by Scott Meadows | Jan 6, 2015 | Info Article
Having a website for your business could greatly help in spreading the word about the services and products you offer, particularly since everyone is now turning to the Internet to search for things they need and information they seek. At first, you might be tempted to go all out and have your Greenville, SC web design experts create a sophisticated-looking website, but looks won’t matter if you fail to get your message across by filling your site with boring content or using complex methods. The first thing you have to know about website design is that it has to be user-friendly and simple; its core focus is your brand and what you have to offer. In setting up a website for your business, with the help of Greenville, SC web design companies like Spark Local Marketing, be mindful of the following common mistakes business owners commit and know how you can avoid them. Technical aspects People are after an easy experience when navigating your website, so don’t EVER deactivate the “Back” button or bring your site visitors to multiple new windows. Deactivating the “Back” button prevents users from going back to their page of origin, causing them to get lost or confused on the site as they struggle to return to a favored page. Bombarding them with several windows as they weave through your site, on the other hand, could slow down their computer’s response and load speed. Content Keyword-heavy content is a thing of the past; keywords are no longer the main components for raising your site’s search rankings. Also, while you might have a way with words,...
by Scott Meadows | Dec 24, 2014 | Industry News
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the tools used in internet marketing by companies to generate traffic to their websites and improve their online visibility. To be able to create traffic, websites require proper optimization of keywords and the implementation of other search engine-friendly strategies. By organically increasing traffic to websites, businesses are able to raise their revenue from users who visit their page and who are then converted into paying costumers. Continuous user visits increases the company’s organic search engine rankings, which eventually boosts their credibility online over their competitors as the company’s website is pushed to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). With the constant developments and updates in technology, it is important for businesses that use SEO to keep up with the latest trends to further improve their success. Nate Dame, a columnist of Search Engine Land gave some tips on how companies can boost their SEO techniques for 2015. The year 2015 is nearly upon us, and every marketing department is forecasting and planning how to make a new splash next year. How is your SEO strategy looking? Now is a good time to dust off your (possibly outdated) SEO strategy and get it ready for the new year. Make sure it’s pointed at the right goal, and make sure that goal is understood and adopted across the entire organization: Google says the user is in charge, so — yep, you guessed it — the user is in charge! Be Guided by Rules Major search engines have their own set of rules to avoid unnecessary spamming of keywords and links. This...
by Scott Meadows | Dec 23, 2014 | Info Article
All businesses use different marketing strategies, whether traditional or online, to achieve their goals in terms of increasing their sales and revenue, improving branding, and expanding their target market. One technique on how these objectives can be accomplished is by having various campaigns that advertise the company’s products and services. Advertising agencies work with clients from different industries to develop and provide effective advertising campaigns that would promote them and make an impact on their targeted market. In an article by David Ingram for the Houston Chronicle, he gave a few reasons why hiring an advertising agency is beneficial for businesses: An advertising agency is a professional service provider that develops and administers advertising campaigns for businesses of all sizes. Advertising agencies are highly specialized in creating advertisements for traditional media as well as emerging technology, such as internet video and social networks. Agencies can act as full-service boutiques, handling a campaign every step of the way, or they can perform contract work on a specific portion of a campaign, such as advertisement design. Financial Savings Hiring an advertising agency can be quite costly, but it can also help companies avoid other expenses. This is also beneficial if business owners don’t have enough knowledge on advertising. If a certain company is hesitant on hiring an agency to do work for them and insists on adding a new department for their operations instead, it would only cost them more in the long run. Hiring professionals allows business owners to dedicate their time and focus more on other vital business tasks. Established Network Prominent advertising agencies in Greenville, SC usually connect...
