Aletheia Digital. Agency Vista

Jan 20, 2023

6 Top Tips To Increase Client Website CVR

( Posted with special permission from Duda.co | All Rights Reserved ) You created amazing websites, they look good, they got some traffic, but there’s one major issue. They don’t convert. Users visit the pages but they don’t end up converting as much as expected. Why’s that? And most importantly; what can you do? That’s where I come in. Here are some life-saving tips to help you increase your client website CVR in no time. 6 TIPS TO INCREASE YOUR CLIENT WEBSITE CVR I’ve compiled a list of top tips to improve conversions. But why stop there? Make sure to get all the best CVR insight in our upcoming session on the matter at DudaCon , on September 13th, with world-renowned expert Andy Crestodina. In the meantime, here are my tips: 1- Improve Site Speed And Page Load Time If you’ve ever clicked on a page that took way too long to load, you know you’re not buying from there. No way you’ll wait hours for each step of shopping and checkout. Better find another provider. So make sure your client’s page load time is less than 5 seconds (ideally even less than 2) so no buyer will experience this issue on your clients sites. To improve page speed you can use a page speed optimization tool . It's also a good idea to create your site on a website building platform that’s already optimized for speed . 2- Drive Action With Compelling CTAs If your users have to search the site just to find out how to buy, it’s not good. It should be very clear and easy to know what the next step is and how to do it. The simpler the better. Your CTA should live above the fold, no need to scroll to find it. It should also be descriptive and specific, no vague “check that” or “click here”. Your CTAs should clearly indicate what the next step will be: Buy now Pre-order Subscribe Sign up That website optimization alone can make a world of difference. 3- Align Visual Hierarchy & Messaging You know your client’s company, what they do, who they are, what they sell.Buyers don’t. It might seem obvious for you, but it’s crucial to focus on the most basic and important information about the company first. If your client’s primary business is wedding planning, but the company also does some catering for other types of events, the home page should clearly reflect that they specialize in weddings, with imagery, headers and content that states it clearly. Then further on the page, or in different tabs on the menu, you can showcase their other services.This way, users won’t be confused as to what the company does and are more likely to stay on the website and ultimately convert. 4- Incorporate Visual Credentials A website is not the place to be modest. If your clients received awards, partnered with big renowned companies, have important certifications, or any other achievements, showcase it! Buyers who don’t know the company yet need this information to know that the company can be trusted. After all, you don’t want to enter your credit card information on just ANY website do you? You can showcase these business credentials with logos or testimonials on the homepage for example. 5- Run A/B Tests Sometimes it can be very difficult to know which page layout, color, or CTA will work best. That’s why A/B testing is crucial. You don’t want to make the changes right away and risk a drop in conversions either. Ideally use A/B tests on a page with enough traffic to give you a good idea of both version’s performance in a reasonable time (a couple weeks, or a few months top). If it takes a year to gather enough visits to have a reliable sample, maybe you can skip the testing on this one and focus your efforts on pages that impact the business more. 6- Use Retargeting Converting doesn’t usually happen right away (unless you’re one lucky cookie). As a consumer, the more you have to spend, the more you need to think it through and shop beforehand.That means, if a buyer already visited your client website, they are most likely interested in what they have to sell, but may not be ready to buy just yet. So follow them a little, stay top of mind. Use retargeting to keep them in the loop and make sure they don’t forget about your client’s brand. Retargeting is also a good way to showcase some promotions, coupons, or other incentives to help your visitors come back and convert. HELP YOUR CLIENTS CONVERT EVEN MORE! Those tips are just a few examples of what you can do to help your clients have high-converting websites. If you want ALL the juicy tips from experts in the matter, there’s a session you won’t want to miss during DudaCon: Boost Client Websites CVR With the Ultimate SEO Audit.

Jan 5, 2023

What Makes A Good Website?

