Introduction

There’s an old adage that goes, “There’s only two jobs in the world. Sales and sales support.”

Marketing is the engine that drives the world forward, whether we like it or not. And at its roots, marketing is simply communication.

Why then, can be so difficult to grow a business? Why can it be so challenging to communicate effectively with your prospects and even existing customers?

It’s because marketing is one of those things that’s simple, but not easy.

A good marketing agency can come alongside a business, not to offer a magic bullet for success, but to ask the hard questions and provide the detailed roadmap for finding more customers and connecting with them in a more meaningful way.

Chapter 1: Know Your Business, Know Your Customer

One of the first things a good marketing agency will do to help a business grow is learn about the business (gasp!). Marketing agencies have built a reputation in the past for acting like an egotistical knight in shining armor, thinking they will come in and save the day just because they have a ping-pong table in their office lounge. Not surprisingly though, that’s not how success usually happens.

Understanding Your Customer

The first component of a successful marketing effort is understanding your ideal customer. While this may seem pretty straightforward, it can actually be quite difficult. You may have some idea of demographics, but your marketing agency should encourage you to dig deeper and ask questions like:

Why did they choose you over your competitors?

What emotional connection do they share with your brand?

What are they interested in outside of work?

Putting together a customer psychographic is generally much harder than putting together a demographic, but if you stay committed to this idea day-in and day-out, you’ll start to develop a sound understanding of your ideal customer over time. There are also consultants, worksheets, and other resources that can help guide you to success.

Top Takeaway: Want to learn more about your customer persona? Talk to your best customers! It’s sounds pretty obvious, but few actually take the time and effort to talk to their best customers to learn why they enjoy doing business with you, and why they hired you in the first place.

Knowing what your customer enjoys outside of working hours can actually go a long way in helping you understand how they make decisions from 9-5.

Dial in Your Business Metrics

Another key element of successful marketing is, well, knowing what success looks like in the first place. We’re always surprised at the limited granularity that many business owners and marketing managers have surrounding their business and its overall operation. While business intuition and instinct are usually very high, we find room for improvement when working to understand the “itemized” opportunities within the business.

If you’re considering hiring a marketing agency to help your business grow, make sure they ask you some of the following questions:

What is the LTV (lifetime value) of a customer?

Which products/services can you scale most effectively as more orders/leads come in?

Which products/services are your most profitable?

What is your acquisition budget for a new sale? If you spent 10% of gross revenue on advertising to acquire the sale/customer, is that worth it?

What is your conversion rate for new leads that contact your business?

Our goal is to get as specific as we can on every component of a business’ operation. We may not be able to figure everything out, but the more numbers we have, the easier it will be to construct successful campaign and understand where the lowest-hanging fruit is.

Top Takeaway: At the very least, a good marketing agency should understand the value of a customer to your business, and how much you can spend to acquire that customer for sustainable growth.

The better you understand your business’ key metrics, the easier it will be to run successful marketing campaigns.

Chapter 2: Is Your Website Working?

For 95% of businesses, a winning website is the foundation of any successful marketing campaign. Here at Midas, our most successful marketing campaigns usually follow behind websites we design. This works because we understand the importance of a website, and how it needs to be structured, designed and executed in order to avoid any friction for potential customers.

The Importance of Your Website

Sometimes businesses compartmentalize various online marketing elements, thinking that social media or search engine marketing will grow their business in isolation. However, this is like a retail business thinking that as long as it distributes catchy promotional flyers, their storefront can be messy, outdated and unorganized. Silly right? The online world works the same way. Social media, search and other marketing channels may offer your business opportunities to connect with customers and bring them to your website, but if your site isn’t built to communicate clearly, add value, and convert, your honestly wasting your time and money.

Top Takeaway: Marketing to a bad website is just as detrimental as a retail business mailing out beautiful flyers only to have a messy, unorganized storefront. Take your website seriously!

Many hear that a specific marketing strategy, such as Facebook Ads, is crucial for business success. While this may be part of the equation, a poor website will immediately turn away all your Facebook visitors – even if they are responding very well (high click-through rate) to your ad on the Facebook platform.

Benchmarking Your Website

Wondering if your website is “good enough” to put the foot on the gas with a marketing campaign? Here are a few questions you can ask:

-Has it been more than 4 years since you’ve redesigned your site?

-Is your website fully mobile-responsive, looking just as good on a phone as it does on a computer?

-Does your site clearly guide potential customers to your primary website goal, like requesting a quote?

-Is your site updated actively with new products, staff members, blog posts, and other content?

-Do you know how well your website is performing currently?

