Archives for March 2020

Social media is not a place that people go so that they can view advertisements, browse through all of the business pages, or read long technical updates about a company. Social media is a place to be social! This means that people want to be engaging in conversations and making their voice heard.

We at ICU Marketing Associates want to share with you some of our tactics to making sure that your followers stay engaged with your business and ultimately become your customers.

1. Initiate Conversation with your Social Media Followers

If you are at a social event and you want someone to talk to you, how do you do it? You have to talk to them first! Show them that you care about what they have to say by making the first move.

2.Ask For Feedback

Let your followers know that you value their opinion and that you want your products and services to be at their best.

3. Do Surveys and Polls

People love sharing their thoughts and opinions on the internet. The surveys can be things directly related to your business, or just fun questions to get the conversations rolling.

4. Organize Giveaways, Contests, and Promotions

This will get people excited about visiting your page! You can even gain more followers and recognition by having the contest entry include sharing the post or tagging a friend. Even for those who do not win, the excitement for the contest will now be associated with your business.

5. Live Q & A Sessions

Live sessions show your followers that you actually want to hear from them. It also gives you the opportunity to tell your audience the things that they actually want to know about your business instead of just guessing what questions they may be having.

The right digital marketing consultant will be able to incorporate all of these into your marketing plan so that you can see your followers begin to engage with your business.

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.

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

Bounce Rate is a way to measure the success of your website. The ‘rate’ is the percentage of visitors who come to your site and then immediately leave (‘bounce’) instead of sticking around to view other pages.

Imagine having a storefront and measuring the number of people who come in, take one quick look around and immediately leave, versus the people who come in to browse for a bit and eventually end up buying something.

Your website’s bounce rate is a window into the effectiveness of your storefront to retain potential customers. Google Analytics is a great tool for seeing how many visitors have been to your website in the last 30 days, which pages they visited the most, and how long they spent on those pages.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you use Bounce Rates to improve your website and by extension, your business.

High Bounce Rate can highlight areas in need of improvement

You may notice that some pages have higher bounce rate than others, some with extremely high bounce rates that indicate little to no retention of traffic there. Use this as an opportunity to work on that page, and attract more visitors! Whether it be by updating it, improving the content, or perhaps assessing whether that page is really necessary.

A Low Bounce Rate means a quality entry page

Landing sites/entry pages are essential to maintaining a low bounce rate. They are your storefront – what draws the customers in! A low bounce rate on your entry page means that it is doing a good job of getting visitors to venture deeper into your site, getting them to view other pages and learn more about your business. Maintaining a quality entry page with relevant information, links to other pages, and pleasant aesthetics is key to making sure you are retaining visitors for as long as possible.

Bounce Rate should be relevant to your business’ objective

A high bounce rate on a particular page doesn’t always mean bad performance. Think about what pages on your site you want visitors to pay attention to the most. The goals of your business’ website should be in line with which pages you want to optimize for the lowest bounce rates.

Have more questions about how to use Bounce Rates to improve your website? Visit us at http://icumarketplace.com or drop us an inquiry at johnny@johnnymurray.com.

https://icumarketplace.com/1957-2/

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

Are you looking to improve traffic flow to your website? Search engine optimization is the golden key to bring more eyes to your page, and we want to help you get there.

Google’s search algorithms are responsible for displaying the most relevant search results at any given moment. These algorithms are based on keywords, search intent, location, and a hundred other ranking factors. Because some are able to “game” the system, Google has to update its algorithm to ensure the results searchers are getting are the results they need. And it’s updated frequently! Five times in 2015, eleven times in 2016, and four times so far this year. That’s 20 times in just 2.5 years!

At the end of the day, Google algorithm updates are good for everybody. The potential customer searching for information is able to reach relevant businesses quickly and make informed decisions. Businesses are able to display their wares or services in such a way to connect with those potential customers.

When your website is fully search engine optimized, it remains at the top of any relevant searches no matter how many future updates Google instates. Be sure you’re getting the best by entrusting your website to us at ICU Marketing Associates!

This is a frequently asked question. It depends on what you are looking to accomplish and the strategy that you have put together.

Are you looking for short-term results or are you planning for next year?

If immediate short-term results are your aim, then you should choose pay-per-click advertising (PPC). The results can be seen in 2 days or in a week.

