Top Ways To Increase Sales Through Your Website
Nowadays, the internet has become an incredibly valuable and increasingly necessary tool to drive forward the overall sales and cash flow of your business. Here are the top ways to increase sales through your website and subsequently improve the health of your business and improve your overall cash flow.
Build Trust and Authenticity
Whether the person viewing your website is a returning customer or just an interested passer-by, the best way to secure a sale through your website is to include genuine, positive testimonials and reviews from already satisfied customers. The best way of summarizing this online sales technique is by examining and employing the concept of social proof, which is essentially the idea that potential customers will conform, in order to be liked by or accepted by the influencer.
Your SEO Score
SEO scores are one of the most useful and important tools in determining the current and far-reaching success and useability of your businesses’ website. Established and experienced SEO score providers such as Yeah!Local can provide you with a nine page, detailed SEO score generated in under fifteen seconds.
Promote Your Best Sellers and Package Deals
There is a multitude of ways to promote your best sellers through your website, and a shrewd way to capitalize on this technique is to use geolocation to improve on a wide array of functionality benefits. Geolocation is essentially the wireless detection of the physical location of a remote device and geolocation data to predict user and potential customer behavior, increase brand awareness and subsequently increase your online sales.
Create Buyer Personas
A buyer persona is a fabricated customer profile that accurately depicts your ideal customer based on real, current data on your existing customers and current market research.
Buyer personas are an incredibly useful tool in enabling you to humanize your ideal customer, this enables you to understand their needs more accurately and subsequently select the right marketing strategies to encourage a sale and increase your online sales on the whole.
There are several different categories in determining your buyer persona which include:
- Personal preferences, including the types of media they consume and how they prefer to communicate with businesses
- Standard information such as age, gender, education level, income level, marital status, number of dependents and geographical location
- Professional profiles including the industry they work in and their job title
- Personal and professional career goals
- Personal and professional values
Increase Your Leads
Your leads are basically the potential customers who have expressed online interest in your services and products and are the people who have given you their contact information to be notified of the latest deals and new information regarding your business.
There are a number of ways to assess the level of your leads, which include counting how many email subscribers you have, how many registered users of your website there are, how many contact form submissions you have, and the number of quote requests you have received.
How Local SEO Helps Service Based Businesses Generate More Leads?
Today, many businesses are already familiar with the positive impact that SEO, in general, can have on the traffic their website receives. However, SEO is about more than just getting traffic; it is about getting targeted traffic that converts to leads and finally sales. The more targeted an SEO campaign is, the more leads you can expect to get and consequently higher conversion figures. That’s why it is so crucial that local service-based businesses focus their attention on the pillars of local SEO and have a lead conversion strategy in place.
In this article, we’ll look at how local SEO can help specifically service-based businesses generate more leads. We’ll also briefly touch on common methods used to convert those leads to sales or clients.
Optimizing Your Google My Business (GMB) Account
One of the first things we often do is start with a business’s Google listing, also referred to as their business profile. It is one of the most effective ways to rank a business and is often a channel for initial contact by prospective clients. Also, ranking well on Google Maps means that your website may also rank well in local search results.
Many local service-based businesses don’t have a Google My Business account and are surprised that there is such a thing. Once we create an optimized profile, add all the required information and location information, it’s ready to start showing up in search results.
Creating a Google My Business Account requires the following:
- We need to create a GMB account and then verify that you own the business.
- Ensure that the listing has up-to-date information
- Respond to customer reviews when someone leaves one
- Include a logo, operating hours, payment methods, products sold and lots of images of the shop, workshop, employees etc.
- Publish posts, mainly announcements, special offers events, which are easily done via the Google My Business dashboard.
Optimize Your GMB Listing
Local service-based businesses that are already listed often don’t manage their listing. Also, a client or someone they might know probably just added them to Google Maps. They do not know of it, fortunately, though you can regain control of your listing and start optimizing it.
Optimizing your listing has two significant benefits for service-based businesses:
- It gives prospects a way to find and contact you directly from the listing. Most people will just tap on a Google Maps listing for the service after checking out a few reviews and calling the company. However, if your number is incorrect or your office hours aren’t mentioned, it possible you will miss that lead. As a business owner, you know the value of a lead that calls in, so your business listing should be optimized to convert that lead when the calls start coming in.
