The worst thing that can happen is for the holidays to arrive without you and your business being prepared, but by having all of your time allotted, all you’ll need to do is keep in line and make sure each task gets completed.

Review This Year

If you’ve been consistently reading our blog, e-mails, eNewsletters, or other materials, yes…we harp on this A LOT. It’s because it’s really important (shocker, we know). But you must go over your year and assess what did and didn’t work out for you during the year to allow yourself to improve upon the successful and unsuccessful aspects of your business. The most important thing to do for this section is to apply what you learn as quickly as possible. Remember step 1 concerning prioritizing your time? Well that time must be used quickly here when reviewing your year.

Organize Yourself

Look around your office. Are things scattered? If you’re like many small business owners, the end of the year has probably taken its toll on you and lessened some of your cleanliness and organizational skills. I understand all too well, but you must organize yourself before the holidays get into full swing. Why? Because when you get back to the office after your time off, organizing all of last year’s issues is going to be the LAST thing you want to do.

Prepare for 2014

Okay, you’ve prioritized your time, reviewed the successes and failures of 2013, and organized yourself before the holidays begin. Now, your last step is to prepare YOURSELF for 2014. Take some time to relax. Make arrangements for holiday festivities with family and friends. Attend some parties. Recharge. Doing so will refresh and relax you, helping you ready yourself to take on the business of the New Year when it arrives.

Yes, owning a business can be incredibly hectic at times and downright soul sucking at others, but if you take the time to prioritize yourself, review as you go along, and organize everything in a timely fashion, you can consistently improve year after year. And that’s what a successful business is all about.

So as we grow closer to the holidays, prepare your business for 2014, but don’t forget to be thankful for everything you have and what you’ve accomplished. If you lose the joy of what you’re doing, what’s the real point in doing it? You’re in business to make a difference. Don’t let anything else overtake that.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Welcome to the holiday season! Are you ready to make that final push as we move toward the end of 2013? I know turkey shopping is on your mind, but don’t let up on your business and future plans for your brand. That’s why I’m going to give you three ways to prepare your business for the New Year! Hooray!

1. Be responsible for your business. Have you properly outlined your goals, dreams, and aspirations, whatever they may be? If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there. That’s why you must think about the idea of your business when it’s fully developed. Once this thought is in your mind, ask yourself if what you’ve accomplished over the past year has helped you grow toward your goals. If they haven’t, something needs to be changed. Remember, you want to consistently grow over time. The secret (or not so secret) to doing so is to cut out what isn’t working for your business and improve the things that are.

2. Set your New Year budget. Setting a budget for 2014 requires you to think about your objectives and the resources you have to meet them. This helps you understand the facts about where your business currently is compared with where you want to be and allows you to make accurate budgets to eliminate the chance of overspending. Cash for your business is like food for your body – If you don’t eat, you die…or get really skinny and almost die. Either way, it’s bad. And setting a budget will help you meet your goals.

3. Manage your time. This is probably the single most important aspect of business. Remember above how cash for your business is like food for your body? Well time is like blood. You can give it away to help others, but if you waste it and lose too much, you die (I promise I wasn’t thinking about writing on so much death during the holiday season, but hey, if it gets the point across, right?). The point here is this: Build a calendar strategy and make an effort to meet your time management goals, especially in the first quarter. Sustained continuation of good habits will carry over throughout the year, whereas making mistakes early can lead to bad habits throughout the entire year…not what a good business needs.

These three tips should help you, as the New Year grows closer. The holidays hit fast and move quickly, so don’t forget to make these plans now before the chance is up. Remember, time is your most valuable ally. Don’t waste it.

But don’t forget to enjoy this time with family and friends either. This year may have been rough (though I hope it wasn’t for you), but with each New Year is the opportunity for more success and new chances. Above all, be thankful for the experiences you’ve had because, good or bad, they make life worth living.

And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. From Raxa Design, finish the year strong and have a great two months.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Happy Halloween! During this month, we solved the Branding Boo’s for your company’s website and marketing campaigns, but today, let’s take a closer look at the “Brand of Dreams” many business owners live in.

So…you’re a business owner, and you don’t know the meaning of clock-in, clock-out. Every day is full of potential with thoughts of your future success clear in your mind. You KNOW that if you could just make that ONE sale, kick-start that ONE campaign, or get everything organized, that you could be successful, make it big, or as I like to say, “Make a difference.”

But right now, it’s just a fantasy…something to long for, to strive toward. You live out these dreams in your head but lack the discipline and proper procedures or systems to get there. You fling all your ideas at a wall and hope that SOMETHING will stick.

So many businesses come to Raxa for emergency projects. “WE NEED THIS NOW!” They plead after recently becoming aware of a tradeshow or expo rapidly approaching. It doesn’t matter that they knew nothing of this yesterday; their entire business DEPENDS upon it today. Yet I always ask: How did they not know they would need this sooner? How do they expect a creative, successful ad campaign or marketing collateral in only a few days? Will this tradeshow or expo really make that much of a difference? If not, then why are they so stressed about it?

In relation to the Branding Boo’s, maybe you are procrastinating on your plans for the New Year. Perhaps it’s because you’ve created what we call a, “Brand of Dreams.” If you build it, they will come. If you market it, sales will come. If you believe it, change will come.

But, in all honesty, people most likely won’t recognize you; people truthfully won’t even care about you or your business. They care about their problems being solved; they care about results. They don’t care about your Brand of Dreams.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is your brand. There is no secret color scheme, logo design, or social media campaign that will rocket you to the top of everyone’s mind. Brands are built over time with many encounters and experiences must occurring before your brand is properly established.

Yet numerous business owners consistently tell me their business and marketing plans are clear in their minds. What’s the problem there? They know what they want, and they know they can do it. But they haven’t actually done it yet; they’ve only thought about it while struggling to grow their business year after year.

No wonder these businesses are struggling to effectively grow. They’re living out a fantasy, focusing on the Brand of Dreams within THEIR mind when it should be living within the minds of their customers.

Take a step back from this example and realize that while you know what kind of difference you can make, nobody else does. This makes your first job to change their minds, make them think like you do, and take your brand from YOUR mind to THEIRS. Give them an experience they won’t forget. Give them something they’ll want to come back to. Make them WANT to tell others about YOU.

The only thing keeping you from reaching your goals is yourself, so what are you waiting for? Start today! Do one thing at a time the right way instead of everything the wrong way. Success and growth will come over time, so stop trying to be ALL things to ALL people. Pick a target market and build that up until you can expand beyond that market segment. Create a plan that you’ll actually complete instead of dreaming about a future where everything is already done. Let your CUSTOMERS live in your Brand of Dreams; you’ve had enough time there.

So right now, you’re thinking, “If I build it, they will come. If I market it, sales will come. If I believe it, change will come. If I just dream…”

But today, I want you to change this train of thought, because, “If you do it, success will come.”

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

The Branding Boo’s can affect many parts of your business, including your website, employee morale, and marketing endeavors. If you have yet to read about the Branding Boo's, check it out here.

However, getting your plans in motion in time for the New Year festivities will allow you to start 2014 with a head start toward achieving your goals.

And this especially applies to planning your marketing campaigns for 2014. But first, ask yourself two questions: Were your 2013 marketing campaigns successful? And did you run consistent campaigns or sporadic attempts when business was down?

These questions must be answered while planning your 2014 campaigns. If your campaigns weren’t successful, odds are trying the same tactics won’t work next year either. Or maybe you weren’t consistent with your marketing and advertising, trying one-off tactics to feebly increase awareness. This sets you up for failure by giving your limited public exposure for your business, a fatal mistake in the world of marketing!

You see…the key to marketing is consistency. The average American human is assaulted with upwards of 5,000 advertisements per day. 5,000! And you think that your single, sporadic campaign will be able to keep and retain their attention? No! You must continually stay in front of your target market with consistent marketing attempts from multiple sources, and this all starts with planning out your year now. Don’t wait until the entire family is in town for turkey feasts and present opening, start now!

Take what you did and didn’t like from your marketing attempts this year and apply it to your new plans. Plan for a consistent schedule across the year, not just sporadic attempts here and there. Most importantly, set your marketing budget for the New Year, but remember: Expect the price of advertising to rise at least 3% next year, so prepare your budget with that in mind to give yourself some budgetary room instead of having to cut back on your marketing from a lack of funds. There’s nothing more frustrating then taking the time to set up a solid plan for the next year’s marketing campaigns, only to have to cut back as a result of insufficient finances.

Here at Raxa Design, we always talk about our plans for the New Year and closely follow what did and didn’t work out well during this year. The reason for this is that to solve the Branding Boo’s, and in this case Marketing Boo’s, we must take the crucial step of planning. If you set your plan and stick to it, you will see much more success than sporadically attempting to market your brand when business is down.

If you ever have any further questions for solving your own Branding Boo’s, we’d love to hear from you and set up a personal plan to prepare you for the New Year. I hope these tips for preparing your 2014 marketing campaign help you as we approach the holiday season. Next week, we’ll close out the Branding Boo’s with an in-depth look at living in the “Brand of Dreams.”

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Here at Raxa, we've been discussing the upcoming holiday season and the end of the year woes most businesses go through around this time. With the holiday season rapidly approaching, business dips as seasonal festivities begin and employees look forward to time off with families. Often during this time, business owners take a closer look at their brand and worry that they won’t have enough time to simultaneously complete billable work, schedule employee’s holiday vacations, and plan for the New Year.

We call this panic toward the end of the year, “The Branding Boo’s.” Coinciding with the beginning of the fourth quarter and Halloween, many business owners get wrapped up in the holiday fervor and stress about preparing their business for the New Year.

But there are a few things to look out for in relation to building your brand, as well as planning your graphic design, web design, and marketing materials to better prepare yourself for the New Year. For the remainder of this month, our blog will help with your New Years preparations to start eliminating the Branding Boo’s.

Many businesses consider updating their websites throughout the year. The holiday season is a terrific time to do so because many brands experience a downswing in business as they transition to a time for various holiday festivities. This provides a good window to focus on your brand while making and testing adjustments for updates to your business’ site. Yes, the holidays are great for family time and vacations, but don’t halt the progress on your brand either! With early January and the start of a new business year quickly approaching, it’s important to start preparing and updating your site now to ensure a solid launch for the New Year.

To help in doing so, look back at what you like about your old site and what you want to improve. Research companies in your industry (your competitors even) to see if there’s anything on their sites that you do or don’t like. When you’ve gathered a list of what you want to include on your updated website, hire a professional to do the work. Yes, you could try to do it on your own, but with the holidays taking up a good portion of your time, as well as managing all of your employee’s schedules, it’s better to have your website done once and correctly than multiple times and haphazardly.

And don’t forget, your website is constantly evolving, just like your brand. New trends, technologies, and styles are emerging faster than the release of new smartphones. Keeping on the upswing of website functionality ensures that your site will remain fresh to your potential leads. This isn’t to say that you must update your website every couple of weeks, but letting it stagnate over the course of a few years can cause incalculable damages by unknowingly losing prospective clients.

I hope these tips for preparing your updated website for the New Year will help you resolve some of your own Branding Boo’s. Next week, we hope to see you back as we go into more depth on planning your marketing endeavors to take maximum advantage of first quarter opportunities.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

“You can make some people happy some of the time, but you can never make all people happy all of the time.”

We’ve come to the final sign that your company may need to Re-Brand, but first, have you heard the above quote before? Well, as much as we may not want it to, this quote applies to business as well. There is going to come a day where you will receive...a customer complaint.

But don’t throw up the white flag just yet! First off, consumers are much more likely to offer a negative review over a positive one, because they EXPECT good products and services. This sets the stage for the unhappy customers, who may not be a large quantity, yet they look large when no positive reviews exist. For this reason, actively asking for positive reviews from satisfied customers can be quite beneficial to your business. Remember, it’s all about reinforcing your brand in the eyes of the consumer.

Now, a legitimate customer complaint can actually be beneficial to your brand if you take the right steps. Think back to your earlier days in your career when mistakes were more common. Most likely, your boss or supervisor notified you of the error, and you subsequently corrected it. In essence, the mistake turned into a lesson to improve your future endeavors, and this same principal can applied to a customer complaint.

When a customer notifies you of an existing problem (issues a complaint), taking the proper steps to satisfy the customer and mend the problem can go a long way to retaining them in the future. It’s part of our nature to want to be satisfied, and when a company goes above and beyond our expectations to do so, we generally tend to think highly of them and tell our friends and family of the experience.

Remember, success is all about reinforcing your brand in the mind of the consumer. Their experience means everything to your business. It determines what they think of you, if they will tell their family and friends about you, and most importantly, whether they will continue to do business with you. Needless to say, receiving a valid customer complaint can be very impactful on your entire business depending on how you handle it.

So don’t look at a customer complaint as the end of the world. Rather, think of it as a way to improve your business. When you make your customers happy, you will also be happy. Your brand depends upon their experience, so be sure it’s a good one, even if they have a complaint.

This brings us to the end of our series on six signs you may need to Re-Brand! If you have any more questions concerning your brand, we’re always available to discuss it with you farther. Simply give us a call, shoot us an e-mail, play a round of golf with me...however you want to chat, we’re here.

We hope you learned a few things to improve your business and look forward to writing more about the effects of proper branding in the future. Even though this series is concluding, be sure to check back next week for more tips on branding and marketing. We’ll keep them coming if you keep reading.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

We went over the importance of image consistency both offline and online last week, but today we’re going to talk about the significance of keeping your website up-to-date. If you missed last week’s blog post, you can check it out here.

But first, let me ask you a question: Was your website designed by a friend or put together on a DIY (Do it Yourself) website program? Secondly, did you forget to ensure your website was up to date with current technologies? If you answered yes to either of those questions, your website may be doing more harm than good.

You see, in this day and age, a company’s website is oftentimes the “front door” to the public. When people hear about a cool, new product or service from a friend, they tend to look it up online to see for themselves. When the website they land on compliments what they’ve heard from their friend, it reinforces the referral and increases the chance of them trying the company for themselves.

That’s all fine and good if the website is up to date and easily navigable, but what if it’s outdated and difficult to navigate? You can ask that question yourself and think back on times where you’ve landed on an outdated website. It felt like they weren’t on top of the ball, and you most likely (and statistically proven by the way) didn’t stay on the site very long.

Do you want the same thing to happen to your prospects? I sure hope not! But if your website is outdated, then the technological “front door” to your company is not displaying a proper welcome mat.

How do you fix this though?

Well, you could study web programming for a couple of years to master the basic ins and outs of the trade, but I have a slight feeling that you have more important things on your agenda (like running your business perhaps). So what does that leave?

Investing.

Wait...in THIS stock market?! Are you crazy, Brian???

Relax; I’m not talking about the DOW Jones, NASDAQ, or S&P 500. I’m talking about investing into something you have much more control of: Your Business.

So many business owners think of the parts of their brand as “expenses” rather than “investments,” but this thought pattern couldn’t be farther from the truth. The parts of your brand work cohesively to create the experience that lives inside of your customer’s minds, and your website plays a direct role in this experience. So instead of thinking of your website as a regrettable but necessary expense, think of it as a vital and beneficial investment. As the front door to your business, an up-to-date website can vastly improve the perception of your company, reinforcing any referrals you may receive...but an outdated website can hurt you in ways you would never know.

If you have any questions concerning your company’s current website, give us a call. We’ll even evaluate your site for you and show you where your site is working well and, more importantly, what you can improve upon.

Next week we’ll talk about customer complaints and how you can handle them effectively, but until then, have a good one...and keep your website up-to-date!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Last week, we talked about your internal brand and how important it is to follow a set structure for day-to-day operations. If you missed that sign, or you want to catch yourself up from last week, follow this link to read more about employees properly communicating your brand.

Now, after the internal side of your brand is in check, let’s go over some of how the public perceives your brand on the external side of things. The same facts that apply to your employees internally apply to you and the collateral you put out for consumers to view externally.

So if you’ve ever thrown together marketing collateral in desperation to meet a deadline or make it to a tradeshow or expo in time, you’re breaking some prominent rules for keeping your imagery and brand consistent. Unfortunately, there are many ways to be inconsistent with your brand imagery, but let’s see if we can cover the most common missteps for you to avoid.

First up: Your Logo. If your logo isn’t being used properly in approved formats, it portrays a sense of unprofessionalism in your material. These misuses result from: Stretching your logo to fit something, changing the colors to work with a certain piece, adding something to the logo, etc. If you’ve done any of those things, your logo (and consequently your brand) isn’t being viewed properly or professionally, and you are hurting your overall brand image. The solution? Stick to the approved formats for using your logo and don’t budge for anything. But wait, you tell us, if we just stray from the guidelines A LITTLE, then we would be able to – No. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it. Stay consistent.

Next on the list: Your Imagery. There are three types of representation for the imagery your put out, of which all three have their pros and cons.

1. Detailed Representation. This style focuses on stock imagery intended to show your product or service in the most detailed and professional way possible. The plus side to detailed representation is the customer’s inability to find fault with your images because of their meticulous attention to the best detail. However, the con of detailed representation is the chance that your imagery might come off as too stock and not personal enough to distinguish from anyone else.

2. Truthful Representation. This style focuses on representing exactly how your product appears by using professional imagery, but still showing how your product and service truly is, even if some imperfections may exist. The benefit to this approach comes from your customers seeing exactly what they’re going to get for their purchase, but on the other hand, your customer may lose some of the splendor and mystery of seeing the product or service how it really is.

3. No Representation. This style isn’t necessarily a complete lack of imagery (though that does fall into this category), but more so, this style lacks accurate representation of your products or services at all. Either the imagery is unprofessional and disorganized, or it doesn’t capture what your products or services actually are. The argument for this style of representation is for customers who already know exactly what the product is, so why would they need to see professional imagery of it? Here’s the deal: Think of your imagery as an INVESTMENT, not an EXPENSE. When you make an investment in your imagery, capturing professional representations of what you offer, you can only make yourself look BETTER, not worse.

Lastly: Your Website. Your website is a whole other animal. Everything that we went over above concerning your logo and representation of your imagery applies here as well.

Consider this. When a client comes into your office or you meet elsewhere, how you look has an impact, correct? The same applies to your website. Think of your website as an ONLINE salesperson, oftentimes a first point of contact for your customers, especially in this day and age where nearly everyone is connected online. Because of this, your website needs to portray you in the best possible light, and this is only possible with image consistency along with a professional layout promoting simple navigability.

Now I’m sure you want to learn more about how to keep your website up to date and operating at maximum capacity, but you’ll have to wait – I know, I know, waiting is no fun! But check back next week where we’ll dive further into the intricacies of your company’s website. For now though, just remember that your website must use everything we’ve learned up to this point effectively, because it will be on display for everyone to see at the click of a few keys. So, like we’ve been repeatedly saying, be sure you’re staying consistent!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Glad you’re back. But if you aren’t back, meaning you’ve missed signs 1 and 2 that you may need to Re-Brand, then you need to catch up with the Cover Your Logo Test and Need More Referrals posts. Don’t worry; we’ll still be here when you get back.

Okay, today we’re going to talk a bit about your brand internally. Many small-business owners get frustrated when, on top of everything else they have on the agenda, their employees don’t seem to be properly communicating the brand to the public. Ask yourself this question: Do your employees currently communicate your brand to the public in the most effective way?

For example, let’s say your company has developed and utilizes a revolutionary process for water bottle manufacturers to purify water in the most cost-effective and safe way on the market. If your employees simply say your company works with water purification, they aren’t properly communicating the many benefits you actually offer. This internal problem hinders your reach in the market and can actually hurt your business in the long-term, but how does this happen and what should you do to remedy it?

Brand miscommunication occurs when there is a lack of internal consistency among your employees. This happens when an internal brand structure isn’t being implemented across the board. What do I mean by “Internal Brand Structure?” An internal brand structure has to do with everything from how you answer to the phone in the office to the signature used on each of your employee’s e-mails. At Raxa, we make sure to teach each and every client that a brand lives in the mind, but this starts with the simplest of associations made with a brand. I’ll turn to Chik-fil-a for an easy example. At Chik-fil-a, employees are told to say, “my pleasure,” instead of, “you’re welcome.” Go ahead and test this at the closest restaurant to you. Tell any employee, “thank you,” and they will all respond, “my pleasure,” in return. This may seem like a menial thing, but these menial things all add up to the bigger picture of your brand’s public communication.

This all starts with an internal brand structure, so if you find your employees miscommunicating your brand, you may be in need of a Re-Branding to sort these issues out. With proper internal branding, you can move forward with confidence that your employees are properly communicating your brand to the public, allowing you to focus on the rest of everything on your agenda. Great news, huh?

But don’t ease up just yet. Internal Branding is incredibly important, but External Branding requires just as much (if not more) care and attention. After all, your brand lives in the mind of the consumer, right? So you better hope you’re getting the right thoughts about your brand into their heads!

Next week, as we continue with the 6 Signs You May Need to Re-Brand, we’ll move onto proper External Branding. Branding your company externally has a lot to do with your image consistency, be it your logo, website, or various marketing collateral, but remember…set an internal structure for how your employees should act, what they should say, and how they should communicate your brand, and most of all…stick to your structure! The biggest brands in the world do it, and so should you.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Welcome to the second article outlining “6 Signs You May Need to Re-Brand.” If you missed the first step, check it out by following the link to do the Cover Your Logo Test. Back? Fantastic. With this next installment of “6 Signs You May Need to Re-Brand,” we’re going to talk about everyone’s favorite business: Referrals. Referrals work so well because they bypass the “Trust Stage,” by utilizing who we know and already trust. If you needed a new roof, and your close friend recommended “the absolute BEST roofer around!” there’s a strong possibility you would give him a call, but this isn’t only true for service companies! When you recommend a restaurant to a friend or family member, you just “referred” that restaurant some business. At Raxa Design, when we do a fantastic job Re-Branding a company, and they tell others about the work we did, they are referring us.

You see, referrals can (and SHOULD) be used as much as possible to increase business, but what should you do if you stopped getting (or have never gotten) solid referrals on a normal basis? To answer that question, let’s dive into what makes someone refer a certain company.

First and foremost, people will only refer a company that impressed them in some way, be it superb workmanship or even considerate customer service. Working with customers to provide the best possible end outcome can go a long way toward them referring you in the future.

Secondly, and of equal importance, your brand must live within their mind after your work is complete. If a customer used your products or services and completely forgot about you afterwards, they will not be able to recall your brand when someone close to them is having issues your company can address. This means no referral, which translates to no added business.

