Email Marketing 101

In last week's blog post, Nikki talked about the importance of targeting your web traffic and measuring it with analytics and call tracking. Targeting traffic can be a time consuming and expensive endeavor, though, and not all SMBs find it within their reach. So, if you don't have the time to invest in organic optimization and/or the money to invest in PPC clicks, what can you do to drive higher levels of quality traffic to your website? Read more »

3 Key Steps to Promoting Your Company Online

So you have a website... now what? Many of our customers are small businesses just getting into the marketing game. Whether you are a seasoned professional or newbie, here are few tips to serve as a reminder or help you get started.

1. Target Your Buyers - The web is a vast expanse of information. The spray and pray approach will drive traffic to your site, but not the kind that converts into customers at a rate that is worth the effort. Know who your customers are, target where they hang out on the web. (FYI - It's not Facebook. Yes your customers hang out there, but so does everyone else. This is not where you should start.) The best way to target high intent (looking to buy) web surfers is through search engine marketing. Spend time defining and refining your keyword strategy and then spend some money on those keywords to drive buyers to your site.
2. Optimize Your Site - Now that you have defined your keywords you are willing to pay for, you should optimize your website for these keywords so that you start to rank for them organically. Not only should you invest in optimizing your site for search engine ranking, but you should optimize it to drive conversions as well. Can customers purchase online? Is your pricing clear? In this day and age, consumers are shopping online. They prefer to do research and make purchases online. Make it easy for them and they will buy!
3. Measure Your Results - I am as guilty of this as anyone. I get so caught up in the "doing" it is hard to find time to circle back and review the results. Must-haves when tracking marketing efforts: 

• Website analytics to gauge where visitors are coming from, what they are buying, what content they are interacting with the most, where they exit your site, etc. This information is invaluable when optimizing your site for conversions.
• Call tracking to tell you where customers are learning about your company. Customers either call or click when they want to learn more. Seeing where they come from when they click is covered above, but if they pick up the phone it's a mystery. Using unique phone numbers in your advertising can help tighten up the way you gauge response rates and calculate Return On Investment.

Happy marketing!