Most websites are built to attract potential customers follow three basic principles. Does your site follow these? Having a website is an absolute must for any business owner. In today’s digital world, a website takes on multiple roles for your business ranging from serving as one of your company’s salespeople by helping drive leads, to a public relations channel you can use to share information about your business with your target audience. With over eight billion searches every day, and more and more people looking online for information about the products and services they need, just simply having a website isn’t enough. To be able to cut through the clutter and turn visitors into customers, you need a site that follows the key elements of what turns a good website into a site built for conversions. So, what key elements make a website both great and built to convert? A well-built site is functional, has a crisp, eye-catching design and is structured to capture lead information and persuade visitors to get in touch. What Makes A Website Functional? Website functionality is a pretty simple topic. Does your website provide users with the information they are looking for in a manner that is responsive and easy to navigate? If so, then the site is functional. Below are some things to keep in mind when judging website functionality. Does the website provide relevant information? People appreciate websites that offer the information they are looking for without having to jump through hoops to reach it. Customers are able to easily find what they are looking for if you have service pages, about and contact buttons in the header of your website. The information on these pages should clearly communicate what services your business provides, what the process is like, and how interested customers should get in contact with you. For home service providers, one of the easiest ways to leverage your website’s content to provide relevant information is to build out “city pages” for your service areas. Building out specific pages for each city in your service area can also help you reach your other digital marketing efforts. You can use these as landing pages for search advertising campaigns that are connected to the location, or you can leverage these city pages for search engine optimization efforts, helping your website rank higher on search engines’ results pages no matter where your customers are within your search area. Is the site technically savvy and up-to-date? Without the backend side of your site properly set up, it will not perform to its fullest. Important technical factors such as load speed and security play a major role in the functionality of your site. One of the biggest reasons that visitors and potential customers quickly exit a site is that the load speed is too slow. Studies have shown that users are ready to leave a site and look for another information source if it does not load within two seconds. Security also plays a major role in the functionality of your site. If your site is not properly secure, some browsers such as Google Chrome and Apple Safari will not let the user even access the site. A security site will protect and encrypt the data of its users so that they are not at risk of cyber attacks. Having a valid security sockets layer, or SSL, installed on your website can help protect users. Other technical factors to consider are the SEO elements that also affect how your site ranks. Meta titles, or the coded titles of your pages, serve as descriptors for Google’s indexing bots. Meta descriptions, or code with information about the page, provide the indexing bots with some insight into what it should be looking for while crawling the page. Alternate image tags, or a short code describing the contents of an image or video, are extremely useful in conveying information to Google about an SEO-rich source like photos and videos. You most likely already know how important keywords are when it comes to building optimized web pages. Making sure that all tags, pages and titles are using the proper keywords can be the difference between a site that appears on the first page of the search results, and a site that appears on the seventh page. When Google crawls your website it utilizes all of these elements to determine how relevant your site is to a user’s search query. Is the website optimized for mobile and tablet browsing? With almost 60 percent of all web traffic coming from mobile devices (Exploding Topics, 2022), the days of having a site not built for mobile are well in the past. A well-built website will have a responsive design, so that the layout and look of the site changes to provide the user with the best experience for their device. Another important reason to have a mobile-friendly site is that Google’s algorithm for ranking search results crawls and indexes mobile site versions first. When building a new site from scratch, it can be a smart idea to begin with the mobile version, as this is the one that visitors will usually be interacting with. Most major website building platforms like Duda and Wordpress have a dynamic site display format built into the design software. Does the website design grab your attention? Customers are more likely to call or fill out a form on a site that is visually pleasing than either a bland or over designed site. You can usually spot an attractive website instantly due to crisp colors, images or fonts, but if you take a closer look you can see the graphic design principles that make it appealing. Good web design follows basic graphic design principles. The main principle of graphic design is hierarchy, the importance of controlling certain design elements and conveying them in a certain order of importance. Are you consistent across your site? Consistency is key in website design. Using the same colors, fonts, and sizes across your site establishes credibility and lends a sense of professionalism and authority to your site. It also makes it easier for the user to comprehend the material they are looking at if it is presented in a uniform fashion. Does your site follow color theory? A major part of design is color theory, which basically boils down to the idea that certain colors match well with each other. The human eye is very perceptive to these pairings, and we are naturally attracted to pairings that work well together. There are many different color schemes you can use to grab viewers’ attention. Some of the most popular color schemes include monochromatic, which focuses on utilizing the different shades of one color, complimentary, which uses two colors that work well together, and triadic, which uses three colors that are often on different ends of the color wheel. Is your website ADA compliant? The Americans with Disabilities Act ensures that all Americans have equal access to various aspects of life regardless of if they have a disability or not. When businesses shift from an in- person to online storefront, this means your website needs to be ADA compliant. For a website to be ADA compliant it needs to adapt to the needs of a visitor who requires a different view. This can range from contrasting colors that make copy easier to read to text-to- speech functions. An ADA compliant website means there is more of the market for you to reach, which in turn means more possible profitability for your business. Are you using your site as a sales funnel? At the end of the day, your website needs to serve a purpose in your overall marketing strategy to help you achieve your goals. Your main goal is most likely to get more leads, so you need to think of your website as the final part of a funnel that takes potential customers from the internet and turns them into leads and actual customers. Having the proper systems and processes in place to drive conversions is critical to having a great website. Below are some tips and tricks to help your website drive leads. Are you using calls to action? A website serves as a source of information for visitors who are interested in learning more about either your company or the products and services you provide. Take advantage of that interest and urge them to get in touch. Your website experience should lead customers to your contact points and subliminally persuade them to take a desired action like calling or filling out a form. For example, imagine a customer wants to learn more about metal roofing options near them. They click onto a website from either an ad or an organic result, and they arrive at a landing page about metal roofing specifically built for their city. On this page they find all of the information about the types of metal roofs available, the average lifespan, and what the company’s installation process looks like. Throughout the article there have been links to the contact us page, sentences highlighting their free estimate offer, and other call to action items. When the customer either reaches the bottom of the page or scrolls back to the top, they notice a form with another “get a free quote” message. They fill it out. This customer visit has resulted in a lead for your business because of your call to action. Are you consistently improving your site’s SEO? The internet is constantly changing and to keep your site ranking higher on search engines, you need to have a plan to work on search engine optimization, or SEO. This plan should include all of the technical SEO features discussed in the functionality portion but also the other aspects that tie it all together. Make a plan to consistently create relevant and useful content that will attract users to your site. Not only does this allow you to add keywords to your site, but these informational bits can be shared across multiple digital marketing channels. Blog posts can be repurposed for email marketing messages or social media posts, which in turn can be used as part of the funnel to drive customers to your site and get in contact with you. Does your website’s forms capture the correct information? Something to avoid is for a customer to find all of the information they need on your site, go to get in contact with you through a form, and then the page’s form does not require the necessary information. Having a form that captures the right kind of information not only makes the user experience more seamless and the buyer's journey more pleasant but also makes your life easier when reaching out to the customer. Most forms should require basic information like name, address, phone and email, and service required. When dealing with forms on specialized services pages such as a form on a roof installation page, you can begin to ask for more specific information such as age of roof or if the customer is interested in a shingle or metal roof. Is your site built to turn visitors into customers? If anything on this list stood out to you as something you feel could be improved on your website, it is worth looking into a fix. Aletheia Digital offers SEO packages structured to help improve your site’s functionality by monitoring web health vitals such as page load speed, site security, URL structure, Search Console page indexing and more. We can also help you leverage your site for content marketing purposes such as blogs, vlogs and content tag optimizations designed to help you rank higher across search engines. For more information about why your business needs a website, or what you can do to improve your current one, click here . -###- Aletheia Digital is a full-service digital marketing agency providing creative marketing solutions to home service providers and other business owners to help them grow their business. With office locations in Columbus, Georgia, and Wichita, Kansas, Aletheia Digital works with companies and contractors throughout the United States and Canada. Aletheia Digital offers products, services and consulting expertise in the realms of website design, paid digital advertising, search engine optimization, etc. to businesses looking to conquer the digital marketing landscape.