It may be tempting to want to just rush into a marketing campaign, but considering your website first and foremost is almost always a must for a successful campaign.

Top Takeaway: Download our checklist and work through it with your team to determine how you’re doing. After you’re done, contact us and we’ll be happy to take a look ourselves and offer any tips and pointers we might see!

Chapter 3: Building a Funnel

Once your website is built (or rebuilt), and you have a deep, well-defined knowledge of your customer, your ready to start filling your pipeline with leads. There’s a few different ways to do this, but almost all strategies incorporate three elements: an invitation, an offer, and the initial email sequence.

The Invitation

The invitation is how you present your offer, which will get into next. While the offer is important, its presentation goes a long way in determining how well it attracts customers. Having an opt-in box or chat window pop up on your website is an example of an invitation. However, if this is set to immediately pop up as soon as a visitor gets to your site, you’d better have a killer offer for your prospect or else they will likely be annoyed by this intrusion and bounce from your site.

A better strategy may be to offer to email a discount coupon for a specific service based on certain pages on your website. For example, a painting company may offer an exterior painting discount for new customers, and set the promotion to only pop up when a visitor is on their exterior painting services page.

In summary, the invitation is your presentation of your initial offer, whether its a PDF download, discount, case study, or a direct link to a certain landing page on your website. Be strategic about how you present your offer, giving special consideration to your ideal customer persona.

Top Takeaway: Getting in the mind of your customer is crucial to proper presentation of your offer. Do it right, and you’ll build trust and rapport before they even contact you. Be too aggressive or unfocused and you may actually leave a bad brand impression.

The Offer

Everyone loves a discount, a freebie, or other valuable resource. This is especially true for new prospects who may need a little more nudging than your existing customers. Offers are usually presented via an invitation either through a landing page, opt-in window or something similar.

The idea here is to offer something of value in exchange for an email address and permission to market to that email. Seth Godin dubbed this permission-based marketing. Here are a few examples of what business offer their customers:

-An online retailer may offer 15% off a new customer’s first order

-A painting company may offer $250 off an exterior repaint

-A SaaS company may offer a 30-day free trial of their software

-A technology company may offer an in-depth case study of its product

Be strategic about both your offer and invitation, and let your prospects know that they’ll get instant access to the offer by signing up for your email list. Once they sign up, they’ll receive their offer and your funnel is now starting to grow!

Top Takeaway: Look to other competitors in your industry if you aren’t sure what to offer your customer. Try to solve a pain point or give them something of value that doesn’t take too much away from your bottom line.

Whether you want to capture email leads as discussed in this article, or drive traffic to a specific webpage as shown here, you have to be intentional about the goals of your website in order to effectively generate leads and close more deals.

The Email Sequence

Once a potential customer opts in to your list and claims your offer, you have to deliver! The problem here, is it takes a lot of effort and attention to constantly be monitoring your website and prospect activity. What’s the answer? Email automation!

Email automation is basically setting up a sequence of emails to go out to your new prospects after their get on your email list. An example of an email sequence would be sending new contacts three emails over the course of the first week after their claim your offer. Email sequences can be as simple or complex as you make them, but one example might look like this:

Invitation: A pop-up box offers a free trial for a software company once a visitor navigates to the pricing page.

Offer: Potential customers are able to use the software for 30 days for free.

Email sequence: The first email is sent immediately after a subscriber claims the offer, giving the prospect a code to use the software for free for thirty day. A handful of other emails may go out over the duration of the trial, offering customer testimonials, case studies, and opportunities to schedule a demo to learn more about using the software. As the trial period comes to an end, a few emails may be scheduled to offer a discount for the first few months of becoming a paid customer of the software.

Top Takeaway: Email sequences, and building funnels in general, is no easy task. While it is possible to manage it on your own, usually hiring a marketing agency to help guide this process will position your company for success in the long run.

Your lead magnet delivery email should always include a soft call-to-action for the prospect to take the next step closer to becoming a customer, such as booking a consultation or scheduling a demo.

Chapter 4: Marketing Campaign Components

Once your website is ready to go and your funnel is in place, you’re ready to put together a marketing campaign to effectively grow your business. Different strategies work for different businesses, but all good digital marketing campaigns will include some, if not all, of the components below.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of positioning your website to be seen by Google as an authority in your industry for your businesses key products and services. Doing this well is rewarded by Page 1 rankings for your top keywords. SEO is a combination of website optimization, content marketing, and linkbuilding. SEO campaigns often need a longer runway for success, but once your website starts ranking well, your business will benefit for months and sometimes years down the road.

To learn more about SEO, visit our SEO services page.