Lastly, and yes…still important, you can do wonders for your business by establishing a set “referral plan” to benefit your existing customer base. This plan can coax customers into basically advertising your company for free in return for discounts or special offers. Remember, more referrals translate to more business. More business translates to more profit. More profit translates to success. So, using the Pythagorean Theorem (A2+B2=C2) from way back in Geometry (I can’t believe my Junior High Teacher was right when she said we’d be using this stuff in real life), more referrals (A2) + more business (B2) = more success (C2). And we all want to be successful.

So if you’re having trouble getting consistent referrals, you may be overdue for a Re-Branding to fix any issues you are having. Remember, you want customers to be impressed with your products and services, you want your brand to exist in their mind AFTER they’ve completed business with you, and you want to establish a solid ‘referral plan” to entice existing customers to promote your brand to family, friends, and colleagues.

When you get these three facets up and running, the referrals will start coming in, and you’ll be on track to the end result you desire. However, the third sign you may need to Re-Brand will be here next week, so check back soon. You’ll be glad you did.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Welcome to a series on 6 Signs You May Need to Re-Brand, but before we start...What is a Brand? Ask that question to everyone in your office. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Back? Great, let’s move on. Almost certainly you just got a different answer from each person you asked as they fumbled around to explain what was so “obvious.” I’m sure most eventually gravitated to a “logo” or “company slogan/tagline/service line.” I’m here to tell you...they are wrong. And if your perception of a brand is the same as theirs, you are wrong as well.

But don’t click out of here just yet. Allow me to explain myself. Many people, normal citizens and small-business owners alike, believe that a company’s brand is a direct result of their logo, color scheme, slogan, and marketing collateral. I believe the reasoning for this stems back to many, many years ago with a process called, “Branding.” To explain the process, many cattle herders would “Brand” their animals by searing their “Logo” onto the animals skin. Ouch! But this allowed them to easily identify which animals were theirs if a mix-up were to occur with other cattle herders.

As a result, we naturally think about “Branding” as a company’s logo to this day, but if you’re finding it difficult to achieve the amount of success you desire with your business, then I’d like you to do a small exercise with me today.

Take any piece of marketing collateral you have. This could be a brochure, a recent ad you ran, or the homepage of your website. Got it? Okay, cover your company’s logo. Now, if you were a prospect looking at this piece of collateral, would you know who the company was?

To explain where I’m going with this further, let’s head back to the cattle example. If you could permanently cover the “Logo” on the animal’s skin, how would the cattle-herder tell which animal was theirs? They couldn’t, and the same goes for your marketing collateral. If you looked at what the competition in your industry was doing and modeled your marketing strategy around that, how will the consumer be able to distinguish between the two companies? By your logo alone?

At the beginning of this series, I challenge you to think about your brand as MORE than just a logo or company tagline. Think of your brand as an “Experience” to be enjoyed and passed along (or “referred”) to others. When a brand is firing on all cylinders, it lives in the mind of the consumer. Sure, the logo, taglines, and advertising campaigns all work together to help construct the mental image, but the actual brand exists behind the eyeballs reading this right now. A brand exists in the mind.

So as we continue forward with this series, I’m going to outline more common signs that you may need to re-brand your company. If any (or all) of these apply to you, don’t think of it as a bad thing necessarily, but an opportunity to grow toward the end game currently living inside of your mind as well.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Brian Waraksa, founder of Raxa Design in Houston, Texas, has been in marketing and small business branding since 2002. He writes the Raxa Design blog to inform small businesses and corporations on effective branding.

Speaking of Google, even though their stock has seen a big increase over the course of 2012, they're not sitting back and resting on their laurels. Instead, they've continued to make some very big changes to their search algorithm. Since they've announced so many different changes, there's a good chance that you've missed out on hearing about a few. Luckily, we've compiled everything you need to know about Google's key changes over the last three months:

Panda Still on the Prowl

While it's now an industry standard to name any major algorithm update that Google makes, most receive a flurry of attention, and are then forgotten about after a few months. However, Google's Panda update has been in the spotlight for over a year and a half. The good news for website owners is one of Google's latest Panda updates truly seemed to be a minor one, so your site shouldn't have experienced any negative effects from this change. However, Google made a larger Panda update at the end of September. But where things get even more tricky is that may not even be the root cause of a recent change in your search engine traffic.

Exact Match Domains

At almost the same time as their latest Panda update, Google also rolled out a new change that targets exact match domains. While their stated intention was to knock down spammy sites that were only ranking because they had keywords in their domain name, there have been lots of reports of new sites dropping out of the top 100 results. What's interesting is that even though many of these sites' owners reported having solid social media traction, that still didn't prevent their sites from getting hit in the crossfire.

Meta Tags are Back (Sort Of)

For the last five or so years, reputable SEOs have been fighting an uphill battle to educate their clients about the fact that meta keyword tags aren't going to magically rocket a site's rankings to page one of Google. However, just a few weeks ago, Google threw a wrench into things by bringing back a form of meta tags. They announced that sites and blogs that have content published through Google news can now use a news_keywords metatag to help ensure that the Google News' crawlers are able to correctly identify and classify content. The goal of this change is to help publishers get the traffic they want without feeling the need to cram their headlines full of keywords.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

When the average high school kid tweets, all they care about is getting the attention of their friends. Since many teens use Twitter as a form of public texting, they aren't overly concerned about what they say. Even if something doesn't come out the way they wanted, it will likely be drowned out by their friends in a matter of minutes.

As a business, using social media brings a different set of challenges. The good news is unless you're a huge corporation, you don't have to worry about every tweet you send being scrutinized. Instead of being concerned about a snafu, the real challenge that most businesses face is figuring out how to wade through all the social media noise and actually connect with prospects and customers.

Since using social media as a marketing tool can feel like searching for treasure without a map, here are some useful guidelines for getting and staying on the right track:

Focus on Your Industry, Not Your Business

There are plenty of businesses that start using social media, only to end up annoying most of the people they come into contact with. In the worst cases, businesses put themselves in a situation where they're viewed as social media spammers.

The reason that so many businesses find themselves in these positions is because they assume that getting results requires explicitly promoting their business. While this is true for many forms of advertising and marketing, it's actually not the case with social media. Instead, the key is making your business part of larger conversations.

The best way to accomplish this is by focusing on your industry. Just like you wouldn't go to a party or on a date and constantly talk about yourself, your business will see better social media results by conversing about a wide variety of topics.

Listen More Than You Talk

Very few businesses try to be rude through social media. However, a substantial number are perceived that way. This is because businesses usually think that they're supposed to speak up as often as possible. In reality, listening via social media can be just as useful as sending out messages. By devoting a portion of your social media efforts to listening and observing, your business will be able to find the problems your customers and prospects are having and then come up with advantageous ways to deal with them.

Stay Focused, But Don't Forget to Experiment

Whether it's Twitter, Facebook or another medium, if you notice that a specific social media site is working really well for your business, you're obviously going to want to focus most of your efforts on it. While that's a smart move, it's important to still save a little bit of your time and resources for other sites. Social media is constantly evolving, so it's a good idea to have roots in more than one place.

How has social media impacted your business during 2012?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

There's a good chance that when you first put your business online, all you had was a two or three page website. Then as you studied your competitors and successful businesses in other industries, you may have realized that expanding your website could significantly boost your online marketing efforts.

During the course of expanding your site, you may have decided to add a blog. Whether this took place a few months ago or a couple of years ago, you're probably in the same position as the majority of businesses with a blog. While most businesses do see real benefits from blogging, hitting a plateau in terms of readers and traffic is very common.

If you want to take your company's blog from good to great, here's the one secret you can't ignore:

Personality

As long as a blog is informative, people who are interested in the subject that it covers will read at least a few of its posts. However, if there's nothing about the blog that makes people feel a connection with it, chances are they aren't going to subscribe, regularly comment or tell their friends about it.

Since you want people to subscribe, comment and spread the word about your business, you need a way to ensure they connect with your blog. And the way to do that is by injecting your blog with personality. Since many forms of business writing are traditionally very formal, it's natural to think that blogging should be done in the same style.

The problem is when a blog's too formal, it seems stiff, which prevents readers from really connecting with it. The good news is regardless of how new or old your blog is, injecting more personality into it doesn't have to be difficult. Here are some of the steps you can take:

Don't Fear Collaboration: Since your blog is a reflection of your business, you don't need to limit it to one author. Additionally, multiple employees don't have to write under a single name. By simply letting employees publish posts with their names, you'll allow readers to learn more about your business and the people who make it so great.

Tell Stories: While you want your posts to be informative, stories are what humans really respond to. Whether it's you writing or one of your employees, don't be afraid to share a relevant personal anecdote. This will not only make your blog relatable, but it will also make readers want to share their own stories with you.

Include an Author Picture: Although it doesn't technically have to do with writing, including a thumbnail picture of whoever wrote a post is just one more step you can take to create the human connection that separates great blogs from good ones.

Engage: If you want loyal readers, don't forget to respond when they take time out of their busy day to leave a comment!

By keeping these simple tips in mind, you can ensure that your business blog continues to grow and thrive!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Email marketing can be an extremely effective way to communicate with potential and existing customers. However, many businesses don't think this is true. Whether they don't do email marketing at all or are looking for other channels like social media because they want better results, the issue isn't email marketing.

Instead, it's how many businesses approach email marketing. Just like SEO, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about email marketing. If you want your company to avoid the pitfalls that capture so many other businesses, here's what you need to know:

Less is Probably More (But Test to Be Sure)

Because of companies like Groupon and the prevalence of terms like the "rule of 7," many businesses think that the more they can email prospects and customers, the better. Unfortunately, most studies show that other than a few exceptions, this generally isn't the case. Studies have also found that there's no ideal email frequency for every type of business. What that means for you is while it's best to err on the side of less, it's also important to test and analyze the impact of different email frequencies.

Don't Insult Recipients' Intelligence

How do you contact hundreds or thousands of people at the same time without making them feel like just another number on your list? If you said "start the email with their first name," you're with the majority. But just because most businesses think this is a good idea doesn't mean it actually is the best thing to do. A recent study from the Fox School of Business at Temple University analyzed ten million emails that were sent to 600,000 customers. Amazingly, this study found that a whopping 95% of recipients responded negatively to marketing emails that began with their first name! Instead of trying to trick recipients, you're much better off focusing on providing them with the most value possible.

Ask, Then Ask Again

Since most businesses want to spread their message as wide as possible, it's common for them to only focus on how many people are on their email marketing list. Because they want to fast-track their list's growth, they may choose single opt-in instead of double. The problem with not sending people a confirmation link to join your list is it means you're inevitably going to end up with recipients who aren't truly interested in your company. So, while using double opt-in may slow down your list's growth rate by around five percent, the quality of your list will be significantly better.

Relationship is the Key Word

Just because someone makes a purchase from you doesn't mean you should stop emailing them. By properly segmenting your list, you can make your email marketing efforts just as effective for repeat customers as they are for prospects.

What's surprised you most about your company's experience with email marketing?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Whether you have an established company or a business that's just getting off the ground, you're probably always on the lookout for new opportunities to get your name out there. One option that's likely crossed your mind is commenting on other blogs.

If you're wondering whether or not you should pursue this idea, my opinion is you should definitely give it the green light. Let's look at why it's such a good idea for companies to comment on relevant blogs within their industry:

Enjoy a Fresh Perspective

Every savvy company realizes that regardless of how long they've been doing something a specific way, there may be a more efficient way to handle that process or task. But in order to find that out, it's important to be exposed to new ideas and approaches as often as possible. By reading and engaging in discussions on relevant blogs, that's exactly what your company will be able to do.

Attract Targeted, Interested Traffic

Blog readers ignore spammy commenters. But when they see a thoughtful, interesting comment, they're going to want to learn more about who left it. That means those readers are going to visit your company's site.

Create New Opportunities

Publishing a guest post on a targeted blog is a great marketing opportunity. While many blogs ignore cold pitches, first building a relationship can lead to your company actually receiving an invitation to author a guest post. This is just one example of the type of networking and other attractive opportunities that commenting can create.

Now that you know why your company should be commenting on other blogs, here are a few tips for making the most of this practice:

Put in Some Effort

Although a brand new blogger may appreciate a comment that just says "great post," that type of comment is going to be viewed as spam on any established blog. Since your company can build a strong presence without commenting on every single post a blog publishes, make sure every comment that's left adds value to the post.

Use a Real Name

Whether it's you or one of your employees commenting, it's best to use a real name. Since the name attached to the comment will link back to your site, you don't need to just use your business name. In fact, using your business name or any other form of anchor text may result in your company's comments being flagged as spam.

Look for Replies

Since engagement is a major benefit of blog comments, it's important to keep an eye out for any replies your company receives. While that task may seem like a lot of work, most blogs make it easy to subscribe to their comments via email or RSS.

By following these simple tips, your company will be able to reap the benefits of building a strong presence on the leading blogs within your industry.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

The same concept applies to your website. While a common assumption is that web design is all about how a site looks, that's actually just one component of the web design process. Good web design evaluates every aspect of your site and focuses on how to make each part as effective as possible.

Because web design is such a holistic process, it can have a significant impact on the bottom line of your business. If you have a sneaking suspicion that your website isn't living up to its full potential but aren't 100% sure, here are the top ten concrete signs that your website is in need of a makeover:

You're Not Collecting Leads

If you want your website to have a positive impact on your business, it needs to be able to make people who come to it more than visitors. The most common way to accomplish this crucial goal is by collecting lead information. Once you have someone's name, email address and any other required information, you can build a relationship with them and ultimately close a sale. But if your website isn't collecting any of this information, you're missing out on this opportunity to increase sales.

Your Website Takes a Long Time to Load

When dial-up access was the only way to get online, people accepted the fact that using the Internet was an experience that required patience. But now that high-speed access has become the standard, people expect sites to load instantly. If your website doesn't load right away, potential customers are going to head off to Google and ultimately end up on the site of one of your competitors.

It Doesn't Include a Blog

Blogs have evolved way past the days of individuals sitting in their pajamas and typing out their thoughts. Blogs have become the standard for businesses to communicate with potential and existing customers. A blog allows you to keep current customers in the loop, as well as give prospects more insights into why your business is the right fit for their needs. Not having a blog on your website prevents you from being able to create these communication channels.

No One's Sticking Around to Read Your Content

If you already have a blog on your website, you can look at your analytics data to see how long visitors spend reading it. If this process leads to you discovering that most visitors leave your blog after just a few seconds, it means the posts you're publishing aren't connecting with your target audience. It probably also means that your blog is lacking powerful visual accents like strong titles and interesting pictures that can grab visitors' attention and get them to stick around.

You Don't Know How Long Visitors are Staying on Your Site

If you have a blog but can't look at how long visitors are reading your posts, it means your website doesn't have an analytics program installed. Because this data creates the backbone for being able to improve your site, not having analytics is a problem that you need to remedy ASAP!

Visitors Have to Jump Through Hoops to Contact You

When someone comes to your website and wants to contact you, what steps do they need to go through to get in touch with you? If the answer is scour your site for an email address or fill out a form with eight mandatory fields, chances are your site is turning away a significant number of people who would otherwise be very likely to make a purchase from your business. Since you never know when someone's going to want to contact you, it needs to be dead simple for a visitor to contact you regardless of where they are on your site.

When Prospects Type Searches Into Google, Your Site Doesn't Show Up

Think of a few phrases someone might type into Google when they're looking for the product or service your business offers. Now, actually type those phrases into Google. When you look at the first page of results, do you see a link to your website? If not, it means your website hasn't been properly optimized and promoted. It also means quite a few prospects are checking out your competitors' websites instead of yours.

Your Site Can't Be Accessed from an iPhone

Thanks to the sophistication of mobile browsers like Safari on the iPhone, "mobile versions" of websites are a trend that has peaked. While your site doesn't need a special version for cellphones, it does need to be accessible. Since mobile browsing continues to be the fastest growing area of Internet access, if you type your URL into an iPhone and don't see key parts of it or any of it, chances are it's the result of your site relying on Flash. Since Apple sold 35 million iPhones in just the last 3 months, you don't want to leave this problem unresolved!

You Don't Have a Way to Connect with Prospects on Other Sites

Just like people expect businesses to have an active blog on their website, they also expect businesses to have a presence on Facebook and Twitter. If your website doesn't link to your presence on these social media sites or you don't have one at all, it means that your site is once again holding you back from connecting with prospects who are very interested in what your business has to offer.

You Always Include a Disclaimer When You Give Someone Your URL

If you're so embarrassed by your website that you always make excuses about it when you give someone the URL, it's a definite sign that your site needs a major overhaul!

As you can see, there are a lot of problems that can plague a website and ultimately hold back your business from its full potential. Although it can be discouraging to realize that your website has multiple issues, the good news is there are solutions for every problem on this list.

If you want to say goodbye to your lackluster website and hello to a new version that consistently brings in new business, get in touch with us today to discuss how we can transform it into a site that moves your bottom line!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

If your business has a blog but it isn't getting much attention, you may feel like giving up. However, just because you haven't gained any traction doesn't mean that your blogging is in vain. In many cases, you may just need to make a handful of changes to the way that you approach each post that you write.

If you want to cook up delicious blog posts, here's the recipe you should follow:

An Awesome Headline: When it comes to attracting readers, keep in mind that you're always competing for people's attention. Since more information about anything that crosses their mind is just a click or Google search away, you're probably only going to have one chance to pull someone into reading your post. If the title of your post isn't catchy, very few people are ever going to see all of the great content it contains.

Plenty of Space: One of the biggest differences between writing in print and online is that more space is never an issue online. Not only does this mean that you're able to dive into topics as deeply as you want, but it also means that you don't need to cram your text together. By embracing whitespace and giving your posts plenty of room the breath, you'll actually make it easier and more enjoyable for visitors to read your posts.

Killer Content: I can't emphasize enough that while the other elements on this list are important, at the end of the day, what matters most is what you write. If readers aren't interested in what you're writing, there aren't any design tactics that will be able to help your blog. While that may seem like bad news if your posts aren't currently being read by many people, it's actually not. Since you're obviously passionate about your business, chances are you just need to make a small tweak to your writing style. Whether that means writing with a less formal tone or slightly adjusting your approach to tackling subjects, you just need to figure out what your audience wants and then deliver it to them.

Relevant Links: A common SEO myth is that if you link out to other sites, it will negatively impact your rankings. In reality, the complete opposite is actually true. If you look at large authority sites and blogs, you'll notice that they almost always link to other quality sources of information.

Subheadings: Since most people like to scan before they actually read, subheadings are a great way to give readers a quick outline of what your post is all about.

A Chart, Graph or Other Complementary Image: The best images are those that actually enhance a post instead of simply serving as a decoration for it.

Conversation: Not only do you want your post to have a comments section, but be sure to actually engage with the people who take time to share their thoughts with you!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

I think we can all agree that we're well past the point of anyone thinking that social media "may just be a fad." While the web's most popular social media destinations and tools may be completely different in five years, this form of communication will continue to shape the way the Internet works.

On the other hand, just because social media is here to stay doesn't mean it's the end all, be all of online marketing. From one-man shops to huge corporations, there are a lot of businesses that are putting all their eggs in the social media basket. If you're feeling pressured to jump on this bandwagon, find out why there's a fine line between social media marketing savviness and foolishness:

The Issue

More businesses are choosing to put their entire presence on Facebook and/or Twitter instead of having their own website. Keep in mind that this isn't just limited to sole proprietors. Many large brands who spend millions of dollars on TV ads are sending potential customers directly to a social media site. The problem is that regardless of how much you put in to your social presences, you'll never have full control over the experiences they deliver.

Is It Really That Big of a Deal?

Well, there are several significant issues that can arise from this approach. First off is the worst case scenario. Even if a business thinks they're playing by the rules, Facebook and Twitter always have the right to torch accounts that they feel aren't in compliance with their policies. Let's say your business only has a Facebook account. Even if it's a glitch, that account ends up getting deleted. When this happens, potential customers can't find out anything about your business, including any form of contact information!

Other problems include limited SERP visibility, not having enough information and being unable to maximize the number of visitors you convert into leads or actual customers.

Keep Things in Perspective

Given how easy it is for any business to have their own website and blog, there's simply no reason not to do so. Having a dedicated online property for your business will not only protect your presence, but it will also give you the freedom to market your business in any way that you want.

Additionally, you'll find that your social media marketing efforts are actually more productive when you have your own site and blog. For example, instead of sending your Twitter followers to a note that you wrote on Facebook, only to frustrate those who aren't signed in, everyone will be able to access a post on your own blog that you promote. And not only will they be able to enjoy reading it, but it will be dead simple for them to share it with others.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Although it's easy to feel like you need to pack as many elements into your website design as possible, the truth is that the simpler you can keep things, the more effective your website is going to be. And while many people assume that simplifying a design is the easiest thing possible, it can actually present some unique challenges.

Since you want simplicity to improve your site's functionality and not take away from it, here are five ways to make simplicity work for you:

Write Naturally: If you're going out of your way to write with lots of keywords or in an overly formal tone, you can take a big burden off your own shoulders by writing naturally. While you may initially feel guilty when you discover how much easier this makes writing, you'll actually find that visitors respond more to casual, conversational writing.

Don't Reinvent the Wheel: Have you ever visited a band's website, only to discover that you have no idea what you're looking at? The problem with so many website's in that category is they try too hard to be creative. It's important to remember that when it comes to web design, you can be unique without throwing your visitors for a loop.

Use Fewer Colors: Because no one wants to have a boring website, many business owners make the mistake of adding too many different colors to their site. While this may not seem like that big of a deal, it can actually be very confusing to visitors. The best way to remedy this problem is to stick with a consistent color palette. If you have no idea how to put together a color palette, a free tool like Adobe Kuler is a great place to start.

Remember the Pareto Principle: If that name doesn't ring a bell, you've probably heard this principle referred to as the 80/20 rule. What this means for your site is that 20% of the elements will drive 80% of the actions that visitors take. Since converting visitors into leads or customers should be the ultimate goal of any business website, getting rid of elements that distract from your core 20% can boost your site's effectiveness.

Simplify Forms: While we've brought up this point before, not only is it still a widespread problem, but since this action's benefit can be quite significant, it's definitely worth addressing again. If you have a contact form on your site, you need to look at each of its fields and decide if they're absolutely necessary. Although you may initially think that you need between 6 and 10 fields, you may discover that you can actually reduce that number down to less than 4 and still get all the information that you truly need.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

You need to talk to your current and potential customers. Even if your business is doing well, if you don't communicate with your customers on a regular basis, it's almost guaranteed that there are weak or lagging areas of your business that you simply don't know about.