- Replying to reviews is another essential aspect of your GMB listing management. Prospects searching for a service they need will start with going through the reviews. If they see that none of the reviews have been professionally responded .They assume the business either does not exist or does not have good customer service. Either way, you’re losing out on leads.
- It would help if you also started asking for reviews in person or online after you’ve successfully completed a job for the client. For instance, if you are a roofer, ask the homeowner to leave you a review after you’ve finished repairing the roof for them.
Optimize Your Listing Voice Search
We’ve seen the rise of voice search in the past few years, and this trend is only going to increase, which is why your listing should be optimized for it. That’s why it is so vital as local SEOs to optimize a website and associated service listing for the most common questions people ask their voice assistants, as opposed to what they type.
In our experience, prospective customers or clients will use more long-tail keywords when doing voice searches than regular searches. That’s why your content’s SEO will need to be optimized for a conversational tone, i.e. as if someone is speaking. One way to account for traditional questions is to use words like what, who, where, why, when, etc.
Our local voice search also focuses a lot on a searcher’s intent because people often search for a specific piece of information. For instance, if they are baking, they may ask Alexa to convert cups to tablespoons and want a quick answer. Also, your site needs to be optimized for voice searches asking for business hours. For instance, “What roofer is available right now?”
Have a Location Specific About Us Page
As a local SEO expert, we know the value of a localized About Us page on the main business website and the GMB listing. You need to have a location page for the area, which at the minimum provides information such as:
- Testimonials
- Store hours
- Phone number, name, address etc.
- Description of the business
- Any current promotions
- Parking availability
- Google Maps attached to each page
If you are operating the service in multiple locations, then you’ll need multiple pages for each location. Each page will also need to be unique to that location in terms of content and what you offer there.
Conclusion
Local SEO, when done right, can yield many leads for service-based businesses. However, services need to optimize their business processes to convert those leads to prospects and then sales. Part of doing that is having good customer service and active SEO, which consistently works on optimizing your local GMB listing and answering reviews left by clients.
While local SEO can be challenging in some locations and for some industries, it is, for the most part, worth the effort and time spent. That’s why as a local service, if you’re not investing in professional SEO, it’s possible that you’re losing out on many leads and sales that come from people who fire up Google to search for dry cleaners, house painters, roofers, contractors etc.
5 Ways Video Marketing Can Boost Your Online Business
Video can be the most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal if you know how to play your cards right. With more than 87% businesses harnessing the power of this potent marketing medium, you are bound to lose a lion’s share of the market by not taking full advantage of it. Whether you are struggling to create an online presence, drive sales and leads, create brand awareness, or increase ROI, here’s what video marketing can do for your business.
Google Loves Videos
One solid reason for adding video to your marketing mix is that video content boosts your online presence and augments visibility. This is because users love video content and are more likely to spend time on a website that incorporates engaging videos. Compelling videos keep the users riveted to your website and keep them from bouncing off. Longer exposure instills trust in your website and signals search engines that your site has good content, which can lead to higher ranking in searches. In fact, research says that you are 50X more likely to show up on top of Search Engine result Pages and achieve a 157% increase in organic traffic from SERPs if your website contains video content. Google always displays video results for search terms like Reviews, How-to keywords, Tutorials, Sports or fitness related searches, and recipes, which is where optimizing your videos can go the extra mile.
Improved Engagement
When you think about the fact that YouTubers watch over 1 billion hours of video every day, including a video in an email can boost the click-through rate by 200%-300%, or that Videos on Facebook garner 135% more organic reach than any type of post or are shared more than texts and images combined, the power of video marketing becomes imminent. If you want people to pay attention to you, highly shareable videos are the way to go. More eyes on your content translates into more people engaging with your brand and ultimately becoming your brand ambassador, which is a marketer’s dream. Whether you want to incorporate live events into your online content, showcase a product in action, educate people or teach them a new skill, share your trade secrets, explain your value proposition, use videos to address people’s concerns, or simply make your audience laugh, shareable videos help you reach a wider audience and turn them into evangelists. Used cleverly and with a purpose, videos can turn your website into a dynamic interactive site that will guarantee repeat visits.
