Strategy

It really doesn’t matter which type of business you have what matters the most is which strategy you follow to improve your web presence. Web presence plays a crucial role when it comes to enhancing the customer base and earning more ROI in less time. During the past days, businesses used to follow two important methods for improving their customer base that is: 

1. Direct advertising. 

2. Word of mouth

However, in today’s digital era a wide range of options are available for businesses due to access to the internet, it has opened up new ways for businesses that aim to improve their business’s presence on the web and grab the attention of a large audience base that also in a very short span.  

Know what is the Exact Meaning of Improving Web Presence for Your Business

Web presence simple means summing up identities that businesses have created and interaction which have been established online using this identity. These identities can include your business website, pages, social media account, and much more which pop up in the search engine list whenever any of the customers search for your business. 

Web presence is an effective digital salesforce and when businesses try to optimize their web presence they can easily create brand awareness. This digital interaction can help to turn your web visitors into your ideal clients. Once you develop a strong web presence for your business, you will definitely have a huge potential which helps you to retain and attract one through various channels available online. 

Different Way to Consider for Enhancing Web Presence for Your Business 

All types of businesses these days are using various marketing strategies but unable to get the desired and steady stream of customers for their business. No matter whether you have established business or have just started your business what matters for attracting more customers and gaining huge referrals is optimizing your web presence. 

By optimizing the web presence of your business you can easily reach thousands of customers all over the world. As a business entrepreneur if you want to expand your business outside the boundary of your local area then you have to pay attention to improving your web presence. You can develop an effective marketing strategy and can use various proven ways to enhance your web presence in lesser time. 

Optimizing the web presence of your business doesn’t happen overnight, but having a strong web presence is very essential for businesses as it helps them to achieve long term goals. It allows the customer to find your business, communicate with you, trust your brand, and much more. Having a strong web presence can sound quite challenging but if you want to achieve it then you have to plan and implement the right strategy which provides the proven results for your business. There are proven ways which you can adopt to increase conversion rates, customer engagement, traffic, and much more for your business. 

Develop a Website for Your Business

Only 51% of businesses have their business website while almost 97% of consumers are searching online for preaching products or services from the brands. Businesses who have yet now owned their business website are losing end number of opportunities what is waiting with open arms on their way. 

And for enhancing your web presence developing the website and an app for your business can prove to be the first and essential activity. With the help of the expert or mobile app development company, you can portrait an excellent piece that loads quickly on the user’s devices and provide them with updated information about your business product or service which you sell. The website or app crafted by them will be mobile-friendly, eye-catchy and will optimize your business URLs.

Sponsored Advertising

Businesses should leverage other sources to improve their web presence, they can use other sites which allow them to advertise their business online using sponsored advertising. Making advertisement using other websites ensure you to reach more customers from the desired targeted market, websites which allow sponsored advertising can be proven beneficial for your business product or service. Each click on your advertisement can bring more customers and traffic to your business website. And each view done by the customers can ensure customers have exposed your business. 

Stay Active on Social Media Platforms 

Staying active on social media platforms can help businesses to grab the attention of millions of users because the majority of customers might have their account on one or other social media platform. One of the most popular activities on the internet is Social media usage. 

As per the report, around 2.65 billion users use social media platforms worldwide, this number is estimated to jump and reach 3.1 billion by 2021. Hence businesses who want to improve their presence online must utilize the power of social media and must create their business page or account on famous sites like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and many more. 

Facebook has around 2.45 billion active monthly users, hence it will provide you the best way to communicate with your target audience. The use of social media can also help you to get more word of mouth from the customers. You can share posts on Facebook and tweet on twitter to attract your targeted audience and make them know more about your brand. You must include all the information about your business on social sites and also pay equal attention to regular updates about your newly launched product, offers, discounts, and much more. 

Multiple Forms of Content to Attract the Audience

There is no doubt that blogging is one of the effective ways to enhance your web presence online. But you can also use multiple forms of content for attracting your customers, this useful content can help you to define your brand’s voice and also build trust among the customers. Businesses should focus on developing multiple forms of content to provide customers with informative and entertaining on like: 

• Vimeo or Youtube video that represents your brand. 
• Developing infographics. 
• Podcast hosting.
• Creating a case study.
• White paper and ebook publishing. 

When you provide qualitative and unique content to your audience it will surely create a positive image in your customer’s mind and will force them to trust you. You can also convey them to make a purchase by delivering good content which will ultimately increase your business sales. 

Find the Best Match for Your Business!

All online activities togetherly are responsible for creating your brand’s images in your customer’s mind. Hence businesses who want to develop a positive image in their targeted audience’s mind must take extra care while performing various online activities. 

Put your customer’s need on top is the success mantra for all the businesses who want to enjoy a huge audience base and high profit for their business. But businesses who are lacking to have a strong business presence will not receive the desired outcome for their business in this digital world. They can use helpful tips to enhance their web presence and can reach the targeted objectives in lesser time

Gain Exposure! How to Create Brilliant Online Promotional Strategy for Your Coaching Practice

A good sports coach inspires and educates players with the end goal of a team win. The same applies when working as a professional coach.

The tricky part is proving to potential clients you have what it takes to help them achieve their goals. You don’t have the national press coverage of professional sports highlighting your every career move. 

Follow this guide to create a brilliant online promotional strategy for your coaching practice to build credibility and attract paid customers. 

Face Biggest Challenges First

It’s very important to understand your motivation for outreach. All businesses need money, but knowing exactly how a post on social media will cure this problem is important. 

Save yourself time by creating a list of your biggest challenges before taking any action. This list helps you identify your goals and ignore the many distractions available online promising you instant customers.

If you are currently marketing online, divide your list between what works for you and what has not produced any success. 

Research Your Audience

Once you understand your challenges and needs, analyze the needs of your customer. Marketers can’t read the minds of customers, so they use data to prove any assumptions made.

Start with social media analytics tools to get demographic data on your ideal client.  Each social media platform has a different type of user and can help you avoid wasting time with demographics that don’t match your audience. 

With enough data, you can create a buyer persona. A buyer persona outlines details about a person like where they work, education level, family status, salary, gender, and fears. 

By creating a buyer persona, you know your ideal client and can make ads or posts that resonate with them directly.

