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April 29, 2022 by mySmartMedia

Marketing Planning in 4 Easy Steps

Marketing planning seems complicated and abstract, but it’s actually deceptively simple. Follow these 4 steps to make it easy!

1. Start by identifying your target market: Who is your ideal customer? What kind of person do they tend to be? What are their needs and desires – both in general and as they relate to the product or service that you offer?

2. Next, create a list of the different ways that you can reach your target market – where do they spend most of their time online and offline? What channels are they likely to respond best to? This might include ads on Facebook or Google, PR outreach to industry publications, and email marketing campaigns.

3. Once you’ve identified your target market and the channels you’ll use to reach them, it’s time to start thinking about your message. What are the key points that you want to communicate? How can you make sure that your message is relevant and engaging for your target audience?

4. Finally, put together a plan for how you’ll execute your marketing campaign. When will you launch each element of your campaign? How will you measure its success?

By following these steps, you can create a marketing plan that is both effective and easy to execute. So what are you waiting for? Get started today! And to give you a great start – check out the Smart Marketing Planner

April 16, 2022 by mySmartMedia Leave a Comment

How to Generate Leads from Your Website

Long gone are the days of websites being simply a digital brochure. Websites are now the hub of all things digital business. They integrate with the apps that you use, manage e-commerce, account data and for B2B company’s the most important thing a website will do is produce quality leads.

Generating Web Leads

Creating a Lead Generation Pipeline

You can’t accomplish this without FIRST, creating a lead strategy and integrating the proper marketing technology behind it.

Creating an Effective Lead Strategy

First you need to ask yourself… where to my best leads come from? If you don’t know this answer off-hand, you may need to learn this through some market testing trial and error. Don’t invest your entire budget into testing right off the bat. Often you can even go back in sales records to identify you key zip codes/cities/demographic/etc that make of 80% of your yearly sales.

Next, it’s time to better understand those customers, by creating a lead persona profile for each general customer segment. Hubspot created a great worksheet on this that I reccomend. Once we have our customer personas created its time to think about content.

Content is King

You may have heard this over and over or never at all.. but it’s worth repeating… Content is King. Why? Because it’s (part of) what helps bring you into the search results, engages your propects and can help turn those website browser into real leads.

One you have your Customer Personas created its time to think about what content will get them excited and taking action.

Good Content is NOT Selling

Good content informs, entertains and downright delights your target audience. Good Content is NOT Selling. So if you aren’t telling them about your products and services what could you POSSIBLY have to talk about?

Reverse Engineer Your Content

Make a list of every question you can ever remember a client asking. Likely, new customers may ask those same questions. Prioritize this list from most commonly asked question to least and that is your new list for content development.

Become Your Customers Best Ally.

Starting with the most frequently asked questions, begin to write content that will help provide potential customers with the info they need to help them make purchase decisions/ plan/ use your product or service. It is so important that in the process of doing so you aren’t blatently trying to sell them. They will see right through it and move along to the next product/firm.

Go Beyond Just Answers

The amount of resources you can create in any niche is almost never ending. From each of those questions on your list you can not only create blog post to provide information, but you can create checklists, how-to guides and so much more.

Pairing Words with Video

While written content is crucial for SEO and for an audience that may not be as in tune with video platforms, don’t ignored the video format to help share information. Even a few helpful videos are way more helpful than nothing or tons of videos that do not directly help your target customers with your specific area of expertise.

But What About the Leads?

Okay, we did mention something at the beginning of this article about leads, didn’t we? Once you have created a few crucial pieces of content for your most popular questions, then it’s time to add some marketing technology magic to generate leads.

Give your Website some Swagger

Content is king, but it’s only half the story. Your website needs to have the right user interface to help guide yur customers to the places they can find their answers and also take the actions you want them to take. In most instances that means filling out a form or calling you.

