Best Digital Marketing Tactics to Generate More Leads and Not Blow the Budget Doing It

Keeping pace with the latest and most effective digital marketing tactics can be quite a challenge. With the majority of consumers now searching for products and services online before making a purchase, it’s more important than ever to have a strong digital presence. Lucky for you, we’ve compiled the best digital marketing tactics that will perform without blowing your budget.

Email Marketing isn’t Dead, Your Approach Is

Email marketing is still one of the best lead generators in the digital marketing space. It generates a sky-high ROI of $42 for every dollar spent. But this ROI doesn’t come automatically. Let’s dive into some best practices for email marketing:

Use your customer and prospect data to create personalized messages for your subscribers. Customizing your emails with relevant information is a powerful way to get more engagement and sales from your leads. Most CRM platforms have AI features that take the guesswork out of creating personalized emails.

It’s not always about short-term conversions. Delivering a regular cadence of email newsletters to your past and present customers builds strong relationships. This improves brand loyalty and retention. If your customers value and enjoy your newsletter, they’ll begin to look for it around the time you normally send it!

Use exciting subject lines to drive higher open rates. Use urgency, intrigue, humor, teasers, and questions. ALWAYS provide value and avoid spam-flagging tactics like multiple exclamation points, too many ALL CAPS or certain trigger-happy sales words. Follow the same guidelines in your content. Think value over length or beauty. Some of the best performing emails we’ve seen are short, text only, and direct. If you don’t provide valuable information, recipients are likely to unsubscribe or mark you as spam. Ouch.

Leverage Paid Social Media Ads

Gaining organic reach on most social media platforms is an uphill challenge. Paid social is a game changer for most businesses when the right techniques are used. Make sure you study your audience enough to know where they gather online and the types of content they engage with the most. Leverage this consumer data to create social ads that grab their attention within the first three seconds while positioning your product/service as a solution to their problem. Ads can build your fan base, drive website traffic or generate leads. The best long-term strategies take a balanced approach.

Optimize SEO for Voice Search

There’s no denying the growing use of voice recognition in the devices that surround us. Optimizing your content for searches with ears rather than eyes requires some reworking of your content. Create content that answers common questions your customers ask. Answer The Public is a great place to quickly find out what your target group is searching for online. Google Ads can evaluate the performance of human language keywords and find new ones.

Content Creation

Content is king, but not all that glitters is gold. Demand for interactive content is growing in today’s digital landscape. Interacting with your audience is becoming more important with the latest social media updates: Instagram story quizzes, LinkedIn polls, and a host of other interactive features are becoming the norm. Using these interactive features not only creates an engaging and entertaining experience for your audience, it also makes it easy to capture their information and begin a dialogue.

These are just a few of the digital marketing tactics you can use to generate more leads and not blow your budget. By using a mix of these tactics, you can reach your target audience and convert them into leads.

At AdEdge Digital Marketing, we specialize in helping businesses generate more leads and sales through digital marketing. We understand the ins and outs of all the different digital marketing tactics and can help you create a campaign that achieves your specific goals. Contact us today to learn how we can help you grow your business without breaking the bank. Got a question? Need a hand? Give us a shout!

5 Signs Your Digital Marketing Agency is Ripping You Off

5 Signs Your Digital Marketing Agency is Ripping You Off

Finding a reputable Digital Marketing agency for your SMB is like stepping into the Wild West. Any cowboy can hang up a sign and say he’s open for business. Unfortunately for you, like the Wild West, there’s no governing body for Digital Marketing agencies or how they manage accounts. Sifting through the dust to find a diamond in the rough is not an ideal use of your time.
So how do you know if you’re working with an experienced, reputable Digital Marketing agency and not some cowboy operation that’s just looking to make a quick buck?

1. Vague Campaign Data

We created a successful Digital Marketing campaign with no data…said no reputable marketing agency ever. Strategy follows numbers and not the other way around. Without a proper understanding of how your marketing dollars are performing, you cannot gauge your campaign’s effectiveness and make necessary adjustments.

A reputable Digital Marketing agency will be more than happy to share this data with you. If your agency is not forthcoming with this information, or worse, if they are trying to hide it from you, this is a red flag.

2. Minimal Communication

Good communication is critical in any relationship, and this is especially true when it comes to working with a Digital Marketing agency. How often do they contact you? What kind of updates or reports do you receive? How much input do you have into the campaign?

An agency that is ripping you off will likely be very secretive and frequently avoid communication. You should expect regular communication from your agency, whether it is through emails, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings. It’s their duty to keep you in the loop and share details about the ongoing work they are doing for you.

3. Failing to Follow Industry Best Practices

Digital Marketing best practices change faster than a Cowboy fan’s hopes at making it to the play-offs. Following industry trends, algorithms, and changes will help you remain at the top of your game and gain a competitive edge over your competitors.

You don’t want your agency using out-of-date tactics that may cause more harm than good. A reputable Digital Marketing agency will stay updated on the latest tactics to help you achieve your marketing goals.

4. Over Promise Under Deliver

I see it all of the time, an agency will promise a client the moon and the stars only to end up getting peanuts. Always do your homework and look at an agency’s credentials such as:

Qualifications and certifications
Awards
Positive reviews, testimonials, and references
Case Studies and white papers
Portfolio

Any reputable agency would be happy to provide this information if it’s not already listed on their website.

