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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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WSI Wins the Medical Standard of Excellence Award at 2020 WebAwards

Summary: For Leman Aesthetic Clinic, the new website designed by Gabor Markus from WSI is a true winner, winning a Medical Standard of Excellence Award at the 2020 WMAs.

When Geneva-based Leman Aesthetic Clinic’s (LAC) new website was announced as the winner of the Medical Standard of Excellence Award at the 2020 WMA WebAwards. It was yet another feat for WSI in winning the award for the second year, this time thanks to local WSI Digital Marketing Consultant in Switzerland, Gabor Markus, and his team. The WMA WebAwards is an annual international competition that is organized by the Web Marketing Association, setting and recognizing the latest industry benchmarks in web design and developments. Participating since 2007, WSI has consistently performed well at the awards each year, winning more than 115 awards until now. And for the second year in a row, WSI has been awarded the Top Agency award!

Website Design that Wins Awards!

When the clients, Dr. Daniel Espinoza and Dr. Daniel Haselbach, approached WSI to redesign the clinic’s brand for Leman Aesthetic Clinic to replace their previous brand Feel Well, the team were excited to embrace the challenge to work on reshaping an existing brand’s digital presence from scratch. The Clinic aims to offer people around Lake Geneva a single entity for all treatments in the field of cosmetic medicine and cosmetic surgery, where their paramount values are built around relationships and empathy. The main challenges during the project were to maintain good SEO and to improve CRO, considering that the new brand had to be elevated and become recognized in its own right.

WSI Delivers Results

Gabor Markus and the WSI team managed to deliver on these challenges and when the new website launched, the results started to come in. The website saw a 61% traffic increase – of which 89% was organic traffic. Impressing either further, the conversion rate went up by 33%.

A very satisfied Dr. Daniel Espinoza and Dr. Daniel Haselbach, plastic surgeons and founders of LAC, had no hesitation in commending WSI for its excellent work. “When we decided to rebrand our company from scratch, it was clear that we needed help. WSI, and more specifically, Mr. Gabor Markus, was recommended to us by a close friend in the industry. Since the beginning of our adventure together, the WSI team has always been efficient, responsive and focused on understanding our specific needs. As surgeons, we don’t understand much about this field, but we are by definition quite picky and constantly looking for perfection. We are very demanding, and are grateful to the entire WSI team for their support, commitment and guidance throughout this adventure which allowed us to quickly reach and even exceed our objectives. We are delighted with this fruitful and ongoing collaboration.”

Gabor is, of course, thrilled with the bragging rights that the team has earned with this award. He says, “It is an honor to win this WMA WebAwards for 2020, especially in the healthcare during this year of COVID-19. It not only distinguishes WSI as a leading provider of digital marketing, it also highlights the endless hard work and dedication that our whole team put into making marketing amazing for our customer. Thanks to Leman Aesthetic Clinic for their confidence and partnership.”

Check out all our 2020 WMA award winning projects from WSI here. To speak to a WSI expert in your region, contact us today.

The post WSI Wins the Medical Standard of Excellence Award at 2020 WebAwards appeared first on WSI eBiz Solutions.

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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Digital Marketing Best Practices in Manufacturing

Summary: Are you in the manufacturing space? Then check out our expert panel discussion all the digital marketing best practices you need to be aware of.

As part of our ongoing series of digital marketing strategy webinars, we have assembled a panel of speakers who bring insights and best practices related explicitly to driving leads and conversion rate optimization in the manufacturing field:

Neal Lappe – WSI certified agency and co-author of “Digital Minds: A Strategic Approach to Connecting and Engaging with Your Customers Online”;

Marty Greif – WSI partner, with over 25 years as a conversion expert;

Steve Condit – WSI certified agency, with 30 years’ experience in manufacturing marketing.

You can watch the recording here, but check out our blog post for a summary of our discussion.

The state of the union in manufacturing

Here are some manufacturing marketing stats:

45% of manufacturers said that they were not sure how many leads convert on their website.

Only 30% of marketers in manufacturing feel that they are using their web and social content effectively.

40% of companies say they saw significant cost savings by using digital marketing to promote their products or services.

75% of manufacturers plan to use video on their website.

What are the most common challenges and problems manufacturing business owners experience?

Historically, manufacturing businesses have relied on tradeshows to attract business. Even post-pandemic, more and more of the buying process will be done online, with many decision-makers having grown up in the internet age. Combine these two factors, and it is no surprise that many purchasers only engage with your salesforce once they have pretty much made up their minds.

Far more selling is being done virtually. Just as business travel and face-to-face selling are diminishing, so too is the interest in print material. Don’t think of your website as an online brochure – there is so much more that it can do. Proper digital marketing includes measuring your results and tweaking your output accordingly for real economic value.

The keys to successful marketing campaigns in manufacturing

You need to share your goals and outcomes with your entire team. Get them on-board and then host monthly meetings to ensure everyone is accountable for tracking your various marketing campaigns’ success.

Have a digital marketing blueprint laying out the key strategies for lead generation and revenue growth. Work on both inbound marketing such as your website, blog, SEO, and digital advertising, as well as account-based marketing where you target specific high-value prospects with your solutions.

A website that is CMS-based offers more flexibility. With CRM software, you are better equipped to positively influence longer sales cycles and manage your leads more effectively.

The key is to unite all your efforts and work backward from your goals. When you know how many more sales you need, you can consider clients’ lifetime value and determine how many new leads you need.

Use your digital marketing blueprint as a guide to design all your digital marketing efforts around those visitors. Create messaging that is very much customer-centric and from the visitor’s perspective. Spell out to them why your offering is the best solution for them.

That is best done with a well-crafted buyer persona of your ideal client – the decision-maker or influencer. Knowing what values drive them will guide you to making better decisions at every turn – from PPC to content marketing to LinkedIn ads.

WSI – here to help in any way we can to keep your business moving forward

For more details on all of the above, watch the recording from our webinar, “Digital Marketing Best Practices in Manufacturing” (posted here) and below.

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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Everything Businesses Need to Know About SEO

Summary: Learn all about SEO, why it’s so essential for your business’s digital presence, and get access to all our SEO resources.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is as vast as it is misunderstood. It’s one of the most essential concepts driving digital marketing today and a must-know for marketers who want to see their business succeed online.

If you’ve spent as much time as we have researching the ins and outs of SEO, you’ve probably realized that algorithms change often, and the strategies that work for you one day can become almost meaningless the next. It’s enough to drive even the most level-headed of marketing pros up the wall.

Still, some things never change when it comes to SEO, and those are the things we’re here to discuss. Because while you can never predict where SEO is heading, you can make sure you’re an expert on the basics. On this page, you’ll get an explainer on everything from why you need to care about SEO to why your SEO efforts might not be working. Let’s get started.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the act of improving your web content to be more favorable in the eyes of both readers and search engines.

Your SEO strategy is the backbone of your digital presence – it’s what brings traffic to your page. Alternately, it can be what keeps traffic away. But as you’re probably well aware of by now, the nuances of your SEO success or failure are complicated.

Why Does SEO Matter?

Consider this:

Up to 90% of all internet traffic comes through search engines (HubSpot).

Over 70% of search traffic comes from organic internet searches, compared to just 30% from paid advertising (MarTech).

Generating traffic and leads is a #1 concern of companies, with 66% of marketers noting that improving SEO and growing their organic presence is a top inbound marketing priority (HubSpot).

Why is SEO important for you? The short answer is that prospective customers don’t stand a chance of finding you on the massive cavern that is the internet without it. If you’re a business, your customers would have to know your URL and browse directly to your website to get in touch with you or make a purchase.

Search engines act as gatekeepers to the broad expanse of the internet, helping people find what they’re researching. And while they’re smart, they’re not nearly as smart as we want them to be. As a result, you have to optimize your web content to help Google, Bing, and other search engines fill in the blanks. You have to construct content carefully that appeals not just to your readers, but to the gatekeepers that bring these internet users to you.

In other words, you have to do SEO.

In an interview, Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, confirmed that content and link-building are two of the most important factors that Google uses to decide where it ranks your site on a search results page. And when it comes to those factors, the quality far outweighs quantity.

But SEO is not just about optimizing the content and the links that live right on your page. SEO is about your digital presence �� not only your website. Pay attention to everything that factors in, which includes:

On-site SEO: The content and links on your site.

Off-site SEO: The content and links on other sites that lead back to your site.

On-SERP SEO: Content related to your page that lives on the search engine results page itself.

Most brands know what SEO is. Many of them have been taking – and continue to take – significant steps to ensure that they don’t get lost somewhere below the first five search results (or worse, below the first page!). These efforts’ goals are varied, but ultimately, SEO helps you achieve one of your site’s primary objectives: it brings more traffic there. And if you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of companies competing for eyes on the web, you definitely know how crucial that is.