Promotional Strategy vs. Ideas

A brilliant online marketing plan is a strategy, not a list of ideas. Ideas are great for coming up with targeted design schemes but ineffective when it comes to creating a plan of action. 

Armed with research your ideal client and business needs, your next step is to use your research to decide the most effective tools. Consider the amount of time it takes to execute each tool and whether you have the budget set aside to cover the expense.

Starting a campaign and abruptly ending it is one way to become discouraged. Choose online marketing tools that allow you to maximize time, money, your business goals, and your customer’s buyer persona. 

When you factor in each of these categories, it helps you weed through dozens of irrelevant marketing options online. 

Web Design

Design a professional website that speaks to the needs of your clients. A well-designed website means capturing the attention of visitors and keeping them on each page longer. 

The average visitor’s attention span is 8 seconds which is 1 second less than a goldfish. Pages that are clean and easy to read allow customers to navigate your website, learning more faster.

If you don’t know how to design pages yourself, hire help. Web designers study user experience to learn layouts that attract more clicks to areas you want. If you can’t afford a web designer, there are alternatives. 

Templates exist that allow you to use proven design styles that attract customers. The site helps you capture user data learning stats like which pages visitors click on most.  

Remember buyer personas when choosing page content.  If your ideal client is a parent, it may be beneficial to add a family photo with your bio on the About Us page to connect with potential customers. 

Get Press

Hiring a public relations professional can mean getting access to media contacts who can include you in a story. While you may not get an article specifically about your business, contributing a quote to an existing story builds your credibility.

News coverage means getting exposure to a much broader audience than you might have access to on your own. Add any press you receive to your website to show off your position as a trusted expert. 

Start a Blog

Starting a blog is a great way to attract repeat visitors to your website and optimize your site for search engines. Blogs are an overwhelming idea for some. The responsibility of constantly adding new ideas weekly or monthly seems like hard work.

Automate a series of blog posts through a publishing service to simplify the process. Instead of coming up with new ideas over and over, write several posts when you feel inspired. Schedule the posts over a period of time to keep your blog active.

Remember to keep your posts engaging. Be personable. Tell a story. This blog is a good example of how to capture your audience with memorable posts. 

Learn from Competitors

Competitors who are successful can show you a paved road to getting the results you want. Do an audit of a competitor’s website to determine why customers spend time there. 

Look at the way coaching services are described. There may be keywords or customer needs you are overlooking with your marketing materials. 

The same applies to marketing strategies. Consider advertising where competitor ads are present to gain market share.  

Research tools like Buzzusmo help you learn the types of content that receive the most shares. This is helpful because it can tell you what content is valuable by topic. Review the top content posted to see where you can improve in your messaging.

When to Bring in Help

Online marketing can seem like an endless set of tasks. Without direction, it’s easy to simply move forward with what’s easy instead of what’s an effective promotional strategy.

New online marketers need to keep things simple but not at the expense of business goals. Consider hiring a professional if you are not tech savvy or find yourself adding more strategies than you can manage on your own.

Your goal as a coach is to help clients succeed. Know when to find your own coach who can help you in areas where your expertise falls short. 

Doing so allows you to focus on your craft instead of learning a whole new job. For more information on content marketing, visit our website. 

A Healthy Website: Keyword Strategy Tips for Healthcare SEO

Are you a healthcare provider trying to keep up with SEO?

It can be difficult to understand the significance of optimization as a healthcare provider. Once you’ve made your way through the rigors of medical school, it seems unfair to have to educate yourself in the ways of digital marketing.

Unfortunately for you, SEO makes the internet world go ’round and if you aren’t privy to it, you can easily fall behind your better-prepared competition. But, it’s never too late to learn.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at SEO keyword strategy; tips and tricks to survive in the digital world. You don’t have to be a doctor to get your SEO in tip-top shape, but you do have to be diligent and stay on top of trends as they morph and change on a seemingly week-to-week basis.

Don’t be afraid, it’s only SEO. Let’s get started.

Why SEO Is Important to You

First, let’s talk about the importance of SEO for your practice’s website. It used to be that you would just go to the nearest healthcare provider when something felt wrong. You either have a family practitioner or you go to the walk-in. That’s all changed.

Now, when illness strikes, the first thing someone is going to do is hop on Google and search for what their symptoms mean. Once Web MD’s convinced them that they’ll die if they don’t see a doctor, they’ll google healthcare providers near them.

If you’ve posted up in a smaller town where you’re one of only a few healthcare providers, then maybe you can rely less on your web presence. If you’re in a larger place, your web presence means everything.

Think about what we talked about earlier. The potential patient is going to Google which healthcare providers are near them. This is where your website’s SEO comes in. Knowing which keywords to use to optimize your site is what will bring the patient to you instead of another provider.

SEO Keyword Strategy For Your Practice

The keywords that you use will act as the bait for the new patients. If you treat these potential patients as customers, then you’ll realize that SEO for your healthcare office is similar to SEO for any other kind of young company.

When someone uses a search engine to find out where they should seek help, they might type in what their symptoms are, their location, and what they’re looking to find. You, as the healthcare provider, need to appeal to these search terms by answering the questions before the searcher asks them. 

By using keywords that tell Google where you’re located and what your specialty is, you’ll rise up the search rankings. If you’re a chiropractor in Denver and someone types “back pain Denver” into Google, you want to be on the first page of results. Use appropriate keywords on all of your landing pages to satisfy the search terms.

Local SEO

Local SEO is a relatively new concept. In the last few years, especially with the rise and continued development of smartphones, we’ve seen more people use localized search terms on their phones to conduct map-based searches for things that are near them. 

Local SEO Keywords

To optimize your local SEO, you need to focus as much on the location part as you do on the keywords that bring in traditional users. Your keywords should include your location down to the intersection, your contact information, your hours, and what you do.

These keywords should always appear in your link title and the meta description of your link. The meta description is essentially a free advertisement that Google provides you to appeal directly to the user on the SERP.

Other Local SEO Help

Using Google My Business will help you appear on map-based searches. Fill out all of the required fields stating your information (business name, business type, location, etc.) and your business will always show up when someone’s looking for a healthcare provider with their map app.

