How to Attract More Visitors to Your Website

28Apr

Two of the things that I am constantly asked during prospective client calls is how to create more conversions on their company website, and how to retarget the visitors who are currently visiting their website. Both of these are definitely doable things…but what happens when you find out that you don’t have enough traffic to create a meaningful result? You work on increasing that traffic!

In this article, I am going to share some tips on how to drive more traffic to your website (and keep them engaged). But, what I first think we need to talk about is the actual traffic you’re getting to your website today.

Do you know how many daily and monthly visitors you have?

Do you know where your traffic is being generated from?

Do you know what pages people are visiting and the time they spend on each page?

Do you know your current bounce rate?

Finding and tracking the answers to these questions is the first thing that you need to do before you try to execute any inbound marketing strategy. Why? Without this first step, how are you going to know how to effect change and drive success, if you are not sure how your website is performing?

Google Analytics (a free website tracking tool) will have all of these details for you – so make sure that you have this installed into your website, and you are reviewing the data often. Creating an inbound marketing campaign without having any idea as to how much traffic your site is even getting is not putting your best foot forward.

After you take a look through your website data, it is now time to start building those inbound visitors. Here are some of the best ways to drive traffic and start building the power of your website today:

Consistently Blog: having a blog posted on your website and regularly linking to each article from outside your website is a powerful tool to drive meaningful traffic. If you’re stuck on what blog you should write next, think about the questions you hear from your clients (or potential clients) and work backward. Make your blog a resource for them to utilize!

Social Media Marketing: utilize your website content when developing your social media posts and try to get out links to your website in nearly every post (where it is meaningful). You can include links to your blogs, specific service or product pages, and share fun facts about your team or company while linking back to your website.

Email Marketing: create a regular email marketing strategy that is developed to drive traffic to your website and stay on top of these! A consistent approach will drive consistent traffic. One thing you may consider is purchasing an email list to send your blasts or offers to. These emails would link to your website, and provide you a way of gaining new eyes on your site.

Choose a Landing Page That Converts: don’t just send traffic to the main homepage of your website, send new visitors to specific pages that you feel will convert them into a lead. Figure out some enticing incentives that your target audience would enjoy. Hide these incentives behind forms to capture their information for outreach at a later date. Having lots of incentives on your website is one way to establish yourself as a thought leader and increase your credibility. Not to mention – these incentives are great things to advertise across your other marketing channels.

Online Advertising: paid advertising is a great way to drive traffic. You can try Google Pay-Per-Click, Geo-Targeting, Geo-Fencing, and even social media advertising to get new visitors that may have never heard about your business to visit you online.

Link Building: a little bit more on the lengthy end of things, getting your posts shared on popular blogs and websites as guest posts (with those all-important links back to your website) will help you gain more traffic with little to no cost.

These are just a few of the quick ideas that you can incorporate to drive traffic. But a few last pieces of advice. Keep in mind the following if you are driving people to your website:

Advice #1: Make sure that your website is free of errors. Make sure that there are no typos. Make sure that the links/buttons work on your website. If you’ve written the content for the site yourself, take the time to copy the paragraphs on your site and run them through a spell checker and grammar checker. If a potential customer is comparing your site to a competitor – and yours has typos, and theirs doesn’t – I hate to tell you they’re probably not going to work with you. The same thing goes for broken links: go page by page through your website to make sure that the links you’re including work! (And do this often, as platforms change, updates are made, links that work one day, may end up broken the next).

Advice #2: Make sure that your website is responsive on mobile devices. There is absolutely nothing worse than a site that’s not responsive on a mobile device – it’s 2020 you must ensure that this is happening on your site. Read your blog; try clicking on your links. Remind yourself that this is how the majority of people will be viewing your site. If it’s tricky to navigate you need to get with a web designer pronto.

Advice #3: Take an audit to see how long it takes for your website to load – if it’s too long, your visitors will bounce. As a society, people have less and less patience these days. If someone has found you through social media, or Google, and have clicked on a link to your website, statistics say that they’re not going to wait very long for your site to load.

Making a good first impression is definitely one of the most valuable pieces when it comes to conversion, so if you want to drive traffic to your online point of sale – make sure it is conversion ready!