5. “Set it and forget it” …and other agency money savers that could cost you

Certain money-hungry agencies will stop at nothing to improve their bottom line. While this can come in the form of over-charging, it more often comes in the form of cutting expenses – at your cost. Here are three ways an agency can rip you off by not investing appropriately in your effort.

Set it and forget it. All is good at kickoff but after that, the changes and proactive communications go silent. The agency is basically running your campaign on auto-pilot which leaves your performance flat or worse.
Automation. Lots of agencies looking to save a buck on personnel turn to automated optimization tools. A.I. may be good at making mathematical decisions but nothing replaces a skilled digital marketer who understands the all-important creative and human side of marketing. A machine can’t come up with new ideas, give subjective feedback or ask, “why?”
Newbie account managers. We hear it all the time, my account manager kept changing or didn’t really know what he/she was doing. Account turnover means unhappy managers and usually new, underpaid managers that skip out to find the next best thing.

An excellent digital marketing agency will offer highly educated, experienced account managers who love what they do and who work hard to optimize your campaign on an ongoing basis. They enjoy their work and what they do, and take pride in delivering continued improvements in your account performance over time.

Looking out for these common red flags will save you time and money. At AdEdge Digital Marketing, you can count on us to create outstanding digital marketing campaigns that generate results through outstanding people, thoughtful campaign development, continuous analysis and performance optimization. Contact us if you’d like to chat.

Search Engine Marketing Vs. Social Media Marketing: The Final Match

Navigating digital marketing as a business owner can be an overwhelming experience when you’re trying to create the perfect formula for keeping your business a well oiled machine. Scroll down any social media timeline and eventually you’ll see an ad touting Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Marketing (SMM), and other tactics as the guaranteed way to make a million dollars overnight. Well, maybe not overnight but it sure seems that way. Odds are you’ve wondered if your business needs Search Engine Marketing or Social Media Marketing, and which is best for business growth.

As your business continues to expand, you may discover that you need to use both tactics for different objectives. Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing come with a unique set of strengths and weaknesses. However, with a solid understanding of how to leverage these tactics to grow your business, you’ll be able to make an informed decision on how to incorporate each into your overall marketing plan to produce a high return on your investment.

How does each tactic work? Which one is better? Let’s explore…

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Seems like a dumb question but as Google continues to evolve so does all that is impacted by Search Engine Marketing (SEM). In business marketing terms, it’s about optimizing your exposure in all areas of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) of Google, Bing, etc., anytime someone in your market area searches for your business or any of the products or services you sell. In other words, how well is your business represented in the search engines when a ready prospect is searching for the things that you sell? The goal of SEM is to improve your exposure in the SERPS and to drive good, prospective customers and clients to your website where they will learn about your company, your products or services and hopefully, will convert to a lead or sale.

Why is SEM so important? Well, just think about how many search queries are inputted into Google on a daily basis: 3.5 billion, according to one study. It’s evident the importance of making sure your business not only shows up in relevant search results, but appears on the first page through an effective SEM strategy.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing (SMM) involves using apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many others to build your brand and create an engaging community that likes and purchases from your business.

SMM involves a more intentional approach to social media platforms than simply uploading the occasional post to your business account. Marketing experts know that the best results from social media advertising spring out of bespoke solutions, carefully tailored to each audience segment, as well as the unique attributes of each network.

What’s the difference between SEM and SMM?

SEM and SMM can both be very valuable tools to grow your business. However, they accomplish this objective in different ways.

Focus

In general, the focus of search engine marketing is to generate clicks and, subsequently, traffic to your website. Whether you stick with organic SEO (i.e producing content that will climb Google’s unpaid “natural” rankings) or dive into the world of Google Ads Pay-Per-Click (PPC), the main objective is to get the highest number of qualified visitors to your website, convert them into leads, and ultimately, sales.

In contrast, social media marketing may have a number of different objectives apart from funneling traffic to your website. For instance, you may want to leverage SMM for increased engagement, or enhanced brand credibility. And in many cases, companies use social media accounts to foster customer loyalty to their business, rather than to directly drive sales.

Content

There’s a world of difference between content that performs well in an SEM context, versus what works for SMM.

For search engine marketing, you’ll typically have either paid ads with clear and concise copy or organic content that will show up as top results. Studies show that the optimal word count for organic SEO falls somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Of course, successful posts may be much shorter or much longer, depending on a wide variety of factors that come into play, such as relevance, domain authority, and content structure to name a few.

On the other hand, social media is typically not the medium for longform pieces of content. In fact, a 2021 survey found that 85% of marketers rank short-form video lasting no more than 15 seconds as the most effective type of social media content.

Cadence

How often should you post content for search engine marketing? SEO-driven content may only be published a few times per month, depending on the size of the business and what’s being sold. In fact, email newsletters have grown more personalized overtime with companies choosing to showcase specific content to different audiences.

On the other hand, the effectiveness of social media marketing is contingent on staying on top of the changing algorithm patterns on the various social media apps to achieve maximum growth and brand recognition on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and many others.

Which method is better?

That’s the million dollar question. And maybe you already saw this coming, but the answer is, it depends. It depends on your industry, budget, goals, sales cycle, etc. Neither one is inherently “better” than the other. A digital marketing strategy that combines both approaches will work much better than either one alone. In many cases, you could sum up the synergy between SEM and SMM this way:

Social media marketing increases brand awareness of and engagement with your brand, while search engine marketing increases both engagement and the likelihood that consumers will select your brand when they are ready to make a decision.

