5 Ways to Increase Website Traffic

How to Increase Website Traffic and Sales: 5 Fast and Effective Ways to Increase Website Traffic 

Looking for some tips on how to attract more traffic to your website? Figuring out how to increase website traffic is an ongoing struggle that every business owner faces. It is not enough simply to have a great website design; in order to market your business successfully online, you need to generate a steady stream of traffic to your website. Our marketing team has put together 5 effective ways to increase website traffic. These methods should work for every business owner, and take just a modest financial outlay or simply an investment of time. Try them and prepare to watch your website traffic grow!

Overhaul your SEO

Websites that gain the top positions in search results receive the most traffic, so you need to make your website as search engine friendly as possible. The best way to do this is by performing an SEO overhaul on an ongoing basis. Upgrade to a responsive website design (mobile-friendliness is one of Google’s ranking factors). Make sure all page titles, content, image alt tags, etc. on your website are regularly updated with the latest trending keywords. And check your website links to make sure your backlinks are correctly pointed, with no 404 errors or dead links.

Invest in paid ads

It can take some time for your SEO overhaul to raise your search rank, so if your goal is to figure out how to increase website traffic fast, you should start investing in paid online ads. Paid online advertising, also known as PPC or pay-per-click ads, is available on search engines (Google AdWords, Bing Ads) and social media (Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, etc.). PPC ads are a great way to generate website traffic fast because they introduce your company to motivated customers who are searching for the exact products or services that you offer.

Write a weekly blog

Adding a weekly or bi-weekly blog to your website will increase traffic to your website in several ways. First, publishing a weekly blog gives you a convenient way to add fresh content and the latest keywords to your website, two factors that Google considers when assigning your website’s position in search results (and as you know, websites in the top few positions get the most traffic). Visitors who hunt for information online will find your blog through their search efforts.  And as you continue to publish well-written, interesting blogs, your website will become recognized as a reliable source of information, which will help draw more traffic to your website.

Expand into online video marketing

If your main online marketing concerns are figuring out how to increase website traffic and sales, you should give online video marketing a try.  Companies that provide services can create How-to videos with answers to common customer questions.  If you have an online store, you can shoot video guides that show your products in use.

You should also give your customers incentives to post their own videos. If your products are available for delivery, reward customers for posting unboxing videos as these have proven to be surprisingly popular and effective at increasing sales. Run contests on social media with prizes for the best customer video submitted each week. Give the winning entry a prominent place on your website, and post enticing snippets of the videos with links to increase traffic to your website.

Start guest blogging

Guest blogging is a terrific way to attract more traffic to your website. There are many sites on the web that focus on bringing content from guest bloggers to a wider audience. The most reputable websites will require you to have a number of published blogs already up on the web, and you will need to submit an article that meets their editorial standards. Look for sites that publish high-quality content that relates to your industry. Make sure you scatter a few links to your website or blogs throughout your guest article, along with links to other reputable sources.

For more marketing tips on how to increase traffic to your website, call on Blue Interactive Agency. We can provide you with everything you need to generate more website traffic, including a responsive website design, SEO services, expert SEO blogging services, video marketing services, and more to help your business get the online notice it deserves.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-779-2801 for expert marketing services to help your business generate the high volume of website traffic it deserves!

Using a Monthly SEO Checklist to Rise in Ranking

How to improve organic search ranking in 6 easy steps

Looking for a way to raise your website’s organic search ranking? A monthly SEO checklist is a great way to start! Search engine optimization (SEO) is not a “set and forget” marketing strategy, because the factors that determine your website’s organic search ranking are constantly changing. Google and the other search engines continually tweak their algorithms to make them more effective. The phrases and words that customers use when they perform searches change over time. And the backlinks that search engines love can become out of date as companies redesign their websites and change their URLs. That means that if you want your website to gain and maintain a high position in organic search results, you need to update your website SEO on a regular basis. To make this process as simple as possible, Blue Interactive Agency has put together this easy 6-step monthly SEO checklist. It addresses all the key on-page and off-page SEO issues to help your site gain the rise in ranking you want to see.