Should you need any help reviewing your site, or if you realize you need an entire web design overall, please do not hesitate to reach out to our team of talented sales and marketing professionals at The Go! Agency.

The 4 Best Email Marketing Tools

By Christopher Tompkins

7Jan

Email Marketing

If you read my last blog post, then you already know what makes email marketing so important. You’ve decided that your business can benefit from email marketing in 2019, and kudos to you for making that call. Knowing why email marketing matters doesn’t give you the tools to make it happen, though, so I’m back again to share the four email marketing tools that my team swears by.

1. Constant Contact
Constant Contact has been in the email marketing game since 1995, so you’re getting a trusted name with this brand. They also have 650,000 customers and some unique features. With event management tools, surveys, and an active app marketplace, Constant Content offers something to fit virtually every business.

No tool can be perfect, though, and Constant Contact’s lack of automation makes using it more of a time investment than some of its competitors. This isn’t a deal-breaker by any stretch, but it’s worth noting when you’re shopping around.

What my team loves most about Constant Content is their high delivery rates. After they spend so much time strategizing and writing, my team wants to know that those emails will make it to people’s inboxes! On the whole, Constant Contact has definitely earned its place as one of the top email marketing tools.

2. Mail Chimp
When it comes to their advantages, there’s a big elephant (or chimp) in the room—Mail Chimp has free options. You can send 12,000 emails per month to 2,000 subscribers, and there are affordable, pay-as-you-go plans if you’re only going a bit above those numbers.

What’s worth noting is that Mail Chimp isn’t cheap for long. As you collect subscribers, your bill will skyrocket. This doesn’t mean that nobody should use it, but it’s important to compare pricing for your specific campaign before making a decision.

Beyond their lower price point, Mail Chimp also boasts some of the best analytics integration. You can accurately track all of your relevant metrics, and their platform works seamlessly with Google Analytics. This all makes it a great tool for our clients with new, low-volume email marketing plans.

3. Pardot
Pardot is, short and sweet, the go-to email marketing tool for B2B campaigns. Because B2B sales tend to take much longer and have multiple steps, Pardot is automated and optimized for these longer campaigns. This makes it popular with B2B marketers who are used to following a sale over a prolonged period of time.

Much like Mail Chimp, Pardot’s main drawback is its price. This automated platform will run you $1,250 per month. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that you do get a lot of extra features for this steep price tag.

My team has noted that Pardot comes with some built-in social media management and customer relationship management tools that make it a particularly comprehensive platform. While it is (by far) the priciest item on this list, it’s worth it for large-scale campaigns that have the resources to invest in email marketing.

4. AWeber
AWeber‘s big claim to fame is that they invented the autoresponder, which revolutionized the world of email marketing. For that reason, AWeber stresses their commitment to automizing email marketing, which makes it a great tool for anyone who can’t allocate too much time to their campaign.

My team’s biggest point against AWeber is that even when someone unsubscribes from your email list, they’re still counted toward your overall subscriber count until you individually remove their email address. This can lead to some steep billing if you’re not careful, but it hasn’t precluded my team from moving forward with this platform (with a bit of extra caution).

If you’re particularly interested in how your email marketing leads to revenue, AWeber is one of the few platforms that directly tracks sales from emails. There are a lot of other metrics worth looking at, but the ability to monitor sales has been helpful in explaining to clients how their investment in email marketing is earning them more money than they’re putting in.

Take Your Pick
The “best” email marketing tool is going to be dependent on what your business does and what your goals are. These four tools are a great place to start your search though, and my team and I can attest that each platform is one of the best out there. As you begin your research, start by looking at each of these options and evaluating their fit for your business’ email marketing campaign!

It’s normal to feel a little overwhelmed by all these options. If you’re looking for some help with your email marketing campaign, just contact The Go! Agency!

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Email Marketing—What It Is and Why You Need It

By Christopher Tompkins

2Jan

Email Marketing

You’ve probably already heard a lot of the buzz around email marketing. A lot of people are in your ear saying that it’s going to set your business up for success, but what even is email marketing? And how can everyone be so sure it’s right for your business?

Well, I believe in backing up all of my advice with facts. Email marketing should absolutely be on your “must-have” list for 2019, but don’t just take my word for it. I’m going to explain to you exactly what email marketing is and why it’s worth investing some time and resources into.

