WSI Marketing, Surf, Search and Social

Uncover secrets to online display advertising with WSI’s complimentary whitepape | Download now

Hopefully you’ve already registered for the upcoming webinar on April 7^th, “Display Advertising: The Billboards of the Web.” Along with the webinar, WSI has released a complimentary whitepaper of the same title with extra tips and techniques for your business’ digital marketing strategy.

This whitepaper was prepared with your business’ goals in mind. And online, it’s undeniably important to increase your brand awareness and drive more traffic to your business’ website. Visibility among your online audience is key to your success. This whitepaper helps you discover the ins and outs of leveraging display advertising best practices to boost your online presence.

Some highlights of the whitepaper include:

• Types of display advertising
• Measuring your display ads
• How to improve display ad performance
• Pay-per-click advertising vs. display advertising

Facebook is one of the very high traffic social media sites and I am always being asked how to incorporate it into a digital marketing strategy and effectively use it to drive business results. Firstly you need to decide on your social media marketing strategy and see if Facebook is a good fit for your target audience. But let’s assume you have decided to use Facebook; what are the next steps?

Marketing your business on Facebook is just like using any social media site you need to build a presence, then establish credibility and educate your potential customers.

Here are some steps to help you get the most from your Facebook marketing:
It is best to keep your business profile separate from your personal page, so remember everything on your business page should be business related, you can have some fun with it but keep it professional.
Make sure your pages look professional: get some help to reflect the same professional image as on your web site; use the same graphics and colours; maintain your brand image. Consider having a welcome page specifically for new visitors.
Have a plan regarding what you are going to add, and what do you want the visitor to do once they find your page. Why should anyone return to your pages again? How will you react to negative comments?
Create a reason for people to provide their contact details and to pass the page onto their friends, this sort of viral marketing is where Facebook excels.
Remember to interact with others, you need to participate in the dialogue and be visible, keep adding fresh content, and answering questions.
Provide polls or surveys to engage with your audience, ask others to share their ideas and tips.
Keep everyone up to date with your latest offers and initiatives provide a good reason for them to interact with your business.
Consider hiring a professional to create an app and provide it on your page. This can really make your page go viral since fans will share them with their friends, which is all adding to your visibility and credibility.
The main thing is that once you have decided to create a Facebook page for your business you need to be consistent with your efforts and contribute regularly to keep things moving. Why not share some of your ideas in the comments section here to help others utilise Facebook to attract new business.

Get to know what your customers are saying about your brand online and learn what you need to develop an effective social media marketing strategy!

Over the weekend one of my family members asked me a question “What’s the benefits of using Twitter?” I have decided to put a short post together outlining some of them. I mostly use Twitter for researching and to promote my content. Usually when I have written a new post, I post a description with a link of the post I have made.

Find some benefits of using Twitter below:

• Researching: Research industry specific topics. Great way to get topics for new Blog posts;
• Communication Tool: Follow and be followed. Start a conversation;
• Twitter Feed reader: Yep thats right. You can subscribe to the people you are following’s RSS tweet feeds;
• News: People post news topics as they happen. Real time information;
• Recruitment: I follow some of these (http://twitter.com/NewYorkWebJobs);
• For Fun: What are you doing right now? Post it on Twitter and see other people’s responses;
• Competitive Intelligence: Find out what your competitors are up to. Be the spy;
• Engage with your target audience: Tell your Pizza fan club about the new Pizza you have made;
• Build a reputation: Post regularly about your topic;
• Build credibility: Become an expert in your topic;
• Build trust: Keep on doing the above;
• Promote your “content”: Share what you have posted, new website, pizza you have made, etc;
• Promotion: Promote your pizza;
• SEO Boost: Gain traffic to your website, blog, etc;
• Ask Questions: Most searches on the search engines starts with a question. Ask your question to your followers;
• Receive answers: Real time results are the best!;
• Press releases: Post about any press releases;
• Internal communication tool: Tweet that your secretary should come to work now;
• External communication tool: Tweet to your friends that you have been fired;
• For conferences: You can even have a conference on Twitter if you want to;
• Re-enforce Your Brand: Tell the world about your Pizzeria;
• Marketing Opportunities: Promote your pizza special on Wednesdays;
• Networking Opportunities: Maybe someone wants to buy your Pizzeria;

Found a post with 101 Twitter resources that can help you on your Twitter path. Find a couple below:

• My Tweeple – Manage your following and followers.
• The Twitter Blog – Follow their official blog.
• Explore Twitter – Learn more about Twitter.
• Twitter Search - Search in Twitter.
• TwitterVerse – What is Twitter doing lately?
• Tweetmeme – Twitter meme.
• The Twitter Blacklist – Spammers are everywhere. Protect yourself.
• Twitterholic – Shows popular Twitter feeds.
• YouTwit – Put Twitter status on Google maps.
• Twitterberry – Mobile client for Blackberry.
• Email Twitter – Mobile client.
• Twoble – Mobile client for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs.
• TwitterMail – Tweet via email.
• OutTwit – Use Twitter from Outlook.

