Critical Elements Every CMS Should Have

Critical Elements Every CMS Should Have

A website CMS (Content Management System) is an easier way that allows anyone in your business to update key areas of your website.

While CMS’ are great it’s important to ensure they are set up to allow the maximum yield, especially if you’re looking at growing your online presence.

Today we look at the 4 main areas a CMS should possess and delve in deep with each of those areas to show why each area is important with your overall online presence.

Time Stamps

What Is A CMS – Time: 00:35
Why WordPress Is The Most Commonly Used CMS – Time: 1:15
Number One – Web Security – Time: 1:56
Number Two – SEO Compliance – Time: 2:16
Number Three – Social Media Integration – Time: 4:14
Number Four – Landing Pages (Optional Extra) – Time: 5:20
In Summary – The Foundation Of A Good CMS – Time: 6:01
In The Next Video – Time: 6:52

Transcript

Hey David Judge, today we’re going to discuss what elements an online marketer likes within a CMS.

I’m a reasonably technically minded so I’m also going to discuss this from a web usability perspective, focussing on what search engines want in order to get the maximum result.

Also…. we’ll discuss exactly what a CMS is, the key areas you should be able to control and why each of these areas are so important.

What Is A CMS

Ok, before we get started let’s explain exactly what a CMS.

CMS stands for content management system and is an easy way for ‘non technical’ method for people to add, edit and manage the content on a website. While CMS’ allow you to perform these tasks, a good CMS will perform a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work.

These include:

Generating navigation elements (like your top navigation on your website for example)
Setting your pages up in a way that they can be indexed (found) by search engines
Keeping your website secure
and a whole heap of other add-on functions

Why WordPress Is The Most Commonly Used CMS

WordPress is one of the most commonly used Content Management Systems as it’s FREE, allows you to set up and customise so many areas at the same time being very simple for nearly anyone to use.

On the flip side, because wordpress is so widely used (in 2014 being the most commonly used CMS’ @ over 60 million WP websites online) a lot of hackers try to and are successful at getting access to your website, when they get in they can do some pretty nasty stuff too.

Number One – Web Security

So the first thing is any CMS you use should offer ‘security’. WordPress have what they call plug-ins (which are add-ons that customise the functionality of your website) and a very popular plugin people use for security is called WordFence.

Number Two – SEO Compliance

Ok, so that’s the first area. The second is for it to be SEO friendly.

A lot of CMS’ say they are SEO friendly so lets be more specific on what that means.

The areas I consider the most important are:

The ability to control the URL’s of each page. This is the address of each of the pages on your website, like so
The ability to add title tags and a meta description
To be able to set a different H1 (or headline) for every page
To be able to add images and ‘alt’ tags to those images
To control the pages that show in your navigation bar and footer
To be clean and load fast
To set up re-directs from old pages to new pages (this is if for whatever reason you move a page or take a page off your website and want to direct to another relevant page)
Support an XML sitemap
No frames within the site
Not Flash
Breadcrumb navigation – You can see this here and this is a much easier way for a search engine to see where a page fits in the overall picture of your website

Some of these are a little technical, but as we mentioned earlier, WordPress offers a lot of these functionalities as standard.

Number Three – Social Media Integration

Ok next is social media.

This is pretty simple and you should basically have the ability to add social buttons to your site, allow people to comment (where allowable) and to place those comments onto a social profile, and to show other important social information about your other social presences.

Your social buttons, etc. should not over-empower the rest of your site as they are there to support your website and ultimately you want to keep your visitors on your website.

When it comes to comments, Disqus is actually a really powerful platform that helps control your comments and how people interact socially on your site. It can be added to many different types of CMS’ and is one of the best commenting systems in the marketplace.

Number Four – Landing Pages (Optional Extra)

Ok, finally and this is an optional extra… A CMS should contain the ability to create landing pages!

Landing pages are the ultimate tool when using paid advertising as they allow you to set up ‘stand alone’ pages on your website that present people with a clear focussed offer.

I’ve actually made a video about that previously ‘here’ where I explain elements of a landing page and how it should all fit together. If you can get this on a site along with the other functions mentioned earlier then you’re on a very good CMS.

In Summary – The Foundation Of A Good CMS

Ok, that’s it and remember Content Management Systems are supposed to be an ‘Easy’, ‘Non Technical’ method to add, edit and manage content. If they are too hard to use then it defeats the purpose of a CMS in the first place and the promise of why you would want to use one.

So choose wisely and ensure you’re covering at least the areas around security, SEO and social.

In The Next Video

Ok, great. Let’s wrap up… in the next video we’re going to talk about Search Engine Visibility. We’re going to discuss why Search Engine Visibility is more than just ‘ranking in top spots for a few keywords’ and why most SEO’s are doing this whole thing the wrong way.

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

Resources:

Wordfence – http://www.wordfence.com/
WordPress – https://wordpress.org/
Disqus – https://disqus.com/

How Much Involvement Should I Have With My Marketing Agency

How Much Involvement Should I Have With My Marketing Agency

Taking the plunge to outsource your online marketing can be daunting. It is normally up to the agency to present the options and the strategies to get the best Return On Investment.

In this conversation we discuss the difference between clients that pay you the money at the end of each month expecting to ‘get the results’ Vs clients that work hand in hand with their agency to leverage their efforts.

You’ll learn 4 benefits in working closely together and ‘How To’ get the maximum bang for your buck.

Time Stamps

The Online World Is A Land Of Opportunity – Time: 00:50
Clients That Just ‘Pay’ And Expect Results – Time: 1:42
Working together ensures you are able to cover the clients Do’s and Don’ts – Time: 2:51
Ensuring Your Message Is Delivered The Right Way – Time: 3:50
Identifying Other Opportunities – Time: 4:40
Combining Your Online to Offline Efforts – Time: 5:20
In The Next Session – Time: 6:52

Transcript

Hey, David Judge here and today we’re going to discuss How much involvement should you have when working with an online marketing agency.

This is a really important conversation especially as a lot of offline marketing efforts are starting to align more closely with online efforts.

I’ll explain exactly what this means and then touch briefly on how I believe businesses should be working with online marketing companies to get the best bang for your buck.

First things first, when I’m talking marketing agencies we’re including any company you employ to help you with your online marketing. This includes a local guy that may be helping you with your SEO and paid ads, right up to a full service agency offering a variety of services from Data Analysis to Online Reputation management.

The Online World Is A Land Of Opportunity

And this raises a really good point around all of this online conversation as the internet has totally changed the way we do business offering more opportunities than ever before.

When I say opportunities I mean more than online advertising, I’m also referring to really valuable information including the number of people that see your ads or website, where they are from, how long they stay and how they interact.

All of this valuable information can paint a picture about your customer and you can use this information to make your business more attractive to your potential leads. Also, businesses that work closely with their online agency can gather insights into this valuable intel as opposed to just paying a bunch of money and not accessing this information.

Clients That Just ‘Pay’ And Expect Results

And this is a good point that I’ve noticed when working with different clients. I’ve found clients that pay you the money and expect the results to be delivered to them nearly always end up dissatisfied as there’s no communication and consultation between the 2 parties.