Building a powerful online presence that increases your bottom line is no easy feat. Instead of wasting time and money with trial and error, connect with an AdEdge Digital Marketing expert today for a free Digital Marketing Health Checkup.

Best Digital Marketing Tactics That Will Generate More Leads and Not Blow the Budget

Digital marketing is a vast and ever-changing landscape. It can be challenging to keep up with the latest trends and techniques, let alone determine which ones will help you generate more leads for your business without blowing the budget. And with the majority of consumers now searching for products and services online before making a purchase, it’s more important than ever for you to have a strong digital marketing strategy in place. But what are the best tactics? And how can you ensure these campaigns are within your budget? Let’s explore!

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics for generating leads. It allows you to reach a large audience with your message, and it’s relatively inexpensive to set up and maintain. In fact, email marketing has an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. That’s quite a return on investment than you can expect from any marketing strategy- digital or not.

Also, according to stats, consumers who receive marketed emails spend 138% more than those who do not receive email offers. Shocking right?

Here are some of the best email marketing tips to convert subscribers to leads:

Segment your list and send targeted messages. This will increase the chances that your message will be relevant to the recipient, and they will be more likely to engage.
Include a strong call to action in your message. Make it easy for recipients to take the next step by providing a clear and concise call to action.
Use a killer subject line, personalize the content, and ALWAYS provide value. If you don’t provide valuable information, recipients are likely to unsubscribe or mark your message as spam.

To get started with email marketing, you will need to build a list of subscribers. You can do this through sign-up forms on your website or using a tool like Lead Pages to capture leads from other sources. Also aim to measure the success of your email marketing campaigns by using tools like Google Analytics to track opens, clicks, and conversions.

Leverage Paid Social Media Ads

Paid social media ads are another fantastic way to generate leads without breaking the bank. Paid social ads allow you to target specific demographics, interests and even behaviors with laser precision, making them a great option for businesses looking to reach new customers. Facebook and LinkedIn offer lead generation forms that can be embedded in your ads converting every click to a lead.

Compared to other pay-per-click channels, paid social media ads are relatively inexpensive. To get started with paid social media ads, you’ll need to decide between a campaign that builds brand, generates leads, or do both side by side. Start by selecting a platform you want to advertise on (a platform that is popular with your target audience). Create ad copy and imagery that will appeal to your audience. Once your campaign is live, track leads, website engagement, and optimize your campaigns accordingly.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is inarguably the most valuable long-term digital marketing tactic for your business. By optimizing your website through SEO, you can improve your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). When potential customers see your website at the top of the SERPs, they are more likely to click through and visit your site considering that 93% of people who search on Google don’t go past the first page, you can understand why SEO is important.

To get started with SEO, begin with keyword research preferably using a current or past Google ads campaign to find keywords. You can use tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Ahref and SEMrush to find popular keywords your potential customers are using when searching for products or services.

Once you have a list of keywords, optimize your website for these terms. This includes adding them NATURALLY to your title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and image alt tags. Create relevant blog posts and infographics for your audience around these keywords to further improve your SEO. Improve the user experience by working on your website load speed times, navigation, and design.

Content Creation

Content is another key ingredient in any successful digital marketing strategy. By creating high-quality content relevant to your audience, you can not only attract new customers but also keep them coming back for more.

Great content establishes you as a leader in topics relating to your field. It helps build trust and relationships with your audience and acts as fuel for your other marketing tactics.

To get started with content creation, begin by developing a content strategy. This will include deciding on the types of content you want to create, the topics you will cover, and the tone of your content. You will also need to decide on a publishing schedule and make sure that you’re creating content that is useful and interesting to your target audience.

Once you have a strategy in place, it’s time to start creating content. This can include social media posts, blog posts, infographics, podcasts, videos, eBooks, or whitepapers. Leverage your content by posting it on social media, through SEO, and email marketing. Great content will not be helpful if people cannot find it!

Need Help? Talk To Us

At AdEdge Digital Marketing, we specialize in helping businesses generate more leads and sales through digital marketing. We understand the ins and outs of all the different digital marketing tactics and can help you create a campaign that is tailored to your specific needs. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you grow your business without breaking the bank.

HOW MUCH SHOULD MY BUSINESS SPEND ON DIGITAL MARKETING?

The one question we almost always get when onboarding a new client is, “How much should I spend on my digital marketing?”

Good question. Most agencies happily answer this question with big numbers, pressing their clients to do a lot of advertising with long-term commitments. Makes sense – it means bigger commissions. The better decision is driven by three things:

Your marketing budget or in the case of a new business, your business plan.
Available cash to invest in marketing and business growth.
Performance.

Taking a closer look at number three, performance, how can you decide what level to invest in marketing if you don’t know which marketing channels are performing? You can’t. This is why at AdEdge, we prefer to start small, identifying top performing marketing channels and within each channel, which keywords, ads, placements, creative, calls to action are driving the best performance per dollar. With this data, we can then make intelligent recommendations about where and how to accelerate investment. It’s basic, “horse before the cart” stuff. “Ready, aim, fire”, not “Ready, fire, aim.” You get it.

According to the U.S. Small Business Association, many small businesses don’t allocate enough money to marketing, or they spend their marketing dollars haphazardly. By taking a few simple steps, you can establish a marketing strategy, an overall marketing budget, and assign specific dollars to spend wisely on your digital plan.

Define Your Goals: If You Don’t Know Where You are Going, Most Roads Will Lead Nowhere.