When used strategically, Twitter can prove to be a very powerful tool in your company’s digital marketing strategy. Visit our site to read more about how social media can build your credibility and reputation online!

If you want your website to be a success online, you will need to think and plan strategically about your website visitors and what action you want them to take. Most websites don’t do this. This is what will set you apart from the rest. Your website is your business image to the world open for everyone to see.

Do you want your website visitors’ first impression about your business to be good? If you answered yes, find some tips below to incorporate into your digital marketing strategy and to help you make your website stand out from the rest.

Business website tips
Customer: Always focus first on your customer. When a new visitor arrives on your website for the first time, they are usually looking for something or answers to help solve a need that they might have. This could be anything from buying specific products or solving a problem. It is vital that you must understand what your best customers are looking for and then make sure you can address them clearly on the specific page that they arrive on.

Image: Design your website around your customer and the services or products that you offer. If you are selling to Generation Y, use a trendier look that integrates social media elements and if you are selling to Baby Boomers, design your website with a high contrast with larger font sizes. Your website design should about be consistent with your industry and branding. If you are selling to corporate customers, then you will need a polished and professional look.

Action: What do you want your websites visitors to do when they arrive on your website? Contact you? Sign-up for a newsletter? Your website pages should always have a clear path to action. Keep it short and simple with clear call to actions (CTA). Too many possible actions and your visitors will leave instantly. Make the decisions that they have to make on your website easy. Make it visible and clear for your arriving visitors. Design a single primary action into your website pages.

Trust: People have always been cautious of buying online. Write the content of your website to address the needs of your visitors in a language that they will understand (no technical jargon). Also, make it easy to contact you with a phone number and an actual street address. You can include a shipping procedure, privacy policy and a refund policy on your website. Include a trust building “About us” page that includes more in-depth information about your company and what you do.

Websites that get good results are focusing on the needs of their visitors. Always remember that it’s not about you but about your visitors!

Visit our site to learn even more digital marketing tips, techniques and best practices that will work to enhance your online brand!

With only a week left until our free webinar, we have just released the supplementary whitepaper “Blogging to Build a Reputation Online.” As we all continue to witness the rapid evolution of technology, blogging is proving to be more and more essential in order to establish a web presence. A company blog is undeniably a digital marketing tool that your business cannot afford to ignore.

Prepared by Eric Cook – a Certified Internet Business Consultant with WSI,  who is also hosting the free webinar of the same topic – this complimentary whitepaper will take you through the Ins and Outs of leveraging a blog to enhance your company’s image and solidify your expertise with your online customer base. A blog can give you, your employees,and your consumers the opportunity to post thoughts, share experiences and showcase what you know. You don’t even have to be a ‘webmaster’ to master the technique of blogging. It’s all about interacting with your audience to develop a relationship and build your brand’s credibility. Considering that many believe that “your reputation precedes you,” blogging is an outstanding way to ensure that your company’s reputation is a positive one!

Some key highlights of this whitepaper include:

• How-to’s for promoting reader engagement
• Tips for dealing with both the good and back feedback from your readers
• Techniques for measuring your blog’s return on investment

Click here to download your complimentary copy of our whitepaper “Blogging to Build a Reputation Online.”

Companies that market to small businesses should focus on creating a social media strategy as a way of promoting their services and be open to trying new methods of prospecting. Companies that are marketing to this sector should have a strong presence at the top or on the most relevant social networking sites. Especially since this is an excellent way of getting the word out about your business.

Here are some other ideas that you can add to your digital marketing strategy to try to increase your online visibility:

Product Reviews and Ratings

When someone is deciding whether to buy something online they will nearly always look for reviews or testimonials; they provide great input to the decision making process. Make sure prospects will find great reviews of your products or services.

Podcasts and Webinars

This year has seen a dramatic increase in the use of podcasts and webinars as a way of educating your prospects as more and more managers are looking online for information. Small business owners consider these as great resources for their professional development and research. They are also not time consuming, so you are more likely to get someone to listen to a short webinar than to agree to an in person meeting.