How to Achieve SEO Success

By this point, you may be a bit discouraged. We get it: SEO is a bit complex, and you may feel like you’re at a disadvantage if you don’t have the experts, money, or time to put into a comprehensive SEO strategy.

But don’t despair! The steps that will take you to inevitable SEO success aren’t relegated to just the top performers or the brands with the most money to spare. Even as the algorithms change (it’s estimated that Google updates its search algorithm a mind-boggling 500 to 600 times a year), the pillars that define SEO success stay the same.

There are seven unique areas you need to pay attention to when optimizing your content for search engines:

Keyword research: The foundation of your SEO strategy. What are the keywords and phrases that will drive people to your site? Identify the main topics your site is about, and then build content around these topics using related keywords.

Competitive analysis: You don’t have to do better than everyone, just the brands you’re directly competing against. What are your competitors in the top search engine spots doing right? What are your competitors at the bottom doing wrong? If you can deliver something a little more helpful, interesting, or inspiring than your competitors, you’ll be rewarded with a boost in page rank.

Website optimization: It’s not just your blog that demands your SEO attention. Any landing pages, microsites, content pages, and other digital content should be optimized, too. Include alt text and image captions, update your terms and conditions (GDPR compliance is a must), and include your business’s contact info. Keep your content mobile-friendly, and factor in the health of your website, too. Excessive redirects, broken links, navigation problems, horizontal scrolling, or other errors can cause search engines to penalize you.

Address domain authority: Forget your content for a second and think of how well your website itself performs. Do you have enough links from other sites with high domain authority? How can you get more? The reverse is also a consideration: if spammy sites are linking to yours, Google will likely assume your site isn’t trustworthy, either.

Content strategy: It’s today’s mantra for a reason: content is king. Is your content interesting, informative, well-written, and well-designed? Do you use keywords correctly? If others share your content and link to it, this is a good indication that you’re on the right track.

Social media strategy: Search engines are starting to pay more attention to your social platforms. Are they being used to promote your content? Are you getting good engagement?

Measure, report, improve: SEO isn’t a one-and-done kind of deal. Are you regularly auditing your site to ensure it’s optimized? What areas are you doing well in, and where are you falling behind?

Building a comprehensive SEO strategy requires going through each of the above steps to identify your strengths, weaknesses, benchmarks, and barriers. Make sure you’re doing all of it with a context in mind. For example, SEO must-dos for local businesses will vary slightly from the must-dos that apply to online-only companies or businesses without websites (yes, they exist, even in 2020).

Another critical piece of context that merits some extra detail: desktop versus mobile. Search behaviors on mobile devices differ from search behaviors on desktops. Optimize your brand’s content for mobile – if you don’t, you’re missing out on critical connections with the 2.71 billion smartphone users worldwide.

SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Now that we’ve gone over what you have to do to make your SEO efforts successful, let’s switch gears and look at what you shouldn’t do. Here are the most significant SEO mistakes you need to watch out for.

Mistake #1: You misunderstand key SEO terms. SERPs. Click rates. Backlinks. There are many terms within SEO that you probably haven’t encountered before, and it can feel like an entirely new language when you’re first getting started. Make sure you’re up-to-date on the meanings behind commonly misunderstand SEO concepts so that you’re not accidentally shooting your SEO in the foot.

Mistake #2: Your keyword research is off. Not all keywords are created equally. Even within one topic, specific keywords are going to rank better than others. Your mistake may be that you’re not going with the keywords that rank best for your particular geographic location, or you’re ignoring easy-to-rank-for keywords with low search volumes. If your keywords aren’t working for you, it may be because you have the wrong ones.

Mistake #3: You’re focusing only on the content or only on link building. Both of these factors play heavily into your overall SEO success, but you’re doing yourself a big disservice if you put all your energy into one other’s detriment. Weigh these relatively equally and don’t let either slip by the wayside.

Mistake #4: You’re trying to scam the system. Even if you don’t mean to, you may be using low-quality SEO tactics that hurt your site’s reputation with search engines. Things like keyword stuffing, link farming, and duplicating content will hurt you way more than they help you.

Mistake #5: You’re ignoring something key. Doing a lot of things right won’t make up for missing the essentials. In addition to optimizing content and links, you need to do things like making sure your website is crawlable and mobile-friendly. Look into optimizing your meta-data, and keep up to date on Google’s algorithmic changes (something we refer to here at WSI as AdaptiveSEO).

When it comes to SEO, middle-of-the-road isn’t good enough. You’ve got to be at the top, and to get there, you must have a strategy that encompasses all of the must-dos and must-not-dos that define good SEO. Once you’ve got a good game plan, tweak it as necessary to adapt to the ever-changing SEO landscape. If you do, you should see more traffic, more conversions, and ultimately, more success online.

Other Recent WSI Posts on SEO

Let’s Simplify Some Commonly Confused SEO Concepts for You

Google’s Deduplication Spoils SERP Double-Dipping

Navigating the Stormy Weather of Google SERPs

7 Strategies for Optimizing Your Digital Presence During COVID-19

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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WSI Named Top Agency by Web Marketing Association for Second Year in a Row

Summary: WSI brings home 13 more WMA WebAwards in the 2020 competition and has again earned Top Agency Award recognition.

WSI is proud to announce that for the second year in a row, we have been crowned the Top Agency by the Web Marketing Association. The Top Agency Award recognizes the consistently outstanding development going on at interactive digital marketing firms. WSI outranked its global competition and won the most WebAwards in this year’s WMA WebAward competition.

Award-Winning Web Designs

Overall WSI won 13 awards in the 2020 WebAwards competition including Best Home Building Website, Best Political Website, seven Outstanding Website WebAwards, and four Standard of Excellence WebAwards. The addition of these awards brings WSI’s total WMA Award tally to over 115 and reaffirms its place among the leading web development agencies of the world.

WSI’s global WSI network of Digital Marketing Agencies helps thousands of businesses and organizations in various industries, maximize the potential of the internet for business growth and profitability. Receiving this award for Top Agency for the second year in a row in WMA’s prestigious annual Web Development Competition makes all of us incredibly happy and proud. This confirms to us the ongoing and exciting responsibility to continuously raise the bar and set new standards for our clients. We would never have been able to achieve this recognition without the tremendous support and close teamwork of our Consultants, agencies, suppliers, partners, employees, and customers. It’s time to say a big “Thank You and cheers” to the incredible WSI team.

The WebAward Competition is the premier showcase for website development in more than 96 industry categories. WSI has been entering into the awards competition since 2007. Their trophy mantel now includes two Top Agency awards, 6 Outstanding Development awards, and over 115 individual WMA Awards.

About WSI

WSI is the world’s largest network of Digital Marketing Consultants with its head office in Toronto, Canada. WSI Digital Marketing Consultants have helped over 100,000 businesses with their online marketing strategies. By using innovative Internet technologies and advanced digital marketing tactics, businesses can have a WSI Digital Marketing Plan tailored to their individual needs and help elevate their Internet presence and profitability to new levels. In 2020, WSI was named the Top Agency for the second year in a row and received 13 Awards at the Annual WebAwards organized by the Web Marketing Association (WMA), bringing their total WMA Award tally to over 115. With the support and cooperation of its customers, Consultant network, employees, suppliers, and charitable organizations, WSI as a collective organization is dedicated to helping make child poverty history through its global outreach program makechildpovertyhistory.org. For more information about WSI’s offerings and business opportunities, please visit our website at www.wsiworld.com.

The WSI blog offers insightful digital marketing tips, strategies, and ideas. You can also follow WSI on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

The post WSI Named Top Agency by Web Marketing Association for Second Year in a Row appeared first on WSI eBiz Solutions.

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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WSI Wins 13 More WMA WebAwards in 2020

Summary: WSI wins 13 WMA WebAwards in the 2020 competition, bringing our tally to over 115 WMA Awards since 2007.

We’re proud to announce that WSI has continued its winning streak at the Web Marketing Association’s (WMA) prestigious WebAwards, taking home 13 awards in 2020. Since entering the international web design competition for the first time in 2007, we have racked up over 115 WMA Awards in total. This year’s winnings for WSI include awards for Best Political Website, Best Home Building Website, seven Outstanding Website WebAwards and four Standard of Excellence WebAwards.

