A checklist and examples of good practice for 9 new features
It’s now around a month since Facebook business timelines were introduced. We explained the main marketing features here.
We’ve been checking out some of the best uses of the new features for marketing, plus we’re seeing some of the new features aren’t being implemented. It’s rare to see a Facebook page that combines all the features in the most effective way. That’s natural, there’s quite a lot for page owners to “get their heads around”, plus the usual time, budget, technical limitations.
In this post I hope to give some guidance to help you review your site and to combine looking at some examples to learn from, plus showing what some are missing. So from top to bottom, I’ll mark what are potentially the most important.
Well, most…
7 Tips for more effective mobile emails
Email and mobile together are already functioning as a team, whether we as marketers want them to or not. The customers and consumers have voted with their usage. They’re not sitting around waiting for marketers to get their act together, but as I write this between 20-60% of your database will be reading your marketing emails on their mobile device.
If designed and planned well, email and mobile together, will, in the forthcoming years, form a formidable marketing force. So marketers, a question: Will you be leading the way and profiting from your competitors lack of preparedness? Or will your competitors be profiting from yours?
Challenges
Many marketers get stuck here and go no further. In no way am I trying to minimize the challenges that lay ahead for a marketer to optimise the mobile email journey – however they are certainly not as insurmountable as they…
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23 Apr 2012
A golden rule to rule them all
I grew up being taught the golden rule that one should always do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
It’s thought which is beautiful in its simplistic wisdom. We've all thought about how much better and brighter this world would be if we all followed this golden rule.
I suppose this could be a problem if you’re masochistic, but let’s assume most of us aren’t...
Email Onto Others as You Would Have Them Email Onto You
It’s not stretch at all to revise this rule to:
"email onto others as you would have them email onto you"
Isn’t that the best place to start? Let’ s put aside all the rocket science and just think of how much better and more effective email marketing would be if we all kept that golden rule front of mind.
Email…
Creating effective landing pages for SEO
If you have followed the first six steps in this series on SEO (plus added your own twist and freestyling) you should now be seeing increased coverage (pages & keywords) in search results for your target keywords. Now the real fun begins since...
Being visible and getting clicks doesn’t guarantee you success. Success depends on many factors, of which landing page quality is one. It’s almost impossible to create a landing page that caters for the needs of all natural search visitors. Your aim should be to improve your landing pages over time, using proven optimisation methods, so that the natural search traffic you get positively contributes to your website’s KPIs.
Please note that you don’t have to make immediate conversions and revenue the primary goals for all natural search traffic – there may be some research terms (head and mid tail keywords) for which your…
The 4 most important tools for LinkedIn & your business
LinkedIn is the most important social networks for B2B marketers who are taking online marketing seriously, particularly in the UK and US. LinkedIn now has an array of tools to help bridge the gap between the network and your own website, they're getting better and better and I wanted to share them with you.
With 5.5 Million users in the UK alone (growing daily) there is an opportunity for all B2B businesses on LinkedIn.
As part of integrating LinkedIn on your website you need to also consider how you connect and interact on LinkedIn. You should checkout a recent post on Oatmeal that made us all chuckle, it highlights how so many companies take a very lame approach to Facebook, the same principal applies to LinkedIn. You have to remember…
How the ‘7 fascination triggers’ will help viewers engage with your brand
Video is a great new way to communicate your business to the world.
Imagine you have found a great production company to help you create shiny, amazing video content. And you have set a filming date and allocated a reasonable budget to make sure you get it right.
But you have no idea what message you want to get across - or what you’re going to film.
The ‘7 fascination triggers’ is a useful tool to help you work out how best to tailor your strategy to elicit the desired response from your target markets.
So what does it take to be fascinating?
How can you grab your audience’s attention and hold it long enough for your message to be heard loud and clear?
The key, according to Sally Hogshead, is to have an understanding of…
It’s quick, cheap, personal, high impact: Are you taking full advantage of SMS?
SMS is immediate and easy for senders and recipients - making it an ideal communication tool to build loyalty and acquire new customers quickly and cheaply.
Disappointingly, the 2012 Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census found only 13% of those surveyed combined email and SMS to deliver their marketing messages - what a missed opportunity!
SMS communication leverages mobile phone ubiquity
How far away is your mobile phone from you right now? My guess is it’s going to be close by; either on the desk next to you or in your handbag or pocket.
How often do you check your phone? As soon as you hear it, every half an hour or so, or every hour; depending on what you are doing?
Do you ever go anywhere without your mobile?…
How to convert more B2B prospects
In the entire history of business you have never been able to access as much data as you can now, thanks to the plethora of analytics programs around.
And, today you can find out more about your customers than you could a few months ago - because analytics software is constantly being upgraded.
In fact, companies are now swimming with so much data that analysing it in any meaningful way is often too difficult.
Which vital data is unavailable from analytics?
According to the business intelligence company, BuiltWith, Google Analytics is by far the most popular service; used by just under half the top one million websites worldwide.
Google Analytics presents each site with thousands of pages of up-to-date information covering every aspect of their current and historical website use - in other words, what people did.
There is, however,…
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28 Mar 2012
... Examples of how to make marketing campaign QR codes work with a short code QR tracking service
If you are running client campaigns with customised QR codes in them, you will want to make sure they scan every time. Not just on your graphic designer's iPhone after she wiggles it in the air for 15 seconds whilst muttering a prayer! Each scan could ultimately be a sale. Or a sale lost. So why do her beautiful creations not always scan?
Why do some QR codes scan quickly?
Putting aside mobile platform and chosen app, a fast scan requires visual clarity and simplicity of the QR code. The bare black and white code including the quiet zone border is (technically) the…
Using Google Analytics to review changes in mobile site usage by prospects and customers
As mobile device usage rapidly increases amongst buyers and influencers accessing content related to your products or services, it may be the perfect reason to start thinking about developing a mobile app or making your website mobile friendly as part of your sales and marketing toolbox.
A client of ours saw mobile traffic to their website increase by 284% in 2011 compared to 2010. Our client manufacturer of stainless steel reinforcement rods (not the most glamorous of products) saw the rate at which the site is accessed from a mobile device increase dramatically.
[caption id="attachment_11974" align="aligncenter" width="570" caption="Mobile visitor growth for B2B product manufacturer"][/caption]
After conducting many audits on websites, the biggest growth I have reported every single time for every single client is the growth in mobile traffic. It’s time B2B…
