WHICH WOULD YOU BUY?

On average, organic foods usually cost MORE than non-organic food.
What does that have to do with marketing?

When given the choice between organic and non-organic food to eat, often we will choose the organic.  Why?  Because we know the organic food hasn’t been harmed by chemicals and pesticides? Because the food usually has a better flavor?  Because we know it’s healthier?  Yes, it’s likely because of all those things. If you’ve had organic anything compared to non-organic, you know it TASTES better and is better for you!  Buying organic food usually costs more, because it’s better.  Unfortunately that expense will sometimes keep people from purchasing “the good stuff” and in some cases, their health my suffer for it.

How this relates to marketing is that sometimes it is WORTH paying a professional to design your site vs. struggling to Do It Yourself and taking your valuable time away from what you do best!

Don’t Cheat Yourself!

So why not choose what’s better for your business?  Stop struggling to figure out a DIY builder and hire your site out to be professionally designed and pay a little more for something a lot better.  Think of the VALUE of your website.  Again, it’s the first impression someone sees of you ONLINE.  Make it a good one!

You will find a variety of price quotes from designers.  Some charge cheap, others modestly, and some charge, well…. rather extravagantly in my opinion.  Make sure you know WHAT you are getting for your money.  Is hosting included?  Is a security certificate (SSL) included?  Are you getting an email at your domain name?  All of these can have an impact on your final quote.

At StudioThought we quote provide hosting + SSL + one email at your domain name.  Every site we build has SSL so the customer can feel safe and secure while on your site.  SSL is required for e-commerce and since July 2018, Google is requiring it also, or your site may be shown has “not secure.”

OPTIONS

Hire A Designer

Often more expensive, but less of a headache as you have someone designing who’s skilled at it and can often do it quickly without you having to sit and figure any of it out.  A good* designer (be careful of the cheap overseas ones) will go to the extra effort to optimize your website fo search engines as much as possible including the “alt” tags in behind the scenes coding, etc.  And a good host will also go through security measures to keep your site safe.

from Tyton Media:  Reasons NOT to use DIY web builders

There are pros and cons to using the various builders.  Per one article online from Tyton Media they offered these reasons as to why NOT to use a web builder:

1. Speed – they (Wix, Weebly, etc.) are in control of that server… slow sites are bad for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and they don’t provide a fast enough server.
2. SEO – there is no backend code with Wix, some meta tags, there are no HTML for bots to crawl for helping with SEO.  These builders don’t have good onpage SEO
3. Authority and Trust – a lot of these sites don’t work or look well on mobile and will have (created by WIX on the bottom).  Does this tell your customer that you took time to build your site or were just trying to do it as cheaply as possible?
4. Control – You don’t have a lot of control over your site.  If you get more traffic and need to move it… you can’t.  If you want to host somewhere else, you’ll have to completely redesign it.

Top Things Your Site Needs To Do

• Needs To Be Responsive – A responsive website means that your website is built such that it will respond to whatever device it is used on, and adjust if being viewed on a desktop vs. a mobile phone vs. a tablet.  Google now requires responsive sites or else they penalize your ranking.
  • I know of one business who was paying Google for ads for better ranking, yet her site was not responsive and therefore was being penalized in ranking.  Therefore, was she spending her money wisely?  
  • Some DIY websites will offer a “mobile” version…. This is usually a completely different layout and in one recent instance I noticed a completely different URL address.  This is NOT ideal either.
• Needs To Be Pixeled – You’ve probably heard about pixels in relation to digital photographs or a screen pixel on your computer or television screen.  But the PIXEL that needs to be on your website is the Facebook pixel.  It’s a small piece of code that you place on your website and allows your site and Facebook to talk to each other.  Why is this helpful?
  • If someone is visiting your site, it is likely because they are interested in your service or product. 
  • Now imagine being able to run Facebook ad campaigns to people who have visited your website within the last 180 days.  You know you are marketing to people who are already INTERESTED in your product or service.
  • I recently visited several business websites that are members of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.  Not many had a pixel.  If you are wanting to harness and use social media, you need to have a Pixel on your website! 
• Grab And Keep Interest – Websites are important for information.  We know that we only have just a few seconds to grab attention and keep them there.  But we as humans in our fast-paced world get distracted, so you also want to be careful when you bring someone to your site from a paid ad.  Limit their distractions by bringing them to a Landing Page in which they have a simple Call To Action.  You’ll get much better conversions of having them to do what you want them to do, whether it be collecting an email or scheduling an appointment or asking for more info.

