Using Social Content to Build Brand

When it comes to building brand, nothing is more effective than customer satisfaction. There was a time before the world of digital communications when it was referred to as ‘word of mouth’ advertising. This was the very best way for businesses to establish trust, an integral aspect of brand. In today’s culture, word of mouth advertising is still alive and well but has just taken on another form – social media. Now we rely on social media to spread the word about our likes and dislikes and this is why the intelligent marketing campaign will tap into the power of such networks as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well as Google+.

Why Trust Is Important

With an ever-growing number of businesses popping up each day and the ease at which consumers can switch back and forth between one brand and another, it is imperative to build a solid relationship with our customers. Relationships are built on trust, pure and simple. If you want to build and grow a solid customer base, the first thing you should be looking to do is instill trust in your products, services and even in your own reputation as a business.

Using Social Content to Instill Trust

People are social creatures so we tend to form bonds with others of like minds. Many of us have online friends and followers to our social sites numbering in the hundreds. We share and post about literally every aspect of our lives from foods that we eat to experiences we’ve had with companies we have dealt with. When looking to instil trust in a company’s brand, it would be nice to capture all those things that are being tweeted about, and posted on, in relation to our products and services. There is actually a way to do just this.

Tools for Capturing Social Content

Just as the web crawlers make their way around the internet to find and rank content for search engines, there is now a new breed of crawlers that seek out social content. If you are trying to capture what people are saying about your products, services and even your company in general, utilising a crawler that has the ultimate goal of searching social sites is the best way to go. Not only can written content be captured but pictures and videos are sought out as well. Many products have literally gone viral due to videos posted on sites like YouTube.

Redistributing Social Content

As information is captured, social content curation pulls the best content together into one place to be redistributed. This social content is then re-published to various platforms in order to be made more visible to potential customers. It can be fed live to your website, reposted on social media hubs or even powered to big screens live, in real time, as it is hitting the Web. Never before was it so easy to capture and spread positive customer feedback which is such a vital element in building brand.

Whilst it has long been known that there is huge potential in utilising social media to build brand, it wasn’t until recently that it became possible to capture and repost all those wonderful things people are saying about our businesses. What customers say about a company is so much more effective than all the advertising we can do and why it is essential to capture and repost as much as possible. If you are not taking advantage of social content to build brand, you are missing out on one of the most effective marketing tools you could possibly use.

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How to Create Quality SEO Friendly Content

Content marketing is an invaluable tool to any business with an online presence, thanks to its cost-effectiveness, wide potential reach and long-term benefits. When it comes to search engine optimisation, the focus is on creating content that is highly visible on websites like Google, in order to generate traffic and leads.

In terms of creating solid, SEO friendly content, you need to consider the way search engine algorithms work, as well as the target audience of your content, and then balance these two aspects. This article presents some useful tips to make sure you strike that balance and create quality content, which works for your company.

Use SEO Tools to Steer Content

A business or SEO company has a range of tools available to them, which can steer them in the right direction when it comes to creating highly visible content. Sites like Soovle will help you to pinpoint popular search terms, while Portent’s Content Idea Generator can help you to think of interesting subjects. Then, of course, search engines like Google have a number of their own tools to make use of.

“We have used Google’s Keyword Planner to identify a list of valuable terms and phrases,” says Graham Charlton from Econsultancy. “Having identified these terms, our content team then brainstormed article ideas to target [them]. This kind of planning exercise ensures that the content we create does as much work for us as possible.”

Make Content Evergreen

An experienced search agency will often reference the importance of evergreen content – that is, content which retains its relevance for a long period of time. For example, news pieces may not be ideal for SEO, because they can become dated quickly, but advice pieces stay useful for months or even years.

In relation to search engine optimisation, the primary benefits of evergreen content are its ability to continue to generate traffic, leads and shares on social media sites long after its publication date. As a result, this enables content to occupy valuable positions in search results for much longer than current affairs articles.

Take Care With Keywords

Once you have decided upon the content you want to produce and the keywords you want to include within it, you need to consider how they are used. Many readers are familiar with the concept of SEO and while that can be a positive, it means that any jarring use of keywords will stand out like a sore thumb. For this reason, keywords need to make sense within the context of the sentences and paragraphs they are in, and relate to the heading.