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is directly paying for clicks to your website (or another form of immediate engagement). Google Adwords and Facebook Ads are two common forms of paid advertising in the digital marketing realm. Unlike SEO, it’s possible to see immediate success with your paid advertising campaigns. However, once you stop paying, your traffic will stop coming in as well.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is often considered part of SEO (and rightly so), but it deserves its own distinction. Content marketing, simply put, is building trust, thought leadership, and visibility in your industry by producing and sharing valuable content. While an active and strategic blogging effort drives a content marketing campaign, other elements such as social sharing tactics can reinforce your content, leading to a full-on inbound marketing program. As both search and social shift more towards “meaningful marketing,” producing interesting content is now a must for just about every business’ marketing strategy.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most preferred and profitable marketing channels for many businesses. Why is this? Because people on your email list already have some sort of relationship with your brand, meaning there are less obstacles to overcome to move your prospects down your funnel. As you already “own” the audience, your only fees for email marketing are the cost of using your email platform (usually pretty nominal), and the time it takes to manage your email marketing effort. In an age of shifting social networks and anticipating the trends of search, email remains the one constant to nurture your prospects and reinforce value with existing customers.

Social Media

Social media means a lot of different things to a lot of different business. It’s an ever-changing jungle filled with plenty of opportunities for the businesses that can keep up. From a high-level, social media is often a place to start new relationships with prospects and reinforce value with your existing “tribe.” It’s usually not smart to push your products and services too hard on social media as people are on social networks to “hang out.” However, social does provide great opportunities to build brand equity and grow your tribe when it’s managed effectively.

Print Marketing

Print marketing has taken a backseat to digital over the last decade, but as the online world gets more crowded, print is finding opportunities to make a comeback. Having winning business cards, brochures, and direct mail pieces can now be way to separate yourself from your competition and leave a lasting impression in the mind of your prospects and customers.

Top Takeaway: Developing an understanding of your customer is critical to properly know which marketing channels to pursue. If your business is sells apparel to young adults, a channel like Instagram is a must. If you are a B2B company selling specific, niche products, you would want to consider a good SEO plan to make sure your products show up in online search engines.

Once you’re confident you have a website that will inspire action from your ideal customer, only then does it make sense to fuel up your business with a marketing budget.

Chapter 5: Understanding Your Marketing Performance

You might be tracking with us so far, but at the end of the day you need to know that partnering with a marketing agency to grow your business is actually going to work. And unless you are super familiar with Facebook Ads, Google Analytics and the code to your website, evaluating digital marketing performance can feel a bit like an overwhelming mystery.

While this is certainly understandable, here are four things to review and you determine how well your marketing efforts are paying off.

ROI: Analyzing you conversion rates, customer lifetime values, and other metrics to determine your actual return on your marketing investment.

Equivalent Value: Comparing your digital marketing spending to more traditional forms of advertising as well as cross-checking against your various digital channels.

Brand Equity: Monitoring your overall reach and engagement to grow your brand value for the long run.

Overall Business Growth: How your business is doing when all the dust settles.

Let’s look at each of these a little bit closer.

Return on Investment (ROI)

This is the holy grail of most digital marketing campaigns, and can be calculated once you answer the questions above in our “business metrics” section of this article. For campaigns we run, we set up goals within your website analytics to track performance as closely as possible.

Equivalent Value (EV)

ROI can be harder for some businesses to track than others, depending on how many offline components are involved in your sales process, or how valuable brand equity (tough to measure online) is for your business. Equivalent Value (EV) is a way of comparing your marketing against other marketing channels, so you at least know if you are spending your dollars wisely. Valuing organic traffic is often used as a way of calculating EV vs. something like Google Adwords. If your website is getting 1,000 clicks per month from online search engines, and the average cost-per-click with Google Adwords if you were paying for those clicks directly is $2.00 per click, you know your organic traffic has an EV of $2,000/month. Over time you can compare that with your SEO budget to make sure you are spending in the most effective way possible.

Brand Equity

One of the harder metrics to grasp, at least for most small and mid-size businesses, are intangible concepts like audience reach and brand impressions. We all know that every single time a prospect sees your ad, you’re business is better off – even if they don’t take action right away. In fact, it may take years of this before a prospect reaches out and connects with your company. So while it’s hard to measure, it’s very important. Our goal with campaigns that we run is to always be ROI positive, knowing that the reach and impressions from the campaign is icing on the cake and will pay dividends over time for our client.

Overall Business Growth

The bottom line when running a campaign is of course, overall business growth. In many cases, this is where the added benefit with things like brand impressions and top-of-mind awareness come into play. Unless there is a significant outside factor (losing a big source of revenue unrelated to marketing, etc.), evaluating your overall business growth is a good way to see how well your marketing agency is guiding your business forward.