by Scott Meadows | Dec 22, 2014 | Info Article
Insta-what? Yes, Instagram, a platform known for #selfies and #ootds, can actually help in boosting up the online presence of your business while creating a human side to your enterprise. You might be focused too much on using Facebook or Twitter for your online marketing strategy, but now that Facebook is limiting promotional posts beginning this January (meaning you’ll have to pay for promotional content), engaging customers may become a challenge. What really are the factors involved in marketing your business on Instagram? Liku Zelleke from Top Ten Social Media has listed down these few things that make Instagram one of the best platforms in online marketing: One of the best ways a business can create a great following is by making sure the public knows the community behind the brand. Posting pictures of the people that drive the business makes it more familiar to the general public. The “family” image goes very far. This is especially true in the business’ early years or when it is still dealing with customers in a relatively small community. Nothing builds loyalty better than the sense of knowing the people behind the business. Putting a human face to brands, especially for small businesses, continues to be a trend and will still be relevant this coming year, and social media has caused all this. With social networking sites connecting people, brands have realized that they can encourage positive interaction between them and their potential customers. That’s not all, however, because an effective Greenville, SC marketing strategy acknowledges that a visual content can also be effective in building up your brand: There are businesses...
by Scott Meadows | Dec 19, 2014 | Industry News
Heads up, companies and small businesses: just in case you haven’t heard, Facebook will begin limiting the number of promotional posts starting this January, meaning you’ll have to pay to get your advertisements posted on their site. This is part of their aim to improve user experience after surveying thousands of people saying that they were already tired of seeing promotional posts on their feed. Facebook might have been an effective medium in promoting your business, but Kimanzi Constable, contributor for Entrepreneur.com, says that relying too much on social media might be detrimental to your marketing strategy rather than beneficial: When you build a large social media following, you have to realize that those people are their customers, not yours. They may be following you, but that social media platform has complete control of what they see and do. Building your business on someone else’s platform has led to the downfall of many entrepreneurs. Since these social media platforms are businesses themselves, it might not be wise to rely too much or solely on social media marketing. Instead, Kimanzi Constable has suggested a diverse online marketing strategy, which you can utilize in the coming year: When SEO started to decrease, savvy entrepreneurs pivoted because they weren’t too dependent on any one strategy. These same entrepreneurs will also weather the changes on social media and whatever is the next “big thing.” Putting all your eggs in one basket is recipe for disaster. Social media marketing should be one part of a unique, and diverse marketing strategy. If that part of the strategy starts to decrease, you pivot instead of...
by Scott Meadows | Dec 18, 2014 | Industry News
Many businesses are already aware of social media—most may even be an active participant in them. Those with websites could even be practitioners of search engine optimization (SEO). Although social media and SEO strategies may seem disparate, both can actually be used hand-in-hand to improve your business’s search engine rankings. As stated by Dave Lloyd in his blog post for Adobe’s Digital Marketing Blog: The marriage of search and social is powerful indeed. While it’s still developing, we should expect it only to get more complex and relevant. That means smart SEOs and marketers will start now to learn the subtle and more direct ways social can support your search engine results. Ask a Greenville, SC marketing expert and he’ll tell you: Social media is influencing SEO more and more with each passing day, and getting ahead of the learning curve can mean massive growth for your company and leaving your competition behind. Take a look at how social media and SEO overlap and how the former can contribute to the overall organic success of your SEO efforts. Links Being active on social media can make your brand or website content more familiar to the public. This increase in awareness can be transformed into links or “shares”. Such links contribute to your website’s overall link profile, which eventually enhances its SEO impact. Search Queries Since social media helps you increase overall awareness about your brand, more people will likely become curious about it and search for it. Once search queries about your brand increases, Google will view your brand as more popular and well-known, and award your site and...
by Scott Meadows | Dec 17, 2014 | Industry News
When it comes to market research, the Internet is such a practical tool to use. In fact, you may already be doing it without knowing—keyword searches, asking customers for input—even reading trade journals and research statistics relevant to your industry already constitutes online market research. Other tools, such as questionnaires and feedback forms, can also help you gather information about your market. Primary Online Research Methods and Tips Indeed, the Internet brings a wealth of additional resources to help business owners conduct low-cost (sometimes free) market research. Of course, you’re going to need the help of Greenville, SC web design professionals to harness these resources effectively. In a recent article, Business 2 Community’s Alex Pejak presented “8 Tips for Conducting Effective Market Research Online”. Below are four of them: Instant Community An instant community provides very quick consumer feedback, reducing the time needed for research from weeks or months to just a few days. Polls and Surveys With polls and surveys, you can structure your research more effectively and collect specific information needed in your marketing campaign. Polls and surveys collect information that is more reliable as it explores several aspects relevant to your market research. Social Media Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have proven useful as online market research channels. Researchers can gain access to useful information about their products in a very short amount of time. Online Focus Groups With online focus groups, pre-selected candidates take part in a discussion that is crafted around a series of research questions. The participants in this kind of research interact...