In addition to context of keywords, it is also crucial to think about placement. It can be beneficial, for instance, to include popular SEO keywords in the title itself, but it can be counter-productive to place your keywords in close proximity of one another.

Remember to Include Images

Finally, it is worth remembering that graphics can also play a valuable role in your SEO strategy, helping your content to show up in image searches, like Google Images. The most important steps are to include an alt tag (the ‘label’ of your image) so that search engine crawlers know what it is about and are able to index it. Also ensure the file name is descriptive and appropriate for the image.

“If you spend hours crafting the perfect post, don’t miss out on the chance to optimise your images for maximum search engine benefit,” says Derek Halpern, a marketing expert and the founder of Social Triggers. As a further tip, due to the fact that page load times can impact SEO, smaller images are generally better, where possible.

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A Small Business’s Guide to PPC

The core principles behind PPC are really quite simple. Your advert will appear during a relevant consumer search on keywords that you define and you pay a fee, based on the amount of competition around those keywords, if the consumer clicks on your ad. In this way PPC advertising is one of the most efficient and trackable marketing strategies for any small business looking to drive potential customers onto their website. When it comes to generating a successful PPC campaign however, a quality advert and relevant keywords are just the tip of the iceberg.

PPC advertising gets results but the competition can be fierce and the search engine results pages (SERPs) can at times feel like a battlefield, with thousands of businesses vying to get their advert on the first page for a whole range of competitive industry keywords and keyphrases. In addition to this fierce competition, search engines are constantly changing their PPC algorithms, requiring any effective campaign to have the knowledge and ability to keep track of it all.

Before even launching a PPC campaign then, there are a few steps every business needs to take.

Establish your Goals

The goals you choose will dictate the type of PPC account you need and the direction it takes. Consider carefully, and decide if you want your campaign to create a surge of traffic to your site, generate leads, establish brand awareness, or be a direct sales effort. Although it’s tempting to want to drive as much traffic to your site as possible, with a view to converting them all to sales, sometimes it might be more beneficial in the long run to generate some genuine brand awareness and get people talking about your company, your content and ultimately your products.

Determine your Advertising Budget

How much is each customer worth to your business and how much you are willing to spend to bring them in. Let’s say the average customer is worth $200 to your business and you are willing to spend $100 to get that customer. The next thing to work out is how many people you need to direct towards your landing page in order to get that customer (conversion rate). If you have a conversion rate of 10% then in order to insure an acceptable ROI you would want to pay no more than $5 a lead. (This calculation gets a lot more complicated when you consider how conversion rates can fluctuate based on all sorts of factors, from landing page to advertising text and things like AdWords Quality Score).

Find a good PPC Management Company

You could attempt running the campaign yourself, but unless you are an expert in PPC management, it is far more time and cost efficient to hire a professional company than to try managing it yourself.

Do you know your CPM from your CPC and CPA? Do you know the differences between impressions, hits, and views? Knowing what these things are is only half the battle, it’s understanding how they all individually affect your campaign and can influence each other.

What about your campaign settings? Should you have different ad groups for each region? Is it better to target different regions or a select area? Is your campaign losing money because of a poorly designed ad? Or is it due to poor choice in keywords and that your landing pages are completely off message?

Whilst it’s not beyond the wit of any small business owner to get to grips with these things, a good PPC management company will know how to set up an efficient and profitable campaign from the outset, a fact that will likely save you a lot of wasted money on a poorly optimised campaign. Moreover, managing a successful PPC campaign is a huge drain on time and can end up amounting to a full time job with the constant analysis and tweaking required; a job you probably don’t have time for. As with any business decision however, do your research and make sure the company you choose is reputable and is the right fit for your company.

Budgeting for a PPC Campaign

There are four primary ways a PPC management agency might charge you:

  • The most common form of payment is based on a percentage of the total monthly amount you spend on advertising, generally between 10% to 20%.
  • Other companies, however, may prefer to bill you at an hourly rate. Initial charges are high when you pay by the hour (as the agency invests time in building the campaign), but costs will be greatly reduced once the account is up and running.
  • The third option, perhaps the fairest of all, is that you pay for the quality of your account’s performance based upon pre-agreed metrics. Unfortunately, this method only works if the agency is able to track your entire system for conversions (which is complicated), or they trusts you to be completely honest with them regarding conversion (which is rare).
  • The fourth option relies on a fixed fee for each service offered by the management company. The result is generally clear-cut, as each management option you select for your account is simply added to your monthly bill.

