Want More Traffic to Your Website? Use Customer Reviews

All Feedback is Good Feedback

A great way to make your website more reliable and trustworthy is to post customer feedback on your page.  Implementing a sidebar on your homepage will allow your readers to see actual review without scrambling around your page to find them.  If you’ve ever purchased an item online, you know that customer reviews of that product are a huge influence of whether you will purchase or not.  Use this strategy on the website for you small business.

use customer reviews to draw more traffic to your website

Here are a few items to consider when posting your customer feedback:

  • Ask and you shall receive: Ask your loyal, satisfied customers to submit a brief review of your services for your website.  You can even include their information, if they give permission.  If another company submits a review, you should post their website – a perfect “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” situation.
  • DO NOT post your own factory-made reviews: This is a dishonest way to promote your business, and your readers will be able to tell.  It will achieve the exact opposite of what you are trying to achieve: customer loyalty and trustworthiness.
  • Remember that all feedback is good feedback: If you get one bad review, take that as a learning experience and improve upon the points mentioned in the review.  Personally respond to the reviewer to follow up to see how you can improve.  Also, never ever delete comments or reviews.  This is distasteful and is not an honest way to achieve a successful smart marketing campaign.
  • Praise the proud: When you get an exceptionally fantastic review, mention their name/business name on your site.  Send them a very grateful email or letter saying how happy you are that they are satisfied with the work your company has done for them.  Give them more incentives as well so that they continue to come back, and so that they spread the word to their friends and family.

For more tips and excellent resources, attend our 8 Week Smart Marketing Webinar every Tuesday!

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Smart Marketing Ideas for Summer

Smart Online Marketing Ideas for Summer

The summer is the time of year where you want to stay inside to avoid the heat. This is the perfect time to sit down at your computer and get some solid work done for your small business.  Now contrary to popular belief, the summer months are a perfect time to reach out to potential clients or those who have shown interest in your company in the past.

Smart Marketing Means Smart Prospecting

If anyone has ever told you that summertime is not a good time to contact prospective clients because they are “on vacation and don’t want to be bothered,” you should rethink that thought process.  If you follow that rule, you might as well not focus on December or January because “there is too much going on during the holidays.”  If you eliminate prospecting from your summer month’s marketing to-do list, you’ve lost out on an entire quarter of the year that you could have been reaching out to prospects. Don’t fall victim to this pattern.
If your competition chooses to ignore new prospects during the summer months, let them go right ahead. Because your small business focuses on inbound marketing, you know that you’re able to get found no matter what time of year it is. This makes it easier for you to be selected by your prospects. Your leads will not have 40 different companies contacting them to choose their service. Instead you will be one of the few innovators who will actually be able to speak with them on an honest basis, and you’ll already have one foot in the door because they found you.  Remember that Smart Marketing Means Smart Positioning.

Smart Marketing Means Inbound Marketing 

Inbound marketing doesn’t mean bombarding your potential clients with commercials, mail advertisements or phone calls. It’s the exact opposite of that. Inbound marketing is smart marketing. Summer inbound marketing is making sure you’re found by those who need your help. Let your prospects know your business exists by taking the time during these lazy days of summer to do effective keyword research and get your website optimized. So that when your prospects search for you, you’re right where they need you to be.

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Setting Goals for your Small Business Marketing Plan

Setting Goals for your Small Business Marketing Plan

As our USA Women’s Soccer team came in 2nd place to Japan in the World Cup, now is a great time to think about setting goals for your small business.  The team is simple proof that persistence and dedication will always pay off in the end: check out Hope Solo, USA’s goalie, with that awesome save!

Short Term Goals

Setting goals that will occur within the next three months should be classified as short term goals.  Do you have too much on your plate and you can never seem to keep up? Perhaps one of your short term goals should be to hire additional staff members.  A simple way to do this is to hire an intern or two.  There are many, many college students out there who are looking to get job experience and who are willing to work for your small business.  But they may not know you are out there and looking for help.  Get on your local college job posting and listing website and put up an ad for the positions you are currently looking for.

Another great short term goal your small business can focus on is building a better website.  How do you know if your business currently has an influential web presence?  Simple: search for your business using a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.).  But do not just use the name of your business.  Use specific keywords that are related to what you do and where you practice.  For example, go to Google and type in “inbound marketing business Las Vegas”.  Louve Notes Media Group shows up on the #2 spot!  We want this same success for your small business.

Setting Goals for your Small Business Marketing Plan

One thing that many businesses all over the world try to do every day is to spend less money and see more results.  With inbound marketing this is finally possible.  In order to see results your business will need to improve its website to the point where customers will not have to dig through dozens of links on a search engine to find your company.  Are you having trouble with this?  Check out our FREE 8 Week Smart Marketing Webinar Series.  We will be there to answer any questions you may have that are targeted directly at your small business needs.business currently has an influential web presence?  Simple: search for your business using a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.).  But do not just use the name of your business.  Use specific keywords that are related to what you do and where you practice.  For example, go to Google and type in “inbound marketing business Las Vegas”.  Louve Notes Media Group shows up on the #2 spot!  We want this same success for your small business.