Claiming Awards for Website Design and Development

This is exciting news for the entire WSI network across the world. It’s a proud moment to be in the spotlight claiming so many WebAwards, but it is also a strong call for us to aim higher and stay at the top. These websites developed by WSI Digital Marketing Consultants, agencies, and their partners in the WSI supplier marketplace are judged on several key criteria. Design, copywriting, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation, and use of technology are evaluated by an elite group of industry leaders committed to raising the standards of excellence of web development on the Internet. Congratulations to all the winners and kudos for leading this highly competitive, dynamic digital marketing landscape. Your efforts and accomplishments strengthen and reinforce the unstoppable WSI brand!

Here is a complete list of WSI winners at the WMA WebAwards 2020.

DORIS GENTRY for Best Political Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultants: Andreas & Georgia Mueller-Schubert

VAN BEEK’S LANDSCAPING SUPPLY for Best Home Building Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultants: Jason & Denise Gervais

WYDA for Outstanding Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: Rodrigo Arruda

DELAWARE PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP for Outstanding Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: Nancy Vinkler

TRILLIUM SMILE DENTISTRY for Outstanding Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: Peter Jasniewski

GRGICH HILLS ESTATE for Outstanding Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultants: Andreas & Georgia Mueller-Schubert

PAIDEIA ACADEMIES for Outstanding Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: Chuck Bankoff

CARROCEL INTERIORS for Outstanding Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: Peter Jasniewski

ENGLOBAL ENGINEERING for Outstanding Website WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: James Alexander

BOWIE LAW for Legal Standard of Excellence WSI Digital Marketing Consultants: David & Lynne Motkoski

LEMAN AESTHETIC CLINIC for Medical Standard of Excellence WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: Gabor Markus

BUTI BAGS for Fashion or Beauty Standard of Excellence WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: Tali Hasanov

HOLLY & ASSOCIATES, INC. for Home Building Standard of Excellence WSI Digital Marketing Consultant: Ryan Kelly

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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A Digital Marketing Guide to Getting Online: Part Three – Audience

Summary: In our final post of the series, we focus on how to communicate with your customers and drive traffic to your online store.

So you have an Online Store – now what? The adage “Build it and they will come” doesn’t work when talking about websites, as we talked in part one and two of our blog series.

So you will have to invest at the correct level to drive traffic and for many brands or retailers that translates to maybe 8-15% of revenue – it depends on the market, product, and how established the business is. The trick will be to develop a marketing blueprint that builds your organic traffic, forms your loyal customer base while also funding new customer acquisition through paid advertising.

Assuming that you have correctly set up your analytics, then the starting point for this process is to understand the value of every sale. That means looking at both revenue and margin, or the lifetime value of every new customer, as that tells you what you can afford to spend to acquire that sale. When you know the cost per acquisition, you can determine what sort of return you need from each of your marketing investments. For eCommerce sites with large catalogs, you need to understand this at least at the product-category level but preferably at the individual product level.

I frequently meet clients who have then put all their advertising activity into one channel, either Facebook or Google Paid Search, for example. For smaller clients, that might be ok due to limits on the available budget to invest, but for most cases, it takes a mix of different channels – to arrive at the most optimized solution. When you have multiple campaigns in the market, then it is increasingly important to understand how they interact with each other, this is called attribution. Up until recently, most analytics gave all the credit to the channel that created the last click before the customer purchased. In reality, a customer might have seen a Facebook ad after opening an email and then did a Google search before purchasing. So it’s essential to understand attribution modeling and how to use it between your different channels. But don’t make it over-complicated good enough will do in this case.

Those familiar with the traditional marketing funnel will tell you that people go through three phases

Awareness where they learn about your Brand/Store

Consideration – where they engage with your Brand/Store

Conversion – They purchase from your Brand/Store

So your campaign planning should account for these three stages. Each business will have a different set of priorities at different times, and the campaign plan or marketing blueprint needs to adapt to those priorities.

Here are some general guidelines and thoughts:

Make sure you are at least capturing any business that already exists out there for you.

Ensure your site is optimized for Generic Search engine traffic because, in almost every case, I have seen this is the best converting traffic you can get. This optimization is always a long-running project, but this cannot be overlooked.

SEO takes time to build traffic, so in the short term, to drive immediate traffic, you should use Google Paid Search. However, this can be expensive in the early days of a store – so your first objective should be to develop a campaign that at least breaks even in terms of cost versus revenue generated. Once you have achieved that, then you can start to expand it out and scale it up. Initially, you will need to decide a budget that you can afford to invest as a two to three-month discovery project. It needs to be big enough to deliver you at least 1000 clicks. If you cannot get to that breakeven point in the first three months, then pause it to return to it at a later stage. You may need to address the conversion rate of your site to improve the return, but at least you will have more information about what people are searching for. Alternatively, you may need to use Google Search and Specific landing pages to focus your effort on selling a particular product or category at the right time – especially if there is some element of seasonality to some of your product sales.

Quick Tip – for seasonal campaigns, build SEO friendly Campaign pages and never take them down (you can remove them from your general site navigation) once the campaign is finished. Update and refresh them so next year they will have built up additional SEO equity and traffic.

Email marketing is the next priority, and there are three things to ensure:

Make sure that you are growing your subscriber list through unobtrusive eMail capture like exit intent forms.

Build a content plan that engages your audience and is not just a series of promotions and discounts.

Segment your list to send the right content to people who have not bought from you versus those that have.

To grow your business, you either need to find new customers, have your existing customers buy more frequently, or increase the average amount that they spend. Finding new customers tends to be more expensive than nurturing those you already have – which is why email is so important.

Exit intent banners are critical to growing your email subscriber list. Don’t annoy customers by presenting them with a popup when they reach your site, but rather when they are ready to leave and have not bought something. Use that time to capture their emails in return for some content of value or interest to them. It costs you money to get them to your site, so don’t let them leave empty-handed if you can avoid it. Make sure someone in the team has responsibility for driving this cadence.

Once you are capturing those customers who already know you and are most likely to purchase from you, your attention can move to how to build awareness of your store and brand. Here the KPIs are slightly different. You want to reach as many people as possible in as affordable a way as possible. You have to remember that generally, people need to see between 4 to 8 ads before they will engage at all with your store. This is where we would typically use Facebook, Youtube, or Programmatic Display to grow the visibility of your brand. Your Facebook campaigns should start with the mission to introduce yourself to your audience. The creative needs to be ‘thumb-stopping’ and educational. This is where the short-form video is essential. It gives you the ability to talk about what you do and, more importantly, why you do it and why the person watching this should buy from you – selling a specific product comes later.

YouTube is another generally underutilized platform, especially as viewing habits change among younger demographics. Platforms like Adroll will also help in terms of prospecting for new audiences that are of similar intent to your currently converting customers (but it does need a reasonable amount of data to perform successfully and, of course, another pixel installed).

Retargeting campaigns become vital as you begin to grow your audience – this is how you get a return for the awareness building activity you are doing. You can retarget your Facebook traffic and your website traffic – form an eCommerce perspective. Build out creative based on product categories that you can then use to convert customers, or you can show to segments that purchased one type but not another. You should also consider how you are going to remove purchasers from your retargeting audience. There is nothing more irritating than an ad following you around for a product that you have already bought. With a little bit of work with your audience definitions, you can avoid that happening.

Conclusion

So there are two things you need to take away. Firstly, if you are running an eCommerce store, then you have to invest at the right level in demand generation activity to be successful. Secondly, there are always more things to do than you or your team can reasonably take on in one go. You need to develop the right Digital Marketing blueprint that recognizes your ability to invest in these tactics. Generally, this is a balance between time/speed and money. The more budget you have available to spend then the faster you can go.

If you start by understanding the required economics of your campaigns in terms of where your breakeven point is, then you have an excellent starting point. That way, you know you are never wasting budget. Having a blueprint to follow and a partner who can look over your entire spectrum of digital activities and help you develop that blueprint is essential. Growing and scaling an eCommerce business is something that has to improve every day. Just when you think you have it cracked, something will change in the environment – a new competitor will emerge, someone with insanely aggressive pricing will try to buy market share, the product tastes will change, and so on. You are open to more outside influences more quickly in the online world. Understanding your roadmap, interpreting what your data is telling you, and making the right changes are all part of the journey. It is an exciting space, exhausting at times, but exhilarating when you see the successes.

The post A Digital Marketing Guide to Getting Online: Part Three – Audience appeared first on WSI eBiz Solutions.

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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Moving Your In-Person Event Online

Summary: With the rise of virtual events as a result of COVID-19, here is a checklist of all the different types of engagement opportunities you have to promote your in-person event online.

One thing that the Coronavirus pandemic has cemented for me is that adaptability is the key to success. With no time to prepare, business owners all over have had to suddenly pivot away from tried-and-tested strategies to the unknown and unfamiliar. This shift has led to the growth of e-commerce (check out our multi-part series on eCommerce, A Guide To Getting Online, with part one focusing on business strategy, and part two focusing on technology) and the rise of online meetings, virtual happy-hours, and in-home training.