Although it can require a bit of research to find the right PPC agency for your account, your efforts will be well rewarded. In the hands of a professional management agency, a pay per click advertising is one of the best ways of increasing online traffic for your business and meeting your online marketing goals.

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What is Local SEO And Why Is It Important?

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is a marketing technique engaged by businesses to help rank their company websites in Google and other search engines. As society has become increasingly technology focused in the last decade, more businesses have decided they want to invest is an online presence and as a result SEO as a practise as grown. Due to the increase in online activity, national SEO has become a very competitive game and unless you are top of your industry, your business might struggle to make the first page of Google for the terms you want to rank for. It’s not all doom and gloom however, national results can be achieved over time but for smaller businesses who want quick results, we can introduce local SEO.

Local SEO stands for local search engine optimisation and involves the same onsite and offsite elements as national SEO, the difference being local marketing targets specific town and city locations rather than focussing on the entire country. Local SEO has grown over the last few years with the increase in smartphone usage. As more people search, on the go, on their mobiles for local services, local SEO has become increasingly important.

Local SEO is ideal for smaller businesses who want to attract local custom. For example if you are a plumber in Derby, you want to attract local, Derbyshire customers rather than get enquiries from someone based in Newcastle. Local SEO will help you rank for your business keywords on a local basis so when someone searches for ‘steakhouse Sheffield’, they will be greeted with a list of steakhouses in that area rather than the opposite end of the country.

Why is local SEO important?

  • With more and more people online, local SEO will help you stand out. Rather than your four man band trying to compete with a worldwide cooperation for national rankings, local SEO will help you be the top for your town.
  • Attract local customers. Attracting local customers can be preferable for a lot of smaller businesses who may not be able to handle large scale contracts.
  • Local SEO will help boast your brand and raises awareness of your business. It will help get your name out there and make people aware of your services/products.
  • Beat your competitors. Get online and become top dog before your competitor down the road does the same. The internet has been growing rapidly over the past couple of decades and it’s not showing any signs of stopping any time soon. Make that leap online and get ahead of your competitors.

How does local SEO work?

Local SEO involves multiple offsite and onsite techniques. Firstly marketers will look at employing location keywords in your content and title tags as well as ensuring your website includes your address. Then they will look at building local citations and listings to emphasise that connection between you and the location.

Local SEO works the same as national SEO. It involves the same onsite and offsite marketing principles however it involves targeting a specific location(s). It is a great way for smaller businesses to get their brand noticed and attract local customers.

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14 Powerhouse Tips to Build Trust on Your Landing Page

Building a lead capture landing page is not just a matter of inserting a form on a page and driving traffic to it. You can always use this strategy, but do not put your hopes so high because it wouldn’t perform well. The foundation of your landing page should be built on trust.

Try these 14 powerhouse tips and create a high-performance landing page fully optimized specifically for gathering leads.

1. Know your target market and set your marketing goals

You need to know who you are marketing to, otherwise, every strategy you will execute will be in vain. Build a database of all your existing customers, leads in your email, and prospects. Then, start to expose fresh content or product demos that may turn them from fence sitters into real and active customers. Nurture them with more content, events, and special offers that would spun their interest.

2. Write an enticing intro paragraph

Make it clear what people should understand about your service by writing a short yet persuasive introduction paragraph. This should serve as an extension of your headline and an appetizer to your bulleted content. Make each word as descriptive as possible to ensure an enticing atmosphere.

3. Address key benefits and advantages through bullet points

Given how little time visitors spend on most web pages, you only have a few seconds to garner their interest. After grabbing their attention via your headline, you need to dig into some simple benefit statements. Instead of rambling on in long paragraphs, state the benefits of signing up to your website in bullet points.

4. Be consistent in your brand and message

Your banner, landing page, and destination should belong in the same family or you will lose the opportunity to make your business grow. Ensure that your visual design complements your banner and landing page. Don’t play with the color palette and typography just because you feel like it. Show professionalism in your website layout by practicing consistency and coherence.

5. Offer something free in advance

Give something away for free in advance before asking for personal details in exchange. It could be a small portion of the materials you are providing, a newsletter, or a catalog. If what you are giving away is valuable and worth the trouble, this will greatly augment conversion rate.