What Is It?
In your everyday life, you might know email marketing as those “LAST-MINUTE SALE BUY NOW” emails that you get every so often. As a marketer, you can think of email marketing as a way to reach out to leads and develop your relationship with them. When you consider investing in email marketing, ignore those spam emails you get. They’re wasted opportunities, and a good strategy can help you avoid that pitfall.

Instead, think of how you’ll reach out to interested individuals and encourage them to have a conversation with your brand. You’ll keep your business on your potential customers’ minds, and you’ll generate conversions from your thoughtful, strategic emails!

That all sounds nice, but I wouldn’t blame you for having some skepticism. How do you know this is going to work for your business? I’ve got some numbers that I suspect you’ll find very assuring.

Does Email Marketing Really Work?
For B2C
I want to show you some of the most compelling email marketing statistics that illustrate why it’s worth your time. First and (in my opinion) most impressively, 80% of retailers say that email marketing is their biggest asset in customer retention. Not only is email marketing keeping customers around, but it’s making them spend more with each individual purchase. Customers who bought products via email links spent 138% more than customers who never got email offers. Email marketing keeps customers around and keeps them spending money on your business!

Don’t get me wrong; not all email marketing campaigns are equal, and the quality of your strategy is going to matter a lot. For example, a lot of marketers miss out on sending “Welcome” emails when someone subscribes to your mailing list. That’s a huge mistake, since research shows that welcome emails generate 320% more sales than promotional ones! Missing opportunities like this will make your email marketing much less effective.

For B2B
One comment I’ve heard in the past is that email marketing is great for B2C business, but it just doesn’t offer much for B2B marketers. Well, nothing could be further from the truth! Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B decision-makers, falling only behind recommendations from colleagues and industry leaders. That means that email marketing is literally the best thing B2B marketers can spend money on!

This isn’t just theoretical, either—it’s already making waves throughout B2B marketing. 59% of B2B marketers reported that email marketing was their biggest revenue generator. If you’re running a B2B business and not reaching out to potential customers, you’re missing out on your best way to make sales!

Press Send
You know what it is and why it’s worth your time, so get started! Skipping email marketing means you’re missing potential revenue. If you want to take your marketing to the next level this year, then now is the time to start working toward that goal!

Do you want some individualized help with your social media marketing? Just set up a free consultation with The Go! Agency!

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The 6 Most Effective Forms of Email Marketing

By Christopher Tompkins

30Nov

Advertising, Content Creation, Email Marketing, Facebook, Local Marketing, Snapchat, Social Media

If the holiday season will teach you about anything, it will give you a crash course in email marketing. You most likely woke up today with dozens of ads trying to entice you to purchase an item. You might have rolled your eyes at one or two of them but chances are you actually were interested in a few of them.

Email marketing is helpful because it’s a direct punch to your audience. They have to acknowledge the email (especially if they want to get rid of that notification on their smartphone). But here’s the thing — your email has to be actually good enough for people to read it and become interested in what you’re marketing.

To win at the email marketing game (or at least get started), check out the following types of campaigns that will catch your reader’s eye:

1. Newsletters. If your brand has a lot to say, then a newsletter is a great way to share your recent news, events, and updates. Newsletters should have enticing articles about your industry and how your company is making an impact.

2. Personalized approach. You often see this type of marketing in industries that closely work alongside clients. Thanks to email marketing software, you insert their name and fashion the copy in a way that makes it sound like you’re actually talking to them- even though thousands received the same message. It can be a bit tricky, but it’s a great way to approach lead generation.

3. Sales / coupons. Widely considered the type of email marketing that has the highest click rate, coupons delivered via email will guide customers down the path of conversion quite quickly.

4. Event invitation. Do you have a big party coming up? Let everyone know via social media and reinforce your message through your email marketing. That’s the best part about email, it strengthens your other channels quite effectively.

5. Contests. There’s nothing easier than delivering a sweepstakes to someone’s inbox and in a few clicks, they have a chance to win a big prize.

6. eBooks and freebies. Offer a free piece of content through your website and social media. The only thing they have to do is enter their email and boom– free stuff digitally delivered in their inbox. Of course now they will receive everything else you send out, but that should be a good thing if they enjoyed your content.