Jul 9, 2021

What To Look For In A Digital Marketing Agency (Pt. III)

Let's look at some helpful questions to ask a prospective digital marketing agency. If you have read my two previous blogs, you are well aware of what you should be looking for in potential digital marketing agencies. Armed with the right knowledge, you may have even begun your search for the right agency. I wanted to touch on this topic again because it’s vital that business owners match with the agencies that would work best for them, depending on the industry, company culture, experience, etc. If you are signing a contract with a digital marketing agency, you want to be absolutely sure that it’s the right one. So, one more time, let’s dive a little deeper into what makes an agency great. Questions To Ask Agencies Here are some of the things you should be asking agencies when you meet with them for a consultation: What are prices like? Prices will vary depending on the service you are seeking. If you just need an agency to manage your online reviews, then you won’t be paying nearly as much as if you were having a website designed for your business. Be sure to compare prices from various agencies, and think about what you might be getting from the lower priced agencies. It’s always nice to save a buck when you can, but you also need to keep in mind that great online marketing is worth paying for! At some point, prices become questionably low, and you have to consider if you should be willing to shell out a little more cash for a job done right. What kind of KPIs do they use? In the previous blog, I mentioned how important it is for both you and the agency you hire to keep track of important metrics. If you are considering hiring a certain agency, ask them about their key performance indicators, or KPIs. It’s great to see that your business’s Facebook posts are getting more likes and shares, as it means more people are becoming aware of your business. But that’s not the reason you hired an agency. You really want to know how the work that the agency is doing is affecting your sales numbers and site traffic. For this, there are better metrics than likes and shares. For instance, agencies should be tracking the number of unique visitors on your website, the click-through-rate on the ads you are running, and the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors that leave the website after they have landed on it), just to name a few. How can an agency help you reach your marketing goals? In order for you to be able to ask this question, you have to be aware of what your goals actually are. Before you meet with any agencies, decide what you are trying to achieve by hiring them. Asking this question will not only help you get a better read on an agency, but it will help them determine if your goals are within their capabilities. The best marketing agencies are more than willing to admit their limits, and won’t try to sell you on impossible expectations or promises. Be sure to ask the agency to go into detail about the steps they will take to reach these goals. They should be able to explain their processes in a clear and straightforward way. It’s not enough for them to say they will create a sound strategy to help you reach your goals--you need specifics. How have they implemented digital marketing strategies for their own brand? If an agency is reluctant to share their own internal marketing strategies with you, it could be considered a red flag. If they are having trouble selling their own brand online, odds are they will struggle with yours. Ask the agency what their own marketing strategies look like, and how they have executed these strategies. This is a good opportunity to also ask them about how they resolve issues that inevitably arise during their own marketing campaigns. If they are able to handle such issues for themselves, it’s a good sign that they are capable of handling them for their clients. What does the timeline look like? Be wary of agencies making outrageous promises of overnight success. The truth is that digital marketing is usually a slow-moving process. If your brand isn’t going viral (most aren’t), it will take some time to start seeing boosts in traffic, revenue, click-through-rates, etc. The good news is that once you and the agency you hired have put in the work, your online presence will continue to grow as long as it is managed properly. You can think of digital marketing as a long term investment. As with any long term investment, it takes time to accrue value. But once it does, the value compounds, and the six months or year of unremarkable results seems well worth it! The Aletheia Difference I’ve included this section in the two last blogs in order to highlight aspects of our services that we feel play a big role in our continued success with clients. Not only does our agency strive for a certain level of transparency and expertise, we also take pride in the things that separate us from other digital marketing agencies. As mentioned in the first part of this blog series, one of those things is how we make it work for the client. We fervently believe in carrying out our clients’ visions, and in order to do that, we sometimes have to find workarounds to unexpected issues. At the end of the day, we want to do everything in our power to help our clients reach their goals, as they are the primary focus of our company. Another aspect of our company that we think makes us stand out is our commitment to great customer service. We place a high value on clear, polite, and consistent communication with our clients. Good customer service is more than just delivering stellar services to clients, it’s also about the continued management of those services. A big part of any working relationship is open communication, and we maintain that with our clients. The final piece of the puzzle that is “the Aletheia difference” is our willingness and ability to build relationships. Our clients are at the core of everything we do, and we want to see the continued growth of their businesses. We realized if we want to be around to see our clients’ businesses grow, we have to foster strong relationships with them. And mak ing it work for the client and solid customer service both serve the ultimate purpose of developing great client relationships. The Search Begins Now that you know a little bit more about what you should be looking for in a digital marketing agency, you are ready to start the arduous process of actually finding one! Of course, these lists of tips are not exhaustive. They are just here to help you get started, and there are a lot of things to consider before making the final decision of which agency you want to go with. Remember to keep your goals in mind, research any prospective agencies, and ask lots of questions during any consultations you have! Stay tuned for more tips and trends in the world of digital marketing!

Jul 2, 2021

What To Look For In A Digital Marketing Agency (Pt. II)

