How to Market Your Small Business in Today’s Digital Space: Part II

The last time Paul Kortman came onto the Magnificent Marketing podcast, he had so much valuable information that we ran out of time. And yet, there was so much more that he had to offer.

Thankfully, he agreed to come back and offer some digital marketing strategies for small business owners.

If you’re not familiar with Paul’s work, he’s the owner of Connex Social. This is a digital marketing agency that specializes in increasing conversions and quality traffic. He is committed to achieving his client’s business goals through solid strategy and on-time tactics every single time.

And I have to say – the guy knows what he is talking about. The strategies he recommends are pure gold. Start implementing them and you’ll notice a change in your digital marketing results.

Paul Kortman Shares Five Strategies That Are Essential in Our Digital Space

In Part II of our conversation, Paul offers these five digital marketing strategies that small business owners will find are essential to their company’s growth and success.

1. Start Producing Videos Regularly

Video is becoming increasingly important in our digital age. More companies are utilizing this medium to get in front of potential customers and to establish themselves as experts in their field.

Something that I thought was especially interesting in our conversation was this: Paul doesn’t recommend switching over solely to video.

Some people have been doing this, thinking that it’s the wave of the future.

Well, they’re half right. Video marketing is one of the best ways to market your business. However, it’s important to remember that not everyone is a visual learner. Some people process information better by reading it, while others prefer audio content to visual.

It’s important to remember, too, that people can’t watch videos whenever they want to. If they’re at work or in a public place and don’t have ear buds/earphones, their best option is to read content.

So, the goal here is to offer a nice mix of digital content: Audio, video, and written content. Doing so allows you to appeal to a wider audience.

2. Make Introductory, Testimonial, and How To Videos

When you do make videos, though, what type should you make?

Paul pointed to some of the mistakes people make with video, like talking only about what the business does. Not only can this be an incredibly boring way to make a video, it doesn’t speak to what matters most to the customer: What’s in it for them.

Another mistake is making super long videos. In the world of digital marketing, a five minute video can seem like an eternity. People just don’t have the patience for that, especially when they’re just learning about a new company.

Paul offered the following tips.

·        Make an introductory video describing what your company can do for customers.

·        Keep your videos short. Introductory videos should be 30-60 seconds.

·        Create How To videos. For instance, a shoe repair shop could make a video about how to repair shoes. You may wonder, though – won’t this take business away from them? Actually, it’s the opposite. People may try their hand at the info in your video but realize they just aren’t good at it or don’t have the time for it. In other words, they learn that they’d rather pay someone (you!) to do the work for them.

3. LinkedIn Is a Golden Marketing Opportunity

The most interesting tip about LinkedIn that Paul shared with me was this: View your LinkedIn profile as a mini sales page as opposed to a resume. If you’re a coach, people who are looking for your type of services won’t care that you worked at McDonald’s when you were a teenager.

Make sure your profile shows potential customers what you can do for them, what value you can provide for them.

4. Collaborate with Other Business Owners

This doesn’t necessarily mean collaborate with your competition. Instead, collaborate with business owners who are in the same sphere, or similar network, as you. These are the folks who provide a product or service that your target audience would be interested in.

Collaboration is all about sharing. You do something for them, they do something for you.

You can collaborate by working on a webinar or podcast together, or writing guest blog posts. You will promote their content on your site, and they’ll promote yours on their site.

5. Encourage Your Clients to Write Online Reviews

Is your client happy with the work you did? Great – go outside of your comfort zone and ask for a review on Yelp.com or LinkedIn.

It can be intimidating to ask for a review, but think of it this way – they’re happy and most likely happy to tell others about you. And if they say no – fine. But the more you try, the more people will end up saying yes.

Keep Learning, Keep Growing As the Digital Market Evolves

Digital marketing is constantly evolving. It seems like only yesterday written content was the best way to reach potential clients. These days, it’s a mix of video, audio, and the written word.

In closing our conversation, I asked Paul about his predictions for the future of digital marketing. He told me that voice search is and will continue to be an important part of marketing.

With Siri and now Alexa, more people are searching for online information by speaking instead of typing. The technology isn’t perfect yet and can, at times, be somewhat frustrating. But technology is always changing and improving. At some point, the majority of online searches may be through one of these devices.