When it comes to transitioning an in-person event to a virtual one, the first thing you need to know is that not everything will have a smooth 1-to-1 transition. There are some things that your virtual event will not be able to simulate. But as Ben Franklin said, “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,” so it’s essential to try and prepare for the things you can control.

Engaging with your Attendees Before, During, and After Your Event

When planning for your online event, you have to be ready to engage your audience throughout. That means creating content and reaching out to your audience before, during, and after your event.

Since the type of engagement you do will vary depending on where you are in the process, here are some examples of types of engagement opportunities available to you:

Engagement Opportunities Before Your Event

Event Creation: this is where the rubber meets the road. Here’s where you’re going to outline your event structure.

What is the event about, who are your speakers, and why should people hear from them?

How are you going to get this information to your audience?

What are your technical requirements for running this event?

Before doing anything else, these are all questions that you are going to need to answer so you can start to making arrangements and creating content.

Promotional Content: as marketers, this is the fun stuff that you can create to let people know about your event. That can include:

social media posts to promote registration,

promotional emails to your database (and don’t forget to set up scheduled confirmation emails, follow-up emails to non-opens, reminder emails before the event, etc.),

event landing pages,

promotional videos of your speakers,

mini-event trailers that you can leverage on social media, etc.

The sky is the limit when it comes to promotional material, and what you can create will depend on your imagination. As you start pushing out all of this content to your audience, here are some tips to keep in mind:

Promote on Tuesdays (22% of registrations occur on Tuesdays);

Promote in the morning (most registrations happen between 8-11 am);

Promote your event 4-6 weeks in advance;

Email is still the best way to get registrations for online events;

Make sure to promote your event on your website (preferably a landing page with a registration form);

Partner with another company (possibly one aligned with your speakers) to help maximize your event’s audience as much as possible.

Customize Your Event: for online events, you’ll likely be using a conferencing tool like GoToWebinar (the preferred communications tool of WSI Consultants all over!) or Zoom. These products allow you to create registration pages for your online event, which you can then customize with your brand colors. As much as possible, you want to:

Attract the eye to the form and use contrasting, but complementary colors;

Create custom registration questions;

Keep everything important about your event above the fold;

Make your calls to action (CTAs) stand out;

Make sure to optimize your registration page for mobile.

PRO TIP: Sites like Canva or Bannersnack can help you create beautiful social images and banners. Promo.com is great for professional DIY videos.

Engagement Opportunities During Your Event

You’ve done the hard work, you’ve promoted the heck out of your event, and your audience has shown up. Now it’s time to calm the butterflies and get started. How do you make sure to engage with your audience during the session and keep them interested?

Use Webcams: The human factor cannot be understated. People want to hear from and be engaged by people. Making your audience sit in their homes and just stare at a PowerPoint presentation, without being able to connect with the speaker, is cruel and unusual. And your event will suffer as a result! So make sure your speakers are ready to share their cameras with the audience (check out some tips for optimizing your webcam below!)

Take Questions at Planned Intervals: Organize this in advance with your event co-organizers – and practice the transition from event to questions! Remember Ben Franklin – “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”! PRO TIP: Prepare questions to answer in advance, just in case you need to prime your audience to get their queries started.

Use Polls: Again, you should prepare this in advance with your event co-organizers, but think about questions that you want to ask your audience.

Use ice-breaker questions, such as, “Are you a dog or a cat person?” or “What Netflix show are you currently binging?”;

Use information-gathering questions, such as “How have your lead generation efforts changed during COVID-19?”;

Use future-planning questions, like “What would you like our future events to focus on?” or “What’s a topic you’d like to learn more about?”.

You will need to practice what you’ll do while the poll is running (since you’ll just be waiting for answers to come in). Be ready with your comments on the top responses. PRO TIP: Never ask a poll question that you’re not ready to share the response for!

Use Videos: If used properly, videos can be a great way to give yourself a quick break during an event and to engage your audience even further. And videos let you achieve a level of perfection that you will never achieve in a live event, so make sure you leverage them!

Engagement Opportunities After Your Event

After weeks of work, it’s over! Your event was a big success, you’ve gotten a ton of new leads, and now you can relax.

Not so fast! Engagement opportunities continue after your event:

Leverage Your Event Recording: You now have this excellent recording (with potentially hours’ worth of content) that you can use as much as you’d like. Make sure to add the recording to your event follow-up email. And share your recording on your post-event landing page. Ensure that you are collecting email information from people who are watching your recording – these are more potential leads! PRO TIP: make sure to customize the email for your event attendees and non-attendees – the messaging should be different for both.

Review Post-Event Analytics: It’s always essential to do an event de-brief and review what worked and what didn’t in your event. Analytics from your GoToWebinar or Zoom dashboard will tell you how many people attended, how long they attended for, what questions they asked, and lots more. Take this time to review this data and make notes about what worked and what you need to improve for next time. PRO TIP: Use the audience questions from your event as a way to follow up with attendees, and to potentially create more future events and content.

Use Your Recording to Create Evergreen Content: Now that your event is over, you need to get as much relevant content out of your recording as possible. Beyond just sharing the recording to your database, you can use the video to:

Create blog posts summarizing the event. You can also ask your event speakers to contribute content to your blog (or ask them to add your blog post to their website!);

Create an eBook or infographic to highlight the critical teachings of your online event;

Create short, how-to videos out of snippets of your main recording;

Turn your webinar into a SlideShare;

Turn quotes, stats, and key takeaways into social media posts that you can share on your various social properties.

And One Last Thing – Tips for Looking and Sounding Good on Camera

The world is full of webcam recordings that are dim, distracting, and just plain embarrassing. If you’re taking the leap and moving your event online, you need to make your webcam your friend. So we’ve put together a quick list of webcam and event space dos-and-don’ts that you will want to keep in mind for your next online event or meeting:

Raise your webcam to eye level and make frequent eye contact (but don’t stare! That can be just as off-putting as staring off to the side the whole time you’re speaking.)

If you’re worried about webcam issues, keep your webcam controls handy during your presentation, so you can stop sharing at any time.

Add proper lighting and make sure you’re sitting facing a soft light, like from a window.

If you wear glasses, make sure to adjust the monitor brightness to cut the glare on your lenses – and to improve the overall lighting.

Remove any unnecessary clutter from the background and showcase your logo.

Choose a spot that has excellent acoustics and is quiet for your event duration.

Don’t rely on Wi-Fi – make sure you have a wired internet connection for your session. And have at least one backup (cell phone, tablet, secondary laptop) ready, just in case.

Invest in the proper mic and headset – there’s nothing worse than having spent all this time and effort on an event, and then finding out your audio is awful.

Have a second monitor (or more) for your presentation.

Eliminate distractions, and don’t try to multi-task. Be 100% focused and present on your event – your audience will appreciate it.

In Conclusion

At the end of the day, whether it’s in person or virtual, your event needs to provide value to your audience. Researching and finding topics that resonate with them will be key – and that will lead to great promotional content and an exciting online event.

With a good topic, a good plan, and our list of tips, your next online event is sure to be a smash! Good luck!

RESOURCES:

Webinar: Move Your In-Person Event to a Webinar with Our Expert’s Top Tips

Blog: Ask An Expert: Replace In-Person Events with Engaging Online Ones

Blog: Introducing the Big Book of Webinar Stats: We Analyzed 250,000 Webinars to Help You Make Yours Better

eBook: Insider’s Guide to Webinars (Marketing Edition)

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A Guide to Getting Online: Part Two – Technology

In this second post in the series about getting online (you can find the first part here!), I am taking a look at the technology platforms and decisions you will need to make as part of that process.

You might be surprised that I didn’t look at this first, but in truth, you want to run a business, not become an IT expert. IT will become a more significant part of your world as an eCommerce operator, but if you don’t get your strategy and mission correct first, and have good content, then no platform will save your enterprise.

Thankfully, the technology part has become a lot more comfortable in the past couple of years, with the advent of several cloud-based services that take away the hosting, security, and maintenance headaches for you. In truth, any of the platforms mentioned in the graphic above will do the job for you. I’ve also just started to help a small operator whose store is built on WIX, and while it might be restricted in some ways, it was more than fine to get up and running.

Your eCommerce platform needs to do the following things for you:

Content management, including product and non-product content

Product search (Amazon has taught us to use the search box, not the navigation)

Provide shopping cart capability

Product and Inventory management

Pricing Tools (including discounts, offers, and promotions)

Payment Systems Integration

Order Management

Integration with shipping and other providers

If you have invested a lot in your current website and content, and it is on WordPress, then WooCommerce is a plug-in works very well. There are lots of developers and add-ons out there that will help you get that integrated, and up and running quickly.