1. Find the latest trending keywordsPerform keyword research and analysis to discover the latest trending keywords that your customers are using as they search for information, products, and services in your industry. Don’t forget your mobile customers! Remember to research the casual, long-tail phrases that mobile customers use in their verbal searches.
2. Analyze your competition’s SEOCompetitor SEO analysis is a critical step when you are trying to figure out how to improve organic search ranking. Find out which keywords, phrases, and backlinks are performing well for your competition. You may find some keywords and phrases that you completely overlooked when devising your search strategy. Search for tweaks that will make your search strategies more effective, and incorporate your findings to improve your SEO strategy.
3. Update your website with the new keywords and phrasesGo through your website page by page and incorporate the latest trending keywords and phrases. Make sure you update your keywords in all essential places:
   • Page titles
   • Meta Descriptions
   • Alt tags on images and videos
   • Copy / content
4. Strategic backlink analysisYou should analyze and create new links to reputable websites within and adjacent to your industry on a monthly basis. This is a key metric that search engines consider when assigning positions in organic search results.
5. Search engine submissionVerify that all the new pages on your website have been submitted to the major search engines. This is a critical step to ensure the search engines include your pages in their search results.
6. Run website diagnosisRun Google Webmaster Tools or another website analysis program to check the performance of your website. Be sure to check all areas of your website, looking for any performance errors that may have developed over the past month including:
   • Menu errors - incorrect or missing links
   • Navigation errors – 404 pages, redirection errors
   • blocked by robots.txt errors

If you would like some assistance putting this monthly SEO action plan into effect, Blue Interactive Agency is here to help. Our experienced SEO marketers can provide you with everything you need to help your website gain a higher organic search ranking. You can choose the exact level of SEO service you need, from a complete monthly SEO maintenance package to individual SEO services such as keyword analysis, strategic link building services, expert SEO copywriting services, and more.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-779-2801 for help implementing a monthly SEO plan of action to help your company achieve the high organic search rank it needs to succeed!

4 Reasons Your Business Should Be Tracking Inbound Phone Calls

Pro Marketing Tips: 4 Reasons Your Business Should Be Tracking Inbound Phone Calls

Looking for a way to punch up the power of your PPC, email, and other digital marketing strategies? Start tracking your inbound phone calls. If you’re like most business owners, you invest a considerable amount of time, effort, and money into your digital marketing strategies. You know your PPC, email, and social marketing strategies must be working because the customer calls are rolling in.   What you probably don’t know is which of these strategies are driving your phone traffic. You could ask everyone who calls in how they found your phone number, but you’ll end up annoying your customers without getting a lot of useful data. Call tracking can show you which of your digital strategies are generating your inbound phone calls.  

The concept of call tracking is surprisingly simple. Using call tracking software and a special line of code that you insert into your webpages, landing pages, and social strategies, you set up a different phone number for every online marketing campaign you run. When customers call in, the software will show you how and where the customer found your number to make the call.  Here are the top 4 reasons why your business should be tracking inbound phone calls now:

You’ll know your customers better

When you know the exact marketing strategy or campaign that prompted your customers’ calls, you get a head start on meeting their needs. You know what is important to them, so you can frame your conversation to emphasize the topics that will drive the sale. For instance, if they reached you through a campaign highlighting how reliable your services are, you can start your discussion with that and save the pitch about your low prices for later.

You can streamline your marketing budget

Once you analyze the data you get from your call tracking software, you’ll be able to see which of your inbound marketing strategies generated each call. You’ll be able to identify which marketing campaigns are effective at motivating customers, and which aren’t generating an adequate response. That will help you determine which marketing strategies are worth the effort and which need to be overhauled or dropped completely. This information will help you to streamline your marketing budget so you’re only paying for strategies that work.

You can supercharge your PPC campaigns

Tracking your inbound calls shows which keywords are getting the best response. You’ll be able to direct your PPC campaigns to take advantage of the keywords that work. You can also incorporate the best performing keywords into your other digital marketing strategies to improve their performance.