Every business is unique and needs a personalized marketing plan. Knowing your goals is the first step when determining how much to spend. Your marketing goals may include:

Defining your target audiences
Boosting your brand visibility
Generating leads
Nurturing and converting new prospects to actual sales
Building a loyal customer base
Drive traffic to your business website
Build a social media presence that drives engagement and awareness

Create a Budget: Your Goals and Revenues Will Guide Your Marketing Spend

For small businesses, a good rule of thumb to follow is to spend 7-8% of annual revenues on marketing with B2C companies spending more than B2B companies. In the initial stages of building a brand, many businesses will commit 20% of their sales on marketing in order to establish a presence in their marketplace.

To help create the right budget, take time to review your business expenses and revenues. Also, get a better understanding of the digital marketing environment. Your goal is to create an affordable digital marketing strategy that maintains a healthy balance between brand investment, performance marketing, and overall cash flow. A digital marketing budget should account for the key channels to promote your brand:

Website
Search Engine Optimization
Social Media
Paid Search
Email
Creative for Ad Campaigns
Content Marketing
Video Marketing

The beauty of digital marketing is that it is highly measurable. Your budgeting decisions will be based on performance data, ensuring your marketing expenses generate tangible results. The numbers can be adjusted accordingly throughout the year.

Here are a few straightforward steps to take to improve your marketing:

Check on your competitors: Identify your biggest competitors in your industry. What is their audience reach, what is their business size, which platforms are they using to market their products, and consider what they may be spending on their overall marketing?

Define your audience and identify where they spend time online.
Research keywords for your business and incorporate into your advertising to boost your ranking on search engine results
Analyze your previous campaigns: Revisit the data (goals, channels, spend, results) from your previous marketing successes and failures.
Test, track performance, and make adjustments.

Don’t Suffer in Silence. Request Your Free Digital Marketing Health Checkup from AdEdge

Are you a new business looking to step into the digital marketing world? Are you unclear on which digital marketing channels will reach your audience? Do you know how your overall marketing is performing every month? Is the marketing agency you have partnered with not delivering the results your business needs? AdEdge can guide you.

With a highly qualified marketing team, we will take time to review your marketing frustrations and respond with solutions that fit your goals. The AdEdge team will focus on digital marketing strategies that work and end your suffering. Our goal is to enable you to confidently grow while effectively managing your budget. Contact us today to learn more about managing digital marketing budgets and performance.

How Can I Drive More Digital Traffic to My Site Immediately?

You know you’re a great marketer when you’re stuck in the highway traffic that’s entirely bumper to bumper, and all you’re thinking of is, “why can’t I direct this much traffic to my website?”

Businesses of all sizes and niches struggle to drive traffic to their sites, so you’re not alone. A 2020 Content Marketing Institute survey found that 63 percent of content experts face hurdles in finding the right experts for content strategy, one of the leading site traffic drivers.

Between creating social media posts, writing new blog posts, and creating a robust email marketing campaign, it can be challenging to look back to see the things that drive traffic to your website and those that don’t. But despite the hurdles, it’s still doable.

This comprehensive guide takes you through the value of quality site traffic and the steps to grow your traffic, generate quality leads, and improve your bottom line.

The Value of Quality Website Traffic

Apart from familiarizing potential clients with your business, your website should allow new visitors into your funnel and convert them into clients.

This way, your site traffic becomes a crucial business growth indicator and driver. It can help you:

View your marketing strategy’s effectiveness
Gather audience insights for critical decisions
Enhance your search engine credibility and rankings
Generate quality leads, boost conversions, and expand your client base

Yet you must drive digital traffic to your site the right way and focus on quality traffic to enjoy the benefits.

Site traffic improves your rank and ultimately generates more traffic, but this improvement should align with an increase in engagement. Otherwise, you aren’t targeting the right traffic.

You can optimize your site for conversion in many ways, but you must begin with attracting the right website visitors. Your overall objective is to drive more qualified individuals highly likely to become leads and customers.

How to Grow Your Website Traffic Immediately

Different strategies can help you increase visitors to your site. The following are the most effective:

Leverage Video Content

Creating video content for your audiences can impact your site traffic substantially. In a Wyzowl survey, 86 percent of marketing experts acknowledge increasing their website traffic through video content. According to a Cisco whitepaper forecast, 82 percent of all IP traffic (consumer and business) would comprise video IP traffic by 2022.

So, create a YouTube channel where you post intriguing regarding your products and informative tutorials on using them. Make sure you link your site content to relevant YouTube videos.

Content Creation

Creating content through blogging is an effective way to attract the right customers. Informative blogs help you cast your net on an expansive audience group, labeling you as an industry expert and credible source of valuable insights.

You have to create content that attracts the ideal visitors to achieve the best results. Here’s how to create great content:

Identify your perfect customer – Knowing your audience lets you publish content that attracts them to your site naturally.
SEO research – Learn what your target audience searches for on the web to provide content that answers their needs.
Create a draft – Draft a post that addresses searchers’ questions while using interesting angles to stand out.
Publishing – Publish the post and optimize the content using SEO tools.
Promote – Market your posts on email newsletters and social media to generate traffic.

Identifying your Target Customer Profiles

You must understand your audience to effectively address their desires, interests, struggles, objectives, and pain points. It’s the best way to create content that speaks your potential customer’s language and generates more clicks.