After a period of time you end up trying to justify your existence as there is a gap. This may be (as an example) where the agency don’t quite work to target the right visitors and the clients aren’t getting access to valuable intel that could improve how they do business.

As you can tell I am definitely for clients and agencies working together. Of course there is an additional investment to run this way, yet the actual return is far more solid especially if you run it as a 2 way relationship with the focus of both parties getting the best results for the client. Meaning you and I working for you.

So lets break it down further and discuss 4 more benefits of online marketing agencies working closely with their clients.

Working together ensures you are able to cover the clients Do’s and Don’ts

This should be a conversation both parties should have at the beginning and will evolve over time as the agency gains a better understanding of areas they can and cannot touch. There is nothing than can impact the way your business is seen online if the agency you’re working with delivers the incorrect message.

This happened most recently working with a client assisting with around SEO to find another company managing their Social Media weren’t aware of a specific subject you simply don’t discuss in their industry.

Fortunately this was picked up and removed as the potential for it to go viral was huge which would have damaged that businesses reputation. This could have simply been avoided if the agency worked more closely with their clients company and discussed the do’s and don’ts at the beginning.

This leads me onto the second benefit…

Ensuring Your Message Is Delivered The Right Way

Whilst an external company will understand how to implement multiple strategies to bring visitors to your business, it’s important to ensure that message is being delivered in a way that fits inline with your overall direction.

This applies from smallest campaigns up to multinational campaigns and like the first benefit it will ensure your target customers are receiving your message the way you would like it to be received.

One other point on the flipside is there may be times where you want to deliver a message a particular way and the company you’re working with will have valuable intel that could show you a slightly different way to tweak and deliver that message. Which leads me into the next benefit…

Identifying Other Opportunities

Some of the greatest business decisions in relation to online campaigns we’ve managed have come as a result of working with clients to get the best result.

Like I just mentioned this could be in the form of how you deliver a campaign and tweaking how you could deliver it (through the sharing of valuable info around reverse engineering other campaigns and how they’ve worked best) through to brainstorming the best approach within your own industry to set up link relationships.

There are many benefits in communicating with between each other, which brings me to my final benefit…

Combining Your Online to Offline Efforts

This is about leveraging what you are doing in your business offline and how you can best use to the advantage of your online efforts.

This can be something as simple as an event you’re hosting and writing and distributing an online press release around it. This can result in additional search engine visibility and public visibility.

We’ve had a number of instances where a client has spoken with us about an upcoming event where we’ve created a few online strategies around that event eventually landing free TV, Newspaper and Radio exposure. This can turn into excellent exposure, online traffic and SEO benefits if set up correctly.

So, there are many benefits in working more closely together as you’re able to maximise how you can really get your business found especially if you can focus on multiple rewards with the one strategy.

As I mentioned this can be through combined SEO and Offline efforts (where an offline project can help your rankings). This can also show you the people that buy from you, what they when they visit your website, how they interact with your website, and finally devising additional ways to improve conversions and targeting your content in the future.

These are just a few examples and by working closely with your agency you get the maximum bang for your buck.

In The Next Session

Ok, lets wrap up… in the next video we’re going to discuss ‘What a CMS should allow you to do when designing a website’.

This includes SEO, Paid Advertising and Social Media functions and how they should all fit together within your website.

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

How To Keep All Of Your SEO When Redesigning Your Website

How To Keep All Of Your SEO When Redesigning Your Website

Upgrading your website should be a pleasant experience especially when you’re giving your business brand a fresh ‘new’ feel.

Whilst it’s important to upgrade your website to stay up to date with the latest technologies, it’s also important to ensure you keep and maintain any and all of your existing SEO if you would like to keep all of your hard earned authority.

In today’s post we talk about the specific steps to consider when you’re re-creating your site to ensure you hold onto your existing SEO and what to do if you’ve disappeared once your site has gone live.

Time Stamps

Why You Need To Keep The Same URL’s or 301 Redirect – Time: 1:06
How Google Handles Broken Links – Time: 2:10
Carry Your Content Over To The New Site – Time: 3:15
Make Sure Your New Site Can Be Indexed By The Search Engines – Time: 4:22
Add Google Webmaster Tools To Your Website – Time: 4:55
The First 3 Steps When Your Site Is Live – Time: 5:36
In The Next Session – Time: 6:37

Transcript

Hey David Judge here and today we’re going to discuss How to keep all of your SEO when redesigning your website.

Now, I’m making this today as it’s actually really common when businesses launch a new website not to think of the existing website and all of the reputation associated with that website.

We have had this happen with new clients that approach us after they have disappeared from the from the search engines only to discover they launched a new website and didn’t follow a few basic principles to continuing the reputation across to the new site.

This is an important subject especially if you build a site and miss these steps you’re essentially throwing your existing Authority and reputation in the bin and starting from scratch again.

These are intermediate strategies meaning you’ll need a reasonable level of knowledge to understand the principles. With that in mind I’ll explain each step to give you the outline of the basics.

Ok, let’s get into and share what you should keep in mind when designing your new replacement website.

Why You Need To Keep The Same URL’s or 301 Redirect

Number 1 – Keep the same URL structure or 301 redirect your old URL to your new URLs.

Ok, the URL of your website is your web address. For example DavidJudge.com is my homepage URL.

I have subpages on my site for example this post is http://davidjudge.com/how-to-keep-all-of-your-seo-when-redesigning-your-website

So, when I publish this post, Google go through my website and they Index (add this page) to their search engine and as people link back to it, I gain more authority around this subject as I’m creating quality content around it and this URL is now where this post I have made exists.

Now, lets say I redesign my site and I move this post to a new URL… Let’s say this one http://davidjudge.com/how-to-keep-all-of-your-seo

When Google goes back to my site and they look for this first URL and they can’t find it, what do they think?

How Google Handles Broken Links

They could think I’ve removed it? Now, because Google is Algorithmically driven (meaning it’s run by a program on a computer) it will now remove this page and all of the authority associated with this page from my website. So essentially I’m losing a bit of authority. Now imagine you do this same thing with hundreds of pages, what do you think that would do to my websites authority then?

It’s actually similar to watching your website experiencing a stock market crash.

The way you overcome this is to 301 redirect your old URL’s to your new URL’s. A 301 redirect is that is called a ‘Permanent’ redirect. This means when a person or a search engine tries to go to this URL, they are automatically directed to this new URL and they are told this is where this page is now.

If you set this up as I mentioned it will carry a good percentage of authority from your old URL’s to your new URL’s which in turn will make the new site a seamless experience for the search engines.

This leads me onto the second point.

Carry Your Content Over To The New Site

This is one of the biggest no’s no’s I see. A business builds their new website which looks gorgeous, is mobile compatible and has a number of really good conversion funnels in place. The site gets moved and the person responsible thinks they’re starting afresh so there’s no need to copy the 1500 pages of existing quality content that delved in deep on a range of subjects within your industry.