Top Takeaway: A victorious marketing effort starts at the very beginning. If you know your customer well and understand your business inside and out, marketing starts to turn into a plan to execute rather than a mystery to be solved.

While marketing will always have its creative, “colorful” side, good marketing is based just as much, if not more, off strong analytical understanding.

Summary: Partnering with a Marketing Agency

Congrats! You made it through an extensive but hopefully informative article on how a marketing agency can help your business grow!.

The TL;DR version goes like this:

Know your customer like you know a friend, and develop a good grasp on your business’ key metrics.

Then…

Build a great website that will serve as an effective salesperson working 24/7 on your behalf.

Then…

Create an irresistible offer to generate new top-of-funnel leads for your business.

Then…

Once you have built a profitable, lucrative offer in place, turn on the marketing jets to drive traffic to your site and watch that traffic turn into new leads!

Then…

Take time to review and evaluate your marketing performance to make sure everything is working.

There’s no magic bullet to marketing, but there are proven & timeless marketing elements that are ready to be put to work for your business’ success.

Are you considering hiring a marketing agency? We know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone….OK just kidding, it’s us. Contact us to get started!

The post How a Marketing Agency Helps Your Business Grow appeared first on Midas Marketing.

The pop culture quote “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to the internet. Just because you have a website published doesn’t mean people will be able to find you. It takes the right approach, the right platform, and a strategy for SEO.

That’s why businesses that are serious about growing take advantage of a WordPress Specialist. These gurus know how to build an aesthetic website that is easy to find, easy to navigate, and generates qualified leads for your business.

How do they do it? And is it really worth the investment? We certainly think so! But you should decide for yourself after reading these 5 highlights of hiring a web designer trained in WordPress:

The Advantages of Hiring a WordPress Specialist

Did you know WordPress is the #1 content management system (or “CMS”) in the world?  This massive platform makes up nearly 27% of the websites online today.

That’s why there are so many WordPress Specialists available. They know the in’s and out’s of this advantageous platform, and how to help your business make the most of it.

WordPress has and will continue to take over the web design world. Working with a WordPress specialist can turn website from a liability to a sales-driving asset.

Here are 5 ways a WordPress specialist will bring your website to life:

1. WordPress Serves as a Powerful Engine for Your Website

If your website isn’t built on WordPress, you could be missing out.

Google is a big fan of WordPress sites. They rank well in search engine results because of well-structured content and the tendency to have a steady stream of updates.

In fact, Google endorses the use of WordPress for site design. The advantages of WordPress allow you to build a custom website that serves as a lead-generation machine for your business.

After all, your site is more than just a digital billboard. It serves as the hub for most digital marketing strategies. Used correctly, it should turn your web traffic into conversions that grow your business.

Whether your business sells products via an e-commerce platform or you’re building a website designed to showcase your services, WordPress gives you the tools and options to create what you need without constraints.

But keep in mind that not everything about WordPress should be “DIY”. While anyone can create a website on the platform and select a theme, it takes an expert to know how to optimize it and integrate various features.

From mobile responsiveness to plugins to SEO optimization, there’s a lot that goes into building a professional and useful website design, which is why hiring a specialist comes in handy.

2. Having an Expert Build Your Website Saves a Lot of Time

When you’re running a business, time is precious. You don’t want to waste weeks–or even months–trying to overcome a learning curve in order to build a website. Not only are you wasting time better spent on running your business, but you also run a high risk of missing important web design steps or elements.

By hiring a WordPress specialist, you guarantee quality results while opening up your own time or the time of your employees to be better spent on their job responsibilities.

Plus, the task gets done quicker. The average timeline for a custom web design is often 6 to 8 weeks. In that span, a good developer mocks up, stagings, and launches your website for you.

As he or she goes about this process, they will use expertise picked up through formal education and/or training to ensure that your site is built correctly from the front-end to the back.

They can also train you on how to post blogs, make updates, or manage your website properly, or you can hire them to do this for you.

The latter of these two options is a worthy investment. One that saves you time while ensuring the job is done right.

3. The Ways a WordPress Specialist Makes Maintenance & Management Easier

Because websites require monthly updates after they’re published to maintain optimal functionality and SEO, it’s good to have an expert available who can handle it.

Typical website security and maintenance services include:

• Updating Plugins & Themes
• Monitoring Website Security
• Responding to and Preventing Downtime
• Initiating Website Backups

But what about the other stuff, like uploading new photos, creating new pages, or formatting and posting your company blogs?