Here are the tools and tactics for in-depth audience insights:

Market research through analyzing social and search data, reviewing competitor analytics, and working with focus groups and research consultants
Surveying your current customers about their experience and any areas that need improvement
Conducting context-specific polls and surveys on different website pages
Discussions with your support team to learn your audience’s problems
Checking out Google analytics

Email Marketing

This approach uses your current customers and readers to generate site traffic. In a recent HubSpot report, about 80 percent of marketers acknowledged increasing their website engagement and traffic at the end of 2020 after implementing an email marketing strategy.

Create a prospective leads’ list to include in your funnel and send appropriate email marketing content. Share newsletters, product launch information, your latest offers, and more. Remember not to spam your audience and clients with emails as they can unsubscribe.

Optimize Older Content

Optimization involves updating older content to target the current customer, generate traffic, and convert leads.

The years-old blogs must be optimized to generate significant organic traffic, increase your social media followers and blog subscribers, and add value to your repository of old posts. You’ll use the content creation procedure to determine what you need to add, remove, or update in the older content.

Learn to Use SEO Tools

Understanding ESO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Analytics will help you create a targeted content strategy to drive more digital traffic to your site.

You’ll analyze and learn what’s working and what isn’t and develop valuable content ideas.

Improve your Keyword Game

SEO can immensely grow your website traffic, but the old-school strategies are no longer effective. Google’s Hummingbird algorithm came with new rules. Instead of checking keywords, the search engine now understands topics. That’s why you must learn to use LSI keywords.

In essence, these are phrases or words related to your target keyword, and you can use tools like LSI Graph to find them. The more terms you include in your content, the more relevant your post seems to the topic. As such, your content will stand out.

Utilize Online Directories

Online directories are valuable website traffic builders for brick-and-mortar stores. Search engines use local content, links, social profile pages, and citations to gather local search information and provide relevant results based on the user’s location.

Tools like Moz Local and Google My Business can help you manage your citations and directory listings to make your business stand out in local searches.

Use your data

Analyzing your business data from different sources lets you understand the content your audience prefers. For instance, top-performing pages allow you to learn their interests, referral traffic shows the origin of site visitors, and keywords reveal the most common search terms. When you combine these insights, you’ll create a strong user persona to define your current strategy.

Get Professional Help to Boost Traffic to Your Site

The above strategies grant an edge in the highly competitive digital space. But an experienced digital marketing expert will give you an upper hand, helping you achieve your goals faster without making common mistakes or using tools that would harm your traffic.

That’s precisely what AdEdge Digital Marketing offers.

We are a Google Partner Agency and can help you develop and manage effective digital marketing campaigns to grow your site traffic and grow your business. To learn more about driving traffic to your website now, Contact Us or call us at 203-682-4585

5 Effective Ways to Optimize Your Website For Lead Conversions

A website is a valuable digital asset that can transform the sales function if utilized effectively. The sales process has shifted from a single engagement with a client to relationship building and provision of value.

Optimizing your website for lead generation is a critical process that makes it possible to convert website visitors into prospects and sales. The ideal website should act as a sales funnel that readily attracts, warms, and closes leads.

The average conversion rate stands at 2.63%, which means for every 100 visitors, only a paltry three become buyers. To that end, business owners must work on ways to improve the numbers.

Here are a few ways to optimize your website.

1. Enhance the Site’s User Experience

As you gear up for lead generation and conversion, the site should offer a friendly experience to users. A great user experience extends the time a site visitor spends on your site. This is directly related to a high conversion rate.

Here’s what you can do to enhance the user experience.

Make Your Site Mobile Friendly: Approximately 92% of worldwide internet users access the internet using mobile devices. Therefore, website owners must work on their structure, size, and orientation to accommodate the large percentage of mobile users. You can create a mobile responsive site by compressing images, eliminating large paragraphs, using portrait orientation in videos, and applying light themes.
Enhance General Usability: Create an intuitive design that helps users to quickly fulfill their objectives with minor hurdles. Place the navigation links at a standard location for easy access across all pages.
You can also improve the user experience by reducing the number of fonts, contrasting colors, and applying large and legible texts. A design that offers seamless usability reduces bounce rate, which complements your lead generation efforts.
Enhance Site Speed: Internet users are likely to leave websites that load in more than three seconds. The delay leads to a high bounce rate that hurts the site SEO, user experience, and lead conversion efforts.

2. Include Lead Generation Forms

The role of a lead generation form is to collect information required to generate or nurture leads. However, it’s essential to take a progressive approach that requires prospects to fill in minimal details at the initial stages.

A cleaning company can create a lead generation form attached to a free quote. It can also improve the effectiveness of the lead generator by including visual cues like arrows or contact details to encourage additional actions from leads.

It’s vital to conduct an audit to determine the pages that generate the most traffic. The different sources bring unique site visitors, which is why you need to customize each landing page. You might be receiving visitors from blog posts, Live Chat, social media, or an email subscription list.

Here’s how you can optimize the landing pages for lead generation and conversion.

Use Page Analytics: Use page analytics to understand how each page contributes to your leads and sales. If landing page A has a 1% conversion rate compared to landing page B with 5%, there’s an opportunity to benchmark. You can then improve landing page A using superior attributes from landing page B.
Keep the Form Neat: Lead generation forms with unnecessary fill-in details record low conversion rates. Remove the unnecessary fields to increase the probability of attracting leads. You can utilize A/B testing to compare different versions of landing pages you may have in other areas.

3. Add Visually Rich Testimonials

The modern customer relies on reviews or proof from other customers to trust a new product. It’s therefore vital to spruce up your testimonials, which will boost credibility and your ability to attract clients. Testimonials with rich media may include videos, images, and screenshots.