Drive More Traffic to Your Site
Technology has enabled us to add clickable and interactive elements in videos for cross-channel marketing. For instance, end screen features and YouTube’s cards allow you to incorporate calls-to-action and links back to your site or some other video, or even showcase a product in your videos. you can leverage YouTube’s end screens to get the users to subscribe to your channel, peruse through your products, visit your website, or even check out more videos, while keeping them engaged with creative and compelling content.
Builds Trust in Your Brand
Trust is the very foundation of conversions, and ultimately sales. Videos help you connect better with your customers and win their trusts. The more you establish yourself as the voice of authority in your niche, the better people respond to your branding efforts and remember you down the lane. Let’s say you are looking to buy chocolate, and come across a new brand that you have never heard of. You check out this brand and discover tons of compelling video content, like drool-worthy recipes, sumptuous videos of chocolate being prepared and packed, and even some explainer videos for ideas behind their unique flavors and how a family’s passion for chocolate turned into a full-fledged business.
Watch a few videos and decide that these people do know what they are talking about. You feel a deep connection with the brand and feel like you actually know them. Even though you have never tasted their chocolates before, you feel compelled to sample the delightful indulgences you have just witnessed. You want to be a part of the experience. This is exactly how video marketing for business builds trust. In fact, 64% of users admit to purchasing a product online after watching a video.
Through engaging videos, you can showcase your products in action to mimic an in-store experience, answer common questions about your services or details, educate users or teach them a new skill, or discuss other relevant topics. The key is to position your business as an expert in that field and persuade people to consider your business next time they are purchasing that product or availing that service.
Video Promises the Best ROI
In a survey, 89% businesses agreed that video offers the best return on investment and helps them in lead generation, while 80% customers say that video content has helped them boost sales manifolds. Considering how video marketing can eat up a lot of your marketing budget, it’s higher return than makes up for the cost.
5 Ideas for Generating More Traffic for Your Business
Improving your brand’s visibility and giving your traffic a boost are imperative goals for any business but boosting traffic can often seem like a time-consuming challenge. You may even think that driving traffic depends on a large amount of investment and expenditure, but the truth is that there are many low-cost or even free ways you can give your traffic an all-important boost.
If you’re looking for inspiration, here are five ideas for you to push more traffic.
1.Use Sound SEO Tactics
One of the best ways to promote more organic traffic is by utilizing consistent SEO tactics. These are going to help promote your brand name within online circles, boost your rankings and build your authority.
Getting an SEO plan together is the first crucial step in driving more traffic to your website. Authoritative backlinks are important for building trust and expertise for your site and help to boost engagement with your brand.
2.Incorporate Paid Ads
While utilizing free and organic traffic is a top priority for businesses, that doesn’t mean that the power of paid ads should be ignored. Running targeted, paid campaigns can help not only to drive more traffic to your website but pinpoint the right people within your desired target market at the right time.
3.Don’t Forget About Foot Traffic
If you’re a physical business store, like a retail venue, or even if you just have a physical office building, foot traffic is important for the success of your business, too. Ensure that you encourage a higher amount of foot traffic using good building design, clear signage, and even eye-catching digital signage, like from www.mandoemedia.com, to encourage passersby to visit your brand.
4.Provide Engaging Content
In promoting more traffic, you need to give consumers a reason to want to visit your website and interact with you — and one great way of achieving that is through enjoyable content.
Think about all the different varieties of content that consumers expect in this modern age and create content persuasively. Of course, you’ll want to embrace all forms of media, such as images, videos, blog posts, articles, and social media posts.
You can also encourage more traffic by promoting website content on other channels, like promoting a blog post through social media, so that people click through to your website to view the full piece.
5.Get Involved with Conversations
Engaging in conversations is a must if you want to create a more lasting relationship with your consumers, but it’s also a great way to drive traffic too. Social media is ideal for allowing the general public to see what you’re saying and where you’re saying it. So, the more that you’re getting involved in conversations, starting conversations, and answering comments, the more other people can see your brand name and choose to click on your site to learn more about you.