However, my preference at this time is for a SaaS-based solution for the simple reason that it should remove a lot of the hosting, backup, and maintenance headaches for you. Hosting performance and page speed is one of the critical things impacting your conversion rate.

So I would typically recommend either Shopify or BigCommerce as a platform choice. There are plenty of reviews on the web comparing both platforms, so I won’t go into all the details here. Still, the differences and advantages of either platform are minor enough that in the end, it may come down to what your Web Developer partner is familiar with or indeed your personal preferences.

Be careful when looking at the pricing differences as there are differences in transaction fees, sales limits, and what functionality comes included at each pricing tier for both platforms – some due diligence is required.

A couple of reasons you might go with BigCommerce instead of Shopify:

Slightly more out of the box features included in BigCommerce

More SEO friendly especially the ability to generate short URLs

Slightly better GDPR compliance capabilities and Multi-currency options

A couple of reasons you might go with Shopify:

With 200,000 or so stores, it’s the largest eCommerce ecosystem around at the moment. There are lots of add-ons and integrations that solve many of the business requirements you will have down the road

No Sales limits

Integrates into the social media space (this is where it started from)

Probably the cheapest entry point if that is important to you

Email Platform

It might seem strange to elevate email to the same level as the platform decision, but I do count eMail as one of the core decisions you need to get right from the start. The reason this is important is, to build relationships with customers, you need to interact with them regularly, and while social media has its place in this, you will be sending a lot of emails.

The first mistake is to think of email as pushing discounts and offers. Think about it, if a shop assistant followed you around a real-world shop saying nothing other than having 5% of that or 10% off that, you would be irritated, and chances are, you would leave. Email is the mechanism to send content that builds trust and empathy with your store or brand. Emails need to be useful, engaging, and interesting to your audience – which means that your email platform has to have specific capabilities. Done right, email as a channel, can/should drive up to 30% of the revenue in your eCommerce store. It is still the most affordable and scalable marketing channel available to you.

In order to create effective email campaigns, your platform needs to do the following:

Provide contact tagging so you can create dynamic lists and move people between those lists automatically based on the actions they have taken.

Smart automation of emails and triggers, which sends specific emails when individual pages are visited on your website.

Provide a good email template collection and builder, as well as the ability to test different versions of an email.

eCommerce data integration so the two platforms can talk and allow you to execute the right actions based on data.

Helpdesk integration. Customers expect a seamless experience. Everyone needs to be able to see the entire customer communication context. Customers hate having to repeat information a second time.

Smart send and scheduling options. Different times in the future, for example.

You will also probably need to manage multiple lists and sequences:

Master list of all subscribers

Pre-purchase subscribers

Post-purchase subscribers

Abandoned carts sequence

Lists for offers that users have opted into

Dynamic lists based on audiences from your website

To engage and nurture your customer base, they likely will be getting one or more emails a week. Never overdo it, and make sure the emails are tailored and relevant. To manage that, you are going to need a little help from your platform. While there are tons of them out there, and things like MailChimp work well in a variety of situations, the two that I would recommend are Klaviyo and Active Campaign.

Klaviyo was designed as an email platform to support eCommerce. Still, I also use Active Campaign with several clients as a very affordable platform that is really feature-rich (for transparency, I am an affiliate partner for Active Campaign). As an added benefit, their support team is excellent and now generally based in Dublin (again some local bias!).

Good content shared correctly via email will have a dramatic impact on your sales performance.

Analytics

The reason eCommerce is different from a traditional business is the level of data and understanding you can develop about your customers. What content do they find engaging? Where do they exit your site? What are the demographics of your visitors? To have this data, you must have Analytics installed, and more importantly, configured correctly. Depending on your eCommerce platform, that can be easy or difficult.

For most people, there is only one game in town, which is Google Analytics. There is no need to look at anything else. While it is frightening for some people, I am still surprised by the number of people I meet with websites and online stores who do not have a good grasp of what their data is, or what it is telling them.

Anyone can get up to speed with analytics, but be prepared to invest time (and get some outside help where needed) to learn them thoroughly. Being able to pick the right performance metrics, and to make sure you make the right decisions based on reliable data (I talk about the correct KPIs in a different post) makes all of the difference. At a minimum, you will need to build the right goals and funnels in your analytics application to understand where people are starting their shopping journey, and where they are exiting before completing a purchase. That way, you will understand what parts of your content are not working and what needs to be improved, including the relevant sections of your site.

Conclusion

There are many other add-ons and apps that we will look at in the Marketing and Demand Generation. Still, these are the core elements and platforms that you will need to become familiar with to be successful, and the decisions you make on these core elements are essential because there will be significant effort invested into getting this set up correctly and running well.

It is difficult to outsource the operation of these elements to a third party as you have the best product and customer knowledge and, therefore, should be best positioned to make the right operational decisions. Your eCommerce partner should be able to help you interpret the data, help identify the right business priorities, and look after the technical elements for you to help you grow and scale your eCommerce setup.

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A Guide to Getting Online: Part One – Business Strategy

Summary: If you are considering getting started with eCommerce during COVID-19, this first part of our three-part blog series will help you get started.

There is no doubt that these are unprecedented times, and while my grandmother might have remembered the ‘Spanish Flu’ living through a pandemic like this is a new and scary experience. However, if we look at the impact of SARS on consumer behavior in China and AP, then we can get an inkling of what might happen post-COVID 19 – SARS catapulted China forward to be the leading online economy.

eCommerce has been growing quickly and steadily for the last 10 to 15 years as the data from Statistica shows. Still, I believe one of the significant impacts of COVID-19 will be to accelerate that acceptance and growth. We see new groups of people being introduced to doing new things online that they may not have considered everything previously from working from home to online gym sessions to grocery click and collect – and finding that they like the experience.

So how should a business owner approach the transition online?

To me, the questions fall into three areas needed for success:

Business Strategy – Why am I doing this?

The Technology – What platforms and technology are needed?

Driving the Business – How do I get the traffic (customers) I need to be successful?

I’ll return to the 2nd and 3rd areas in later posts, but for now, let us look at the strategy question.

The Business Strategy – How Will You Compete?

As Jack Welch famously said, ‘If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.’

Just because you build a website, customers will not just come and buy from it – if only things were that simple and if you are thinking about pivoting towards eCommerce as a short term fix, my best advice is don’t do it.

eCommerce is a strategic shift of behavior, so think about it that way. Traditional retail will recover, but your customers will have different expectations, and what gave you a competitive advantage in the past may no longer be accurate. Conventional benefits like geographic location or pricing are much harder to sustain online than in the real world.

Pricing is very transparent (and expected to be) online, so if your business model is all about hidden discounts or rebates, you might be in trouble. Being the cheapest is not always desirable or necessary, but you do need to be competitive. You need to think differently about what you bring to the table that will encourage people to buy from you if you are an expert in sourcing niche products that is good. If you can use your expertise to help people make the right choices, that is great because often the problem online is too much choice and knowing who to trust. If you provide a niche or specialized product, then even better-this is the channel for you.

Local can still be a good reason to differentiate, but that does limit the audience you are addressing. Your store must talk about who you are as a brand or retailer, what your mission is, what you believe in, and why people should buy from you. If you can’t articulate this, then you will be at a disadvantage. Your thinking needs to change not to where am I located in terms of footfall but who is my audience, what are the problems I can solve for them, and how do I connect to them digitally.

To compete, you must also harness the two-way nature of the Web. Online gives you a different (and sometimes deeper) connection to your customers. A means to connect with them digitally and to understand what they are looking for and what solutions you can provide for them. The best online merchants know that this is a two-way street and use their connected customers to guide their direction and decisions in a way that is much more difficult to do in the bricks and mortar world. Your customer list and the consent you have collected to engage that audience is a real measure of the value of your business into the future. This is important to focus on this in your strategy because it is the only way to counter the reduced loyalty people generally feel online and the fact that there is a world of competition only a click away.

The world is not going to be completely online – so how does your online presence support your Bricks and Mortar store or your sales team in the field? This can be a real concern for businesses and brands. My experience is making sure everyone is in on a standard set of incentives, and pricing is transparent in all channels goes a long way to solving any concerns. Multi-channel works well today.

How Can I Help, Sir?

No successful salesperson ever started a conversation in a shop with – What can I sell you? People want help, and they will return to the brands, owners, and retailers that help them the most. The difference in eCommerce is that your digital assets and content are what will help your customers now, not your sales assistants. You have to focus on the problems you solve and the needs you satisfy for your customers and how to do that digitally.

