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Showing posts from November, 2014

5 Metrics You Should Measure in Every Marketing Campaign

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Measuring your marketing campaigns is the best way to determine the success of your efforts. Without accurate measurements, it's easy to be misled by regular market fluctuations or emotions. A few key areas can help you gain important insights into how your campaigns are performing and where they can be improved. Here are five metrics you should use in every marketing campaign, no matter how small it might be. Where your traffic's coming from It's important to measure your rate of traffic and know where your visitors are coming from. Identifying how many people click on your ads, follow links from other sites, or find you through search engines will make it easier to identify what aspects of your digital strategy are having the most success and which ones need more work. This data will also give you a better idea about what keywords and offers are the most attractive for customers, so you know which ones need the most attention. Similarly, with mobile devices re

What We Can Learn From Writing Holiday Wish Lists

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As the holiday season approaches, children across the country will sit down with paper and crayon in hand to spell out exactly what they hope to get during the upcoming festivities. This year, Frozen-themed toys are likely to top many lists, as are the latest video games, some popular action figures, and other toys that have been flying off the shelves. Many children will compare notes with their friends at school to get ideas about what to ask for and to see what's already on other people's lists. This sharing of ideas is an example of the psychological phenomenon known as 'the bandwagon effect.' From the activity of writing a Christmas list itself, to the toys that appear on it, children are influenced by what their peers are doing. This principle impacts all of us, no matter how old we are or what the subject matter is. Regardless of how independent we'd like to think we are, the truth is we're all heavily influenced by what our peers are doing. Accor

How Much Personality Should You Add to Your Company Blog?

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Many businesses struggle with the value of adding personality to their professional blogs. You might have heard that customers like to get to know the people behind the company brand to help build those crucial relationships, but you've also heard that blogs are supposed to be centered around building value for your customers. How are you supposed to reconcile these two seemingly opposing ideas? Balancing your blog Your blog should really be doing both. The key is learning to balance the blog. The primary focus of your blog should always be providing value to your visitors. These are the posts that are most likely to bring new visitors to your site, answer their questions, and convince them that you're an authority worth their attention. In general, you want about 75 percent of your blog posts to fall into this category. There are some visitors, however, who read your blog because they've gotten to know your company. They already know they can trust your judgmen

How to Fix Your Call To Action

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Your call to action, or CTA, is easily one of the most important parts of your website. It's where you find new leads and convince your audience you offer something worth exploring. Whether your CTA invites people to sign up for a newsletter or download your latest ebook, all CTAs are not created the same. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind when developing this critical part of the website. The words The words on your CTA are critical. Most people will be skimming it, so it's important to make your offer's potential value obvious to everyone who sees it. Use precise, clear language that explains what customers are going to receive. Bullet points are fantastic because they're particularly easy to skim and tell the audience exactly what they're going to receive. The words you use in your CTA should also line up with the text around it. For example, if you offer home cleaning services and are offering a free download on the safest cleaners to us

Finding Your Crowd... On Social Media

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Imagine you just moved to a new area. It's a small city with a bustling population. The local college attracts many young adults to the city, especially on the weekends, while local businesses ensure the professional crowd is also well represented. Being new to the area, you want to find a place to go for dinner where you can meet some locals and start to get to know your new neighbors. Friday afternoon, you head into the first restaurant. It's bustling with activity and has great music, but at a volume so loud you can barely hear yourself think. You look around and realize that the crowd is mostly college kids. Surely, some of them are great people, but this isn't really the crowd you're looking to get to know. You might make a connection or two, but it will likely be significantly harder to form meaningful relationships. So, you head out to the second restaurant. As you walk in, hardly anyone looks up. Most people seem to already be finishing their dinner, and

Just What the Teacher Ordered: The Business-Building Benefit Marketing Reports Provide

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By the time most of us graduated from high school, we were well acquainted with researching, writing, and editing reports. College often meant more of the same. While few would list report writing as a "highlight" of their academic career, those hours spent compiling reports were not spent in vain. Sure, report writing helped many of us learn how to plan out a project and conduct research, but they also taught us a bit about the topics we were researching, too. By forcing us to look in depth at the various subjects we were studying and analyze them from a number of different angles, we gained a far better comprehension of the subject matter than we might have if we had just read the textbook. It's important to remember those benefits, especially when it comes to marketing your company. How marketing reports are like your old school reports Like their high school and college counterparts, marketing reports can also feel frustrating. People often view such a

Designing a Landing Page that Converts Customers

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Landing pages are a fantastic way to convert leads into customers. A potential customer sees something that interests them. They click your call to action link or scan a QR code on an advertisement and end up on a page specifically designed to convert them. So how do you maximize the potential of your landing page? Make the value immediately relevant Landing pages are typically created to entice potential customers who have seen something of interest. When people arrive at the landing page, you want to capture their attention by showing them immediately the value you have to offer. Use a short paragraph or a bulleted list to outline exactly what the customer can hope to receive from you. To make the value even more obvious, include positive customer reviews regarding the product or information you're offering. A line or two of customer recommendations at the bottom of the page will help boost sales, as prospects will feel encouraged to join the group of already satisfie

3 Marketing Lessons Netflix Has Taught Us

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Over the past few years, Netflix has revolutionized how people think about television and movies. As people have become increasingly disenchanted with cable options and the price of TV, Netflix has risen to become a major entertainment provider. Recently, the service has even begun producing movies and shows of its own. Whether you subscribe to Netflix yourself or know someone who does, here are some valuable Netflix-inspired lessons to consider for your company. Research, research, research We know it's important to research our potential audience and customers, but Netflix has taken that research to a whole new level. Just consider the research that came with the company's production of its own original shows. Netflix researched everything from viewing habits to actor popularity to the types of shows and movies people like in order to create the perfect recipe for success. Conversely, Netflix has also shown us the importance of research with its hiccup a few years