Final Thoughts
One great thing about promoting more traffic is that it usually goes hand-in-hand with another beneficial purpose, such as forming more positive relationships, building your social media channels, or creating content. This can make generating more traffic a creative and enjoyable experience, as well as a fundamental one.
How to Get More Responses From Your Outreach Campaign
Outreach for your brand is an important part of making sure that people can find your company. So that your consumers are aware of your products and services. If you are taking the time to do outreach yourself or you decide to outsource your link-building work or email blasts. You need to be sure that you are getting the responses that you are expecting.
Emails in particular, are commonly sent to spam folders by many consumers if they do not offer the value that they were hoping for. If you are trying to figure out how to make your outreach campaigns more effective, read on for more information!
How to Get More Responses From Your Outreach Campaign
There are some planning and design phases that you should always submit your outreach campaigns to before you roll them out to consumers. Doing the right planning and design process will make sure that you are delivering quality content and outreach with the right branding message.
1. Identify the Purpose of Your Outreach Campaign
This is the most important part of planning an outreach campaign. You should always take this step first before you design anything that you plan to use for outreach. The purpose of your campaign guides every aspect of its design and its delivery. Are you trying to convert to sales or are you informing your consumers about a new product that is going to be coming out soon?
Maybe you are trying to get new email list subscribers, or you might be trying to promote a book or another product that you get affiliate marketing payments from. These kinds of determinations need to be made well before you start to design any kind of outreach campaign that you are designing. This will make sure that you are not wasting money or time on outreach that will not generate engagement or sales.
2. Be Willing to Change Direction
You might have an idea in mind of an email campaign and then you realize that this will be content that is better. When delivered as a blog post or as part of your social media ad campaigns. It is important to make sure that you are not locking yourself into forcing round pegs into square holes. You can probably use almost any kind of content that you have dreamt up for some purpose, but forcing that content to fit the needs of an incorrect outreach style will never work.
Being willing to identify the proper placement of different kinds of information. Outreach is essential to being able to deliver content and outreach that fits properly with your branding and delivers maximum results for your money spent on ads, email campaigns, and blog content. You always want to avoid annoying or frustrating your consumers and you can spare yourself lots of lost subscribers by making sure that you are sending the right content through the right channels each time you provide outreach.
3. Define Your Target Audience
Always make sure that you know exactly who your target audience is for each kind of outreach that you are doing. You should never assume that your target audience is not changing over time. You should always be open to segmenting and retargeting your audience details. No matter what kind of outreach you are working on, you will have reduced success if you are showing this outreach to the wrong parts of your audience.
Your audience can grow, split, and change over time and you may find that you are going to need to do outreach to these different audience segments in unique ways. This is especially true of email outreach campaigns. Defining your target audience can make a huge difference in engagements and conversions.
4. Deliver Outreach at the Right Times
Believe it or not, the time of day that you submit your outreach to your audience can make a huge difference in the results of your outreach campaign. People are far less likely to take the time to read a blog post or an email campaign. If you send it during business hours when they will be at work. Likewise, if you send out an outreach campaign in the middle of the night, no one will see it until the next morning when they are busy heading to work.
You might also need to consider the time frames of different parts of the country as well. You do not want to be sending out email outreach based on Eastern time when most of your engagers are historically in the Pacific Northwest. Timing can be the difference between a successful campaign and a campaign that is a flop.
5. Make it Actionable
If you are sending out outreach, particularly via email, make it easy for people to follow your call to action. Make a big or obvious button or link for them to follow to buy an item or watch a video. Don’t expect your consumers to do a bunch of leg work to find out what you really meant when you reached out to them.
Consumers are increasingly impatient with technological issues, both on websites and within blog content or email outreach. Don’t annoy your potential customers by creating shoddy or hard-to-use outreach campaigns.
Getting More Responses From Your Outreach Campaign is About Attention to Detail
Paying attention to how your campaign is constructed will have a major impact on the engagement you receive from your work. You will need to be sure that the content is correct for your purposes, that you know what your stated intention for this outreach is, and you will want to be sure that you are delivering your content to the right audience.
Making sure that all of these factors are in place will ensure that you get great results from any outreach campaign that you send out and your brand will enjoy engagements and conversions in increasing numbers. Meeting your outreach goals just requires some planning and careful design practices to be a big success!