Archives for December 2017

So you are a new business gone online, or you are a business that has decided to step up your marketing campaign by having a new website built, and you have created some pages on social network sites like Facebook or Instagram.

Maybe you have a blog out there as well, and you have started creating content for all of your online sites.

But if you are a new to online business, and digital marketing, and you are just getting started, you might be wondering where all your customers are.

You may be seeing little to no traffic at all for your efforts. It’s not that you are doing anything wrong. And unless you are a business with an entirely new product or service that has never been offered before, you are likely to have some tough competition who have already been marketing for years.

So how do you compete?

The answer is Pay-per-click Advertising using PPC platforms such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.

But getting into Pay-per-click Advertising or ‘PPC’ needs a solid strategy.

There are many things you need to have knowledge of. This include but not limited to having a starting PPC budget, a good traffic conversion tracking system for your ads, and having different landing pages that can be cycled to allow for split-testing. You should also have good ad copy with solid calls-to-action that get your targeted audience to go to your website and buy the service or product you are selling.

Any business that wants to get started in Pay-per-click Advertising should have expert knowledge on getting started, including proficiency on the tools you need to create and track successful PPC advertising campaigns.

If you want to get started in Pay-per-click Advertising which can bring you instant traffic, clients, and customers, then contact us now and we will help you get started with the right arsenal of tools and show you how to create profitable campaigns from day one.

johnny@johnnymurray.com
Johnny Murray

Anyone in the marketing game can tell you that online ads can boost your business’ visibility. But if you’re new to online advertising, you might be wondering, which platform is right for you and your business? And, where should you start?

One strategy is to start with the heavy hitters. Google AdWords is the top dog in search advertising with 79.79% of the global desktop search engine market share, according to Net Market Share.

Another powerful option is social media advertising. Based on recent lead generation and conversion studies on social media advertising, Facebook is best if your business is B2C: business to end-consumers. As a bonus, there are over 2 billion monthly active Facebook users worldwide, so the odds of finding new customers through targeted ad campaigns are very good.

For the business to business type (B2B), LinkedIn is your best bet. As you may already know as a LinkedIn user, this platform has 500 million users across 200 countries, according to Fortune.

If you’ve already explored these options, don’t worry! There are many more to choose from, each with their own strengths. In addition to Facebook and LinkedIn, social media marketing options (which get your business in front of their impressive user bases) include Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

Search advertising platforms get your business priority placements whenever someone makes a search. While Google AdWords is the leader in search advertising, Bing Ads is also a strong option. The widely used pricing model in search advertising is CPC (cost-per-click), where you only pay when your ad gets clicked.

The third main type of platform is display advertising. Google’s DoubleClick Media and Yahoo’s BrightRoll are two of many that fall into this category which provides ad placements across their networks of publishers.

There are many options and variables to consider. Feeling overwhelmed? We can help! Contact us today.

Businesses around the globe are cashing in on Facebook’s massive audience and unique features to increase their growth, sales, and overall success.

Is your business using Facebook Ads yet? Are you apprehensive to get into Facebook Ads?

Never fear! At ICU Marketing Associates, we can help you get a well-deserved Facebook boost by:

1. Capitalizing on Facebook’s huge captive audience: Facebook has over 1.7 billion active users, and features that help you target your ads so that they’re seen by your potential customers.

2. Transforming Facebook visitors into customers: turn your cash into traffic to your landing pages and conversion funnels. Facebook even lets you re-market towards users who have engaged with you before.

3. Utilizing Facebook’s powerful Call-to-Action feature: Unlike others, Facebook Ads lets small businesses choose from a variety of call-to-action options, which lets you focus on exactly what you want your audience to do.

4. Developing demand generation advertisements: The average Facebook users spends 40+ minutes a day there to explore, connect, and discover. Help them discover just how much they need what you have to offer!

5. Testing your content before you spend money to maximize engagement: Another reason to advertise on Facebook is that it lets you get the most bang for your buck. How? You can test how engaging your content is by posting it on your page for free and analyzing your Insights. Then you can put your money on the most successful posts!

6. Creating video ads: Facebook videos have high rates of engagement and can help create buzz around your business.

Ready to begin your next Facebook Ad campaign?
Contact us at johnny@johnnymurray.com or 908-375-3030 to get started!

There are many benefits to doing online advertising over the traditional model. One of those is the cost between the two. Traditional advertising, such as billboards or television spots (commercials) can cost quite a bit of money for a single 30-second spot.