Here are some more tips for finding the right digital marketing agency. In my last blog, I touched on what you should be looking for when seeking out a digital marketing agency for your business. Because this is such a broad topic, I thought it best to dig a little deeper in the next couple of blogs. While it is important to look for the positive qualities in the agencies you are considering, it’s also very much worth keeping an eye out for the negative qualities, as well. Some of these may be hard to spot before you’ve actually started working with an agency, but you should still be on the lookout for them even after you’ve signed that contract. Tracking Results An agency can run the best campaigns in the world, but it doesn’t count for much if they aren’t keeping track of the results. Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are vital when it comes to measuring the success of any campaign. Marketers use these metrics to determine whether a campaign needs adjusting in certain areas. It helps them to know what works and what doesn’t. Clear Communication As with any business relationship, clear and consistent communication is incredibly important to the success of a campaign. If your agency isn’t letting you know how a campaign is going or are generally avoiding contact with you, you have to ask yourself why. A lack of good communication will complicate things and keep you in the dark, when you should be up-to-date on the campaigns being run for your business. Dwindling Client Count When considering an agency, try to find out their history with other clients, both former and present. It should be no problem for an agency to give you a list of references for you to contact. If they have a history of rapidly losing clients, there is probably a good reason for it. And if they aren’t willing to give you references, you should definitely search elsewhere. Grand Promises You will want to watch out for the agencies who make grandiose promises that sound a little too good to be true. In most cases, they are too good to be true. The best agencies are well aware of their capabilities, and they don’t feel the need to exaggerate their abilities. Instead they recognize their strengths and apply those strengths in their clients’ campaigns. And if the agency is promising fast, over-the-top results, there’s something wrong there. It takes time to build a strong online reputation with good SEO practices. Unfortunately, there is no fast-tracking the process. Lack of a Portfolio In addition to a list of client references, any agency worth its salt will gladly show you the work they have done in the past. Showcasing a portfolio, whether it contains websites, video content, or display ads, is a great opportunity for an agency to show off their best stuff. If they are hesitant to show you past projects, it’s not a good sign, and you should probably take your business to another agency. No Industry-Specific Experience It just isn’t realistic to use the same digital marketing strategies for businesses within different industries. If you own a roofing business, you don’t want to go to the agency that has ample experience running campaigns for doctor’s offices and dentistry practices, but has never done marketing for roofers. When you get a list of client references from your prospective agency, be sure to consider what industry those clients belong to. Poorly Designed Website If the agency you are considering is promising you a beautiful website with strong traffic and a great online presence, check out their website! If the agency isn’t invested in their own digital marketing, why should you trust that they will be invested in yours? This also goes for other aspects of digital marketing. Do they have social media accounts that they keep updated? Can you find their business listed on the Google results page, along with online reviews? A digital marketing agency should be marketing themselves in addition to their clients. The Aletheia Difference In the last blog, I talked about how one of the things we take pride in at Aletheia Digital is our tendency to make it work for the client. This is a huge part of our values as a company, but is only one part in the grand scheme of how we operate. Another factor that plays into our company values is customer service . This goes beyond s imply making it work for the client. At the end of the day, digital marketing agencies are providing customer service. And if you meet with an agency to see if they are a good fit, you should keep that in mind. You, after all, would be their customer. And you would expect nothing less than great service if you were a customer at, say, a restaurant. At Aletheia, we don’t view our clients as just another source of revenue. We would want the best possible service if we were in their shoes, so that’s what we strive for. Top-notch customer service means many different things. It means being honest and straightforward with our clients. It also means maintaining strong communication with them. Whenever issues do arise, we know how important it is to keep clients up-to-date with how we are working to solve those issues. Another major part of good customer service is listening to clients. We care about what our clients have to say, and fulfilling their digital marketing needs is only possible if we are actively listening to them. These may seem like characteristics that any digital marketing agency should possess, but we are confident that we outshine other agencies when it comes to making clients happy. Don’t just take our word for it though, hear what one of our longtime clients has to say about our services! And keep an eye out for next week’s blog, where I will go even further into what you should be looking for in a digital marketing agency!

Jun 25, 2021

What To Look For In A Digital Marketing Agency

Looking to hire a digital marketing agency? Here's what you should keep an eye out for. First Things First: Why Hire a Digital Marketing Agency? It's no easy task to carry out a digital marketing strategy. Many business owners assume they can save some money and handle the heavy lifting themselves. While this is totally possible (especially if they have a decent knowledge of digital marketing practices), it's not ideal for a number of reasons. Time Constraints: Running online marketing campaigns takes a lot of time. Most business owners have pretty full schedules that wouldn't allow for much free time to worry about coming up with keywords for a PPC campaign. They could be focusing on improving their business in other ways. Misuse of Ad Spend: When you let professionals take the reins, they are more likely to steer your business's marketing in the right direction. It may cost less to do your own digital marketing in the short run, but you run the risk of improperly allocating your budget. Changing Marketing Practices: This might be the best reason to hire a digital marketing agency instead of doing it all yourself. With new trends and practices constantly coming about in the digital marketing world, it can be hard to keep up. If you aren't educating yourself of these changes on a regular basis, you might be wasting your ad spend (see bullet #2) and your time (see bullet #1). Proven Strategies: Digital marketing agencies have the advantage of knowing which strategies are worth pursuing and which should be avoided. This means you aren't going in blind, and you will see results more quickly than if you were to jump into digital marketing on your own. Finding The Right Agency Before you can ultimately decide which agency you want to hire, you need to ask yourself what your goals are. What kind of results are you hoping to see? Setting clear and measurable goals will not only help you in the long run, but it will help the agencies determine right off the bat if they are a good fit for you. Many agencies specialize in specific areas of digital marketing, such as video marketing or social media. If the agency knows what kind of goals you have set, they will know whether or not they have the right tools and knowledge to help you reach your goals. For example, your business may have a great website that just isn't getting enough visitors. You might then make it your marketing goal to increase traffic to your site by 45% over the next three months. Keeping these goals in mind when searching for the right agency is integral. It's also important to check the track record of the agencies you are considering. Some digital marketing agencies have more experience than other agencies when it comes to advertising for certain industries. Has the prospective agency done marketing for landscaping companies before? What about roofing companies? It makes a difference. The Aletheia Difference Aletheia Digital is a full-service digital marketing agency. That means we run well-rounded campaigns that fully involve numerous aspects of digital marketing. This way, we can improve our clients' overall online presence, resulting in boosts in awareness and revenue. A core tenet of our business is that we believe in making it work for our clients . While unforeseen issues can arise, we don't believe these issues should prevent us from carrying out the clients' visions. This "make it work" attitude is one of the reasons Aletheia Digital is so successful throughout the fulfillment process. Our team knows the value of strong client relationships, and a big part of maintaining those relationships is keeping constant communication going with our clients. We believe that solid communication should begin with the initial consultation with your prospective agency. When you meet to discuss your needs, the agency should be clear about what they are and are not capable of. It's okay for an agency to specialize in certain areas of digital marketing. It's not okay if they make promises to their clients that they know cannot be kept. Aletheia Digital recognizes this, and strives to provide the best services possible, while managing the expectations of our clients and prospective clients. Finding the right digital marketing agency can be as easy or difficult as you want it to be. If you want to get the best results, you should put some effort into the search for the right fit. Do your research and take your time. Some agencies won't be good candidates because the agency itself differs from your business in terms of core values, has an industry-specific work history, or because you simply can't see yourself working with the people at the agency. It's better to recognize these differences before signing any contracts. There's a lot to cover when it comes to finding the right agency for your business, so stay tuned for more helpful tips in our next blog!