Have you received a piece of email marketing in the timeframe it took you to read this article? If so, look at how that company takes on social media marketing and see if their angle can help out your business with the above ideas in mind.

How Much Email Marketing Is Too Much?

By Christopher Tompkins

27Jun

Email Marketing, Local Marketing, Marketing

Finding the right balance for your email marketing can hard. If you send too many emails to people on your email list, you come across as spammy and unprofessional. But if you barely send any emails, you can easily get forgotten about or buried beneath all the other emails in the world.

So how many emails is just the right amount? As usual, it’s a simple question with a complicated answer.

Learn About Your Customers

Every business we take on as a client is unique, which means their customers are unique too. If every business has a unique customer base, it’s impossible to make a catch-all rule for email marketing frequency that works for every business.

Even though a business’s customers will be similar demographically, that doesn’t mean they’re not unique in their personalities too.

Think of this:

How do you interact with your emails? Do you browse the titles and only open certain ones? Are you meticulous in your email opening and open everything? Are you unafraid to unsubscribe from email lists if they don’t immediately interest you? Or do you continue to stay signed up for multiple newsletters despite n reading them?

The way everybody looks at their emails is different. So while your business may cater to cat-lovers and your subscribers will all love cats, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to build a strategy that works for all of them.

Your Email Marketing Can’t Please Everybody

Basically what I’m saying is, in this case, you can’t please everybody! Some subscribers would love to receive an email from you every single day. Others will go into a rage if you send more than one email a week.

So what are you going to do?

First, stop thinking about perfection. You know you can’t make everybody happy. So now you just have to focus on making most of your subscribers happy. But how can you figure out what makes them happy?

Here are a few ideas:

Why not just ask them? Create a survey to gauge how your customers feel about your email marketing. Ask them what they prefer. Ask enough customers these questions and you’ll be able to figure out how the majority feel.
Test. Split your email list into multiple lists. Called them Test A, Test B, Test C etc. Send one list an email every day, send another list an email every week. Compare the results of the two. Look at how many people opened the emails, how many clicked through, how many unsubscribed. The more you test, the more you’re able to find the correct middle ground.
Put yourself in the shoes of your subscriber. How would you feel about getting emails every 2 hours about a business? Most likely annoyed. It doesn’t take a genius to work out they’d get annoyed too.

These ideas may give you a lot of good information and data on your subscribers.

But there’s one last thing you may want to consider:

How often you send your email marketing might not be the problem.

A Bigger Email Marketing Problem

I’m signed up to a bunch of mailing lists, some of which email me once or twice a day. I find that to be excessive, yet I still haven’t unsubscribed.

Why?

Because those mailing lists offer good value to me. They may overwhelm my inbox, but when I do I see a subject line that I like, and open their email, I know that the information within will be well written and thought out.

The discomfort of seeing my inbox filling up each day doesn’t overpower my loyalty to those quality email lists.

Nobody will hate you for sending them lots of emails with valuable, quality content.

Email marketing becomes spam when the email has no purpose behind it and isn’t useful at all to the subscriber.

Improving your emails and their content is just as important as finding out the frequency of your email marketing. If your subscribers love your emails, they will actually enjoy receiving more of them!

But, I know, all of this takes time. Testing, writing emails and figuring out your customer.

So why not let The Go! Agency help you? Take a look at our email marketing services to get an idea of what we can do for you: http://ow.ly/S1IK30cVWPH

5 Great Tips For Making Effective Email Blasts

By Christopher Tompkins

25Jul

Copywriting, Email Marketing

In today’s age, we all get a ton of emails every single day. If left unchecked, most people’s inboxes will get loaded down with hundreds of junk letters in just a few weeks. So, with all of these emails pouring into our accounts, how can a marketer expect any emails to hit home? Email can be more effective than you may think. However, it needs to be done right or your receivers will be hitting that “junk” button before they get to read your entire message. Here are the top 5 simple ways to make sure your email marketing works just right:

Know your software. To have truly successful email blasts, you will need some help. There are plenty of software options for you to choose from, but we recommend looking into Constant Contact, MailChimp, or Vertical Response. If you have experience using other scheduling programs like Hootsuite, you should have no problem figuring these programs out. If you are completely new to this type of marketing tool, take some time to really get to know your new software. Have patience, because these will soon become indispensable resources.

