Food for Thought: Is Paid Search good for more than just finding new leads?

This isn’t an opinion piece or even really a blog post in the traditional sense. It’s just a simple question:

Are you leveraging your existing marketing as much as you could?

For example- You probably know that paid-search is a great tool for finding valuable leads and connecting with prospects. But have you thought about it as a means to continue marketing to existing clients? Why not try it out? Read the rest of this entry »

Google Now Offering Location-Based Search Results

Google recently added the ability to search by location to its ever-growing list of search-sorting options. This will be a groundbreaking shift for local business owners taking part in paid-search.

Consider the following scenario:

You’re a dry-cleaner serving a metropolitan city and its surrounding areas, including suburbs, 2 or 3 counties, and countless incorporated town names. If you wanted to only advertise to people living in those areas who are searching for the term “dry-cleaner”, you’d have to guess what else they might type in (as it relates to their location). If your shop is in the city limits, and your customers are j

ust across the county line, they may not see your paid-search advertising.

But thanks to the change Google recently made, it won’t matter anymore.

Read the rest of this entry »

Get More from Your Facebook Page Today: Part 2

In part 1 of this series, we discussed how focusing on content over quantity of followers will dramatically increase the results you’re seeing from Facebook fan pages. In this installment, we’ll reveal a surprising find on what kind of content converts fans into paying customers.

But the answer isn’t what you might think. Read the rest of this entry »

Get More from Your Facebook Page Today: Part 1

If you have a Facebook fan page for your business and aren’t seeing the results you’d like to, you aren’t alone. A study by Sysomos reports that only 4% of Facebook pages have more than 10,000 fans. Of course that isn’t a stat that is either surprising or important to your results.

Read on to find out why…

Read the rest of this entry »

Styling Web Links and How it Applies to You

Smashing Magazine has a great article on best practices for styling web links. It’s really a great read, so be sure to check it out.

After reading through the article, we realized that many of the principles driving these best practices are excellent principles for your business to follow in its online presence.

Here are a few of the best practices discussed and how they relate to an effective web presence:

Read the rest of this entry »

Better User Experience with Storytelling

Smashing Magazine is a great blog for those of us interested in web design. They just posted the second part in a series called Better User Experience with Storytelling.

The article covers great storytelling not only in web sites, but in industrial design, product packaging, architecture and more.

It’s a great read and definitely worth your time.

Check it out here and view Part 1 here.

Get a Cool Summary of Your Website

If you have a website (and chances are you do), and you’d like to get a good technical overview of how it’s doing, you owe it to yourself to check out WooRank.

WooRank is a free website analysis tool that gives some great info on your  website that you may not have already known. In fact, you can enter any website address at all and get a free report instantly – great for checking out the competition.

While the information isn’t as detailed or as extensive as what an actual person or paid service would give, it’s still a pretty neat overview of a website, and can give you some clues as to what you might need to improve.

Check it out here: WooRank

Display Advertising, Not Just for Giant Corporations Anymore

While online display advertising (banner ads) is one of the oldest forms of internet advertising, it has been difficult for most small to medium sized businesses to take advantage of it; until now…

Read on to find out how… Read the rest of this entry »

Make the Sale – 3 Tips for Maximizing Landing Pages

So you’ve got a killer online display and paid search campaign; or maybe you’re starting to gain traction with an email marketing campaign. Congratulations, you’ve managed to create interest in your product or service and motivate prospects to do something very difficult: take action!

Your next challenge is to motivate your prospects to actually buy into your product or service. If the links in your other marketing campaigns are directing customers to the home page of your website, chances are you aren’t seeing the results you’d like from your marketing campaign.

But don’t worry! You can get the results you want through the use of a well-crafted landing page…

Click here to continue reading – Read the rest of this entry »

Email Marketing – Are You Making this Fatal Mistake in Your Newsletters?

Email marketing is an essential part of any serious digital marketing strategy. It allows you to communicate directly with your best prospects and customers in a format that they have asked for (they signed up for the list). This is a great opportunity to gain new customers and develop deeper relationships with current customers. But so many companies are misusing the format and are ruining credibility with their audience.

At the same time they’re building their subscriber bases by thousands upon thousands, thus spreading negative perceptions about their brand like wildfire. All because of one mistaken assumption about the right way to do email marketing.

Are your emails ruining your brand? Read on to find out… Read the rest of this entry »