Enter Website Management: a service most businesses choose in order to save money, improve efficiency, and gain peace of mind.

When you put your website’s management into the hands of a WordPress Specialist, you save on the cost of having to hire a website developer in-house in order to use your site to your advantage.

These individuals are no stranger to coding. From HTML and CSS to PHP and Javascript, they know how to create, maintain, fix, and update this foreign “web language” so your website maintains a professional look as well as its structural integrity.

They can also include this coding on any site updates you create. This is important when you’re making changes to your website. Even blogs have a unique set of coding that is essential to its formatting and SEO performance.

Not knowing how to update your website properly can lead to poor display, broken elements, and other “emergencies” you don’t want your web traffic stumbling upon.

4. A WordPress Specialist Can Help with Your SEO Strategy

Okay, so we’ve covered your website’s design and maintenance, but what about SEO? There’s no point in having a website nobody can find.

No matter how good your website design is, you aren’t going to pop up on the first page of Google overnight. It takes strategy to move up in search engine rankings, and the competition can be thick.

Currently, there are over 18 BILLION websites on the internet today–and counting. Carving your place on the world wide web requires you to prove to search engines your content and services are the best solutions to certain keywords researched by its users.

To do that, businesses develop or hire someone to develop an SEO strategy. This strategic marketing approach researches the most relevant keywords in your business, then uses both internal and external content to help you rank for them.

SEO is a full-time job for most businesses. It requires not only implementation but also maintenance. Your ranking changes in real-time based on new websites entering the pool and updates on existing websites trying to rank for the same keywords as you.

That means getting to the first page of search engines is only half the battle. The other half requires constant, daily monitoring and maintenance if you want to achieve optimal performance.

WordPress Specialists trained in SEO can do that by:

• Producing Relevant On-Page Content
• Producing Relevant Off-Page Content
• Building Quality Backlinks to Your Site
• Auditing Poor Backlinks to Your Site
• Improving Your Site Speed
• Improving Your Mobile Responsiveness
• And More…

All of these things are ongoing strategies, not singular tasks. They have to be implemented continuously in order to build and maintain your SEO performance.

But what if you need to rank fast? There is a strategy for that, too. It’s called Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. Many WordPress Specialists trained in SEO are also familiar with SEM strategies, including AdWords, Google’s popular platform for digital marketing.

The difference between SEO and SEM is that SEM is paid advertising. You’ve seen it before. From the banners on various websites to the top 3 listings on each of your Google search results, SEM puts you in front of your customers’ eyes.

For a price, of course.

If you’re interested in pairing an SEM strategy with your SEO, be sure to ask a website specialist about digital marketing opportunities.

5. A WordPress Specialist Can Improve Your Digital Marketing Campaigns

While we’re on the topic of marketing, another advantage to hiring a WordPress Specialist is he or she can help you get the most out of your digital campaigns.

From newsletters to landing pages to setting up call-to-actions, a good WordPress Specialist can adapt your website to whatever digital campaign you have going.

Have a sale on a product? Advertise it on your website via blogs, a landing page for SEM, or a slider image on your homepage.

Do you produce a monthly newsletter? Add a newsletter signup pop-up to your website to build your audience.

Perhaps you’re big on social media. Great! Add widgets or icons to your website in order to help new visitors stay connected.

When it comes to campaigns, there are numerous ways your website can both support and expand its reach. However, you won’t know how or when to use them without insight from an expert.

By hiring a WordPress specialist, you receive this expertise through a third party vendor, saving you the cost of hiring an in-house employee while making you money through advanced website development and maintenance.

Pretty cool, right?

Let Us Help You Optimize Your Website

Ready to have your website built and managed the right way? We can help your business grow with your website design, branding, SEO, and copywriting needs. We’ll set you up with a WordPress Specialist who can design and optimize a website tailored to your business.

Contact us to get started!

The post 5 Ways A WordPress Specialist Can Bring Your Website To Life appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Just because you run a successful business doesn’t mean the search engines will automatically pick up all your products and services when potential customers are searching.

While these search engines algorhithms can seem confusing, but there is a method to the madness. Figure out that method, and you’ll end up with quality results.

Luckily, there are people who can optimize your website and manage marketing campaigns to make your business more visible online. This person is called an SEO expert. Search engine optimization is key for generating traffic on your site, which is the first step in growing your business using online marketing.

Do you need an SEO expert on your team? Let’s take a look.

What is an SEO Expert?

An SEO expert is someone who’s skilled in the art of building online traffic. It gets complicated, and it’s important to know what you’re doing because a wrong move could send you to the bottom of the barrel.