All of the sudden your site goes from an amazing level of visibility to ‘NADDA’. Why? When the search engines rank your pages on your site they look at the individual pages on your site and also look at lots of pages grouped together. I call this collective content as all of your content collected together forms a picture of authority within specific subjects, around your overall website.

If you remove all of this valuable content, the search engines are no longer able to confirm your are an authority on those subjects you have been ranking for.

So, it’s really, really, important to carry your content over.

Make Sure Your New Site Can Be Indexed By The Search Engines

When you build a new website you would often have that site sitting in a development stage. During development stage you don’t really want the search engines to find it so you add a little code that asks the search engines to ‘no index’ so they don’t index these pages.

When the site goes live, it’s really important to make sure you switch this off, in other words encourage the search engines to index and show your pages in their results.

Now, there is a really easy way you can do this which leads me into number 4

Add Google Webmaster Tools To Your Website

When you add WMT (as the cool people call it) you are allowing Google to tell you how they see your site, any issues they may have, and most importantly, if they have indexed your site.

If there are any issues this should always be your point of reference as they will tell you if a bunch of pages that used to be there are now GONE. They’ll tell you if you’re not allowing them to visit your site. They’ll tell you if there are any other areas of concern you should look at. So yes, WMT should be added to every website already and is very important to have when you move sites.

Ok last are… Number 5

The First 3 Steps When Your Site Is Live

When you do set up your new site, in Webmaster Tools you should:

1 – Fetch your site as Google
2- Get Google to Re-crawl your site
3- Re-submit your sitemap

These are all pretty easy to do as you can see and only take a couple of minutes.

By completing this last step you’re basically saying ’HEY GOOGLE, I’ve changed my site and I want you to check it out again for me!’.

Ok, that’s basically it and you know what, do yourself and if you are working with an SEO agency please do them a favour, and ensure you look at these steps.

It is not enough to think your web design company will sort it out, you really DO need to ask them, check it out yourself or notify your SEO agency.

Ok, nuff said…

In The Next Session

Ok, great. in the next session we’re going to discuss Using external agencies to do your online marketing and how much involvement you should have in the process. I’m going to explain the importance of working together rather than just giving the whole lot to them and praying they get the result.

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

 

SEO Penalties

SEO Penalties

If your website is penalised it can be a big problem for the website owner especially if they rely solely on the search engines for traffic. As time has passed, Google have become more transparent on ‘how to’ identify a penalty and many SEO’ers have developed processes to follow to reverse those penalties.

In today’s session we discuss the different types of penalties, how to identify if you’ve been affected and the steps to reversing a penalty.

Time Stamps

What is an SEO penalty? – Time: 00:24
The 2 Types Of Penalties – Time: 00:43
Algorithmic Penalties – Time: 2:13
Panda Algorithm – Time: 2:34
Penguin Algorithm – Time: 3:05
Pigeon Algorithm – Time: 4:01
How To Identify The Type Of Penalty – Time: 4:39
The Steps For DIY Penalty Removals – Time: 6:25
How To Reverse Pengiun Penalties – Time: 7:10
How To Reverse Panda Penalties – Time: 8:07
In The Next Session – Time: 8:56

Transcript

Hello and Welcome, David Judge here and today we’re going to discuss SEO Penalties.

We’re going to talk about the idea of what an SEO penalty is, the different types of penalties, and what you can do if you’re penalised.

So Let’s jump in as this is a really juicy subject.

What is an SEO penalty?

An SEO penalty is when your site goes against the webmaster guidelines of a search engine (specifically Google in today conversation) and as a result loses it’s search engine visibility.

In plain english, this means your site loses its rankings.

The 2 Types Of Penalties

There are 2 ways a penalty can occur… a Manual penalty, where a human finds an area of your site violates their guidelines and pushes the big red button of doom or Algorithmic which is when Google’s algorithms (their computer language) picks up an area and algorithmically penalises your site.

If you think you have a penalty, the first step is to check and find out. If it’s a manual penalty Google will tell you if you install a handy little add-on called ‘Google Webmaster Tools’.

If you’re in the manual doo doo they send you a message, that will look a little something like this –

So you can see a variety of penalties here, which as I said are manually activated.

The most common manual penalty you would find was related to the types of links you have pointing back to your site… more about that in a minute.

There are also algorithmic penalties which occur when Google roll out a change on how they measure the elements of a quality site. When these occur you’ll normally notice a change in the traffic that is coming to your site from Google.

Google’s algorithm (the way it chooses which websites rank where) is so huge and complicated that they broke it into a few different areas to allow people to focus on specific areas of improvement.

Algorithmic Penalties

They’ve also given these different areas of their algorithm cute animal names to lead you into a false sense of security as they pounce and attack your site.
You may or may not have heard of these animals so we’ll share each one and what purpose it serves within the overall algorithm.

Panda Algorithm

So first is the Panda – This was the first of the 3 animals that measure your websites content, the quality of that content, as well as the structure of that content. Panda has always focussed on understanding how well your content relates to the words you would like to rank for and is constantly improving how it measures the theme and structure of your website.

Of all of the algorithms Panda is one of the most overlooked as most people are missing out on massive opportunities to improve this area of their online presence.

Penguin Algorithm

The next is the Penguin – Penguin is all about links that point back to your website and is an area a lot of SEO’s have focussed on as it was the most widely abused techniques people used to get websites ranked.

Google have always reinforced that someone linking to your website should be to pass value onto that visitor and of the examples I showed before the most common reason was due to spammy links.

We’ve had to work with a number of clients to correct issues with Penguin and the most common type of spammy links were an SEO person arranging 1000’s and 1000’s of links from directory sites and any other site they could find to get a backlink.

When businesses find their traffic has dropped a lot think it is as a result of Penguin where it can also be a result of Panda.

Pigeon Algorithm

Of, the last one we’ll mention is Pigeon. This was released on 24th July 2014 and had a heavy impact on local businesses and how they ranked Google. This is still in a lot of ways in it’s early days and expect to notice more around this in the future.

So those the 3 animals to be aware of and as they ‘Roll Out’ an algorithm change you can see if your site has been impacted or not. So rolling out means they make a change to the algorithm (like when you upgrade software with new features).

How To Identify The Type Of Penalty

As I just mentioned, this is the best time to see if you’ve been impacted or on the flip side you can look at the historical traffic (that comes from Google) to your website and see if there are any great drops in traffic.

This is usually a good tell tale sign that you’ve been impacted. The best way to measure this is through ‘Google Analytics’ where you can drill down and see traffic from the search engines.

How would this look?

Well, in the instance of ebay, it looked like this where they experienced a 220% loss in Search Engine visibility:

[insert as an image on the post] http://screencast.com/t/CzboaWoI55

or for RetailMeNot it looked a little bit like this where they experienced a 139% decrease:

[insert as an image on the post] http://screencast.com/t/vi9oQiSO

Now, the best way to see what penalty you’ve been affected by is to take the drop in traffic you’ve experienced and to compare it to the dates Google have rolled out updates.

You can do this by Googling ‘Moz Algorithm Change History’, or check out the link I’ve included below.