You’ll have measurable marketing results

One of the difficulties of digital marketing is trying to demonstrate the ROI of your efforts. Without hard data you can show your company, it can be hard to convince them to allocate marketing spend into digital channels. When you track the source of inbound calls, you get solid campaign performance data that clearly shows the results of your online advertising.

For more helpful marketing tips and full support for all your digital marketing efforts, turn to Blue Interactive Agency. We’re a leading inbound marketing agency, well equipped to help you with every aspect of your digital marketing strategies. We’ll set up a system for tracking your inbound phone calls, and provide you with analytics to use the information to supercharge your PPC campaigns, email strategies, social marketing efforts, and other digital marketing strategies so you achieve the highest possible ROI.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-406-4149 to discover just how much call tracking can improve the success of your digital marketing strategies!

How to Increase Traffic to Your Website

6 Ways You Can Get More Leads: How to Increase Traffic to Your Website

Does this sound familiar? Your small business has invested a lot of time, effort, and expense in developing a killer website but you’re just not getting the volume of visitors you need to succeed. You’re left trying to figure out how to increase traffic to your website without breaking your budget, and you’re not sure where to turn. We’ve got some small business marketing tips that can help! We’ve identified 6 easy, affordable offline and online marketing strategies you can use to drive an increase in traffic to your website. Most of these tips require an investment of time, not cash, making them perfect for small businesses operating on a tight budget. Put them into effect and get ready for the virtual crowds!

SEO marketing

SEO marketing is the most essential step to increasing traffic to your small business website.  Research has shown that 90% of consumers now search online for information about businesses, products, and services before making a purchase. If your website doesn’t appear on the first page of search results, you’re virtually invisible to the vast majority of these prospective customers.

To gain a higher visibility in search and generate more traffic for your website, you will need to perform on-page SEO throughout your website.  Research and incorporate the latest trending keywords and longer keyword phrases used in verbal searches in these key places on your website:

• In your page titles
• 3-4 times in the content of each webpage
• In the ALT tags of all images
• In the META descriptions

Content marketing (blogging)

An interesting, well-written weekly or bi-weekly blog is one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website. Blogging is an effective content marketing strategy that allows you to add fresh new content to your website on a regular basis, which helps to attract new visitors while giving your site a boost with Google. Blogging helps you build inbound links and gives you a way to keep your website continually up to date with the latest keywords, which will improve your website’s position in search results. And as you continue blogging, you will build up a content bank that will help your website become the go-to source for information about your industry, which will raise your search position higher and encourage even more visitors.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing strategies work hand in hand with content marketing to help you generate more website traffic. Every time you publish a blog, you should create teaser posts that link back to the blog for all the social media platforms on which you maintain a presence. The posts don’t have to be long or involved; in fact, you can often just use the Meta description from the blog as your lead line. Adjust your headline and content to match the tone of each of the social platform and be sure to include appropriate #hashtags with your Twitter and Google+ posts.

Email marketing

Encourage your email subscribers to visit your website by including enticing snippets from your latest blogs in your monthly newsletters. To maximize your emails’ impact on your website traffic, you can send out time-dependent offers that link back to your website.

Analytics

Once you’ve put these online marketing strategies to work increasing traffic to your website for a month or so, you can use analytics to refine the strategies and make them even more effective. Use Google Analytics to track how visitors are getting to your website and see what actions they take once they get there. You’ll be able to determine which blog topics are most popular, which social strategies are generating the most traffic, and which emails garnered the most click-throughs. Apply that information to make your online strategies more effective and you’ll be able to increase your website traffic at an accelerated rate!

Offline advertising

Don’t forget to continue your traffic building activities offline! Make sure your website address figures prominently in all your branding materials, promotional items, and offline advertising. Direct customers to your website for more in-depth information on the services or products your small business provides, and offer an incentive for visiting your site.  The incentive doesn’t have to be large to inspire a great response; often a minor discount of 5% or 10% is sufficient to increase website traffic in a major way.

For more small business marketing tips and full support for all your offline and online marketing strategies, you can always turn to Blue Interactive Agency. Our dedicated marketers can provide you with a responsive web design, SEO services, expert SEO content writing services, monthly social marketing packages, and more to make sure your small business gains the website traffic you need to succeed.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-779-2801 for a full range of offline and online marketing strategies to gain your small business website the traffic it deserves!