Appearing in local search directories will help out your local SEO as well. If you rank highly on online review listings, then you’ll rise up the ranks on the SERP. Directories like Yelp go a long way with bringing in customers, so try to maintain a good rating and promote your positive reviews.

Content Creation

You can really grow your healthcare business by creating and linking to engaging content relating to the healthcare field. This is a great way to use relevant keywords to draw in future patients. Once they arrive at your blog, then you can direct them to book an appointment at your practice.

Blogging continues to be one of the best ways to improve traffic on all sites, healthcare-focused ones included. They allow you to display your personality and establish yourself as an authority on the subjects that you have expertise in.

Researching appropriate keywords with an online keyword tool will help you out, especially in the beginning when you’re still figuring things out. Keyword tools let you know the average number of times that keywords are searched and how many other sites are using them on their blogs. 

It’s good to mix in a healthy amount of buzzworthy keywords in with some more unique phrases. Bring people in with your keyword usage and keep them there with the useful info in your engaging articles.

You don’t want to get in the habit of “overstuffing” your articles with keywords. These are still humans that are reading them, so you should focus on writing creative and helpful content.

Get More Patients Today

Getting your website in good standing should be a high priority for your healthcare practice. If you’d rather stay out of the digital marketing side of things, then you should hire a professional to take care of it for you.

Always consider the fact that many patients are searching online for medical help before they contact a healthcare provider. Having a good keyword strategy for your SEO is super important, as is mastering location-based searches and having a content-driven blog. 

Once you’re seeing more and more patients coming in your doors, you’ll be happy that you sorted all of this out.

Sign up with us for help with digital marketing and writing or visit our blog for more articles on the importance of SEO.

Tips for Success: How to Create a B2B Content Strategy that Attracts New Clients

89% of B2B marketers report that content marketing is their most effective way of bringing in new leads and sales. Which is why a strong B2B content strategy should be the backbone of any marketing campaign.

Not sure where to start? Read out tips below on setting up a successful content plan. 

What Is B2B content strategy?

Chances are, by now you’ve heard about how important a strong content strategy is. However, unless you’ve spent some time focusing on marketing efforts in the past you may not know what B2B content is.

Basically, B2B content is offering valuable information through various mediums to other businesses to mark yourself as an authority in the industry. Not only does this lead to increased traffic and higher Google rankings, but it also increases the number leads your business will bring in.

Know Who You’re Creating Content For

There’s an old marketing adage that states “if you’re talking to no one everyone you’re talking to no one”. The saying still rings true today, which is why it’s so important to know exactly who your content will be geared to.

While target market research is very helpful, we suggest creating an ideal target avatar. This means crafting a fictional character that matches someone that would fall into your demographic.

Give your avatar a name and get detailed. What do they do for a living? How many children do they have? How far did they get in their education?

Then go even deeper. Think about what keeps your avatar up at night. What parts of their day can be made better? Who do they admire? This information should be at the center of all of your content.

What Problem Will You be Solving?

Out of the questions listed above, the most important is what problem will you be solving? Is it a problem that your avatar even knows they have? Do you need to let them know that it’s a problem? Most importantly, how will you educate them on how your product or service fixes the problem?

Another valuable asset in marketing is letting your audience know just how affected they are by this problem. For example, everyone knows that a lack of sleep leaves you with low energy throughout the day, but do they know that not sleeping also increases your risk of heart attack? This is educating your audience on the realities of the problem you’re helping to solve.

Highlighting What Makes You Unique

Unless you’ve landed on an entirely original product, you’re going to have some competitors. Even if your idea is entirely unique, it won’t be long until the copied ideas start popping up. So it’s important to learn how to highlight what sets you apart from similar products and services.

Even subtle differences can give you an advantage over the competition. For example, your product may be more eco-friendly, safer for children, or perhaps a portion of your proceeds goes to a cause your avatar is passionate about. Highlight these differences and incorporate them into your content.

Know Content Type

Not all B2B content lands the same. It’s important to know what type of content your audience is most responsive too. Often these media choices will depend on the industry, for example, fast pace industries may respond better to a short infographic than an in-depth blog.

You may find that your audience responds to a blend of content, like a short blog paired with a video that gives more information on the subject. See where the engagement lies and follow that.

And Where to Publish It

Today there are countless social media platforms and media outlets where you can meet your audience, and trying to get your content on all of them will quickly dry up your marketing budget.

Instead, focus on 2-3 platforms that have been known to attract your type of audience. Don’t just limit yourself to social media either. White label blogging through other sites and media sources is also a great way to get your content in front of the right audience.

Set Clear Goals

And by clear goals, we mean realistic goals. Many businesses expect to start producing content and have the traffic rolling in within weeks. The truth is between audience research, content production, and engagement you’re looking at 4-6 months before you start seeing real results.

Which is why consistency is key in any content marketing campaign. Set a clear and realistic goal on where you would like to be in terms of traffic and engagement in the next 6 months, then an additional marker for a year from now.

Stay on Top of Management

Many businesses start off with a strong content campaign that tends to taper off as time goes on. We get it, your business takes enough time and energy without having to come up with fresh content on a regular basis.

This is where you have a couple of options. You can use a content platform that allows you to create your content in bulk and then slowly leak it out to the public. While this will ensure your content is consistent, it also requires you to invest a high number of hours up front.

Your other option is to hire a content agency that both creates and distributes the content on your behalf. This offers a higher ROI as getting the right kind of content engagement is what these businesses are all about.

Track and Regroup

While we would love to say that most businesses hit their content campaign out the park on the first try, this often isn’t the case. Fortunately, there are a number of analytics tools available to offer insight on which content is performing well and which isn’t.

Once a month take a look at your analytics and try to spot trends. Is your audience responding more to a specific type of content? Is one platform bringing in more leads than another?

Take this information and use it to restructure your content. Remember, your audience will change and it’s up to you to change with them.

Taking the Right Steps Today

The more you know about creating a B2B content strategy, the more successful your content campaign will be.

If you’re ready to start putting some action behind your content, we suggest starting with our article on 4 Actionable Content Marketing Tips.

5 Science Blogs that Nail Their SEO Strategy

Do you operate or write for a science blog? Are you wondering how to get your awesome content seen and heard by the masses? Are you utilizing SEO strategies to get higher rankings?