And that will change how we create digital content. Why? It’s simple – people tend to speak differently than they type. This will change how we utilize keywords and put information in front of people.

This is why it’s so important to keep educating yourself. We all need to do this. Learn what the trends are, and then find out how to utilize them in your business. Doing so will ensure that you always stay in front of your target market.

Do you want to get helpful tips about online marketing on a regular basis? Paul can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter. His posts will keep you up to date with the latest digital marketing trends

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ABOUT PAUL KORTMAN

I’m just a regular guy. A follower of Jesus from Michigan in the US. My story is unique just like yours. This blog varies from stories about my family and struggles with raising our kids to helpful technical articles. This is just me in zeros and ones.

Stephan Spencer’s SEO Tip: Be Outcome Focused, Not Activity Focused

Remember when you were in school and your teacher was so exhausted that they gave you “busy work” to do? There wasn’t really that much point to the work, it didn’t yield any results.

Despite our best efforts, we can become guilty of doing this kind of “busy work” when it comes to working on search engine optimization.

Thankfully, Stephan Spencer – marketing guru extraordinaire – chatted with me about how to do SEO work that is outcome focused. In other words, follow his advice and your time spent on your SEO endeavors will actually yield results, like improving your rankings.

3 Ways to Make Sure You’re Focused on the Outcome, Not the Activity

Your goal when working on SEO should never be to do busy work. In other words, you want to focus on work that gives you results, or a great outcome. Here are three easy ways to make that happen.

1. Write Good, Thoughtful Content for SEO and for Humans

Stephan made a really good point about writing content. He said: “What you create for humans should be good for SEO, what you create for SEO should be good for humans.” Makes sense, doesn’t it?

And yet, a lot of us get too caught up in how many keywords we have in our piece and how many variations of that keyword we can add to it.

Stephan’s advice: Don’t worry so much about the number of keywords you use – worry about where and how you use them.

That means making sure your content is easy to read and full of helpful information. It also means that you need to let your readers know right away what your content is about.

For instance, Stephan pointed out that if you write a page about blue widgets, it will rank better if you talk about blue widgets in the first paragraph as opposed to waiting to mention them until the last paragraph. Making this mistake is like saying, “Oh, I forgot to tell you – this whole page was about blue widgets.”

2. Don’t Use a Keyword Just in Your Title Alone

Another keyword tip that Stephan had was related to the title of your page and keywords.

A lot of people are really concerned about the H1 title tag and using a focus keyword there. This could be useful, as long as you use your keyword thoughtfully throughout the rest of your blog.

Let’s go back to the blue widget example.

If you use the H1 tag for your title, add a keyword to it, but then don’t add that keyword anywhere else on the page, it doesn’t really look like the page is about the topic that you claimed in the title it would be.

Instead, it looks like you did a little bit of SEO and thought, “Oh, I want to work in an extra keyword in there. I hope I rank for it. I’ll drop it into the title tag where it gets the most weight.” But if there’s no mention of that word – or even a synonym of that word – on the page, you’re not likely to rank very high for that keyword.

So yes – the title is the most important place to put your main keyword, but you have to make sure you use that keyword again thoughtfully within the context of your page.

3. Link From Page to Page on Your Website – But Thoughtfully

On the Home page, you should link to your most important services, products, landing pages, and articles.

But you want to place those links strategically on your page.

A lot of website owners put links to other pages down at the bottom of their Homepage, listing “featured pages” or “featured blogs.”

People don’t have the patience to read everything you’ve written on the Home page. It’s not likely that they’ll end up scrolling down to the bottom to find out more about you and what you have to offer them.

Many websites make the mistake of having a home page where the visitors have to scroll and scroll until they finally get to some content near the footer of the page.

And then the content reads like this: “Welcome to our email marketing services company. We provide email marketing tools and email marketing consulting, and our email services are some of the best out there, and if you're looking to get email marketing best practices…” and it goes on.

Then, all of the keywords are hyperlinked to services pages.

This is not only uninteresting to read – people know that it’s been written with search engines in mind, not people.