Although they may add to your site size and bandwidth requirements, it’s a powerful tool to improve your lead scoring and conversion abilities. For instance, you can include the reviewer’s image to boost its credibility instead of adding plain text.

Equally, you may add logos of companies that have used and approved your products. Besides the visual impression, you’ll tap on the power, popularity, and trust that the brand holds. A screenshot of reviews from Yelp can indicate the brand has genuine customers who have tried the products. Ultimately, the role of a testimonial is to create an emotional conviction or appeal that holds the power to convince a lead who may be indifferent.

4. Develop a Custom Built Website

Most ready-made sites cannot fulfill your lead generation efforts. You’ll find missing pieces ranging from fonts, color, orientation, and other technical aspects. As such, it’s vital to invest in an affordable site that’ll complement your lead generation goal.

First, you can work on the technical aspects to improve the SEO features of your site. It can range from optimizing URLs, site maps, removing crawling restrictions, or conducting a link audit to find errors. It’s also crucial to fix navigation, visual impression, and blog functionality.

The ideal site should capture your customer base, which is why it’s vital to work closely with a web developer to make the site persuasive and create a site that mirrors your brand identity.

5. Optimize Each Stage of the Sales Journey

If a website visitor reads a blog with the title “10 benefits of social media marketing”, the ideal offer should promote social media services. Other conflicting offers like web development can distort the sales journey.

In addition, customers don’t assume a linear sales journey, necessitating the need to optimize all interaction points. Create a Call-to-Action(CTA) that is simple, concise, and compelling. You can embed an image to capture the attention of your audience or leads.

The open rate of ‘Thank you’ emails— sent after a successful subscription — is twice as much as regular emails. That said, businesses can tap them to send offers that are relevant to the source page.

Conclusion

An optimized website puts your business in a strategic position to attract leads and grow your sales. You can generate leads effectively using a custom-built site, optimizing interaction points, and a defined nurturing process.

That said, AdEdge Digital Marketing is the perfect service provider to boost your site’s lead conversion ability. We are experts in SEO, web design, PPC, email, or mobile marketing, critical in lead management. Schedule a meeting to learn more.

Digital reputation management is not optional, it is essential

The internet is a powerful marketing tool and has a huge potential to make or break a brand. On the one hand, it allows businesses to reach wider audiences than any other traditional advertising channel in existence. And on the other hand, it allows prospects to look businesses up online before making a buying decision.

A decade ago, things like reputation and PR management were mostly a concern for celebrities, CEOs, and politicians. Smaller brands seemed not to care much about it. And they didn’t have to since their brand perception was a one-way street with customers having little to no room for feedback. Besides, the worst that a customer would do was refrain from buying their product or service. Their perception had little to no impact.

But that’s not the case anymore. We’re now in a digital era where customers have a voice and a range of platforms to express their opinions about brands. Happy clients are eager to leave positive reviews and comments for others to see. But guess what, so are the unhappy, dissatisfied ones. And with 85% of consumers trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations, you cannot afford to appear disreputable and untrustworthy on SERPs. That’s where online reputation management comes in.

What’s online reputation management (ORM)?

ORM is the strategy that influences or shapes public perception of your brand. It involves monitoring all aspects of your online presence and doing whatever it takes to improve it. ORM uses positive material to balance, counteract or “push” negative material to a position of insignificance.

Is managing your reputation necessary?

Your online reputation determines how people perceive your brand when they stumble upon it or search for it online. When consumers or potential clients search for a product, service or organization, they are actually performing a three-part search. 1) They search for something that will satisfy their want or need or need, 2) they focus on recognizable brands. and 3) they filter for “the best” solution to their need. Your reputation (reviews and ratings) often determine whether you or your competitor will pass through the reputation filter. How appealing is your reputation against your competitors? Your reputation and perception of quality will often determine who gets the click and ultimately, the business. As such, it has become critical in most industries to manage your reputation to build positive brand equity, a competitive edge, and growth.

ORM proactively influences the information these people will find. It combines public relations, SEO, marketing strategies, etc., to monitor and improve your brand’s online reputation. This strategy helps your business put its best digital footprint forward, helping you show the world the picture of your business that you want others to see.

Why is a good reputation important?

Take a moment to think about your marketing strategy. You buy ads on multiple online and offline mediums, invest in public relations for quality brand mentions, and even send out dozens of press releases to drive interest in your solutions. In the end, all these efforts drive prospects to one place: online. What prospects discover online through Google or Social Sites will influence their perception of your brand. Positive results that align with your brand messaging amplify your marketing effort. But negative ones will hurt your marketing ROI. People across the world turn to search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo first. In fact, 62% of global respondents in the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer said they trust search engines the most when researching a business. Meaning, your prospects are researching your business online, and the result will influence whether or not they’ll visit. Surveys further reveal that businesses with 1- or 2-star reviews fail to convert 86% of prospects – which can be a great loss for startups.

Online reputation affects offline brand perception

The problem with a bad online reputation is that it doesn’t just stay there. It extends beyond the internet into all corners of your sales and marketing. A survey by Weebly showed that 56% of consumers did not trust businesses with poor reputations. Any form of distrust can negatively impact any and all forms of sales and marketing, whether it involves digital media, traditional media, or sales.

