Marketing - Mike McRitchie | Resume and LinkedIn Profile Writer | Telecom Marketing Content Writer

Psychology of Advertising…Secrets to Boost Response

June 12, 2020 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

Did you know that by some recent estimates, the average person is exposed to up to 10,000 advertisements each day? In such a saturated market, only the very best ads are going to be able to really capture customers’ attention. To make sure you’re giving yourself every advantage, take a moment to learn about the principles of advertising psychology and how you can implement these tips and tricks into your own online ads. The guide from RentSpree below outlines which colors, fonts, and emotions you should be targeting to make sure your ads are making an impression.

5 Reasons Why the Look of Your Website is Vital for Your Business

May 16, 2020 by Keith Coppersmith Leave a Comment

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The clerks in your brick-and-mortar store (assuming that you have one) represent your brand and all of its values when interacting with customers. You have specific policies in terms of appropriate attire expected from your employees, as well as attitudes, and the knowledge required to do their jobs well. If a customer were to be greeted with a confused shrug every time they had a question, they’d likely never come back to your store. The same would happen if the clerk were wearing a tutu skirt and a bikini top, selling urns.

It’s no different with your website. Merely replace the confused shrug with a messy, ad-riddled landing page, or a missing security certificate from your check-out page. It’s annoying, doesn’t elicit trust, and it sure as hell won’t inspire anyone to come back any time soon.

It’s evident from these simple, but not isolated examples that the aesthetics of your site can be vital for the perception your customers have of your brand and the potential outcomes of those interactions.

Establishing trustworthiness

If a brand experiments with colors, it can be construed as playful and adaptive to a specific campaign or digital environment, but it can also be seen as confusing. Consistency in the visual presentation of your brand on your site enables your customers to recall your brand, connect the dots, and feel comfortable trusting you with their money. If your logo, overall website design, and imagery are all drastically -different from how you present yourself on, say, social media or in your store, you risk losing their trust.

Let your customers immediately recognize your brand as soon as they land on your website. The visual content should match your identity and your promise, and allow them to see you as truthful and transparent.

Increasing website traffic

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Do the numbers agree with your assessment of your website and its look and feel? If not, you have an opportunity to tap into the data you collect and see where your site fails to impress your audience. As you’ll notice, your customers will consistently spend more time on well-designed pages, read well-structured articles, and purchase well-represented products.

Maximizing the potential of your website’s look starts with using your digital marketing reporting software to understand the gaps in your existing design and spot the most attractive segments based on various KPIs. From your bounce rate, average time per page, all the way to the average duration of each session on your site, you can use the information to then adapt the layout, navigation, and other visual elements of your site that are stifling your traffic and conversions.

Showcasing your security assurance

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Customers are getting smarter every day, and they will only leave their most sensitive information (and their cash) with brands whose website clearly indicates security measures across the board. So, if you’ve managed to impress your customer with a stellar website, superb track record from other customers based on testimonials, and you’ve defeated your competitors with your product selection, it’s time to seal the deal – quite literally so.

Using security seals and badges on your site lets you send a clear message with the help of these simple, straightforward visuals: it’s safe to buy from us. It would be a pity to have spent all that time on tweaking your website structure only to fail so majestically because of such a simple omission. Make sure that each relevant page of your site strategically emphasizes your trust seals and security measures to make your customers feel safe with your brand.

Enabling brand awareness through consistency

Another long-term consequence of design consistency on your site is stronger brand awareness. In turn, brand awareness is the gateway to customer loyalty that no business can afford to neglect. The overarching look of your site creates the necessary basis for brand recognition, only to build on that wave of relevance to help customers associate specific emotions, values, and promises that your brand stands for.

The look of your site plays more than a marginal role in this process, because the visuals, the navigation, and the layout of your site all need to correspond with your identity traits such as your innovative spirit, generosity, honesty, and integrity. One smart design solution at a time, and you have an entire business development strategy built into your website.