If not, now’s the time to start!

Unfortunately, there seems to be a disconnect between people and science. Brilliant science articles attract fellow science buffs – but what about everyone else? How can you get quality information out to them?

Science blogs need to market their content much like any other blog. An amazing article on the artists’ brain may get lost in the pages of Google. It may get taken over by the latest Kardashian sighting or Apple iPhone release.

And that just isn’t right. We need to reinforce that important connection between humans and science.

Here are 5 science websites that are killing the SEO game. Use them as inspiration for your own!

Science Blogs Worth Looking at

When we say SEO, what are we talking about, exactly? More than keywords (although they’re important, too).

The site should be easy to navigate. It should use click-worthy titles and social media. It needs to use internal and external linking to establish authority.

Take the PBMCs site, for example.

It has clear, click-through sections. It has a helpful FAQ page. They use text and video. 

Here are some others whose SEO techniques are on-point!

1. Scientific American 

This blog knows the importance of using video as well as text. Not only does Google love video, but so do mobile users. It offers an emotional and authoritarian connection, which is great for science writers.

They also have great headlines:

• “There Is No Such Thing as Conscious Thought”
• “A Novel Way to Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria”
• “How and Why Scientists Redefined the Kilogram”

Are we nerdy, or do those titles make you want to know more?

2. Gizmodo 

This site is great at combining humor and education, bridging that science gap. “There Goes My Dream of a Viking Funeral,” says Bryan Menegus in one hilarious (but informative) article. 

They also know how to use internal linking to their advantage. Click any of their articles and you’ll find them referencing other articles of theirs. Authoritative and (sneakily) promotional.

3. HowStuffWorks

This site is also great at linking. They link back to their own content and cite reputable sources like universities and space.com. This increases their trustworthiness to audiences and the Google bots.

They also have a handy “Related Articles” section at the bottom of each article. This helps keep users on their site.

4. ScienceNews 

Quality is better than quantity – unless you can nail both as ScienceNews does. They post on a regular basis, sometimes even many times a day. But each article is chock-full of relevant, researched info.

They also use the “Subscribe” pop-up, a great way to keep users in touch with their content.

5. Popular Science

This science blog also uses the effective pop-up, offering a “largely ad-free” experience. The ads they do use are smartly placed and not annoying for users.

They have a super navigable page, starting from the toolbar at the top. They have sections such as “Science,” “Tech,” “Military,” and the popular “Video.”

Our favorite feature is the “Roll the Dice” button, which gives you random articles. Within two clicks, we got the articles “Monkeys May Technically Be Able to Talk,” and “The Rise of Personal Computers.” 

Fun, and interesting!

This site is also great at their linking.

Science for the Masses

SEO increases your blog’s credibility, something very important for science blogs. It might put you on Google’s coveted page 1, getting you the exposure you deserve.

Let’s make science popular again!

And while you’re at it, why not hone in your writing skills? Science can be a pretty technical subject. Here are 7 technical writing tips all scientists and bloggers should be using! 

App Design 101: How to Craft a Content Strategy for Your App

Two-thirds of the global population, around 5 billion people, now own mobile phone.

That’s around 60% of the current population, which means mobile phone usage is in the majority.

This is why the mobile apps industry is still growing at an exponential rate. As the needs of mobile phone users change, the industry adapts and undergoes many changes as well.

This might be the reason why it can still be hard to get the right mix of app design and content. If you want to know how you can create a great content strategy for your app, dive in to learn what you should consider.

1. Have a Strategy Before Launching the App

When developing a content strategy, make sure it’s ready before you even launch the app. When you already have an idea of what your app is going to be about, that’s when you can start planning. This is because you also have to take into account the type of content when designing the app.

Your app should have the right sections for the content you want. For example, you want user-generated content on your app. You should then design your app in a way that would accept submissions.

This then brings us to the type of content you want.

2. Determine the Right Type of Content for Your App

You have to consider the type of app you want before you decide on the content. If you want to cater your app toward busy people, for example, you won’t want to publish lengthy articles.

If your app is all about recipes, decide if you want to include step-by-step pictures or videos, too. Then, think of what else you can offer aside from recipes. You can allow recipe submissions, or you can put a comment section so users can chime in.

Remember to focus on the goal of your app. Don’t add other types of content if they don’t align with your app’s purpose.

3. Focus on High-Quality Content

You might think that with mobile apps, shorter content is better. That may be true in some instances, like in the example above, but that’s not always the case.

Even with smaller screen real estate, people still like reading useful information. If your content doesn’t add anything of value to them, they’ll drop your app no matter if it’s short or long.

Instead of focusing on limiting the length of your content, focus on delivering valuable information. Optimize the content in other areas to keep the readers’ attention.

4. Use Short Paragraphs

Because devices have smaller screens, a single paragraph can take up the whole screen. Avoid walls of texts by using shorter paragraphs. Test the content first on a mobile phone before publishing it to get an idea of how readers will experience it.

As you publish more and more content, you’ll be able to get a feel of how long a paragraph should be. We recommend using 2-3 sentences per paragraph. If the sentence is rather long, use 1-2 instead.

Make sure each paragraph also has ample spacing in-between. Otherwise, it would still look like a wall of text.

5. Use Headers to Separate Different Sections

One trick to make the reading experience easier is to use headers, especially if the content is long. They can separate each point in the article into different sections. This makes it easy for a reader to follow through.

Headers can also make it easier for a reader to go back to a certain point in the article. As you know, navigating is a bit harder on mobile phones. It can be harder to find something again as your readers will have to scroll back and forth.

With headers, they can read them instead of the whole section to find what they’re looking for. To make it easier for your users, use the right header tags to make them stand out from paragraphs.

6. Use Legible Font Size and Type

Another consideration when devising a content strategy for mobile phones is the font. It has to be simple, something that people can read without effort from their screens. It should also be in the right size so as not to strain the users’ eyes.

When designing the app, you also have to consider every single person who’ll be using your app. Your user base will likely include those with poor eyesight, old or young. In this sense, it’s a good idea to offer options, such as a bigger font size.