Why It's Important

The biggest reason consistent customer feedback is so important is because there are more than likely problems within your business that you don't know exist. While they may not be causing any real headaches for you right now, that doesn't mean they don't have the potential to erupt. By collecting customer feedback, you'll be able to identify these developing issues and nip them in the bud before they turn into full-blown problems.

The other big reason primarily applies to startups or brand new businesses. It's quite common for founders of these ventures to keep their ideas as quiet as possible. While they think that their silence is a competitive advantage, here's what actually happens to most people who choose to keep their idea or business on the down-low:

• They invest a significant amount of time, resources and money into solving an issue that's not actually a real problem; or
• They follow the same process, only to discover that there's another competitor within their space who's at least doing "good enough" to keep customers happy.

In either situation, the unfortunate bottom-line is that startups and businesses discover that there aren't actually enough prospects who are willing to pay for the product or service to keep things up and running.

The Tools

When you decide to gather customer feedback, you not only want a tool that makes it easy to collect, but will also take the hassle out of keeping the feedback you collect organized. Although this used to be a task that required a savvy programmer, even a one-man operation can now collect and manage feedback thanks to tools like Confirmit, SurveyMonkey and QuestionPro.

What to Ask

Some of the things that you want to learn from customer feedback include:

• who your customers really are
• how they're actually using your product/service
• if they're using your product in any ways you hadn't even thought of
• what they like most about your company
• what they like least about your company
• what additions and/or changes would make them happiest

If that sounds like a lot of issues to tackle, it's because it is. That's why you don't want to pile all those questions on every customer at the same time. Instead, spread things out so customers can provide feedback without feeling inconvenienced.

Additionally, as you begin collecting feedback, you may want to divide your customers into different segments. For example, you may find that a certain portion are willing to answer as many questions as you ask, while another portion will only deal with the occasional simple question.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

On May 30th, Google made a change that impacted more than 80 million businesses. The change was to replace all of their existing Google Places pages with Google+ Local pages. Because this change was literally made overnight, plenty of their users were confused by the look of these new results. However, while it won't take long for searchers to adjust, as a business owner, you've got a bigger challenge. Since this result may determine whether or not prospects ever make it to your website or give you a call, it's important for you to fully understand what's changed.

Because there's both good news and bad news about this change, let's start with the good:

Goodbye Anonymous Reviews

Being able to speak freely on the Internet is a great thing. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who abuse this privilege. This is especially true when it comes to reviews. While you want to provide your customers with the best service possible, you can't do that when they want to complain behind a cloak of anonymity. What's even worse is although an anonymous review may not even be real, it can still discourage potential customers from doing business with you.

Since countless businesses were hurt by negative reviews that didn't even have any merit, the good news about this transition is those reviews are gone for good. Because Google has a strict real name policy for their Google Plus program, anyone who wants to say something about your business will have to put their name next to it. What's great is not only will this protect you from unjustified badmouthing, but the impact of seeing a name and picture next to a positive review will be even more persuasive to searchers who come across your business.

Social is No Longer Optional

All businesses have a limited number of resources. Regardless of whether a business has one employee or twenty, only so many things can be accomplished during the course of a workweek. As a result, businesses can't pursue every opportunity and avenue that's available to them.

Social media is one avenue that many businesses have put on the back-burner or completely ignored. The two main reasons for this are difficulty measuring its impact and not fully understanding how to form a comprehensive social media strategy. If your business falls into this category, Google Local's change is going to be a double-edged sword.

On one hand, having the features of Google+ available to your business presence means you're going to have even more ways to interact with potential and current customers. On the other hand, the social signals surrounding your Google+ Local page are most likely going to influence how visible you are throughout your target Google searches.

Because of the increased importance of these metrics, businesses who don't fully embrace the importance of building a strong social presence are going to lose traction to competitors who do. While you may have concerns about how you're going to integrate this into your overall marketing strategy, the silver lining is you're not only on a level playing field, but can actually get a major competitive advantage by putting social at the top of your priority list.

If you want to discuss the specific impact this transition is going to have on your business, as well as how we can help you deal with its new social requirements, we're available for a free consultation. All you need to do is fill out this simple form:

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

At first, the idea of offering less in order to increase the effectiveness for your website may seem counterintuitive. However, there are several proven ways that this strategy can improve your website and the profitability of your business:

Trial Periods

While a trial period is a great way to give potential customers a feel for your product, you don't want to offer too wide of a window. Consumers who are ready to make a purchase are not going to need a ton of time to make a decision. Offering trial periods that are too long can actually be a distraction for individuals who are serious about making a purchase.

A shorter period gives serious prospects an opportunity to test the product and then make a decision. If you're currently offering a trial period that's longer than a month, you should test shortening it to 30 days, as well as test the results of shortening it to 14 days.

Product Options

The last thing you want your website to do is overwhelm visitors by providing too many choices. Research has shown that when consumers are presented with too many choices, they often make no choice at all. This is especially true for online sales. Luckily, the less is more philosophy can help your visitors stay focused and make a decision on the best product for their needs.

Most conversion testing shows that between 3 and 6 options is the sweet spot for maximizing sales. Many SaaS companies offer 3 monthly plans, while Amazon limits the additional books it suggests to 6.

Forms

The less is more concept can also apply to any forms you use on your website. While forms can play a central role in collecting leads, forms that are too long and involved can drive prospects away. Split tests have shown that forms with 3 to 5 fields result in the highest number of conversions.

Navigational Links

Websites that contain too many navigational links not only look cluttered, but they can also make it very difficult for users to find what they need. When someone visits your website, they want to find valuable content without needing to spend a bunch of time clicking around your site. By setting up your navigational links to include only the most relevant content categories, your website visitors will be able to have a much better experience.

Blog Posts

Because it allows you to communicate with both potential and current customers, a blog is a valuable addition to your website. However, many businesses make the mistake of thinking they should crank out as many posts as possible. In reality, you can increase engagement with readers and improve the amount of social media sharing blog posts receive by publishing less of them. For example, instead of publishing 5 decent blog posts a week, invest the same amount of time into publishing 2 great posts a week.

Have you applied the less is more strategy to any other areas of your website or business?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

You've read multiple articles and blog posts that have told you how important it is to create an email list and connect with your subscribers on a regular basis. While you know that a service like AWeber or MailChimp makes it really easy to create and manage an email list, what you don't know is what you should email the people who are interested in hearing from you.

If you're hesitant to email your list subscribers, that's actually not a bad thing. Since building a quality list of prospects and current customers takes time, the last thing you want to do is waste that list by accidentally annoying your recipients and causing them to unsubscribe. Although figuring out what to send is a big decision, the good news is you do have quite a few different options:

Don't Let Old Content Go to Waste: Blogging is a great way to build an active audience. The only downside to blogging is it emphasizes new content over older content. While your old posts will bring in some search engine visitors, they're not going to be seen by the majority of new prospects who come to your website. While this isn't a big deal for blogs that mainly focus on news, the evergreen nature of your blog means that posts you wrote a year ago may be just as relevant today as they were then. What's nice about email marketing is it gives you an opportunity to breathe new life into the posts that you worked so hard to create. WIth just a little editing to make them the perfect fit for email, you can use old blog posts to educate and engage your email list.

Can Be a Two-Way Conversation: Many people forget that just because you're sending an email to multiple recipients doesn't mean that it can't be personal and engaging. Awhile back, entrepreneur Jason Calacanis got a lot of attention for switching his primary communication medium from blogging to sending an email newsletter. One of the things that made his newsletter unique is he always asked for subscribers to send him their thoughts. This allowed him to build a very strong and engaged audience. You can enjoy this same level of engagement with your audience simply by asking them to send a reply with their thoughts about your email.

Email Works Best as a Marathon, Not a Sprint: Now that you've got some ideas for your email list, you're ready to start connecting with your subscribers. The last thing to keep in mind is that this format is best suited for building relationships over the long-term. Instead of immediately blasting your list and asking them to make a purchase from you, focusing on building their interest and trust in you. While this long-term approach doesn't appeal to spammers, it's actually great for real businesses. The reason is it means you're free to experiment with different approaches and figure out what works best for your audience.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Learn about a recent change Google made to YouTube, as well as whether or not video marketing can help you deal with Panda and Penguin.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

By now, you're aware of the fact that keywords should play a role in your search engine marketing strategy. While they're not the only component of this type of strategy, since keywords are what prospects type into a search engine when they're looking for something, you do need to pay attention to them.

For awhile, there were plenty of people who thought that more was always better when it came to keywords. This led to the creation of "content farms." The problem with this approach was that while these sites targeted staggering amounts of keywords, their quality wasn't all that great. As a result, Google made algorithm updates like Panda to lower the prevalence of these sites in their SERPs.

Since quantity isn't the answer, how should you decide what keywords to target? The best approach is to focus on keywords that are going to provide the best return on the time and resources you invest in targeting them. Here's how to make that happen:

Define What You Want to Accomplish: Before you start picking out keywords, you need to know what you want those keywords to accomplish. As you may have learned from past experience, simply bringing visitors to your site doesn't mean anything if none of them take action. Since you want customers and not just website traffic, start by deciding exactly what you want your website to do. In many cases, you may have multiple goals. For example, you may want to increase the number of subscribers to your email newsletter, as well as bring in more direct buyers for a specific product. Once you know your actual goal(s), you can begin building keyword lists for each one.

Start by Brainstorming: Instead of immediately going to a tool, it's a good idea to start with a brainstorm session. Since you have one or more specific goals defined for your sets of keywords, think of all the words or phrases someone might type into Google in the process of completing the goal you've defined. Using the previous example, prospects who eventually sign up for your newsletter are going to be interested in finding more information, while those who promptly make a purchase may be looking for a specific product recommendation. The main reason to start with a brainstorm is if you immediately go to a tool, you may miss good opportunities as a result of your scope being too narrow.

Hone Your List and Put It to Use: Once you have your brainstorm list, you can use a free or paid keyword research tool to figure out which phrases have enough volume to target. After you hone your list, the last step is to put it to work. Keep in mind that you don't necessarily have to create tons of new pages just to target keywords. Instead, you may be able to accomplish a lot with simple changes like writing more descriptive titles and improving your site's internal link structure.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Google's change Places to Places Plus has affected business reviews, iOS and pictures next to local listings. Find out exactly what this means for your business.

From Places to Plus: What's Really Changed About Google Local?

Now that it's been over a month since Google Local got a + added to it, let's take a look at what this change has actually meant for business owners like you:

Reviews Not Showing Up

In a June 14th post on Google's Product Forums, a business owner expressed concern that while he was aware that two customers had recently reviewed his business, neither review had shown up on Google Places. Over the next day, two more people stated that they were experiencing the exact same problem. To top things off, on June 19th, a participant named nseidl said that one of his clients had gone from nearly 80 reviews to just 5! He added that since his client had two listings at two addresses, around 30 of the reviews were showing up for the second address.

iOS Issues

Two issues have been brought up in regards to how Google+ Local works with iOS. The first question was asked in the SEOmoz forum. A user named Journeyman said that it appeared to him that it was no longer possible to write a review from an iPhone or iPad. He asked if others had noticed that, as well as if anyone had found a solution. While it wasn't a direct answer to his question, The Cardinal Rule published a blog post about this same topic. They found that the ability to leave a review through Safari has been eliminated for now. They added that it's still possible to post a review through Google's Places iOS app.

Pictures Next to Local Listings

In an SEO Chat thread, a user named Dr. Marie said that her local listing had suddenly jumped to #1 for her local SERPs. Not only did it move to #1, but she also mentioned that while her local listing wasn't officially attached yet, she had an existing Google+ page that resulted in an author picture appearing next to her listing. The end result of both of these changes were that she received several calls from prospects "that will likely translate into tens of thousands of dollars."

Make Sure You Cover the Basics

As with any significant change that Google makes, it can take a lot of work to figure out the root of a specific problem. However, before you can start dealing with any advanced issues, you need to make sure that you have the basics covered. In the case of Google+ Local, that means ensuring your listing is rich with pictures, videos and plenty of descriptive text. Additionally, it's a good idea to take advantage of the new Google+ functionality to start using your page's stream to share with potential and current customers.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Although it wasn't the spectacle that many people were expecting, Facebook's IPO has still had some major effects. One of them is putting programming in the mainstream spotlight. Thanks to this attention well-known individuals, like Ezra Klein and Mayor Bloomberg, have expressed their interest in learning how to program.

While many within the tech community are thrilled that more people want to take a walk on the technical side of life, there are those who have published blog posts to discourage "amateurs" from "wasting time" on these pursuits. Not surprisingly, a lot of heated debates have sprung up around this topic.

Even though both sides are likely to continue arguing their position, the good news is there's no reason you have to be a tech prodigy to benefit from what automation can offer. In fact, you don't even have to learn true programming thanks to all the great tools that are available. You can do a lot just by being aware of them. Let's look at a few examples of what you can accomplish simply by actively making an effort to automate parts of your workflow:

Basecamp + MailChimp: Shortly after launching the new Basecamp, 37Signals added the ability to make to-do lists via email. If there are tasks or projects that you do each month, you can automate the process of keeping track of them by combining this Basecamp feature with MailChimp.

If you have both a Basecamp and MailChimp account, all you need to do is create a list for each Basecamp project where you want to create to-do’s. You can then add the corresponding Basecamp email address to each list you create. Next, make a campaign that includes the to-do’s you'll need to complete. Finally, schedule this campaign for when you want it created. For weekly or monthly tasks, just replicate and schedule the campaigns accordingly.

In less than half an hour, you can use this simple automation to take care of ensuring that you'll never again forget about a task or project step you need to complete.

TextExpander: Whether it's a few words or entire paragraphs that you have to type on a regular basis, this $35 Mac program allows you to eliminate repetitive typing. All you need to do is create a snippet that corresponds to what you want to type and TextExpander will take care of the rest for you. If you're a Windows user, PhraseExpander provides similar functionality.

Fake: Do you find yourself regularly opening your browser and performing the same steps? If so,Fake for Mac can automate these steps for you. While you can incorporate any programming knowledge you have into using this program, its graphical interface makes it possible to automate processes simply by dragging and dropping. If you use Windows and Google Chrome, Automato is an extension that can provide some of the same functionalities as Fake.

Do you currently use any tools that make it easy to automate tasks with just a little technical knowledge?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Social media has revolutionized the way people communicate. Since so many conversations now take place online, it's natural for products and services to be among the topics that come up. Wouldn't it be great if you could hear what a current customer was telling a potential customer about your business? While this would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, you can now get this information in a real-time manner.

Although it would be next to impossible to manually monitor every mention of your business across all the social networking sites that people use, the good news is there are tools that can take care of capturing and analyzing all of this data for you. To help you save time, here are the three best social media tracking tools for businesses:

HootSuite

This product pulls in all activity from sites like LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter & Facebook and puts it in an easy to manage dashboard. You'll be able to easily manage all of your social profiles, keep track of what's being said about your business, schedule posting activity and dig into data about the traffic that comes to you from social sites. What's nice about HootSuite is in addition to all of its standalone features, it can also be integrated with other programs like Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

Because it's free and has a lot of features, you may already be using Google Analytics on your website. However, many current GA users aren't even aware of the specific social tracking that it provides. Its standard reporting gives you a good overview of how many social media users are actually visiting your website. If you want to take your tracking to the next level, GA makes it possible to use conversion tracking to find out how much your social traffic is actually worth to your business. You can also find out how well the different types of content you publish perform on specific social sites.

Viralheat

This product gives you the ability to manage, monitor, engage, review analytics and use actionable insights. Not only can you monitor and manage your social media accounts, but if you're a Salesforce user, you can also tie that account directly into Viralheat. In terms of engagement, what makes this product attractive is the ability to instantly respond via Twitter or Facebook without needing to log into different accounts. Although Viralheat costs $49 a month, you may find that its extensive analytics and insights are worth it. And since you can try it free for 14 days, you'll be able to see if it's a good fit for your needs before committing to a paid plan.

Increased site traffic, the ability to develop targeted marketing activities, and a more solid understanding of customer perceptions are only a few of the advantages of utilizing social media metrics. If you're looking to attract more prospects, improve engagement, and identify new product opportunities, tracking and analyzing the effectiveness of your social media efforts can be very useful.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

In today's competitive B2B market, it's crucial to have a strong online presence. Businesses cannot rely solely on distributing business cards at trade shows. Since Facebook is primarily focused on friends chatting with each other, LinkedIn is the ideal social media network for B2B.

This social network caters to professionals who want an easy way to connect with each other. As a business owner, you can promote your products or services through networking, in groups or by answering questions. By sharing your expertise, your reputation and credibility will increase. The process of becoming a recognized authority in your industry will translate into more sales for your business.

In order to get the most out of LinkedIn, you need to:

1. Build an exceptional profile: Your profile acts as your landing page. You want to personalize it by including plenty of relevant details. This will ensure that when potential customers read it, they are compelled to know more. Although a profile is basically your resume, you don't have to limit it to a conventional format. Instead, you can write an interesting narrative about yourself and your experiences.

2. Connect with your network: Connecting with the right people in your industry is a key part of making the most of LinkedIn. You can start by uploading your contacts from your email accounts. Since there's a good chance that some of them already use LinkedIn, you can send a personal invitation to them.

3. Join and participate in groups: One way to get noticed and to attract potential customers is by joining relevant groups. You can join conversations by commenting, giving feedback or sharing your expertise. By posting valuable information, other users will take notice of your contributions.

4. Create and start your own group: You can leverage your popularity by starting your own group. As the group owner, you can create topics on subjects of your own interest or start targeted topics to attract those people you want to reach. By growing your network, you can create more direct connections that ultimately lead to sales.

5. Update your profile frequently: In addition to participating on a regular basis, don't forget to keep your status updated. Having fresh content will keep other users interested in your profile. Ways to do this include adding a link to your latest blog entry or integrating Twitter with your profile. Additionally, you can share a video with tips on how to solve problems. Since you want people to be able to find the content you share, make sure your titles include relevant keyword phrases.

6. Ask others: Not only can you contribute your own opinions and expertise, but you can also engage others by asking questions. This can be in the form of asking for a recommendation or creating a poll that allows other users to share their thoughts.

Do you currently use LinkedIn?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Although the last thing you want on your computer is a virus, having a blog post go "viral" can be quite beneficial for your business website. Some of the benefits of attracting this type of organic buzz include more potential customers visiting your site, an increased number of RSS and/or email subscribers and attracting more backlinks. Since most of the links will come from real people with quality blogs, they can do a lot for your rankings.

While going viral has a lot of benefits, it can take some work to accomplish. There are two main reasons you can never be 100% certain a post is going to spread like wildfire. The first is that until a post is published, you're not going to know exactly how people are going to react to it. The other is that people only have so much time and attention. As a result, your post will be competing with many others.

Publishing a post that gets shared far and wide isn't an exact science. However, the good news is that there are steps you can take to increase the likelihood that your post turns into a home run. Here are five tips for maximizing a post's chances of hitting it big:

Pique Readers' Curiosity: A large percentage of most people's days follow the same pattern. Since they're used to cruising along on autopilot, anything that stands out as different will grab their attention. You can benefit from this behavior by focusing on something truly interesting or unexpected in your post.

Be Direct: You want to write a post that readers are going to remember for more than a few minutes. One of the keys to making a strong impression is to be direct. Posts that are wishy-washy don't stand out from the crowd. You need to figure out what you want to say and then convey that message as directly as possible in your writing.

Looks Great: If a post is one big block of 450 words, then people are going to have trouble digesting it. By adding formatting elements like subheadings or list items, you can ensure readers don't miss the highlights of your post.

Trigger an Emotion: The top six emotions that make people the most likely to share a piece of writing are awe, anger, positivity, anxiety, surprise and interest. Just be sure to avoid sadness; it all but kills the likelihood of writing being shared.

It's Got to Have a Great Title: If you open any book about copywriting and look at the table of contents, you'll notice that quite a few pages are dedicated to writing headlines. The reason that so much time is spent discussing this subject is because experienced copywriters know that regardless of how good their writing is, not many people are going to read it if the headline doesn't grab their attention. In order to get people to read and ultimately share your post, you first need a title that pulls them in.

What's the most successful post you've ever published?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Internet users are no longer limited to static pages that require them to read. Because an endless supply of distractions are just a click away, if you want to keep visitors on your site, you have to provide them with what they want.

Does Video Actually Work?

In many cases, video may be the only way to keep a visitor’s attention. Even if someone’s not in the mood to read, chances are they’ll be happy to spend five minutes watching a video. The best approach to using video is to upload options that aren’t too overwhelming or sales heavy. You want to give potential customers information and ideas that are useful to them. This establishes trust, which can ultimately help you close a sale.

Make sure it’s easy for visitors to find the videos you add to your site. You also want to make it easy for visitors to share your videos. There’s nothing better than having your customers do marketing for you. Keep in mind that it’s informative and memorable videos that can stimulate buzz and potentially bring lots of traffic.

What's in It for You?

Videos are a way to establish a more personal connection with customers and spread awareness of your products, services or brand. Additionally, video sites like YouTube can drive visitors to your site. Since YouTube videos generally rank quite well in the SERPs, they are a small investment that can pay off in a big way.

How Can You Get Started?

There are plenty of tools that make it easy to start shooting and uploading videos. Because there are lots of affordable HD cameras and most computers are already equipped with editing software, the main thing you have to do is come up with ideas that are going to interest your potential customers. You may have to do a little research to find out what your customers want.

For example, if it’s a product video, make sure customers can see your product in action. For informational videos, customers want to learn something they didn’t previously know. Other wishes people have are to be entertained or become inspired to use what you sell to explore their own ideas.

Some of the excuses companies make for not utilizing video is it’s going to be too complicated or too expensive. While this may have been true a decade ago, these are no longer good reasons to stay away from video. Thanks to easy to use technology that can fit a wide range of budgets, shooting, editing and uploading videos is now easier than ever.

The icing on the cake is not only are videos an effective marketing tool, but you can use analytics to track just how well they perform. By evaluating the performance of each video you upload, it won’t be long before you get the hang of putting together really great ones!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Your website is often a potential customer's first point of contact with your company. As a result, it’s crucial that your site be well designed, easy to use and informative. Unfortunately, many sites suffer from problems that actually drive customers away.

To ensure your site helps your business instead of hurting it, you should pull it up on one side of your screen. Then put this post on the other side of your screen and use it as a checklist to see if your site:

Is Too Hard to Use

Your site's navigation should flow logically from one area to another. All navigational links should be clear and obvious. Most importantly, your homepage and key landing pages should offer a strong call to action that links directly to your order or contact form. Customers who cannot figure out how to order from or contact you will very likely move along to a competitor.