Re-Energize Your Small Business Marketing Efforts by Optimizing Existing Content

How to breathe new marketing life into your old content

Looking for a way to rev up your small business marketing efforts without having to spend hours writing additional new content? There’s no question that publishing interesting, relevant content is the best way to supercharge your online marketing strategies to make them more effective.

But if you’re like most small business owners, you already have your hands full running your company. You simply don’t have enough free time to produce more content than the weekly or bi-weekly blog you already author.

We’ve got good news! If your company has already produced enough content that you have a sizable content bank built up, you can re-energize your small business marketing efforts simply by optimizing your existing content. Updating and republishing your renewed content can actually help you achieve a much greater marketing reach than you can generate using only new content.

All it takes to optimize your existing content and renew your small business marketing strategies is just 7 easy steps:

Step 1: Analyze your content bank

Before you can start enjoying a re-energized online marketing strategy, you need to analyze your existing content to find blogs that will help you gain the most marketing reach. Don’t be surprised to find that your older posts are actually doing a better job of generating new leads than your newer posts, particularly if you have a large list of subscribers.

There’s a very logical reason for this: your subscribers are already “in the loop,” as established customers so you need new visitors to see your posts to generate new leads.  And that depends on search.

Older posts that have generated a significant amount of traffic have already proved their relevance, which gives them a leg up on search engine positioning, which in turn helps them generate more organic search traffic. Time to capitalize on that cycle.

Step 2: Identify high-potential postsYou’re looking for two specific types of blog content:

• Past posts that are getting a lot of traffic but not converting well
• Posts that still generate a high number of conversions even though they aren't getting a lot of search traffic

Once you’ve identified these high potential posts, you can start optimizing them.

Step 3: Make your posts more attractive to search enginesThere are several actions you can take to re-energize your existing content by making it more attractive to Google and the other search engines.

• Identify the keywords visitors are using to reach your blogs, and then incorporate them throughout your content in the text, title, and images of your posts
• Keep the same URL that’s generating visits, but add relevant keywords into your title
• Update your links to include internal links as well as outbound links with authority

Step 4: Update posts to make them more appealing to visitors

Renovate your older posts to improve their quality and make them more attractive to visitors.

• Add some eye-catching visuals
• Re-format text into short, easy-to-read sections
• Update facts and figures with current information

Step 5: Pair your content with offers that are highly relevant and targetedUpgrade your posts with offers that are tightly targeted and directly relevant to their content. For example, if you’re a realtor with a blog about obtaining commercial property mortgages, you shouldn’t pair it with a call to action that offers an e-book on readying your home for sale because that won’t appeal to the readers of that post. Pairing that content with an offer for a checklist for buying commercial properties will generate a much greater response.

Step 6: Optimize your CTAs

When you adjust your calls to action to provide the best possible user experience, they end up generating more responses. Use smart CTAs that are personalized so that any known visitor information is already filled in, and adjust the form parameters so it only appears to new traffic instead of annoying repeat visitors.

Experiment with the placement of your CTAs to see what generates the best response. Try p your CTAs in a popup window across the screen or through anchor text directly within your blogs, as well as at the bottom of your blog.

Step 7: Republish your renewed content

Change the publish date on your refreshed content to bring it current and republish on the web. Promote it across the full array of your online marketing strategies as if it were brand new, using social media, email, and SEO strategies to put it in front of a large pool of interested visitors.

Optimizing your existing content through these steps should re-energize your small business marketing efforts and give you a significant boost in conversion rates. For more content marketing tips along with complete support for your small business marketing strategies, you can always turn to Blue Interactive Agency. Our dedicated team of marketers can provide you with everything you need to re-energize your content marketing strategies including responsive web design, professional content creation services, interactive marketing strategies, monthly social marketing packages, and more.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-779-2801 for help in re-energizing your small business content marketing strategy to extend your marketing reach!