In both examples I mentioned just now, these sites drop in search engine visibility were as a result of Panda updates, so it’s important to understand why before you react or ‘do’.

Ok, we’ve covered a lot already so lets cover off the last section before we wrap up… What do you do if you’ve been impacted by a Penalty?

First step is to understand what that penalty is by using the technique I mentioned just now.

The Steps For DIY Penalty Removals

Once you understand the type of penalty from there it’s time to react.

In my opinion, I think you should contact a company that can help you strategize and correct the issues. I am biased as this is a service I offer, but I know the complexity associated with getting a site back into the search engines. I have also seen the result of a person trying to correct the issues by digging deeper holes by using old school SEO methods.

Let’s say you don’t want to get someone else to do it and you want to tackle it yourself, I’ll touch briefly on what I would do and then we’ll finish up. Warning… if you don’t have a great deal of knowledge around this subject I am about to get technical.

How To Reverse Pengiun Penalties

Ok, if you find you’re impacted by Penguin you need to clean up your low quality links. You can use software like Link Detox to flag the low quality links and then you need to contact the webmaster of where the links are located and ask them to remove.

You should also look at the remaining links you have pointing back to the site and the anchor text they use. If they are too keyword stuffed (meaning keywords you want to rank for is the anchor text you’re using) then you need to change them and focus more on brand links.

Next, you need to look at other strategies to naturally attract links to your site. This can be relationships you form where you create valuable content for them, referencing a page on your website that expands on a topic and many, many other ways of getting links.

Finally, you should look at how your site is structured and any opportunities to expand on the content of your site, really focussing on how you can deliver value to the end user.

How To Reverse Panda Penalties

Ok, if it’s Panda you should look at the content on your site.

Is it original, does it offer value, does it delve deep on a subject, does it link to other supporting content on that subject. If you’re a shopping cart, are you offering an interactive experience? Do you have reviews of your products, allow others to rate and review, do you have supporting content that expands on the back story of your products, do you have suggest other similar products.

Panda is all about making sure you are delivering the best experience to your users and as a result of offering that great experience you’ll naturally gain higher rankings. In other words focus on your users first and you’ll be rewarded second.

In The Next Session

ok, great… Let’s wrap up. In the next video we’re going to cover

Ok, great. in the next video we’re going to talk about redesigning a website and the areas to be mindful of from an SEO perspective. I’ve witnessed so many sites firsthand that have redesigned their websites have flicked the switch and have totally dropped out of existence as they didn’t cover the basics to make sure all of their previous work gets counted.

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

Resources

Moz Algorithm Change History – http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

Link Research Tools – http://www.linkresearchtools.com/

 

The Top 5 Ways To Understand What Your Customer Wants

The Top 5 Ways To Understand What Your Customer Wants

Understanding what your customer wants for many business is an unattainable dream as ‘no-one’ can ever truly understand what they want.

In reality there are more tools today you can use than ever before and where it used to cost a fortune to understand nowadays if you understand how to ask combined with the right tools, you can gain better insights than ever before and get those same customers to come back and buy from you.

In today’s conversation we discuss the top 5 ways to understand your customers wants and how you can apply every strategy in any business.

Time Stamps

Asking Your Customers What They Want Can Have a Massive Impact – Time: 00:22
Ask Your Clients To Complete Surveys – Time: 1:05
Read And Measure Your Analytics – Time: 1:58
Ask For Review And Feedback – Time: 2:54
Measure Feedback Through Paid Advertising – Time: 3:51
Reverse Engineer Your Competitors – Time: 4:44
There Are Tools You Can Use To Measure What Your Customer Wants – Time: 5:34
In The Next Video – Time: 6:33

Transcript

Hello David Judge here and today I’m going to discuss The Top 5 Ways To Understand What Your Customer Wants.

Over my years in the Online Marketing arena I’ve watched the number of tools that have grown and adapted and seriously it is easier today to understand what your customer wants more than ever before. The amount of information you can gain about your customers using the internet is staggering.

Asking Your Customers What They Want Can Have a Massive Impact

On the flip side, when I talk to business owners about the tools they use to measure client satisfaction at times I get this look like I’m asking them to explain the meaning of life.

And you know this is great news as it means there’s a lot of opportunity out there to understand the hot buttons of your customers, how to sell them what they want and most importantly, get your previous customers to come back and buy more stuff from you.

Last point (and then we’ll get into it)… when I researched this subject (as I wanted to see if there were any new trending ideas) the information out there is pretty light on so you’re really in for a treat.

Ok, let’s go and we’ll jump straight onto the first method, which is…

Ask Your Clients To Complete Surveys

A survey is a way of directly connecting with your customer and asking them what they like and don’t like about buying from you.

In a survey you can ask as many questions as you like with our research showing up to 6 questions getting the most people to complete.

Also, when you conduct a survey, make it as easy as possible. I usually give the person 5 bullet points to choose from with an optional text block for them to complete more info.

The best way to send? Email it to them! You can email it to them right after they buy from you, you can send them all out at once and you can even send them a few times a year.

Surveys are BY FAR the most direct path to finding out what your customers want.

Read And Measure Your Analytics

Analytics lets you look at what your visitors are doing when they visit your website and or social pages.

Google Analytics for example will tell you where a visitor comes from, how long they stay, the pages they look at and a heap of other important pieces of information. A good example of how you could use analytics would be to set up page on your website and send it out to for customers to look at. You could look at how many visited that page and place special ‘Calls To Action’ around that page and measure what they do.

If you pay really close attention to analytics, especially after you make changes to certain pages on your website, you can see how people react to those changes.

I am a HUGE fan of analytics as the first step to improvement is to first of all measure where you’re at first!

Ask For Review And Feedback

Reviews and feedback can certainly go 2 ways, especially as people are more likely to leave a review if they are unhappy as opposed to happy. How do you fix this then???

You make it a process to ask every person to leave you a review which will allow you to gain a broader insight into what people like and would like to see improved.

An example of this could be a shopping cart site where you could invite people to leave reviews after they’ve made a purchase asking the pros and cons of dealing with you. Whilst you may experience negative reviews if they are handled constructively, you’ll actually improve on a product, service and overall how they experience your business.

Measure Feedback Through Paid Advertising

No my preferred medium of finding out what my customer wants is through Facebook Ads.

Why??? With facebook ads you can really drill down the people you would like to target, their age, gender, likes and dislikes and so much more.

Facebook ads are also very cost effective at the moment, where you could gather a whole lot of important data from a well run ad for only $50.

An example of how you could use paid ads would be to take a product or service and new ideas around how you would like to present that idea and to set up an ad for it.

If you get bites, people like it, if you don’t then you need to tweak and repeat. This is a really good way for you to take a new product to the marketplace especially if you want get an insight on how your target market may react before you go LARGE.

Ok, last one…

Reverse Engineer Your Competitors

This one is HUGE and can give you a massive amount of information around what they do and how they do it.