Jun 18, 2021

Email Marketing

You may not believe it, but marketers use email to distribute their messaging more than any other channel. There's a reason why. Does Email Marketing Really Work? With so many different channels to market through, it may seem far-fetched to say that email is one of the most effective--but it's true! Just think about how many people you know without an email address. Probably not many, right? Sure, there are a lot of people who have no interest in social media, don't regularly watch online videos, and couldn't tell you what their favorite meme is, but odds are good they have an active email address. According to Statista.com , there are 4.147 billion email users across the globe. Even with so many people using email, you might still be skeptical about the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns. That's understandable, as there are so many newer and flashier marketing channels. Why would marketers send out emails when they could be posting engaging content on their Facebook or Twitter pages? There are actually a few reasons why: Meaningful Customer Relationships: One reason email campaigns work so well is that the recipients of the email (usually) actually want to be a recipient. They have subscribed to the emails for one reason or another, so marketers are able to get their message directly to the people who would benefit from seeing it. Marketers can cater their content to an audience based on their position in the buying journey. Maybe the goal of the email is to retarget users who filled their cart with items before abandoning it. Or maybe it's simply to gain traction with consumers who have not yet bought anything from a business. This level of personalization helps to foster more substantial relationships between the consumer and the marketer. Cost Effectiveness: Now we get to the nitty gritty of why marketers favor email: it's cheap! Studies have shown that email marketing yields an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. Math never was my forte, but it's easy to see how that kind of ROI would be attractive to marketers. So attractive, in fact, that 47% of marketers consider email to be the most effective marketing channel--more than any other channel. That's not to say that email marketing is a magic wand that will launch your revenue into the stratosphere, but, when done right, it can be a serious game-changer. Growth of Business: The bottom line is that marketing with email can fast-track your sales growth while also improving brand awareness and customer retention. Email is great for informing customers about new sales or products, and then calling the customers to action. It can be so powerful, in fact, that 60% of consumers have said they made the decision to purchase a product because of an email the company sent them. If you want to grow your business while maintaining tight control over how much you spend, email marketing is the way to go. How to Make Email Marketing Work While it is evident that using email to market can help your business grow, there are some things to keep in mind if you want to make a success out of your marketing campaign: Purchasing Contact Lists: Depending on what kind of email marketing you are engaged in, you may want to consider purchasing contact lists. At Aletheia Digital, we make good use of available data to get the best reach with our email campaigns by purchasing contact lists for our clients. Some email marketing involves sending mass numbers of emails to contacts whose information was on a contact list. There really is no escaping the fact that your email address is on a list somewhere and you will receive ads from countless companies. But the simple fact is that these campaigns work. If you are really trying to build your brand image and connect with your customers on a more personal level, it's good to build your contact list organically. But in terms of hard numbers, purchasing lists is a great option. Create Mobile-Friendly Emails: Ensuring that your emails look good across all devices is a must. This is a good rule of thumb when designing websites, too. With 56% of online traffic taking place on mobile devices , it's a given that your emails will be viewed on phones. If you are sending poorly optimized emails, it detracts from your message and results in a loss of credibility on your business's part. Before you send any email, check to make sure it looks great on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices--which leads me to my next point... Test Your Emails: This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's well-worth mentioning just because of how important it is. Before you send an email to a customer or prospective customer, test it out! Send it to yourself to make sure it opens without any issues and looks the way you want it to look. It's good to test it across multiple platforms, too. Maybe the email looks right on Gmail, but not in Outlook. There's nothing worse than working tirelessly to craft the perfect email, only to send it out and realize one of your images won't load or the formatting has changed. It's best to tackle those kinds of issues before the email goes out. Analyze the Results: Whenever you are running any sort of marketing campaign, whether it's through social media, direct mail, targeted display ads, PPC, email, etc., you need to measure the effectiveness of the campaigns. This means looking at the results and determining what works and what doesn't. Do more recipients open your emails when you send them in the mornings as opposed to the afternoon? Are you getting too many unsubscribes? Are people clicking on your Call to Action? These are the kinds of questions you can answer with dedicated analysis of the campaign results. Deliver Great Content: This is another good practice that transcends email marketing to all forms of marketing. If you are delivering a message through your ads and emails, it needs to be a message that people will care about. Don't think that people will just be happy to read your email in their downtime. Convince them to open your emails by delivering consistent and high-quality content. After all, content is king! Should Your Business Be Using Email Marketing? Many business owners may question whether or not they should focus their time and effort on email campaigns. While it may not be the most exciting form of advertising, it is a proven strategy that gets results at a low cost. Small businesses would especially benefit from email marketing, as it can act as a catalyst for growth. Its cost-effectiveness is also helpful, as many small businesses don't have a large marketing budget. Another great thing about email is that, unlike social media posts, you aren't limited to a certain number of characters. Although it is best to keep your emails concise, you have more freedom to include as much content as you would like. Of course, email is only a part of digital marketing. Integrating your email campaigns with other strategies is always good. For instance, if you plan on using social media to run a contest, you can use email to advertise it directly to your customers. There are a lot of good reasons to engage in email marketing for businesses of all sizes. I went over a few of them, but the list goes on and on. With email, you can increase traffic to your website, thereby increasing sales, all while gaining credibility with customers and prospective customers. If you like the sound of that, then maybe it's time to invest in email marketing. Your business will thank you!