Paid Growth

Paid Growth with Advertising, Same ideas as all the organic growth tactics previously mentioned, plus the following…

• Use a Landing Page:  If you should choose to run a paid advertisement, it’s best to bring them to a landing page vs directly to your webpage.  Your normal webpage has lots of distractions which can help the customer forget why they clicked the ad to begin with.  Where do I go?  What do I look at first? Bring them to a page that ONLY gives them a specific task to accomplish:  opting into an email or requesting services, etc.
• Increase Your Reach:  Normally about only 10% of fans get to see your message until you use paid advertising or you score a huge WIN on engagement in your post.
• Be Specific About Your Audience:  You can score a huge WIN with paid advertising due to being specific with your targeting and choosing WHO you want to show your ad to.
  • Many businesses will choose radio or television or even billboard advertisements.  While this might get a large reach, is it really reaching YOUR ideal client/customer?
  • Radio and television both will want a minimum 3 month agreement for advertising.  In my own experience that’s been at least $300 per month, totaling an investment of $900 and that’s not even for a “prime spot”
  • Billboards are in a single location with traffic… again, what percentage of the traffic that passes that location IS your ideal client and will NOTICE the billboard?
  • Build “your own radio station” using Facebook tools.
  • Use these downloadable Avatar Worksheets from Digital Marketer (click to download Male Avatar and Female Avatar) to discover your ideal customer and then run a paid ad campaign to target just them!
  • Use Retargeting Ads to retarget those who showed an interest.
  • Use the Facebook Messenger Bots to interact with and engage with your customer and walk them through your “funnel” to purchase.
  • Facebook lets you Build Your Own Audiences using targeting systems that know if someone clicked on or interacted with your ad or even someone who “looks like” (by their behaviors) your ideal audience.
• Advertising Done Incorrectly… you can waste a lot of money on Facebook, done Correctly… yes, you can win big often for a smaller investment of your money.
  • Check out these 10 Tips to see if you’re ready to do Paid Advertising.
• Remember:  Running an ad campaign is more than just posting and/or clicking “boost”.   There’s much more to it… more management is involved to get the best ROI.

ManyChat

Facebook offers some good built in tools with its messenger app where you can add “button” for frequently asked questions in your messenger app.

Using Facebook’s messaging is a great way to start interacting with your customers.  And if you want to go a step further, you can add ManyChat and add more features.  ManyChat allows you to ‘dress up’ your bot with more features.  You can register with ManyChat for free and use it, but if you want to build out complex bots, you’ll have to use their paid features.

• Works GREAT for restaurants who want to offer coupons.  Without GROUPON taking so much of your money. 😉
• Great for engagement:  Make a post and ask people to comment.  ManyChat allows you to set it up such that once someone comments on a post, you can message them through messenger and interact to get the coupon to redeem.  For example… want to run an offer for a FREE appetizer?  Make a post and ask people to comment to get a coupon.  When they comment, they are automatically sent the coupon through messenger.  🙂
• ManyChat’s paid service is $10/month for 500 subscribers up to $145/month for 25k subscribers, and they ask that you call for more than that.  Using ManyChat you can send out group “broadcasts” to all subscribers, so it’s another way to interact with your audience/customer.

Bots are a new and big then now, and I predict they will grow in popularity and use.  It’s similar to email marketing where you can segment, but much more interactive which is what Facebook is all about.  They WANT you on their platform.  And think how quickly you respond to an instant message vs. an email.  Therein lies the power of using bots.

Interested in learning a whole bot course?  I have a friend who is called “The Bot Boss”, and you can check her course out by clicking here.

Email Marketing with MailChimp or Similar Apps

MailChimp:  It’s free to begin with and easy

Do you have a customer list?  If not, you should!  It’s the easiest way to connect directly with YOUR customers or potential customers!

• Need to collect emails addresses, this is how you can continually market to those interested.
• Need to collect phone numbers as much as possible, people read a text more quickly than email. (visual screenshot of your phone and the bubbles of notifications – 0 for text, a couple for messenger and a ton for email – award for the the one with the most and least for fun)
• Lists are another way to stay in touch with customers and potential customers
• You can segment lists so you know who your buyers are for example

Using Contests To Gain Growth

Organically:  One of the great ways to get engagement and gain social organic growth is by running a contest.  The easiest way is usually to ask someone to comment on a post (gets engagement) and then use a random comment picker to pick a winner.