6. Avoid gimmicky sales tactics

The web is already filled with irrelevant sales tactics. No matter how much you feel the desperate you are for clients and you feel like this is the perfect time to use the “Buy now to avail the best deal ever,” do not do it. Remember that authenticity rules. People are on the lookout for something trustworthy in the web and they are starting to learn when web pages are telling the truth or not.

7. Refrain from using pop ups or pop-unders

Pop ups are the easiest way to shame. Unless you want your customer base to leave you for a company with more integrity, do not give in to this cheap tactic. Pop ups and the like only promise slight and short term improvement in conversion.

8. Present verifiable facts

Bold claims about your product or service may extract anxiety on the part of your visitor. If what you are promising isn’t 100% true,don’t publish it on your web because you will eventually be caught.

9. Never underestimate the power of testimonials

Testimonials from real people are credible. Interview your previous clients. Never place overwhelming and exaggerated statements by personas grabbed from stock photo sites.Might as well, ask one of your loyal clients to share their personal experience on your web page. This will make people trust you and believe that you have affected someone else life.

10. Attach all relevant certification logos

This is an effective strategy to garner trust. If you have an association or affiliation with trusted companies, wear their logos proudly on your sleeve. Use relevant and well-known brands that have the same visions and missions as you.

11. Shout professionalism all throughout your landing page

The World Wide Web works like this: the more expensive and corporate you look, the more people will be likely to believe your cause. You still need interesting content, but a killer layout with picture perfect design.

12. Use endorsements to build reputation

If you are affiliated with famous people such as celebrities or known experts, make them endorse your product or service. Their endorsements will help your company build credibility. People are willing to spend a grand because the celebrities promoting it are placing their credibility on the line.

13. Stop extracting information you don’t really need

If certain information is not critical to product or service being requested on your landing page, then don’t risk scaring people away by getting irrelevant information. These data will not be of any good use to you anyway.

14. Show your contact details

Make sure that your visitors know that they have someone to contact for queries. Post your contact information, including your phone number, mobile number, and email address. It also shows that you are legitimate and there are real people behind the website.

Apply these tips and you are on to a successful marketing campaign.

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You Need More Than Responsive Web Design to Improve Sales

The whole world is going gaga about responsive web design. And after Google’s new mobile friendly update, no one is even ready to take the risk of being left out. In fact, having the “mobile friendly” label matters a lot, statistically speaking. According to a recent comScore study, around 20 percent of all search activities originate from smartphones while another 9 percent comes from tablet devices. It also indicates that a large number of people are using mobile devices (46 percent using smartphone and 48 percent using tablets) for watching online videos.

Moreover, being mobile friendly is an absolute necessity if you are targeting teens. A report from Nielsen indicates that 80 percent of teens in the U.S. own smartphones and over 90 percent of them are using these devices to search the web online. Another study conducted by L2 further shows that 69 percent of global consumers aged between 18 and 39 with incomes ranging from $75,000 to $99,000 are using smartphones to research products online, whereas 44 percent are using tablets for the same purpose.

By now you are already convinced that all you need is a responsive web design to make your online business the next big hit. Wait, we are not yet finished. If you are happy and super excited after resizing the browser, we are probably going to vandalize your glee. Having responsive web design alone is not enough to improve your sales.

Why Responsive is Not Enough

Focus on responsive web design as your only solution for mobile and you will end up losing your users and money too. The goal is to apply responsive design intelligently as performance is the ultimate truth for mobile, as for web. To do it right, you need to first understand the problem.

Since the beginning of mobile, designers and developers are oversimplifying the issue. Responsive web design has become a cookie-cutter solution to all of our problems. As a result, we often overlook the real purpose of mobile web experience – speed. People browse mobile on the go and they need what they are looking for real fast. You need to therefore provide a lightning fast mobile web experience to your users. And here lies the real challenge.

Delivering a usable, fast and compatible mobile web experience across all devices is easier said than done. It remains same when implementing a responsive technique. A better and more feasible approach is to embrace performance, right from the beginning.
That being said, we are not criticizing responsive web design. It is in fact a great thing, but responsive web design isn’t a silver bullet. It cannot be your only weapon for a winning mobile strategy. Otherwise, performance issues are likely to impede your conversion rate.