The site you build and continue developing for your brand is not merely a digital storefront, but also an extension of your brand identity, of your values, your promise, mission, and vision. The more you invest in updating your identity while retaining its essence through content creation, the greater your chances are to stand out for your target audience and be remembered for future purchases.

Add to that, the appeal of your site will inspire them to recommend you to others, which will inevitably create an opportune loop for growth. To conclude, there’s nothing superficial about appearance. It’s as functional and substantial as every other aspect of your brand, and it should be treated accordingly.

Why Small Businesses Need SEO More Than Ever in 2020

March 9, 2020 by Keith Coppersmith Leave a Comment

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As you may have probably heard by now, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is no longer considered to be an optional marketing strategy but rather mandatory. The main reason is that the online market is growing to be more competitive and overcrowded each year.

2020 is finally here and you can pretty much guess the situation; SEO became more important than ever. This is especially true for small businesses. Many SMBs need a way to stand out in such a competitive environment, as well as gain a much-needed competitive advantage over well-established and better-funded companies that are already favoring a good presence in the market.

Competing in such a dynamic landscape is difficult enough as it is. Without marketing, small companies and especially new ones wouldn’t stand a chance against those who came first. Fortunately, SEO and the rest of the marketing strategies can give everyone a fighting chance. With that in mind, here are a few reasons why small businesses need SEO more than ever.

SEO is cost-effective

It’s no secret that the budget SMBs commonly have cannot compare to that of the large enterprises and popular brands. If a company has enough funds to launch a large-scale marketing campaign that will cover every important marketing aspect, then how does a small company compete against that with a tight enough budget as it is?

The answer is cost-effective marketing strategies, such as SEO. Using the budget wisely is essential for SMBs. You cannot overspend on marketing if that will leave you without enough funds to develop your products or grow your business efficiently. That’s why you need a strategy that will ensure your money’s worth. This is exactly how SEO works.

You can spend as much as you can and still get viable results from it. Whether those results are portrayed as more web traffic, improved visibility, greater exposure or anything else, it will be beneficial for your small business. The key, however, is knowing in which SEO tactics to invest so that you can benefit from it even with a small budget.

Being visible is vital

Visibility in the online world is of the utmost importance, especially in 2020. Consumers tend to do a lot of research before they decide to make a purchase or devote their attention to a business. SEO helps your visibility increase by helping you rank well on search engines, such as Google.

But how does that benefit my business, you ask? Here are a few benefits of being visible online and ranking well on search engines.

The majority of consumers won’t go beyond the first page of search results.
Appearing on the first page of search results is considered to be a recommendation as far as consumers are concerned.
Between 70% and 80% of consumers focus on organic results while ignoring paid ads.
Consumers look for reviews and content regarding products and services.
They prefer content that matches their intent.
The first page of search results captures up to 92% of website traffic and clicks compared to the second page that captures only 6%.
Ranking well for relevant keywords increases organic web traffic.
Content that ranks well makes you authoritative and thus more sought-after.

You need those conversions

As mentioned before, the majority of search engine users ignore paid ads and focus on organic results. By ranking well on search engines, you become more visible, easily findable and more accessible to consumers.

Organic search complements organic web traffic and such leads are more willing to convert once they find your business and your website online.

In other words, consumers that have the intent of finding a specific product or service are already willing to make a purchase. Finding your business in their search results simplifies the entire process. That’s why matching your keywords and your content with that of consumer intent is essential.

However, many SMBs aren’t really sure how to achieve that. Fortunately, there’s always an option to consider effective white label SEO. What it means is that you partner up with an agency that will promote your product via SEO while you take responsibility for selling that very same product.

Your competitors are on it or are they?

Every business is looking for a way to gain a competitive advantage and outrun their competitors. SEO can be that advantage if you know how to use it. What you probably didn’t know is that large companies often don’t bother with SEO.

As you may know, SEO takes time to produce any viable results, which is why many companies simply give up on it instead of investing in SEO further. In other words, you may compete with other SMBs regarding SEO than against large companies, which is a better situation considering your limited budget.