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7 Inbound Marketing Key Words

online marketing keywordsBelow is a list of inbound marketing keywords that you, as a small business owner, should become familiar with:

  1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This is the process of  writing your website focused on specific keyword phrases that you choose based on how your target market searches for you. When optimized well your site will reach the point where it will be amongst the first results pulled up by a search engine.  The more links referring back to your website from quality websites, the more SEO credit you will get.
  2. Blog – This is the area of your website that becomes your brand’s thought leadership marketplace. It’s a collection of educational material created specifically for your target market. It’s best to write about solutions and insight to you the problems your target market face. It is a best practice to post blogs a few times a week, with a length of around 300 words.
  3. Calls-to-Action (CTAs) – These are buttons on your website for readers to click in order to take an action.  They may say something like, “Click Here to Find Out More”.  These clickable buttons are essentially traceable links that re-direct users to a landing page (see below).
  4. Landing Page – A landing page is the page a reader will be re-directed to after they click on one of your CTA buttons. Your landing page should be a page with a form for the reader to fill out.
  5. Metadata – This is essentially data about data.  When you search for something using a search engine, the meta data description is the little blurb below the URL that tells you a little bit about what the page is about.
  6. Alt Text – This is what a reader can see when they hover their mouse over a picture that you have on your page.  This is the perfect opportunity to get more keywords on your page to increase your SEO.
  7. Hash Tag (#) – This is used on Twitter to mark certain popular keywords in your tweets.  You can search hash tags to see what others are tweeting about.
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What is Inbound Marketing?

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As a small business owner, your marketing is the heartbeat of your business and is what’s used to increase the number of current customers you have. It’s vital that you understand the way marketing changes and know what the most effective way is to communicate with your target market. With dramatic increases in technology over the past few years, your small business should be using inbound marketing methods to get found by potential clients and to grow your business.  With this method, your message is not being screamed at your customers who are not interested in what you are offering, instead your message is being found by your customers who were searching for you online.

what is inbound marketing?Inbound marketing pulls your customers into your business through the use of keywords phrases that your customers are searching for via search engines. Inbound marketing uses social media sites to help promote your business and your message. From Facebook’s Statistics page, “More than 750 million active users spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.”  The idea is simple: get your business on Facebook so that potential customers can find you.

Now is your chance to think outside of the traditional [outbound] marketing “box” and do something new that’s proven to work.  Get on Facebook to get more clients.  Use your Twitter to let clients know you’re listening to them and care about what they need.

Build your blog on your own website.  If you have a blog on Facebook, that is great.  But if you want to retain that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) credit, you should integrate the blog onto your own website.  This way, when a potential customer searches for your business using a search engine, your website and blog will come up.  It is highly encouraged to link your Facebook page back to your website as well, this way people know you are a stable company and it increases your credibility.

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How to Use Twitter in Your Smart Marketing Plan

how to use twitter with your smart marketing strategyMany large businesses have an automated service connected to their Twitter accounts, but how can you successfully reach your potential customers if you’re not engaging with them live? Consider this, on average your followers are also following over 100 Twitter accounts, and chances are they are not reading every single tweet that comes their way.  However, many will most certainly read a tweet with a “@ mention” of their Twitter handle. Make it a point to engage some of your audience personally every day. Respond to something they are tweeting about or @mention them in a tweet of your own, or retweet (RT) one of their tweets. A nod in their direction could go a long way.

This can be a very simple and very effective way to increase your smart marketing effectiveness on Twitter.   A great idea is to ask potential clients about a specific problem they face and how your business or company could help them to solve that problem.  For example, if you are a gym owner, you could send out the following tweets:

  • What would you like to have at your gym?
  • How much are you willing to pay for a gym membership that you are fully satisfied with?
  • How often do you make a purchase after receiving a free trial?

Getting feedback from your potential clients is priceless.  You will know exactly what each person is looking for when they are scouting out a gym.  This inbound marketing tactic will take your business to the next level because your potential clients will see that you actually care about the services they want.

Let’s get started right now: What do you struggle with in your online marketing? Comment below so that we can help find the best solution for you!

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Smart Marketing: Tune Your Blogs to Current Times

Update Your Twitter

As a small business owner, you should have a current and frequently updated Twitter account for smart marketing.  But it is really about how you use this account that will get you the new clients you really want.  If you just login to the account once a week, your impact on the Twitter community is not going to be great enough to catch anyone’s eye more than once.  You will be discarded and never thought of again.

Instead you should update and connect with others on your Twitter account on an everyday basis.  The goal is to have your message read.  You want your message to be read more than the average Twitter account.  Make sure you are following solid Twitter accounts, and not spamming robots.  You can even use TwitterGrader to measure your Twitter influence.

When to Tweet

smart marketing when to tweetAlso remember that there are far less tweets over the weekend.  This also means there are probably twice as many tweets on Mondays.  Do you want your message to get lost amongst the chatter?  Probably not, so send out your most important messages in the middle of the week, once the Monday Twitter excitement has passed.

Now, this is not to say that you shouldn’t tweet from Saturday to Monday.  Exactly the opposite actually: this is where you can use an automated Twitter service to reach those who are checking their Twitter accounts on those days.  You can schedule when you want your message to go out.  Just make sure to check later if that message had any significant impact on your followers and potential clients.

Want more social media marketing tips? Sign up for our Smart Marketing for Smart Business webinar series. Click below for more information.

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