According to a research by Akamai’s Guy Podjarny, only “18.7 percent of a list of 10,000 top-tier web sites is responsive.” The number decreases in accordance to the site’s traffic. In fact, the percentage comes down to 11.8 percent when analyzed the top 100 sites. The research also indicates that 72 percent of these responsive websites are delivering equal number of bytes, irrespective of screen size and mobile network connections.

But you should not forget that Internet users are known for their lack of patience and the problem is even more acute in mobile users. They won’t be waiting for your website to load, at least not all of them. The good news is that you can make things right and minimize the loss, now that you have a basic understanding of the issue.

Responsive + Speed = A Winning Mobile Strategy

There is no denying that responsive is a smart approach than an m.* subdomain but you also need to understand that responsive web design is not a replacement for mobile web sites. What we mean is that there is no hard and fast rule that you need a single URL to deliver the same content across various devices or that all devices need to download the same resources.

While responsive design has tons of benefits, it is certainly not meant to solve performance issues. There are other techniques for that. You need to design responsively in order to cater to various viewport sizes across mobile and desktop. But when it comes to mobile devices, considering only screen size will lead you nowhere. Today we have different possibilities, depending on the device type, open to us especially as the line between desktop and mobile is becoming more and more blur. As a result, responsive web design too need a few tweak to sync with the modern vision.

Long story short, responsive design is not a cookie-cutter solution, neither is it a silver bullet to be applied to all kind of documents. Rather, you need robust mobile solutions that maximize performance.
Here are a few ways to do it:

  • A mobile-first approach is a better solution, especially if you are creating something from scratch.
  • Use same content and same URL to deliver your document across all devices but do not follow the same structure.
  • Resizing your desktop browser is just a thing of past. Instead, test your website on real devices and try loading resources to see how much time it takes. What is the user experience?
  • There are several optimization tools; leverage them to measure and improve your mobile performance.
  • Use JavaScript to deliver responsive images.
  • Consider the loading time; don’t make the website heavy with unnecessary JavaScript. A better approach is to load only what you need for a particular device with conditional loading.
  • Follow above-the-fold content delivery format or inline the initial view for mobile devices.

The key techniques you need to incorporate for a smart mobile strategy include applying responsiveness according to group, conditional loading, above-the-fold content in 1 second, and a server-side layer.

Conclusion

The real challenge with responsive web design is that each designer define “responsive” differently, leading to communication issues. To address to this issue we need to first understand the broader goals we need to achieve through mobile. Responsive design is not the goal, neither it means to be mobile-compatible. The goal is “user satisfaction” as it is your happy users who lead to more conversions, the ultimate goal of any business.

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[Event] New Dublin WooCommerce Meetup to Bring Woo-Entrepreneurs Together

Wikipedia states “WooCommerce is an open source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. [..]  Launched on September 27, 2011,[3] the plugin quickly became famous for its simplicity to install and customisation and being free in nature. [..] In May 2015, WooThemes and WooCommerce were acquired by Automattic, operator of WordPress.com and core contributor to the WordPress software. [..] For the 2nd week of March 2015, Trends indicated that WooCommerce ran on 24% of e-commerce sites online with total downloads reaching 6.7 million.”

But as a Woo-lover and Woo-developer, numbers don’t really mean much. The more entrepreneurs I meet in town, the more website owners I speak to, the more social media addicts I “talk” to, WooCommerce is sure to become the biggest provider of Ecommerce functionalities in the next few months.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has just acquired WooCommerce, included its worldwide staff of 50+ people, for an amount that is close to $30,000,000. Now, that is what you call an investment!

With 7million downloads worldwide, we’ve decided to start a Dublin WooCommerce Meetup.

Upcoming WooCommerce Meetup: 12 August

 

The first event saw approximately 25 entrepreneurs attending, all from different backgrounds (web designers, developers, ecommerce entrepreneurs, WordPress enthusiasts). Realex Payments kindly sponsored venue and….. drum roll… free drinks!

Good news is – we’re running our WooCommerce Meetups every 2nd Wednesday of the month, in Dublin 2 (and specifically in the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, 7 Clare Street).