by Scott Meadows | Nov 10, 2014 | Info Article
When you’re out to try a new product or service, whose opinion and recommendations would you trust most? That of the business owner, or that of a former client who has firsthand experience? Of course, given how modern consumers arrive at purchase decisions, the latter’s feedback takes precedence—and this makes customer reviews important to businesses. In fact, due to the significance of customer reviews and ratings, even search engine optimization in Greenville, SC and other areas, particularly SEO campaigns aimed to promote local businesses, consider online feedbacks as critical elements that need to be constantly monitored and managed. An article by Amanda DiSilvestro posted at Yahoo! has this to say: Online reviews have always been a part of Google and good business management, but just recently Google has really started ramping up places you can features reviews. Based on some of these moves […], it seems that business reviews are going to be more important than ever in 2014. Small business owners need to make sure they’re taking advantage of all the different review options, making efforts to earn quality reviews, and communicating with the team about updating and managing comments. Fortunately, business owners can rely on leading Greenville SEO companies like Spark Local Marketing to help them understand the relationship between consumer reviews and SEO. As a basic introduction, here’s what you have to know about online reviews and search engine marketing: Online Reviews and SEO—The Profitable Connection Google Values User-Generated Content Other than fresh and relevant content that can be found in your website or social media profile, it seems that Google’s hummingbird also favors user-generated content....
by Scott Meadows | Nov 7, 2014 | Industry News
If you’re a business owner hoping to improve your brand’s exposure, you’ve probably already invested in online marketing. You have to take note though, that online marketing is like a large tree with many spreading branches, so you’ll have to work with dependable advertising agencies in Greenville, SC such as Spark Local Marketing that know current and effective marketing practices—especially online reputation and customer relationship management—like the back of their hand. The Impact of Customer Reviews: From Word-of-Mouth to Online Posts These days, if a person is happy about a purchase, he doesn’t just rave about it to friends—he makes an online feedback. The same goes for dissatisfied customers who take to web forums or review sites to rant and complain. To maintain a good image, both online and offline, businesses typically depend on the marketing experts of Greenville, SC advertising agencies for help. With 70 percent of global consumers stating they trust online reviews (based on Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising report), and 61 percent of customers reading online reviews before making a purchase, there’s no doubt that the power of online reviews is not only growing, but becoming much stronger. Future of Online Reviews An article by Tomer Tagrin for Entrepreneur.com discusses the relevance of customer reviews for businesses today and in the future: With reviews already such an important part of the buying process, it’s easy to see how reliance on them will only increase in the future. For example, over the next few years, we can expect to see the anonymity of reviews fade away and instead become linked to shoppers’ real identities on Facebook, Twitter...
by Scott Meadows | Nov 6, 2014 | Industry News
Just like most things in life, there’s no way for you to do better, learn more, or grow further in your business if you don’t scratch beneath the surface of tasks that you have to do—be it hiring people or promoting your products. This means that to succeed in an endeavor, you’ll have to devote considerable time and effort into mastering it. For instance, take local Greenville, SC marketing campaigns, especially local SEO (search engine optimization), wherein a number of business owners fail to see the bigger picture and rarely go beyond posting in local directory listings. As Neil Patel states in his article posted at Entrepreneur.com: Local search engine optimization (SEO) can be tricky. Not only do you have to do all the customary SEO stuff, but then you have to do a new layer of complex SEO activities. Most tech-savvy local-business owners have a decent idea of how to do local SEO, but diving to a deeper level can get confusing. For example, most people think that in order to have successful local SEO, you must have directory listings. This is true — to a point. First, though, you have to make sure that several other things are in order. (Directory listings don’t come first in local SEO.) This is why business owners can significantly benefit from the services of leading Greenville, SC advertising and marketing companies like Spark Local Marketing. Other than ensuring that your business is listed with the right directories, they’ll see to it that the following are put into effect: Active Social Media Accounts These days, an official website isn’t the only proof and...
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