7. Publish Engaging Content

Of course, these tips won’t help if your content isn’t engaging in the first place. As we’ve mentioned above, it should align with the goals of your app to ensure that it’s relevant to your users. If you’re a user and you downloaded a beauty app, you won’t want to know the latest personal finance tips, for example.

You can also deliver personalized content, which takes into account their activities within the app. This shows that you’re catering to their needs, urging them to engage with your app more.  

8. Consider Adding Visual Content

Humans are visual learners, and so they may be more inclined to engage with your app content if it has some visual elements to it. Add infographics or even videos along with your content or as the content. These will make it easier for them to understand the message you’re trying to deliver.

There’s one thing you’ll have to consider when using videos, though. It’s going to use a lot more data than images or a simple text. Consider adding text to accompany the video so your users will have a choice.

If you have a poor app structure, it might not even be able to perform well with videos. Make sure it can handle videos by visiting this website.

Sometimes, you don’t have to go overboard with your graphics. Some relevant images to break up walls of texts can suffice to hold the readers’ attention.

9. Front Load the Important Information

In mobile phones, you have limited chances of grabbing the user’s attention. This heightens the importance of being direct to the point from the get-go.

To give you an example, think of how users read push notifications. There are only a few lines they can see, so apps would have to make sure they can deliver the most important information in 2 lines.

You can have the same logic with app content. The first thing they see should be the content’s main point following the headline. At the same time, it should make them want to know more.

10. Craft Interesting Headlines

Headlines should have a bigger font size to capture the interest of your users, but they should be interesting by themselves. It should be clear as to what the content is about, giving the readers a good idea of what they’ll see when they click it. Make sure to avoid clickbait headlines that might make your users delete the app instead.

Craft interesting content first and then write an interesting headline to go with it. At the same time, it should be short enough for mobile optimization. It shouldn’t take too much room on the space, yet it should be big enough for readability.

This task is going to be a bit tricky with all these considerations. However, as you get a good idea of what makes people click and what doesn’t, you’ll be able to craft good headlines in no time.

11. De-clutter the Screen Space

You need a reader’s full attention as they read through the content. To achieve that, your app design should have minimal clutter that can distract them.

This is becoming more important as humans now only have 8 seconds of attention span as opposed to 12 seconds from before 2000, around the start of the mobile revolution. This is what you’re up against, so don’t make it easier for your users to distract themselves from what’s important.

Depending on the purpose of your app, you may want them to take action. A cluttered space will distract them from doing that. It might even make their user experience unbearable, which will then lead them to delete the app.

12. Optimize the Reading Experience for Touch Screens

Navigating in the small screens of mobile devices is hard as it is; if you want users to interact more with your app and content, you have to make navigation easier for them.

On computers, we have keyboard shortcuts to copy/paste, switch between screens, and more. It’s easy to highlight certain texts and then save it to another application.

On mobile phones, on the other hand, we have limited shortcuts and most of the time, these shortcuts are hard to access and use if the developer didn’t optimize them. You can’t use keyboard shortcuts on mobile phones. As an app developer, you then have to figure out a way to offer shortcuts that will enhance the user experience.

Consider adding buttons for bookmarking, sharing, and such. However, we recommend keeping them hidden but still accessible via a single swipe. This is in line with the tip above to reduce clutter.

This is only an example; you can be as creative in optimizing the space for a great reading experience as you want.

Develop an App Design with Content in Mind

Your content strategy will play into the app design you’re going to end up with. This is why it’s a crucial part of any app development.

If you want to learn more about writing great content, for apps or for the web, check out our other guides now. Join us now for any of your digital marketing needs.

How to Measure the Success of Your Blog Strategy

These days it seems the only marketing advice anyone gets is ‘start a blog!’

And yes, we agree content marketing is effective. But deciding to have a blog for your business is only the first step.

To be truly successful with your content, you need to measure results. Measuring tells you when your strategy is spot-on. It lets you know when it’s time to find a new one.

If you want effective content, learn how to measure blog strategy in our guide below!

Is Content Marketing Still a Thing?

All your marketing friends have been hailing content as king for a while now.

And yes, content is still a big deal. Almost 70% of people would rather hear about your business from an article than an ad.

If you’re selling a service, a product, or even an information campaign, content is still the best way to connect with your consumer. Connecting with your consumer is still the best way to sell to them. So, if you want sales; you’ll need a blog strategy.

Perhaps you’re a marketing manager wanting to modernize. You might be part of a one or two-person operation, who needs to be on top of everything from accounts and logistics to marketing.

Whatever the case, we’ve got your content marketing strategy covered. Read on to learn just what you’ll need to do to ensure success.

Plan for Success

A prize-winning cake only comes from a tried-and-tested recipe, and a successful shopping trip relies on a grocery list.

Similarly, if you want success in your marketing efforts, you’ll need to plan ahead.

There are three basic elements here:

1. Marketing Strategy – to plan your overall sales goals, with your target customer(s) in mind
2. Content Strategy – mapping what information your target customer(s) want, need and actively seek out
3. Content Plan – almost like a to-do list, listing topic ideas, style notes, and specifying which employee or team is responsible for what, with dates for submission, editing, publication, promotion and results analysis

Of the three elements, you should focus most of your attention on the Content Plan.

A successful blog strategy relies on getting content out there and adjusting the program according to results. That’s why our advice is to get your first iteration of topics to the market quickly, so you can measure results and improve future content more quickly.

But before you jump to writing, make sure you pass through the marketing and content strategies.

Blog Strategy 101

Blogs have come a long way since the 1990s. Then, they were often online journals or travelogues.

Today’s blogs are closer to newspaper opinion pieces or magazine content.

Word-of-mouth has always been one of the most reliable lead generators for businesses. That’s because people like to buy from those they trust.

Content marketing relies on the same psychology. By giving you helpful information on subjects of interest, the company becomes a ‘trusted advisor’, and the customer feels more comfortable loosening those purse strings.

The other important factor to creating valuable content is that it increases your ranking on search engines. The more effective content on the subject you have, the more likely customers are to see your website when they type a question about that product on Google.

Platform Makes Perfect

There are many types of blogs, each with their own individual flavor. They all serve a different purpose. Your strategy will need to consider what is the most effective for your brand and desired outcome.

