Google's New Ad Structure... Will You Pay More?
A major shift in the way Google displays its advertising took place this past week. Google began phasing out the right hand or sidebar ads and instead are now featuring 1-4 ads at the top of the page, placing three more at the bottom of the results page. Google has confirmed that the change is now rolling out to all searches, in all languages, worldwide. Ads will not appear on the right side of desktop search results, with two exceptions: Product Listing Ad PLA boxes, which show either above...
Running Facebook Flash Sales to Boost Customer Acquisition
Facebook Flash Sales are an excellent tactic when you’re looking to acquire new customers at break even or better. It is important to remember that these types of sales aren’t necessarily meant to make a huge profit; it is about acquiring new customers. Think of it as a Groupon offer or a Black Friday sale. You create an offer at such a discount that it’s nearly impossible for customers to say no. Don’t run these sales every week. This would start to train your...
Trouble Hitting Your Sales Goals? Maybe You Are Using The Wrong Number
Lots of companies give salespeople dollar goals to hit. While that is certainly one way to do it, in some cases it can be counter productive. After years of trying different sales goals, we finally found an approach that got better results across the board. Here is what we did... 1. We separated marketing goals from sales goals. We gave each team their own goals where they are totally accountable. 2. We gave our marketing team a goal of X number of inbound sales leads to generate per week. We...
How to Build a Community Around Your Business
Building a community around your business can be challenging, but the payoffs can be astounding. Research has shown that customers in communities spend 19% more than customers who aren’t in communities. That’s a big jump. One of the most challenging parts of building a community is getting people to notice, and then actually participate in what you do there. There is a lot of effort that goes into building a community around your brand. It’s creating content, being...
Is Email Marketing Dead?
Far from it! Email marketing is alive and well. Here are some stats from MailChimp just one email service provider for 2015. In 2015, MailChimp handled 62,310,854 email campaigns. They sent 204,383,657,109 emails. Of those, 42,164,247,301 were opened and 3,527,638,012 resulted in clicks. 3.5 billion clicks doesn’t sound dead to me. Here are a couple tips to make sure that you are doing your emails correctly: Be Mobile-Friendly More and more, email is being read on mobile devices. You...
Don't Leave Money on the Table – Website Conversion Tactics Post-Sale
Many businesses spend a lot of time, hard work and money in order to attract new visitors to their websites. Of those new visitors, some decide to leave the website while others take an action or "convert" into a lead by filling out the contact form, making a purchase or placing a phone call to inquire about more information or to engage your services. In a typical sales scenario, you answer your prospect’s questions, make the sale and that would be the end of the customer purchase...
How Ultra-Targeted Facebook Ads Bring You New Leads
With the expansive targeting options now offered by Facebook,
it is nearly impossible not to find your perfect target market using Facebook
advertising.
Are you a dentist? Wedding planner? Auto dealer? Fitness
guru? Florist?
Your ideal audience is waiting on Facebook. Need more
convincing? Check out these targeting examples.
Want to attract people who are looking to plan a wedding?
Show your wedding planning services to the people most likely searching for
your business, newly engaged...
The Biggest Difference Between Email Marketing and Marketing Automation
MailChimp takes on Infusionsoft It is the difference between a bicycle and a Ferrari… it is the difference between communication and money… it is the difference between a shore wave and a swell… but enough of the analogies... Yes, both Infusionsoft and MailChimp and similar systems like Constant Contact, have some basic similar features when it comes to email marketing, and that’s about where it stops. Even most smart marketers don’t yet realize there are major...
What Is Marketing Automation? Is It for You and Your Business?
Marketing Automation
Sure, you’ve heard the term, but it’s likely you don’t
exactly know what this trend is and what it means for you and your
business. In this article, we will educate
you on what exactly marketing automation is and how it will affect your
business. If you want to skip to the
end, here’s what you’ll learn… marketing automation saves you time and makes
you money. Keep reading if you want to
know how.
Marketing Automation
Defined
...
Keeping the Peace: Integrating Sales and Marketing Systems
For many years, businesses have been trying to get marketing and sales to work together. Like oil and water they didn’t mix. It was marketing’s job to bring in the prospects and sales' job to close them. Unfortunately, sales complained about the "low quality" leads marketing was delivering and marketing complained about the sales team’s inability to close business. Good news! Thanks to things like social media marketing and the latest advances in marketing and sales...