Jun 11, 2021

Tips for Improving SEO

Maximizing SEO is a great way to get your website more traffic. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of making your website more search engine-friendly with the end goal of not only increasing the amount of traffic your site sees, but the overall quality of traffic. After all, you want a lot of people to visit your site, but they need to be the right people. If they have no interest in the services or products you offer, then you aren't really gaining anything from them clicking through to the site. There are a ton of ways to improve your SEO to make sure you are getting the most relevant traffic to your website. This is by no means an exhaustive list, only a drop in the bucket. But you have to start somewhere! Let's dive right in... 1. Focus on the User Experience The whole point of good SEO is to get search engines to list your website higher on the search engine results page, or SERP. However, when you are improving your SEO you need to remember that the user's experience comes first. You don't need to worry about getting more traffic to a site that performs poorly or isn't user-friendly. Besides, Google takes user experience into account when ranking websites. They know that their site-crawling bots don't see websites the same way people do, so they've worked to make their bots savvier to good user experience practices. If it comes down to choosing between optimizing your site for search engines and creating engaging and readable content for users, it's best to pick the latter. For example, it's easy to stuff keywords into your titles and URLs to entice search engines to rank your webpage higher, but it would come across as less natural to users. Speaking of keywords... 2. Use Keywords This is where you need to work to get quality traffic coming through your site. Relevant keywords are the name of the game. You don't want to overdo it, but don't ignore the power of well-thought out keywords! You can strategically place these keywords in your title headings, within the content on your "About" page, or in blogs to get search engines to notice you a little more. It's important that you only use one keyword or keyword phrase per page. If you use more than one, and they are dissimilar from each other, it will be that much harder for your webpage to rank. I'll say this a lot because it's important: don't jeopardize the end user e xperience in an attempt to boost your ranking on the SERP. Use keywords, but use them carefully. 3. Content is King One of the best things you can do for your website is consistently update it with fresh content. Search engines (and people) love to see websites with regularly updated content. There are few things to keep in mind when posting new content, though. Don't load your website up with content from other sites--be original! It's okay to share content that you know your users would find relevant, just make sure you are keeping the focus on your original stuff. You also want to make sure you're focusing on quality as well as quantity. Don't think your 20 blog posts alone will do the trick. They need to be 20 substantial blog posts that your target audience will care about. If you are regularly uploading new content, it might enc ourage users to bookmark your website. If they are using Google Chrome (as the majority of internet users are), then their action of bookmarking your site will help to increase your ranking. 4. Fast Page Loading Google notices slower loading speeds, and a slow website will only hurt your ranking. And, of course, people will notice slower loading speeds, as well. We've all been to a website that takes too long to load and promptly left that site in search of a faster one. In fact, 1 in 4 users leave a website if it takes more than 4 seconds to load ( WebsiteBuilderExpert ). If people are leaving your site after 4 seconds, Google will think your content isn't useful to searchers and will lower your ranking. So how long should you keep your site visitors waiting? The ideal load time is three seconds or less. The rate at which people leave the site (bounce rate) increases dramatically as load times go up. If your website takes between three to five seconds to load, users are 90% more likely to leave. If that goes up to six seconds, the probability of users leaving goes up to 106% ( Think with Google ). So you can see how small increases in load time can have detrimental effects on your bounce rate. I'll say it once more: focus on improving the user experience in order to better improve your SEO and ranking. 5. Utilize Good Image Posting Practices There are a couple things to keep in mind when including images on your site. The first is that you can use them as opportunities to get more keywords on your page. Use keywords in the captions, descriptions, or titles of your images. Another way to get some keywords in is to include them in your images' alt texts. Alt texts are the words that appear when you scroll over images. These are in place to help visually-impaired visitors who are using screen-reading tools and also for site-crawling bots that aren't able to see the image. The second thing to consider is the size of the images you are using. T he larger the image file, the longer the page will take to load (see tip #4). If your images are too large, try compressing or resizing them. 6. Maintain a Blog As I mentioned before, it's important to frequently update your site with content. Blogging is a great way to do just that. If you can build a following for your blog, you will have people coming to your site for new content. Another reason to blog is the opportunity to sneak in more keywords. Include them in your titles and in image alt texts, titles, captions, and descriptions. Just remember you shouldn't sacrifice natural and coherent writing for a higher number of keywords. Blogs are also good for including links. When you make certain claims or use statistics to support an idea, make sure you are linking your source. This will go a long way towards making your site appear more credible. 7. Include Videos on Your Site Blogs are a great form of content to put on your website, but they aren't the only thing that will boost traffic. People generally like to watch videos more than they like to read content. Whether you are posting video testimonials or company culture videos, they can help you retain visitors. 83% of marketers have said that video content has increased the amount of time users spend on their site. Visitors spending more time on your site will lead Google to fav or you more in the rankings, so anything you can do to keep people on your site is beneficial. You don't need to post 15-minute long short films, but remember that longer videos mean users spend more time on your site. I can't stress enough how important solid SEO is. You want your business's website to impress those site-crawling bots so that you can gain more visibility, and, in turn, gain more visitors to your site. Again, this is definitely not a complete list of SEO improvement tactics. There are a plethora of ways to earn higher rankings on SERPs--this is simply a starting point. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back for more insights into digital marketing!