Tell the story the way you want

This is perhaps the most distinct benefit of online reputation management. It allows you to create the brand image that you want your prospects to see. Effective ORM capitalizes on positive stories and reviews that highlight your brand – but suppresses those that conflict with your brand image. This lets you show your best face and attract customers.

Rank higher on search engines

Most businesses desire to rank on the first page of the search engine. But if you’ve been at it for a while, you understand that it takes more than a good website and content. Reviews are now the fifth most important factor in where a business ranks online. They make up 16% of the search engine decision-making process, particularly for local rankings. So, making the best effort to manage your online reputation can help you gain SEO visibility.

Builds credibility and trust

With prospects trusting online reviews, earning their trust is critical. Good online reputation management helps you gain customers’ trust. When customers trust your brand, they’re more likely to buy from you than your peers. If you’re lucky, they’ll leave more positive reviews and even refer your brand to others through word of mouth.

Reinforces your brand

You need a clear and consistent brand message across all platforms for people to trust your business. Online reputation management involves scouring the internet for inconsistencies and fixing all issues to ensure uniformity and positive exposure across the web.

Higher revenues

Customers who trust your business see your brand as reliable. So they will always prefer your solutions over your competitors – translating to higher sales conversion and retention rates. Also, as we mentioned earlier, consumers who see your good reputation are more likely to refer you or give positive feedback when your name comes up, which again, will improve your sales conversion rate.

How online reputation management services can help

The last thing you want as a business owner is to leave your brand’s reputation to chance. It takes years to build a reputation, but only a few months to destroy it. An online reputation management service can give your business a voice. It will promote the positive and build upon your hard-earned brand reputation. It will also subdue the negative comments that can ruin your reputation.

If you have any questions or concerns about your online reputation, feel free to contact us and we’ll do our best to help!

Digital Marketing During Covid: 3 Marketing Tactics That Thrived

When coronavirus struck, the marketing sphere was greatly impacted. Physical interactions were restricted, most brick and mortar shops closed down, and foot traffic fell significantly. CMOs were also faced with the difficult task of finding effective ways to reach their customers without going over budget.

Brands have been marketing their products for ages, so how hard can it be? Well, consumer behavior was greatly altered, and internet usage increased by a whopping 70%. The truth is, people were bored at home, so they turned to the internet for information and entertainment. This was the Hail Mary that marketers needed; they could easily market to their audiences on online platforms, at their desired budget. 3 platforms, in particular, experienced a boom during the pandemic; Facebook, Search ads, and YouTube.

1. Facebook Advertising

The most newsworthy internet usage was social media and, specifically, Facebook. As social distancing and remote working increased, Facebook use exploded, making it far easier to reach both consumers and business professionals. People moved to the platform to share news, stay in touch with their friends & family, and as a source of interaction. In fact, when the virus was declared a global pandemic, Facebook usage rose by 50% in the most affected countries.

Why Did Most Marketers Favor Facebook Ads?

Brands using social media have the unique advantage of interacting with their target audiences on a personal level. It is their opportunity to create lasting connections without coming off as too promotional. Most importantly, social platforms are great for selling items that can be bought on impulse. Here’s why Facebook ads boomed;

Budget Control: you are in charge of your marketing budget and can easily adjust it based on how the ad is performing. At a time when most companies had to slash their marketing budget, this aspect was vital.
Goal flexibility: do you want to increase brand awareness, drive people to your website, or generate new leads? You can easily set these goals with Facebook! You just have to find a way of keeping your audience engaged and making your ads click-worthy.
Remarketing: it’s possible to target people that have interacted with your brand in the past using Facebook. These people are more likely to convert since they already have a relationship with your brand.
Targeting options: Facebook has great targeting options that make it easy for marketers to define their audiences based on various criteria, e.g., age, gender, interests, geographical locations, etc.

Facebook was also a great platform for B2B companies to interact with their target customers by sharing relevant blogs, company information, and live webinars.

2. Paid Search Ads

Paid search has always been a strong marketing tool because you are in a position to reach a local market at “the moment of intent” when they are searching for the products and services you sell. During the coronavirus pandemic, marketers had to revisit their PPC strategy because search trends changed considerably. Few consumers were searching for products & services, and most keywords were health-related.

However, now that people were stuck in their homes, search ads became more important. Customers couldn’t visit physical shops and had to look for alternative ways of shopping. All markets had to do was assess their ads to make sure they reflected the current times.

Tricks Marketers Used For Search Ads

Promotion of Products in demand: brands had to evaluate the products they were promoting earlier to those that were in demand. How did they know which products to promote? They based their decision around; social distancing, essential products, entertainment, homeschooling, etc.
Messaging that accommodated the tough times: the ad copy had to reflect the restrictions of the pandemic and call to actions changed; ‘visit store’ was replaced with ‘shop now.’
Communication of value using ad extensions: ad copies had to relay information that shoppers now considered essential, e.g., turnaround time, free shipping, fast delivery, etc.
Use of negative keywords: to avoid getting irrelevant traffic, markets leveraged negative keywords to ensure the ads were only shown to people who were likely to convert. This, in turn, increased ad efficiency and budget allocation.

3. YouTube Advertising

Many more people turned to YouTube during the pandemic, relying on this media for entertainment. This, along with YouTube’s ability to target by search history and retargeting previous website visitors, made it a super-strong platform for; building brands, driving website visitors, and generating leads and sales.

