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HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN LEAD TO CONVERSIONS?

When it comes to developing your digital marketing strategy, determining whether or not social media is worthwhile for your local small business is tough to measure. But Blue Hippo Marketing team can reassure you that maintaining active social media accounts matters, even if you can’t put a number to the positive results.

Tracking website traffic from your Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ page is easy. And it’s a great indicator that customers are interested in the services or products you offer. But unless they link to your website and immediately contact your practice, a conversion might be difficult to identify. 

Potential customers may initially find your website via social media but contact your practice after a subsequent visit to your site. So while you may not be able to see the social media metrics, conversions are happening!

In addition to realizing that social media conversions are tough to track, keep in mind that robust pages also serve your business in a variety of other ways. 

Brand Recognition

The more you expose your brand, the better! When potential customers associate your logo with quality services and positive messages, they’re more likely to visit your website and contact your business. Social media is a great resource to provide new content on a regular basis to maximize exposure to your target audience.

Customers today look to social media pages to establish that your practice is professional and legitimate. Even if a current customer refers your local small business to a friend or family member, that potential customer needs affirmation that your business is credible. They’ll search for your website and social media pages to do so. You need current and frequent content on your pages to prove that your local business will meet their expectations.

Our team implements proven social media best practices to ensure that you build brand recognition via your pages. We post information about your services to drive business to your business, articles about your products and services to establish your authority, and entertainment content to boost positive associations with your business.

 Link Building

Social media pages are great for posting content that links directly back to your website. Including links strengthens your digital marketing strategy for two reasons: potential customers are provided with easy access to your website and search engines factor legitimate link building into search results. That means posting links on your social media pages boosts SEO!

Our team posts a link to your website once a week on your Facebook and Google+ pages. So we’ve got you covered with ongoing link building.

 Google+ Page

If you consider Google search results only, maintaining a Google+ page boosts SEO… it’s that simple! As the search engine monitors its own channels, your active presence is noticed. Posting the same type of content that promotes brand recognition and increases link building also indicates to Google that you provide an excellent user experience. When your website and social media page adhere to Google standards, the effects are apparent in the search results. Customers who are likely to seek your services use social media to research and recap their experiences most often. It behooves your local business to have a strong social media presence to capture your audience.

We provide social media services developed to enhance your digital marketing strategy and maximize conversions. Let us know if you’d like to learn more about how social media leads to conversions!

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Why Branding is Important for Your Small Business?

An important part of building a brand is establishing a business philosophy. What do you stand for? If your business is anything like Blue Hippo Marketing, you stand for providing world-class service for your customers. We’ll work closely with your local small business to incorporate your values into your brand.

Beyond just a memorable logo, good branding increases the value of a company, provides employees with direction and motivation, and makes acquiring new customers easier. So what exactly is a brand? 

The short answer is: everything.

A brand represents the sum of people’s perception of a company’s customer service, reputation, advertising, and logo. When all of these parts of the business are working well, the overall brand tends to be healthy. On the flip side, we all probably know a company that offers excellent products or services, but has a tarnished brand due to poor customer service.

Let’s take a look at the important ways a strong brand impacts your business:

Branding Improves Recognition

One of major components of your brand is your logo. As the “face” of a company, logo design is critical because that simple graphic will be on every piece of correspondence and advertising. A professional logo design is simple enough to be memorable, but powerful enough to give the desired impression of your company.

Branding Creates Trust

A professional appearance builds credibility and trust. People are more likely to purchase from a business that appears polished and legitimate. Emotional reactions are hardwired into our brains, and those reactions are very real influencers.

Branding Supports Advertising

Advertising is another component of your brand. Both the medium chosen and demographic targeted for advertisements builds a brand. Too narrow an advertising focus, and a company risks being “pigeon holed” and losing their ability to expand into new markets. Too broad a focus, and the company fails to create a definable impression of the company in the minds of would be customers.

Branding Builds Financial Value

A strong brand usually guarantees future business. Once the branding materials work their magic for your business, conversions from potential to new customers will increase and generate more revenue for your business. The greater a company’s devotion to build its brand value, the better the financial return from its efforts.

Branding Inspires Employees

Many employees need more than just work— they need something to work toward. When employees understand your mission and reason for being, they are more likely to feel that same pride and work in the same direction to achieve the goals you have set. Having a strong brand is like turning the company logo into a flag the rest of the company can rally around.

Branding Generates New Customers

Branding enables your company to get referral business. Would it be possible for you to tell a friend about the new shoes you love if you couldn’t remember the brand? A large reason ‘brand’ is the word used for this concept is that the goal is an indelible impression. As the most profitable advertising source, word of mouth referrals are only possible in a situation where your company has delivered a memorable experience with your customer.

The most profitable companies, small and large, have a single thing in common. They have established themselves as a leader in their particular industry by building a strong brand

Let Blue Hippo Marketing help build your brand; we will build for  you a complete marketing strategy to truly make your local small business shine amongst your competitors. It might be time for your business to look into our branding services.

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How To Improve Your Local Ranking On Google

When people search for things such as Italian restaurants or hardware stores, Google assumes they are seeking local options so it returns local results. For instance, if you search for Italian restaurant and you’re in Portland, a famous New York City trattoria won’t show up. What comes up, complete with star ratings, addresses, and hours, and is colloquially called the “three-pack,” three listings and their location on a Google map.