Jun 4, 2021

The Power of Online Reviews

Managing your business's online reviews doesn't have to be a headache. Why You Should Care Have you ever been in need of a service and relied on friends or relatives to point you in the right direction? Most of us have. We tend to trust a business more if people generally have positive experiences with that business. If you want to use those positive customer experiences to your advantage, you should be encouraging reviews. So how, exactly, can more online reviews help your business? Here are a few ways you could be benefiting: Credibility : As strange as it may sound, people really trust the reviews they see online. Even though they don’t know the people leaving the reviews, people still make purchase decisions based on them. When your business has a plethora of great reviews, users will notice. Their perception of your business will be more positive, and they’ll trust you more. Awareness : I’ve talked about your Google ranking a lot in other blog posts. Having a higher number of positive reviews will help you climb the ranks. Google takes your business’s reviews into consideration when showing search results. Basically, if you have more good reviews, you have a better chance of being ranked higher on the SERP. Feedback : Reviews offer a ton of benefits, but perhaps the most important is the feedback you are getting from your customers. Everyone loves positive reviews, but the negative ones shouldn’t be ignored. Listen to what your customers are saying in their reviews. Every business has its flaws, and online reviews give you insight into how you could improve. Customer Interaction : Engaging your customers online is just one more way to improve the image of your business. When users leave positive reviews, comment on them and thank them for leaving the review! It will go a long way in the eyes of not only that particular customer, but other people who see that you responded. Just as important (if not more) is responding to negative reviews. Reach out to those customers who had a negative experience and see how you could remedy the situation. Impact on Purchase Decision : Research shows that 67% of consumers are at least somewhat influenced by online reviews. It’s obvious a good review can go a long way in helping your prospective customers make the choice to purchase your products or services, so you wouldn’t want to leave that opportunity on the table. How To Make Reviews Work For You Unfortunately, the benefits of online reviews don’t come without a little encouragement. There’s nothing wrong with asking your customers to leave reviews. In fact, it’s a good practice to maintain--especially if you are sure they’ve had a great experience. It’s also important to quickly respond to reviews, as mentioned before. When you do respond, make sure you are using the right tone and verbiage. You want to maintain a consistent online brand identity, and part of that is watching how you interact with customers--whether it’s in a response to a review or private message. Keeping up with all this can become overwhelming if you get a lot of reviews rolling in, and when it does, you can turn to an online review management tool to help you lessen the load. These management tools will allow you to take control of your online reviews. More specifically, you’ll be able to see each new review that comes in whether it’s from Yelp, Google, Facebook, or hundreds of other sites. The best part is, you can conveniently manage them from a single dashboard. These features are pretty consistent across different management tools. At Aletheia Digital, we prefer to use a software called Birdeye. This review management tool provides our clients with a convenient, easy way to see reviews posted in real time, respond to those reviews, and even encourage reviews from customers. Birdeye will automatically request reviews after you’ve provided a service or product for a customer, either via text message or email. You can personalize these requests to your liking so that you know exactly what the automated messages will say. Another cool feature of Birdeye is its negative review alert system. If your business gets a poor review, Birdeye will automatically send you a notification to let you know. This way, you can immediately start working to rectify the situation. And all of this can be handled conveniently from an app on your phone. Birdeye will also ensure your best reviews are strategically placed where more people will see them. As I mentioned before, Google will favor your business on the SERP if you have a higher number of positive reviews. Using tools like Birdeye can help you automate the process of building up your average rating. And with a higher rating, more people will find your business when searching for the services or products you offer. So staying on top of your reviews and maintaining a strong, consistent online presence will lead to higher awareness and, down the road, higher sales numbers. Is It Worth The Cost? If you opt to use a review management tool such as Birdeye, or hire an agency to set it up for you, you are going to have to decide if it’s worth the cost. Of course, prices for these tools vary depending on the available features, the services you require, and other factors, but they are generally very cost-efficient. It’s important to measure return on investment when analyzing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. You won’t start to see overnight increases in sales and customers when you start actively managing your online reviews. Keep in mind that encouraging and monitoring reviews is simply a small part of online reputation management. While it doesn’t mean overnight success, it’s a great first step to increasing awareness of your business, and thereby increasing your revenue. It’s also important to note how time-consuming it can be to manage your online reviews. Most business owners (especially small business owners) have a lot on their plates. It may seem like it’s not worth committing the time to manage reviews, but that’s where the management software comes in. If you want to stay on top of your competitors and increase awareness of your business, you should consider investing in an online reputation management strategy.

May 28, 2021

How Can Social Media Marketing Help Your Business?