Fashion pages or interior design business find great success with visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. An effective cross-marketing strategy links winning visuals with interesting, value-add content.

If you are promoting a management consultancy or legal advice, then engaging and informative content that answers questions, or solves problems, for your audience is a smart way to go.

Increasingly, businesses include video-logs embedded in their written content as a way to boost SEO. It adds a personal connection for consumers. A video can help people connect with you and your brand.

Some time-poor businesses take the route of buying Content Marketing Packages to make the job easier. There’s really no one right way to go.

What’s the Point?

You know your target customer(s) and you know what sort of questions they want you to answer. Great! Your content will practically write itself.

But wait – you need to decide what the point of it is first!

Do you want readers to buy, or sign up for a newsletter, sign a petition, or repost a sales promotion on their social media?

Knowing what the desired end-point of your content marketing strategy is, is the key to success.

You need to know the destination if you’re gonna get there, right?!

Most blog strategies have more than one goal, in fact. Your primary goal could be to sell, by becoming a trusted advisor. The secondary goal might be to improve SEO, get more traffic to your website, or boost the number of email addresses on your contact list.

Be Data Driven

There is any number of tools online that can help you measure the success (or not) of your content campaign. Use them. We’ll look at some ideas below.

The internet gives us the sort of sales data marketers could only dream of thirty years ago! It can tell you the demographic breakdown of who visits your site, who buys things, how long people spend on each page before they buy, and so on.

Using that data wisely means calibrating your marketing efforts into a lean, agile machine. No energy wasted. Imagine that!

Metrics Matter

You want to be data-driven to be agile. That means checking metrics and analyzing Return on Investment (ROI). But what metrics should you track?

There is so much data available that it can be overwhelming. Tracking all of it is an excellent way to fall into a rabbit hole.

Here’s a quick break-down of the-what-and-the-why of some key marketing metrics you might want to analyze for ads you embed in your content.

We strongly encourage you to have your marketing and content strategy in mind when you select the metrics you will track, be they:

1. Ad Click Through – the rate at which those that saw your ad clicked on it
2. Ad Conversion – the rate those that saw the ad bought r signed-up
3. Engagement Rate – the rate those that saw your post/ad reacted or shared it on their own social media
4. Measure Success

Once you have measured content-specific metrics, such as page views or page shares, it’s time to analyze ROI.

How much has it cost you to maintain the website, and get your content written, edited, published and promoted? How much of this has resulted in sales for the business?

From these figures, you can crunch some ROI figures for your business. Some good ones to use are cost-per-visit, cost-per-click, and cost-per-lead.

Work out which ones are the best for your particular blog strategy, and track all your content with the same metrics. That way, you can compare apples with apples, as they say.

Consider the conversion rates, gross profit per month, average qualified leads per month, and the average number of new customers per month.

Record them and analyze them against results from your content to see what sorts of content get you the best sales results.

Tools You Can Use

There is any number of free tools available online which will track the results of your content. One of the most popular is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics can show month-by-month data on conversion rates, demographics, and almost any other metric you’d want to consider.

Other free online tools can help you to publish your posts across platforms. You can even schedule these in advance. That way, on Marketing Monday you plan out the full week’s marketing drip-feed. This frees you to focus on other aspects of the business the rest of the week.

Analyze and Re-strategize

A pitfall for many businesses is that they collect so much data, they get overwhelmed and do nothing with it.

This is known as paralysis by analysis.

You can avoid it by sticking only to the data that is relevant to your strategy. Then, strategize your analysis. What do we mean by that?

You should build marketing analysis points into your content plan. Each month you write and publish content. Then, on a set date each month you measure the results and use them to re-calibrate your strategy.

Maybe your content is attracting lots of people to your website, but they’re not staying long, and they’re not buying anything. This might suggest you’re attracting the wrong people, and need to change the tone or subject of your content.

Perhaps you’re putting in back-links to competitors, inadvertently sending your customers to buy elsewhere.

As you can see, this whole blogging concept takes a bit of experimenting. It’s often best to work as part of a team so you can throw fresh ideas around in those early, at times frustrating, days while you’re figuring it all out.

Hang in There!

We promise that it will be frustrating at first. But like any other business success, it comes with trial-and-error. Stick with it.

Get some diverse, quality content out there, measure results, and see what it’s telling you.

What do your top performing blogs have in common? Is it the same author, subject, or tone? Are the calls to action at the end of these pieces similar, or somehow more effective?

Prioritize Your Efforts

You’ve written content, got it published, measured and analyzed the results.

Now you know what content performs the best for your brand, your market, your area.

So, rinse and repeat!

Keep writing winning content. Keep measuring results. If the metrics tell you it is getting less effective over time, then – and only then – do you change.

That’s what we mean by being data-driven to save wasting energy.

Content Is King; Be King of Content!

If you follow our guide to strategize and plan your marketing and content, you can have success.

But to truly be a king or queen of content, you need to measure blog success. That’s the only way to achieve a water-tight, idiot-proof, Teflon-coated content marketing campaign.

It’s time to get the team together and get that blog strategy in place.

Want more expert business advice? Visit our marketing blog!

Should You Incorporate an SMS Campaign In Your Marketing Strategy?

In the ever-changing digital landscape, attention is everything. The late 90’s was the golden age of email marketing. Companies enjoyed open rates of over 95%. That’s what you call getting the audience’s attention.

In 2018, an SMS campaign can be as effective as email marketing was back then. With nearly 90% of millennials having their smartphone to hand 24/7, and 80% of them reaching for it as the first thing they do every morning, the attention is firmly placed on smartphones.

With that in mind, businesses are awash with how they can grab the attention of the market. Many worry that emails go unopened, and Facebook is too distracting to be able to grab a users attention for any longer than a few seconds.

That’s why SMS marketing may just be the approach you should be taking in 2018. Time to flip your marketing on its head and get some attention.

How Can an SMS Campaign Improve Your Marketing Strategy

With the worldwide spend on digital marketing expected to hit 306 billion US dollars in 2020, marketing executives are getting creative in developing the best techniques to reach their desired audiences.

Content marketing has become huge in the last few years and continues to be one of the main focuses for marketing departments, but a new and emerging trend of SMS marketing campaigns has been hitting the ground in 2018.

