PODCAST & VIDEO REPLAY: How Your Content Strategy Can Grow Your Business (on How I Built)

PODCAST & VIDEO REPLAY: How Your Content Strategy Can Grow Your Business (on How I Built)

How I Built This with Joe Casabona

Joe recently published this interview on YouTube from his podcast show that he invited me a few years ago. We talk about practical ways that business owners and entrepreneurs can create and publish content. The strategies we talk through are easy to understand and with the scenarios we talk through, you’ll see how you can directly copy and use them or alter them in a way that best suits your business. I don’t want to spoil it any further, so un-mute your speakers and let this play in the background but have your notebook or notepad handy because you’ll want to hit the pause button and write!

Oh and be sure to check out Joe’s website and offering for Free Coaching Calls

5 Things To Consider With Website Redesigns

5 Things To Consider With Website Redesigns

Define Your Goal(s)

It’s important to have a an accepted end point that you and your team share, and then you can build the roadmap to how to achieve it. Having clear and defined goals help to ensure the success of your efforts with the redesign. It also will bring into scope what content, functions, specific designs, and other elements that will be required and allow you to break each goal down into silos with milestones and tasks.

Create Attractive Content For Your Audience

The best content is content made for specific individuals. The idea of generalized media with a spaghetti on the wall approach is meaningless and a waste of time (and money). So instead, do some research on what your custom avatar is challenged with and how your MVP is going to address their issue(s). You’ll want to lead with that on your home page, then provide proof of concepts, examples, case studies, and testimonials. If you have some big partnerships or known influencers, leverage their contributions and feedback as well. All of these can greatly help change a potential client/customer from kicking tires to frantically looking for a BUY NOW button.

Design For Mobile Use

The data shows that more websites are viewed on a mobile device over desktops. Yes widescreen monitors are nice and I’m sure your brand graphics could look amazing on them. But going back to the goals, what is the main function your online visitors are expected to want to do? Are they mainly going to pull up your website to see graphics and ponies scroll across the screen in a parallax or slider? Is that going to make them more inclined to use your call to actions or sign ups? If so and you can make all that work on a mobile device using average network speeds, go for it all. Otherwise it may be worth to disable some elements that are useful on the desktop but not necessary for a mobile experience so that your content loads even faster and satisfies the ever dwindling patience of today’s society.

Make The Navigation Flow Easy

A hamburger menu is those three lines at the top corner of the website – on mobile – that help visitors click to show a full menu of pages and subpages to navigate or jump to. If your site doesn’t have this as a feature, you’ll certainly want to incorporate it. Being responsive and Google Mobile Friends is also key for SEO purposes and for Accessibility. Those are the technical, but let’s also take a second to consider how your visitors “should” be navigating from page to page like as if they were reading a book. Will you have landing pages optimized with content that you’ll be using ads and retargeting so that when visitors do “click” and get to your landing page(s), they’re offered a seemless experience and then can easily tell what their next steps should be? Are large buttons and large arrows necessary? Or do images alongside content helping the eye navigate along a page clear interaction points shown. PRO TIP: On your current website, install a Heat Map so that you can see how and what people are using their mouse and spending time on for each page on your website.

Create Multiple Landing Page With Specific Strategies

I’ve hinted about landing pages above, but let’s talk a bit more about it here. Landing pages serve singular purposes, and that’s to provide information on a product or service with a clear and sometimes repeated offering or call to action. The normal top or side page navigation menus are not aways displayed because we’re hoping to keep the visitor focused on just what they see on the page. There may be an introductory video, infogrpaphic, product images, before and after photos, you name it. All of these along with supporting text that better describes a need or challenge that the visitor can have solved by taking another step. Maybe that’s to sign up for a newsletter, purchase a product, subscribe to a newsletter or mailing list. There’s no limit on the amount of content needed on each of your landing pages or a limit on how many landing pages you can or should create. Having multiple can help with A/B testing, segmenting your audience, providing variations for your digital marketing ad traffic and audience and more. Consider your landing page almost like a deal closer that can speak to anyone in your target audience, but in a specific way that they’ll understand individually and appreciate.

I hope that you found these points useful and relevant if you’re going through or planning a redesign with your company website. Each business is different and there are many other things to consider. If you’d like help with a strategy for your own redesign be sure to contact us.

 

 

Email Marketing Tips and Strategies for Success

Email Marketing Tips and Strategies for Success

These are the slides from a recent presentation on Email Marketing. A video of the presentation will be available later, but in the meantime the slides are available for you to view and download below. 

If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur and you’re looking to learn some ways to grow your email list and also learn marketing tips to help reach and grow your audience, this is the presentation for you. Now it’s nothing too technical or hard to follow. It’s mainly concepts and best practices along with some statistics to help you design, engage, and even automate your email marketing efforts. This presentation is high level and so anyone from any industry can take from this and put aspects of it into practice immediately. If you’re looking for a custom solution or strategy for your email marketing efforts, please be sure to contact us so that we can help. 

4 Tips for Promoting Your Brand Strategy

Branding Diagram

Small business or large corporate entities are defined by the vision of the organization, as well as its value system as it relates to society and where it ranks among its industry contemporaries. Defining that within your marketing & promotion strategy in a distinctive and definitive way can be challenging.  So how do you create those strategies and consistently deliver on it when marketing & promoting your business?  Here are a few tips to consider.

1. Know Your Brand Platforms
The leading & most important company brand platforms are:

  • Company Mission
  • Company Long Term and Short Term Vision
  • Company Values
  • Personality
  • Industry Positioning
  • Social Media Integration

Knowing these allows you to prioritize your branding goals as well as allocation of time and resources to what’s most important.

2. Keep Your Promises
Paralleling strategy with the promises of delivery can sometimes be a complex and delicate balance. Knowing what to promise and ensuring those deliverables can have great or detrimental affects.  Failing to keep a promise can have detrimental affect for your consumer’s brand loyalty. Most consumers identify certain brands that become their “go-to’s” and have no problem showing commitment when their expectations are met. Bottom line: Be a reliable & keep your promises.

3. Promote Your Brand Identity Values
In a more socially conscious era, most consumers like to know what companies stand for aside from just what they are selling to them. The best way to tap into that is for companies to articulate and translate their brand identities via a values system. To expand the potential impact of your business it is critical for companies to know what their core values are and properly promote the values they subscribe to. But what if you aren’t sure what those are?  Take the time to figure out what your organizational values are and align your marketing efforts to those values.

Global Network4. Be Social…Globally

Prioritizing Social Media efforts doesn’t always come easy or depending on your size, make it to the top of your brand strategy list. And that’s a shame for several reasons.

  • Hello People…it’s FREE!
  • Every company should know that they COULD BE a global brand if they think outside of their geographical region and box-like mentality.
  • Social networks allow brands to capture more public attention than traditional print collateral, driving social-media chatter which equates to digital “good press”.

So whether its via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google + or Stumbled Upon, people can gain worldwide access your content and ultimately your product or services. And in return, you get a global audience for your brand through some digital marketing powerhouses.  This 2012 article highlights the impact and evolution of social media for businesses in 15 Social Media Statistics That Every Business Needs to Know

Using these strategies will help you build strong, sustainable branding campaigns successfully by building your brand identity & core values, encouraging brand loyalty, delivering on your promises and increasing your company’s visibility in a broader, more global way.