Forms are your Friend

Forms on websites are used for a variety of reasons, but reason #1 is that they can grow your potential customer database. Effective forms are easy to fill out, don’t overwhelm your customer and give you the info you need to effectively market to them. Not every customer wants to be contacted right off the bat or will be ready to buy, so while a Contact Us form is a must have, it should not be your only form. You will also want to have forms for gated content, such as your checklists and other free resources. You may even want to have a short form for name and email just to get them added to your email marketing lists.

But Where Do These “Magic Forms” Go?

Ideally you would have a Customer Relationship Database (i.e. Salesforce) but if you are just starting out an excell spreadsheet maintained with a good sales/marketing strategy will do just as well until you grow large enough to have a sales team and in which case a CRM is highly advised.

Spreadsheet Magic

If you are using a spreadsheet, the form data should go to a point person who will then import that data into the spreadsheet. We advise asking for name/address/city/state/zip/email and any business areas of interest you might want them to select.

Email Sign-ups

To save the hassle of manually adding sign-ups to your email list, companies like Constant Contact have plug-in form that you can create within your CC account and them add them to website for any email only form this is a great way to go.

More with CRM

Using a CRM like Salesforce can give you the capabilities to create forms and manage all the data that comes in without major manually imports. HubSpot also offers a great solution for gated content/forms and customer data management and sales follow-up.

Hiring Help

While creating content may be an easy part of this process, for most business owners, who have many hats to wear, creating and maintaining a website lead platform can be overwhelming. At minimum you may want to see help to initially get you going and then maintaining lead data, reaching out to have them connect web pages and forms to your CRM as you develop fresh content. Essentially this process can be as simple or complex as you want to make it, but most importantly it should work to scale with the sales goals you are trying to achieve.

Never Stop Creating

Eventually leads start coming in and you might be tempted to pat yourself on the back and say “Job well done!,” but never ever stop creating content. There will also be more questions to answer and stories to tell (And Leads!). As your business grows and serves new areas you will need to create content for that as well.

But. What. About. Google?

Think about your lead pipeline as your company’s personal reach, but if you really want to expand the bandwidth of that pipeline… you need Google. The first step to getting ranked in search results is to create great content which you will do by creating answers and resources for your prospective clients. The second part is a bit more technical and it helps if you have a web company or consultant that can help make sure Google’s bots find the things they are looking for when it scans your site. There are no written rules (ironically you can Google SEO all you want but Google will not give out their written rules on this called algorithims, which is what Google uses to rank websites). But if you create great content for your human audience and have a well developed backend structure for the bots, you have the best chances to make Google happy. There’s ALOT more then this summary and for more on SEO you can check out this article.

June 21, 2019 by mySmartMedia Leave a Comment

Are meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text, and header tags still an important part of SEO?

Traditional SEO

Too often, people still consider meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text, and header tags an important part of SEO. Are they important? The answer is yes and no.

In the previous SEO 101 article, we stated that these elements are considered “standard.” This means that having them in place won’t necessarily help you, but not having them in place will definitely hurt you. That being said, there are many other aspects of “SEO” that you should have precedence over metadata optimization. For example, if you have a web page with no H1 or H2 tags that receives 500 pageviews per week with a 70% bounce rate, your focus should be why visitors don’t like your page, not optimizing meta tags. Buy Your Tools Do yourself a favor and purchase Screaming Frog. This SEO spidering tool will crawl your website and tell you anything you want and need to know about your website. There are many other tools available, but this (in our opinion, as well as many SEO experts) is the most robust for the job.

Title Tags

• DO use keywords in your title tag

• DO make sure that your title tag is between 55 – 60 characters (or 512

pixels)

• DO make sure your tag accurately describes your page content

• DON’T focus your title tag on purely “SEO” optimization

• DON’T under-utilize the space available in this tag

o If you have extra space and your title is explanatory, compelling, and

accurate, don’t add keywords for the sake of adding keywords.

