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Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/personal-branding-discovering-the-authentic-you/
Masterful Marketing Home » Internet Marketing » 6 Critical Elements to Guarantee a Successful Web Presence
Greetings! Thanks for visiting Masterful Marketing. You’ll find a lot of content about marketing your small business in the blog, so you may want to subscribe via the RSS feed or email so you won’t miss any valuable information.
A successful web presence that attracts your ideal client and makes a great first impression is now much more complex, incorporating not only your website and blog, but also your social media profiles, business directories and review sites.
It’s no longer enough to just have a website. Your website is just one component of a complex network of information about your business that projects your brand and expertise to those in search of a product or solution.
The opportunity to develop an solid web presence as part of your online marketing is immense. A well thought-out plan can help you gain visibility, develop an expert reputation and create a large digital footprint that attracts attention of your ideal prospects.
There are many steps and tactics to make your web presence effective that will be different depending on your business model. But regardless of your tactics, there are six overarching elements that are required for successfully creating a powerful web presence.
Developing a web presence strategy is not a difficult exercise as it should be integrated into your overall marketing strategy. If you have your marketing strategy defined, include the following additional information:
Web Presence – 6 Elements to Ensure Success
Is every place I can find a reference to your company consistent in what it says and how it looks?
Think about how many businesses that have a similar name to yours. When someone searches for your business and finds you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+, or finds your Google Places page or a listing on a review site, including the Better Business Bureau, will they immediately know it is you?
To ensure people always recognize your web properties and to build a recognizable expert brand, be consistent in all you do including using the same design elements such as color, images and logos. When a visitor finds your business, make sure there is no doubt that they have found the right business.
You can’t just set it and forget it. You have to be present regularly to respond to questions, participate in conversations and acknowledge those who mention you on social sites. You also need to keep content flowing regularly, updating your blog, offering new content to your visitors and sharing content from others you find interesting.
On the local search front, it is also not enough to just let your business listings lay dormant. Seek them out and claim them, ensuring your company name, address, phone numbers and all other relevant information is accurate and consistent. To search engines, Masterful Marketing and Masterful Marketing, LLC are not the same.
Creating the right content for your audience is difficult, but if you create a content strategy that defines what you are going to write and a content marketing strategy to define how you will use that great content to gain visibility, you will be more likely to be found when your audience is searching for a solution. Get their attention and help them out of a problem and you become a valuable resource they will keep going back to for advice.
You have an opportunity to optimize your web presence, including website, social profiles and business listings using your top keyword phrases. Once again, you can’t just set it and forget it because search engines change how they index web pages frequently, so you need to produce new content and incorporate basic SEO components to stay visible and highly ranked in the search engine results.
Periodically do a review of your web presence to be sure all listings are kept up to date. If something changes, update it across all properties. If you get a review on one of the review sites, know about it. You never want to be surprised by a good or bad review. Keep a spreadsheet of all the sites where you have claimed your listing so you can keep them updated when necessary.
Web presence takes a commitment in time, effort and persistence, but the payoff is huge. Ensuring that all of your web properties work together to project the consistent image and professional reputation you want is important to getting found regularly. Make this the year that you commit to your online web presence and make it the best that it can be.
Have you done a web presence analysis and put together your plan?
Debra, very well put! Search is now more than just Google (YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are among the largest “search engines” for their internal content) and web presence is more than just a corporate website. To maximize the chances of being “found” when a prospective buyer is looking, companies need a broader view and coordinated approach to maximizing their web presence.
Tom, I expect a lot of small businesses will be very overwhelmed with what they need to do for gaining visibility in search and will be disappointed in their results if they don’t commit to, as you put it, a broader view and coordinated approach, to their web presence.
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Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/6-critical-elements-to-guarantee-a-successful-web-presence/
Masterful Marketing Home » Inbound Marketing » Inbound Marketing System – Keep Focused and In Control
Greetings! Thanks for visiting Masterful Marketing. You’ll find a lot of content about marketing your small business in the blog, so you may want to subscribe via the RSS feed or email so you won’t miss any valuable information.
As this is the ninth and final post in the series on Inbound Marketing, it is fitting that it is about creating an inbound marketing system to ensure you remain consistent in your activities. As the final post of the year, it is also good to remind ourselves that success comes in taking little steps rather than setting lofty resolutions that get forgotten by the middle of January.
Create an Inbound Marketing System
Now that you have your inbound marketing plan and have established your WordPress website and social media outposts, it’s time to start generating and nurturing leads and turn these prospects into customers.
But how do you incorporate inbound marketing into your daily schedule while still working in your business?
A marketing system enables you to consistently execute your activities and see the results. Without a system, you will find yourself in one of two places:
As with setting any goals, if you write them down you will be more likely to achieve them. Put your system in writing and make sure that it will work for you. Start simple and expand if you find that you can do more:
My system is probably simpler than you might have expected but like you, I have to balance my time between marketing my business and helping my clients. It works for my business and that’s what counts.
First a couple of recommended tools.
I use Evernote as a way of organizing my inbound marketing activities. I use it to organize content from wherever I am because it works across all of my devices – smartphone, tablet, laptop and desktop – and it syncs to a hosted service so I always have my latest “to do” list or a place to write reminders available to me.
I’ve grown very fond of Buffer App. As I read my RSS feeds, Buffer makes it very easy for me to schedule posts to my Facebook Page and Twitter. I can pick and choose which posts make more sense on either platform and set my schedules so that I can space them out. I can’t wait until they support Google+!
