Archives for July 2019

If you’re among the business owners who are posting and sharing content through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, then you’re off to a good start.

But if you’re not getting the results you’re looking for, chances are that’s because your social media isn’t actually very social. Posting and sharing content just isn’t enough!

However, how do you put the ‘social’ back in social media and take your social media marketing game to the next level? By creating opportunities for your customers to get involved in the conversation and get to know you and your brand.

1. Post conversational status messages.

This will humanize your brand. Remind people that your business is run by individuals who care about their products and their customers, not by some faceless corporate machine. Allow your customers to connect with you on a human level.

2. Post videos of yourself talking to your target customers.

As a business owner, showing your face builds trust and, again, humanizes your brand.

3. Ask questions. Hear their story.

Ask about their needs and get feedback on your products or services. The exchange will benefit both you and your customers. You’ll be helping your customers feel like they are a valued part of your business, and as a business owner, you will gain valuable insight about your target customers.

4. Respond to comments.

Being social means engaging in a two-way conversation. When your customers reach out to you, make them feel heard and keep them engaged by responding thoughtfully to their comments.

Do these things, and your business will not only have gone social, but it will start taking off.

Need help? Contact us at johnny@johnnymurray.com

As business owners, we must ensure that our marketing efforts are worthwhile.

We need to make sure that our website’s design and structure is at optimal levels to maximize our marketing campaigns.

Having someone on your team that can analyze your website traffic data will help ensure that your efforts are worth every little bit of time and money you spend on marketing.

Installing Google Analytics makes acquiring this information easier than ever. Understanding this information will help you strategize and improve your marketing efforts.

Here are 8 simple ways to use Google Analytics to advance your business to next level:

1. Identify the Sources of Your Traffic

Use analytics to track the traffic on your website. This will help you understand what sources send the most traffic to your business.

2. Determine the Path that Leads to Conversions

Determine what pages are driving conversions for your business. Conversions could be making a sale, the download of a white paper, a filled out contact form on your website or one of many other actions that positively impact your business.

The quality of your traffic relies on if you’re bringing the right buyer personas to your website who are genuinely interested in your company’s offerings.

3. Understand Which Relevant Keywords Drive Traffic

Analytics informs you how your business is ranking for key search queries.

Ranking highly for the most important long-tail keyword phrases related to your business can drive quality visitors to your website on a regular basis, which is why marketing around these search phrases is essential for your business.

4. Understand Time on Site

Start by understanding how engaged your visitors are by using the engagement report to better understand their time on site.

The reason why this is so important is that the longer someone is on your website, the more likely they’ll perform an action with your business whether that’s a download, completing a transaction, etc.

5. View Multi-Channel Funnels to Locate Understand a Visitor’s Path

The multi-channel funnels report in Google Analytics is one of the most important to monitor. It provides an overview of the most common paths to conversions. Take a look at which funnels are driving the most activity for your business and try to spur more movement across these channels.

6. Know Which Device Users Drive Results

Improve the quality of your ongoing traffic by analyzing and catering to where your traffic is coming from –desktop, mobile or tablet devices.

7. New vs. Returning Visitors

This report is important to monitor regularly to see if your existing audience is continually returning to your website, while also informing your business of your audience growth over time as seen through new visitors.

Ideally, there should be a healthy balance of both new visitors and returning visitors to inform the quality of your website.

8. Manage Your Backlinks

This can help your business understand what websites are linking to your site, which is a major factor that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when ranking your website and driving traffic to your business.

Your backlink profile is a crucial factor to help ensure that only quality websites are linking to your business and that you’re building trust with your customers and the search engines.

Need to learn more about how to use Google Analytics to improve your website and your business?

Contact us today!

ICU Marketing Associates 908-375-3030 johnny@johnnymurray.com http://icumarketplace.com

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

A Harvard Business Review Survey found that only 36% of organizations use some advanced tools and practices, but they are mostly underutilized or disconnected.

And that only 15% of companies use advanced marketing tools, analytics, and practices widely for more effective marketing and sales efforts.

Are you in the 15%, or are you having trouble integrating advanced marketing tools and practices to your business?

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, at what extent do you use advanced tools to maximize your marketing?

Let us know. Shoot us an email johnny@johnnymurray.com.

The information age can be glorious. It gives customers nearly limitless information when trying to make a purchase decision, and it gives business owners like you new and exciting ways to reach those customers. It also makes it of the utmost importance to have a solidified and well-crafted website to make your case to potential customers.

Yes, your website is your virtual storefront. Open 24/7.

Not sure where to start? We can help.

Your website needs to sell you and these six things are proven to do that in the most efficient way.

1. The way that your product or service navigation is organized must be primarily based on your potential customer’s needs, and not based on, say, alphabetization.

2. With featured products or services, you can quickly direct your customer to what they are most likely to need. If the weather is heating up, make sure you don’t feature coats. Make educated guesses to showcase what’s hot for each season.

3. A product or service catalog makes sure your customers know exactly what you offer. It allows them to search through and identify what aspects of your product or service that fit your needs.

