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Effective Inbound Marketing Tips

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Increase Website Traffic With Hubspot Atlanta

Posted by John Estes | (December, 4 2012)

It can be very difficult to know where to begin when you are looking to gain exposure in search engines. Organic searches are essential to businesses looking to increase their website traffic but it is often hard to know what your prospects are searching for. HubSpot Atlanta can help you in numerous ways by providing you with detailed analytics to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy. The website command station allows you to create content, blog and expand your social media reach, all of which result in more traffic for your site.

 


Topics:
atlanta marketing , atlanta marketing company , atlanta online marketing , inbound marketing , atlanta internet marketing services , inbound internet marketing , Hubspot Atlanta , hubspot

How To Increase Your Company's Website Content Writing Rates

Posted by Fred Spring | (November, 6 2012)

When it comes to content writing, there are all sorts of ways to be paid and charge clients. However, certain rates you charge two years ago don't have to stay the same now--especially now that you have gathered even more experience and have more to offer to your clients. But, making sure to have reasonable rates is also important because clients might just find a cheaper alternative, and there can be many on the Internet. So, how do you increase your website content writing rates without seeing your clientele disappear? Good question! Luckily, there are several ways to do so.

 


Topics:
atlanta marketing , atlanta online marketing , blog writing , Website Content Service , website content creation , Website Content Writing Rates

The Atlanta Social Media Marketing Survival Guide

Posted by John Estes | (October, 23 2012)

Here at 98toGo, we believe that engagement is the true key to successful Atlanta social media marketing. Engaging your customers and making them want to interact with you is how you build fans and followers. An active, engaged social media marketing service base is one which will share your posts and retweet you tweets, while at the same time making your corner of the web into a vibrant place people want to experience.

 


Topics:
atlanta marketing , Atlanta Social Media Marketing , atlanta online marketing , social media marketing , Social Media Marketing Service

3 Top Small Business Blog Marketing Strategies That Work

Posted by John Estes | (September, 13 2012)

Small business blog marketing isn't easy, but it's one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways of growing your online business. It requires persistence and hard work, but fundamentally, anyone can do it if they put their mind to it.

Here are three strategies we constantly see utilized for great effect. These are the things that successful blogs do, and you should too!

1 - Blog Consistently!

If there is any reasonable way of defining small business blog marketing strategies that work, it has to be based around customer acquisition. Fundamentally, you only get a return on your investment if someone buys something.

On the matter of converting visitors into viable customers, Blogspot's 2012 "State of Inbound Marketing" report makes one key element quite clear: The more you blog, the more likely you are to gain customers.

Among companies with blogs, only 43% those who posted less than monthly reported gaining a customer through their blog. Among those who post multiple times a day, that number rises to 92%. And it's a pretty smooth progression the whole way. The more often and consistently you blog, the more likely your blog is to attract actual paying customers.

Maintaining this level of output can be tricky, especially for small operations. That's one of the biggest reasons we recommend those who are serious about content marketing investigate article writing services as a way to obtain quality content in the quantities needed to make your small business blog marketing strategies pay off.

2 - Pursue Social Media

As we've mentioned before, we strongly feel that your online marketing strategies are best served by pairing blogging and social media strategies, using one to reinforce the other. There's no reason for it to be an either-or game when they both have so much to offer.

You should ensure that you have social media sharing buttons available for every blog you post, to encourage people to share them. A popular link shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Linked-In can result in a huge influx of hits. Likewise, while you probably should not use your social media accounts to announce every single blog you post, use it to promote major articles that you think have the potential to "go viral" or might genuinely provoke debate.

Social media can also be used indirectly to aid your small business blog marketing. The wealth of user information they have is generally put directly into your hands, and you can use it to leverage your market research. Check out Facebook Insights, PeopleBrowser for Twitter as well as their new targeted advertisements, along with other social-tracking systems like Klout to learn as much as you can about your audience.

3 - Become an Authority

Easier said than done, right? Well, while truly becoming a respected expert authority is quite hard, it's still quite possible to create the appearance that you are one, and that's one of the main ways to go about actually becoming one.

The key is to structure your blog and website to encourage people to continue reading your content once you're there. The more you can create an air of authority, the better that will go, and the more likely they are to either share your content, decide to make a purchase, or (hopefully) both!

Here are a few general tips:

  • Blog on a wide variety of topics relating to your own industry. The more ground you can cover with good articles, the better it looks.

  • Use plenty of internal links. When you mention a topic you've talked about previously, link back to the past article.