Your visitors aren’t the only ones who won’t be impressed. Search engines have algorithms that check for this type of hyperlinking and keyword stuffing, and they penalize websites that do those things.

Your goal should be to make things as interesting and as easy as possible for your site visitors. Somewhere along the top of your page, have some sort of image that people can hover over with their mouse and click through to the services page.

While it’s important to change the images alt attributes for SEO purposes, a text link is even more important when it comes to search engine rankings.

A text link along with a useful image looks like your website is designed with humans in mind – not just search engines. For example, have your nice little image along with the text “Our Email Marketing Services.”

Focus On the Results-Based Low-Hanging Fruit Instead of Busy Work

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the idea of improving your SEO efforts. It seems like every day there’s new information about how to get better rankings, how to make more money from your website, how to attract more clients and customers.

All of that information can become really distracting, causing you to focus on busy work that you can cross off your To Do List but that leaves you with minimal results.

Focus instead on what Stephan calls the “low-hanging” fruit – like the tips above – and you’ll start seeing results without feeling overwhelmed.

Are you ready for more helpful tips from an internationally renowned marketing guru? Then, make sure to follow Stephan on Twitter and read his information-packed blogs regularly.  

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ABOUT STEPHAN SPENCER

Stephan is an internationally recognized SEO expert and bestselling author. He is the co-author of The Art of SEO, author of Google Power Search and co-author of Social eCommerce, all published by O’Reilly. The Art of SEO, now in its third edition and weighing in at nearly 1000 pages, is considered THE bible on search engine optimization, boasts testimonials from such industry giants as Seth Godin and Tony Hsieh, and is even used as a textbook at universities. 

Stephan founded Netconcepts in 1995 and grew it into a multi-national SEO agency before selling it in 2010 to paid and organic search software/services agency Covario, which was in turn acquired in 2014 by ad agency conglomerate Dentsu Aegis. Stephan invented a pay-for-performance SEO technology called GravityStream that was also acquired and is now part of Rio SEO.  After completing his earn-out in 2010, Stephan continued in the online marketing, ecommerce, and SEO space as a highly sought-after SEO and digital strategy consultant. His clients post-acquisition have included Zappos, Sony Store, Quiksilver, Best Buy Canada, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Chanel, to name a few.

Stephan has spoken at countless hundreds of Internet marketing events, including all the major search & e-commerce conferences (SES, SMX, PubCon, Internet Retailer, Shop.org, eTail, etc.). He’s been a contributor to the Huffington Post, Multichannel Merchant, Practical Ecommerce, Search Engine Land, DM News and MarketingProfs, among others.

Stephan is also the creator of Traffic Control, a three-day seminar on SEO, co-creator of the three-day professional development seminar Passions into Profits along with co-founder Kris Jones, and the host of two podcast shows, The Optimized Geek and Marketing Speak.

Stephan is on the board of Impact Network, a 501c3 nonprofit which builds and operates schools in Zambia.

He holds an M.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Top Quick Wins for your Content Marketing

Content marketing is a marathon rather than a sprint. Almost everything you do is about long-term results that fuel the growth of your business.

However, this doesn’t mean that quick wins are inapplicable here. In fact, there’s actually a lot one can do to create some momentum immediately.

In this article, we’ll talk about top quick wins that you can use for your content marketing strategy and obtain appreciable results right away.

1. Use Pop-ups to Drive Immediate Results

The most important goal of any marketer is to convert more leads into customers. Unfortunately, most people are hit-and-run visitors. For example, they find your website, read something there, and leave quickly. They don’t interact with the content and don’t provide any contact information.

This problem should be fixed. You can install a popup plugin like SumoMe which makes it easier for visitors to share your content and join your email list.

2. Grab New Content Ideas

Struggling to get new ideas for your content? Not enough time to research industry news and trends? No worries, you can find new ideas by using the following tools:

• Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator. Fill in three fields with nouns you’d like to write about, and the tool generates relevant titles for articles.
• Portent’s Content Idea Generator. Another great title maker that requires only a subject of potential articles.
• HARO. Provides a database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources.

