Category
Internet Marketing
Don’t Waste Your Web Traffic!
Now that you’ve got traffic coming to your site, it is essential to capitalize on that traffic. Part one of this equation is presenting an attractive, professional design; part two is tailoring your message to compel your audience to take action. According to a recent MarketingSherpa report, however, a staggering number of businesses fail to… Read more
4 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site
By now, most marketing professionals are familiar with the concept of inbound marketing vs. outbound. Briefly, outbound marketing sends your message out to prospects who don’t necessarily want to hear it. Think cold calling, trade shows, billboards, etc. Inbound marketing, conversely, involves drawing visitors in. This automatically results in prospects who are pre-qualified: they choose… Read more
Are you talking WITH your customers, or talking AT them?
Social media is a wonderful tool that you can use to really engage with your audience. It can also be a colossal mess, if you don’t handle it correctly. Think about it: what makes the social scene so enormously popular with the general population? It is the fact that now everyone has a voice, and… Read more
5 Keys to Getting Your Emails Read
Consider the following two email subject lines: 1. Joe: This Week Only, Save 20% on Sprockets 2. THE SPROCKET FACTORY’S WEEKLY EMAIL! July 20, 2012 Which of these two emails are you more likely to open? It’s OK, take your time. The obvious answer is, email #1. Let’s take a look at five factors that… Read more
The Tragedy of Penny (a fable)
Once upon a time, a lady named Penny Pincher owned a brick-and-mortar store. She sold a niche product to an underserved area, and her store was profitable and growing quickly. Penny saw the tremendous opportunity in opening an online store and selling to a worldwide market. She went to Web Stores R Us for a… Read more
Content is King, Emperor, President…
We’ve all heard the mantra, ‘content is king.’ These days, that’s more true than ever. Why? 1. Search Engines Do the words “Panda” or “Penguin” mean anything to you? These are two of the latest tweaks to Google’s algorithm, which are in part aimed at cutting down on the amount of SEO spammers who make it… Read more
Writing Like a Human Being
In our years of working with businesses and their Web sites, we’ve found that a lot of them suffer from one of two common writing maladies. Here, we offer our suggestions to overcome these obstacles in writing your content. 1. Don’t be incomprehensible! It’s important to speak to your audience on their level. Using terminology… Read more
Grab Your Visitors in 10 Seconds – Or Else
If you don’t grab your visitors’ attention in 10 seconds, you’re toast. Plain and simple. Research recently released by Microsoft Research indicates that 10 seconds is the magic number during which visitors form an opinion about your site, and decide whether it’s worth staying to read more or not. (visit Jakob Nielsen’s blog for more… Read more
Internet Traffic to Increase 4x by 2016
According to a recent report by Cisco, the internet is poised to quadruple in size within the next four years. http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=888280 Considering how large the internet is already, that’s a staggering figure. What does it mean to SMBs? With four times the amount of content out there, it will be more important than ever to stand… Read more
Grab Your Piece of the Social Media Pie
According to a recent study by BIA/Kelsey and vSplash, less than 20 percent of small business websites use Facebook or other social media. (http://streetfightmag.com/2012/04/17/study-less-than-20-of-smb-web-sites-link-to-social-media/) Less than 20%. Let that sink in for a moment. Now consider that by engaging in the social media world, you’re putting your business out there ahead of 80% of your… Read more