Social Media Company and Brand pages

Creating a great image on the social media sites is now a necessity for most small businesses, but make sure you also include some educational resources. Try to answer the most common questions your company is asked as a part of the profile page. Also consider adding some presentation materials; this is easily done using SlideShare which can be added to your LinkedIn profile, and optimized for search.

Company Blogs

A well written company blog can have a big impact, but this does involve a commitment to keep on creating additional content. So make sure you have a plan for this before you start one. You need both the content strategy and resources necessary to create and maintain a good one.

All of these activities act to engage decision makers in your business or brand and can set your company apart from the local competition.

To keep up-to-speed with the evolving social media technologies and techniques of today, take a look at our Social Media Strategy Kit.

Do you have a company presentation? You can use SlideShare to get the message out about your business. SlideShare provides tools and web space for publishing your business presentations online.

An astonishing 25 million website visitors – most of them professional people – participate in SlideShare every month, making it ‘the world’s largest community for sharing presentations‘.

How Can SlideShare Help you?

Participating as part of the SlideShare community enables you to upload, enhance and share your slides, and discuss other PowerPoint, PDF and Open Office presentations with like-minded people.

The purpose-built online sharing tools allow presentations to be shared privately (for internal use only), as well as publicly, with the aim of eliciting some social interaction from your target audience.

Getting Your Message Heard
Spreading your sales message across multiple web platforms is part of an effective Web 2.0 marketing strategy. With this is mind, you can use SlideShare to help:

• Upload your company presentation to share with new and existing customers
• Publish tutorials about your products to enhance your support services
• Share slides from business presentations as a means of reference and promotion
• Develop conversations with other businesses that relate to your industry
• Add insightful comments to enhance other presentations in your niche

To bring an extra dimension to your presentations, SlideShare tools allow you to synchronize audio with your slides. Once a presentation is viewed, the user interface provides all the usual methods of sharing content across the web that millions of web users are now accustomed to just as in YouTube.

Making New Connections
As well as publishing your own materials, use the SlideShare search tool to find other presentations that relate to your target market – or simply to locate topics that interest you. Make comments and contribute genuinely to enhance the presenter’s message.

As part of the SlideShare community you can join and create groups related to your areas of interest. Monitoring groups will allow you to hone in on who will be most compatible with your interests. It will also give you a feel for the tone to take when you first make contact.

Presentation Tips
Adopting a professional but simple approach to preparing your business presentations will enable you to publish short, succinct and memorable marketing messages. With this in mind, here are some tips:

• Be creative with your copy – not with ‘wizzy’ effects
• Keep the presentation style simple – a light colour background for your slides is ideal
• If you are using images, optimize them so the slides load immediately
• Keep your messages short and to the point
• Consider adding some personality – it is a social networking site, after all
• Don’t overwhelm the viewer with facts and figures; use them to enhance your message, not as your message.

Additionally, if you use business presentations, you may want to consider dusting them off and publishing them on the web.

There are many more digital marketing techniques like this that will help your business gain exposure and drive growth online. Here are a few of the world-class online strategies you can implement into your company’s digital marketing mix.

In order to have a successful website, you need your visitors to take action.  You might have exactly what they need. If you have your visitors interested, how can you get them to commit? You also might have a clear and compelling offer, but that is not always enough to let them take the final decision.

It’s a fact that people are wary about buying online. You always have to build trust by eliminating their risk. Your visitors are looking for reassurance.  Adding strong trust-building elements to your website or blog is frequently the difference between a poor performing website and a money maker.

Find below 20 tips you can implement into your digital marketing strategy to build trust, credibility and lower your prospects’ anxiety.

1. Offer a 100% unconditional money back guarantee.
2. Include an option for a free trial or introductory offer.
3. Include a video clip of the product in action to help the customer see what they are buying.
4. Have a simple and hassle free returns policy.
5. Prevent surprises by disclosing shipping costs early in the shopping process.
6. On your home page and ordering pages have ‘trust logos’ prominently posted (Bank logos, VISA, HackerSafe).
7. Give reassurance that you will guard their privacy (no spamming, emails won’t be sold to spammers).
8. Include helpful product education and ‘how-to’ advice. The more time they spend on your site, the more they will trust you.
9. Include user product reviews and ratings.
10. Include real testimonials and reviews by people who have used your products.
11. Get endorsements from industry experts and professional organizations.
12. Include links to press coverage from the mainstream media; include an ‘in the news’ or ‘press’ section on your website.
13. List any industry awards you have won.
14. List any industry associations you are a member of (or use their logos in #5).
15. Include actual case studies you have done.
16. Disclose any ongoing costs to maintain and operate the product.
17. Include your phone number and physical address prominently on your site.
18. Offer offline ordering alternatives such as finalizing the purchase by phone.
19. Offer multiple payment options.
20. Offer multiple shipping options.