Online advertising uses a platform where you are charged by how many times an ad is clicked. This is called Pay-per-click or ‘PPC’ advertising. It’s not nearly as expensive with an average cost per click of 0.60 cents.

With online advertising, you’re getting instant traffic. You could run traditional advertising and online advertising in a race side by side, and you’ll get online customers a lot quicker than traditional.

However, the biggest benefit is that with online advertising is that you can get detailed data on everyone that sees your ads.

You can also split test ads for the same cost, find out who interacted with your ads, where they were from, which ad they liked better, and what converts and what doesn’t. You can then optimize your ads with the data you collected.

Let’s say you ran an ad and 100 people clicked it, but no one bought anything, then you would know there is a problem somewhere and be able to fix it and optimize each ad.

Once you spend money on a television ad, that’s it. No way to optimize it. Having control over your online ads such as when they are shown, and how much money you are spending is crucial for success, while not breaking the bank on ads that aren’t converting.

But running a successful online advertising campaign can be tricky. It takes some knowledge and learning how to setup everything properly to run highly successful campaigns.

There is a lot of competition, and you need every bit of experience you can get on your side.

If you would like to learn more about setting up a successful online advertising campaign, then contact us, and we’ll help you get started today.

johnny@johnnymurray.com

Here at ICU Marketing Associates, we want to make sure your business looks irresistible online. Our experts have compiled a list of 4 warning signs that your website might need a total redesign.

1. Your site takes more than 3 seconds to load

If your site takes longer than two seconds to load, you can not expect people to sit around and wait for the content to show up. According to a survey from Akamai, 49-percent of consumers expect a site to load in two seconds or less. Testing the speed of your website is easy. Open your website on multiple devices such as phones, tablets, and desktop computers to check the speed.

2. Some of the features or content do not display properly

Check your website regularly to make sure logos, photos, and outside links are working properly.

3. Your site is difficult to view and navigate on mobile

Check to make sure your website is usable on a wide range of mobile devices. The last thing you want is to lose a potential customer because your website is not responsive.

4. You’re Not Seeing Any Business Results.

Is your website bringing in leads and sales? If not, then it is definitely time to consider a redesign.

If one or more of these 4 warning signs apply to your website, give us a call today and let our experts help you create the best version of your website.

908-375-3030
johnny@johnnymurray.com

Creating and maintaining a positive reputation for your business is a vital and important aspect in creating a loyal customer base while building your brand.

No major successful or popular brand started out and became successful with a negative reputation. In fact, the reputation of a business has been proven to have a significant influence on customer loyalty, satisfaction, and trust.

Customer retention is something that the majority of big and successful companies thrive on. Customers that are happy are more likely to be return customers who spend more money, and in turn, tell their friends and family about their experience.

Having a reputation marketing strategy in place should be the first thing your company focuses on when building your reputation.

More and more businesses are encouraging their customers to go online and post reviews about their experiences. There are many big review sites out there and the data you get from them can be invaluable to your reputation marketing campaign.

Managing these review sites builds trust and authority for your brand and shows your transparency and accountability. Getting feedback about your business and your brand provides you with valuable insights on where your business is falling short, and how you can improve. Even good feedback can be improved on.

Believe it or not, there are many companies that have failed due to having a bad reputation, and either not knowing, or not doing anything about it until it was too late.

On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that companies with a good reputation financially outperformed companies with bad reputations in every way.

With a good reputation marketing strategy in hand, your business will benefit from higher brand equity, exponential growth, and a flood of loyal customers with increased customer lifetime value worth 10 times as much as their first purchase.

Don’t wait. Take control of your reputation marketing strategy today, and get started building your businesses trust, brand, and reputation today.

Send me an email johnny@johnnymurray.com now to get started.
Johnny Murray

When it comes to remarketing, some businesses have no idea what it means, or the benefits that it can bring by getting visitors (who left your website empty-handed) back to your website and purchasing what they were looking for.

It is important for a business to take every advantage that there is to convert a potential customer or client into a happy and satisfied customer. But this isn’t the only benefit of remarketing.

In fact, you can get some pretty interesting data by showing different ads to a customer who leaves your website and goes to another website.

This type of remarketing can serve to the visitor a reminder that they are looking for a certain product or service, and if they are moving around the web looking for this product or service from someone else, there is a good chance they might see your ad and return to convert. For example, you could show a different ad group to visitors that leave your website with a discount if they return to get what they were looking for. This strategy works so well that you are likely to see a 2-3 times increase in click-through-rates for these ad groups.