Comprehensive keyword research and continuous monitoring and optimization of your PPC settings will maximize performance and yield ongoing positive results.

If your vision is for longer-term gains then consider search engine optimization (SEO). A comprehensive and thorough SEO campaign will start to yield results after a few months. This may take 4-6 months or 6-9 months.

Successful results mean not only increase your website ranking on search engine results but also receiving leads that lead to sales.

We can help you with a cohesive strategy both for immediate and long term success.

Visit our website http://icumarketplace.com to learn more about our marketing audit and blueprint consulting services.

Online reviews are crucial to managing your reputation, gaining trust and building confidence. Trust is a key element to gaining and maintaining customers.

Do you remember asking for a friend’s opinion about a product before deciding to buy? Didn’t you become more excited after hearing encouraging feedback?

That’s exactly how online reviews work.

Let’s take a look at these statistics from BrightLocal:

• 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation
• 7 out of 10 consumers will leave a review for a business if they’re asked to
• 90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business
• 54% of people will visit the website after reading positive reviews
• 73% of consumers think that reviews older than 3 months are no longer relevant
• 74% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more
• 58% of consumers say that the star rating of a business is most important

Your potential customers are now checking what others say about your products or services before buying!

So you need to always provide a good experience, earn those positive reviews, get them published, and see more repeat and new sales coming to your business.

There are additional benefits to getting positive reviews and 5-star ratings:

Improved Organic and Local Rankings
Google gives priority to businesses with stellar reviews on rankings.

Increased Click-through Rate
Consumers will most likely click on a business with impressive reviews in the search results.

Create Consumer Loyalty
Your customers who take the time to leave a 5-star rating are far more likely to feel a certain bond with your business.

Let your Customers Do Your Marketing for You
Even just a handful of positive online business reviews are worth a great deal and can attract new customers to our business.

Contact us at johnny@johnnymurray.com to learn more about boosting your revenue with reviews.

It seems that in social media lists, LinkedIn is always thrown at the end as another, lesser, option to the bigger sites.

However, if you are looking to make B2B connections and grow your leads there is no more effective social media platform than LinkedIn!

Unlike the other social media channels out there, LinkedIn was specifically designed for business leaders to share ideas and make connections.

Studies have shown:

1) 92% of B2B Marketers leverage LinkedIn over all other social platforms.
2) 79% of B2B Marketers view LinkedIn as an effective source for generating B2B leads.
3) 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
4) 43% of marketers say that they have sourced a customer from LinkedIn.

So hopefully those statistics have pointed out to you why using LinkedIn is an effective choice for your business. Now, let’s focus on how you can best utilize the site.

Just showing up to the party isn’t enough, you are going to have to enter the conversation. In order to do that your company needs to begin posting engaging content for your target decision makers to read and share. Here are three points for you to think about regarding LinkedIn content:

1) 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content

Businesses are sharing tons information with one another and making connections. It is time for you to join in and boost your visibility by posting useful content for your future customers.

2) 10 pieces of content are consumed before a purchasing decision is made.

People are constantly taking in information and researching before buying, especially on LinkedIn. Now through the content you post, your business has a direct way to speak into their decision-making process.

3. LinkedIn SlideShare reaches 70M unique visitors a month.

The site is now among the top 100 most-visited websites in the world. The audience is already right there for you to reach out to!

We are ready and willing to help you create and post content that is going to make valuable connections and grow your business!

Contact us today at johnny@johnnymurray.com

Do you think your PPC campaigns aren’t optimized to the fullest? How much is your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)? What is your CTR (Click-through Rate)? What’s your Cost per Acquisition? What’s your Abandonment Rate?

We will perform the evaluation, identify the problems and recommend the next steps to take.

Your PPC campaigns should be getting an unprecedented boost under capable hands now that Google Optimize and Google Surveys 360 work with Google AdWords!

Google Optimize facilitates the A/B testing of your AdWords PPC landing pages and landing page elements and shows you which site experiences engage and delight your customers. It will also give you the solutions you need to deliver them. Google Surveys 360, on the other hand, enables you to directly ask questions to your remarketing lists to help you understand what worked best for them and what didn’t.

You’ll get richer insights from your AdWords to take action on with Google Optimize and Google Surveys 360.