So whether you like it or not, you are now in the content business – for many, this is a new skill set that needs to learned or acquired.

If you are selling products, you need great product descriptions, features, but also benefits. If you have content showing the product in use, that’s great. If you don’t, consider creating it for your top 20 products. There are no ifs, buts, or maybes with this. Nothing will sabotage your online eCommerce business quicker than poor product images and descriptions. You, as the business owner, must think about how your team will provide this content and, by the way, increasingly that should be in video format. Some stores report that conversion rate (the ratio of people who purchase a product) can increase by 174% if they watch a product video. I guess maybe those late-night TV shopping channels did sell some stuff!

Business Strategy – The Team

First and foremost, online is still a business, so all of the fundamental business skills around operations, finance, customer service, etc. remain the same, but there are some new ones you need.

It certainly helps to have access to someone who has broad digital experience. Who can help you put all the pieces together? Just like you don’t expect your shopfitter to be an expert in marketing, your web developer may not be the right person to help you drive the business forward. (Don’t get me wrong your web developer is a crucial member of the team – just don’t ask them to do things that are outside their skill range) A highly focused SEO agency will not be able to help with customer proposition or email communications, for example. As you grow, you can undoubtedly bring specific skills to your team. In the beginning, you probably should engage some consulting help to build the broader roadmap and plan in how you are going to grow and sustain the business. You do need as a core skill a Marketeer or merchandiser who understands your business but don’t expect them to be able to put together and execute the broad range of tactics needed to make this a success.

Analytics and understanding your data will be crucial to success. You can outsource in the beginning to have it set up correctly, but you can not be successful without understanding your data and what it is telling you. So start learning on the job or working with someone that can help you find your feet quickly.

Business Strategy – The Economics of Your New Business

Analytics brings me neatly to the final leg of your business strategy. You have to understand the new economics of what you are doing. It used to be the case that people believed that you got a lower price on the internet because businesses did not have all the traditional costs of real estate, staff assistants, or multiple partner margins. While that is partly true, there are a whole set of other expenses you need to consider, logistics/delivery, returns, payments and charge-backs, digital infrastructure costs, and, most importantly, demand generation and marketing costs.

While you may not be paying high street rents and rates for your online store, you are going to have to re-invest a significant proportion of your online revenue into generating quality and converting traffic. So make sure you build out a proper financial plan and P&L that accounts for these elements before you start. Make sure you understand the margins behind each product and how that allows you to scale your marketing correctly. Nothing worse than a nasty financial surprise.

Conclusion

I believe that almost every business needs to plan for at least 15-20% of its revenue to come from Online sources as you simply cannot concede that space to your competition anymore. COVID simply increases the imperative to do this.

But there is no magic here. Start by articulating your overall business strategy, how you will compete, how you will build the right team around you for success, and how to finance this correctly. You can start small and slow and grow from there – just make sure you have considered the road ahead.

WSI was founded in 1995 and is an innovative digital marketing agency with offices in over 80 countries. We’ve spent over 20 years helping more than 100,000 companies and large global brands unlock the full potential of their business by leveraging the Internet and its many unrecognized opportunities. We’d be happy to help do the same for you and consult on your digital marketing strategy. Simply give me a call or email me at [email protected] to learn more.

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Tracking Insights that Matter with SMART Goals

Summary: A review of SMART goals, plus the recording from our Ahead of the Curve webinar on How to Track the Insights that Matter Most to Your Business.

Our Ahead of the Curve webinar series continued this week, with an informative session on web analytics. This time, WSI Digital Marketing Consultant, Andreas Mueller-Schubert, joined us from the beautiful Napa Valley region in California, USA. During the presentation, he showed how he uses data and analytics to help pivot and adjust his clients’ digital marketing strategies.

In addition to sharing several tools and tips that you can use to leverage data in your decision-making process, he also talked about the concept of SMART goals.

Many of our webinar attendees had questions around what SMART goals are and how you define them. As part of our recap, we’ve outlined what a SMART goal is and how you can easily set them for your business.

If you missed our session on web analytics and “How to Track the Metrics that Matter Most to Your Business,” we have included the full webinar recording at the end of this blog post.

What is a SMART goal?

SMART is an acronym used to help marketers best define their business goals. It helps ensure that the goals you are setting for your digital marketing strategy are actionable and attainable. We breakdown each aspect of a SMART goal below.

S – Specific

Your goals should be clearly defined, and they should be easy to communicate to others. You should be able to explain, in precise terms, what each of your goals are and how they relate to your overall business objectives.

M – Measurable

Your goals should lend themselves well to data analysis. You should be able to track them in real-time, and you should know right away when they’ve been met or failed to deliver.

A – Achievable

Your goals should be realistic. Don’t aim low, but don’t let your goals get out of control, either. If your company made $1,250,000 in revenue last year, for example, don’t base your goals around making $4,250,000 this year. You want your team to feel inspired, not that they have an impossible mountain to climb.

R – Relevant

Your goals should relate to your big picture intentions. Brand awareness is essential, but you should be able to connect most — if not all — of your goals to real sales objectives.

T – Time-Bound

Your goals should have a designated start and end date. Working from a timeline is necessary not just for defining your goals but for measuring them. It will also help you stay consistent with your tracking methods.

If a goal doesn’t pass the SMART test, try to rework it until it does. If no amount of redefining gets it to where it needs to be, drop it, and focus on the business goals that you know will help move your business forward in clear and concrete ways.

For more details on how you can use your SMART goals, and other data points to help pivot your current marketing strategies, watch the recording from our webinar, How to Track the Metrics that Matter Most to Your Business (posted below). We also encourage you to listen to our other recordings and register for our upcoming session on our Ahead of the Curve page.

https://videos.wsiworld.com/watch/t7DrXsGYjc5qukLMhcsMGH

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7 Strategies for Optimizing Your Digital Presence During COVID-19

Summary: A quick recap, plus the recording from our Ahead of the Curve webinar on How to Optimize Your Digital Presence During COVID-19.

Due to popular demand, our digital marketing educational webinar series, Ahead of the Curve, has been extended until the end of May. This past Wednesday, we hosted our 7th webinar and covered the topic of search engine optimization (SEO), and specifically How to Optimize Your Digital Presence During COVID-19.

During this session, WSI Digital Marketing Consultant, Mark Jaimeson, based out of Ottawa, Canada, shared his seven SEO recommendations and strategies for thriving in this new “normal”.

We’ve included a quick recap of Mark’s seven tips below, along with the full webinar recording at the end of this blog post, so you can hear Mark speak to each of them firsthand.

1. Monitor Consumer Patterns, Behaviors & Channel Preferences

You must be monitoring consumer conversations right now. You should develop a clear understanding of how their habits are evolving, how their interactions with your brand are shifting, and where your brand can meet them to change these needs.

So, as lock-down protocols ease up and you can reopen your storefronts and allow customers to come back in, keep a close ear to the ground. Listen to what they’re saying. Understand their needs. Part of doing this may mean that you have to enable these conversations online (on your website via a chatbot, on your social channels, or via a customer feedback survey).

2. Strive for Expertise, Authoritativeness, & Trust (E.A.T)

You can nurture your brand by building your expertise, authority, and trust, or what Google refers to as the E.A.T Principle.

Google doesn’t want to serve up results to searches that take them to pages that are uneducated, that are opinion based or potentially fraudulent, or that actually can harm somebody.

So, what Google is asking business owners to do, especially now because of the high demand for traffic on the Internet, is:

Demonstrate your expertise (this begins with proper keyword research)

Show some authority (having backlinks from high authority sites)

Showcase you are trustworthy (positive user reviews, and ensuring your site is secure)

If you concentrate on these three things, you will have a better chance of improving your website’s optimization.

3. Manage Your Web Presence’s Media: Owned, Earned & Paid

When it comes to having a strong SEO strategy, one that can help you drive more traffic to your

website, you need to be managing and controlling your brand narrative on all of your marketing channels. There are three types of marketing channels:

Owned (website, social profiles, blog)

Paid (third party channels, display ads, PPC)

Earned (shared content, word-of-mouth reviews)

By taking stock of your media right now, you can ensure that you are speaking the right message, that your message is hitting people at the right time in the buying process, and that you’re monitoring what is being said about your brand online.

4. Audit Your Upcoming Content & Campaigns

If you had crafted any campaigns (PPC, content, social, etc.) before COVID, it’s good to reevaluate the messaging and topics you are using before you keep developing content or launch anything. Buying patterns and trends are changing. Digital marketing is still one of your best choices to reach your audience, but messaging that may have worked in the first quarter of the year, definitely won’t work now or even in the upcoming months. We highly recommend you take a look at your campaigns and audit them. Make sure they have pivoted and are aligned to the new normal.