Schedule your Inbound Marketing Activities
Spend a couple hours at the beginning (or end) of each month planning your content for the (next) month. Schedule those hours in your calendar so you won’t forget! I do my planning in Evernote so if I have a few minutes to spare, I can jot down ideas for the coming month.
Schedule your time each week to work on your content. Writing consistently is very difficult for many people so don’t get discouraged! The content plan is the most important thing as that helps you decide what to write. Again, I keep a list of potential topics for blog posts in Evernote.
Figure out a time when you can take care of the daily tasks. I do mine in the morning over coffee and then at lunch. These are times when I take a little break from client work to see what’s happening and stay visible. Does it always work out? Of course not, but most days it does.
Having a plan and a schedule will make you more likely to succeed. If you book it in your calendar and treat those appointments as you would those with clients, then you will have a far better chance of staying on course.
What is your inbound marketing system for the upcoming year?
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Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/inbound-marketing-system-keep-focused-and-in-control/
Masterful Marketing Home » Inbound Marketing » Lead Nurturing – Build Relationships with Future Clients
This is post eight in the series on Inbound Marketing, focusing on how to nurture all those quality leads you have generated.
Lead nurturing is what it sounds like: continually providing support and nourishment to leads (in this case acquired through your inbound marketing efforts) by anticipating their needs and sending them new, fantastic content that is interesting, educational and relevant.
Lead nurturing is not new – it’s a process that has been used by quality sales people for years, taking prospects through various nurturing stages until the time is right and they are ready to buy. The major difference between traditional lead nurturing and today is you are touching your prospects using social media, email marketing and blogging.
These people gave you permission to contact them when they signed up for your offer. If you ignore them, you will let these leads turn cold and possibly drive them to buy from your competition. According to Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Applied Research, MECLABS (parent company of MarketingSherpa), “most lead nurturing programs don’t begin to impact conversion before at least five meaningful touches, and that it’s important to continue nurturing leads whether it takes five touches or 25 touches to get them to the sales-ready point”.
Nurturing the leads from your inbound marketing lead generation activities
This means you must provide the right information at the right time to help your leads move through the buying decision process. Begin to communicate with them, offering valuable information and “can’t say no” offers every time you touch them. These meaningful touches must provide the value they expect so the prospect begins to differentiate you from the competition in their minds.
If you truly understand your audience and you know what type of information they need, then you can craft a plan that sends the right information to them at the right time without becoming a pest. But, if it were that easy, we all would be wallowing in the fruits of our success.
Remember the content marketing strategy we wrote back in September? You thought it was just for lead generation, didn’t you?
In fact, your content marketing strategy should include the content you will need in order to provide meaningful touches for those who have opted in so you can take them from being a cool lead to a hot prospect.
This content will depend on the complexity of your product or service. Small businesses primarily need educational content that helps your prospect understand:
In other words, it is not about selling your services or products through your content, but about selling you as a valuable resource for them. This type of nurturing develops a relationship built on trust and respect.
To get started, set up a schedule for when you will touch your prospects and with what content. Use varying types of content, such as your blog, articles, eNewsletters, white papers, videos and presentations, and begin nurturing your leads.
How will you be nurturing your leads generated through your inbound marketing activities? What type of content do you plan to provide at each step of the funnel?
Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/lead-nurturing-build-relationships-with-future-clients/
Masterful Marketing Home » Inbound Marketing » Lead Generation using Inbound Marketing
This is post seven in the series on Inbound Marketing, focusing on how your inbound marketing activities can help you generate quality leads.
Lead Generation, Inbound Marketing
By now you are probably wondering “what’s in it for me” when it comes to inbound marketing. It seems like a lot of work and is there any benefit to my small business?
The ultimate goal of inbound marketing is to generate leads. All of this work is futile if in the end you have not generated any interest in your products and services. But like everything in marketing, generating leads using inbound marketing is a process.
Let’s take a look at where we are in that process to date. We:
We have the pieces in place for our small business to be found among a sea of small businesses. Now our task is to create compelling offers to attract more visitors, create solid communities and capture visitor information thereby generating leads and building a strong in-house email list.
Once we have developed our own email list, we can use it to build relationships and trust with your prospects that is both consistent and relevant to their needs. And because of the relationship you build between you and those in your communities, when they need help, it will be highly likely that they will turn to you.
Blogging regularly and ensuring your blog, Facebook Page, LinkedIn profile and other social media outposts are well optimized to increase traffic are your first steps to becoming visible. Up to this point, you have given your visitors quality content through your blog and social media outposts without any strings attached. Taking it to the next level, what can you provide that has so much value to them that they will give you their email address?
There are many lead generation strategies that may be valuable to your audience.
So how many of you have a website with one or less lead capture forms?
That’s not a silly question. I’ve come across many websites that either require me to call them or let me leave without them knowing I stopped by. In my experience watching inbound leads for my clients, many people conduct searches for products and services at night, after dinner and after their children have gone to bed. If you don’t have a form that makes it easy for them to contact you when it is convenient for them, you are missing a huge opportunity to get qualified leads.
A well placed lead conversion form, visible above the fold, with a compelling offer is an important component of your website. Keep the form short and only ask for as much information as you really need.
Once you have captured that email address, your next step is to build trust with your community. Remember it’s more than just collecting email addresses. You need to determine what your audience wants to get and how often. Some companies can email more frequently because they are making offers that are time based (weekly deals or coupons from Staples) or personalized (Amazon). Other companies like ours need to gauge how often your list will appreciate an email correspondence.
What offers have you provided that captured the most leads for your email list?
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Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/lead-generation-using-inbound-marketing/