While having a great-looking website that performs well is a key part of digital marketing, it's not always enough on its own. Social Media: What's The Point? As with any other industry, marketing and advertising have adapted to the times. Marketers are always seeking out new, efficient ways to get their message across. As new technological advances come about, so, too, do new marketing strategies and practices. And these days, marketers are cracking the social media code. Most of us have at least some exposure to social media. Whether you're on your phone five hours a day or you log into Facebook every now and then to catch up with friends and relatives, odds are good you're at least familiar with the basics of it. But you may not be aware of the seemingly endless marketing opportunities that social media presents. Like it or not, there’s no denying that social media can be an extremely powerful marketing tool. Here are a few of the benefits of marketing with social media: Increase website traffic Increase conversions Increase brand awareness Build your brand identity Foster positive brand associations Actively communicate and interact with customers These are just a few of the ways social media marketing can have a positive impact on your business. If you aren’t maintaining a strong presence on social media, then your competitors may already be reaping the benefits. That doesn’t mean it’s too late for you to join in on the fun! It just means you need to get in the game sooner rather than later to be on a level playing field with them. If you still aren’t quite convinced of the power of social media marketing, let’s take a look at the stats: Over half of the world’s population (53.6%) is actively using social media. ( DataReportal ) The majority of users (79%) expect a brand to respond to them on social media within a day of reaching out. ( Sprout Social ) Almost half of all Millenials (49%) prefer social media for ad influence. ( Pitney Bowes ) 79% of consumers look to user-generated content on social media to help them make a purchase decision. ( Stackla ) On average, people spend two and a half hours on social media every day. ( DataReportal ) 71% of users who report having positive experiences with brands on social media are likely to recommend the brand to friends and family. ( Lyfe Marketing ) It’s clear that investing in a heavier social media presence would help you connect with customers (and potential customers) like never before. That’s important, because many consumers prefer to reach out to businesses via social media channels. Before you can dive right into social media marketing, it’s good to recognize certain practices that will elevate your campaign. Social Media Marketing Best Practices You want your business to have social media presence, and to do that, you have to do more than just make an account on Facebook (although , that’s a good start). Here are just the basics of what goes into successful social media marketing campaigns: Setting Goals: This is the first practice I’m going over because it is vital to any successful marketing campaign, social media or not. If you want to see results from your campaigns, you need to know what you’re looking for. When setting goals, make sure they are S.M.A.R.T. goals ( S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R ealistic, and T ime-sensitive). Keyword Research: Before you run any campaigns, you need to know which keywords are going to produce the best results. The most effective keywords will differ based on which platform you are using. Also, you can’t just take your keywords from a PPC campaign and plug them into your social campaign. User intent varies depending on the platform. While people are looking for information on Google, they are engaging in conversations, idea sharing, and other types of interactions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Consistent Content: Like I said before, there’s more to this than simply having an account. You need to use it! Let users know your business’s profile is active by regularly putting out content. And make sure it’s relevant. You want consistency, but that doesn’t mean rapid firing posts that have nothing to do with your business. Maintain Your Brand Identity: Users who follow your social accounts will come to expect certain types of content, so you should strive to be consistent with the messaging in your posts. If your posts constantly come across as professional and serious and then you decide to start posting funny videos and memes one day, it might throw your followers off. Use Social to Promote Your Content: Your business’s social media accounts should be used to spread the word about content that gets uploaded to your website. If you write blogs for your site, or make videos, you can promote these on your social accounts. It’s another way to extend the reach of your content and a good step toward maximizing impressions. Promote Outside Content: There’s nothing wrong with sharing posts created by other brands or businesses. If the content of the post is relevant to your target audience, then it makes sense to share it. Make sure you don’t neglect your original content, though. Track Your Campaigns: You want to keep an eye on how well your posts are doing in terms of impressions, engagement, reach, click-thru rate (CTR), and more. Social media platforms have analytical tools available that make it fairly easy to track such metrics. If you aren’t measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns, you won’t know how to improve them. Track Your Competitors’ Campaigns: It’s important to note how well your competitors seem to be doing with their social media campaigns as well as your own. If their posts are more effective, try to find out why. Evaluating their campaigns can help you better evaluate your own. Keep Response Times Low: Consumers favor social media platforms as means to easily reach out to brands or businesses. People don’t like to be kept waiting on a reply for too long. It’s important to keep track of response rates and times, just as you would track impressions, engagement, etc. Use the Right Platforms: Before you can run your campaign, you need to decide which platforms you are going to focus on. This will depend on the type of messaging you want to use. Facebook campaigns would benefit from a more light-hearted tone while LinkedIn users expect to see posts that come across as more professional. Twitter is great for higher levels of engagement with users and building up your brand identity, one Tweet at a time. While this is certainly not a comprehensive list of good practices to follow when running social campaigns, it’s good to keep these in mind. Is It Right For My Business? Some business owners shy away from using social media marketing. They may have enough word-of-mouth going around that they don’t see a need for it, or they are comfortable with the methods they have been using for years. Marketing on social media is a great way to boost your online presence at a relatively low cost. It’s good for expanding your reach and engaging directly with your customers or prospective customers. If you are trying to build your brand identity or awareness, it’s great for that, too. Also, it’s helpful to know whether or not your target audience is on social media. Only you can ultimately decide whether or not your business needs to engage in social media marketing. Determine what your goals are, and go from there. And if you have trouble making that decision, or you aren't sure what first steps you should take, you can always reach out to professionals like us to lend a helping hand!

May 21, 2021

Data-Driven Marketing: The New Normal

Have you ever wondered why some of the ads you see are so spot on? It's no big secret anymore. What is Data-Driven Marketing? In the past, marketing boiled down to getting broad messages out to consumers. Demographics were taken into consideration, just not even close to the extent they are today. There was not really any reliable way to tell if the messages were landing or not, and oftentimes they were not. Sometimes, it seemed, the ads worked. And other times they didn’t. In today’s marketing world, much of the guesswork that dominated the industry is no longer present. Today, marketers are putting their messages in front of the consumers they know will be interested. This is made possible by data-driven marketing. We’ve all seen online advertisements for certain products or services and wondered at the specificity of the ad. How did they know I’ve been wanting to buy that new pair of shoes, or try that new restaurant? The mystery behind it all isn’t as exciting as an Orwellian-level Big Brother conspiracy. The truth is, when you visit certain websites, they sometimes track which pages you are going to, how long you stay on the page, or even what time of day you visited the site. Your name, email address (hello email ads), IP address, and more are collected by numerous different websites, companies, and even phone apps. This information is what helps marketers deliver ads that seem almost catered to you. This benefits both the marketer and consumer. The people on the receiving end of the targeted ads are now only seeing the ads that they might be interested in. Never before has marketing been this personalized. The Benefits of Data-Driven Marketing Hyper-focused ad targeting isn't just good for the consumer, marketers (and the companies they market for) can reap huge rewards when they take advantage of available data. When marketers can hone in on consumers with such granularity, they inevitably have more success with their ads. More successful ads mean more impressions, which can lead to more website traffic and eventually to higher sales numbers. Campaigns that make good use of data-driven marketing strategies report 5-8 times more ROI for their ad spending ( Marketing Evolution ). When you are running more successful ads, you are wasting less on unsuccessful ads. One great thing about data-driven marketing: you can easily track which ads are performing better than others, and which ads you may need to improve upon. This results in ad budgets well-spent and leads to more consistent, high-quality ad messages across the board. The best marketers know that data c an be used to anticipate the needs of consumers. They use personalized information to segment their audiences based on their interests, lifestyle, professions, and a ton of other identifiers. This segmentation ensures relevant, diverse messaging that is shown across demographics. Does Data-Driven Marketing Really Work? Not only does good data improve your marketing campaigns, it can work wonders for them. And marketers are well aware of this fact. A survey of marketing leaders showed that 76% of them base their decision-making on data analytics ( Marketing Evolution ). There's just no need to make marketing decisions based off gut instinct when you can use hard data to support your strategies. Something else to keep in mind is how the pandemic has changed the marketing scene. Over the past year, people have largely been confined to their homes. This, of course, resulted in people flocking to the internet for entertainment, shopping, and social interactions. With more data out there now more than ever, it's the perfect time for businesses to invest in data-driven marketing. Modern consumers expect personalized ads that are relevant to their wants and needs. It's beneficial to them because ads become less intrusive or annoying, and more refined to their tastes. It's beneficial to the companies advertising because of the better results they see from their highly targeted campaigns. The bottom line is data-driven strategies are being used more and more because they really do work. If you want to ensure your ad budget is being used to its fullest potential and you aren't leaving any sales on the table, then now is the time to invest in data-driven marketing strategies.