Search engines operate by reading your website and determining how much it can be trusted for your target keywords, which should reflect your primary products and services.

A good way to determine trust is to look at how many other websites are linking back to your site. If a popular website links to your website’s blog post or service pages, it’s a way of acknowledging your credibility for whatever that article or service may be. It’s kind of like the search engine algorithm’s version of a referral.

Typically, the more links to your site, the better. This gets tricky though, because not all links are created equally.

Think of search engines as crusaders for quality content in a never-ending battle against spam. Research shows that nearly 60 percent of the links on the internet are spam. Nobody likes spam.

The more spam that is associated with your site, the less likely you are to come up on a search. Alternatively, the more trusted sites that you’re associated with, the more likely you’ll be at the top.

That’s called link value, and we’ll get to that soon.

The process of acquiring links to your website is often known as linkbuilding, and is a critical part of improving your online presence. Linkbuilding is fairly technical and time-consuming, which is why many businesses prefer to hire an SEO expert to help guide their business to the top of the online search mountain.

With a few hours of research, you may be able to grasp and even execute a few basic linkbuilding ideas on your own. But you could also work on your own engine, build your own home, or defend yourself in court.

If you really want to dominate the search engine results, the most efficient route for many business is to hire an SEO expert.

The Link Almighty

So, why are links so important? How do they work?

The idea is pretty intuitive, but it can be helpful to get a run-through on the specifics. We mentioned a link is like a referral, but you can think of links as references on a job application.

The more references the better, right? That depends. You wouldn’t want to put a known drug dealer down as a reference on a job application.

You would, however, want to put Bill Gates down. That would immediately bump your resume to the top of the pile.

The concept is the same with links. The less trusted the links in your network are, the less likely a search engine is to trust you. If your site is frequently linked to websites like popular news sites or universities, you’ll be more trusted.

So the question is, “How do I get associated with the most trusted links?” The job search analogy applies here as well.

In order to be qualified for a high ranking job position, you need to have relevant experience, quality references, and the people skills to land the interview in the first place.

Thankfully link building is a bit more straightforward than job hunting, and unlike a job interview, it can be contracted out to the experts!

Just like with a job interview, if your website has strong references from other popular websites, it will be seen with more authority.

Types of Links

In the early days of the internet, search engines determined your spot by examining the material on your website. The status quo is now focused on how many people have linked to you.

We’ve established that having more links means having more SEO traffic. That’s a general rule, but as mentioned not all links give you the same pull in the eyes of the search engine.

Popular Sites

Links from popular sites will hold more weight in a search engine. Popular sites tend to have more links, so they are seen as more important. Getting links from popular sites will make you a more popular site.

However popular sites also know their worth, and it takes a skilled SEO expert to land those links for your business.

Niche Sites

Getting links from sites in your niche is also a huge plus. This means that you should try and buddy up with similar sites to your own, even if that means competitors.

Think of it this way: if you were a musician and you had links on the pages of every artist in the top 40, you’d get more traffic than if you had links from the 10 greatest plumbers in the world.

A good SEO expert will work to build relevant links from authoritative sites in your industry.

Link Neighborhood

You will want to link to other sites as well, and by doing so you enter into new “link neighborhoods.” A link neighborhood is the nexus of links that you are connected with in a sort of link exchange.

Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that you aren’t linking to sites that aren’t trusted. Your best bet would be to link to popular websites that get a lot of traffic (but that doesn’t mean that you should avoid the chance to promote a friend, or local artist’s website).

Low-Ranking Links

When you comment on a social website, or post frequently on social media, you are also generating links. These don’t hold nearly as much weight as a link from The New York Times, but hey, it’s still something.

You may be thinking, “I could just post a million comments in every video I watch on Youtube!” Don’t think that.

If you throw an inhuman amount of low-ranking links into the internet, the internet will associate you with those low-ranking links. You would then be spamming. You would become the Internet’s enemy.

Time Frame

The internet has been around for a long time. Ever notice that you never see websites from before 2005? That’s because links lose value as they age if the website is not updated with fresh content and design.

You’ll want to keep your website current and maintain an active SEO linkbuilding strategy, even if you are already ranking well for your search terms.

Search engines do this to keep their searches up-to-date because some things just aren’t relevant anymore.

How Do I Improve My Link Value?

An SEO expert can help you, but you may already have access to some low-hanging fruit.

Just like anything else, you’re going to have to start small. Ask around to people that you know who have websites or blogs. If they’re in your niche, even better.

Build relationships with other people in your niche by commenting or messaging with them. The comments will add a little value to your site in the search engine, while the simple act of reaching out greatly improves your odds of getting links on this person’s site.