I like to look at:
How their website is structured
What they offer and how
Their social media accounts and how often people interact and how they interact

It doesn’t have to be in your local area, you can look countrywide, especially as there may be competitors further away that are really engaging in a way you could implement in your business. I mean seriously, what better way to understand what your customers want then to reverse engineer others.

There Are Tools You Can Use To Measure What Your Customer Wants

One last point on this last strategy… Make sure you focus on this from a ‘How I could apply this to my business and really focus on the areas that you can see attract the highest level of attention. Socially there are a lot of services you can use, for example Social Bro which allows you to measure your competitors Twitter accounts and which tweets gain the most traction, when they tweet and heaps of other cool info.

Ok, that’s it. Remember as I said at the beginning the number of people out there actually investing the time to find out what their customers want are few and far between even though it makes so much sense to do it.

By understanding what your customer wants you can get them to buy more of your stuff and in turn have more money to invest in getting new customers.. Make Sense????

In The Next Video

Let’s wrap up… In the next video we’re going to talk about SEO penalties.

We’re going to discuss what this actually means, the different types and the steps you need to start to reverse any penalties.

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

The Purpose Of A Landing Page And The Key Elements Of Landing Pages

The Purpose Of A Landing Page And The Key Elements Of Landing Pages

Have you ever created a landing page for your business and the result was no where near where you expected? The reality is a good landing page comes as a result of lining up a number of critical components which would be best described as putting all of the pieces of a puzzle in the right place.

We talk about the importance of landing page (especially if you’re using paid advertising), and demonstrate live examples of landing pages that WORK and the Why’s.

Time Stamps

What Is A Landing Page? – Time: 00:16
The 2 Types Of Landing Pages – Time: 00:57
The Purpose Of A Landing Page – Time: 2:25
The Key Elements Of A Landing Page – Time: 2:54
Your Ad Must Match You Offer – Time: 3:23
Other Critical Elements Of A Landing Page – Time: 4:08
Look At The Opportunity Of Landing Pages For Yourself – Time: 5:04
In the Next Video – Time: 5:44

Transcript

Hey David Judge here and today we’re going to talk about…. Landing Pages and we’re going to explore the purpose of a landing page along with the key elements every landing page should have.

Now, before we get started and for those of you that are thinking ‘What’s a Landing Page’, let briefly jump in and explain….

Now I’m grabbing this from unbounce as I love the way they explain the idea of landing pages.

What Is A Landing Page?

Ok, as unbounce says, in the world of the online marketing a landing page is ‘standalone page that is separate from your main website’ that is designed with a single focus or objective.

This also means that your landing page keeps visitors separate from your main website.

The reason why this is set up this way is you want to make sure you are MAINTAINING the focus of the visitor to that action you want them to take, without allowing any distractions to get in the way.

The 2 Types Of Landing Pages

There are 2 types of landing pages…

‘Click Through’ and ‘Lead Generation’.

Click through pages are designed to educate a person around the benefits of a product designed to warm a person up and to assist with their buying decision.

The error a lot of businesses make when they are using ‘Paid Advertising’ to direct toward a site, is they direct visitors directly TO the product without warming them up first with all of the benefits of that product.

The other type is a ‘Lead Generation’ where you capture user data like their name and email address. The SOLE purpose of this page is to get peoples contact details so you can market to and connect in the future. When you use this type of landing page you need to give them a reason to complete their details.

A few examples that come to mind include:

A free e-Book
If you’re running a webinar
Discount coupons / vouchers
Entry for a competition
A free trial
A gift (like a physical gift)
Getting alerted to a new product

There are other examples that can be applied to your business with this giving you a basic guide.

The Purpose Of A Landing Page

So, why would you want to use landing pages?

Landing pages are most commonly used for paid advertising and are used to increase your conversions.

Lets face it, you’re paying every time a person clicks you want to maximise the possibility of getting a conversion and the ‘concept’ (as we said earlier) of a landing page is to Maintain the focus of the visitor.

If this is the first time you’re looking at this it should be starting to come together for you…

The Key Elements Of A Landing Page

Ok, lets now talk about the elements of a landing page, and to do that we need to talk about the ad you use to click to a landing page…

The ad you use should have a call to action. For example:

Get 10% off today Pink Lashes
Check out my new turtles
101 dog stories that’ll blow off your socks

Ok, maybe not the last one, but keep going with me here…

Your Ad Must Match You Offer

When I click on your ad, guess what I expect to see when I go to your landing page????

That’s right, that single offer. So if I’m clicking on a link about 101 dog stories to blow your socks off, I expect to see why 101 dog stories will have that effect as opposed to a generic home page where there are simply too many choices and distractions.

Now, I invested a little time on that first pointer as this is one of the biggest gaps businesses that use landing pages miss. They have a totally different message from the ad to the landing page and if I ask for a salad I don’t want to be given a cheeseburger. (is my analogy too left wing???).

Other Critical Elements Of A Landing Page

Anyway, let’s cover off a few other important elements of a landing page:

A headline that matches your ad
A sub headline that shares that same message as your headline
Your call to action above the fold
Testimonials that demonstrate why your product or service is sooo good
Benefit statements that explain the reasons they would want to use that product / service
Demonstrations of the product / service in use (video is great as it’s proven to increase conversions)
Social indicators (allow people to share on social channels and to like the product / service)
Any other cred builder (as used by …. or as featured in…)
And finally, the same congruent message throughout the whole page remembering your looking at a SINGLE message

So I have a little exercise for you as we finish up.

Look At The Opportunity Of Landing Pages For Yourself

Go to Google and perform a few searches and click on the paid ads related to that search and see how many businesses are following these basic principles. Every time I look I am awestruck at how many people are throwing their money away by not looking at these basic principles that are PROVEN to work!!!

What that means is there is a lot and I mean a LOT of opportunity here to get the maximum result by following this simple little formula and will ensure you’re getting the maximum ‘Bang for your Buck’.

Ok, let’s wrap up…

In the Next Video

In the next session we’re going to talk about The Top 5 Ways you can understand what your customer wants.

This won’t be a ‘what women want’ video as in all honesty it’s a lot easier to understand what your customer wants than a woman. (ha,ha,ha,ha)

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

SEO or Paid Advertising

SEO or Paid Advertising

SEO and Paid Advertising are both in the top 5 methods used by local businesses when marketing online. We are often asked which of these 2 methods would suit best in their business and have recorded a conversation where we discuss which one would work best in your business.

We also discuss the idea of an overall marketing plan and how that would look for your business.

Time Stamps

What is SEO? – Time: 00:32
What Are Paid Ads? – Time: 1:10
The 2 Key Differences Between SEO and Paid Ads – Time: 2:16
The Greatest Individual Benefits Of SEO and Paid Advertising – Time: 3:35
How To Dominate Your Marketplace – Time: 4:54
It’s a Question Of How Many – Time: 6:54
In The Next Video – Time: 7:35

Transcript

Hey David Judge here and today we’re going to talk SEO and Paid Advertising and which one’s best for your business.

And this is a really interesting question which is about more than just one or the other, but more around the direction of your business and what your overall online plans are.

Before we jump into that, lets invest a few seconds in looking at what SEO and Paid Ads actually are before we jump into the best one for your business.

