Archives for August 2019

Social media allows so much information to be at our fingertips.

It allows business owners to connect with potential customers in new and exciting ways.

It also gives customers new ways to reach out and share their opinions, and it is inevitable that sometimes those opinions will be negative.

We want to make sure you know just what to do with the inevitable happens so that your customers keep coming back.

The first thing to do when you see a negative review is to take a step back. Never respond in the heat of the moment. Never indulge in an angry flash. Compose yourself and address the review in a cool, calm and collected manner.

Also, work to identify authentic bad reviews from those who are just “trolling” looking to waste your time. If a review is unnecessarily inflammatory, profanity-laden or unintelligible, odds are the reviewer is just targeting you for argument sake. In these situations, the best thing to do is just step back and let it go.

Once you’ve identified true reviews, start by acknowledging the mistake and apologizing. Sometimes a simple sorry is all the reviewer needs to hear. At the end of the day, consumers want to know they matter and that they are not just another number. Demonstrate this with a polite and sincere apology.

Even if it wasn’t your mistake, it doesn’t hurt to say that you feel sorry about the misunderstanding or bad experience.

Next, see if you can make it right. Is there something that can be done to fix it? If not, offer other perks or benefits, such as free shipping or a discount in the future. Also, make sure you’ve identified an accountability process to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Finally, thank the customer for taking time to leave feedback. Feedback gives you the tools you need to improve to become a better business.

Addressing bad PR is easier when you have our marketing team on your side. Contact us today to learn more about our services.

An optimized website means that it is structured, coded, designed, and has content published in a way that will allow Google to rank it.

Why is this important? Well, if Google can read your website correctly and interpret your content then it will understand the product or service that you are selling and so present it to your potential customers searching on the Web.

So, how do you ensure your website is optimized? Certain basics need completing such as keyword research, great content, and some technical criteria that a consultant can help you with such as tags, architecture, crawlability, among many other things.

Every worthwhile endeavor takes some amount of effort. Such is the case with optimizing your website to gain more visibility and traffic.

Think about your own experience when searching for information or a particular product. You will most likely click on the top results on the first page never bothering to check the second page when a list of results appears on the screen that “matches” what you’re looking for.

In today’s fast-paced world, customers have access to more information than ever, and they want results quickly. This means that they will choose from the top of the list, which is where you want your site to be.

Optimizing your site can get you there. This ongoing process requires regular maintenance and changes.

SEO rapidly evolves. So keeping up with the changes with your SEO consultant will give you an edge over your competitors.

Contact us at johnny@johnnymurray.com to learn more.

There are many things you can do to get more traffic to your door.

One of the things that are surprising is that many local physical businesses don’t have, or don’t think they need local SEO, such as getting listed on major local business listings.

Not having some type of online presence is a big mistake for companies. Take into consideration that more people are closely connected to their mobile devices more than ever.

People use their smartphones to do everything from ordering pizza, to finding out who has the best price on the car part they suddenly need. And while this is just a small example, you may or may not be surprised that many people go online to check to see if a business has what they need, what the prices are, if they are currently open.

They do these things before deciding to drop by a store!

There are many things that a local physical business can start doing besides having a website online so that they can be found easily by new prospective customers. Getting yourself listed on Google My Business is free, and the page is likely to get indexed very quickly since it is Google.

The next best thing to do is get listed on local directories and review sites. Many people are using these sites to check business reviews and will be able to find your business quickly.

Some other things that you want to be sure to do are building links from local news sources, establishing partnerships with other businesses and of course, utilizing search engine optimization using locally targeted keywords which very well could be easy to rank for.

If all this sounds great to you, and you need more information on how to get started, then contact us now, and we can help you get your business in the important places that matter most and help increase your foot traffic.

johnny@johnnymurray.com
Johnny Murray

Wouldn’t you like to know how what your customers are thinking? How are they going to act? Well, you can! You just need to track how your current customers are interacting with your business.

You or someone on your team needs to be continually answering the following questions in order to get to know your potential customers.

How many customers are you getting every month?

Even in the craziness of running your business, you need to make sure you have a way to keep track of all of your customers that you are serving. You also need to make sure that everyone on your team is on the same page and using the same system for tracking.

How many of them are coming from your website?

You need to be asking how your customers found out about you and keeping track of customers that are coming from your site.

Are they coming from your SEO efforts? Social Media? PPC?

You or someone on your team need to be monitoring how users are finding your website to learn what is working for you and what can be tweaked.

By what percent of your visitors are converting?

Track how many people who are coming to your site are actually becoming customers.

How high is your bounce rate?

Monitor the percentage of people visiting who are just viewing one page of your site and then navigating away.

Which pages are most visited?

Take note of the pages that users are going to the most often and see if they are the pages that will lead them into making conversions.

Which pages do they spend most of their time on?

You should study the pages that users are spending a lot of time looking at and see how you can make other pages interesting to your potential customers.

What’s the winning conversion path?

Find out what path the customers are taking to make conversions and make sure that your site is designed around making that path as easy as possible.

Make sure someone on your team is answering these questions often so you can optimize your website design to get a greater number of conversions.

For more information on tracking your website visitors, visit us at http://icumarketplace.com.

Do you recognize any of the following signs?

1. You’re not visible on search engines and if you are visible, no one clicks to visit your website.
2. If visitors do click through and visit your website, they leave almost immediately.
3. You’re getting clicks, and website visitors aren’t leaving your website, but they’re not buying anything!

Sound Familiar? I’m sure you’re asking, “What can I do?”