5. Take Stock of Keywords You Are Currently Targeting

You also need to take stock of the keywords you’re currently targeting. Your products and services, and the way you deliver them possibly have changed. Which means, some of the search terms that people are searching for to find your products and services could have changed as well.

What’s essential for marketers to understand as well is that some of the keywords that you should be going after right now may not yet exist in Google’s database. Even if they do, they may have small search volumes associated with them. Search terms like “virtual showrooms for X vertical” could be keywords that start trending. Today, they may have little to no search volume, but 6-8 months from now, it could be a different story.

When it comes to keywords being used today, we need to be putting ourselves into the consumers’ minds and start foreseeing new search terms and going after them today.

6. Ensure Your Mobile Presence is Exceptional

Today’s consumer wants a seamless and fast mobile experience. Knowing this, on July 1, 2019, Google moved to a mobile-first indexing strategy. This means that Google indexes the mobile version of your website to determine your search engine ranking. So if you’re not providing an excellent mobile experience to your website visitors, you aren’t going to rank well from an SEO perspective.

We recommend that you take a look at your mobile site experience from your customers’ perspective. Go on your phone, and navigate through your mobile site and make sure it’s exceptional.

7. Focus on User Experience – it’s Everything!

When it comes to user experience online, we often talk about a website’s navigation, clear calls-to-actions, or accessible forms that can help improve conversions. Although this is all still applicable today, we need to consider the current state of affairs and consider a different type of user experience.

We recommend that you narrow your focus and think about what your customers need right now and speak directly to those needs front and center on your website. Move from the hard sell to the soft sell, and focus less on the products and services you’re offering and focus more on what you can do for your customers today. Make your customer service easily accessible. Ensure that your phone numbers, email addresses, new hours of operations, or instructions for pick-up and delivery are easy to find on your website.

For more details on the above strategies, watch the recording from our webinar, How to Optimize Your Digital Presence During COVID-19 (posted below). We also encourage you to check out our other Ahead of the Curve recordings and upcoming sessions.

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Important Coronavirus/COVID-19 Update

Here, at WSI, we are closely monitoring the evolving situation related to the Coronavirus (now referred to as COVID-19) for any risks that would put the safety and well-being of our clients, their customers, or our organization in jeopardy. As always, our goal is to continue to help our clients grow their business and connect with their customers online.

To ensure our community is aware and comfortable with our level of support and service during this time, we wanted to provide this initial update.

All Meetings will be Conducted Virtually

The “remote” approach has become a best practice and necessity for many organizations to minimize contact and reduce the risk of exposure to their staff and clients. Virtual meeting technology (i.e., GoToMeeting, Zoom, Skype, etc.) enables us to continue to have productive meetings and meaningful conversations with our clients. WSI Corporate and our Consultants will continue to be available to answer any questions you may have concerning your digital marketing strategy.

Technology and Support Systems Remain Up and Running

The cloud-based technologies and support systems within our network have infrastructures and contingency plans in place to provide uninterrupted service during natural disasters and incidents like the Coronavirus outbreak. While the actual impact of the evolving Coronavirus is unknown at this time, we are confident of our business continuity capability and our ability to meet our obligations to our clients, our valued customers, so our service and support to remain unaffected.

Outstanding Projects and Commitments

We currently do not anticipate any impact on our scheduled website launches, digital advertising campaigns, or any other digital marketing commitments that are pending for our customers. However, if you are a WSI client, and there are changes you feel need to be made as a result of factors inside your organization, please reach out to your WSI Consultant to let them know. We understand these circumstances are unique and may require flexibility across all parties. While the situation is not ideal, we believe WSI is well prepared to continue uninterrupted services despite the possible impact of the Coronavirus.

If you have a specific question or would like to talk further, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your WSI Consultant.

Please take care of yourself and your family,

Valerie Brown-Dufour President of WSI

The post Important Coronavirus/COVID-19 Update appeared first on WSI eBiz Solutions.

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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6 Ways to Use Video Marketing Across Your Business

Summary: A quick recap, plus the recording from our Ahead of the Curve webinar on How Using Video Creates Revenue, Retention, and Relationships.

If you’re an avid reader of our blog posts, you’ll know that WSI has been in the digital marketing space for quite some time – 25 years to be exact!

So, when the Coronavirus pandemic hit, we knew we had a responsibility to share our digital marketing expertise and help businesses around the world navigate through COVID-19.

One way we are doing this is through our Ahead of the Curve webinar series, which aims to share digital marketing tips and best practices on key tactics that can help you overcome the marketing obstacles you’re facing today.

Our digital marketing educational webinar series kicked off this past Wednesday to an impressive response and covered the topic of video marketing, and specifically, How Using Video Creates Revenue, Retention, and Relationships. In this session, Ryan Kelly and Cynthia Barillas from the WSI Smart Marketing team based out of California, USA, joined us to share six ways you can use video across the core areas of your business. We’ve included a quick recap below, and the full webinar recording can be found at the end of this blog post.

1. Use Video During the Prospect and Client Communication to Boost Sales

The next time you jump on GoToMeeting or Zoom (or whichever virtual meeting technology you are using), turn on your webcam. Sharing your webcam when conducting a virtual meeting humanizes the conversation you are having with your prospect or client. You can’t read a person’s emotion or passion or share how much you care about their business as effectively over text as you can with video.

2. Use Video in your Emails to Enhance Your Customer Service

Delivering exceptional customer service isn’t always about how fast you can answer a question or get an issue resolved. A lot of the time, customer service is enhanced by the type of rapport or relationship you can build your customers. Using video in your emails to share a quick how-to, results of a service you delivered, or even just to say hi and check-in, will take your customer communications to that next level.

3. Use Video in Your Social Media to Make Your Post More Engaging

Social media is one of the easiest ways to incorporate video into your business. As part of your social media strategy, consider adding video to your social posts and stories. Look into doing a live video stream on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube to share content with your followers immediately. Social media is a great way to share new video content but also video content you have created in the past as well.

4. Use Video on Your Website to Showcase Your Client Testimonials and Solutions

Adding video to your website is the quickest way to make your web pages more engaging. Today’s website visitors are much more likely to consume content by watching it than reading it, especially on their smartphone. Videos are also more likely to keep your visitors on your website longer and even entice them to fill out a form. So take a moment to go through your website and make a note of any content that could easily be adapted into a video – like blog posts, FAQs, service and product pages, or client case studies.

5. Use Video in Your Marketing Messages to Build Your Brand and Reputation

Video is a great way to show-off your service expertise and builds your professional brand and reputation. If you’re looking to make a name for yourself and become a recognized expert in your industry, set-up a YouTube channel and start sharing essential tips, tricks, and advice that your target audience is looking for in video format. Then, optimize these videos to build up a following, and you’ll be on your way to being a trusted expert in your field.

6. Use Video while Your Team Works from Home to Increase Employee Engagement

Many businesses and employees were thrust into a remote working environment as lockdown protocols suddenly took effect due to COVID-19. During this time, when many outside factors could negatively impact your employee morale, business owners and team leads must be doing what they can to maintain your company culture and keep employee engagement up. Turn those webcams on during your team meetings, bring all employees and departments together in weekly team huddles, and for all the CEOs and Presidents out there – send the occasional company update via video.

For more details on all of the above, watch the recording from our webinar, How Using Video Creates Revenue, Retention, and Relationships (posted below).

The post 6 Ways to Use Video Marketing Across Your Business appeared first on WSI eBiz Solutions.

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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Navigating the Stormy Weather of Google SERPs

Summary: I don’t think anybody in the SEO world is ready to claim they know what’s going on with Google and its SERPs, but we’re confident in saying the more closely we pay attention these things, the quicker and more prepared we’ll all be to act quickly and gain any available advantage.

While it might seem like a lifetime ago, back in January I wrote about Google’s move to de-clutter the first page of search results. And just 8 weeks later, we’ve seen Google make even more substantial updates that SEO pros should be watching intently.

To quickly recap, the clean-up we discussed two months ago aimed to streamline a searcher’s online experience by deduplicating search results. URLs in position zero with a featured snippet would no longer appear anywhere else on search engine results pages (SERPs) as they had previously. This update was great for users looking for a clean, organized experience; not-so-great for the marketers who’s URLs originally appeared twice on page one of the SERPs.

Of course, Google’s updates are never ending: their algorithms will forever evolve alongside user behaviors. They tend to tweak their algorithm hundreds of times a year. Naturally, we keep a very close eye on the search landscape and – in keeping with the general turbulent tone of 2020 – it’s been kind of unstable.