Meta Descriptions

• Generally, it’s a good idea to incorporate keywords in your meta description

• DO make sure it is between 155 – 160 characters or ~920 pixels

• DO write descriptive and compelling copy to inform your user and draw

them to your page

• DO utilize the character space available

• DON’T under-utilize the space available.

o Again, if you have extra space and your description is explanatory, compelling, and accurate, don’t add keywords for the sake of adding keywords.

Header Tags (H1 – H6)

The H1 tag should be more specific than your title tag about the subsequent sections on your page. Keep it concise and include keywords. The H1 element sometimes gets used as a snippet in Google’s search results. There should, ideally, be one H1 tag per page. The subsequent H2 – H6 tags can be used more frequently as your content becomes more categorized/focused further down the page. They should be descriptive of the subsequent content, be concise, and contain keywords where applicable.Remember, readability and user experience is real SEO. Trying to over-optimize these tags will likely reverse your search optimization efforts in that these tags are for people to read, not web crawlers.

Meta Keywords (?)

By and large, SEO experts consider this meta tag dead. Matt Cutts, former head of Google web spam team, has explicitly stated that meta keywords are not used as ranking signals for Google. Most engines won’t use these as a ranking factor (if any), and, when used improperly, can hurt your rankings. However, consider the fact that big name brands such as Amazon and Best Buy still use them. Being from the old school, I would add four to five meta keywords unique to every page on my website. That’s just a product of being in the industry when the topic of this article was important. Take them or leave them.

Conclusion

These elements, again, are “standard.” Yes, they should be in place, but no, you shouldn’t prioritize them over bigger issues your website is probably facing. If you’re wondering where the shout out is to open graph tags and all the other meta tags in existence, stay tuned as we dive further down the SEO rabbit hole each week.

June 17, 2019 by mySmartMedia Leave a Comment

SEO isn’t Rocket Science. How to develop a Solid SEO Strategy

When you think about SEO, what comes to mind? If your first thoughts were related to meta tags and keywords, you’re doing it wrong, and we’re here to help.

Before understanding what “SEO” looks like in 2016, we need to address what shapes the playing field. This can be summed up in one word: Google. This search giant owns nearly 70% of the search space, with Bing gaining ground at around 20%. Google’s algorithm updates are becoming increasingly sophisticated by the hour, so understanding their goal will help you reach yours.

Search engine algorithms are hyper-focused on the user and their intent. Serving up the most relevant search results (and ads) for a query satisfies the user, increasing the likelihood of that user returning to that search engine for their next question. You want to be the search result, or website, that answers their question. You want to be valued by Google.

Traditional SEO isn’t dead. It’s standard.

Optimization of title tags, meta descriptions, image alt tags, and header tags is, in a sense, a thing of the past. These elements are standard. Having them in place with optimal keywords will only ensure that you’re “in the building” and ready to be considered by Google to be served up to the next search query. Having these elements in place won’t give you first page status, but not having these elements will ensure that you don’t.

Is content really king?

You’ve heard it before – “Content is king.” The truth is, there’s only limited truth in that annoying buzz phrase. Content is only as valuable as your customer finds it. Pushing out fresh content (that has likely already been written and read thousands of times) is nothing more than a waste of time.

Take time to write innovative articles, infographics, podcasts, etc. that actually answer your user’s question. Keep it short and to the point. Drawing traffic to a piece of content that is too long or uninformative will increase your bounce rate (or lower your time on page), which tells Google that your page didn’t help the user. When they navigate away from your page, click on another search result, and engage, you lost to your competitor. With so much data available to everyone, you have, on average, just 8 – 12 seconds to interest your customer.

Add structured data to your website.

If you’re looking for, what feels like an SEO task, visit Schema.org. Adding structured data to your website in the form of microdata or JSON helps search engines serve up more than just your web pages. Marking up product reviews, star ratings, videos, and other on page elements makes it easier for Google to understand the elements on your website and serve them as results. Now you’re diversifying and increasing the resources that search engines can use to answer a search query.

Accessibility

This is arguably the most important piece of “SEO” as we speak. Since Google and other search engines want to satisfy their users, your website has to be able to accommodate them quickly and efficiently.