3. Reduce Size of Your Images to Improve Website Speed

Website performance is a critical SEO and user experience factor. Even an insignificant delay in a couple of seconds can cause visitors to lose patience and leave. “Imagine a customer having an urgent request,” says Cameron Suarez, a B2C marketer. “I had one customer requesting “write my essay!” in the middle of the night because he had to turn it in the next day… Do you think that customer had time to sit around and wait for websites to load?”

Let’s test your website by using awesome performance tool called Page Weight by imgIX.

If the tool says that your website could lose some weight to improve performance, you can do the following to resolve this concern:

• Convert images to JPG with Free Online Images Converter. It uses a combination of the best optimization and compression algorithms to reduce the size of images (keep your largest images around 2000 pixels)
• Read Optimization tips for Images from Google
• Use image optimizer Kraken.io.

4. Avoid Stock Photography

Regardless whether you’re doing business in photo industry or not, you should go for real, unique photos taken or bought by you. Why? Because stock photos are everywhere on the Internet; they’re free and many websites use them. If a visitor sees the same image he or she saw on seven other websites, it is very likely that the trust to you will be undermined.

So, hire a professional photographer or buy unique photos to increase trust of visitors.

5. Test Page Load Times to Improve User Experience

Customers do not like to wait not even an extra second. Yes, even though one can binge-watch an entire season of TV show at a moment’s notice, one gets really frustrated to wait for five seconds in order for a website to load.

As you can see, every second counts. So, it’s a good idea to test the speed of your website and see if the visitors get a pleasant experience browsing it.

PageSpeed tools. These are the tools developed by Google, so they’re probably your best bet.

Pingdom Website Speed Test. Cost-effective and reliable uptime and performance monitoring tool.

6. Focus on the Right Content Type

There are a number of different content types you can use in your content marketing strategy, including infographics, how-to articles, lists, videos, and others. Are some of them more popular than others?

Yes, according to data provided by Odork and Buzzsumo.

As you can see from the graph, internet users prefer infographics and list-based articles. That’s why you should design the content which is popular at the moment. For example, you can use Infographic Maker by Canva or Vengage to produce beautiful infographics your visitors will love.

7. Make Your CTAs More Effective

If you’re looking to increase the effectiveness of CTA buttons of your website, there are some techniques you can choose:

• Use a button in a contrasting color
• Address the viewer’s fear of commitment by including text like “no credit card required,” “no commitment,” or “no loopholes” near CTAs.
• Use clear language without an element of burden: “download here,” “subscribe to get,” and “check out.”

In Conclusion

The full implementation of these quick wins takes minutes but it can go a long way in improving the overall performance of your content marketing.

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About Tom Jager

Tom Jager is professional blogger. He works at Awriter.  He has degree in Law and English literature. Tom has written numerous articles/online journals. You can reach him at G+  or  Facebook.

Grow Your Business with Smart Automation Tactics

To entrepreneurs and their marketing and sales teams, the concept of automation is a fascinating one.

Just imagine – robots doing what people used to do.

This technology cuts way down on the “busy work” of content marketing that many marketing and sales teams have had to do, taking them away from other important tasks.

Content marketing takes a lot of time and effort. And the amount of time and effort a company invests has increased over the past few years because the internet has become so saturated with content.

So when automated systems were introduced, a lot of companies jumped on the bandwagon.

Some had great success. Many, though, haven’t.

What has contributed to their automation failure? And what tactics can your marketing and sales teams implement that will actually see results?

That’s what I discussed with marketing expert and award-winning blogger, Matt Heinz.

Why Automation Isn’t Working for So Many Companies

In working with big companies (like Amazon and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) is that budgets for content marketing have been on the rise. This is great because content marketing is one of the best ways to reach out to clients and prospects.

However, Matt’s noticed a worrying trend – the spending increases and content proliferates, but the companies aren’t seen a commensurate tie between that content and their business results.

His theory is that companies are putting out a ton of “crappy” blog posts that make the companies feel good because they’re getting clicks and web traffic. However, that content and traffic aren’t actively translating into business value.

To Matt, marketing automation is the means of creating consistency and repeatability of certain actions that connect the right content to the right prospect at the right time.

But a lot of companies tend to look at automation as “set it and forget it.”

Good marketing and sales technology mean automating something that robots can do better and more efficiently than humans. The robot can be on the lookout for and track your prospects activities.