To explore why SMS is becoming so popular for businesses, we’ve compiled seven reasons why you should be including an SMS campaign in your marketing.

Let’s jump in.

1. SMS Messages Reach Your Customers

Text messages have an open rate of 98%. With rates like that, you can see how far an SMS campaign can push you towards reaching your customers. Customers are much more likely to react and act when receiving a message that comes from an SMS message.

With more and more email marketing campaigns clogging up customers inboxes, marketers need to explore new options to reach their desired audiences. SMS messages could be a hidden gold mine.

2. Keep It Short and Sweet with SMS

Most service providers have a limit on SMS to 160 characters. What this means is much like Twitter, if you have something to say, you better keep it short.

This helps to make you get to the point with your message and really drive home a point with your audience.

Make sure to include strong call-to-action in your SMS campaign, consider using a service like Betwext texting to grab your audiences attention fast.

3. Immediate Results and Immediate Action

When you send out an SMS, you are almost guaranteed the majority of your consumers are going to read the message immediately. What that means is if you can create a strong call-to-action you can almost immediately see results.

With most people reading text messages within the first three minutes you’ll find out pretty quickly if your campaign is doing what you want it to do or not.

You could even use the SMS to drive immediate action by inviting customers to a flash sale that finishes at 5 pm that day. Companies like Dominos pizza do this constantly and it’s a very successful way to get immediate results.

4. Off the Charts Customer Satisfaction

One of the most underappreciated parts of the SMS campaign is the level of customer satisfaction it garners. In a world where paper receipts and keeping track of files has become tiresome, companies interacting with their users with text messages has revolutionized customer satisfaction.

You can see businesses from food delivery services to dentists utilizing SMS to keep their customers in the loop and to give great service.

5. SMS Campaigns Are Cost Effective

When company spending becomes a concern many companies turn to the marketing department to make cutbacks. The great news about SMS marketing is it’s a very cost-effective way to reach your audience.

For companies with tight budgets and non-profits who rely on donations, you don’t need to invest in big teams of people to craft your marketing message. An SMS campaign will allow you to send out your message to your audience by only spending a few cents per message.

ROI for SMS campaigns are usually much higher than other marketing messages, so not only do you save money by hiring no marketers, you can make money from doing an SMS blast.

6. Open and Response Rates Are High

You’ll find that many marketing channels incorporate a spray and pray strategy. The beauty of SMS marketing is that regardless of your internet connectivity or the time of day, you have much higher chances of getting your message seen.

With people checking their mobiles constantly throughout the day, text messages have a much higher chance of catching the attention of your audience. When you compare that email marketing open rates sit at on average 27-38% compared to 90%+ for SMS messages, it’s easy to see why so many people are turning to SMS.

You’ll also find that with SMS campaigns your response rates will be better. SMS response rates are far superior to alternatives like mobile advertising. Prompts to download an app, for example, are about 3X more effective via SMS compared to mobile advertising.

7. SMS Is Unobtrusive

One of the greatest strengths of SMS is that it’s unobtrusive. To opt into an SMS campaign requires you to give prior authorization.

What that means is that an SMS campaign will only target people who have a genuine interest in your product or service, making your messages less likely to annoy them.

This makes SMS a great alternative to direct calls from a call center which is widely regarded by many as a nuisance. The great thing about SMS is although many people open them straight away, they don’t demand immediate action.

So if your customer is in the middle of something, they can put it on hold till later.

Time to Make Your First SMS Campaign

With people increasingly becoming aware of businesses using SMS, the time to get started is right now for any businesses wanting to expand their marketing efforts.

For more information on how to get the best out of your businesses marketing strategies, check out our other posts.

Why Your Online Dispensary Needs a Marketing Strategy

Do you have the right marketing strategy for your online dispensary?

It’s tempting to think that you don’t need marketing for some products. After all, marijuana is a desirable product that many people need for medical reasons. Why would you need marketing to get them to buy it, especially when they can easily buy it online?

However, the reality is that every business needs a marketing strategy, even an online dispensary. If you don’t nail down your marketing techniques, your competition will quickly take over.

In this guide, we’ll show you exactly why your marketing strategy is so important to the success of your online dispensary. Keep reading to learn more!

1. Save Time

One of the main reasons to have a strategy is to save time down the road. If you plan ahead now, you won’t waste time fumbling through your marketing later on.

Marketing strategies are complicated. If you don’t think ahead, you won’t be able to make the organized moves that will allow you to succeed.

With a strategy, you’ll ensure that your efforts can really work, so you won’t have to backtrack later on. It’s a “work smarter, not harder” approach. Don’t waste time on a marketing campaign that doesn’t have a strategy. Instead, plan ahead to save your precious time.

2. Stay Focused

There are so many different ways to do marketing for an online dispensary. If you don’t have a plan, you won’t be able to keep your focus throughout the process. You might even feel overwhelmed or lost if you don’t start by narrowing down your options.

When you make a marketing plan, you can choose the strategies that will work best for your business, and leave the rest behind. This helps you focus your efforts on the areas where you’ll see the most success.

You need to break down your strategy into the individual parts so you can see how they’ll all work together in the end. This focus allows you to fine-tune your work and concentrate on the right steps at the right time.

3. Beat the Competition

If you don’t have a strategy to use, you’ll quickly lose your customers to the competition that does. Marketing is how your online dispensary attracts the customers it needs to thrive.

Make sure you have a plan, so you don’t let the competitors get ahead.

4. Help Customers Find You

You already know that customers are looking for the product you’re selling. However, if you don’t have a marketing plan, they’ll find your competition instead of your company.

For example, if a customer types “Ventura mmj delivery” into Google, they’re looking for medical marijuana delivery in the Ventura area. The companies that come up first in the search results will be those companies that have a marketing plan.

Your business might have exactly what they need, but if you haven’t focused your marketing efforts, they might not even find your company’s name in the search results.

5. Target Search Engines

This leads to the next important point: a marketing plan is essential for SEO.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is what allows customers to find your company in situations like the one above. When a customer does a Google search, Google selects which websites to show based on how well that site does SEO.

With SEO, you’ll use things like keywords, blog posts, images, and links to make your site show up above your competitors’. However, if you don’t have a marketing strategy that involves SEO in place, your site won’t show up in your client’s searches.