We can show you how. It’s all about understanding who your real customers are, their search behaviors, and the digital channels they use – and having the right product.

Luckily for us, Internet Marketing allows your potential customer to be matched with your
service to ensure that your product is the perfect one for them!

Here are additional tips:

1. Make sure you are doing SEO. This includes optimizing the titles and description of every page and optimizing your content to match the intent and context of the search.

2. It’s not just about getting potential customers to visit your website. You want them to become engaged with your content.

3. Your written content (the actual words/explanation/description of the product or service) is engaging, interesting. Relevant content will build trust and increase the probability of a visitor becoming a buyer.

So, know your audience, decide on your strategy and use the correct tactics. If you are unsure, seek advice. Shoot me us an email at johnny@johnnymurray.com.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet marketing advertising model where businesses or individuals who want pay a certain amount of money every time your ad is clicked.

This is a way of buying extra targeted visits for your website. The sponsored ads that typically appear on the top list of the results from a Google search are what we call AdWords PPC.

PPC is highly cost-effective. You only per for the clicks. Your ads that don’t get clicked, get exposure!

Will PPC increase traffic to my website?
Yes. PPC has proven to increase visitors to websites by 300%.

Will it increase the sales I make when potential customers visit my website?
Yes. PPC visitors are 50% more likely to purchase something compared to those customers who stumble upon your website.

What about my brand?
Search ads can increase brand awareness by 80%. That’s Huge!

PPC results are phenomenal. Contact us for more information.

Are you getting a return on investment (ROI) on your search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns? You’re not alone if you’re not sure how to answer that question. Indeed, 40% of marketers say proving the ROI of their marketing activities is their biggest marketing challenge according to HubSpot.

But measuring the ROI of your SEO efforts is possible, and we’re here to help you do just that.

Here are 3 things that need to be in place in order to calculate ROI:

1. The right attribution model. Attribution models are the basis for allocating credit to each marketing channel. There is no right or wrong attribution model. Each one is different and comes with its own strengths. We’ll help you find the model that’s the best fit for your business.

2. Google Search Console and Google Analytics. You may already have these tools in place for your website(s), and if so, that’s a great start. GSC is a key SEO tool for capturing and understanding website metrics. And the data from Google Analytics (GA) or a comparable website analytics package is crucial for understanding ROI.

3. Marketing automation and CRM. These tools supplement website analytics data by providing data on individual buyers. This helps you ascertain the lifetime value of individual customers, which in turn help you determine the lifetime value of a particular marketing channel.

At ICU Marketing Associates, we understand that business owners like you don’t have the time to do all of this. We can help you get these important tracking tools in place.

Contact us today at johnny@johnnymurray.com to get started.

When you are running ads on Facebook, AdWords, or LinkedIn your copy needs to be able to stand out among all of the competition that is surrounding it.

We at ICU Marketing Associates want to help you make your ads grab your target’s attention and get you as many clicks as possible!

Here are a few of the tactics that we use to increase click through rates:

Offer Promotions and Incentives in the Headline

Grab attention right away by showing the potential customer exactly what you are offering them. Set yourself apart from the start by showing that your business is the best value.

Use Deadlines for Your Offers

Create a sense of urgency for your targets by showing that they have a limited amount of time to click on your page and take part in that offer. Using AdWords you can even set up a countdown within your ad, which will motivate your potential customer to click so that they don’t miss out!

Include Keywords in your Ad Copy

It makes your ad look more relevant to the viewer at a glance and it also gives you another line of valuable text in your ad copy.

Use Emotional Triggers

Connect with your potential customers on an emotional level, don’t just throw out technical jargon about what your business does. Say something personal about what your business can offer that will connect to them on an emotional level.

Use a Call To Action

Make your viewer curious about what you are offering with a call to action. Asking them to click to “find out more…” or “To learn more about this offer…” will force their mind to wonder what more you are offering and will make clicking on your ad more enticing.

If you need any help with reviewing your ads and making them as successful as possible, please visit us at http://icumarketplace.com

Have you ran a digital marketing campaign for your business before? What tactics and channels did you use?

Here are 7 digital marketing trends you should know:

– Content marketing is still the dominant technique.
– Top 3 B2C content priorities: a) providing engaging content, b) utilizing visual content, c) measuring content results.
– Facebook posts with images still perform better than posts without images.
– Tweets with images still get more engagement than tweets without images.
– Infographics perform better than any other type of content.
– Visual UGC (user-generated content) is more engaging than brand-produced photos.
– The demand for interactive content is increasing.

Do you agree with these points?

Do you think these tactics will impact your business?

Let us know what you think.

Dacia and Facebook

Dacia is one of Europe’s fastest growing car brands.
The Goal: Their aim was to grow their brand and to generate more leads.
The Result: 60,000 extra cars sold in the last three years. That’s a huge success!

How did they do it?

1. They decided to use social media.
2. They chose Facebook to get their message across.
3. They targeted desktop-using customers and customers who primarily used their smartphones.
4. The tool they used was Facebook’s boosted posts. This allowed them to test the market and find out where their potential customers were and the best time to place an ad in front of them.

The Girl Scouts and Twitter
The Girl Scouts are well-known for making and selling their own cookies to raise funds for the local community.
The Goal: To increase downloads of their mobile app.

The Result: Nearly 20k extra downloads as a direct result of their Twitter campaign!

How did they do it?
1. They decided to use social media.
2. They chose Twitter to do their promotion.
3. They added images to the app to show how delicious and inviting their cookies were.
4. They used the Twitter App Card so customers seeing their Tweet could access the app directly from their Tweet. Simple!