Seems Vague or Confusing

Customers need precise information regarding the service they are ordering and the price they will be paying before they place an order. Unclear pricing structures or vague descriptions of services can leave your customers too confused to place an order. Your best bet is to explain each service concisely but thoroughly. You should also include detailed pricing in a table or list that is easy to read and comprehend.

Provides Too Many Options

Presenting customers with too many choices can actually be a bad thing. If your business model allows for infinite service or product customization, you don’t need to include every possibility on your website or in your price list. Instead, select the most commonly ordered options and list those. Then make your contact information visible and clear so that customers who want a specialized order will be able to reach you. This is the best way to avoid discouraging potential customers who have simple needs without losing those with more specialized interests.

Looks Insecure or Unprofessional

Appearance does matter. Customers can make snap judgments about businesses based on little more than the appearance of their website. If your site looks cheap, has spelling errors or outdated design features, a customer may conclude that your business is less than reputable. They may also think your site has been abandoned. Keeping your website up-to-date and well written will prevent customers from hitting the back button.

If you collect orders online, customers want to know that their information is safe and secure. Your website should use secure processing for all personal information, including addresses, phone numbers and credit card numbers. Making it clear to your customers that their information is secure and will only be used for the fulfillment of their orders will go a long way towards winning their trust.

By taking the time to review your site and then fixing any issues you identify, you should be able to improve your sales in a very short amount of time.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Selling goods and services on the Internet is a big business. Although many consumers buy products from major players like Amazon, smaller sites are also flourishing. If you have an ecommerce site, you can still do very well. The key is making your site as effective as possible.

The good news about making your site more effective is it’s not as difficult as it may initially seem. There are two keys to getting the results you want. The first is to commit to making changes on an ongoing basis. One of the main reasons many ecommerce sites don’t perform as well as their owners would like is because they don’t look for ways to make improvements. Instead, they simply keep waiting and hope something will magically improve their site’s performance.

The second key is not to get caught up trying to achieve “the perfect conversion rate.” The reason this pursuit is a waste of time and energy is because no metric actually exists. Because there are so many factors involved in ecommerce, conversion rates can greatly vary from one site to another. Instead of worrying about how other sites are performing, only focus on your own. Once you know how well you site is converting, use that as the base for measuring your improvements.

Now that you know what your mindset should be for making these changes, here are some of the areas you can improve, along with specific ideas for doing so:

SEO: You want to use targeted keywords to drive as many customers as possible to your site. However, make sure that they are the best keywords for your business. There is no point in getting lots of hits on your site if those people will not be interested in your product. What this means is you’ll probably be better off going after long-tail keywords than shorter but less targeted ones.

Web Design: Multiple high quality pictures are a great way to help customers connect with products. The same is true for video. Not only can video be a very good way to encourage people to buy, but what’s really great is you can easily shoot your own video with an affordable HD camera.

Content: Don’t limit customers to a few technical details about products. Instead, write great descriptions that will get them excited. You should also encourage your customers to post product reviews. This builds up customer loyalty and is a great advertisement to new customers. And if you have any incentives such as free shipping, make sure that these are clearly displayed on your site.

Regardless of how many sales your ecommerce site is currently doing, you can improve. Instead of worrying that there’s no room for smaller players or that you will need to start from scratch, you just need to start with one improvement and build from there.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

When you pull up the analytics data for your website, you see graphs that look nice and a whole lot of numbers. Inundated with what appears to be positive information, you smile to yourself and close your browser, making a mental note to check the data again later. The only problem is you didn’t actually do anything with the data you just saw!

What many business owners forget is simply collecting a lot of data isn’t a productive activity. In order to use this data, you need to be able to analyze the key parts of it. To help you out, here’s the what and why of the three types of data that matter most:

Keyword

Your analytics data is a goldmine for keyword research. The advantage of using your own data instead of a third-party tool is that instead of simply seeing volume, you get to see what keywords are being used by people who actually take action on your site.

When you’re looking through your data, you should spend time analyzing the content area. This will allow you to see the performance of your landing pages. One interesting use of your analytics data is to beef up your best landing pages with your best keywords. This will allow you to drive visitors to the pages that you already know are proven winners.

Traffic

Your website analytics can dissect your traffic into specific categories. As a result, this information is quite valuable for targeting your marketing efforts. Depending on your specific marketing needs, you will want to dig into the details of your traffic sources and related data so that you can use what you learn to tweak or create new advertising campaigns.

For example, if you have a local retail store, you can check just how much of your traffic actually comes from the area you’re targeting. If you want to expand your advertising efforts into mobile devices, you can use this data to check what devices and browsers your visitors use.

Conversion

When it comes to your website, what matters most is the number of people who are actually taking action. Having hundreds or even thousands of visitors isn’t helping your business if those people aren’t filling out your contact form or making a purchase.

There are plenty of website owners who aren’t even aware that they can set up their analytics program to track conversions. If you fall into this category, the good news is it’s likely easier than you expect. In many cases, you’ll just need to copy and paste a snippet of code. Once you start collecting this specific data, you can use it as a starting point for all of the changes you make.

Now that you have a better understanding of how to actually harness your analytics data, it’s time for you to stop staring at it and start using it to take action!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

It's no secret that people spend a lot of time browsing the web on their cellphones. As a result of this shift in usage, many businesses have jumped on the mobile website bandwagon. However, while cellphones couldn't handle full websites several years ago, the iPhone and all of the other devices that have sprung up to compete with it have eliminated that issue.

Mobile Websites Can Do More Harm than Good

When someone uses a modern smartphone to visit a website, it can be frustrating when they are presented with a mobile website that only offers a fraction of the functionality provided by the standard version of the website. The reason this creates a bad experience for those users is they may be unable to do or find what they actually wanted. Because of this issue, if you decide that a mobile version of your website is still the right fit for your business, be sure that you make it easy for all visitors to access the standard version as well.

There are Some Valid Mobile Elements

While your website may not actually need a mobile version, there are a few elements that you may want to adjust for those visitors who come from a mobile device:

Flash: Popular cellphones like the iPhone don't work well with Flash. And even if a phone is able to play a Flash file, it may take forever to stream. There are several options for dealing with this issue. If you have a video that's in a form like MP4 or hosted on YouTube, iPhone users will be able to watch it. And if you're worried that it's going to take too long for the video to stream, you can supplement it with an explanation or even a full transcript.

PDFs: Some documents are best shared as a PDF. However, this filetype is misused on a regular basis. For example, there's no reason that a restaurant should have their menu as a PDF file. Not only is it a hassle to pull up on a desktop computer, but on a cellphone, it can take forever to download. If you've got important information on your website that is currently in the form of a PDF, you should convert it to HTML. Mobile and desktop visitors will both appreciate this change.

Popups: Because they are so effective, many websites use a popup light box to highlight a special offer or email opt-in form. While that's fine for desktop visitors, this type of window can be difficult to close on a mobile device. As a result, if you're using one of the windows, it's best to set it so it isn't displayed to mobile visitors. This will ensure that you don't cause them to go away as a result of being frustrated.

Does your website have a mobile version?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

When businesses want more customers, they often think that they need to drive more traffic to their website. While that may be the case, it's not always what's preventing them from getting the results they want. Often, business websites receive plenty of traffic. However, the reason that traffic isn't turning into customers is because the website itself isn't properly optimized to generate leads.

In order for someone to give you their name, email address and any other personal information you may request, your website needs to accomplish several things. First, it needs to make them trust you. This can be accomplished by having a professional design and including elements like testimonials that show you're a legitimate business. Second, your website needs to provide a simple experience. If it takes too long to load or people have a hard time finding what they want, they're going to leave before taking any type of action. This factor is why it's so important to have clear navigation and prominently feature important elements on your homepage.

Finally, you have to pique their interest to the point where they want to take action. Since most people are tackling multiple things at once when they are on their computer, it should come as no surprise that grabbing their attention in this manner can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are several options that can help you accomplish this crucial goal. All of the options take the form of an offer. For some businesses, one of these offers will be the perfect fit. For others, they will actually get the best results from using two or three of the options in combination with each other. Let's take a look at each one:

Eliminate Risk: There are a lot of situations where you simply need an offer that can bring people into your sales cycle. The key to properly making this type of offer is to eliminate all obstacles. That's why something useful and completely free is the best way to go. Whether it's a whitepaper or free report, make it clear that anyone who gets it will benefit without taking on any type of risk.

The Extra Push: Chances are, there are plenty of people who visit your website and are almost ready to do business with you. However, before they actually become a paying customer, they just need one final push. The type of offer that can persuade something in this position is something like a free webinar. While it's more involved than the previous offer, its effectiveness will make it worth your time.

Provide an Upgrade: It's important to remember that people who have never done business with your company aren't the only potential source of leads. Your business can also benefit from existing customers who choose to upgrade to another product. It's also possible for potential customers to have one option in mind, but then be persuaded to go with another. The one thing you need to keep in mind about making this type of offer is while you want it to be attractive, you don't want to make your basic offering look like junk.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

The fact that you're taking time out of your busy schedule to read blog posts about ways to improve your business means you're already ahead of many other business owners. What you realize is regardless of how much you may already know, there is always room for improvement. This concept is especially important for web design. Many people think that web design is a one-time task. While that can be true, the most effective web designs are the result of ongoing changes and improvements.

Since there's only so much time that you can spend on improvements, you want to make sure that you choose areas that are going to have the biggest impact. Because it's the first page most visitors see when they come to your website, your homepage is an excellent candidate for where you should focus your attention. If you want to know what you can do to make your homepage even more effective, here are five additions that can help you turn even more visitors into customers:

A Clear Headline: Even though your homepage probably isn't just a single article, that doesn't mean you should neglect having a strong headline. In fact, because it may only be a second before a visitor decides to stay or leave, you want to ensure that there's a powerful headline to make them choose the former. When it comes to crafting your headline, you want to be clear and relevant. Keep in mind that the goal of this element is to get visitors to continue looking at your homepage and the rest of your site. While a bold headline can work very well, just be sure that the rest of your site can back it up.

Focus on Your Visitors: Visitors to your website obviously want to learn about your business. However, the reason they care is because they want to know if your business has something that can help them. Because their interest actually has to do with themselves, you want to make sure that the elements on your homepage reflect their true intentions. If your current homepage is all about your business and not about what it can do for visitors, a few adjustments can go a long way.

A Relevant Photo: Multiple studies have confirmed the usefulness of having a relevant photo on your homepage. While there are cases where a stock photo can work well, a real photo of anything from your store to a customer can be even more effective.

Clear Directions: Whether you're collecting leads or actually making a sale, there is a path you want visitors to follow from the homepage. Instead of leaving their choices up to chance, be sure to make it clear to them exactly where you want them to click next.

Contact Information: Although it sounds like common-sense, many businesses still overlook this important element. In addition to having a prominent link to your contact page, it's a good idea to actually display the phone number and email address of your business directly on the homepage.

Have you recently made any changes to your homepage?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

People who have never owned a business commonly think that customers simply make a purchase as soon as they come into contact with a business. However, as a business owner with years or even decades of experience under your belt, you know that's quite far from the truth. Although it would be nice if it was that easy to close sales, the reality is it normally takes multiple interactions for a promising lead to become an actual customer.

Although the Internet has not eliminated the standard buying habits that people follow, the good news is it has made it easier to guide them from an interested lead into a customer who actually pays for something. If you are wondering how you can make your sales process more efficient, social media is the answer. By properly utilizing social media, you will be able to guide leads through your sales process and end up with customers who are very happy.

Here are the details of exactly how it works:

Start with Free

Today's consumers have more options than ever. In addition to their increased options, chances are they have been disappointed or completely ripped off by multiple companies. As a result, they are generally hesitant to jump right into making a purchase.

Although that may seem like a major obstacle for your business, there is an easy way to accommodate it. The solution is to begin your sales process with something free. What you give away will depend on your specific business and industry. In addition to being free, the key to getting the most out of this step is to provide something of value. Once you figure out what you should give away, you can use outlets like Twitter to share it with potential customers.

Move Towards Commitment

Some businesses try to skip directly from a free giveaway to paid customers. However, studies have found that adding an intermediary step to your sales process is a more effective option. If you sell a physical product, this will generally be a free sample. And if what you offer falls into a different category, a free trial is usually the best option.

The way that social media can complement this step of your sales process is by allowing warm leads to directly communicate with you. Additionally, when they discuss your free sample or trial through an outlet like Facebook, it creates opportunities for other potential customers to discover your business.

Close the Sale

The last step in a successful sales process is to actually close and gain a new customer. This is arguably the step where social media has the biggest impact. The reason social media can be so beneficial for closing a sale is because people realize they have a public venue for discussing your business. As a result, they understand that you stand behind what you offer. This combination creates a level of trust that would be difficult to achieve without the support of social media.

How big of a role does social media play in your sales process?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Consistency is one of the keys to getting the best results from social media. Since social media is all about building relationships, you don't want to leave people hanging for days or even weeks at a time. Instead, you want to keep them engaged with your brand. While the fun nature of social media means that being consistent won't create the type of burden that comes with an activity like dieting, that doesn't mean you'll always be bursting with ideas about what to share.

If you've gotten into a regular social media routine but have suddenly hit a sticking point, the good news is there are quite a few ways to come up with interesting new ideas. To help get your creativity flowing again, here are some ideas that you can use as inspiration for your own social media activities:

Talk About Customers: Obviously, how much you can share will depend on your specific industry. However, even if you're in an industry where privacy is important, that doesn't mean you can't say a single thing about any of your customers. While it's great if your industry is one where openness is an option, if that's not the case, you can still discuss recent positive experiences you've had with customers without revealing any specific details about their identity. You can also take this specific strategy and substitute partners as another option for coming up with social media content.

Make It a Team Effort: It's good if your social media activities have a clear and consistent voice. But just because you want your brand to be consistent doesn't mean that you have to exclude members of your team from engaging through social media. The 37Signals blog is a great example of how to properly execute this strategy. They regularly publish posts from all different members of their team. Because each post is clearly labeled with the author's name, it allows multiple team members to contribute without creating any confusion among readers. In addition to blogging, this strategy can be used everywhere from Facebook to Google Plus.

Ask for Feedback: One of the simplest ways to create engagement is to ask questions. What's great about this option is you don't have to feel pressure to come up with extremely creative questions. While those types of questions can be interesting, there's nothing wrong with asking for something as simple as feedback. The reason this works so well is because everyone likes to give their opinion. For example, if you make changes to a page on your website or its entire design, ask people what they think about it. While it's true that you may receive some criticism, keep in mind that can be a good thing. Since you may discover something you overlooked, this form of social media engagement can be just as beneficial to you as it is to your customers and followers.

What other sources do you turn to for social media inspiration?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

If you want to be able to reach more potential customers and create more opportunities for your business, guest blogging is definitely an effective marketing tool. However, some business owners who have dabbled with guest blogging weren't impressed by the results that they saw.

In most cases, the reason for less than stellar results is because people miss out on one or more crucial elements of effective guest blogging. If you want to avoid these mistakes and make the most of your guest blogging, here's what you need to remember:

Quality > Quantity: Because it takes time and effort to write a quality guest post, you don't want to take the approach of trying to crank them out and then throw them up on any blog that will accept your posts. Instead, you want to choose blogs that are going to provide you with the best mileage. Initially, you may think that means choosing blogs with the most traffic. While it doesn't hurt to have your content on an "A-List" blog, don't discount blogs with smaller but very targeted and loyal readers. In many cases, you will get the best results from utilizing that kind of blog.

Since you want to choose your guest posting opportunities wisely, be sure to take some time to research in advance. Not only will this help you find the best options for publishing blog posts, but because you will actually learn about the blogs you're interested in, you will be able to contact their owners without sounding spammy.

Target the Audience: One of the benefits of guest blogging is it allows you to put your business in front of readers who may have otherwise never known about it. Since you're probably going to be writing for a very focused audience, make sure you hone your post to match their interests. That means you're probably going to change things up from how you write for the blog on your business website. If this sounds complicated, you'll be relieved to know that just about all bloggers are happy to provide guest authors with some ideas and tips. In addition to reading multiple posts to get a feel for a blog's style, don't be afraid to ask its owner questions.

Don't Abandon Your Post: Just because you finish writing a post doesn't mean that you're done with it. Once it's published, you want to make sure that you give it the attention it deserves. Not only will the blogger who published it for you appreciate the effort you put into promoting it, but it will also maximize the results you see from it.

One of the best things you can do is interact with commenters on your post. In addition to taking the time to respond to readers who leave a comment, you can also promote the post through your own social channels.

Have you published many guest posts over the last six months?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Because so many people use social media, there are tons of guides and ebooks about how businesses can benefit from this trend. While there's no denying the fact that social media presents an amazing opportunity for businesses, the problem with many of these guides and ebooks is they treat social media like it's some kind of "get rich fast" solution.

Anyone who thinks that they can bring in a flood of new customers by spending a few hours on Facebook or Twitter is going to be very disappointed. As with any channel that can actually help a business, social media is not an overnight solution. However, if you're willing to invest your resources into it, the payoff can be quite substantial.

Since a strong social media presence for your business is something you have to cultivate, here are three tips for making the most of the time and resources you invest;

Listen First: Many business owners think they should sign up for a Twitter account and then start blasting out updates about their business. In reality, one of the most compelling features of Twitter is being able to "listen" to potential customers in real-time. Not only can you find out what they think, but you can also engage with them. The best way to keep up with this type of activity is to use a free tool like Monitter or Social Mention.

Be a Giver: Just because you're keeping up with relevant conversations on Twitter does not mean that you want to bombard the people who are having them with a canned promotional response. If you are going to use Twitter and other social media platforms to reach out to potential customers, make sure you actually help them solve a problem.

The reason this distinction is so important is because no one likes to be the recipient of a cookie-cutter marketing message. However, what people do like is having their lives made easier by successfully eliminating a problem that has been plaguing them. By making this one of your primary social media goals, you will be very happy with the response that you get from potential customers.

Be Responsive: When you first start building a social media presence for your business, it will primarily be you initiating conversations with current and potential customers. However, as your presence increases, both of these groups of customers will begin coming directly to you through these channels.

When that occurs, the worst thing you can do is take forever to respond or completely forget to get back to someone. While this is the ideal opportunity for you to win a customer over, neglecting it can have the opposite effect.

Even though this may sound like a lot to manage, it's really not that difficult once you commit to it. Since customers aren't going to expect an immediate response from a small business at 3 in the morning, the main thing is to keep up with any questions or messages you receive during the day. Since any social network you use will allow you to have notifications sent to your inbox, you'll find that you are able to provide prompt responses without any issues.

What social media platforms are currently the most important for your business?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

You've undoubtedly heard of the site that is being hailed as "the next big thing." However, you may still be unclear as to what exactly it's all about. Additionally, you're probably wondering if it's something that can actually help your business.

Pinterest 101

Pinterest is an image sharing site. Its name comes from the fact that users can pin images to boards. Because users can create multiple boards, it is common for people to build boards around specific topics. For example, a Pinterest user may have one board for shoes, one for pictures of Ryan Gosling and one for wedding ideas. And whenever someone pins an item to one of their boards, they can also add a written description to it.

In addition to pinning and writing descriptions, Pinterest has several features that we've all come to expect from social websites. Members can follow other users or simply follow individual boards. Members can also tag other users when they pin something. And if someone comes across an image that appeals to them but they don't want to actually pin it, they can simply Like it.

So, What's the Big Deal?

Now that you have a better understanding of how the site works, you may be asking yourself "so what?" While this is a common reaction of people who aren't users of the site, it's important to remember that social websites don't have to be life-changing to be extremely popular. What Pinterest has done is create an environment and experience that is especially appealing to multiple female demographics.

Even if you aren't convinced that Pinterest is the greatest thing since sliced bread, keep in mind that in just two years since being launched, it has become a Top 100 Alexa site. And just as importantly, Shareaholic reports that "Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube combined."

Can Your Business Benefit from Pinterest?

Since that referral statistic is downright stunning, the big question is if you can harness any of that traffic for your own site. The good news is the answer to that question is definitely yes. There are two main keys to establishing an effective presence on Pinterest. The first is to remember that this site is all about images. As a result, you want to focus on images that are going to grab people's attention.

Keep in mind that images aren't limited to photos. Options like infographics or striking charts can be just as effective. The second key to effectively utilizing Pinterest is to focus on creating and providing value. As with any social website, you can't expect to slap up a few images and attract a flood of traffic. Instead, you should focus on creating boards that are so good that people seek them out. Additionally, you should invest some time in becoming part of the community. That includes following others and commenting on their pins that you find interesting.

Have you spent any time exploring Pinterest?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Improving the design of your site or blog doesn’t mean that you have to start from scratch. While a complete redesign may be the best option in some cases, many designs simply need some tweaks. This is especially true for some of the most common design elements. Examples of what you can easily improve include:

Social Sharing Buttons

People like to share content through social networks. As a result, many sites incorporate buttons that make it easy to share. Unfortunately, the most common trend for these buttons has become to cram in as many as possible.

If you currently have these buttons on your site, you may want to rethink their usage. First, look at your analytics to find out which social networks your visitors are actually using. There’s no reason to provide shortcuts to a dozen different sites when your visitors are actually only using 2 or 3.

Next, instead of simply slapping up the buttons on your posts, think about adding a call to action at the end of your posts. Experiments by multiple bloggers have confirmed that adding something along the lines of “If you liked this post, click here to share it on Twitter” is more effective than simply having an icon.

Additionally, if you have a signup or opt-in process, consider adding a sharing link to the end of it. Since your visitors are likely to be excited about what they just joined, many will be interested in telling their friends on Facebook about it as long as you remind them to do so.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a great way to improve your site’s conversion rate. However, not all testimonials are created equal. If you have a handful of paragraph long testimonials on your site, the first thing you can do to improve them is take the best snippet from each one and make it stand out. This is commonly done by featuring it above each testimonial block.

While you probably already have a name next to each testimonial, you can make them even more credible by adding a picture of the person who provided them. In addition to text testimonials with a picture, you may want to experiment with video testimonials. Many sites have reported that video testimonials significantly increased their conversion rate.

Contact Forms

The key to making sure contact forms are as useful as possible is making them dead simple for visitors to fill out. That means the first step is to eliminate as many fields as possible. If you have a contact form with ten different fields, try to slim it down to two or three.

Next, instead of a boring gray button that says Submit, add a more noticeable button with a clearer call to action. You should also add a call to action above your contact forms. Finally, make sure visitors receive some type of confirmation once they successfully submit one of your forms.