Another way to boost your site’s ranking is to start a blog that falls into your site’s niche. You’ll want to maintain it and write consistently. Many SEO experts can help you manage this as content and linkbuilding go hand-in-hand in a good SEO campaign.

Developing quality content on your blog will reinforce your linkbuilding campaign, as the search engines will see that not only do you have good links pointing to your site, but you are consistently producing relevant content related to your keywords as well.

It can be difficult to do all of the things listed above on your own. Hiring an SEO expert, as mentioned, can save you time and grow your business when done right.

What Should I Look for in an SEO Expert?

Just like links, not every SEO expert holds the same value. It may seem like a simple job at first glance, but there is a lot of detail and work that goes into optimizing your site.

Make sure to have an open discussion with the person or team you choose before they begin taking the internet by storm. A storm can be good and bad.

The person managing your site holds a lot of power, and they can do some damage to your reputation if they aren’t careful. That’s why you need to ask them a few things before you begin doing business:

Set clear expectations as to what you would like to see. Discuss a result that you would like to see in a certain time frame, and hold them accountable to that. They should be able to look at your keywords ahead of time and make recommendations to match your budget and timeline.

Next, make sure that their practices are going to be beneficial to you. Ensure that they aren’t going to turn your site into one that’s registered as spam, or link you to unfavorable sites. This is what happens when many “budget” SEO experts start running a campaign

Lastly, look for reviews and references. If your SEO expert can’t point to specific examples of successful work, your company probably isn’t going to be their first home run.

Start Doing the Work

Developing an effective and successfully-ranked website is not always easy. You can hire an SEO expert, but you’ll want to begin laying the groundwork as soon as you can with some of the tips in this blog.

Regardless of whether you go the DIY-route or contract a professional SEO company, make sure you have a good understanding of your business metrics and customers before you start.

Ready to go? Start brainstorming ways to generate high-quality links to your site that won’t damage you in the long run. If you’d like to talk to us about SEO for your business you can get in contact with an SEO expert.

The post How an SEO Expert Can Help You Grow Your Business appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Creating a business is about more than your product and team.

Strong business plans include investment opportunities, research and development plans, and a well-designed logo.

That’s right – as much as the practical things matter, you need to get creative as well. A weak logo puts you at risk to lose consumers, either to competitors or because your market simply doesn’t understand you.

To keep this from happening, you need to understand the importance of a logo.

It’s more than a symbol, it’s the face of your brand.

Let’s take a look at everything a strong logo does.

1. Introduce Your Brand

A logo is one of the first things a user will see when they’re getting to know you.

This might be someone scrolling through social media or an investor you hand your business card to. Either way, you need to get their attention.

If you don’t make a strong first impression across the board, you will likely miss many opportunities for growth.

Think of your logo like a window into your company. Give it a bit of character and make sure its unique.

The more you stand out, the better your branding strategy will be down the line.

2. Tell a Story

Once you’ve gotten someone’s interest, you have to keep the conversation going.

This is the real importance of a logo – to tell users who you are.

A logo is a reflection of company values, products, and mission. You might not think it possible to say so much with just one symbol, but there are many design elements at play to make this happen.

Through the emotions of colors and the psychology of shapes, you can use logos to relate to your market.

Every detail matters, and more often than not has a deeper meaning.

3. Gain Recognition

While you’re working with different design elements, you have to find the balance between standing out and doing too much.

This helps boost brand recognition.

Not every consumer is going to fall in love with your logo right away and make a purchase. In fact, it rarely happens like this.

But, over time, users will start to associate your logo with various kinds of positive attributes. As they go about their daily lives, your logo is continuously popping up to gain more relevance in their mind.

Such a process gets them one step closer to completing the buying cycle.

4. Improve Your Marketing Strategies

Logos don’t just appear on billboards or online ads out of nowhere.

A marketing team makes a plan to put your unique symbol where more people can see it.

This means your logo has to be made with digital and print platforms in mind.

Eventually, it will be on your website, social media posts, and email chains as well as company apparel, business cards, and even posters or fliers.

The Importance of a Logo Depends on Its Design

With so many branding efforts relying on a logo, a strong design isn’t an option. It’s a must.

Your logo has to be simple yet interesting, and classic, but daring.

It’s a hard thing to do if you don’t have the right eye or design skills. If you need help, we’re here for you and your business.

Contact us today to discuss your logo-making opportunities.

The post Understanding the Importance of a Logo for Your Business appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Your website is one of the first impressions your business will make on a potential customer. So it better be a good one!