They can even take care of some of the follow-up work, like sending the next email in your drip campaign when a client takes a certain action, like downloading a white paper or signing up for your newsletters.

But robots aren’t going to (and shouldn’t!) replace what Matt calls “the human touch.”

Prospects don’t want to communicate with robots – they want to communicate with people.

Therefore, the idea that a robot can take care of complex sales needs is a fallacy.

Yet, many companies think that once they purchase their automation software that’s all there is to it. The robot will take care of everything.

There’s so much more to it, though, if a company is to be truly successful, see growth, and garner repeat customers.

Automation Tactics That Will Help Your Business Grow

How can we take advantage of automation technology without losing the human touch?

The first thing we need to do is slow down and come up with a strategy.

To do that, ask yourself these questions.

• What does success look like? What is my ultimate goal? (This is usually a sales or revenue number.)

• Who is my ideal customer?

• What are the issues they care about?

• What type of content will you create to fit each stage of the purchasing journey to engage prospects?

Matt made a really good point: before you can sell to someone, you have to have their attention. What are you going to do to earn and keep their attention?

At this stage, it’s best to forget about technology altogether. Right now, the focus is on the client – their needs, their concerns, what they’re trying to accomplish in their life and/or business.

If you address that in your content, you’re more likely to get their attention and get them interested in a particular topic.

The next step is to consider what else you can share with them that is relative to their topic of interest.

Once you’ve figured out what is going to interest your customers at different stages of the sales process – then you can create something that is scalable and repeatable that marketing automation can now help with.

During these initial strategy stages, both the sales and marketing teams need to be involved. They have a good idea of what kind of persona you want to market to and how you’re going to accomplish this.

Then, have your teams figure out when and what the marketing teams should put in front of prospects, as well as when and how the sales team should engage with customers.

Your Key to Success: Everything Should Be Client-Centric

When it comes to marketing, a lot of companies get really caught up in everything they need to get done – their ever-growing To Do list. What they forget to think about is why they’re doing what they’re doing and for whom.

Matt repeatedly told me (and this is something I’m hearing from a lot of marketing experts these days) that we need to make sure we stay client-centric.

One-size does not fit all when it comes to sales and marketing.

Different people want different things for different reasons and at different times.

The goal of a marketing campaign is to get the right information to the right people at the right time.

Always think about your ideal customer – the customer you want to sell to, the customer who really needs your product, and the customer that you want coming back again and again.

Remembering that your clients are people with needs and desires just like you can make that easier. Think about how your product will serve a person or company. Now think about what other ways you can help them once they have your product.

Start with this and you will start to see successful automated marketing campaigns, as well as the business growth you’ve been wanting.

Would you like to learn more from my award-winning guest, Matt Heinz? Be sure to subscribe to his blog and follow him on Twitter. You won’t be sorry

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ABOUT MATT HEINZ

Prolific author and nationally recognized, award-winning blogger, Matt Heinz is President and Founder of Heinz Marketing with 15 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations and industries. Matt’s career focuses on consistently delivering measurable results with greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty. Matt is a repeat winner of Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management and Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers.  

How to Close More Sales Without Getting Pushy

Ryan Stewman is a five-time bestselling author, sales trainer, and entrepreneur. He's also a regular contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other major publications.

 Ryan is known throughout the sales marketing industry as the "hardcore closer."

He didn't pick this name himself, but he accepts it with pride.

Today, Ryan talks about how you can get everything you need to know about your initial sales call and close more sales without getting pushy.

Spend More Time Preparing and Less Time Calling

Most companies recommend calling leads within the first five minutes, but not Ryan.

In fact, his team doesn't schedule calls for about four or five days out.

Why not? This gives them ample time to prepare for the call. The goal is to find out as much as they can about the person.

Another mistake companies make? They call every. single. lead.

Ryan recommends opting for quality over quantity. Why waste your time chasing down bad leads and facing ultimate rejection? Sales is emotional and stressful: you're constantly berated, rejected, and turned down so morale can deteriorate pretty quickly.

No one likes hearing the word "no." You can avoid lots of rejection simply by getting to know your leads before making the call.