You have more chances of outrunning fellow small companies than popular brands and other SMBs are most certainly using SEO. All the more reason for you to start using SEO too if you haven’t started using it by now.

SEO grows to be more and more important every year. As the market becomes more complex to navigate, SMBs need a way to overcome challenges and obstacles the market will have in store for them. That’s why SEO is one of the surest ways to make a name for yourself in such a competitive environment.

3 Steps To Successfully Market Your Physician Practice

March 9, 2020 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Being a physician in a private practice is just like most other small businesses. You need to find new patients, keep them and keep down your costs.

People have many choices depending on their insurance on who to go to for their healthcare needs. Long gone are the days of the family doctor that treats multiple generations of the same family until they retire.

These days you have to make sure you’re attracting patients to have a steady income stream.

Some of the marketing techniques are different for a doctor than they are for other solo practitioners – so let’s take a look at how you should proceed.

1 – Build a useful website

The engine that will power your marketing has to be your website. Many doctors make the mistake of creating a site that just has basic information. While you need to have things like services and office hours, there has to be more than that.

For starters, it should have a blog. You should have articles that rank well in the search engines that will bring in traffic. It also serves to give some personality to your practice as people can see what it is that you stand for.

You should probably hire a writer who understands how to write engaging copy that doesn’t come across like a legal contract. Your blog is for your potential patients, not other doctors – so a copywriter will know the right voice to use.

2 – Grow an email list

One of the most important things to have on your website is a way to get people to give you their email. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business.

Have a landing page that offers a downloadable product in exchange for their email. Something like a checklist for the flu, or a short ebook about how to prevent diabetes, that people can download is helpful. These are called lead magnets as they attract leads (emails).

When you are sending helpful emails to your list, they will feel confident using your services. They can even be reminded to come for a check-up or for their vaccines by email.

The best part is that it is all done with automation software so you don’t have to worry about finding time to send the emails individually.

3 – Use PPC ads

Even if you have all of your SEO on point and your site is ranking in the number one spot for physicians in your area, you’re still going to be further down the results.

Pay Per Click Ads always come first. You’ll need to make sure that you are also spending money on ads to get those top spots for your keywords.

Suppose the keyword terms are “Podiatrist in Peoria”. You’ll have to bid on those keywords and come out of it with the top spot for those keywords. On the other side, you’ll have to make sure you are also excluding terms that aren’t specific to your practice so you don’t spend money on ineffective ads.

The Significance of SERPs

December 29, 2019 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

In simple terms, Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are results search engines give to users in return for their search query. Each time a user inputs a search query (i.e., keywords or keyphrases) to the search engine, the search engine will, in response, display a list of webpages to the user. This list is arranged chronologically, based on the evaluation of the search engine robot on how relevant it is to the user.

Each Search Engine Result Page is as unique as the performer of the search. This implies that two people can search for the same keywords but get slightly different search results. Search engines tailor each SERP based on the searcher’s location, keywords combination, browsing history, and so on.

Types of SERPs

There are different types of SERPs. However, this section will outline the two basic types, which are:

Organic Results

Organic search results are featured on SERPs by the search engine algorithm. Before your web pages can be featured on SERPs organically, you will need to optimize both your website and your webpages for the search engine. To do this, you have to know about SEO or hire an SEO expert. SEO experts specialize in the optimization of website content for search engines.

However, optimizing your webpage is not the only prerequisite to rank on SERPs organically. Your web content must also be helpful and valuable to your readers.

Paid Results

Paid results are search results displayed on top of SERPs with a small advertisement icon at the side. Paid results are mostly text-based, and they are used to promote products or services.

Paid results come in different types. However, PPC is one of the most effective forms of paid results. PPC, also known as Paid Per Click, is a form of paid ads that allows an advertiser to pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on the ads.

Today, 40% of brands want to increase their PPC ads budget. This is so because it is effective and affordable at the same time. Small businesses do not need to set aside a significant amount for adverts. Also, they are at liberty to stop the PPC ads from running at any time.

Do you want to launch a PPC ad today? Check the Infographic below for more details on PPC advertisement.