It might sound like a complicated process, but if you are already using Google AdWords, then you can take advantage of Google Ad Retargeting. These ads will be shown on other websites through the Google Content Network which are amazingly effective.

The benefits of a solid remarketing campaign strategy, and having Google Retargeting setup correctly are huge. The benefits range from having your ads in front of people when they are finally ready to buy, a much larger scale reach as these ads are shown on over 2 million websites, and much more efficient pricing, easier ad creation, and so on.

And there are many different ways to remarket with Google Adwords besides this. There is video remarketing, remarketing for mobile applications, having remarketing lists for search ads, and email-list remarketing which works by uploading your list of email addresses you have collected from your visitors.

When anyone on this list are signed into YouTube, Google Search, or Gmail, they will see your ads.

If ad targeting or remarketing is something you haven’t been doing, then don’t wait a minute longer to get started.

If you need some help and expert advice on creating effective and successful ad retargeting campaigns, then shoot me an email to get started today!

johnny@johnnymurray.com
Johnny Murray

Tired of wasting money on print ads, billboards, flyers, and more? Save money, and let our expert, Johnny Murray, show you how to use SEO to gain more customers.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a powerful resource for expanding your business. SEO allows your business to become visible to those who need your products and services.

Did you know that about 89% of consumers use search engines for making product decisions. So if you’re tired of finding customers, SEO will help you get found by customers.

How? When someone types in a search query on Google, Google matches that with millions of web pages in its database and shows the most relevant pages based on the user’s search text, context, intent, location, and hundreds of other signals.

SEO is a way of reaching more customers behind the comfort of a computer or mobile device. Tap into this power by allowing us to help you optimize your website.

SEO can be utilized to target your ideal customer and increase your brand’s visibility on search engines because the more visible you are the more extensive your brand’s reach becomes. Let Google help your potential customers find you.

Stop wasting money and start saving today by utilizing SEO in your business!

Give us a call today and start saving!
908-375-3030 http://icumarketplace.com

Are you putting social media to work for your benefit? Follow these 10 strategies to reach social media success!

1. Choose the Right Platforms

Every business is different. Make sure you consider both your customers and your business. Find out what social media sites your audience uses most, and think about which sites are the best fit for your products, too.

2. Create Unique Content for Each Platform

Your customers use different social media sites for various reasons and purposes. Make sure you’re crafting content that reflects the strengths of each platform.

3. Create a Social Media Calendar

Get organized by creating social media calendars to help you post consistently and effectively.

4. Optimize Post Times & Frequency

For that calendar, make sure you incorporate the best times to post on each site and the optimal frequency of posts.

5. Encourage Engagement

Make sure your social media is social! Interactive posts will encourage your customers to engage with you.

6. Target Your Social Media Outreach Expertly

Go for quality over quantity with your outreach: utilize your business advocates, peers, and “big fish” influencers to your advantage.

7. Avoid Over-Promote Your Brand

Don’t give in to the temptation to directly promote yourself every time. Some experts recommend the 1-in-7 rule: for every 1 openly promotional post, make 6 content posts.

8. Share Video

Visual content, especially video, is a proven attention-grabber.

9. Build a Community Around Your Brand

Another common pitfall is trying to get the most followers possible. Instead, we recommend you focus on cultivating a loyal, engaged customer base.

10. Provide Value to Your Followers

To keep them engaged, give your customers something useful, whether you entertain or inform them. This will help you gain followers and spread your content to a wider consumer base.

For more information or assistance with social media marketing for your business, contact us today at johnny@johnnymurray.com or 908-375-3030!

You’ve done your research, you know what customers want. You worked hard to bring about a good product that you know will solve their problems, *it* is ready for the market and you know the market is ready for *it*.

Now the only question is, do you have a customer-centric website where your products can be promoted and showcased?

If the answer is no, then there are some factors you need to consider when designing a site such as…

1. Buyer’s persona – who’s the target audience for this product? Who would realize its value the most?
2. Buyer’s journey – what does your customer have to go through to finally get your product in their hands?
3. Ease-of-use – ultimately, is the website for your product easy to use? Or is it fraught with hard to navigate pages that could put buyers off?
4. Answers questions – Are there plenty of chances to learn more about your product in an easy, accessible way? Don’t be vague, customers want to know what they’re buying.

These factors and more should all be considered when designing a website where your products will be sold. Want to learn more? We’d be glad to help.

Contact us
johnny@johnnymurray.com
ICU Marketing Associates