Or next appointment is on Aug 12th (RSVP here by Aug 11). We’ll discuss:

  • best practices for WooCommerce/WordPress website hosting
  • hosting platforms: who is using what, for how much, and what the feedback is
  • website speed: hosting and caching plugin recommendations
  • backing up and security: tips and suggestions to keep our websites secure and 99% hack-proof

Why is this WooCommerce Meetup important to me?

The main obstacle being faced by web developers, graphic designers and website owners is… TIME.

You would agree with me if I said WooCommerce is easy and fast, however this only applies to basic ecommerce functionalities. There are hundreds of free and premium plugins, thousands of themes, millions of PHP snippets available to accomplish advanced tasks.

So, TIME is money and we wish we had some extra hours a day to run the whole process smoothly!

This month, we’ll discuss openly about hosting providers, hosting plans, website speed, backup and restore planning and whatever is related to the best practices of “starting with the right foot“.

If you charge a considerable amount of money to develop WooCommerce websites, or if you’re investing in your next WooCommerce website, it’s extremely important to select the best hosting options before starting with the development.

When is the next Dublin WooCommerce Meetup on?

Happy Woo-Entrepreneurs of Dublin while enjoying their Free Drinks On July 8th

Happy Woo-Entrepreneurs of Dublin while enjoying their Free Drinks On July 8th

As already mentioned, we’ll be meeting in the Dublin Chamber of Commerce at 8pm on August 12th.

We asked Blacknight, Letshost, SpiralHost, Digiweb and other companies to attend so we’ll see if they’re brave enough to attend and answer our questions!

For sure, there will be myself, recently appointed WooCommerce Meetup Organiser by WooThemes/Automattic, and several other entrepreneurs such as website owners, designers and developers. In the first event, 2 great guys drove down from Cork to attend – so there is really no excuse if you live in Dublin!

To register (it’s free of course, plus Realex Payments will get you a free drink afterwards!), visit http://www.meetup.com/Dublin-WooCommerce-Meetup/events/223649210 now.

Hope to see you there!

 

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8 Ways to Improve Your Next Trade Show

Trade shows can be excellent for expanding your reach, but like many things in life, the more effort you put in them, the more likely it is you’ll see great returns. Keep reading to get some tips on how to make your trade show experiences terrific instead of terrible.

Do Your Research

Many people who attend trade shows are in the mood to buy things and network with people, but it’s still worth doing some research to find out whether the people who tend to go to a particular trade show are likely to be interested in whatever you’re selling.

You can find out about trade show demographics online, and it’s also smart to see if people in your circle has attended in the past. If you find someone who has gone before, be sure to ask what his or her impressions were about the general atmosphere and the attitude of fellow attendees.

Send the Right People

Choose carefully when deciding which of your staff members will be sent to a particular trade show. Usually, you’ll want to pick people who are very personable and engaging, and who are knowledgeable of the product.

Your trade show staff members are representatives of the company at large. Make sure they have an extensive knowledge of whatever you sell and can also give some insight into how your business or a particular product came to be.

When you send people to a trade show for the first time, always pair them up with veterans who will be able to lead by example and make the newer representatives feel more confident by showing them how it’s done.

Depend on Social Media

Your social media strategy should certainly have a trade show component. You can consider live tweeting during the event or running Facebook giveaways that are exclusive to the people who are at the trade show.

Having a solid social media strategy not only helps strengthen awareness of your brand but it also gives the impression you have your finger on the pulse of current events in your industry. Before heading to a trade show, settle on a hashtag you’ll use consistently leading up to and during the event. That should help create momentum.

Use Your Logo Liberally

If your company has a logo, a trade show is the ideal place to display it proudly. Do an inventory of all the things you normally bring to a trade show and determine if there are ways to add the logo to those items.

Also, if you give things away to trade show attendees, those free items should definitely include a logo, along with a way for a potential customer to find out more. Including your website address or a phone number allows someone to easily take the next step once she or he has found out the basics about what your company does.

Ask the Trade Show Organizers if You Can Write a Guest Blog

Sometimes, making the most of your time at a trade show requires a little reciprocity. Specifically, consider reaching out to the organizers and seeing if you can write a guest blog post that simultaneously promotes the trade show as well as your products. Then your company gets promotion as well as the trade show.

Try to use a tone that’s relatable and likely to resonate with other exhibitors and consumers alike.