Be consistent. While those on your mailing list may not be expecting an email from you, the goal of email marketing is to regularly remind your customer base of your services and new updates happening in your business. The aforementioned software will help you remain on time with publishing, but you will also want to stick to a regimented writing schedule yourself.

Integrate social media. When compiling your email, do not forget to supply hyperlinks that will direct readers to your Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts. This will maximize coverage and take advantage of the email’s potential.

Be brief. As we have said, no one is expecting your email blasts, so you do not want to slow their day down with an extremely drawn out message. Keep it short and effective.

Create an eye-catching subject line. As much as you compete for readers’ attention on social media, email blasts require the same amount of effort. You need a snappy subject line to make people feel like they need to read that email! You can make it relevant and reference something happening in the world such as a holiday, election, sports event, etc. If it is more sales-oriented, you could let the customer feel special and say it is a “special invitation for loyal customers” or an “exclusive offer”– just don’t come off like spam! Most importantly, keep to the truth!

Email marketing allows direct access to your customers in a unique way. Think of it as a “follow up” on steroids. It is an effective tool that will serve as a continuous reminder to your customers just how awesome your company is.

What tools do you utilize for email marketing? Share below!

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Email Marketing 101: Think Before You Blast

By Christopher Tompkins

23Aug

Email Marketing, Marketing, Uncategorized

One of the most traditional forms of lead generation has been direct mail marketing. But with the introduction of the internet, email as well as the push to cut down on waste and be “green”, the methods of lead generation have evolved and a new form of direct mail marketing has surfaced: email marketing.

Although for some this topic is elementary, I think it is very important to throw out there for discussion, its a vital cog in a successful online marketing strategy.

Since we all use email on a daily basis, you already know how quick and effective it is to communicate with your business associates…so why not harness this power to keep in constant communication with your clients? (Hence one of the largest email marketing campaign companies being named “Constant Contact”).

The first step is to create an email database, which can be done using your current mail server (Microsoft Outlook for example or even Gmail or Hotmail). Once you have created this database, every time that you gather a new email address/contact, add them to this database. That way you will continually grow your list, which will in turn grow your business.

Next up, think about how often you want to send promotional messages to your list/database. I suggest hitting your target market at least twice a month…this way you are consistently in front of your prospect, they don’t forget you, and you have more opportunities to turn them into a sale! When considering the frequency of your messages, remember that in order to generate the highest number of leads, you need to have an on-going email campaign.

Then…what do I send?! You have three options:

An Email Newsletter
Promotional Email
Useful Information (insider tips)

To start out, try a combination of the three. Email Newsletters give you the opportunity to talk about different aspects of your business, while straight promotional emails or ones with useful information can be limiting. You don’t have to have a fancy format, simply separate your email into different sections…viola! A newsletter!

Tip: try to keep your graphics to a minimum, many people will never see them and as soon as the graphics don’t pop up will delete them thinking they are spam.

Write a warm introduction explaining the newsletter, alerting them to when they can expect to receive the next one, have one section for special offers and promotions and then in another section provide some tips. For example, if you were a fitness coach you could write a friendly introduction giving the latest news in your practice (new services, new staff, achievements, awards), in section 2 you can tell them about your new full body bootcamp (including a “newsletter only discount”) and then in the last section you can give them 5 tips to healthier eating.

But there are some hard and fast rules for email marketing that need to be taken into account. Most importantly:

Always personalize your emails: Use “Hi Bob” Rather than the stock “Hello”
Subject Lines Are Key: Write attention grabbing subject lines (avoiding the use of SPAM words such as “free” “sex” and “$$$”)
Check your spelling ten times before sending: look professional
Always present a clear call to action
Add links in your emails: to your blog, to your website, to your landing page
Do the messages in both HTML and Plain Text: let your recipients decide individually which they prefer
Always include an “unsubscribe me” link: this will help you keep from illegally spamming people who do not want your messages

There you go! Again, if you want help getting a great campaign together with little time and little money, Constant Contact is a great service that can help you launch!