What is SEO?

Ok, so in a nutshell, SEO also known as Search Engine Optimisation (and organic traffic) is a process used to increase your visibility on the search engines. This is most commonly measured using Google as it holds a massive percentage of the marketplace with over 100 billion searches performed every month. When you search for something on Google the results that show up on the left hand side are the ORGANIC results.

The big attraction to SEO is the cost and to this day is one of the most cost effective methods to getting business.

What Are Paid Ads?

Paid Ads are exactly as they sound where you are paying to get visitors to your door. While Google have a massive hold on this market as well (you can see these generally on the top or right hand side – labelled as Ads), other providers include Facebook (which has really grown in 2014), LinkedIn ads and Twitter ads.

These are usually what are called ‘Pay Per Click’ (meaning you pay every time people click on your ad), dependant on the website you can also have ‘Cost Per Impression’ (which is paying an agreed amount for a number of times an ad shows up or ‘Cost Per Action’ (which is only paying when a person takes and action like buying your product).

SEO and Paid Advertising are both in the top 5 most commonly used methods for businesses looking at getting found online and both are very unique in the way they attract new leads.

The 2 Key Differences Between SEO and Paid Ads

Ok, the key differences between the 2 are simply TIME and MONEY.

To explain, to get a really well performing SEO campaign you need to invest the TIME. Just a few areas around SEO include:

– The layout and structure of your website
– The quality of the content within your site and the message it delivers
– How other sites connect with you and the value of that connection
– The authority of your site and brand
– How others interact and engage with your site

A well executed SEO campaign can take up to 6 months to Yield a return and if set up correctly will bring in a lot of solid business.

When it comes to paid advertising the level of entry (if you were to call it that) is actually lower. This means whilst there are other certain requirements it’s a lot easier (and faster) to get your business found online.

The cost (excuse the pun) of Paid advertising is literally in the amount of MONEY you can afford to spend on your ads, which is of course relative to how much money you make through the leads you convert.

So thats the 2 biggest differences (yes Time and Money).

The Greatest Individual Benefits Of SEO and Paid Advertising [h2] Time: 3:35

Lets now delve briefly into the Greatest Benefit of each and we’ll start with SEO first.

In my opinion EVERY BUSINESS that has a presence online should be performing SEO techniques as a bare minimum as these foundational techniques help to grow your reputation. They also assist with the visitors to your site to best understand how and why they would want to deal with your and your unique Value Proposition.

The greatest benefit of SEO is you earn your level of Search Engine Visibility and unlike Paid Advertising where you literally disappear once you stop paying and are replaced by your competitors. In other words in SEO, once you’re up there, you stay there.

The greatest benefit of Paid Advertising is you can target your potential leads and dependant on the paid medium you can even target specific groups of people, their location along with their likes and dislikes. With paid advertising you can also target people that have already visited your site with ads on other peoples sites pointing them back to your site again. Pretty Tricky yeah?

How To Dominate Your Marketplace [h2] Time: 4:54

So lets look at the original question of SEO or Paid Advertising and I’ll do this with a client example.

We have a client that we manage a paid advertising campaign for and when he first started he was literally just dipping his toe in the water with a paid budget of just $500 a month. He was getting very little results from this and when we assessed the campaign after the first month we confirmed he was not investing enough in his campaign.

After a long conversation we convinced him to quadruple his spend up to $2000 for just that one month. As a result of that one month’s increase he experienced over 150% increase in business for that month. This was like a revelation for him as he understood by increasing how much he was INVESTING in his marketing his return on investment also increased.

It was at this time he added SEO to his campaign, with the understanding that it would take several months to see a result, yet the money he was making from his Paid Advertising covered the investment of his SEO whilst it kicked into gear to start bringing leads.

6 months down the track the client had increased his monthly budget to $15,000 a month and his SEO was in full gear, bringing in a 3/4 of the business of his paid advertising yet his revenue had increased by a much larger rate (he wouldn’t share the exact amount, but he was very happy). Even though this created growing pains in his business he acknowledged it was a good position to be in.

For this client he realised Paid advertising and SEO played their part in his business and he needed both if he wanted to truly dominate in his area of business.

In other words he used multiple strategies to grow his income as opposed to one single strategy.

It’s a Question Of How Many

So, that’s my answer folks… It’s not really a question of one or the other, it’s more of a question of how many.

If you do not have the time or money for both then I would use Paid advertising to get the ball rolling and then use SEO and other strategies to lay down the foundation for the longer term. If you do use this approach make sure you invest enough in your spend to gain consistent visibility and in turn generate those leads.

Ok, lets wrap up…

In The Next Video

In the next video we’re going to talk about Landing Pages, the purpose of a Landing Page and the key elements every landing page should have.

If you run ANY paid advertising then you need to check this out.

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

5 different types of content every website MUST HAVE

5 different types of content every website MUST HAVE

What are Content? Pictures, Text, Video??? While these are all types of content they really don’t layout the exact formula you should use to convert your visitors to customers.

In this session we outline the 5 different types of content and how you should strategically use each type to create funnels that lead your visitors along a path to conversion.

 

Time Stamps

Content Is Far More Than Images, Text And Video – Time: 00:19
Content And Networking – Time: 1:13
1 – Content to Entertain – Time: 2:28
2 – Content to Educate – Time: 3:07
3 – Content to Support – Time: 3:42
4 – Content to generate leads: – Time: 4:31
5 – Content to make sales – Time: 5:07
Time To Audit Your Own Sites Content – Time: 5:46
In The Next Conversation – Time: 7:05

Transcript

Hey David Judge here and in today’s short video I’m going to talk with you about the 5 different types of content every website must have.

Before we jump in I want to give a heads up to Hanna Smith who works with the content strategy team for distilled which is where I gathered some of my intel.

Content Is Far More Than Images, Text And Video

When talking CONTENT we’re approaching todays video from a strategy perspective and how you can get a better understanding of how you can set up your website.

We’re basically discussing the different content for the different pages on your website and how the use of video, text, audio, graphics, etc, can come together to create an awesome website.

So, lets start with a Question?

What is the purpose of your website? When I ask that I mean the FINAL Goal?

Is it for you to offer FREE advice?
To get people to visit?
To have people call you and tell you how good you are?

While all of these are great (especially if people are calling you to tell you how awesome you are) at the end of the day in business your website is designed to bring you the folding green (you know, money).

Content And Networking

Imagine you’re meeting a person for the first time, lets say at a networking event.

If you’re going to do business with them you need to go through certain steps.

These steps include:
– Build Rapport
– Build Trust
– Being Interested
– Educate
– Sell

If you meet a person for the first time and as you’re shaking hands you ask them for the sale then the chances of you closing are going to be smaller than ZIP. This makes sense as you need to develop a relationship and gain a persons trust before they choose to do business with you.

This is exactly the same when it comes to your website and the 5 different types of content you should create to emulate those steps (of developing a relationship with a person) all with the end goal of getting them to part with their cash.