Email Marketing Tips: Successful Email Marketing

6 tips to create a winning email marketing strategy

If you’re looking for affordable, effective marketing ideas for small business, email should definitely top the list. Email marketing offers some definite advantages that can make it one of the most valuable forms of online marketing that small businesses can pursue. It can be easily personalized to rev up its appeal, is extremely affordable, and gives you the opportunity to market your business directly to your customers without having to wait until they stop by your website or social media pages. Simply sending out emails and hoping for the best isn’t going to get you very far, though. Just like with the rest of your online marketing strategies, there are certain guidelines you should follow to get the best return for your emails.  To help you on your way, here are our top 6 email marketing tips to ensure your email marketing efforts succeed.

Tip #1: Make your emails mobile-ready

The majority of customers now access their email using a smartphone or other mobile device, and Litmus reports that a whopping 71% of these on-the-go subscribers will delete an email if it isn’t mobile-friendly.  Choose a responsive email design to ensure your emails perform perfectly no matter how they’re accessed – there are a number of free templates available online to show you how.

 Tip #2: Create winning subject linesA killer subject line is the key to successful email marketing. Create interesting subject lines using these tips will help entice recipients to open your emails:

• Keep it short - 28-39 characters is optimum
• Make sure your subject lines are directly relevant to the contents of your emails - “bait and switch” tactics are just going to annoy your readers
• Motivate recipients by including a call to action
• Create a sense of urgency
• Include a specific offer or discount

 Tip #3: Provide meaningful calls to action

Crafting meaningful calls to action is the best way to boost the click-through rates on your emails, according to Ascend2’s benchmark email marketing trends report. Make your CTA stand out on your email by using contrasting colors and bold, clear language. Motivate your customers with dynamic CTAs that urge them to directly take action such as “Join the conversation”

 Tip #4: Choose a simple, clear layout

You only have a small window of opportunity to grab your recipients’ attention with email marketing. Don’t overwhelm them with a cluttered layout design that features so many graphics, flashing gifs, and decorative fonts that your message gets lost. Trust in the strength of your message and go with a simple, clean layout with information divided into two or three sections. That will offer just enough visual stimulation to provide interest and capture your readers’ attention without distracting them from your message.

Tip #5: Use short, succinct wording

Don’t make the mistake of overloading recipients with so much text that it puts them off from reading your email. The purpose of your email is to get readers to click through, so present information in a few easy to scan sections that readers can take in at a glance. Positioning CTAs strategically throughout text will entice recipients into taking a desired action to discover more information.

Tip #6: Choose your graphics carefully

It can be tempting to use big, showy graphics to catch readers’ attention, but loading down your email with too many images or ones that are too big can cause your messages to load slowly or appear distorted in email. Some email clients even gray out images, leaving only broken-link symbols. Recipients aren’t going to wait for your email to load; they’re going to trash it unread and move on. Consider sending out emails that are primarily text-based, using contrasting colors and just a few well-chosen images to enhance the message. This approach will help your message to come through clearly and quickly, which can help increase your open and click through rates.

For more email marketing tips and complete support services for all your online marketing efforts, turn to Blue Interactive Agency. Our dedicated team of marketers can provide you with a comprehensive list of small business marketing services that includes responsive web design services for websites and emails, email content creation, subscriber list acquisition and management services, monthly social marketing packages, and much more.

Contact us at Blue Interactive Agency today at 954-779-2801 for more information on implementing effective email marketing strategies to help your small business succeed!

Benefits of a Full Service Marketing Agency

Employing the help of a full service marketing agency is a cost effective solution to your marketing needs

So you own a small business, and you’ve got your hands full.  After all, you’re totally in charge of everything-- from hiring to payroll to inventory to…everything.  You obviously have to market your biz, but you’ve already invested all you have and the bank loan didn’t supply you with the extra dough needed to put your product on the map.  So what do you do?  You can’t afford to hire a full-time marketing staff.  Maybe the best decision you can make is to hand over the duties to a full service marketing agency.

Full Service Marketing Agency:

A full service marketing agency is just like you.  It’s a business that knows its specialty.  Think of it like this—you would hire a specialist to perform a job you can’t do yourself, be it a plumber, electrician, or a roofer.  It’s their specialty, and they know what they’re doing where you might have your hands in the air with frustration over your inability to do the job.  And a full service marketing agency is bottled into one house.  It’s a team of talented players, working cohesively with a common thought process.  They’re in sync with what you’re trying to accomplish.