Have you ever made a small design tweak that ended up having a big impact?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Copywriting isn’t a skill that’s only useful to professional writers. In fact, you don’t even need a blog to benefit from copywriting. Every business owner can benefit from sharpening their copywriting skills and then applying those skills to their business website. While many of the changes you will eventually make to your website may not seem like that big of a deal, they can actually have a significant impact on your overall conversion rate.

Because there are so many different ways to approach copywriting, figuring out how to get started can be one of the hardest parts. If you’re not sure where to focus your attention, an easy way to simplify this process and dive right in is to use magazines as a guide of what to do. Although they’re obviously a print medium, the techniques they use are just as effective when applied online. Let’s take a look at the key copywriting lessons you can learn from magazines:

Write One or More Strong Headlines

The goal of a magazine cover is to grab your attention and pique your interest so that you will pick up the magazine and open it. When someone first visits your website, your goal is to give them a reason to stick around and continue exploring what you have to offer. You can accomplish this goal by writing one or more strong headlines for your site’s main page(s).

Depending on your site, there are several ways to write a strong headline. One option is to ask a question. Another is to make an interesting statement that compels visitors to continue reading. If you’re writing a headline for a product page, you can center your headline around a benefit the product offers instead of one of its features.

Use Short Chunks to Break Up Longer Pieces of Content

Magazines almost always use quotes, lists or other additions to break up longer stories and make it easier for readers to digest them. You should use this technique on your own landing pages. Instead of hitting visitors with huge blocks of text, interject and emphasis key pieces of information throughout your pages. This will allow visitors who are only skimming your pages to still pick up important pieces of information about what you’re offering.

Tell Visitors Where to Go

When you open a magazine, one of the first things you’ll see is a table of contents. This section of the magazine tells readers exactly where to go to find the story they want to check out. Making it as easy as possible for readers to quickly find exactly what they want ensures they don’t throw down the magazine in frustration and move on to something else.

You should take this same approach in guiding visitors around your site. Instead of simply adding a link, explicitly tell visitors to click it so they can go to wherever it leads.

Have you tested any popular copywriting techniques on your site?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Most businesses invest a lot of resources into acquiring new customers. While avenues like search engine marketing can be cost effective ways to bring in new customers, many customer acquisition methods are quite expensive. Because of their focus on this task, a lot of businesses forget that they already have a great source of customers.

This source is the clients or customers they’ve already served in the past. One of the hardest parts of getting prospects to actually pull out their wallet and do business with you is reassuring them that they’re going to get great value for the money the spend. But with past customers, they already know that they can count on you to do a good job. Since this hurdle is eliminated, all you have to do is give them a compelling reason to place another order from you.

If you like the idea of focusing more on your past customers but don’t know how to pique their interest, there are a couple of methods that are quite effective:

Offer a Discount

Although it’s a simple strategy, offering a discount can work very well. Given the recent bad press that daily deal sites like Groupon have received, some business owners are hesitant to offer any discounts. However, it’s important to remember that this strategy doesn’t involve offering discounts to bring in new customers. Instead, you’re offering a discount as a loyalty reward. Since huge companies like Starbucks are known for their great loyalty discounts, there’s no question that this strategy can yield favorable results.

Customize a Pitch

This works really well if your clients are other businesses. For example, if you provide conversion rate optimization, take time to look through their site. If you see a page that you know you can improve, take a few notes and then send them a pitch. Or if there’s something you know they’d benefit from adding to their site, shoot them an email with that information. In many cases, the only reason business owners aren’t sending you ongoing orders is because they’re simply too busy to figure out what they need done next. By taking care of that work for them, you can do them a big favor and receive an order from them in return for it.

Provide a Referral Bonus

Making the most of your past clients or customers doesn’t even have to directly involve securing another order from them. Instead, one way to benefit from your existing relationship is to have them bring new prospects to you.

What’s great about this arrangement is the prospects a past client delivers will already have a personal recommendation about your business. As a result, you will find that it’s much easier to close an order with them than it is with a prospect that you bring in on your own.

Since this is a valuable service that past customers can provide, it’s worth motivating them by providing some type of bonus. Whether it’s a monetary or discount bonus, as long as you make it appealing, you’ll find that your happy past customers are more than willing to send prospects your way.

Did you focus on your past clients or customers very much during 2011?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

To the average person, the world of fashion can seem quite strange. However, despite the eccentric nature of this industry, it’s huge. The fashion industry in the UK alone is worth over £20 billion a year. Because of its size and influence, there are some valuable tips that marketers in any space can learn from fashion:

Trends Come and Go

Trends are one of the first things most people associate with fashion. Every year, it seems like there’s something new that makes its way from the runways and catches on with mainstream consumers. While it may seem like the biggest trend ever at the time, chances are by the same time next year, something else will have already replaced it.

The lesson for marketers is while there’s nothing wrong with trying out the latest social networking sites that pop up or other distribution platforms, it’s important to be cautious about how much time and effort you invest into something that’s brand new. While there can be advantages to being an early adopter, it’s just as likely that the hype around something new will fizzle out just as quickly as it started.

Sometimes You Have to Push the Envelope

Although most trends are nothing more than a flash in the pan, every once and awhile a designer comes up with something new that ends up having a lasting impact on the world of fashion. In many cases, the designers who make these changes may be initially written off for whatever they do. However, because they’re not afraid to push the envelope, they’re able to have a real impact.

When it comes to developing a new strategy, sticking to the status quo may not cut it. Instead, you may find yourself in a position where you have to step up to the plate and do something that’s truly bold. Even though this type of decision does have risk, the end result can be well worth it.

Real Relationships Matter

One of the main obstacles that new designers face is getting exposure for their lines. Because there are so many designers and companies producing new clothes, fashion magazines and other publicity avenues are only able to cover so much. As a result, the relationships designers build with their colleagues and customers can make or break their line.

Whether you’re a marketing professional or a business owner who’s handling this role on your own, it’s important to remember that all of your efforts are built on a foundation of real people. As a result, don’t treat them like they’re simply a number on a spreadsheet. Instead, go the extra mile to build relationships that are going to last. While marketing is always going to be a challenge, it becomes much easier when you have customers who are so passionate about your business that they do much of it for you!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Developing a content strategy, building an email list and engaging in social media marketing are all ways that you can bring more visitors to your website during 2012. While all of these options are very effective when done correctly, there's one more step that you have to focus on if you want these visitors to become actual customers. Conversion is the key to actually increasing your bottom line. Although it may not be a topic that the tech press hypes on a regular basis, optimizing your conversion rate can have a major impact on your overall business.

While you will probably have prior steps in your sales funnel, once you're ready to actually make a sale, a landing page is generally the most effective way to maximize your conversion rate. The reason a good landing page works so well is because it gives a visitor all the information and reassurance they need to become a customer by actually pulling out their credit card and making a purchase.

Since your landing page can make or break your ability to close sales online, here are some tips for ensuring every landing page you create in 2012 yields the best results possible:

Compelling Headline

The headline for your landing page should be highly visible. You want to make sure that your landing page's headline is positioned and sized so it immediately grabs visitors’ attention. Because there's no doubt that visitors will look at your headline, you need to ensure that it's compelling. According to legendary copywriter Joseph Sugarman, the sole goal of the headline is to get people to continue reading.

Add Testimonials

Most people are naturally adverse to risk. One risk that we all try to avoid is losing money. No one wants to spend their hard-earned money on a product or service that turns out to be worthless. As a result, your landing page needs to reassure visitors that they're not going to be disappointed by their purchase.

While persuasive copywriting can be very effective, nothing is better than honest feedback from other people. The reason visitors respond to this type of feedback is because it functions as a form of social proof. Once visitors know that other people have been happy with their purchase, their fear of wasting their money will subside. By adding real testimonials from existing customers, you can show new visitors that they're going to be very happy with their purchase.

Include Multiple Call to Actions

Although your landing page doesn't have to go on forever, a good one will have quite a bit of information. As a result, it's important to remember that different visitors will read different amounts of information. To avoid missing any opportunities, make sure that you include multiple call to actions throughout the course of your page. This includes placing a highly visible call to action, like a button, above the fold of your landing page.

Have you used any tools to increase the conversion rate of your landing page(s)?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

It's safe to say that social media is past the phase of being a fad. Although new social sites will be launched and some existing sites may decline in popularity, using the Internet for this type of communication is here to stay. Since people aren't going to suddenly stop communicating through social media platforms, it's worth investing some of your marketing efforts into these channels during 2012.

The biggest issue with social media marketing is it can be hard to directly measure results. A big reason why this can be so difficult is while multiple studies have confirmed the benefits that social media can offer to businesses, many of them are a "bigger picture" result. This means that it's hard to directly correlate the impact of using social media.

This uncertainty leads to many businesses hesitating to embrace social media. While that's a natural reaction to this issue, it's not the route that businesses have to take. Instead of simply turning your back on social media, a better option is to focus on maximizing results and minimizing wasted time.

No one is going to argue that social media can’t turn into a significant waste of time. This is just as true for individuals as it is for businesses. The key to avoiding this problem is clearly defining what you're trying to accomplish with your social media marketing. For many businesses, their main goal is to communicate with existing and potential customers. If this is your 2012 social media goal, here a couple of tips for being as efficient as possible:

Don't Do It All

One of the reasons social media marketing can seem so overwhelming is because there are so many different networks where people spend time talking to each other. However, it's important to understand that just because these networks exist doesn't mean that you have to be active on all of them.

Instead of driving yourself crazy by trying to maintain a presence on every social network that springs up, a better option is to focus on the primary one(s) where your existing and potential customers spend time. If you're wondering how to find out this information, all you have to do is ask. By asking a handful of your existing customers what social network(s) they use, you can safely assume that the same is generally true for your potential customers as well.

Learn the Ins and Outs

Another common mistake is businesses simply start bombarding social networks with promotional messages. While this may seem like the most efficient way to communicate, the reason it's not is because this type of marketing is going to be ignored.

An added benefit of narrowing your focus to the primary social network(s) of your target audience is you can take the time to learn their ins and outs. Once you actually understand how a social community functions, you will be in a much better position to get the results you want in the right way.

If you're already engaged in social media marketing, what tools are you using to be as efficient as possible?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

More business owners are realizing just how much they can gain by creating a strong online presence for their business. However, email is one area that many business owners in both the new and experienced with online marketing categories still overlook. One of the reasons that many don't emphasize this aspect of online marketing is because they think it's a dated practice. While email marketing may not be a topic that the tech press is buzzing about, it's still extremely effective. In fact, since spam filters have eliminated a significant amount of unwanted commercial email, targeted emails may be even more effective than they were a few years ago.

Why You Need to Care About Email Marketing

One of the reasons you need to focus on email marketing in 2012 is because it allows you to develop a direct relationship with potential and current customers. For potential customers, the relationship you develop may give them enough trust so that they feel comfortable placing an order with you online.

Another reason you should care about this topic is because it will allow you to do more with the traffic you receive. Instead of losing every visitor who doesn't make a purchase when they land on your website, you can convert them into a lead by collecting an email address from them.

How to Start Building an Email List

If you've decided to make email marketing a priority for 2012, the first step is to start building your email list. In order to do this, you want visitors to submit their email address through your website.

One of the most common mistakes people make when they add a signup form to their website is including too many fields in it. In many cases, all you need is one field for a visitor to enter their email address. In some cases, you may also want another field for them to enter their name. However, two fields is generally going to be the most you're going to need.

Another mistake that's quite common is not placing forms in a visible enough location. If your signup form is buried in the bottom corner of your site, it's not going to be nearly as effective as if it was prominently featured near the top. In addition to putting it in a location where visitors are actually going to see it, make sure that you add a compelling call to action.

The reason you give visitors for signing up will depend on your business. Some websites literally give away a report or other freebie in exchange for signups. While this can work very well, it's not always required. Other websites do quite well by simply informing visitors that signing up for the site's email list will give them access to exclusive deals and special offers. You may want to experiment with several different options to see which one works best for your specific signup form.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Since the New Year is less than a month away, the next few posts are going to focus on ramping up for a successful 2012. Today, we're going to discuss how to get your content strategy in line.

What Does Google Want?

During 2011, Google made several changes that had a significant impact on the way they view content. While many Internet marketers were left scratching their heads throughout the year, two things were made very clear by these changes. The first is that quality is of utmost importance to Google. Although quality can be a somewhat subjective issue, the important thing to remember is Google uses general signals and guidelines to determine the quality of content.

The other thing they made clear is that for topics that change, they want information that is relevant and fresh. While this doesn't impact every business, it does have an effect on many of them. As a result of these two key takeaways, a big focus of your 2012 content strategy should be quality over quantity. This means that instead of cranking out three articles on closely related topics, put the same amount of time into creating one article that can be viewed as an authority resource on the topic.

The same can be said for blogging. Instead of feeling the pressure to blast out multiple posts a week, invest your time into a single post each week that people are going to truly like and want to share with others.

Should You Do Article Submissions?

Although backlinks from article directories may still pass some link juice, it's safe to say that the heyday of article submissions is over. Not only have the bulk of the articles in these directories turned into web pollution, but it's important to remember that even though they're not great, it still takes time to write these articles. As a result, you're much better off investing the time it would take you to write a couple of low quality articles into a single guest post for another blog. Unlike most article directory submissions, publishing a real post on another blog means people will actually read it. This can result in potential customers finding out about your business who otherwise may have never been exposed to it.

Do Press Releases Still Matter?

Press releases can still be an effective form of content. The problem is most people seem to forget their purpose. Although they're commonly used to build links, this isn't their primary function. Instead, the main goal of a press release is to get the attention of members of the media who have an interest in what your business is doing or announcing. While potential customers may see your actual press release, it's generally a tool that can be used to persuade reporters and bloggers to write about you. Since you want people to write about you, make sure you only use a press release when you actually have something to announce.

How is your 2012 content strategy going to be different from your strategy over the last year?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Although it's been over a decade since website "hits" had their heyday, you can still find plenty of website owners who obsess over how many daily visits their site receives. While it's easy to get caught up in refreshing your stats, this isn't an activity that's going to help your bottom line.

If a website relies solely on banner ads for revenue, then the sheer number of visitors it receives may determine its success. However, since you're running a website for your business, it's not quantity that matters. What matters most is the quality of the visitors that are coming to your website. You are much better off receiving 15 highly targeted visitors a day than you are having 50-100 random visitors stumble onto your website.

The quality vs. quantity issue doesn't only apply to the number of visitors your website receives. There are several other stats that people commonly get caught up looking at with the wrong focus:

Pageviews: Not every website needs visitors to go through dozens of pages. As a business owner, your main goal is to get visitors to take an action on your website. If they email you or call you after viewing just a couple of pages on your website, then there's no reason for you to stress over your site's average number of pageviews.

Rankings: Some people think that the more terms they rank for, the better. In reality, what actually matters is ranking for terms that send targeted visitors. If you're ranking for a bunch of terms that sends visitors who aren't interested in what your business has to offer, those rankings are meaningless.

Although it can be a little more tricky now that Google isn't passing keyword data for every search, your main focus should be the keywords that send converting visitors. If you don't know which keywords convert, you should set up that form of tracking instead of worrying about checking to see if you've had any ranking fluctuations.

Bounce Rate: This metric can be very misleading. Because most website owners have heard that the lower their bounce rate, the better, they get stressed out when they're unable to get it as low as they'd like. While bounce rate can be useful, there are also some common issues with this metric.

One issue is different analytics programs define bounce rate in different ways. As a result, while you may think that people are coming to your website and instantly leaving, that may not be the case at all. Before you get stressed out about this metric, make sure you understand how the specific analytics program you're using calculates this metric.

Another common issue is forgetting that bounces aren't bad for every website. For example, if you have one site that serves as a landing page to bring visitors to your main website, a high bounce rate isn't necessarily a problem if most the visitors are coming to your primary site.

Do you find yourself checking your website's stats more often than you should?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

If you’re frustrated that your conversion rate is much lower than you’d like, the good news is there’s a simple way to convert more of the people who visit your website into potential customers. An email newsletter may be exactly what you need to get better results from your online marketing efforts. Although a newsletter may seem like an old school marketing tool, there are several reasons why it can be extremely effective:

Build a Relationship: Although there are impulsive buyers, a significant percentage of consumers are very thorough about the decisions they make. This type of consumer doesn’t dive right into a purchase. Instead, they spend time doing research and analyzing this decision. One of the factors they take into consideration is how they feel about your company. They are much more likely to purchase from you if they view your business in a positive light than if they don’t have any feelings about it. And one of the best ways to create this type of goodwill among potential customers is to use an email newsletter to build a relationship with them.

Avoid Wasting Website Traffic: If making a purchase is the only option you give to your website visitors, you’re going to lose all the ones who decide not to buy. However, if you have an email newsletter and provide a sign up form on your website, you can capture these visitors and work towards making a sale at a later date.

Stay on Potential Customers’ Minds: Your business may sell a product or service that people only need at a certain time. By sending them a monthly newsletter, you can ensure that you stay on potential customers’ minds. Because you’ll eliminate the possibility of them forgetting about your business, they’ll immediately get in touch with you if a situation arises when they need what you offer.

Have Others Help with Your Marketing: The best newsletters are those that provide real value to recipients. The value can be anything from useful information to a coupon. When people receive something of value, they want to share it with others. Because they’ll be able to forward your newsletters to their friends and family, they will actually help you with your marketing.

Sell When the Time is Right: The most successful email newsletters don’t constantly pressure recipients to buy. Instead, they build interest in the benefits a a product or service can provide someone. After delivering this type of interesting content, a good newsletter will provide a special opportunity to make a purchase that people won’t want to miss.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

What’s the most effective newsletter you’ve received from another business?

Whether you want your website visitors to submit their email address or pull out their credit card and make a purchase, before a visitor will take any action, they need to trust your website. If visitors are concerned that your website isn't legitimate, they're unlikely to submit their email address to you, and they're definitely not going to make a purchase through your website.

If a lack of trust is hurting your conversion rate, the good news is there are some simple steps you can take to ensure visitors know that there is a legitimate business behind your website:

Add Testimonials with Pictures: Even the best copywriters will admit that nothing they write is as compelling as testimonials from customers. When a visitor is about to take action on your website, there is a little part of their brain that asks "are you about to do something you're going to regret?" Because no one wants to answer yes to this question, adding testimonials to your website will reassure visitors that other real people have taken the same action and were very happy with the outcome.

While it's great to have a page of testimonials, it's also good to put a testimonial near your call to action button. This will provide visitors with reassurance as they are actually taking action. Also, try to include a picture next your testimonials. This ensures visitors can see that they're legitimate testimonials.

Add Trust Seals: Because you spend a significant amount of time online, it's easy to forget that most Internet users are not nearly as computer savvy as you. As a result, there may be things that matter to them that you don't even notice. Trust seals are a perfect example. Since you probably see BBB and McAfee Secure (previously Hacker Safe) logos on websites throughout the day, you probably don't pay much attention to them.

However, for regular Internet users, these seals can be very important. How important? According to the Conversion Doctor, these signs of trusts have a noticeable impact on conversion rates:

Conversion Rate With NO Seals or Logos: 2.06%
Conversion Rate With ONLY BBB Online Logo: 2.15%
Conversion Rate With ONLY Hacker Safe Logo: 2.27%
Conversion Rate With BOTH BBB Online AND Hacker Safe Logos: 2.33%

Take the Time to Answer Visitor Questions: There are plenty of long landing pages that are very ugly. As a result, many business owners assume they need to keep their landing pages short in order for them to be aesthetically pleasing. In reality, long copy is actually effective. The main reason is it gives you an opportunity to answer as many questions as possible that visitors may have. When visitors are able to read an answer to a question that pops into their head, they're going to feel much more confident about taking action. Additionally, there's no reason that longer landing pages can't still be attractive.

What makes you trust a website enough to place an order through it?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Everyone and their mom has a Facebook account these days. And Twitter isn’t far behind. Then you have YouTube videos popping up left and right that go viral and get seen by millions of people. And here you are, a small to mid-sized business owner, wondering how you can harness the potential you see. Is it possible that such Social Media outlets can be used to expand your business.

You bet. But you have to know how.

Understand What Social Media is Good For

So what’s the point of social media? Do you just go create a bunch of profiles and use them to talk to people? Well, not exactly. If you do that, what you’ll probably find is you have a Facebook Fan Page with no fans and a Twitter page with no followers.

The idea behind social media is sharing. And what are you sharing? Content. Ah, it always seems to come back to this, doesn’t it?

You need to have quality content that other people will want to see. If you are putting this content out there, people are going to take notice. And not only will they take notice, but they will share with other people. The next thing you know, there’s a snowball effect and more and more people will come to you for the content they’re longing for. See where I’m going with this?

What Kind of Content Are We Talking About?

Well, first of all there are the original blog articles that you should be producing. Make sure they aren’t a bunch of rehashed drivel. Each article needs to be fresh and unique—you know, attack an existing issue from a new angle.

There are also videos. These can be webinars, short commercials—anything people will watch and want to see more of. Webinars, like articles, should provide useful information. Commercials should be original and not scream “BUY BUY BUY!”

And of course, you can also share other people’s content. This is a good way to make friends that are noteworthy in your industry. It also keeps you from having to produce all the shared content yourself.

Social Media—Get with the Times

If you aren’t yet taking advantage of social media, don’t fret. There’s always time. Form a plan and slowly begin to implement it. Just remember, social media is only one piece to the overall marketing puzzle!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Whether you've just started a blog to help promote your business or your employer has been speaking with you about launching a company blog, it’s absolutely true that a blog can help a business grow. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing this post right now!

While blogs have long since passed their stage of being nothing more than personal journals, there's still a lot of confusion about how to blog the right way. This is especially true for businesses who want to get on board with blogging. To get the most out of the time you spend blogging, make sure you avoid these common business blogging mistakes:

Making It All About Themselves: This is not only the most common mistake, but it's also the mistake that will kill your blog before it ever has a chance to grow. You can add as many pages to your website as you want about what makes your business great and why customers should choose you. However, when it comes to your blog, your focus needs to change.

The reason so many businesses make this mistake is they're used to their marketing efforts being all about them. But unless you're a company like Apple, your blogging needs to have a broader focus. The key to figuring out what you should blog about is thinking what your audience wants to read, not what you think they should read.

By putting yourself in the shoes of the type of people you want reading your blog, you will be able to build an audience who's eager to read every post you publish.

Not Posting Often Enough: While blogging will help your website attract more search engine traffic, this is only one of its benefits. If all you want to do is publish a few posts to pull in extra search engine visitors, you're better off publishing them under an articles section of your website.