4. For each product listing, make sure you identify the benefits, features and product specifications. By ensuring you answer all the customer’s questions, you help them arrive at the “yes!” more quickly.

5. FAQs are found on almost every website. Whether they’re questions about shipping times or your return policy, you want to make sure anything a customer may wonder about is clearly spelled out.

6. Testimonials take advantage of the fact that customers trust their peers more than almost anything else when it comes to buying a good or service. If you have happy customers, make sure you utilize that to sell yourself or your products to new clientele.

Feeling overwhelmed? We’re here to help!

Send us an email at johnny@johnnymurray.com to learn more about what we can do for you!

Are your competitors way ahead of you when it comes to getting leads? Ever wondered how they do that? How come their website ranks so high? Why do you keep seeing their ads at the top of the page? It’s frustrating, isn’t it?

There is something that you can do about it.

Interested?

What if I told you that you can find out what their keyword strategy is and simply adapting their techniques for your business?

Just think, you can then add their effective keywords to your existing keywords without doing any exhausting, time-consuming research. Easy!

It’s easy if you know where to look. Click on these links to start immediately:

https://www.spyfu.com/
https://semrush.com
https://keywordspy.com
http://keywordeye.co.uk

Contact us to learn more: johnny@johnnymurray.com

Does SEO Confuse You?

You are not alone.

SEO is a complex process, indeed. Google has over 200 ranking factors!

Plenty of research is being conducted quarterly and yearly by different organizations to understand Google’s ranking factors. Here are some of the findings from a recent study:

– Between the top 3rd and 20th position in Google search results, there is a 45% difference in content length.
– Between the 1st and 10th positions, there is a 10,000 difference in referring domains.

Content and backlinks are extremely important in SEO.

Reach out to me if you need SEO explained to you from a perspective that you care about without the technobabble. That is, how it will affect your bottom line.

Your Customer’s Journey goes through these stages: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. There’s no telling how long they stay in one stage before jumping to the next. Sometimes the progress takes months, and others the jump is almost immediate.

Many websites concentrate on the ‘Awareness’ and ‘Interest’ stage without signals toward a purchase while others focus on the ‘Action’ stage without providing sufficient information.

ICU Marketing Associates ensures that your website speaks to your visitor relative to their stage in the buying process. Does your website’s navigation and content address all of the needs of your potential customers in every step of their journey?

Navigational cues such as menu buttons, bread crumbs, overview of next steps, suggested readings, and calls-to-action must guide your visitors from whatever buying stage they are in and on whatever page and content they are currently on to the next logical and intuitive step.

This strategy requires a deep understanding of your customer, what they need and how you meet that need. This means knowing what information in certain media formats they need to absorb to learn more about your offerings in a way that will resonate with their motivation to buy. This strategy also requires getting rid of all possible barriers to buying, making the actual purchase process as smooth and satisfying as possible.

Contact me at johnny@johnnymurray.com to learn how I can help you fix your website.

Johnny Murray
johnny@johnnymurray.com

It’s no secret that social media can help business owners like you connect with customers. Most businesses have Facebook and Twitter accounts to keep loyal fans engaged and attract new customers, too.

But what about YouTube? With over 30 million daily viewers, YouTube can help you grow your business and expand your customer base.

Businesses of all sizes are turning to video marketing as a crucial strategy for customer engagement. And since 6 out of 10 people prefer online video platforms to live TV, it’s no surprise that YouTube reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network!

And YouTube users are watching on the go: More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices, and the average mobile viewing session lasts 40 minutes! Are you getting visibility like that? With a YouTube channel for your business, you can!

Unsure how to use YouTube to your advantage? Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. How-to Videos or Tutorials
2. Customer Testimonials
3. Product-in-Action Videos (Demo Videos)
4. Product Spotlights or Special Offers
5. Product Comparisons
6. Behind-the-Scenes Videos
7. Contests

New to video marketing? Want to make sure you’re getting the most from YouTube?

We can help!

Contact us at johnny@johnnymurray.com to learn more about utilizing YouTube.

On-the-go mobile users who are near you and who are searching for a product or service on Google at this very moment should find your business. But are they?

Are you visible in Google’s ‘Local Pack’ and expanded results?

Increased foot traffic, phone calls, or visits to your website should mean more customers for local business owners like you. That is why optimizing for local search results should be important.

Businesses listed in the Local Pack vary from the searcher’s location. If you are nearest to the searcher at the time of the search, then your business listing should appear there.

However, being closest to a potential customer searching isn’t a guarantee that you will come up in the search results. Your listing and your website must be optimized for local search.

Here are some of the important ranking factors that we can help you with based on a study by Moz:

Google My Business Listing Signals
Link Signals
On-page Signals
Citation Signals
Review Signals
Behavioral Signals
Personalization
Social Signals

Sounds too technical and challenging for you? No worries, ICU Marketing Associates is here to help you.

Contact us if you want your business to become more visible in the local search results and get more customers!

Johnny Murray

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https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors