You don’t need to blow your budget

It is never the intention to blow your budget for the smallest of returns. Often marketers are left scratching their head wondering why the miracle never happened and will conclude that advertising doesn’t work.

Well, I have NEWS for you . . . It does.  Everyone still loves responding to advertising,  just not the unimaginative, ill targeted ones or the over-the-top creative ones.

This post is not meant to be cynical. But, this just happens to be the outcome, after discussing with many different businesses who are trying to figure out why their advertising failed to pull in the responses.

This doesn’t need to happen to you!

There is no way to guarantee winning advertising, but at least you can get some cool and killer tips to increase your chance of much higher response.

Let’s start with AIDA – an incredibly powerful copy writing tool

It’s a tricky one, because there is a lot of exciting ground to cover. Let’s start with a fantastic tool I use when writing adverts. It’s called AIDA. It was developed by the copywriting pioneer Robert E Ramsay way back in 1922. AIDA stands for:

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

Why your ads need to have AIDA at their heart

AIDA is the mental process a person goes through before they buy into the content of your advertising. It’s what they’re thinking while reading your advertising.

Your advertising has to take the reader through the AIDA process in seconds otherwise you’ll lose them.

Attention

Start by grabbing attention with your… attention grabbing headline. Good headlines are 95% of the reason the advertising gets read at all.

Interest

You must build on the reader’s interest with your proposition. How? Two or three compelling benefits underpinned by genuine facts and figures about the power of your offer.

Desire

Build this with your value drenched irresistible special offer or your equally value drenched giveaway. Add some genuine customer feedback. One or two meaty, unedited lines are more than enough.

Action

The final stage of AIDA is that all-important action. You have to make it clear to your reader what you want them to do next. This means having your contact details, the terms and conditions of any special offers, your website details, social media profiles and telephone number available. While readers are linked by their need for you, you can bet your bottom dollar they will have different response preferences. I like to telephone, you like to e-mail. I like to check out on Twitter, you like to go straight to the website. Make it easy for your now hot prospect to book a meeting; request a quote, take advantage of their free session or your incredible offer, etc.

I can guarantee that if you use the AIDA model when writing advertisements you’ll be well and truly on the road to copywriting that really does sell and pull higher response.

Here’s your challenge

Whip out your last batch of adverts and evaluate them against the AIDA model.

• Is there room for improvement?
• Can you see the glaring mistakes?
• Ah, now I know where I went wrong!

Surveys across the Internet reveal without question that mobile email views are up significantly year after year. From March 2011 through March 2012, mobile email views rose 82.4% with 88% of people checking email on their mobile device on a daily basis.

Eighty-five percent of mobile email opens were done on an Apple mobile device. The iPad has seen a 54% annual growth in mobile email use.

That’s good news for mobile optimized marketers. The bad news for those businesses that have not yet optimized email for mobile is that almost two-thirds of Americans and 41% of Europeans will simply close or delete an email that doesn’t render well on their mobile device. That’s a large percentage of loss that should not be acceptable to your business.

And, businesses better be quick to act because forecasts and analyst predict by the end of this year, more emails will be read on a mobile device than on webmail or desktops.

The future of computing is most definitely mobile. More and more people are using SmartPhones and tablets and moving away from PC’s and desktops.

A recent study found that nearly half of marketers don’t know how many mobile subscribers they have. Marketers that don’t have the basic data they need to figure out their mobile strategy will likely lose out.

Many of the email campaign manager platforms will easily determine and sniff out how many and which subscribers are using mobile devices to view your emails.

And speaking of using mobile devices to view emails, when your subscriber takes action and calls you, what is your image?  Do you have a message on hold?  Does it have a call to action?  Are you tracking subscribers that call you from clicking in an email?  Those are more statistics you should know that will add tons of black ink to your bottom line.

Integrated marketing across the board is critical and it’s the awesome part of the digital age because integration and data management are much simpler now.  There is a noticeable and measurable spike in requests from customers to re-purpose content across a variety of channels to produce an integrated campaign. It is no doubt the next logical wave from the branding revolution in the past decade.

The first priority for marketers is the optimization of messages offering content that customers actually want. Don’t throw a message about back-to-school sales to customers whose children have grown up, for example.

You must create content that has meaning and value for your customers. If your goal is to make something go viral, you probably have already failed. Your goal should be to do something great for your customers.

NEVER forget those social links . . . make it simple for customers to find and share your content, deals and information with their network.

As for the actual messaging, subject lines are still paramount.  Mobile functionality is a growing concern, too.

Subject lines will always matter because they are the first impression that a consumer has of your offer.  Images and proper landing page links are all part of the basics in Email Marketing. Aside from that, mobile email is a game changer.  Consumers use mobile and smartphones to text and read or send email. There are significant design implications with mobile email.  However, as mentioned, technology and platforms make it a cinch to be compliant and up to date to please your customers/consumers.

So always TEST how your content is displaying before sending it out.  Always make your content relevant by personalizing it using data from your customer lists so that the right message is relevant and reaches the right consumer/customer.

You would think it would be painfully obvious that most websites would provide ways for consumers to get in touch easily or better yet connect via social media channels. But, I am sorry to tell you that you would be wrong, especially amongst SMB Websites.

According to recent research by SMB DigitalScape and BIA Kelsey, in analyzing over 1 million SMB websites in the U.S., SMBs are lagging way behind larger brand firms when it comes to providing contact channels and links to their social media channels.

- 60% were missing either a toll-free or local telephone number on the homepage;
- Almost three-quarters were missing an email contact link on the homepage;
- Two-thirds were missing any type of form to allow consumers to request information or provide feedback.

In addition to failing to provide the above simple and basic contact means to website visitors, SMBs are also lagging behind other businesses when it comes to connecting their website visitors to their social media channels.

Around 20% of SMBs link to their Facebook Page and even fewer link to Twitter or LinkedIn.

And just when you thought the research findings couldn’t get any worse, a whopping 93% of SMB websites are not optimized for mobile visitors.

Consumers expect certain levels of Social, Local Search and Mobile functionality.

Take 10 minutes today to review your website and add any functionality missing.  In most cases it does not require programming.  If you can’t do it, your webmaster can… and, in very short time.

When making these changes, be sure to track and measure the results.  You will certainly get more business and make your website visitors happier to do business with you.

With SmartPhone users expected to make up over half of US mobile users by 2013, content consumption on mobile devices is also on the rise, including video viewing and social networking.

Estimates are that by or before 2016, 110+ million American or in comparison one-third of the total US population will watch video content on a mobile phone at least once per month. To put that into perspective this year 25.2% of US mobile phone users are expected to watch mobile video content monthly.

Mobile phone social networking will reach a greater share of the overall population even sooner. One-third of US consumers, or 42.6% of mobile phone users, will log in to social networking sites via mobile devices at least once per month by 2014. The overall majority of these mobile social network users like mobile video viewers will be using a smartphone to access social content on the go.

One of the most popular among activities will be visiting Facebook from their phones. Estimates are that the number of monthly mobile Facebook users in the US last year went from 49.4 million and predicted to almost double to 93.9 million by 2014. At which time over 98% of these users will be accessing the site on a smartphone.

Estimates of mobile content usage, including video, and social networking, are based on the analysis of survey and traffic data from research firms and regulatory agencies, historical trends, company-specific data, and demographic and socioeconomic factors.

With these statistics growing sharply upward, isn’t it time to create that video that shows off your hotel property?  Or how about that fabulous menu for your restaurant?

There is no better time than the present, as these numbers will support your efforts.  Enjoy!

Facebook is in their quiet period right now because of their impending IPO.  However, this just makes total sense that they would do this especially now that they are approaching 1 billion users.

Think of how this would impact your business.  People searching your business or niche via Facebook has many advantages.  Especially if you are doing a location based search; it would use your location and your friends’ tastes.

A team of more than 20 Facebook engineers — led by a former Google programmer — is at work on a vastly improved search engine within the site, according to a Businessweek report.

The idea, according to two sources, is to take better advantage of the mountains of content Facebook users create on — and off — the site every day.  Facebook users are using their mobile devices to navigate their profiles by a steep climb upwards every month sharing status updates and supporting business brand pages on the network.

Don’t forget the almighty Facebook “Like” button to mark articles and videos from external sites, there is certainly a lot for Facebook to take advantage of, but more importantly you as a business owner should be paying full attention.

Google has continued to try and get its hat in the ring in the social space.  Its latest effort was launching the Google + network last fall which still did not even slow Facebook down.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has consistently downplayed the level of direct competition between Facebook and Google. “I don’t think that this is going to be the type of situation when one company wins all this stuff,” he told Charlie Rose of PBS last fall.

If the Businessweek report is true, however, it will add yet another area of heightened competitive overlap between the two Silicon Valley giants.

And let’s not forget that Facebook got more traffic than the Google network for the first time last year.

So if you have been hesitating getting your Facebook business page launched, now is the best time to get off the fence.  When Facebook finishes their IPO it will be global news and traffic to the network will be bigger than ever before.

Do you think your business could benefit?  I think so . . . especially since it’s free with no risk.

Do you know where they come from, how engaged they are with your website or if they have converted as a reader, subscriber or customer?

You CAN and you SHOULD.

You can see all of these insights by getting a free Google Analytics account.

Why Google Analytics?

Google Analytics allows you to see where your visitors come from and if they engage with your content or leave immediately.  The best part is you can set up goals and objectives and measure if your visitors are meeting those goals.

With Google Analytics, you can get valuable insights about your visitors and track your social media traffic.

This will help you identify the social media sites that send the most visitors back to your website to see which one needs more attention.

Plus you’ll discover how you can learn more about the visitors who come to your site from Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ sites.

In addition you can use a feature called Advanced Segments to segment your social media traffic and see how those visitors behave on your site.

Getting Started With Google Analytics

Before we dive into this, I want to make sure that you use the latest version of Google Analytics.

To do this, just login into your Google Analytics  account and click the New Version link from the top left section of your screen.

Once you do that, you are all set up with the latest tracking insights.

Identify Your Main Traffic Sources

First you will need to find out what social media sites send the most traffic to your website.

To do that, go to the Traffic Sources section, select Sources and All Traffic.

You’ll be able to see a list with all of the websites that send traffic back to your site. Right now, you will need to identify which are social media websites and keep the first three in mind.

Identify the main 3 social media sites that send you traffic.

From this example you can see that Twitter (t.co is Twitter’s shortened URL), Hacker News and Facebook are the main social media sites that drive traffic.

For you, the most important may be Google+ or StumbleUpon or any other site where you have an active profile.

Google Analytics has great support and direction.  Now it is up to you, but always remember:

“To Convert, I Must Track . . .”

Companies that use automatically triggered emails for abandoned shopping carts say that it is the best form of automation, bar none. Yet, according to the findings only 13% use them.

Brands that don’t use automated email are clearly losing out on ROI.

Website owners that use email to re-engage those who have fallen out of sales funnel are significantly more likely to report higher levels of ROI.  Companies that don’t have any of these automation techniques implemented are much more likely to rate email as being poor for generating increased revenues and ROI.

The strong correlation between increased revenues, increased ROI and use of email triggers is clearly a “no-brainer”.  Companies that are not utilizing just have not been shown the way.

When asked which triggers prompted emails several options were given ranging from welcome programs to date notifications, such as birthdays. Disappointingly, over a third (37%) of companies said that none of the options presented applied to their business. Responses were as follows:

Welcome programs – 31%
Response to sign-up/site visit – 28%
Reactivating lapsed customers – 23%
Timed content across sales cycle – 18%
Selling complementary products – 15%
Up sell – 14%
Abandoned shopping cart – 13%
Content downloaded – 12%
Click-through but no purchase – 10%
Content viewed on-site – 10%
Subscription renewal programs – 10%
Date notifications (birthdays) – 9%
None of the above – 37%

Optimistically companies will catch on to automated email triggers.  It is relatively simple to implement and delivers significant returns.  In other words, increasing response and ROI while being able to reduce traditional advertising by 50% or more.  Do your research now and start enjoying greater returns.

Making a mobile version of your site makes a lot of sense as the world continues to go mobile; there is no end in sight. The number of mobile devices increases by the tens of thousands every day. The growth for content consumed through mobile devices is on a sharp curve upward. It’s best to keep current and to learn some best practices when it comes time to developing code for mobile sites (HTML5). As a Website owner it is very much worth your time and that of your webmaster. If you want to be sure, take a moment to check your website analytics. Most Website owners and webmasters use Google Analytics, where you can easily check to see how much of your traffic is coming from mobile devices. In the New Version of Google Analytics, scroll along the menu on the left and click Mobile from within the Audience section. Then click, Devices. Then, in the main window, you’ll see a list of mobile devices that your visitors are using. Some Website owners will notice 10%, 15% or 20% or more of their audience is coming from mobile devices. And that’s considered pretty significant. Your visitors could still access your content on a mobile device, but it’s not very friendly.

HTML5 is the code that makes your Website mobile compliant.  Start by visiting your Website from your mobile device.  To check the compliance of your Website, go to http://validator.w3.org where you can get information that will be helpful in pointing out the problem areas.

With few exceptions, who do you know that doesn’t have a mobile phone or tablet?  Most mobile devices are within arm’s reach 22 plus hours per day.  This is a VERY good reason to make sure your Website is mobile compliant.  When it is, the biggest benefit is that your conversions will begin to rise, and this is attributed to your Website being mobile compliant.

And speaking of compliance and conversions, for those potential customers who call you, make sure you don’t have dead air (silence) when they are placed on hold.  Your message on hold can include calls to action which will also drive your conversions up, as well as making it easy and convenient for your customers by letting them hear driving directions, your operating hours, and any specials you may be running.

Clever, yet simple.  Thousands of members at first, and now millions.

What is the activity at Pinterest?  Pinning photo’s and images on your profile and categorizing them for others to view, LIKE and share.

How does it apply to your business?  Well, if you are in the hospitality, travel or restaurant business . . . read on.

It is one thing to PIN images on a website.  But, quite another if you can add a link to each photo or image that you upload.

So here’s an example.  A hotel marketing manager might create a profile at Pinterest, and post photos of the property.  Room photos, restaurant photos, meeting room photos, pool photos, and amenity photos.

Here’s the marketing spin, though.  Put the name of the hotel in each photo and include the city name, too.

Then, add a link to the hotel reservation website. When someone likes the photo and clicks on it, it will take them to the reservation system on the hotel website.

Oh… did I mention that it’s FREE? That’s right – FREE marketing!

What can a restaurant do with Pinterest? You could post photos of coupons or food dishes and attach a link to a Google map or any other part of your restaurant website.

The same with the travel industry. You know how fabulous travel pictures can look. The right photo can take viewers to another world in their mind and begin to create a longing to explore new places.  Again, add a link from the photo to a tour package on your travel website.

Now you’ve made it about more than just viewing photos.  It drives traffic & new customers to your website and becomes an interactive experience.

Do a quick search on Pinterest to see what all the hoopla is about.  And take advantage of this NO COST marketing concept.  Enjoy!