Although you don't have to post on a daily basis, the biggest benefit of blogging comes from building an audience. And like a TV show, building an audience requires you to deliver quality content on a consistent basis.

If you're just getting started, commit to publishing one great post a week. After a month or two of keeping this schedule, you'll be able to decide if that schedule is the right fit for you and your blogging goals.

Not Interacting with the Audience: A blog isn't a one-way street. Businesses who simply publish posts and never take time to look at the comments that are left are missing a huge opportunity.

If someone takes the time to leave a comment, it means they're interested in what you're saying. And if they're interested in what you have to say, chances are they'll make an ideal customer now or in the future.

Given the amount of money businesses spend trying to bring in new potential customers, don't make the mistake of overlooking leads that are right in front of you!

Writing Like a Robot: Your blog doesn't need to read like a corporate memo. In fact, a lot more people will read it if you write with your own voice and personality. Whether you're writing a blog for your own business or you're an employee blogging for your company, you'll get much better results by letting readers get to know you through your writing.

What mistake(s) have you recently seen a business blog make?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

You know what press releases are, but if you’re like most small business owners—you don’t know how to use them. Sure everyone would love getting press for their business, but is it really possible? And can you create a press release that will do it for you? In this week’s post, I aim to open your eyes to the world of press releases.

The Purpose of Press Releases

First of all, you need to know what exactly they’re used for. And really it can be broken into two categories:

1. Garnering attention to what your company is doing.
2. Building links to boost search rankings.

How Do You Write a Good Press Release?

Truthfully, it isn’t rocket science. As long as you are a decent writer with a bit of time on your hands, all you need to know is the following:

• Make sure your title and introduction offer something newsworthy. In other words, when someone reads your press release, they should immediately be able to tell what is new and relevant about your company.
• Lay off the advertising. A press release is not your chance to explain why your company is awesome. It should be purely factual, as it is an informational article.
• Use your keywords. Whichever keywords you are focusing on should appear in your title and one sentence summary. I also like to include them in the first and last paragraphs. Don’t go crazy with them though.
• Include relevant quotes. Whether from you or someone else related to the newsworthy event, use quotes that add to your message.

What Do You Do with Your Press Release?

• PRWeb
• PR Newswire
• Business Wire

When properly used, press releases can prove a useful facet of your marketing campaign. Have any questions? I’m here with the answers!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

So now you’re bringing in good leads. Great! But what’s happening with them? You can have a million people a day look at your site, but are you converting them into paying customers?

Enter the landing page, your secret weapon for conversion.

What is a Landing Page?

The landing page is the specific page of your website that people find themselves on when they click from:

•  Search engines
• PPC ads
• Links in email new letters

These landing pages are tailored specifically to search terms and products or services. In other words, say you ran an air conditioning business that:

• Sells new HVAC systems
• Repairs existing systems
• Provides customers with various maintenance plans

In this case you would have at least 3 separate landing pages—one for each keyword and service. Many people starting out think that their homepage link is the most important, but that’s not always the case. You need the specific landing pages narrowed down. Your homepage will just be a broader overview of what you do.

How Do You Write a Solid Landing Page?

Well, your best bet is to use a professional copywriter. The right guy can do this kind of work with his eyes closed. However, if you’re intent on doing it yourself, make sure you follow these tips:

1. Your headline needs to be direct and to the point. And make sure it clearly spells out a solid benefit. Something that will make the customer want to keep reading.
2. The most important information should come in headlines, at the beginning of bullet points, etc. People tend to scan websites and are more likely to read in these places, so it’s crucial you catch their attention and get them to read the remainder of the body.
3.  Write a solid call to action. I can’t say this enough. You have to tell your customer what to do and why they should do it. If you want them to email you about you’re a/c maintenance package, provide a contact form and tell them to fill it out for a free consultation.

That should get you started. What other landing page tips would you include?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

After reading the title of this post, you probably clicked wondering “how’s he going to spin this to make it right?” But the truth is I’m not going to spin anything. I mean what I said—customers do not care about you. Let me explain.

When you visit almost any small business website, you’re met with the same old content. “Welcome to our site. We’ve been in business blah blah. We are known for blah blah blah. We are committed to excellence blah blah.”

See those blah blahs? That’s how we read such content. In one ear, out the other. And that usually results in Xing out the page and moving on.

What’s the problem? Is the content just boring? Well, that might be part of it. But people certainly aren’t visiting your small business website for entertainment purposes.

What it comes down to is what I said earlier—people don’t care about you. They don’t want to sit and listen to you tell your company history and your qualifications.

It’s Time to Shift Your Focus

So what do your customers care about? Sounds like a hard questions—but it isn’t . See, when you get down to the root of the matter, pretty much everyone is concerned about one thing: themselves. Or more specifically in this case, what your company can do for them. Knowing this basic human truth, your content should be geared toward what benefits the customer will reap from your product or service as opposed to why you are awesome.

You might be awesome, but they don’t care.

An Example for You to Chew On (Copywriting 101)

Let’s practice a bit. Say you’re a law firm dealing with medical malpractice suits. When I go to your existing site, I read, “We have been in the business for over 20 years.” Company-centered copy.

How do we change it? Let’s try this: “You need a law firm experienced in handling malpractice cases just like yours. With over 20 years in the business, you can depend on our lawyers to know exactly how to take your case all the way to victory.”

See the difference? One gives a fact about the company. The other explains why you should care by telling you how you can benefit from that fact.

Get Your Focus Right

Maybe you have good traffic to your site, but you just aren’t getting those visitors to buy. If so, maybe you need to get the focus right. Drop the “we” and talk about your customers!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Looking to develop an online marketing strategy? Good—let me help you out by breaking things down for you. The following post breaks online marketing down into 4 stages, each more narrow than the one before. Remember, before you get started, you need a complete plan that hits every stage of the process in order to set yourself up for success. Failure to adequately plan (leaving unfilled holes in one or more stages of the process) will cause you to hemorrhage potential clients.

Stage 1: Target market

First and foremost you need to identify your target market. Are you going after new homeowners? Twenty-something cell phone users? Retirees looking to downsize? Personal injury victims? Whoever that target market might entail, you need to make sure all your marketing materials speak directly to them. That means mail outs, brochures, e-newsletters, Tweets, Facebook status updates—all types of marketing efforts. And they should all have one goal in mind—direct your target market to your website.

Stage 2: Website visitors

Once you get people to your site, they enter stage two. Here is where you had better hope you have put the work in to provide a web experience that is not only user friendly, but drives visitors to action. How can you do that?

• A professional, useful design
• Compelling content
• A strong call to action

Stage 3: Leads

Once a customer has shown enough interest to contact you, they become a lead. Notice that this stage is not the final stage. That’s because they aren’t yet sold. No money has exchanged hands. No contract has been signed. No promises have been made. The fact is this lead could also be a lead for 5 of your competitors they have also contacted. Now it’s time for you to make the conversion.

How? First of all, respond promptly. If you wait around, count on the competition to swoop them up and away. When you contact the customers, make sure to focus on your unique sales proposition and bend over backwards to move them into stage 4. If they don’t bite, don’t give up. Put them aside and try again in a week.

Stage 4: Paying customers

Obviously, you want as many people as possible to end up in this group. The more paying customers, the fatter your profit. But don’t forget, it’s not just about getting them here: it’s about keeping them at this stage. Repeat customers are the best kind. Because you aren’t spending time and money trying to find them. They’re already there and all you need to do is keep them happy and coming back for more.

Are there holes in your online marketing plan?

If you are missing a piece of your plan, give me a call. I can help you identify problems and come up with solutions!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Recently someone asked me a question I’ve heard a thousand times before. And it’s likely I’ll here it a thousand more:

“What’s the key to attracting visitors to my website and turning them into loyal, paying customers?”

I usually pause, look at the ground for a moment, and chuckle. As if there were some secret ingredient that would suddenly make their website a “winner.” Now, obviously there are a million things you can do to attract visitors. You can hire an SEO professional to work some website magic. You can put together a PPC campaign. You can engage potential and past clients on various social media platforms…

But when I sat down to write this post and was pondering the question that is posed so often, I remembered the article I wrote last week. And I realized—it answered the question for me. Not directly of course, but after rereading my own words, there it was, sticking out at me like a sore thumb.

The answer is simple. Quality content is the primary ingredient to a successful website.

Now here’s where you say, “but I have quality content and my website is still sucking!”

But do you? What makes you think you have quality content? Well, I’d have to write a book to adequately answer the question, but here are a few key tips:

1. Quality content speaks to the right people. For instance, if you’re a lawyer, your content shouldn’t speak to other lawyers. After all, they aren’t the ones paying for your services, are they? Let’s face it—if you’re a DWI lawyer, you’re talking to people who might be drunk driving. If you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, you’re talking to people in up to their ears in debt. And so on. So in this case, quality content doesn’t mean scholarly content. See the difference?
2. Quality content is fresh content. Content considered quality 3 years ago is no longer quality content. Why? It’s outdated. The thing is, everyone wants to see something new and fresh. Your website visitors want new information—different information. The search engines want to see fresh content to rank you higher. And the more fresh content you generate, the more chances you have for Google to pick you up and carry you up that search ranking ladder.
3. Quality content attacks old issues in different manners. Anyone can look at someone else’s blog post and spin their words enough to reuse it on their own site. It doesn’t take a genius. In fact, it doesn’t even take a good writer. But who wants to read the same old stuff on 10 different sites with a few words changed here and there? On the other hand, there are only a certain number of issues out there for you to talk about. So how do you produce quality content if there is nothing left to talk about? You get creative and try and hit the issue from a new angle.

Of course, not everyone is skilled enough to produce quality content on a regular basis. That’s why you hire a professional to do it for you!

Now remember, I said quality content is the key ingredient. But it’s not the only ingredient. There’s more to it than all that, but if I had to break it down to one thing—content would be it. What do you think?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

But what I’ve learned along the way is that the websites of most small business owners just sit there and do nothing but take up space. Why? Because their plan only went as far as actually building the site.

Unfortunately, your website isn’t going to just magically attract visitors. You have to know what to do with it once it’s there. The following outlines 3 practical steps you can take to start putting that piece of online real estate to use.

Step 1: Produce killer content.

You can hire the best web designer in the world, but if your site isn’t full of engaging content, it’s not going to do you a whole lot of good. After all, they don’t say “content is king” for nothing. Top notch content is not only more likely to get found, but it’s more likely to convert. Start with solid copy on your main pages. Then branch out and regularly produce useful posts on your blog.

Step 2: Optimize your content.

Of course, while quality content should be top priority, this alone won’t allow people to find you. If your content is to be read, it needs to be found through Google. And if you want Google to crawl it, you need to make sure it’s optimized. That means you need to identify your relevant keywords and then make sure your content is written around them. But be careful not to get caught up in the whole keyword stuffing thing. Just make sure you’re on topic and let the keywords flow naturally.

Step 3: Push your content through social media.

Not only does social media allow you to share your content with others, but it allows them to share it with their networks too. And if you truly are producing killer content then it will travel farther and farther. That said, how do you push your content? Is simply tweeting and sharing your links good enough? Probably not. What you need is a plan. A plan that involves building relationships, engaging existing customers, and helping push others’ content too. (Sounds like a good topic for a new post—stay tuned!)

Take the First Step

It’s time your site started working for you. Follow these steps and you’ll see your leads increase. Need help? Shoot me an email and let’s talk!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Among other things, I design websites. So of course it’s in my best interest to sell the idea of website redesigns. However, the truth is that if you ask me, I’m not always going to recommend a redesign. In fact, sometimes I may flat out say no.

Why? Because above all else, I am a builder of brands. And whatever I recommend, it will be in the best interest of your brand. That said, there are times that people come to me wanting to redesign for all the wrong reasons.

Here are a few instances in which I would try to dissuade you from redesigning your business’s website:

• You are sick of your design. Look, we get tired of new stuff pretty quick. It’s human nature. Think about the last new car you bought. When you were shopping for it, you were all about it. And when you first bought it, you loved getting in it every morning. Going to work became a joy instead of a chore. But after a few months, you started hating your commute again and that new car lost its charm. Same idea with your site. Just remember, while you may be tired of your site, it’s still new to those new customers.
• It’s been awhile since you have had a website overhaul. Again with the car analogy. Some people lease so they can get a new car every year. But that’s not a very good reason typically and they end up losing money. If you want to throw your money away on a new site every year, then go for it. But it’s a bad business decision.
• Your designer wants to. Here’s a secret: your designer only makes money when he’s designing. So the odds are that he may try to push for design work even when none is really needed. So if he comes to you saying you need a redesign, get a second opinion. It just might be that your existing site is just fine.

Let’s remember what the purpose of your business should be—to get good leads. And moreover, to help convert these leads into paying customers. If and only if your website redesign will contribute to this goal—then go through with it.

But if you are considering a website overhaul just because people in your company are tired of your old one…don’t do it. You’ll end up wasting time, money, and maybe even doing some serious damage to your brand along the way.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

There’s been a lot of talk around here lately about dying brands. How to notice, when to act, and how to act, etc. But what about those of you whose brand is staying afloat but just isn’t quite producing like it once was? You aren’t in danger of going under (not right now at least) but at the same time your marketing efforts aren’t really producing any new results.

Is it time for an extreme brand makeover? Well, that depends. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself to find out.

• Do You Have Set Goals? Or are you just kind of floundering in the water, splashing a little here and there but not really accomplishing anything? If your marketing efforts are not pinpoint focused on achieving specific results, your brand will suffer and you need to rethink things. 

• Is your message succinct? Layout all your marketing materials in front of you. What do you see? Do you see a common thread throughout? Does each piece look like it came from the same book? Or does it look like someone different created each one? For your brand’s sake, your marketing materials should be connected. Inconsistency in marketing materials equals inconsistency in branding equals inconsistency in performance (at least, that’s how the clients will view it). 

• Do we have We-We syndrome?  In copywriting terms, “We-We Syndrome” is when a company’s copy is very self-centered. It reads “we do this we do that we’re so awesome we we we we.” Your marketing materials should be customer-focused. That means second person point of view copy. Otherwise your potential customers will be turned off by your egotism. 

• Do I look like an amateur compared to the other guy? You need to stay one up on the competition. That means you need to analyze their strengths—not just their weaknesses. If their marketing and branding efforts outshine yours, maybe you need a makeover. Of course, don’t jump the gun here. If it ain’t broke… 

Have questions about getting help for your brand makeover? Ask away.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

You know the signs of a dying brand and it’s now clear—you’re in trouble. You understand what’s at stake and that it’s time to take action. But like so many others in your position, you aren’t sure what to do.

“Taking action” is such a general catch phrase that it could really mean anything. And sure you could begin researching your next move, read a million blog posts that will give you a million different pieces of advice, and go down the path of the brand rebuild on your own. However, going about it in that manner is risky. After all, if you were capable of keeping your brand alive on your own, would you even be in this position in the first place?

Might sound harsh, but it’s reality.

That said, your first course of action should be finding a branding specialist. By taking this bold step, you’ll have an outside consultant come in and:

• Analyze your brand
• Provide you with a diagnosis
• Produce a plan of action
• Carry out the branding rebuild

Finding a Branding Specialist That Really is a Specialist

Now, I’m not going to sit here and spend an entire post trying to convince you that you need a branding consultant. At this point, it should be pretty obvious to you. More importantly, what you need now are tips on how you can find a branding consultant who can really help you. A true specialist. The last thing you want at this stage of the game is to shell out a bunch of cash while your business is reeling, only to watch the ship keep sinking. So here are a few quick tips on what to look for:

1. Look for someone who has produced results. The internet is full of supposed marketing geniuses. Guess how many of them really are geniuses? I’m going to go with like .5%. That means if you hire someone blindly, you’re probably going to throw your money away. By looking for someone who has documented results—someone who can produce data from past clients, as well as testimonials—you drastically increase the odds of getting back on track.
2. Find a consultant who insists on educating you along the way. A branding consultant who will really help you won’t keep you in the dark. Part of the problem here, after all, is you. Or more specifically, something you aren’t doing properly. So find someone to educate you and turn you into a branding specialist along the way. It really is about forming a successful working relationship.
3. Make sure they come to you with ways to produce hard numbers. One of the signs of a trustworthy consultant is one that comes in right away putting a focus on measuring R.O.I As he helps resurrect your brand, he will produce hard evidence of it along the way. Anything less will find you not knowing what you are paying for. Again, throwing your money away.
4. Think long-term…and short-term. Sure, any successful investment strategy involves focusing on the long-term. But a successful branding strategy focuses on ALL-term. In other words, you want a plan for the short-term, mid-term, and long-term. You need someone who develops a robust strategy that deals with all aspects.

In review, once you realize it’s time to take action, the first action you need to take is to get help immediately. Just make sure you do your homework and find the right partner.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

In my last post, I explained to you how to notice when your brand is dying. I told you how I define the term and pointed out the key symptoms of a sick brand. Now that you know how to spot a dying brand, you need to know when the best time to take action is.

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. You take action as soon as possible. And while that’s usually the case, sometimes it’s not so cut and dry.

See, what normally happens in respect to brands is one of the following:

• You think your brand is worse off than it actually is, so you make an unnecessary drastic change. In other words, you go overkill. Case in point, Tropicana orange juice. A couple of years ago, they thought it was necessary to revamp their logo. Why? They felt like they were behind the times. Big mistake. What was meant to rebuild their brand and usher in new customers instead caused a mass revolt. The move backfired and profits immediately plummeted. What happened? They saw what they thought was a sign of their brand being in trouble and responded too harshly. A perfect example of why the “act now ASAP” mentality isn’t always best.
• You fail to notice the signs—or worse yet, you ignore the signs thinking your brand will bounce back on its own—so you do nothing. Be it ignorance or be it arrogance, once the symptoms of a dwindling brand become truly apparent, it’s time to reevaluate. Failing to do so will undoubtedly find your business on life support. What it comes down to is some companies are just stuck in their ways. They feel that they truly have the best product to offer, and that will cause them to win out in the end. Maybe that’s what happened with LiveJournal back in the day. For those of you unfamiliar with it, LiveJournal is a social blogging network that was big before MySpace took over. At one point, they were offered a hefty sum to sell, but errantly refused. Then MySpace came into power, their band quickly faded, and they ended up selling for pennies on the dollar. Ignorance or arrogance? You decide. Either way, they didn’t act when they had the chance.
• You spot the symptoms, properly assess the level of severity, and make your move accordingly. Who better to talk about here than one of the most current rebranding success stories, Dominoes Pizza? After accumulating loads of data, including comments from people sitting in on focus groups, the message was clear—people thought their pizza sucked. Dominoes saw that their customer loyalty was at an all time low, came up with a well-calculated plan to fix it, and came out swinging. What did they do? They made a bunch of commercials admitting that they made crappy pizza, but ensured that their new recipe would make customers happy. And apparently it worked big, as profits doubled in 2010.

So when is the right time to make a move and rebrand? I’d say it’s when you have:

• Noticed the signs we discussed in the last blog
• Accumulated plenty of data to support the fact that your brand is in trouble
• A plan of action

Wondering what action to take? Stay tuned for my next entry and I’ll lay it out for you!

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Too many people toil away building a business only to get a small taste of success and then watch it all slip away. But why? How come so many seemingly successful business end up fading away?

I would argue that very often business owners don’t recognize the signs of their dying brand. Maybe they don’t know what to look for. Maybe they’re just so caught up with the day to day operations that they fail to take notice. Whatever the case, it’s essential that you are aware and watchful for the symptoms of a sickly brand.

“Brand” Defined

So how can you learn from the mistakes of others and keep your business—and brand—afloat? Well before I can answer that for you, you need to have a good understanding of what a brand actually is. My definition can be put in the form of a simple equation:

Words + Images + Awareness = Emotion

And emotion leads to profits.

Here’s how it works. First you put pen to paper and find the words that describe exactly what your company stands for. Then you create images to visually communicate those words to your clients and make them aware of your message. As a result, these clients and potential customers experience an emotional response to your company and become loyal, paying customers. Or at least, that’s what happens with a healthy brand.

The Signs That Your Brand is Fizzling Out

Now if you’re brand isn’t healthy, your company is in trouble. Period. You’re at risk of losing it all. That said, you need to know the signs that your brand is on its death bed so you can take action quick. Here are a few things to keep a lookout for:

• You’re hemorrhaging repeat customers. When you’re connecting on an emotional level, customers keep coming back. But once they stop coming back, you have a problem. It’s like a local bank I used to bank with. For the longest time, I was happy with their service and wouldn’t dream of going anywhere else. But then they failed to keep up with the changing times and the larger chain banks that were coming into town. I grew frustrated with the bank and eventually made the move to a larger one. Along with who-knows-how-much of their customer base. Guess whose brand is in trouble? There’s. Do they realize it? Maybe now, but they certainly didn’t do anything about it before I left.
• Your best employees are trying their luck elsewhere (and you just can’t seem to replace them). There are two things going on here. First of all, some of your top team members are opting to try their luck elsewhere. Not good. Maybe they’re going to the competition, which shows they’ve lost faith in your brand and think they can do better elsewhere. And if the top guys have lost faith, you know it will do (negative) wonders for the rest of your staff.
  
  Now typically when you lose a top guy for a legitimate reason, you can do a bit of work and find a replacement. If your brand is thriving, this shouldn’t be difficult at all. In fact, people in your industry will be dying to work for you. But if you find the application and resume stream drying up—well, your brand is choking.
• You’re having difficulty bringing in new customers. A healthy brand is one that is connecting and resonating with new customers. In other words, you won’t have trouble finding new business if things are going the way they should. As soon as you find yourself hitting the wall, not getting any nibbles on the fishing line—take notice.
• Simply put, customers no longer see you as one of the best choices in your field. I can think of a million examples of this one off the top of my head. Let’s start with MySpace. Remember when their name was on the tip of everyone’s tongue? But now, if you ask any random person to name their social network of choice, MySpace won’t be anywhere on the list. They couldn’t keep up with what Facebook was offering, and their user loyalty to their brand diminished.

The bottom line here is this—you have to know the signs that things are heading downhill and be vigilant. Otherwise you may find yourself waking up one day with no clients and no employees. If you can quickly identify the symptoms of a sickly brand, you can make the necessary moves to nurse it back to health.

I’m out of time here, but stay tuned for my follow up—what action to take once you’ve diagnosed your dying brand.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

That’s why I encourage businesses to take a balanced approach to their social media marketing.
Look, no one signs up for Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network so they can be advertised to all day long. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can start to truly engage with your target audience and build deeper relationships with them.