  • Utilize intelligent tags with a sidebar map allowing users to easy access information on specific topics.

  • When adding external links, link to the highest-quality sites you can find.

  • This last one's a toughie: be willing to admit when you're wrong and post updated blogs when needed.

What other effective small business blog marketing strategies have you discovered?  

 

 

 


Topics:
business blog writing , Business Blog , atlanta marketing , Blog Optimization , Small Business Blog Marketing , blog writing , business blogging , business blogging company , Blog Optimizer , blog

Hire A Blog Writer While You Focus On Your Business

Posted by Fred Spring | (August, 13 2012)

Trying to juggle a successful business, or even one that is starting out, with trying to develop a solid online content strategy and business blogging can be a little difficult. You already have to worry about new sales, on-going customers, marketing material, and most importantly: finances. How can you squeeze in time for blogging and online marketing when you've got so much on your plate? Rather than stressing out about every little thing, it might be time to hire a blog writer to take care of your business blog writing.

 


Topics:
atlanta marketing , blog writing tips , blog writing , Blogging , business blogging , Blog Optimizer , blog writer , hire a blog writer

Why Blog Without Blog Optimization

Posted by John Estes | (July, 31 2012)

Companies that only do things halfway rarely amount to much. To succeed in business, especially given the cutthroat nature of the Internet, you have to commit and you have to be dedicated to making sure that every aspect of your business is top-notch.

This is absolutely true of blogging.

Business blogging is one of the most powerful weapons in your online marketing arsenal, but there's more to it than just putting an article together and calling it a day. The companies putting out the best blogs engage in heavy blog optimization, tweaking and refining their blogs to make sure they're performing at their peak.

So if you have a blog but you think it could be doing better – which should be everyone reading this! – here are some blog optimization tips to help get the most out of it.

Blog Optimization Strategies For Maximum Returns

  • Invisible keyword usage: Don't write blogs centered around keywords which are blatantly ungrammatical, such as “best used car dealers Charlotte.” People may be searching for you with terms like that, but putting them in a blog just makes it look like poor writing. This drives off readers. Save such keywords for “hidden” elements, such as HTML headings and metatags. And speaking of which...

  • Make full use of metadata: Don't forget that your blog is being “read” by two different creatures. One group is your human visitors, but it's also being read by the search spiders who index the web. You should be making good use of HTML tags, rich snippets, and other forms of metadata to get your keywords seen by the spiders.

  • Don't exclude mobile users: Mobile browsing is constantly on the rise, with some experts predicting it becoming the dominant form of web usage in just two or three years. Make sure your blog is optimized to use as little bandwidth as possible, that it has a mobile-friendly layout, and that it doesn't rely on plug-ins like Flash that not all mobile users can access.

  • Get analytical! Analytics products, such as Hubspot or Google Analytics, are invaluable in blog optimization. Track the performance of your pages. See which get the most views. See which garner the most leads. Use this information to fine-tune your content and to try to deduce what your visitors most want to see.

  • Include multimedia elements: Photos, infographics, video, slideshows, or even music can all be used to spice up a blog. Every blog post should have at least one or two pictures, to break up the text and attract the eye. Use other multimedia forms to enhance your arguments, add information, or illustrate points not easily written out.

  • Keep your sitemap up to date: XML sitemaps are a great tool for attracting search spiders and ensuring your content continues to get indexed. You should periodically update your sitemap, so that it includes all new content. This is a dead simple way of increasing your blog's presence on search engines.

  • Encourage feedback. Don't let the “comments” section of your blog become a ghost town. You want an active community of people responding to your posts, since it encourages return visits and helps establish your site as a valuable resource. Write blog posts that are open for discussion, and consider including a question at the end to help spur conversation.

  • Make social sharing easy. Every blog post you make should include buttons for sharing your content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and any other social services you might use. This is an extremely cheap and easy way to increase your exposure.

Always Strive For Improvements

The great thing about marketing online is that you can always tweak, refine, and improve your strategies. Every blog can do better, and with good blog optimization, you can make it happen.

What changes have you made to your blog that made it a more effective marketing tool? 

 

 


 


Topics:
business blog writing , Business Blog , atlanta marketing , Blog Optimization , Atlanta Internet marketing , Atlanta search engine optimization , blogging for business , blog writing

Why A/B Testing Calls To Action CTR Is Pointless

Posted by Fred Spring | (July, 30 2012)

Remember the old days of marketing – you know, before the Internet? There were fewer metrics to consider, and less data to examine. If you wanted to know how well a product or service would go over on your target audience, all you had to do was round up a test group and ask a few questions or try out the product on a sample market and tally up the results. Ah, things were so much simpler back then – but were they as effective?