If your local small business isn’t making it into that three-pack, Google recently updated its information on how to improve your local ranking. The article explains what your local small business needs to do in Google My Business first, and then details how it ranks local searches. We’ll go through their advice.

Enter complete data

Be thorough here. Local results favor the most relevant results for each search, and businesses with complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches. Make sure all of the information about your business in Google My Business is complete, so there is no question about exactly what you do or offer, where you are, and your hours. Go beyond just the basics where possible and update this information if anything changes. Inconsistency is a sure way to be downgraded in Google searches, as items such as conflicting telephone numbers create confusion.

Verify the location of your small business

Verify your practice location. This has to be done with Google, either through a request for a postcard or, if you’re lucky, a phone call.

Be accurate with your business hours

Don’t be lackadaisical about your business hours thinking that everyone will know you’re open when any sane small business is open. Be specific. Are you open on Saturday? Which holidays are you closed/open?

Respond to reviews

Google likes that you actually pay attention to reviews people write about your practice. When you respond to them it earns you Brownie points in local search. It shows Google that you’re engaged with your patients, not just taking their money. This is particularly true if, for whatever reason, you get a bad review.

Don’t be shy — add photos

Add photos of your small business, not just the customary street shot, but interior shots, too. Have some new local product? Add a photo. Photos tell Google you’re trying to help people understand what you offer.

OK, now you’ve done that. Here’s how Google determines your local ranking

Local search results are based on relevance, distance, and prominence. Google’s algorithms use those three factors to deliver search results

Relevance

Relevance is how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for. This is why you want to make it as easy as possible for Google to understand exactly what your practice does.

Distance

If the user doesn’t specify a location in their search, Google will put up results based on what’s known about the user’s location. This is especially becoming more relevant on phone searches, since the user’s location is precisely known.

Prominence

Prominence means how well-known your local small business is. Prominence is based on information that Google has about a business from across the web. This includes links, articles you’ve written or been mentioned in, and directories. It also counts reviews and positive ratings to improve your local ranking. Again, this is why consistency is key. For instance, how you write your address and phone needs to be the same across all directories you are listed in.

The easiest way to accomplish all of the above? Let us do it. At Blue Hippo Marketing we have our Local Marketing and Organic Traffic Generation Services that provide consistency across all directories from a single dashboard. We’ve been helping businesses in Seattle and Portland area for a long time, so rather than deal with these details, let us do it and you run your local small business.

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Does Your Local Small Business Website Need a Facelift?

When was the last time that you updated your website?

Some small business owners choose to keep a close eye on their competition’s websites and make updates accordingly to position themselves as having the superior website.

Others wait until it is absolutely necessary before enhancing their small business website design.

At the least, to keep up with the times, you should plan to refresh your small business website at least once a year.

If you’re wondering whether it’s time to give your small business website a facelift, here are some obvious signs to be on the lookout for:

Your website is not currently using responsive design.

Responsive design provides website visitors with the ideal viewing and interacting experience regardless of the type of device used to access the site.

In fact, most of users say that if they arrive on a business site that isn’t working well on mobile, they take it as an indication of the business simply not caring or being very unprofessional.

 Do you really want to leave an impression like that?

A responsive website is able to automatically detect the type of device that someone is using to access the website anything from a desktop computer to a smartphone–and immediately make adjustments to resolution, image size, scripting abilities, and more for the optimal viewing experience.

In other words, a responsive website should respond to the technology that the website visitor is using.

 Does your website use a responsive design?  To find it out you can access your small business website from a variety of devices, such as your smartphone, tablet, and desktop.

By the way, Google’s latest update gives preference to mobile friendly websites in search rankings.

Because of this recent change, it’s absolutely necessary for your small business website to be mobile friendly, and responsive design is the most effective format for this.

 Blue Hippo Marketing specializes in developing responsive websites for local Pacific Northwest small to medium businesses to accommodate all platforms and user preferences.

 Your website’s design has become too cluttered.

Most outdated sites contain a lot of information and have a lot going on.

There is something to be said for white space.

In web design terms, “white space” is the space between graphics, columns, images, text, margins and other elements. By the way, that space doesn’t necessarily have to be white.

 A business that makes white space a fundamental aspect of its website’s design can benefit greatly by being able to showcase content that is legible and easier for an audience to digest.

Also, if you really want to make something stand out and draw your audience’s attention towards it, surround it in white space.

By helping to better captivate your audience, white space can lead to more conversions on your website.

You’re not getting any leads or customers from your website.

It’s not unusual to hear that a small business website is not generating the leads or traffic that the business ideally wants to see.

If you find yourself in this predicament, there is a very good chance that your current website’s design is holding you back.

Some possible enhancements to your small business website design could include the need to make more enticing offers behind forms, shorter forms, higher converting call-to-actions, a better color scheme, among other things.

If you are running into any of those problems, it’s probably time to look into web design services. At Blue Hippo Marketing we know that guiding traffic to your website through search engines is critical to growing your local small business. Our specialists can optimize your exciting website or create a new website that’s well designed, developed, and managed!