Your status updates shouldn’t be one blatant advertisement after another. If they are, people will start to tune you out pretty quickly. It’s like when you subscribe to a company’s email list, and they bombard you daily with their “biggest sale of the year.” It gets old fast.

Instead, you need to focus on adding value to the experience of your fans and followers. Publish content that they’ll find useful…content they’ll want to share with their friends.

Sometimes, that might be an advertisement-type update about an outrageous deal you’re offering. Other times, it might be a link to a useful article you found. And on some occasions, it might just be a funny picture or video that others might find entertaining.

My point is this. You have to mix things up if you want to keep your followers engaged. If you post the same self-promotional junk over and over again, your audience won’t have any reason to pay attention. And they’ll get tired of seeing their stream clogged with advertisements time and time again.

Focus on bringing value to the conversation, and you’ll see much better results with your social media marketing.

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

In my last post, I told you about an experience I had when I was shopping online for fitness equipment and got taken away from one company’s website because I was distracted by their huge ad for a Facebook contest they were running. I never made it back to that company’s website, and someone else earned my business.

My point in that post was to show you the dangers of giving too much home page real estate to your social media icons, but today, I want to talk about another issue I have with this. In short, I think most Facebook contests are from the devil.

Think about it, what’s really the point of running a Facebook contest? Most companies do it so they can get more fans, plain and simple. They tempt people into “Liking” their company on Facebook so they can be entered to win some sort of prize.

Here’s the problem. It’s an artificial way to inflate your Facebook stats that doesn’t pay off over the long haul. If the only reason people decide to like your company on Facebook is so they can have a chance at getting their hands on a freebie, they’re probably not going to stick around or pay much attention to you after the contest is over. They’ll likely unlike you after the contest is over and they’ve walked away empty handed.

Facebook contests draw too many unqualified entrants to make them worth it, in most cases. I just don’t understand why businesses get so preoccupied with how many fans they have or how much personal information they can gather from people who aren’t in their target audience and have no interest in buying their products or services.

Look, I’m not saying that all Facebook contests are a waste of time and money. When done properly (and within Facebook’s guidelines), they can be helpful for generating some buzz and helping you raise brand awareness among your target audience. But you need to really focus on taking a targeted approach with the marketing of your contest so you don’t get a slew of unqualified fans who you’ll never see a dime from.

What do you think? Have you ever run a Facebook contest before?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

A couple of weeks ago, I spent some time discussing the overuse of social media icons in advertising. Everywhere you look, these Facebook and Twitter icons are clogging up space, distracting customers from what’s really important…deterring them from taking any profitable action for your company.

I want to continue on this same subject by talking about how to use social media icons on your website. If your company is on Facebook and Twitter, there’s a pretty good chance you have links to your pages on your homepage. You might have big Facebook and Twitter buttons on your sidebar, or you may go really overboard and feature your social networking profiles even more prominently in your main homepage banner.

Here’s my problem with both of these tactics. You’re taking up precious homepage real estate with something that drives visitors away from your website. Isn’t the point to keep people on your website so they can dig deeper and become a prospect or a paying customer?

The other day, I was shopping online for some fitness equipment. I clicked on an AdWords ad from some fitness company, and as soon as I arrived to their website, I was greeted with a HUGE banner on the homepage that was promoting a Facebook contest where I could win $250. I clicked on it to see what it was all about, and I was taken off of the company’s homepage and to their Facebook page.

Guess what happened? I got distracted and never made it back to their website. They lost my business because they sent me away from their website.

Look, social networking really is great. It does offer ways for you to connect with new customers, nurture relationships with existing customers, improve your services, and so much more, but you can’t put so much focus on your social networking that you hurt your other marketing efforts.

Personally, the way I go about it is to either place Facebook and Twitter links in the footer of my homepage or only on the contact page. This way, people can still get in touch and connect, but they aren’t distracted from the main message of the website.

Also, I always use a blank target in the HTML so that whenever someone clicks on the social media links, they open in a new window and don’t have to abandon my website. Win win.

What are your thoughts on including social media icons on your homepage?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

To prove his point about the lack of originality on the part of advertisers, Martin Lindstrom taped 60 different car commercials produced by 20 different car companies. He created a montage of these 60 car commercials into a two-minute reel to see if he could tell which clip came from which car company. He couldn’t.

But the automotive industry isn’t the only one guilty of copycat marketing. Take a look at the bottle/can design war going on in beer advertising right now. 2 beer companies now have cold-activated  beer bottles, another has a bottle with grooves on the inside, another has miniature 8 oz. cans, and another has special wide mouth designs. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you which beer company does which. They all blend together because it’s just one knockoff after another.

I can, however, tell you that The Most Interesting Man is a character for Dos Equis. I can tell you this because in a sea of beer commercials focused on bottle design, Dos Equis stands out because they’re doing something totally different.

Want more examples of copycat marketing? Microsoft just opened their new store down here in Houston, and it looks eerily similar to the Apple store. Microsoft simply hijacked the strategy used by Apple and slapped their name on it. Of course, given Microsoft’s origin, this really shouldn’t be that surprising.

My question is what happened to originality in marketing?

Why do companies insist on simply copying what the competition is doing? Just because it’s working for them doesn’t mean it will work for you too, especially not when everyone else starts copying that strategy too.

The whole point of marketing is to try to stand out…to show your target audience that you’re different from the competition so that they’ll choose to do business with you instead of one of your competitors. Whenever you start doing copycat marketing, you’re undermining yourself and stifling your success.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with studying the competition and identifying the things they do well. But you can’t just copy and paste their marketing and expect it to work for you. It’s the companies that dare to do something different and original that see the truly remarkable results.

Take a look at your marketing. Are you guilty of copycat marketing?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

You see them everywhere. On websites, blogs, direct mail pieces, TV commercials, email signatures…even on business cards. I’m talking about social media icons, particularly Facebook and Twitter icons. Companies have taken to including social media icons on all of their marketing materials, with the intent of showing their customers that they’re part of the social movement and to encourage them to connect with their company online.

And you know what? I’m sick of seeing it!

I mean, what are these companies really doing when they place social media icons on their marketing materials? Most times, the icons are just there on their own…no call to action…and on print materials, no URL to their profile pages. Do they honestly expect customers to take the time to search and find their Facebook and Twitter pages? You must be kidding me.

Look, I’m a big believer in social media marketing. I think Facebook and Twitter have given companies the chance to connect with their customers on a deeper level than ever before. Social media is great for building relationships, generating valuable feedback from your target audience, studying the competition, general brand positioning, and so much more. But there comes a point where you have to ask yourself, “What am I really promoting?”

It seems to me like too many companies are promoting the Facebook and Twitter brands rather than their own brands. It’s totally backwards!

I’m especially confused by companies who give large chunks of real estate on their website to their Facebook and Twitter icons, driving traffic away from their websites rather than to their websites. Shouldn’t you be focusing on getting your friends and followers to come to your website to do business with your company? Why would you want to drive them away?

And then there are the companies who slap Facebook and Twitter logos on their direct marketing materials with no URL and no call to action explaining why people should look them up on these sites. If you insist on including these things on your ads, at least tell people what you want them to do and why you want them to do it (e.g. “Follow us on Facebook to get special deals you can’t find anywhere else!”).

What do you think? Am I missing something here?

Leave a comment to share your thoughts on the matter

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Last week, we discussed some of the major symptoms of bad marketing. You might have realized that your company is suffering because of bad marketing, and you might be wondering what you can do to avoid more bad marketing. Later on this month, we’ll get into some specific tactics to help you overcome your past marketing mistakes, but today, I want to focus on changing the way you think. Because that’s where it all starts. Until you get in the right mindset, you will keep making the same mistakes time and time again. You need to understand the following 4 truths about marketing.

1. Quality always trumps quantity—Too many companies get caught up in numbers—the number of likes they have on Facebook, the number of email subscribers they have, the number of people who visit their website, and so on. Numbers don’t tell the full story. Who cares if you have 20,000 email subscribers if nobody opens your emails or responds to the calls to action within? It’s pointless. Rather than focusing on how big the audience is that you’re reaching take a look at the quality of the people you’re reaching. Are they really in your target audience? Are they prone to taking action and being loyal to your brand? If not, you’re wasting your time.
2. Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean they’re right—I can’t tell you how tired I am of copycat marketing. Company A sees that Company B is running a Facebook contest, so they launch their own contest. Company B sees that Company A bought advertising in a magazine, so they take out an even bigger ad. Meanwhile, nobody questions why they’re doing what they’re doing, and at the end of the day, they’re really just flushing money down the toilet.
3. Marketing takes time to produce results—Patience is a virtue. You can have the most brilliant marketing strategy ever, but it’s still likely going to take several months to start to produce results. Unfortunately, we live in a day where companies lack patience and want results now. So, often times, campaigns get cut short, they build no momentum, and the company never sees the results they hoped for because they never give anything a true chance to work.
4. Marketing extends to every aspect of your company—Most people think marketing is just about the look of their website, their social networking profiles, their logo, their advertisements, etc. They forget that the way someone answers the phone when a customer calls is also marketing. They forget that the timeliness of delivery of customer orders is also marketing. They forget that their returns policy is also part of their marketing. It’s all marketing!

What are some other marketing truths?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

Bad, ineffective marketing is all around us. I see the results of it on a daily basis. It’s the reason people end up contacting me. They’ve tried other marketing tactics in the past, and they just haven’t seen any results. So, it’s my job to step in and identify the problems with their marketing and create solutions to get the results they desire.

Are you suffering because of bad marketing? Here are 5 common symptoms to watch for.

1. Your target audience doesn’t know much about you. I like to think of marketing as a tool to educate your target audience. An effective marketing campaign teaches your target audience who your company is, what you offer, and what makes you different from the competition. It educates and inspires.
2. You lose customers because of price. I’ve talked at length about the problems with marketing to price shoppers. If you’re losing customers only because of price, that’s a clear sign that your marketing isn’t communicating the value and quality of your offerings. It’s also a sign that you’re going after the wrong type of customer.
3. You’re not getting anymore quality leads. This is pretty simple. If the leads have stopped flowing in (or maybe they never came in at all), your marketing isn’t working. Period. Good marketing will generate leads through your website, it will have your phone ringing, and it will ultimately help you get more sales. The proof is in the pudding. No leads or sales? Bad marketing is likely the cause.
4. You have a major problem with customer retention. A lot of people think marketing is all about attracting new customers. That’s wrong. Sure, good marketing will bring in more people, but it will also help you keep the customers that you already have. A sound marketing strategy will have elements focused on improving your customer retention.
5. Your campaign is just a ripoff of your competition. Too many companies are afraid to stand out. They simply want to play it safe and do what everyone else is doing, but guess what, that’s not playing it safe at all. Instead of modeling your campaign after what everyone else is doing, you should be looking to find ways that you can do things differently so you will stand out in a crowded marketplace.

What are some other symptoms of bad marketing?

About The Author

Brian Waraksa

One of the questions I get asked most often from prospects and current clients is “Should we redesign our logo?” Logo redesign is often an important part of the branding process, helping to keep a company’s look fresh and relevant. But the truth is, redesigning a logo isn’t always necessary, and it’s not always the most important tactic a company needs to deploy.

I always tell people that your logo doesn’t necessarily have to change, and it definitely shouldn’t be the first thing you focus on if you’re trying to build your business and get more sales. It all comes down to creating a sound strategy first, then deploying the right tactics later (see my post on Tactics vs. Strategy).
The truth is that just creating a new identity or slapping a new logo on your marketing materials isn’t going to bring you more business. That’s not to say that the design of your logo isn’t important, because it is. But it shouldn’t necessarily be your top priority.

In my opinion, the best time to redesign your company logo is after you’ve outgrown the original. Here’s an example of what I mean:

A small business gets launched with a limited budget. They don’t have the funds to hire a professional graphic designer, so they either hire a cheap designer or come up with a basic logo themselves. The logo doesn’t always capture their true brand identity; it’s just there. Filler. Later on, when they have more money to invest in their brand, they consider redesigning their logo to better fit the identity they’re trying to create.

90% of the time, people who come to me looking for a logo redesign fall into this category.

Another time that you might need to redesign your logo is if the actual wording or image doesn’t really reflect what you do anymore. For example, let’s say your company started out as a residential painting service, but over time, you added full general contracting (electric, plumbing, reconstruction, etc.). If your old logo mentioned the word “painting” or had a logo that played off your painting services, it would no longer truly reflect the current identity of your company. So, it’d be a good idea to redesign it to capture your new identity.

And sometimes, logos just look outdated. Times change, and what looked cool 10 years ago might look stale and outdated today. A simple logo makeover could help your company look current and trustworthy. You don’t have to completely scrap your logo, but just slightly updating it to look more modern could help. Pepsi gives their logo a facelift every few years for this exact reason.

So, what do you think? Is it time to redesign your logo?

When it comes to marketing your company, you have two basic options: you can either handle all of your marketing in house or you can hire a marketing firm to do it for you. Most companies opt to hire an outside marketing consultant for several reasons:

• .They don’t have the time to handle their own marketing
• They lack the in-depth knowledge to create effective marketing strategies
• They don’t have the budget to hire in-house marketing consultants

These are all excellent points to consider, especially the last point. If you’re running a small business, you probably can’t afford to hire even one extra employee to manage your marketing campaign, considering the costs of salary, vacation time, healthcare, etc.

Hiring a marketing firm can not only save your company money, but it also lets you get connected with experienced marketing professionals who have the knowledge and resources to help you get good exposure for your business.

Of course, not all marketing companies are the same, so it’s important that you take your time when choosing the marketing firm you want to work with.

You should plan on interviewing at least 2 or 3 marketing companies before making your decision. Prepare a list of questions that include the following:

• What is your experience? You don’t want your company’s fate to be in the hands of someone who’s learning on the job. You need an experienced marketing company that has a proven track record of helping businesses grow. The best marketing companies will be able to show you a strong portfolio and provide references.
• How will you determine which tactics to use for my company? No two companies are the same, so your company shouldn’t get stuck with a one-size-fits-all marketing campaign. A good marketing company will take the time to truly get to know your company and your objectives, using this information to develop a strategy and determine which tactics are best suited to your needs.
• Will you track the results of my campaign? You need to know you’re not just throwing money away on your marketing. A good marketing firm tracks everything to show you the results your campaign is generating.
• How much will this cost? While you should never choose a marketing firm based on price alone, the reality is that you have a budget to consider. Make sure you’re getting a good value on your marketing.

What are some other questions to ask when interviewing a marketing firm? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

No matter what line of work you’re in (web design, residential contracting, auto repair, etc), you’re always going to run into customers who try to talk you down on your price. While there’s nothing wrong with some healthy negotiating, it’s a huge red flag whenever a customer’s only concern is the price.

Not a week goes by that I don’t get phone calls or emails from people who want to know “how cheap” I can design a website for them or design a logo for their company. They don’t ask about the quality of my work or my design process; they just want to know if I’ll do it cheaper than the other guy.

In the past, I took on a few of these projects. I convinced myself that I could still make it profitable, even at the lower price. I even tried to establish terms up front with the customer outlining what I would do for them at the discounted price.

Every time I’ve ever gone into business with a price shopper I’ve regretted it.

Why?

First of all, price shoppers are always more trouble than they’re worth. Cheap customers always expect more, no matter what the terms are up front. In short, they want more work for less money. And they’re often very demanding about it. It’s a huge headache.

Another issue is that I don’t want Raxa Design to be known as the company to go to for cheap work. If you start to take on price shoppers, it can be easy to paint yourself into a corner to where you’re only getting low quality clients. I don’t know what it is, but one price shopper tends to lead to another. It’s hard to dig yourself up out of that hole once you’re in it.

Then there’s the fact that price shoppers are the most disloyal customers out there. If someone agrees to do business with you based only on the fact that you have the lowest price, they’re going to ditch you as soon as someone cheaper comes along. I’d much rather go into business with someone I can build a long-term relationship with based on a number of unique things I can offer to them.

No matter what business you’re in, I highly recommend looking for any USP other than price. Price wars are a fight to the bottom, and the quality of customer you attract is as bad as it gets.

Remember, this isn’t Auction Hunters or Storage Wars. The best price doesn’t win. You shouldn’t treat your business identity so carelessly; otherwise, customers won’t take you seriously.

What do you think? Leave a comment to let us know!

Creating a brand doesn’t happen overnight, nor is it as easy as just putting out a company with a logo or mascot and hoping that it sticks by drowning customers in your marketing rhetoric. And while every marketing firm out there will talk in circles about “branding” and “voice”, it all really boils down to three elements: words, images, and emotion. Or rather, to create a brand, you combine the right words with well-crafted images to elicit an emotional response from the customer. This A+B=C equation of branding is the key to getting your company to register at a deeper level with customers, who will remember your brand and all it represents when they’re getting ready to make a purchase.

Let’s look at the three steps…

Choose the right words: Once you know what your company sells, you need to know what it stands for. What are the values it promotes? What values to your target customers hold dear? What word do you want the customer to immediately think of when they see your logo? To start write down a list of the values and words you want associated with your brand. It may seem like an overly simple starting point, but you’d be surprised how many companies jump straight into marketing their product without first thinking through these basic points. This list marks the first step to creating that spark that will make your brand catch on like wildfire.

Craft your image: Now that you know what you stand for, it’s time to figure out how to show it. When it comes to imagery, whether static or moving, you need to focus on two things: your company’s story and the values it represents. A well-chosen image can make all the difference in the world. From the big picture down to the tiniest details within, which the customer may only notice unconsciously, it all inspires them to feel one way or another about your brand; this applies to pictures in advertising as well as the general image your company presents of itself through stationery, website design, delivery vehicles, etc. The image you craft for your brand can work for or against you in assuring potential clients that you’re the company for them. The right combination of overt and covert cues in your images can be the difference between clients calling you or your competitor.

Inspire an emotion: No one remembers a company that elicits apathy; an emotional response is the key to getting your brand to stick in their mind. Unfortunately this is a double-edged sword, as customers are just as likely to remember you for a good branding message as they are for a bad one. This is why finding that perfect pairing of message and imagery is so important: how you present yourself can inspire positive reactions as easily as it can negative ones. If your customer can look at your brand and associate it with positive values and emotions, they’re going to remember you when it comes time to make a purchase.

And that’s when you know you’ve successfully built a brand.

The bottom line? Branding isn’t about a logo and giving it mass exposure, it’s about getting customers to connect with your company in a positive way. If you can do that, then the world of marketing is your oyster.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this blog venting about companies who are afraid to take chances and afraid to stand out in the crowd. Too many companies want to “play it safe” and blend in with all their competitors. But the fact is that’s not safe at all. Blending in is the most dangerous thing you can do. It hampers your success and makes you completely replaceable in the eyes of your target audience.

So, you know that it’s important to stand out from your competition, but how exactly can you do that?

• Pay attention to your customers’ feedback—Nobody knows what makes your company different better than your customers. You need to pay attention to the things they say about your company and your products. What is it that leads them to buying from you and not your competitors? If you’re not currently getting any feedback from your customers, try to do so through surveys, asking for testimonials, and monitoring the social media space.
• Study the competition…then do something different—Competitive analysis is an important part of developing a marketing campaign. Unfortunately, most companies go about it all wrong. They study their competitors and then try to mimic them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to identify the things your competition is doing that are working, but if you want to stand out, you need to figure out what you can do differently. Zig when they’re zagging.
• Create a basic marketing message—I always like to create a simple marketing message that acts as a foundation for the rest of the campaign. For example, Burger King says you can “have it your way,” and all of their advertisements play off of that theme. This is their differentiator, and they make sure that you always know it.
• Stay on point—It’s hard to develop a recognizable brand identity if you’re always changing your message. Once you’ve created your basic marketing message (your foundation), stay on point. Everything you do should emanate from that basic marketing message.

What are some of the things your company has done to stand out from the competition? Share your experiences by leaving a comment below.

Any time I take on a new client, I put them through a basic interview process that helps me get more familiar with their brand and their business objectives. One of the first (and most important) questions I ask customers is “Who is your target audience? Be as specific as possible.”

Unfortunately, more times than not, the client gives a generic answer that basically says they want everyone to be their customer. They want their brand to appeal to all people. They want everyone to love their company.

And while that sounds nice in theory, the reality is that your company can’t be all things to all people.

See, when you try to create a marketing campaign that appeals to everyone, you end up with a watered down message that’s stale and ineffective. You end up with products and services that blend in with all the other crap that’s flooding the marketplace. And you end up competing against so many other companies for that huge slice of the pie that you have no chance at all of standing out and achieving success.

That’s why I prefer to take the sniper approach to marketing rather than the shotgun approach. I believe in narrowing down my target audience to a very specific type of person so that I can create more targeted marketing messages that truly speak to their needs and have stronger emotional appeal. It’s all about choosing your slice of the pie as carefully as possible.

So, how can you identify your ideal client?

• Make a list of the characteristics of your best clients—I’m a firm believer in the idea that there are good customers and bad customers for every business. Bad customers are the ones who are never satisfied, want something for nothing, and show no loyalty. Good customers are the ones who love your products and services, refer business your way, and remain loyal. Identify the shared characteristics of your best customers so you can find more people like them.
• Describe the demographic—What’s the age, gender, income, location, and general background of your typical customer? The better you know the demographic, the more effectively you can target them.
• Determine the problem—What is the biggest problem(s) your product solves for your target audience? What’s their pain point?
• Understand their values—What’s most important to your target audience? What do they look for when buying the products and services your company offers? What are some of their values?

How well do you know your target audience?

In the early days of my business, I accepted these projects without hesitation. Hey, you want me to design a brochure for you? Bring it on!

But lately, I’ve felt, let’s just say, unfulfilled. And maybe even a little guilty to be honest.

The truth is, many companies out there are haphazardly employing marketing tactics without creating an overall strategy. They think that simply printing up a brochure will help their company, but they don’t take the time to question why they need that brochure or how it will fit into their overall branding efforts. And in the end, they wind up with a mish-mash of marketing tactics that don’t add up to anything special.

That’s why I’ve started asking people who want to use me to work on a single piece of marketing collateral a simple question “Why?” I ask them why they want that brochure, that website redesign, that magazine ad, or that direct mail piece. I ask them what they hope to accomplish with it, and I ask them how it fits into their overall marketing strategy.

You see, there’s a difference between tactics and strategy. Too many times, businesses focus only on the tactics, paying no attention to how everything ties together in their overall marketing campaign. When the truth is, they should be taking the opposite approach.