SEO isn’t just something you can throw together at the last minute – you need a strategy to really make it work.

6. Produce Great Content

Content, such as videos and blog posts, is an important part of SEO and marketing overall. Without a strategy, you won’t be able to produce excellent content that gets the attention of your customers.

People are exposed to tons of online content every day. To make yours stand out, you need to plan ahead. This means keeping up with trends, making a content calendar, and covering the topics that your customers are most interested in.

A strategy gives you the time to research and develop this great content for your customers.

7. Use Social Media Effectively

It’s tempting to think that social media will be an easy part of marketing. After all, many people use social media recreationally. However, when it comes to using it for business purposes, you’ll need a strategy.

Social media posts need to be strategized to best reach your customers. You’ll need to know exactly what kinds of things they want to see. For example, does your clientele respond best to text posts, or videos?

A good social media strategy also involves lots of research. You’ll need to find out when your customers spend the most time online, so you can post at those times for the most engagement. You’ll need to review your approach from time to time and use analytics to see how well it’s working.

With a solid marketing strategy, you can seamlessly integrate social media into your overall business approach.

8. Predict Challenges

All businesses have challenges. If you have a marketing strategy in place, you can anticipate some of the marketing challenges you’re likely to face, which will make them much easier to overcome.

In fact, if you know your challenges ahead of time, you might even be able to turn them into strong points for your company.

9. Prioritize Tasks

Some marketing tasks are more important for your business than others. Use a strategy to help you prioritize the tasks that will get you the most results first.

This makes your efforts more effective, by breaking down the time you spend on marketing in the most strategic way. You don’t want to spend more time on tasks that will get minimal results while neglecting the tasks that would get major results.

Does Your Online Dispensary Have a Strategy?

If you don’t have a marketing strategy yet, it’s time to change that. Don’t wait – every day you work without a marketing strategy is a day your competitors can get ahead.

For more on marketing, check out our guide to content marketing here.

How to Create a Promotion Strategy for a Massage Service

Are you looking for ways to create a unique promotional strategy for your massage business?

In today’s digital age, how you market your company can be the difference between a thriving business and one that does not last.

According to eMarketer, there was an estimated $83 billion in digital marketing. That’s a figure expected to grow to $129.23 billion by 2021.

But promoting your business isn’t just about what you are doing on the internet. You need a well-rounded strategy that can be used offline to help build a stronger brand for your business.

Read on to learn how to create a promotion strategy for your massage service.

Create Great Written Content

An effective promotion strategy in digital marketing is to create good content for your website.

That’s because it can help you generate traffic online and increase your revenues.

According to Tech Client, websites with blog content have 434 percent more indexed pages than those that do not have it. Indexed pages are an important part of search engine optimization (SEO).

That’s because these are web pages that are scanned by a search engine’s spider programs. Spiders skim pages for content to use in search engine results.

You can market your massage service by creating well-written content for blog posts. These blog posts can cover a wide range of topics, whether that is specific to your business or industry-wide.

Your content should be relevant to your target market and be backed up by citations to authorities in your field. That’s because your reader will be more confident in the information when you use reputable sources.

Be Actively Involved in Your Community

Active involvement in your community can be a great way for you to advertise your business while helping others. It also helps your massage service align with a positive cause in your community.

Some of the ways you can do this are by donating gift certificates to silent auctions or as a giveaway at a special event. You could also consider sponsoring a charitable cause. Becoming synonymous with these things helps people view you as more than just a business. It’s also a great way for you to build your professional network and learn more about what people want.

This can go a long way towards helping you build a strong brand. It can also be one of the ways that you set your business apart from the competition.

Share Information on Social Media

Sharing information about your business on social media can be a beneficial promotion strategy. That’s because social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn reach billions of users each month.

Just consider the reach of Facebook alone. According to Statista, in the third quarter of 2017, there were 2.07 billion active monthly users.

You can share blog posts and other info about your services through social media. This helps you reach prospective clients in a unique way. But social media accounts are not only a good way to share information. They give you a way to provide good customer service to your clients.

Ambassador has reported that 71 percent of customers who have a positive customer service experience on social media are likely to recommend that company.

These recommendations can create interest in your services and help you generate more revenue.

Offer Exclusive Deals

You should also offer special deals to members of your email list and followers on social media.

The benefits of this marketing tactic are two-fold.

First, it helps promote awareness about your company’s presence on social media. By spreading the word on social media, you can get more followers and a bigger interest online.

Second, your followers and email subscribers can develop a sense of loyalty to you. This is because of the goodwill created by your gestures in and out of the office. Especially in the massage service industry where there are nearly 330,000 massage therapists in the U.S.

For example, a business like WINKS sensual massage can create a special offer for their services. They can advertise it through their Facebook account and have a bigger reach than if they promoted it by just posting a sign in their office.

Incorporate Video Content into Your Website

Video content is a great way for you to bring your business to life for a prospective client. It’s also an increasingly popular form of digital marketing that you cannot afford to ignore.

According to a report from Cisco, by the year 2019, 80 percent of the world’s internet traffic will be video content.

Part of having a successful massage service is creating a nice and relaxing atmosphere for your clients. But if someone is just learning about your business online, video content can be a great way for you to show the environment you create.

Besides being a good way to show off your business, it’s also an effective way for you to break up the text on your website.

Mobile Optimization

You can promote your business in a more effective way by having a website that operates well across all web browsing devices.

In October 2016, mobile web browsing surpassed desktop use for the first time in history. Mobile web browsing on tablets and smartphones has been on an upward trend and is expected to continue.

Because of this, you risk losing out on business if you have a sharp drop off in user experience when browsing on a mobile device versus a desktop.

During the design phase, it is important to test your website to ensure it runs smoothly. If there are any glitches, it is best to fix them in the testing phase before your website is rolled out to the public.

Wrapping Up: Promotion Strategy for a Massage Service

You have worked hard to create a unique massage service and this should resonate in your promotion strategy.

This way prospective clients can learn more about your services. But they can also find out more about your company’s culture and what makes you stand out from the competition.

Are you looking for other ways to grow your company? Check out our post about how small businesses can get money fast.