Last point before we get into the sharing… as we go through I want you to think about your own website and which pages of your website fall into what area and if those pages are set up the best ways to get the best results.

Sound good? So lets get into by starting with the first type of content, which is:

1 – Content to Entertain

This is content that creates an emotion when people see it. It can be funny, cute, controversial, cause people to feel empathy all with the main objective of causing an emotion.

The purpose of this type of content is to help your site to stand out from every other site and to encourage people to share and/or interact with your information.

As an example, I can see a case study that really draws on the pain and success of a story falling within this category.

2 – Content to Educate

This is delving into the how’s, what’s, where’s, when’s and why’s of your business and is really to educate people around your industry and to also show others you are an authority in your subject.

Think of this like a parting of your knowledge broken into smaller manageable chunks where you educate on the different elements of your business from your perspective.

You can also educate around the best way to approach your type of business and even share subjects that others outside of your industry may not be aware of.

3 – Content to Support

Content that shares empirical facts or delves deeper on your ‘content to educate’. This is where you can really expand on a specific subject and the small facets that make up the overall content. The purpose of this content is to show people you understand what you are talking about which will in turn, position yourself as an authority.

An example could be the subject of Ants. Educational content could discuss the different types of Ants based on where you are in the world, mentioning that black ants are very fond of sweets. Supporting content would delve deeper into the idea of ants and sweets, explaining why this is the case with supporting facts and data.

As it sounds, ‘supporting content’ acts as a support to your ‘educational content’.

4 – Content to generate leads:

This is content that shares the benefits in taking the next step when dealing with your business.

This is emotion driven where people feel what it would be like to do business with.

As I just mentioned this should be benefit driven, meaning a person can place themselves in a state of WIIFM.

An example could be to discuss the top 10 benefits in using your product or service and whilst this may contain elements of education it really should secure an emotional connection between your business and potential customers.

5 – Content to make sales

All of your content should be designed to make sales, even if it’s educational, entertaining, etc and lead visitors down a funnel of dealing with you.

On your website you do this by your calls to action, contact forms, telephone number and plainly telling a person what they need to do next!

This is like a factual way of telling people how to buy your stuff.

One last point, this content should be easily accessible at all times and make it easy for a person to know how take the next step.

Time To Audit Your Own Sites Content

Ok, that’s our 5 and I want to you leave with a little action step you can use to rate your own website.

So, take a look at the different pages of your website. Do you have content that covers each type and can you easily classify each page? For example, are you using a blog to entertain and educate or are you using it to sell.

In fact, are any of your pages there to generate leads by drawing on benefits and emotion and is your content to make sales easy to find and factual?

By applying this 5 type formula you can understand from the very beginning the purpose of the content you will create and how it will fit on your overall website.

In The Next Conversation

Ok, great, lets wrap up and in the next video we’re going to talk about The idea of Paid Vs Organic traffic (Adwords or SEO). We’re going to explain how you can determine which one is the best fit for your business and what to expect from each strategy!

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

sources: https://www.distilled.net/blog/the-content-matrix/ 

Top 5 Online Marketing Strategies If You’re On A Tight Budget

Top 5 Online Marketing Strategies If You’re On A Tight Budget

Many small to medium business owners understand there are opportunities to growing business online but don’t have the budget to invest.

Like many areas of business, if you simply think outside the box there’s always opportunity hiding if you’re prepared to turn over a few rocks to look for it.

In today’s session we cover the top 5 online marketing strategies if you’re on a tight budget and how ANYONE can use them to get a ROI for your online marketing efforts.

Time Stamps

The Idea of Time V’s Money – Time: 00:27
Set up the local presence of your Business Online – Time: 1:13
Engage In Social Media – Time: 2:43
Network With Others – Time: 4:06
Create Case Studies – Time: 5:00
Ask For Referrals – Time: 5:52
In the Next Video – Time: 6:54

Transcript

Hello and Welcome, David Judge here and today we’re going to talk about the Top 5 Online Marketing Strategies If You’re On A Tight Budget.

This can be is you’re a startup, want to get some extra turnover or have some pretty tight purse strings and want to find other ways to get potential customers but simply don’t have the money to spend.

Before we get into it, I wanted to mention the balance in business and the idea of Money Vs Time.

The Idea of Time V’s Money

The saying ‘Money makes the world go round’ is so true in many parts of life. Money can buy you stuff, it can pay for education and in business can leverage your business growth.

Sure, money alone won’t do it all for you (as you’ll still need physical work combined with experience), yet if you have money in reality it makes it easier. (yes I’m getting a little philosophical, but stick with me here).

In business if you don’t have the money, you still have a really powerful tool – TIME.

Time in many ways can be used as an exchange for money which is the perfect lead-in for these strategies, as each of these 5 strategies will take you time to complete and I would say you could sustain them for a period of time by yourself, but ultimately the objective would be to EVENTUALLY have someone else doing them for you.

So as we share each strategy I want you to think of how you could do these yourself to get started and then ultimately how you could pass them onto someone else.

Sound Good? GREAT!

Ok so lets get into the Top 5 online marketing strategies if you’re on a tight budget and get right into number 1 which is…

Set up the local presence of your Business Online

One of the most common ways to do this is to set up a Google Place Local Account which is basically a way of showing Google your local location and the areas you service.

You can also upload images and videos of your business, link back to your website and finally, get your clients to leave reviews for your business (which will show people why they should deal with you).

The end result if you set this up correctly (ensuring you focus on adding as much value as possible) is to show up locally when people search for your business in the search engines.

One special point to note when you’re setting yourself up on the internet (using Google Local for example) is to keep everything consistent meaning your business name, address and contact details are consistent and match the exact details of your business.

Ok, that leads us into number 2…

Engage In Social Media

Social media can take a lot of time so if you’re on a tight budget then choose one to two to focus on and go for it.

One of my personal favourites is LinkedIn as my target clients are Businesses which makes the LinkedIn B2B approach a perfect fit for me.

People can see my experience, recommendations, content and why they should do business with me.

The reason I mention this point is you need to ensure you approach your social target audience being mindful of the social platform. I would not place anything on LinkedIn (for example) mentioning my weekend out with my mates or a pictures of me wearing a bikini as my profile image (not that I would post that anywhere).

Also, when using social media don’t just keep posting stuff, Interact and engage meaning comment on others which will actually show you are interested.

Last point, be mindful that social media will take at least 6 months of elbow grease before you get traction. Keep up your consistent 6 month efforts and you’ll reap the benefits.

Network With Others

This is offline and online as some of the greatest online opportunities can happen as a result of meeting and talking to someone face to face.

I have sourced some of my biggest online deals as a result of networking.

Interestingly, these have happened as a result of a person I’ve met face to face referring me to another person that has hired me to talk, guest post or have bought my services.

Always think of how an offline opportunity can help you online.

Create Case Studies

A case study is a real life scenario about an experience within your business.

This can include showing people how to use one of your products, talking about a specific scenario & how you overcame the problem, or other examples that would give people an inside glimpse of how it is to do business with you.

People prefer to do business with those they know, like & trust and case studies bridge that gap, especially as they help potential clients to get a real feel of how you do business.