YouTube Marketing During the Pandemic

Video ads are a great way of increasing brand awareness and audience engagement, especially when on a low budget. Here are some tricks marketers used for YouTube advertising:

Tailoring video ads for passive listening: yes, YouTube ads have always been visual, but there has been a fundamental shift. People working from home used the platform for passive listening, so advertisers made their ads more ‘listenable;
Quality video content: competition was fierce, and companies had to find a way to stand out. The video ads had to be creative and unique, content that will keep the user glued to their screen.
Webinars: now that companies couldn’t attend events and seminars, the only best option was to hold webinars to interact with their potential customers. YouTube videos also provided brands with a great way of sharing company information and relating knowledge interactively.

Even though YouTube isn’t effective for maximum conversions, it was perfect for brands looking to create a rapport with their audiences and then convert them later. Some of the calls to actions that were used include; stay safe, we’ll help, free tips, view more, etc.

Marketing Your Business During the Pandemic

The coronavirus fundamentally changed how businesses interacted with their customers. Foot traffic was low, so they had to revisit the most basic marketing rule: the best way to interact with your customers is by doing so in the platforms they are most active on. Since people were stuck in their homes, the only way to market to them was through digital marketing, most specifically Facebook, search ads, and YouTube advertising. Even though the economy is slowly opening up, digital marketing is here to stay!

Are you looking to create a winning digital marketing strategy? Contact us today for a free consultation!

Creating Your Social Media Strategy

It is important to create a social media strategy before jumping into the weeds of engaging prospects on social media. Create a social media strategy that works best for your brand, cultivates new followers, and converts customers into brand advocates. Understand the audience you are trying to reach and what interests them. Do they respond best to images, videos, or longer written posts? Establishing a tone, style, and cadence when posting as your brand should all be laid out prior to launching your social media profiles. Understand how your brand’s audience consumes content. Do they like in-depth long white papers or memes? Social media audience information will help you focus on the types of content that will lead to the best results. The AdEdge Team previously wrote about how to Manage Your Professional Brand On LinkedIn, but what about a social media strategy for your business?

Creating Social Media Business Profiles

The next step is to set up business profiles on the social media platforms that matter most to your business. Don’t spread yourself thin. Simply being on a social platform doesn’t mean that it will help your business image. It may even hurt your brand if a profile lays vacant and inactive.

In addition to a personal profile, creating a business page lets you connect with people who want to know more about your work. You can share updates, progress reports, and ideas with a wide range of folks who may not visit your website on a regular basis. Take a look at some quick tips to get your business profile started.

Get To Know Each Social Media Platform

On LinkedIn, you can create a company page and build an online community around it, getting customers and potential customers to follow you. To learn more about LinkedIn for business, see its official guide.

Twitter

Twitter’s ad platform allows you to target particular audiences and reach them so they learn about your business and have an opportunity to become followers and engage with you. Take a look at its official guide to see how it can be part of your online business efforts.

Facebook

For a business to succeed on Facebook, it’s about connecting with a community that engages with your content. If your product, service or idea is something people like and want to connect with, they will want to do the same on Facebook. To learn more about using Facebook for business, take a look at its official guide. When content is posted to your business page, the number of people that see it is called Reach. Increase your content reach with a few helpful tactics.

Instagram

You should also explore Instagram’s advertising options and see how they fit in with your overall strategy. Instagram is all about getting existing and potential customers excited about what you do, so be sure to explore it. To learn about its business potential, take a look at its official guide.

There may be other social media platforms that your customers spend the majority of their time on – dive into where your audience is and adjust accordingly. Note: AdEdge team will continually update this blog with new and relevant social media platform information to best inform your business decisions.

Expanding Your Brand Via Social Media

After determining where your target audience is and spends the most time, you can start pumping out useful content that your following will love. If you haven’t already, find out how to create content your audience will want to share. Each platform has a different algorithm that it uses to release content, expand your brand with a unique approach for each of your social media business accounts.

Smart, relevant, timely posts can help you build a better company profile, especially when you use hashtags in a professional manner. Participating in popular hashtags when they are relevant to you works well. This should be a prioritized element of your social media strategy, while occasionally using hashtags around your products or services.

Features like Instagram Stories, which allow you to update your audience using multiple photos and videos, are ways to use Instagram in a business environment. These stories last for 24 hours, which could be time-consuming to produce when considering the limited time it is available to your audience. Most of the time, you are better off creating visuals and graphics you can use on multiple platforms that will also have a longer shelf life.

Advertising Is Different For Each Social Media Platform

Learning how Facebook ads work is essential for your digital marketing plans. You may find yourself under pressure to pay to boost your posts. However, organic growth models on social media almost always work better than paid acquisition. Instagram ads are often (but not always) created in conjunction with any Facebook campaign that is being launched. Their ad platforms are unified because Instagram is owned by Facebook. There is also a lot of cross over between campaign metrics and options for visual elements.

As with the other platforms, you should see if LinkedIn advertising features make sense for you. LinkedIn notoriously has higher costs per action than other social media platforms. But is that worth it when dealing directly with your target audience. CEOs or Product Managers from specific companies can be targeted for instance. Looking for a place to start? The AdEdge Team wrote about the costs and benefits to using LinkedIn or Facebook.

While creating a social media strategy may seem complex at first, these tactics are fairly simple to implement. More importantly, a good social media plan can build a community around your brand and be highly cost-effective. Want to learn more about social media strategy? Contact an AdEdge Specialist at 203-682-4585 or info@adedgemarketing.com. If you’d like to keep up with the latest and greatest digital marketing tactics, sign up for our once-monthly newsletter.