Gleam:  Gleam is a great tool to get people into your social channels and build your lists, followers and gain reach.  This is the tool often used when you see the contests that ask you to LIKE their Facebook page, SUBSCRIBE to their YouTube channel, FOLLOW them on Instagram, etc. all for more entries or points.  Got a sales funnel? This is a great way to get people in the top of the funnel.

Basic DYI SEO

(Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization)

• Register your business at business.google.com
• If you’re using WordPress, install the Yoast SEO plugin to help you as you create pages and content based on the basics listed below.
• Core SEO basics:
  1. First select the keywords your business wants to rank for. Preferable keywords (or key-phrases) are made up of 2-5 words each. Rarely ever do you want a one word keyword. One (and even two) word keywords are too competitive to get traffic, and too vague to draw converting visitors. Key-phrases need to be specific.
  2. Build content around those keywords, one key-phrase at a time. Do not put multiple key-phrases within one page/content-piece. Start with the most valuable (highest search volume) key-phrase. Content should be at least 500 words with 1-2 images and the key-phrase should be:
     • in the META title and description tags
     • in the body text no more than 10 times
     • in the H1 tag
     • in a sub-head sentence – H2 tag directly under the H1
     • in an image ALT tag
     • and, if possible, in the URL
     • (Note: if all of the above points sound “greek” the H1, H2, Alt and META… what’s when you know you need a good web designer and ASK that they do this base SEO for you!)
  3. “Link juice” is really important. Ideally, the best “link juice” are links from other valuable websites to your site. The link text is very important. This is called “anchor text”. The text that’s clickable should have the keyword/phrase in it. Even though it’s best to have other websites link back to this content piece, it’s still valuable if your own website links to this content piece using the keywords in the anchor text. 
  4. Submit the entire site or a single page through Google’s Search Console. Also submit on Bing. 
  5. Link to content piece through social networks

• More in-depth article on SEO:  https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-simple-but-effective-guide-to-keyword-competition-analysis/

Video:  Get Used To Doing Some Video!

• People will watch video more quickly than they will take the time to read an ad.  Especially if you do something in the video at the beginning that is like “a pattern interrupt” (waving, or eyeballs looking in the camera, etc.)  An example I can give is that I have a friend who is a Musician and who did a LIVE video on Facebook dressed up in a Reindeer onesie at Christmas.  THAT was enough to make me stop scrolling and push play to hear what he had to say.  I would never EXPECT his in a reindeer onesie even tho it was Christmas time.    The other perk about doing a video and turning it into a paid advertisement is that you can usually “get by” with a few more calls to action in a video than you can in a written text/image ad.  You can ask people to specifically LIKE/COMMENT/SHARE.  Facebook continually updates their rules and policies and so sometimes what used to be allowed, may not be allowed now.  Many used the “LIKE/COMMENT/SHARE” in their ads and then Facebook began to monitor those and penalize the organic posts for that.  Then they have allowed it again as in the case of running an ad and asking for people to comment so that the messenger bot can then send you a message.  So my advice, is to use it, but using it wisely.  Don’t make every post a LIKE/SHARE/COMMENT.  And again, USE VIDEO!
• Facebook also gives priority to LIVE feeds over everything else.  Remember, they want you to stay on their platform and going to YouTube is taking you away from their platform.  So LIVE video is given priority.  You can use it in many ways to connect with your audience.
  • Announce a new product/service
  • Show off a finished product or service (it’s okay to brag “a little” when you are showing off your best stuff!)
  • Education:  have a LIVE Question/Answer for people to get to know you better.
  • There’s all kinds of ideas that you can harness for doing LIVE video.  🙂
• Teaching – You can record once and then teach multiple times with video.  Think of doing a live webinar, recording it and then posting it up so that anyone can view anytime!
• Video lets people get to know YOU!,  Knowing you instills TRUST.  People BUY from those they trust.  Think about why you buy a certain brand over another.  It usually because you’ve had some kind of experience with it to know it’s good and works, right?  You might go to the farmer’s market because you get to know and meet the people from which you are buying food and therefore KNOW where it comes from and if it is organic or not.  Most of us watch our local news and because of it, we feel like we “know” Robin Reed or any of the other television anchors on either station.  We simply feel that way because we see them in our living rooms every day.  Let people get to know YOU the business owner and your story through video!