Online Marketing Agency:

Eighty-nine percent of consumers head to the worldwide web to help them with purchasing decisions, according to a study done by Fleishman-Hillard.  That’s a whole lot of business out there for you.  An online marketing agency can guide you on the path to success where you might fail alone.  Do your research, find the right agency, and make sure they know what your goals are, not just what they might assume they are.  These types of agencies don’t just help Coca-Cola or McDonald’s.  They’re out there for small businesses like you.

Nuts And Bolts:

You can learn the nuts and bolts of marketing, but it’s an ever-evolving world.  A full service marketing agency is well aware of trends and changes, and they keep up with these elements on a daily basis.  Again, it’s their craft, not yours.  They have the time and resources to keep up to date on this.  You don’t…you have receipts to file!  They are in place to alleviate the marketing burden from you, to service you and your company’s needs.

Local Marketing Services:

When choosing a marketing service, it might behoove you to go local.  You can go online and see a fantastic-looking website that blows you away.  It doesn’t necessarily mean there is a team of 10 strategists ready to go.  It could be a one-man band 2,000 miles away for all you know.  A local marketing service allows you the opportunity to meet and interact with the team that’s performing your marketing strategy.  You can see an actual building, assess their infrastructure, and make sure you have a good overall feeling about the agency.

Blue Interactive Agency is one such local marketing service.  A top-ranked Fort Lauderdale marketing agency, BIA has been performing these kinds of services for a dozen years, both locally and nationally.  Ultra-capable, Blue Interactive Agency can readily tackle any marketing challenge you have, from SEO strategies to web design to social media marketing, and more.  If you’re searching for a full service marketing agency, BIA will take the ball and run with it, serving your every marketing need.  BIA looks forward to hearing from you and for the opportunity to deliver a massive ROI.  Call BIA at (954) 406-4149.

The Importance of an Effective Website Design

Website Design: The First Step in Attracting New Leads

Your website is the online face of your business. Just as you wouldn’t want anyone to enter your actual store and see clutter, disorganization, and lack of benefits of being there—your web page is vital to your business’s success. It’s time to give your website design a thorough look through and decide if it’s up to snuff or if you need either slight alterations or a complete overhaul. What does your page need to attract and keep viewers interested? Read on to find out.

Be Clear. Be Concise. 

So a person decides to click on your site to see what you have to offer.  Don’t be too wordy on your homepage.  Don’t put too many pictures on there (though photos are good when done appropriately).  Don’t clutter it up with excessive “bells and whistles.”  Your page should be clear and concise and tell the viewer exactly what your business does and what products or services are offered.  Ambiguity is a word that should never come into the fold when it comes to your website.

Make An Impression.

Your page should pop.  It should be bold.  It should make the retina of a viewer expand in wonderment.  Crisp website design, font, and coloring are what you should always strive for.  Make an impression in those ways that make viewers enjoy and, most importantly, remember your site.  Once your website design achieves this, visitors to your site are much more likely to choose your business over another that has a boring, bland look.

Going Mobile.

If you’re old enough, you may remember the song “Going Mobile” by the Who.  Great song, great group…apologies for the digression.  Your website needs to be mobile-friendly, period.  People use their smartphones far more than desktops in this day and age.  Google recently changed its search algorithm to reflect SEO positioning based upon mobile-friendliness of a website.  Guess what?  If a person is in the car, they can’t use their desktop.  So make sure when they hit up their cell phone, your page is designed in such a way that it works without any extra scrolling or swiping side to side to read the end of a sentence.

More Music? Yep.

Keeping in the theme of classic rock, Tom Petty has a lyric that goes, “The waiting is the hardest part.”  For some reason, music is on my mind as I deliver keys to website design.  No one likes to wait.  The attention span of today’s America might have a hard time reading this entire sentence without being distracted by a shiny object.  It’s a sad indictment, but it’s true.  To the point—your website design absolutely needs fast-paced page loading.  Google says your site should load a new page in one second or less.  Slower loading means more waiting, and I’ve just covered that.  Anyone who has to twiddle their thumbs waiting for the next page to pop up will opt to click away to a competitor’s site rather than continuing to twiddle.