Make Sure to Collect Email Addresses

Email addresses are valuable marketing tools, because they help connect you with possible customers. In many scenarios, it’s very hard to get customer emails, and you may even have to work with third-party companies in order to do so.

With that in mind, don’t overlook the resource you have at your disposal. People who come to trade shows often willingly give their emails out, especially in return for something.

You can either do things the old fashioned way and have a simple clipboard with a sheet for people to write their email addresses, or take a more modern approach by handing people tablets or laptops to give their details via online forms. Think about offering a discount code, ebook or other perk to anyone who gives their email.

Make Your Display Memorable

There’s a certain degree of homogeneity in many trade show booths. They are usually very simple and to the point, and might have solid-color backgrounds. You may want to experiment with aesthetic techniques that stand out a little more and also help strengthen your brand image.

For example, if you are going to a travel trade show as a company that offers customized trips to Scotland, your display could feature a Scottish tartan pattern and maybe even a soundtrack of Scottish airs playing softly in the background.

Accessories like LED lights can make your display more noticeable by highlighting what you have to offer. The key is to catch attention without being annoying. Also, whether you’re revamping your display or building one for the first time, make things as streamlined as possible and remember you’ll need to settle on something that’s easy to pack away when necessary. The key is to have a display that’s streamlined and not stuffy.

Follow Up With Your Trade Show Team

No matter which techniques you try to get more traction at trade shows, it’s crucial to meet with each of your representatives and get feedback from them about what worked well and what didn’t. Having an adaptable mindset is essential, because it should allow you to adjust according to the responses you get.

It’s useful to keep track of all the feedback in one place, so you can look back at it and discover whether there are links within the data. For example, you may find people at a general outdoors trade show really liked the keychain flashlights you gave away, while the attendees who came to a trade show that’s specifically for recreational vehicles particularly loved the drink can insulators.

Now that you’ve learned practical tips for how to make the most of your time at trade shows, hopefully you’ll see each outing as a constantly evolving process that’s driven by customer feedback, new marketing methods and changes in your industry.

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Here’s Why Your Mobile Subscribers Are Opting Out

So your marketing department has put together an impressive list of mobile subscribers, and in general, things appear to be going along fantastically. But as time goes on and you watch your numbers, you can’t help but notice that a small yet noticeable percentage of people are opting out, leaving your mobile subscription list.

Granted, no one likes to be rejected, so this rankles a bit. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to distance themselves from your wonderful company. What’s gone wrong? Is it them? Is it you?

It’s probably you, and here’s some reasons why. Any similarity between these opt-out reasons and reasons why couples break up are purely coincidental.

Probably…

You Talk Too Much

We all have that person in our life who drones on and on, until eventually we can’t take it anymore, and say something like “Would you please shut it!?” Your subscribers can’t say that to you when your business sends too many texts (well, actually they can, but it doesn’t do them any good), so instead they vote with their feet, or to be more precise, with their finger on their mouse, clicking on the “opt out” link.

What’s defined as talking too much? Conventional marketing wisdom says that you should only send one or two messages per week for each marketing campaign or promotion. More than that is overkill, and any savvy marketer is aware that their business is probably not the only one that their subscribers are getting texts from. You don’t want to have a hand in inundating these poor folks.

They Sobered Up

Don’t laugh, this is actually a thing. Picture, if you will, a group of friends who go to their favorite local pub and during the course of the evening, they end up all having quite a few. Then one of them happens to see a promotional flyer, where people can sign up for the establishment’s exclusive club and get on their text messaging list. Since alcohol tends to encourage not well thought out actions, everyone signs up.

The following week, the subscribers start getting the promotional texts, and everyone is wondering why on Earth they’re getting what amounts to commercials sent to their smart phones. Then their memory, no longer drowning in lager, kicks in and they remember. Their next action usually is to opt out.

Don’t take it personally. People do all sorts of odd things when they’ve been drinking.

They Have Outgrown You

Perhaps your business offered your subscribers something that interested them a year ago, but at present, not so much. Tastes and trends change, and sometimes people simply move on. There’s not much you can do about this.

They Don’t Like Your Tone

Finally, it may be a case of not liking how you come across. The article “5 Common Reasons Why Mobile Subscribers Opt-Out” touches upon such no-no’s as relying too much on slang, industry terms, acronyms and abbreviations, or text speak. Sometimes, in an effort to come across as hip and current, marketing promotions end up sounding silly, grating, and unprofessional.