Utilize Google Analytics

Which pages have high bounce or exit rates? Did your customer leave because it was uninformative or because they couldn’t find what they were looking for? Are your customers spending considerable amounts of time on pages that don’t matter? These are questions that you should be asking yourself and sparking discussions between you and your web developer. Websites have to be easy to navigate and allow users to find what they’re looking for quickly. If not, you’re loosing out on conversions, sales, and customers.

Utilize Webmaster Consoles

Search console analysis is a must. They give you insight to your page load time, broken pages, duplicate content issues, and more. Ensuring your site loads quickly, is mobile-friendly, and doesn’t have broken pages are just a few of the issues you can identify and clear up for your users. If a searcher accesses your site with no wait, doesn’t run into any errors, doesn’t find useless content, and has the same experience on a mobile device, your chances of making the sale or converting them as a lead are exponentially higher. Presenting the user with any of the aforementioned problems will turn them off to your website and leave a bad taste in their mouth when recalling your business.

The bottom line of what SEO means this year is that technical optimization is taking a back seat to customer experience. Focusing on intent and accessibility should be at the forefront of your SEO efforts.

There is much more that can be said for any of the previous topics covered, and even more for the topics that weren’t covered (yet). Stay tuned to mySmartMedia for more on how you can get the most out of your website now, and years to come.

May 24, 2019 by mySmartMedia Leave a Comment

The message that will get you meetings on Linkedin

Linkedin has been in the news lately about its poor decisions when it comes to the user interface, product offerings and most importantly, its ability to generate sustainable revenue as seen in the 80% drop in its stock market price.

But in the long run, Linkedin is still as valuable as ever. And here’s why.

It offers both the ability to connect with potential leads on both a paid and free basis.

I personally, do not pay for any of the services, but there are some benefits to having paid accounts.

If you are a recruiter, my clients get alot of value out of the paid recruiter platforms, so sometimes, free isn’t always better.

But if you are not a recruiter and you are looking for new sales leads, then this is the article for you.

The idea is simple. Maybe you are already doing this and didn’t even realize the potential it has.

Step 1.

Connect with as many people as you can. But, be strategic about it. Look for titles that will be decision makers. If you are going after a particular company, you may be better connecting with as many people as you can from that company, even if they aren’t decision makers. Why? So when decision makers look at your invite and see you are already connected with several of their colleagues, it makes the invite more credible and gives them a greater sense of trust in accepting your invitation to link.

Step 2.

About 2 weeks after someone accepts your invite, reach out to them with a message somewhat like this…

Hey Nick,

Thanks for connecting. Would love to learn more about what’s happening at [Company Name] these days.

Do you have time for a call tomorrow or next Thursday any time between 9 a.m. and noon?

Thanks,
Sam

This message isn’t for everybody you have connected with, it’s for those identified decision makers.

Step 3.

Wait. Most of the time, you won’t get a response. Some of the time you will get a “No Thanks” reply, and, every once in a while you will strike someone at the right time who will be interested in saying yes.

Are all those non-responses and no’s a waste of time to have sent? Absolutely not! This is the process of planting seeds, some will need more time to flourish, some will need more follow-up down the road, some may not need you now but will remember that message they got from you when the time arises that they need what you have to offer.

While its easy to start this process, the hard part is staying the course and keeping it going. Following up with those non-answers in another month or two and following up with the no’s at an appropriate time in the future.

Tracking all of this.

After a while, tracking can become a major problem. If you don’t have a CRM like ACT, Salesforce, etc… there are several Free CRM’s that will work great if you are a small company or solo-entrepreneur.

Linkedin also keeps message history in your mail client and you can view messages sent to a prospect on each of their Linkedin pages.

The best part of this is that is has a very little direct cost, so in your downtime between hot prospect meetings, this is a great way to keep filling the lead nurturing funnel.

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Too often, people still consider meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text, and header tags an important part of SEO. Are they important? The answer is yes and no.

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