Benefits, They’re Beneficial.

When you get lucky enough to have someone head to your page, you better give them a benefit for going there.  It can be a coupon, an idea, or anything that is of direct value to the viewer. Consumers want to know what they’re getting, and that there’s something of worth waiting for them.  Give them a reason to stay on your homepage and advance to further pages on your site.  Incentivize viewers to keep looking at what you can provide them, and not provide a competitor any reason for them to head to their website.  This is a key facet in website development, and, along with the aforementioned tips, as well as many others, should not be taken lightly.

There are website design companies available at the touch of your fingers.  Blue Interactive Agency is one that helps businesses worldwide in this capacity.  BIA has been in business for over a dozen years, and is well-equipped to assist you with website design.  Don’t hesitate to reach out for a consultation at (954) 779-2801.

6 Secrets Behind Social Media Marketing

Add the Secret Sauce to Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

With so many methods of marketing in which business owners have to figure out, one of the most en vogue and ever-expanding ones is that on the social media front.  There are well over two billion active social media users around the globe—a staggering number that represents nearly a third of the planet’s population!  Think you need to focus on social media marketing now?  Let’s dive into six secrets behind social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing Tips:

It’s likely you have at least one social media account, whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or other.  If you have one, potential clients have at least that many, but odds are, they have more.  In this article, we’ll run briefly through social media marketing tips that can greatly enhance your business.

You Had A Business Plan.  Have A Social Media Marketing Plan:

You had to start your business with a plan of attack.  No bank would’ve given you a loan to get that business off the ground otherwise.  While you’re not asking for startup money, having a social media marketing plan is paramount into breaking into this arena of promotion.  You can’t just go about it willy-nilly.  A smart hire of a marketing specialist, if you can afford to pay for the position, is ideal.  Figure out what it is you want to accomplish via social media, how you’ll go about efficient marketing, and research the ways in which to measure success using tools like Google Analytics.

Peanut Butter On Ripped Bread:

What does that mean, you ask?  It applies to the theory of not spreading yourself too thin.  You may think hitting every potential customer out there on every different platform is a good idea.  It isn’t; at least at first.  Don’t overextend yourself with too many places to have to be active.  It’s far too much work.  Figure out who your demographic is, and hit that/those platforms hard.  When you get the hang of it, then add different accounts as you see fit.  Remember, you have enough on your plate that eating peanut butter on ripped bread is not in your best interest.

Quality Trumps The Numbers. Just Ask Google:

Quality content when using social media marketing still rules.  You can tweet 1,000 times, but 10 effective messages on Twitter will still yield better results, and have a higher likelihood of being shared with more people that may be interested in your product.  Also, those 1,000 tweets may be seen by 1,000 people, but if they’re not interacting with your content in the right way, Google will actually penalize your SEO ranking.

Social Media Marketing For Small Business:

You’re a small business owner.  You’re not Coca-Cola.  You’re not Home Depot.  It allows you to connect on a more personal level in your content.  When you do that, you become a face, a person, not a conglomerate that has grand ideas of world domination.  Do your best to be genuine and respond to all comments and inquiries on your social media outlets.  Humanize your brand.  Build relationships.  You can ask questions, put up polls, link to other sights, and more.  People want to feel like they mean something, and that you’re listening.  This kind of authentic relationship building will go a long way in boosting your business.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Sales:

OK, a picture may not necessarily translate into that exact number of sales, but you should use visuals as often as you can when posting on social media.  Show your product.  Show yourself.  Show your place of business.  Show happy customers.  Show anything (in good taste).  Showing visuals is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than simply text.  Make sure to be consistent with your brand, logo, and the colors that go along with them.