Gather Information

When Ryan's team receives a lead, the first thing they do is determine how they can get more information.

Ryan suggests utilizing an automated email system that sends out surveys and forms to your leads. He uses a roughly ten-question survey to find out where they live, where they work, what kind of problems they're having, and what kind of business they're in.

This helps to get an overall sense of who they are and build your familiarity.

Social Reconnaissance

Ryan recommends checking out your lead's social media profiles.

Most people share posts with a public audience because they want others to see these things. No one pays attention to anyone anymore, so Ryan says people really appreciate this effort.

The goal is to get a sense for their personality.

This can also help avoid unnecessary rejection. Notice a lead chronically complaining or making up excuses in their Facebook posts? Then don't pursue that lead. Why waste your time with ultimate rejection?

On-The-Call Strategy

Ryan's strategy for phone calls is pretty simple: he barely says anything.

If you can get folks to open their mouths, they're more likely to open their wallets.

This means that you don't need to be a good sales person if you're already a good listener.

First 30 Seconds

At the very beginning of the call, Ryan says you'll want to accomplish two things: let the person know you already have successful results with someone just like them and get them to admit they've already made a decision with you involved.

It sounds hard but it's actually pretty simple.

Ryan starts out by asking for the person's geographical location. Then he lets them know that he has current clients in that same area with great results.

He doesn't lie: if Ryan doesn't have clients in the same city, he'll list the state or region.

After that, Ryan asks why the lead reached out to him. By answering this question, Ryan gets them to admit they've already made a decision that involves him.

Keep the Conversation Flowing

Ryan says the process of sales is very similar to what a doctor does: someone tells you their problems and you give them a solution.

When you enter a doctor's office, you usually go through the same protocol, right?

Ryan uses the same strategy for sales calls. He calls it the "prescription method."

Come up with six or seven open-ended questions to use on every sales call. This helps keep the conversation flowing and avoids dead-ends.

Once the lead feels like you thoroughly understand their situation and problems, they're more likely to trust you for a solution.

Answering Questions

Ryan says a lot of companies make big mistakes when it comes to answering questions on the initial phone call.

They forget what the lead wants to get out of the phone call. When someone calls a mortgage loan officer, it's because they want a house. They don't want to hear all the details about bond markets and interest rates.

Answering questions with too many details gets confusing quickly. We're conditioned to write and speak for experts, but fancy words and industry detail is just confusing to customers.

Tell them what they want to know in a way they can understand.

What about revealing prices?

Ryan prefers to list his price up-front on the website. He also likes to compare his price and product to another product with a similar price. He'll then explain that not only is his product superior, but it also costs less.

Closing the Sale without Getting Pushy

Ryan says the atmosphere has changed since the days of cold calls and newspaper ads.

You don't need to go through the hassle of changing someone's mind because you can find leads that prequalify for your product or service. Social media has made this strategy easier than ever.

Once you thoroughly understand someone's problems, you can prescribe them a beneficial solution. This is only possible by conducting efficient research through surveys and social reconnaissance.

Don't push for a one-call close!

Why risk jeopardizing the relationship? If a lead isn't quite ready to commit, ask when you can follow-up for an answer. Ryan also likes to send automated "thank you" emails.

The goal is to push for future contact. Clients feel comfortable when you give them this control.

How to Learn More from Ryan

You can find Ryan at Hardcore Closer where he's written over 700 blogs and published over 500 additional pages of content covering everything to do with sales marketing.

Ryan's bestselling book, Elevator to The Top, walks you through the sales funnel, upsells, and extra programs. You can score a free paperback copy here.

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About Ryan Stewman

I’m a 4x best selling author

I contribute to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Addicted2Success, Good men Project, Lighter Side of Real Estate and Huffington Post.

I’ve got more Salesman of The Month plaques than I can count. It’s crazy to think of what all I’ve done from just taking action and working hard.

Hardcore Closer is an online learning resource for salespeople. We sell e-learning products in the advertising, marketing, funnel, sales and social media arenas, as well as do personal coaching and live events. My Break Free Academy program is our flagship program. It has everything you need in order to start marketing your business online and crushing your competitors.

I’m Ryan Stewman CEO of Hardcore Closer and it’s nice to meet you.