There are a number of ways to get your casetudies out there, including your website, social media and to simply email your leads and existing clients.

Ask For Referrals

This may sound like a bit odd, especially as an Online Marketing Strategy, yet Referrals are by far one of the most cost effective ways to get extra business through the door.

There are many ways you can set up an online referral system with one of the most common a simple ‘Would you like to refer me’ email to every customer that has experienced your business.

You can also offer a financial incentive (10% off your next purchase) or other incentives to act as a way to entice people to refer your services.

So there we go, 5 solid Online Marketing Strategies if you’re on a tight budget.

Remember, Marketing Doesn’t Always Cost Money.

There are literally thousands of companies out there right now succeeding on a tight budget and many times you just need to think outside the box and use a little elbow grease and creativity.

In the Next Video

Ok, great. in the next video we’re going to talk about the 5 different types of online content every business MUST HAVE.

We’ll delve in deep on the purpose of content and how you can get the best of both worlds to get the search engines to prefer you and for people to find YOU when they’re thinking about your products and services.
If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.

Email Marketing Tips For Small To Medium Business

Email Marketing Tips For Small To Medium Business

Email Marketing is one of the MOST PROFITABLE methods for online marketing, yet is one of the most under used strategies for small to medium businesses.

In today’s strategy session we cover the top 7 tips to grow your business through email marketing and show you the secrets of the BIG GUYS and how they succeed, even if you’re on a small budget.

 

Time Stamps

Why It’s More Cost Effective To Approach Your Existing Customers – Time: 00:46
Top 7 Tips To Email Marketing – Time: 1:29
1. Make it easy and enticing for people to subscribe – Time: 1:36
2. Choose the software to manage your contacts – Time: 2:30
3. Send a welcome email – Time: 3:32
4. Create a template – Time: 4:29
5. Include special offers – Time: 5:00
6. Email with consistency (keep a calendar) – Time: 6:07
7. Measure your stats – Time: 6:37
In the next video – Time: 8:06

Transcript

Hello and Welcome, David Judge here and Today I’m going to talk about why email marketing is important and how totally smash email marketing for your business.

This is a really juicy subject so we’re going to get right into it.

In my last video where I spoke about How Social You Should be in your business, I shared an interesting statistic that showed 86% of businesses that had an online marketing plan, used email marketing.

What I find really surprising around this stat is when I conducted my own research of asking 212 business owners if they use email marketing, only 16% said yes and of those 34 businesses, only half sent emails with regularity.

Why It’s More Cost Effective To Approach Your Existing Customers

On top of that lets consider the saying that It costs 6–7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. This statement that I just made was confirmed by Bain & Company in a survey of businesses.

Now, off the top of your head, do you think if you were to send an email to existing customers, asking them to buy more of your stuff (the right way of course) that you could get them to come back?

And based on the stats (6-7 times more to acquire a new customer) do you think it may be easier to get them to buy from you rather than get new customers?

Starting to make sense? Cool!

Top 7 Tips To Email Marketing

So lets go through now and look at the top 7 tips to email marketing that will help you to get more customers through your door!

1. Make it easy and enticing for people to subscribe

This means to make sure how a person can subscribe clear and simple to find. This can be on your website, email signature and social channels. Wherever I can find you online, I should see easily how I can subscribe to get more from you.

Also, make it enticing. Which sounds more enticing:

– 7 steps to gaining the competitive edge newsletter, or
– Sign up for my newsletter

If you are asking me to sign up, I want to know what’s in it for me, so make you give them a reason to give you their info.

2. Choose the software to manage your contacts

When I sent my very first email marketing campaign 14 years ago, I bought software that would sit on my computer. I would load all of my email addresses and tmy mailout and it would send one email after the next.

I would have to manually remove my unsubscribes, my list and the whole process was painful and SLOW.

Nowadays there are a lot of options where you may have an add-on as a part of your website. If you don’t have this you can use software like, MailChimp, Aweber, Get Response.

Mailchimp is a Free option if you want to just ‘dip the toe’ and they allow you to send up to 12,000 emails per month and to store up to 2000 contacts Free.

The main points here are to make sure your software makes it easy and clear on how they can unsubscribe and for you to get access to your stats (which i’ll mention shortly)

3. Send a welcome email

Yes, send them a welcome email. This lets them know you have received their contact details and if you’re really smart (using the software I mentioned above) you can set up what’s called an autoresponder sequence’.

What’s an autoresponder sequence? This is a series of preset emails that you can send out to your new subscribers. You can have as many emails as you like and the reason auto responders are awesome is you can set how many and the time gap between each email.

For example you could send 5 emails (that send automatically for you each spaced 1 week apart) that talk about other products or services you offer.

This is just one example of endless opportunities, seriously.

Ok,next

4. Create a template

A template is essentially how your emails / newsletters would look. Each message you send that is coming from your business should have the same look to it and should reflect your overall branding.

If you use one of the mail softwares I mentioned before, you can use one of their many templates which means a lot of the hard work here is done for you. All you have to do is add your headline to the top, your logo where you choose and what you’re going to send.
Which leads perfectly into number 5

5. Include special offers

I always like to include a special offer of some description with every email you send to your subscribers. An example… We arrange an email to a clients list of 2000 previous customers offering a Free Service (valued at $49.95) if they booked in for another product. The main product was $447 and the extra service took 5 mins and the cost on it was very low.

We sent 3 emails to his subscribers over a 7 day period and he was booked out 1 month in advance.

The moral of the story is not just that this worked really well, but also to really consider your offer and if it would get your target market to take ACTION. In other words, make your offer a fresh warm loaf of bread as opposed to a mouldy piece of toast.

6. Email with consistency (keep a calendar)

Like most online forms of marketing you need to have a plan. In reality when times get busy it’s really common to drop the activities that actually bring more money into your business, so If you have a schedule that you work on in advance you can delegate specific tasks which will ensure the ball keeps rolling.

7. Measure your stats

The stats are critical, especially as you want to understand what appeals to your subscribers. This will allow you to send them MORE of what they want which will in-turn make you more sales. Sound pretty simple right?

I’ve referred to the software I mentioned a few times now, so I’ll refer to it one more time. Mailchimp, aweber and get response all allow you to track important stats including:

– Open Rates – the % of people that open your email
– Click Through Rates – this is the % of people that open and click on a link in your email
– Unopens – the people that didn’t open your email at all
– Unsubscribes – the number of people that have unsubscribed from your list

As I mentioned, these stats are really important and when you combine these 7 tips together you are preparing yourself for massive success.

Businesses are literally making millions of dollars a year by asking their customers to come back and by using exceptionally affordable methods just like email marketing make it a massive No-Brainer!

In The Next Video

Ok, great. in the next video we’re going to talk about the ‘Top 5 Online Marketing Strategies if you’re on a tight budget’.

This is great for start up companies or if you want to do some online marketing, but don’t want to break the bank.

If you have a question you would like me to answer make sure you get in contact and I love to hear from you.

As always this is David Judge talking online marketing and showing you how to grow your business online.