With 73% of Americans going online daily and 21% saying they’re online “almost constantly,” periodic reviews of your website effectiveness are essential.

So let’s make sure your website is doing its job by looking at what makes a website effective overall.

Clear Communication

First and foremost, your website communication needs to be clear and optimized for your target audience. That means using simple language to convey the following:

• What your company does: Try to explain your services in a brief, Twitter-friendly description of 140 characters or less. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a great exercise to keep your communication clear and succinct.
• The purpose of the website: Is it to provide menu details for your restaurant or tech support for a product? Make your objective clear from the get-go.
• A simple call-to-action: Whether you want people to subscribe to your newsletter or call for custom pricing options, make sure they know what to do after viewing your site.

It’s tough to strike the perfect balance between including too much information and too little on your website. But your best bet is to focus on using concise language with quick, catchy descriptions that get your main points across.

Also be sure to check for silly spelling and grammatical errors that can undermine your website’s trustworthiness. Every detail counts when it comes to keeping users engaged.

User-Friendliness & Functionality

The modern attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish. That means your website needs to be quick and easy to use, or your customers may just swim away.

Check that all important sections are clearly labeled and easy to navigate to. Ideally, nothing should be more than three clicks away from your homepage. Also, spend time clicking through your links to make sure they all actually work.

That includes ensuring that your web design functions as well on mobile as it does on desktop. Keep in mind that if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, you could lose up to 40% of your visitors!

So make sure your pages are responsive and your web experience is fluid by trying it out yourself.

Smooth Transactions & Analytics

The best way to measure your website effectiveness is analytics. Page view data, where your visitors navigated from, and where they spent the most time can offer clues about what’s working and what’s not.

If a certain page has far more bounces–people visiting and quickly clicking away–than other pages, that’s a flag that something’s not quite right about the page.

Likewise, e-commerce vendors should focus on keeping their shopping experience as seamless as possible. Visitors should be able to edit their carts, apply promotional codes, and make secure purchases all without having to contact support.

Website Effectiveness Made Simple

If you make your website more effective, you’ll boost your web traffic, up your mobile views, and increase the amount of time spent on your page. All things that factor into that all-important SEO ranking!

But ensuring your website effectiveness is an ongoing process. If you have any questions on how to increase your site views, give us a shout or request a free quote today.

The post How to Check Your Website Effectiveness appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Over 80% of marketers say that they use Facebook to help to generate leads and beef up their content strategy.

In fact, in a single year, the number of brands using Facebook to advertise their products/services has grown by about 50%. 

But how can you use social ads on Facebook to generate valuable leads?

Read this guide to find out!

How Do Social Ads Work?

Basically, Facebook ads take the guesswork out of finding your target market on social media.

After your brand provides Facebook with some information about your company, your mission, and what you sell or offer, Facebook finds users they know will be interested in what you’re all about.

Then, an ad will show up in the “news feed” of your new potential customers. These ads are a much more targeted way to get new clients than traditional digital marketing methods. You’re playing to your niche, not the whole world.

Usually, these ads will feature a special offer (like a discount or a free gift with purchase) created by your brand to entice customers. Then, the Facebook user can essentially “sign up” to get the offer. This means you’ve got a quality lead.

How To Make The Most Of These Facebook Ads

Of course, as social media users are exposed to more and more ads every day, you need to work hard to ensure that yours stand out from the competition.

Start by selecting a wider age range when you’re asked to name your target demographic.

First, doing this will these lead to more clicks to your site, which will ultimately boost your site in the Google rankings. But it will also allow you to “test out” the interest of a wider age range before you totally overhaul your marketing plan to cater to them.

You can also get more specific about the exact interests of your target market through a new Facebook ad feature called “Detailed Marketing.”

This new feature lets you set the required interests of the Facebook users who will see their products in their news feeds.

As opposed to a broader set of interests that possibly fit with your branding, you can get specific about the exact interests you know your target market has.

For example, if you’re a natural beauty company, instead of just “cosmetics,” you may be able to say something like “natural beauty products.”

Doing this won’t just increase your conversions, it will also ensure that you’re spending your advertising money the right way on social media.

You’re Ready To Get The Most Out Of Social Ads

The reality is that Facebook, and other social media platforms, are some of the most important tools when it comes to reaching new customers and keeping past ones coming back.

No matter the economic climate, your business can use digital marketing, content, and social media strategies to thrive.

Ready to get started on making this your most productive quarter ever?

Get in touch with us to learn more about the services we offer that will get you more hits, higher rankings, and unreal profits.

The post Social Ads: How to Generate Real Leads on Facebook appeared first on Midas Marketing.