Let’s discuss what seems to have been a broad core search algorithm update and the significant fluctuations that caught the eye of SEOs everywhere. The sooner your business understands the changes, the sooner you can adapt, optimize and benefit from it.

The Choppy Waters of the Search Landscape

About two weeks after Google’s big featured snippet update, SEOs noticed a significant disturbance in the Forc—oh wait, wrong Galaxy. What SEOs in our Galaxy noticed was drastic changes in Google’s rankings over the course of a 48 hour period. One SEO I know called it, “The biggest two days in SERP disturbances in the last two years.”

The above is a screenshot of the MozCast from January and February of this year. For those unfamiliar with the MozCast, here’s how Moz describes its tool:

“MozCast is an experiment in tracking the “weather” patterns of the Google algorithm. While big updates like Panda and Penguin get a lot of press, Google revealed that they made 516 changes in 2010, and all evidence suggests that pace has continued. What we notice is barely the tip of the iceberg. MozCast was designed to help you keep track of the day-to-day changes in the Google algorithm. An average day in the SERPs is about 70°F.”

In the screenshot, you can see that on February 7, the MozCast was 116°F. On February 8, the Mozcast was 115°F. Big algorithm changes means hot and stormy weather, and this is some of the hottest and stormiest weather we’ve seen in the search results in recent memory.

What does it mean? And what has Google said about the turbulent times on search engine pages to start the year? Credit to StanVentures for helping get all of us the answers to these questions, which they wrote about here.

Google’s answer coy, but we’re going to agree with Thekkethil here — it’s obvious something important is going on here.

Here’s a second screenshot of the MozCast, which I took on March 29th (it includes the previous 30 days).

The MozCast has remained at consistently turbulent temperatures throughout March, with most days clocking in well above that 70°F average. On March 18, the MozCast measured 103°F, and hit the century mark (100°F on the nose) a couple of days later on March 23.

I don’t think anybody in the SEO world is ready to claim they know what’s going on with Google and its SERPs, but we’re confident in saying the more closely we pay attention these things, the quicker and more prepared we’ll all be to act quickly and gain any available advantage.

What’s Happening With Position Zero?

So far we’ve established a couple of things: Google made sweeping changes to its featured snippet position and continued to make further significant tweaks to…we’re not exactly sure what.

Since we can only speculate on what else is causing such stormy waters on the SERP landscape, let’s talk about something we have at least a little data on: what’s been happening with “position zero” since all the featured snippet changes?

We’re going to reference two fantastic posts for this discussion: this one by Dr. Pete and this one by PJ Howland.Dr. Pete’s post is a great breakdown of the initial update, but we’re going to focus on the takeaways of Howland’s post, since it contains real data. Some of the key takeaway from that post were:

Longtime snippet winners are seeing CTR and traffic drops

When a double snippet is present, CTR on the first snippet tanks

There’s not a true number 1 spot

Evidence of CTR bumps below the fold

Clickability matters more than it ever has

The caveat here is there aren’t yet a lot of concrete, ironclad takeaways after just 30-60 days. What we do know is there is evidence to suggest some or all of these things might be true. If you hedge your bets and keep your ear to the ground, you may just be able to turn these story SERP conditions into a positive for your business.

As I’ve said a few times, the conditions in Google’s SERPs right now are rougher and more unpredictable than they’ve been in years. Which is not unlike the position we find ourselves in today – all around the globe. In both situations, there are two options: panic, and not handle things so well, resulting in a poor outcome for everybody. Or, take the situation as it comes, remain calm, and find a way to come out the other side stronger, smarter and more prepared to handle this type of scenario than ever before.

Stay safe out there in the world, and good luck out there on the SERPs!

The post Navigating the Stormy Weather of Google SERPs appeared first on WSI eBiz Solutions.

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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Digital Marketing Strategy Elements for Success

A large-scale digital marketing strategy is a complex undertaking, which is why before you know it – and even though you have the best of intentions – things can get messy. Too much of this tactic, not enough of that one; a dash short on cohesion, a lack of collaboration. One tiny misstep can often send an entire digital marketing strategy careening off track. However, when the perfect mix of digital marketing solutions comes together, success flows like the magical elixir of a Disney fairytale.

With that in mind, we’re kicking off WSI’s Digital Marketing with an entry called the 6 Essential Elements For A Successful Digital Marketing Strategy. With the amount of confusion, noise and sheer choice available in the digital marketing space, it’s become increasingly difficult for marketers and businesses to figure out where and how to focus their energy. Below, we outline the components that will help your digital strategy cut through the crowd and deliver success.

6 Essential Elements for a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy from WSI

1. An Engaging, Responsive Website

With more and more people interacting with brands via their smartphones and tablets, it’s necessary to ensure you’re delivering a consistent and responsive experience across all devices. It should be just as easy for a user to engage with or complete an action on your website, content and social media with their phones as it is their laptop. And oh yeah,the wearable market is promising, the number of connected wearable devices worldwide is expected to grow to over 1.1 billion in 2022 so that might be important. Don’t sleep on anything related to mobile technology – we promise you’ll regret it.

2. Measured Search Campaigns

Is SEO dead? HA, good joke, we really had ourselves going there for a second. SEO is alive and well, friends, but perhaps a bit more difficult than in the past due to an increased number of requirements and that pesky algorithm over at Google that keeps getting better and better. Then again, search marketing isn’t just about SEO, so don’t forget about the incredible effectiveness of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. The key, whether you’re doing PPC or SEO, is to track and measure your results so you can maximize the value of your marketing budget.

3. Email Marketing

It’s amazing how overlooked and underused email marketing is, even as we head into 2015. Sending email to your target audience is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic, engagement and conversion. You’re missing a huge opportunity, not to mention an integral part of a successful digital marketing strategy, if you haven’t implemented email marketing.

4. Add Social to the Mix

Over the last year, we’ve talked a lot about how vital customer service is to the core of a company or brand. And in our opinion, social media is a space where you can delight your customers with unexpectedly exceptional customer service. Increased social activity also gives a boost to your brand’s awareness, and adds credibility and thought leadership to your industry voice. Even though many businesses had a difficult time discerning the utility of social media, they’re starting to figure out it isn’t just a fad.

5. Join The Dots With Content Marketing

Ah, content marketing – the darling of the digital space for the last few years. With more companies heavily investing in content, there’s an increased pressure to plan, organize and deliver magical, unicorn-like content that wins the heart of anybody who reads it. Yeah, that’s not reality, at least not the unicorn part. But seriously, content is becoming so huge that you really do need to seamlessly plan, collaborate and organize your content marketing agenda to achieve success.

6. Measure, Tweak, Improve

Everything in digital marketing boils down to value. Most companies and brands have tight budgets but expect huge results, and the only way to do that is to always, always, always measure, tweak and improve upon whatever it is you’re doing in order to extract maximum value.

Need help to get these digital marketing elements into your strategy? Contact WSI for more information.

The post Digital Marketing Strategy Elements for Success appeared first on WSI eBiz Solutions.

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wsiebizsolutions · 5 years ago

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A COVID-19 Webinar Series You’ll Want to Attend

Summary: Free webinar series sharing digital marketing tips, tricks, and best practices that you can use to overcome the marketing obstacles you are facing today.

I think it’s fair to say that none of us imagined we’d be where we are today. Nor did we foresee the impact COVID-19 would have on businesses all around the world.

We know your business has been affected in one way or the other, and we’d like to help you navigate through this crisis, so you are positioned to come out on the other side stronger.

Over the next few weeks, WSI will be running a free webinar series to share digital marketing tips, tricks, and best practices that you can use to overcome the marketing obstacles you are facing today. Based on some of the recent research we’ve seen, companies that embrace digital marketing will be in a much better position to engage and network with their customers through this crisis.

Here are the details for this special WSI COVID-19 webinar series, which will be happening every Wednesday starting April 1st to May 6th, from 11:30AM to 12pm EDT:

Topics being covered include:

April 1 – Video Marketing: How Using Video Creates Revenue, Retention, and Relationships for Your Business

April 8 – Competitive Research: How to Analyze the Marketing Activities of Your Competitors to Get Ahead

April 15 – Database Management: Learning the Basics of Managing Your Customer Database to Grow Your Business

April 22 – Persona-Based Marketing: Understanding Your Target Audience in Challenging Times

April 29 – Conversational Marketing: How to Reimagine Your Customer Conversations Using the Latest Technology

May 6 – Website Conversions: How to Convert More of Your Website Visitors into Leads

Even if you don’t think you can’t make all of the dates above, we encourage you to register for the series, so you get a copy of the webinar recordings to your inbox to watch later.

As always, my team is here to support your business in any way that we can.

Stay safe, and remember, we are in this together.

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