They should first focus on creating a sound marketing strategy. And to do that, they need to:

• Identify their goals as a company
• Learn as much as possible about their target audience
• Study the competition’s strengths and weaknesses
• Create a unique selling proposition to differentiate themselves from the competition
• Determine the best marketing tactics for spreading their message effectively to their target audience

See, the tactics are actually the final piece of the puzzle. Deploying various marketing tactics, whether it be social media, direct mail, SEO, etc., is actually the last step of the marketing process. You can’t start using these tactics until you’ve identified the reason for using them.

Simply put, a strategy is an idea, a realization of how you can achieve your goals. Tactics are the actions you take to implement the strategy.

You want to know what the most frustrating part of being a marketing consultant is? It’s making clients understand that they shouldn’t be trying to mimic what their competition is doing. It’s making them understand that they want to stand out in the crowd, not blend in.

I’m a huge fan of Mad Men, so I’ll let Don Draper explain:

“Success is related to standing out, not fitting in. One wants to be the needle in the haystack, not the haystack.”

BINGO!

Sure, it might be more comfortable for you to blend in with the competition. When you stand out, you open yourself up for criticism. You put yourself out there for everyone to see. And frankly, that can be a little nerve-wracking.

But the simple truth is that if you want your company to be remarkably successful and not just average, you have to be willing to separate yourself from the pack. Because when you settle for being just another copycat company, your put very tight limits on your success.

Think of it this way. If your company looks and sounds like all of your competitors, why would any customer choose to do business with you instead of the competition? To the customer, you’d all be the same, so it wouldn’t really matter who they chose.

Just last week, I had a client who wanted Raxa Design to create a new logo for his company. We presented him with a few options, and he decided that he wanted something that was “more like the other companies in (his) industry.”

I was perplexed. Why would you want your logo to be indistinguishable from the logos of your competitors?

Look, I’m not picking on this client. Believe me, not a week goes by that I don’t deal with this exact situation.

I’ve had clients who want my copywriter to basically rewrite the copy their competitors use on their websites. I’ve had clients who want us to create marketing collateral that looks just like those used by their competition.

It’s easy to get caught up in focusing on what has worked for your competition in the past. And it is important to conduct a thorough competitor analysis. But if you ever want to surpass your competitors, you shouldn’t be focusing on what has worked in the past; you should be trying to figure out what will work next, in the future.

Before you employ any marketing tactic, ask yourself “Why am I doing this?” Is it because it will yield a measurable result for your company? Or is it because it’s what everyone else is doing, so you feel like you need to do it to?

Stop mimicking the competition and start finding ways to differentiate your company. Dare to be different.

So, you’re thinking about starting an email marketing campaign? Congratulations. Email marketing is one of the most profitable marketing tools available at your disposal. It’s great for improving customer loyalty, turning prospects into customers, and building your brand.

But to get the most out of your email marketing campaign, you need to avoid the common mistakes that ruin campaigns. Here are 7 newbie email marketing mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Buying your email list

Cutting corners isn’t the way to build a successful email marketing campaign. A bought list will never perform as well as a list that you legitimately build on your own. That’s because the people on that list that you bought aren’t interested in what you have to say. They didn’t subscribe to hear from you, so they’ll tune you out.

Mistake #2: Emailing your subscribers way too often

One of the top reasons subscribers stop opening emails and/or eventually unsubscribe from a list is because they’re being contacted too often. Don’t overdo it with the emailing, because your subscribers will tune you out.

Mistake #3: Not paying attention to the CAN-SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that governs commercial messages. You have to make sure your business is totally compliant with this law, otherwise you could yourself in trouble. Click here to read about the CAN-SPAM Act.

Mistake #4: Not including ways for subscribers to share your content

The best way to spread your message far and wide is to provide a way for your subscribers to easily share your content with their friends. Your emails should have “Forward to a friend” links as well as social media links that allow for sharing of content over Facebook, Twitter, and other outlets.

Mistake #5: Ignoring subscriber feedback

If your subscribers offer feedback about your email marketing campaign, take note. They may tell you about which type of subject matter they’re most interested in receiving, or they may offer suggestions for improving your emails. Take this feedback seriously, and act on it.

Mistake #6: Not testing

Test everything. Test out different subject line variations, message lengths, link placement, personalization, and more. This is the only way you’ll discover how to get the best open and response rates for your emails.

Mistake #7: Relying only on email marketing

Email marketing is great, and it offers many benefits. But it’s not enough on its own. Your email marketing efforts should be a part of a much bigger, cohesive marketing campaign.

What are some other email marketing mistakes marketers need to avoid? Share your tips by leaving a comment below.

Here are 7 easy ways to get more Twitter followers.

1. Get listed in Twitter directories—There are a number of popular Twitter directories out there you can get a categorized listing in, such as WeFollow, Twellow, and JustTweetIt. When you claim your listings, make sure to categorize your profile properly so searchers can find you.
2. Include a Twitter badge on your website—Embed a badge on your website showcasing your Twitter profile. You can have a static badge that links to your profile or an active Feed that shows your latest Tweets.
3. Put your Twitter info on your print marketing materials—You can include your Twitter address on your business cards, advertisements, brochures…you name it. The more you get it out there, the more followers you’ll get.
4. Hold a contest—I’ve seen a number of different companies use Twitter to host contests, helping them build brand recognition. For example, you could offer a giveaway once you hit a certain number of followers.
5. Be worth following—No amount of promotion is going to get you a lot of loyal followers if the content you Tweet sucks. Simply put, make sure you’re Follow-worthy.
6. Rub elbows with influencers—Identify the influencers in your niche and start interacting with them. ReTweet their content, engage in conversations with @replies, and do whatever it takes to get their attention. Eventually, they may start ReTweeting you and talking you up to their followers.
7. Use hash tags wisely—By adding #hashtags to your Tweets, you make your content easier to be found. This is a way of categorizing your Tweets so people who are interested in the subject can find it and follow you.

What are some of your tricks for attracting more Twitter followers? Share them by leaving a comment below.

Still not convinced of the importance of email marketing? Don’t think it’s an effective tool your business can use to profit? After you see these 10 shocking statistics (all courtesy of www.EmailStatCenter.com), you’ll think again.

1. 94% of daily email users subscribed to marketing messages in 2010
2. 57% of internet users worldwide said they are more apt to buy a product in a store after getting a marketing email.
3. For every dollar spent on email marketing, marketers can expect about $40-$45 ROI.
4. 42% of consumers said the best way to receive ads for sales and specials is via email.
5. US Internet users engage with an average of 11.8 brands via Email, compared to 9.4 brands via Facebook and 7.9 brands via twitter. –
6. 56% of US Internet users interact with brands only via marketing emails, compared to 1.3% who interact only via twitter and 0.7% by Facebook.
7. If email was a country, its 1.4 billion users would make it the largest in the world. Bigger than China, bigger than the populations of the USA and European Union combined
8. 59% of email users spend more than 20 minutes a week with permission email and 27% spend an hour or more weekly.
9. Marketing e-mails using a house list are seeing an average open rate of nearly 20%, a click-through rate of 6.64% and a conversation rate of 1.73%
10. More than one-half of adults said they were likely to open an e-mail containing promotions or coupons, and 30% said they would forward such an e-mail to others, up from 28% in 2008.

Whether you like it or not, email marketing is still alive and well. Email can be a powerful tool for lead generation, building customer loyalty, driving sales, branding, and so much more. And the great thing about email marketing is that everything can be tracked easily, so you know if it’s getting results for you or not.

Does your company have an email marketing campaign? How is it working for you?

Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

1. Reply to @mentions—The first thing I do each time I get on Twitter is look to see if I have any new @mentions. These could be from other people ReTweeting your content (thank them for doing so), or it could be from customers who have a question, complaint, or compliment (respond to them). Replying to @mentions helps to keep the conversation going.
2. Monitor all brand and product mentions—Twitter is an essential tool for monitoring your brand’s reputation. Set Twitter alerts for keywords related to your brand and products. This way, you’ll get notified anytime something related to your company gets mentioned on Twitter, and you can respond to it in a timely manner.
3. RT interesting content—A little ReTweeting makes the Twitter world go ‘round. Spend a little time each day RTing content that you find interesting.
4. Interact with your followers—Twitter is all about building a community and creating relationships with your target audience. You can’t do this unless you actually take time to interact with them. Spend a little time each day chatting it up with your followers. Remember, be a good listener.
5. A little self-promotion—There’s nothing wrong with a little self-promotion on Twitter, but you have to be careful not to overdo it. Tweet out a link here and there to your blog posts or to a special promotion your company might have, but just don’t overdo it.

• Unique design—Standing out from the competition means you need to look different. And the right graphic design company can help you do that first and foremost by creating a unique logo. This logo will be the first thing many of your potential customers see, and should set the right tone for your company. With that in mind, make sure your design company specializes in logo design.
• Consistency throughout all your materials—Once your design company creates your logo, they’ll know exactly where and when to use it in your marketing materials. By being consistent with your logo and message, they’ll ensure that your brand gets burned into your customer’s mind. This goes for your tagline as well.
• Purpose for each image—For your brand to truly pop, your graphics need to have a sense of purpose. All graphics on your brochures, cards, flyers, and website should be meaningful. That means they need to connect with what you’re saying. Just like every sentence of your copy should focus on your selling points, so should your graphics. Failing to use meaningful graphics will compromise your message and make your company seem dull.
• Professionalism throughout—Above all, you need to keep things professional. However, often people’s vision of professional entails the mundane. But let’s be clear here—professional does not equal boring. Instead, it means the above traits and more. Professionalism is giving the appearance that you know what you’re doing and you can be trusted by your clients. And clean design can help set that tone for you. On the other hand, if your design looks like you did it yourself in the Paint program, then your brand won’t exude trustworthiness. And your business will suffer.
• Get  your brand out there—Design companies that offer SEO truly provide you with the complete branding package. After all, the above qualities won’t do your brand much good if no one knows about it, right? An SEO company can do the tough work for you, and get your logo and message seen online. And with over 80% of buyers using the internet at some point in the buying process, it’s becoming more clear than ever that your online presence is one of the most crucial pieces of your marketing plan.

At last check, Facebook had about 500 million users. And people who are active Facebook users spend about an hour a day on the site. In fact, Facebook is the second most visited site on the web.

But by now, you already know all of this. You know that your business needs to be active on Facebook, and you may have already created a profile for your company. But the truth is just having a Facebook page isn’t enough. You need a page that’s truly special…one that is customized to reflect your band’s image…one that gives people a reason to visit it and share its content with their friends.

Savvy businesses have begun to understand the power of custom Facebook pages. From Michelin to Lucky Brand, companies of all sizes, from all industries are beginning to create strong, engaging profiles on Facebook.

But when it comes to really using Facebook creatively and effectively, perhaps no other company does a better job than Walmart. On Walmart’s Facebook page, the company offers Groupon-like deals to get crowds involved. For example, they are currently running a CrowdSaver deal where users can get 3 video games for $39. The catch is that 2,000 people have to “like” the deal for the offer to go active.

This works because it gets people involved and gives them an incentive for sharing Walmart’s content with their Facebook friends. And it’s all because Walmart has a custom Facebook page rather than a generic, lifeless profile.

Tips for Building Your Own Facebook Page

Thinking about customizing your own Facebook page for your business? Here are some simple tips to help you out.

• Don’t go overboard with the apps—It can be tempting to load your Facebook page up with a bunch of different apps, but there is a real danger of overloading your page and overwhelming your visitors. Keep your apps in separate tabs, and make sure each one serves a useful function.
• Display different pages for fans and non-fans—Facebook gives you the ability to display different landing pages for fans and non-fans. This lets you create a page that encourages non-fans to become a fan as well as pages for engaging current fans to take another action.
• Focus on generating participation—The power of social media marketing lies in its ability to spread content far and wide through the participation of users. Your Facebook page should get users involved. It should have content they care about, and it should give them an incentive to share that content with their friends.

Does your business have a custom Facebook page?

Are you thinking about hiring a graphic design firm to create your marketing and advertising materials? If so, you probably already know that there are dozens of design companies for you to choose from. You also probably know that not all of these design companies are the same. If you choose the wrong design company, you could end up causing damage to your brand and wasting your money.

So how can you be certain that the logo design and graphic design company you choose is right for your needs? Here are the most important traits to look for in your design company.

1. Experience—You want to make sure the graphic design firm you hire has proper experience handling all types of design work. The design industry is plagued with newbie freelancers and inexperienced companies that simply don’t know what they’re doing. You need a company with a proven track record of delivering quality designs in a timely manner. Experienced companies will be likelier to take a professional approach than a new design firm.
2. Familiarity with your industry—It’s important that your design firm actually understands your company and knows the challenges you face building a presence in your industry. The best design company will have worked within your industry in the past, so they’ll have an idea of what type of designs work best with reaching your target audience.
3. Complete branding services—In addition to offering design work, it’s also important that your design firm offers complementary services like copywriting, internet marketing, SEO, and more. This way, you don’t have to hire a bunch of different companies (e.g. copywriting firms, SEO companies, etc.) to handle all of your marketing needs. Everything will come from under one roof, so you get a more consistent branding and marketing campaign.
4. Good listening skills—Design is a cooperative process. It’s important that the graphic design firm you choose actually listens to you. You want them to pay attention to your needs, understand your goals, and incorporate your feedback into the final design they create. Too many design companies ignore clients and act independently, leaving clients unsatisfied.
5. A strong portfolio—Before you hire any graphic design firm, you need to see examples of their work. The best design companies will be happy to show you samples of logos, websites, print ads, etc. that they have created in the past. If a design firm can’t show you a portfolio of their work, don’t do business with them.

If you run your own business, there’s no need to be a web design expert. There are plenty of companies out there who can wear that hat for you. However, before you hire someone to handle your web design, it’d be a good idea to have some basic web design knowledge. Here are a few things you should know:

• Your graphics should match your content—It’s nice that you want to show off that picture of your baby grandson or your new puppy. But your business webpage isn’t the place to do it. It’s also great that you love Superman or you have a crush on Angelina Jolie. But again, your webpage isn’t the place to show this. Try a personal Facebook page instead. For your business site, you want all your graphics to match up with your content. In other words, business related.
• Flash = bad—We’ve had small business owners approach us for sites envisioning some awesome flash intro leading into an equally flashy flash site. Flash, flashy, flash! Look, we understand that flash looks cool. But you’re not out to look cool are you? You’re out for two things: to get found in the search engines and to sell your products or services. With that in mind, please understand… flash will keep you from doing both.
• You’re going to pay a bit for professional design—Found someone who is going to build you a site for 99 bucks? Good luck! Web design is like anything else. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Your website will be an integral part of your business. Perhaps even your focal point. So you need to be ready to spend a few bucks to get it put together right. Don’t cut corners. Now having said that, at the same time you don’t want to get ripped off either. Do your homework and find out what prices are average.
• Keep things small—Back on the topic of graphics, you need to make sure you keep things small. You don’t want huge graphics or other files for a variety of reasons. Mainly due to the way in which they slow down your site. The last thing you need is a site that takes 5 minutes to load. Guess how many paying customers will come through your site then? ZERO.
• The content might not read exactly like you want—Often when you hire a web designer you’ll get the added benefit of having a professional copywriter put together your content. In this case, talk to the copywriter and give them all the information about your business and your vision that you can. However, keep this in mind: when the writer finishes, your content may not read exactly like you planned. Don’t worry about it. Your copywriter will be a professional at writing sales material. Go with his instincts!

Can you think if any other web design basics you should know? Talk about them in the replies.

The New Year is here and everyone is making their New Year’s resolutions. And chances are most of them read something like: lose weight, exercise, eat healthy, etc. Rather than make the same old resolutions that you never keep, why not make some for your business? More specifically, you should set goals for redefining, expanding, and capitalizing on your web presence.

Not sure where to start? Here are a few sample New Year’s web resolutions for you.

This year I’m going to…

• Create a mobile web presence—There’s no denying that more and more people are accessing the web with their mobile devices. Who knows, the days of the desktop PC may soon be behind us. With that in mind, how does your site look on your customer’s iPhone? If you haven’t had someone create a mobile site for you, then we promise your site doesn’t look good. And if your site isn’t functional for a mobile user, then you’re losing business. Period.
• Climb the search rankings—A lot of people pay for a spiffy looking website and have it “search engine optimized” in the process. But let’s be clear here—SEO isn’t a one time deal. Just because a designer builds your site with optimization in mind doesn’t mean your site is going to start the climb to number one on Google. To get those sorts of results, you need to hire someone to perform ongoing SEO work for your site. You need someone out there fighting the good fight for you, building quality links.
• Simplify my website—Gaudy, flashy websites are fine for band websites and things of that nature, but not for your business. Your potential customers want to visit a site that looks professional, but it easy to use. For that you need a clean, simple design. Something that looks great but doesn’t overwhelm the viewer. That said, if you have a flash intro on your site, you definitely need to rethink your design.
• Get into social media—Twitter and Facebook are all the rage—and neither shows any signs of slowing down. And truthfully, social media can help grow your business. It can get you out in front of people who wouldn’t otherwise see you. It can make you seem more personable to your clients, as they get to converse with you on an individual basis. It can help you get better customer feedback. Frankly, the benefits of social media are seemingly endless. The only downside is, like anything else, it takes time to do right. That’s why you should consider hiring someone to handle it for you.

So in this New Year, forego the usual resolutions. Make some of the above for your business.

I know this is a design blog, but I’ve always been a firm believer that a great design is totally ineffective if not paired with the right words. To me, the best websites (and other marketing/advertising materials) are the perfect combination of clean design and powerful copy. When both the look and the words are just right, that’s when you have a website that converts visitors at a high rate.

But what makes for good website copy? Here’s a simple checklist you should use to grade the content of your site. Great copy is…

• User-focused—Too many companies get caught up in talking only about themselves. Their websites are full of “we”, “I”, “us”, and not enough “you”s. Here’s a little piece of advice. Nobody cares about you. Customers don’t care about your company or how great you think you are. All they want to know is how they’ll benefit by doing business with you. Focus on the user, not on yourself.
• Optimized for the search engines—I’ve talked pretty extensively about SEO on this blog. A well-optimized site includes content that is targeted around specific keywords relevant to your products and services. Just make sure you don’t overdo it with the keywords. You want your copy to sound natural, not spammy and robotic.
• Easy to scan—Did you know web users tend to scan content rather than read it word for word? It’s true. With that in mind, you need to organize your copy in a way that it’s easy to scan. How can you do this? Use short paragraphs, bulleted lists, subheads, and bolded phrases to guide the eyes to important messages.
• Focused on the benefits—Again, it all comes down to letting readers know how they stand to benefit by using your product or service. Rather than getting caught up in the technical specs and features of your product, explain the end benefit of using it. For example, the benefits of driving a hybrid car are that it saves you money on fuel costs and is good for the environment. There’s no need to get bogged down with the technical aspects of how it works.
• Inviting and easy to understand—I always say—write like you talk. I can’t stand it when I come across copy that’s full of jargon and that reads like a corporate handbook. Be personable and friendly with your copy. It helps you connect better with your customers.

Take a look at the copy on your website. Could it be better?

It seems to be a growing trend. Small business websites with owner headshots integrated into the design. You see it on lawyer sites, real estate agent sites, even some web designer sites. It seems as if the headshot might work for virtually any type of small business web page.

But the question is this: is it a good idea to make your headshot a prominent piece of your design? The following details some of the pros and cons.

Pro: It helps you get personal.

When a potential customer sees your photo prominently displayed on your homepage, it can make them feel a bit more comfortable. That’s because they get the feeling that they’re dealing with a real person rather than some business conglomerate. In turn, that can make the customer feel like you’ll be more than just a number. Maybe you could even be friends! And friends take care of one another. See where we’re going with this?

Con: You can’t just use any photo.

You certainly don’t want a photo that looks like you took it yourself. Personal is good, but amateur is not. That said, you’re probably going to have to spend some money on having a professional portrait made. And you may even want someone to touch it up for you. Luckily, your graphic design company can cover that aspect for you. And if you really luck out, they’ll have a photographer on staff so they can cover the whole job for you.

Pro: Attractiveness might really mean more business.

Let’s face it. We’re a shallow people. No matter how much we try to get away from it—we can’t. And the sad fact is, the more attractive your picture, the more likely certain people will do business with you. So if you have looks that kill, you really might want to consider integrating a picture into your website. That way you can start slaying the competition.

Con: It’s tricky to do it correctly.

Integrating your photo into the design is tricky business. And it’s going to take a web design company with plenty of experience to pull it off. Otherwise your site is going to end up looking really silly. Not to mention, if the photo is too large, you might end up giving people the impression that you’re stuck up. And no one wants to do business with a company like that.

The verdict?

So should you integrate your photo into your design? Well, the answer still isn’t all that clear. But we can tell you this. If you don’t have a good designer, don’t even think about it. You need a professional who can make the tough choices when it comes to putting your page together.

If you’re really wanting your picture integrated, they’ll know exactly how to do it. And while you’re at it, find a company that does SEO as well. That way they’ll make sure your sophisticated photo is seen all around the web!

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that something wasn’t right with my Facebook. I wasn’t seeing all of my friends’ updates on my wall. It was like some of my friends had just disappeared. When I went to their page, I could see their status updates, but they wouldn’t show up on my wall.

What the heck was going on? I went on a mission to find out.
As it turns out, if you have more than 250 friends, Facebook’s default mode only allows you to see updates from 250 of them on your wall. The rest of your friends are basically invisible to you. What’s the point of that?

So if you have more than 250 friends on your Facebook and you want to see updates from all your friends on your wall, you need to keep reading because I’m going to show you how to fix it to where you can see all of them.

Step #1: Go to your Facebook homepage
Go to Facebook.com, login, and stay on your main homepage. You should see the feed with all the latest updates from your friends. You there yet? Okay. Let’s move on to the next step. Note: There is a difference between home and profile - make sure you are on the home page

Step #2 Change the feed from "Top News" to "Most Recent"
In the top right hand corner you should see two options "Top News" and "Most Recent". Select Most Recent. 



Step #3: Scroll down to “Edit Options”
If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the homepage, you’ll see a blue bar that has 2 links: “Older Posts” and “Edit Options.” Click the link that says “Edit Options.”



Step #4: Change the “Number of Friends” preset
After you click “Edit Options”, a box will pop up with 3 different categories. Under the “Number of Friends” category, you’ll see that you can control how many friends are shown in the Live Feed. The preset maximum is 250. Luckily, you can change this. Just change it to a number higher than the number of friends you currently have (in case you add more friends later). I set mine at 1,000.

That’s all there is to it! You can now see all of your friends in your feed. Time to reconnect with those people you haven’t “liked” or commented on in a while!