And then there’s humor, which at best is a subjective thing. We live in an age where many people have suddenly acquired a very thin skin, and packs of individuals roam the countryside, looking for things to get offended over. Perhaps the joke in that last promotion got someone in a lather, and they opted out.

So, What Can You Do To Stop This?

The moral of the story is: text no more than twice a week, keep it relevant, keep it professional, and offer something worthwhile. It may also be worth trying to put together some kind of follow-up mechanism to use on those who opt out, and find out their reasons why.

For more insights into SMS texting, visit “Email And SMS: A Marketing Marriage Made In Heaven”.

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[Event] Learn Inbound – A Digital Marketing Event that delivers

Marketing is changing to meet the wants of users just like you. Inbound marketing shifts the focus from talking at people to a point that they simply tune out, to providing people with something that they genuinely value and enjoy. It focuses on providing solutions to problems, saving time or money and causing them to have a positive emotional reaction. When done effectively it converts people to become loyal customers who see your brand as one that can help solve their problems.

As technology improves and we gain more options in what media we consume and how we consume it, the world around us changes. As we adapt to these changes, our expectations and demands change dramatically. We’re watching fewer television commercials and moving towards ad free on demand services, we’re opening less direct mail and instead looking to communicate directly with brands on the channels we choose and we’re blocking more ads than ever before as we browse our favourite websites. As this type of behavioural change increases, it has pushed the cost of traditional advertising even higher while making the benefits of inbound marketing, providing users with relevant and helpful information at the right time, even stronger.

Why is it important for me?

User behavioural changes are already well underway, we don’t consume data or use technology as we used to. The algorithms that control search ranking, social promotion or paid advertising are picking up on the changes there and actively promoting the content that’s providing the best user experience, or at least continually trying to. The question now is how long it will take businesses to catch up.

According to The Second UPC Report on Ireland’s Digital Future, Irish online consumer spending was estimated to be in the region of €5.9 billion. Of this, more than 60% (~€3.6 billion) is being spent abroad. The report alarmingly estimates that fewer than one in four small Irish businesses (24%) have the ability to conduct online sales, meaning there is no Irish competition for those billions leaving the country. With all estimates pointing to online spending more than doubling by 2020, the stakes are only going to get higher.

How can Learn Inbound help?

The main obstacle being faced by businesses is how to address the current problems. Many wish to sell online, many wish to export through their sites but they simply don’t know where to start or how to execute it. Others have started and are now looking to expand their reach and improve their performance. In either case, education is the vital first step.

Research carried out recently by HubSpot and Smart Insights collected data from over 700 content marketers across Europe. When asked to rate their content marketing capabilities, 68% rated themselves at basic or inconsistent. Over half of those surveyed (51%) said that they found the measurement of their effectiveness a real challenge and only 39% claimed they were able to measure return on investment from their work. In spite of these challenges, only 3% were sceptical of the value of their marketing efforts.

Learn Inbound brings together an active community of business owners and marketing professionals, all of whom tackle these issues on a daily basis just like you. Leading industry experts come in to outline tactics and strategies, with case studies and technical details on execution, to help improve efficiencies and performance. Providing detailed technical talks with the benefits of peer review and discussion with an active and engaged community helps improve information retention and ensures the events stay fun and relaxed. That’s also helped a little with a free bar and some snacks to help you keep up with the fast pace of the evenings.

If you’d like to learn more, do check out the free videos available from earlier events. There’s a wealth of digital marketing advice on the site and these topics will continue to grow and expand in the future.

When is the next Learn Inbound on?

The next event is on the 21st of October in The Academy, Dublin. We’re delighted to welcome to Ireland Rand Fishkin of Moz, Elizaveta Lavrienko of SEMrush, Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive, Gianluca Fiorelli of ILoveSEO.net and Bas van den Beld of State of Digital. The demand for this event is already huge and we’re sure it’ll be a sell out well in advance. If you’re interested in joining the community for the night and spending time with some of the shining stars of inbound marketing just jump over to the Learn Inbound event page to save your seat.

These events really are all about the marketing community and all about you. If you’ve any thoughts, ideas or suggestions for the team here we’d love to hear from you and discuss them.

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