Adapt, Adjust, Acclimate:

As tough as it may be to simply keep up with social media and post on a regular basis, you’ll have to be ready to adapt its ever-evolving, ever-advancing world.  Remember when there was just MySpace?  Seems like a long time ago, but now there are a myriad of outlets.  And those outlets are constantly striving to stay ahead of their competitors by adding new facets to pique the interest of today’s social media society.  Like an acorn into a tree, grow with the changing times, and the increase in your business will be indicative of a job well done.

Blue Interactive Agency is adept at handling social media marketing issues and we are ready to aid you in understanding how to increase traffic to your site(s), how to be mobile and smart, and in best practices for social media usage.  Don’t hesitate to reach out us at (954) 613-2476.

Improving Your Email Marketing Campaigns

A guide to improving the implementation and results of your business’ email marketing campaigns

Those of you who don’t regularly check emails, raise your hand… No one? Let's face it, we all do, and pretty much daily, if not multiple times per day.  That’s why email marketing is such an effective tool to reach customers and grow your business. When done correctly, it’s one of the most successful things you can do as a business owner. That’s a very general scope, so let’s focus our gaze a bit tighter on the how to go about improving your email marketing campaigns.

Email Marketing For Small Business      

Email marketing for small business has many facets to it. One of the first to consider is having great landing pages to direct your subscribers that offer great information relevant to the email. Why are landing pages so useful? They allow your email to be more concise and don’t clutter up your web page. They’re great destination pages that customers who really want what you’re offering in the email can head to.  It’s kind of like a present waiting for them should they decide to click to the landing page. When you email subscribers (we’re about to get to that segment of the buying population), make sure you’re delivering specific information that gets them to your site, as well as linking them to your landing page.  Just getting them to your web page isn’t enough. There’s a momentum factor that keeps them going farther with your landing page. You don’t want to lose out on that flow.

Viewers Into Subscribers, Subscribers Into Customers

Getting viewers to become subscribers is tremendously beneficial to accruing business.  How do you get viewers to become subscribers? You can acquire massive amounts of subscribers via gated content. Gated content is that which only subscribers can access. It gives them a feeling of exclusivity and importance. There is real value in it, because many people like getting extras that come with “membership.”  You can offer up discounts, guides, free services, or any number of incentives that can give a little push for viewers to become subscribers.  If that doesn’t seem to be working as well as you hoped-- ask. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  When you post a blog, which you should be doing regularly, you can always write something to the effect of, “If you like what you just read, check out more by subscribing to my feed.” One bonus with subscribers is when you post a blog, they receive an email notification, which gives them a reason to go to your page. You don’t have to keep reminding them you just blogged.

Personalize Your Emails. Connect With Subscribers

Try to find out about subscribers; maybe it’s their favorite football team or most hated food.  That’s enough to personalize and customize your emails.  Don’t write one generic email for the masses. Draw them in on an individual basis.  Research has shown click-through rates increase by as much as 35% when you gear a personal touch in your emails. You may also obtain personal information based on a “like” or comments directed on your blog. Customers love to feel special, that they’re connected to you.  It empowers them.  When they’re empowered, they purchase, and you win. By allowing to select products or services they are interested in, you can easily tailor different messages to each customer subset.

Improve Email Marketing.  Make it Mobile-Friendly

If you’re reading this, you may very well be doing so from a cell phone.  Face it-- we’re always on our phones.  They’re accessible, where computers live in designated spots.  So, you can improve email marketing efforts by making your site, blogs, and emails mobile-friendly.  Content that looks good on the cell phone may encourage consumers who might simply be waiting for their oil change to subscribe.  More than a third of cell phone users utilize that device rather than their laptop or desktop.  It’s a huge population you need to be hitting.  Find that segment of consumers where they are at the moment, not where they might be while watching TV after work.

Remember, 91% of consumers say they check their emails at least once on a daily basis.  Data has also shown email resonates nearly eight times better than social media.  And it nets you twice as much ROI on pay-per-click.  It stands to reason that an effective email marketing campaign will boost your business demonstratively.  If any of this sounds confusing, don’t waste time scratching your head.  Blue Interactive Agency is at your service to enlighten, enable, and empower you to grow a healthy, robust email marketing campaign.  Don’t hesitate to reach out to BIA at (954) 779-2801 and get your business on the fast track to bigger bucks.