While the web may have complicated things by arming marketers with a virtual artillery of dense jargon and confusing metrics, the results from today’s market testing techniques are arguably much more accurate. Instead of testing out two new slogans for a women’s cosmetics line to perhaps 25 shoppers at one department store, companies can test out both calls-to-action buttons on their website or the effectiveness of a landing page, to a much larger sample size, in a shorter period of time and compare the numbers collected by their analytics software. It sounds difficult, but it’s actually pretty simple.

In a previous post, we covered calls to action (CTAs), or the messages within a website that inspire a consumer to further investigate or accept a particular offer. Now, we’re going to take things a step further by explaining how testing calls to action can determine which message is the most effective.

Today, companies generally test and measure the effectiveness of marketing messages on their website in three ways:

  1. The first metric is the Click Through Rate (CTR) - also referred to as Views to Clicks Rate - which is the number who viewed the CTA offer divided by the number of clicks to that offer. (see the provided actual example just below).

  2. The second metric is the clicks to submissions rate.  This is the percentage of people who did click through AND then ALSO filled out your data capture form. These submissions are very, very important - these are your new leads.

  3. The third is likely the best measure of effectiveness - it is the views to submissions rate.  This is the number who filled out the data capture form (submissions) divided by views (the number who viewed the call-to-action button).  

The best measure of effectiveness is views to submission rate. Simply put, the higher the views to submissions rate - the more effective your CTA is in generating leads.

In order to gather information from these metrics, however, you must have a minimum of two calls to action to try out. This is called A/B testing. For example, let’s say a software company just released a new product and they want to offer a trial period to encourage consumers to explore their new product. They then develop two calls to action – call to action A says “Try our new software free for one week!” while call to action B says “Try our new software free for 30 days!” The company tests both the A and B versions of the calls to action by exposing both CTA messages an equal number of times to visitors to a live website.In order to gather accurate data and determine the most successful call to action, however, the company must look at all three metrics. If they only review the CTR, they may find that a call to action gets good results such as a 5.59% CTR (aka Views to Clicks Rate) – but they’re still missing some key information for making their call to action as effective as possible. Just testing for CTR is pointless.

Using a real life example - the blue version of the CTA Liquidation Sale caused less than 1 in 10 (or 9.84%) who clicked to then submit a completed form. This could mean that the call to action, while strong initially, was not powerful enough to prompt interested consumers to spend 30 seconds filling out their contact information. The solution for this clicks to submission rate issue may be to drive more traffic to the web page with the blue version CTA offer to gain more submissions.  There's a better solution.   

The better solution is A/B testing to find the most effective CTA. By reviewing the views to submissions rate in the example above - the orange version of the CTA generated a much larger submission rate.  Despite similar percentages of people who initially clicked on the offer - version B the orange colored design - is more effective in capturing submitted forms (leads).In today’s online marketing world, you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about click through rates and why they’re important.  Often times people forget about or are unaware of the other two important metrics. That’s sort of like creating a recipe and only measuring one ingredient. If you want to know which option is the most effective, you have to look at it from every angle - and that means reviewing not only the CTR, but also the clicks to submissions and views to submissions. By considering all of these metrics together, you will have a better reckoning of the big picture and can thus create more successful calls to action.  

 

 

 

 

 

 


Topics:
Business Blog , atlanta marketing , calls to action , Atlanta search marketing , call to action , Atlanta Internet marketing , Atlanta inbound marketing agency , click through rate , Internet marketing Atlanta

Cut Your Profits In Half By Not Testing Your Calls To Action!

Posted by John Estes | (July, 27 2012)

I came across an interesting blog post recently that really nailed down why testing your calls to action is so important, and how much of a difference it can make to sales. In a single experiment, a website boosted its conversions by 43% by changing just three words on their calls to action. It was a simple change, too, taking the words "learn more!" and replacing them with "open an account."

 


Topics:
atlanta marketing , atlanta marketing company , calls to action , call to action , atlanta seo services , Internet marketing Atlanta , online marketing

How To Mislead Yourself With Call To Action A/B Testing

Posted by John Estes | (July, 26 2012)

For most companies, having an effective web presence all boils down to lead generation – how many new customers are you generating through your website? Smart business owners have invested in social media marketing and created a great blog with plenty of thoroughly researched, well written and search engine optimized content for the primary purpose of driving traffic to their website. However, once consumers reach your website – what’s next? How do you draw in your target market and convert them into paying customers?