The goal with call to actions is to be transparent and to show your prospects why they should trust you. Always provide real value and offer your customer choices.

Visit our site for more digital marketing tips and industry techniques that will help your company’s website convert visitors into customers!

In just about a week, we’ll be hosting our annual WSI Global Convention! From September 24^th to the 26^th, WSI franchisees will be traveling from all around the globe to converge in Miami, USA, for 3 days full of workshops, case study presentations and endless collaboration opportunities to exchange world-class digital marketing methods and strategies. Put simply, we’re literally forming an international “Think Tank.”

Just as impressive, perhaps, is the keynote address that’s we’ve lined up. In fact, we have two keynote speakers for this convention: Avinash Kaushik and Scott Klososky!

Day 1 Keynote Speaker: Avinash Kaushik

As many already know, Avinash Kaushik is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and public speaker for a topic that is at the very core of the WSI community: how to reinvent your digital existence.  He has championed the evolution of countless organizations’ online strategies to a more customer and data driven approach. As an established authority on leveraging data analytics, an essential addition to everyone’s reading list should be Avinash’s blog Occam’s Razor, and of course his best-selling books Web Analytics: Hour a Day and Web Analytics 2.0.

Day 2 Keynote Speaker: Scott Klososky

Next up we have social technology expert Scott Klososky as the keynote for day 2. He’s a former CEO and has worked with a number of large corporations assisting them with the latest media technologies and how to leverage such tools to boost their profitability. Having already heard Scott speak, he is undeniably a thought leader in this continually evolving field. Like WSI, Scott shares in the vision to recognize and utilize emerging fields to help businesses thrive and prosper.

I can safely say that the whole WSI community is looking forward to hearing both these gentlemen speak. It’ll be a pleasure to have them join us for this year’s Global Convention!

Read more about how WSI leverages the latest and most innovative digital marketing tools to deliver practical, revenue-building solutions for businesses.

I get this question all the time. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy question to answer.

To back up a bit, there has been a major shift in the marketing rules in just the last few years. Interrupt marketing (commercials, pop-ups, banners) and passive marketing (magazine ads, flyers and mailers, phonebook ads) have become less effective as more people are engaged with the Internet. I give talks to groups of business owners, and at the start of each talk, always ask two questions:

1. How many of you have used the yellow pages in the last month? (a few hands go up)
2. How many of you used Google yesterday? (every single hand in the room goes up)

This is a poignant illustration that we all use Google and the other search engines to search for products and services, and do research before making a purchase or finding a company to do business with. Unfortunately, many businesses still cling to the “old ways”.

As business owners start to realize that their advertising dollars bring fewer new clients in the front door, they start to wonder, “What would it take to get onto Google and the other search engines?” That’s where the question, “How much does SEO cost?” comes in.

There are so many factors that determine who gets to be “king of the Google hill” and who is relegated to the bottom of the heap. We don’t have a magic wand to wave over a client’s website to make it to the top. It’s been documented that Google actually changes the rules every single day! Furthermore, the client’s website itself usually has significant enough problems that prevent it from performing the way it could on the search engines.

We always recommend that a business that wants to get ahead of their competition on the search engines, must have us perform a thorough analysis. It’s kind of like going to the doctor. You may have a pain that’s bothering you, but the doctor isn’t going to just recommend surgery or a prescription. They have to run tests – blood work, diagnostics, x-rays, and so on, before deciding upon a course of action.

Similarly, WSI’s analysis looks at many factors:

• The client’s website coding structure (think of it as their vital signs)
• A 25-point SEO readiness checklist (health history)
• A WebScan™ that looks at on-site and off-site factors (an x-ray)
• Keyword research – what are people really searching for? (We hate shooting in the dark!)
• Competitor research – what do the client’s search engine competitors look like (environmental factors)

Once our diagnostic analysis has been completed, then we can effectively answer the question, “How much does SEO cost?” It may be just fixing a few things on the site, or it may be “major surgery”, depending upon how aggressive and competitive the landscape is.

If you as a business owner want to get to the top, insist that your digital marketing expert run these tests to diagnose the problem. It’s better to know up front what you’re facing, rather than shooting in the dark and completely missing the mark!

Learn more about how WSI Consultants leverage SEO techniques that will help your business gain competitive rankings for your site.