One of the most important tool on your entire website is your set of calls-to-action (CTA). For some companies, the call-to-action is a paragraph of text, a video, a graphic or maybe even one simple sentence, such as “Get a free quote today!”. Marketing professionals think long and hard about their CTAs. They play around with buzz words, colors and concepts, but without measuring their performance of the CTAs through various metrics, there’s no way to tell whether it is ultimately effective. Though they may have exercised every advertising trick in the book, and even attracted some new business, the only way to truly discover the success rate of a particular call to action is through A/B testing or split testing.

You probably remember A/B testing from elementary school science class when you measured the growth rate of plants. One group of plants may have been placed under a special lamp while the other group of plants was placed in a window that received direct sunlight. After several days, you and your classmates measured the plants to see which ones grew the fastest. This was not the only data you collected, however. You may have recorded the number of hours the groups of plants received sunlight, the amount of soil and other factors. This is because measuring only one factor may not have yielded accurate results.

Measuring your CTA's performance with A/B testing is really no different. You must measure your success (or lack thereof) by using more than one metric to ensure you’re obtaining an accurate reading. However, companies often only use one metric – and can end up wasting a great deal of money in doing so.

Most web analytics programs allow you to see three different metrics – your click through rate (CTR), click to submission an view to submission. The click through rate shows you the percentage of people who actually clicked on an offer after viewing a call to action. This number is important, but it is not the only number you need.

Even if your CTR is a healthy number, this metric can be misleading without reviewing your click to submission and view to submission numbers. For example, the click to submission may tell you that although many people have clicked on the offer, very few of them follow through with the submission form. The view to submission may also express that the number of people who viewed the call to action versus the number of people who submitted the form is actually very low despite a seemingly high number of clicks.

If you do not take the time to review all three of these metrics, you could mistakenly assume that one particular call to action is successful – only to find that you’re not effectively turning clicks into leads. Without the follow through of a completed submission form, a click is just a click.

How do you determine if and how much your calls to action are effective?


 

 

 

 

 


Topics:
atlanta marketing , atlanta marketing company , calls to action , Atlanta Internet Marketing Agency , call to action , atlanta online marketing , develop calls to action

Got My Calls To Action In Place. Now What?

Posted by Fred Spring | (July, 20 2012)

It doesn't take new inbound marketers long to realize one key (yet not immediately obvious) truth: you're not actually giving content away. You're trading it. Specifically, you're swapping the content for personal information that turns a visitor into a sales lead.

The interesting thing is that most experienced Internet consumers understand this arrangement, even if they don't know the marketing terminology. Giving away your email address or Liking something on Facebook means giving implicit permission to be marketed to. So, even for something as simple as "give us your email address in exchange for this eBook," you have to engage in real salesmanship to close the deal.

Calls-to-Action (CTAs) are the first stage in this process, but they don't do much on their own. You can have CTA buttons in place, and yet still fail to convert visitors into leads by simply not convincing them to give up their information.

Here's a quick guide to how to make sure your Call-to-Action is effective and lead to effective Landing and Thank You Pages.

Calls-to-Action: The Basics

Calls-to-Action are graphical elements scattered throughout your website that invite people to trade personal information for content. At their most basic, a CTA could be nothing more than a graphic that says "Click Here to Download Our Free eBook!"

In general, these are a few attributes of good CTAs:

  • Graphically distinct, standing out from the page.

  • High contrast colors and fonts to make them more distinct.

  • Iconographic elements (such as a downwards arrow for downloads) that further reinforce the action to be taken.

  • A short blurb that says what benefit the visitor will receive.

  • A prominent and unmistakable button to click to begin the transaction.

What Comes After the Calls-to-Action

CTAs are little more than a sign outside a shop, inviting a visitor to step in the door. It's what's inside that really matters.

The next step in the process is a Landing Page, which every associated CTA leads to. A Landing Page is, fundamentally, a sales page except that rather than convincing them to give up their credit card number, you're just asking for a few details about them.

 


Topics:
atlanta marketing , atlanta marketing company , calls to action , call to action , atlanta seo services , atlanta SEO , develop calls to action

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98toGo is a proven inbound marketing agency.  We make it easy for your ideal customer to find you online, helping you turn browsers into fans, and fans into customers.

 

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