How To Give Presence To Your Online Marketing Voice

When a small business starts their online marketing, they often struggle with both their message and marketing tone of voice. How do you say what you want to say in the right way? The word "right" here to most new businesses really means "How do I sell my products/services to deliver the most profit?" Sales are important to businesses, but, equally as important, is our integrity and our authenticity, both fundamental parts of who we are as both an individual and as a business.

In today's online world, where we are told "content is king" or "social media is essential", small businesses have the opportunity to connect with their target audience at any time and almost instantly. Therefore, what has to be equally, if not more important than the content, is the voice you use to speak through the many available web marketing channels.

If you are finding it difficult to connect with your target market online, then ask yourself the following:

Is my web marketing too quiet? 

Are you under selling your offer? Are you telling the world who you are and what you believe in?

Is my web marketing too forceful? 

Are you pushing your target market with too strong a message? Too many messages? Is the focus on the sale rather than your prospective customer? The best route to profit is to offer something great and deliver. For this reason, sales should never be the sole, primary focus of any business.

How do you give your online marketing presence?

Take away all of your own business pressures. Try not to create your marketing messages with thoughts of sales targets, internal costs and other business pressures in your mind. Focus on what you offer and what you believe makes it, and your business, positive.

1. Focus on your perfect customer. Where are they? What are they thinking? What would you say to them if they were sat right beside you?

2. Speak with belief. When we create our marketing messages, we can be tempted to claim the same things as our competition without truly believing in what we are saying. Focus on what you know you can do well for customers and it will motivate both your customers and you.

3. Be genuine. You can get caught up with industry jargon and trying to keep up with your competition. Don’t. Simply speak from your heart and be genuine. Your potential customers will believe you.

 

Top 9 Tips for Writing an Email Newsletter

At Blue Dog Marketing, we’re often asked how to write an email newsletter. Is there a secret? The main thing I've learned in my experience writing email newsletters is that not many people open them. Fewer still actually read them.

This can be disheartening if you’re a small business owner looking to keep in contact with your customers. But if you know this to start with, then you know you have to have a killer subject line, an intriguing headline and very short body copy that tells people quickly what you want them to know.

Here are my top nine tips for writing newsletters that people open and read:

1.   The subject line is king. Something like 99.9% of marketing emails don't get opened. If you can get someone to open your email you're more than halfway there. Make sure to make your subject line short, interesting, different, important, clear and valuable.

2.   Know who you're writing to. You've got to know exactly who you're writing to, what they like, what they need and what key words will trigger them.

3.   Keep it new. Some of your customers will read your newsletter, so they need to find it useful and relevant to them. Write about different things in a different way each time.

4.   Call to action. What do you want your customers to do? Make sure this step is big and bold. Include it separately from the body copy as people will miss it there.

5.   Top 10 lists are a great idea. Nothing is easier to write than a top 10 list. It's great for the reader because they can skip down the points in bold or read more.

6.   Do questions work? Yes. It's an old trick, but a good way to start the first paragraph, or in the subject line, with a question.

7.   Include pictures and picture captions. After subject lines and headlines, the most important piece of copy you'll want to include is the picture caption. Pictures are much more important and interesting than copy, and, after they've seen the picture, they'll often read the caption to get a bit more information.

8.   Have a theme. Each month it's good to have a different theme so that you can tie in seemingly irrelevant news items or articles in together. Magazines do it regularly for the same reason. It makes your newsletter seem more essential, more thought out.

9.   Include sneak preview and quick polls. You can fill out the content of the newsletter by adding a quick poll, facts or Did you knows? Also, tell the reader a bit about what to expect in the next newsletter in this one to whet their appetite and help keep the open rate up.

Logo Basics

In our last post, Blue Dog Marketing talked about building your brand. Your logo is an integral component of your brand.

Logos have been in existence for hundreds of years, but only recently has the logo-hype truly hit hard.

What is a Logo?

A logo is a visual, symbolic representation for a company or brand. It is the face of your business. It is the first and lasting impression for anyone who sees it, thus weighing heavily on the success scale. A logo can consist of a graphic, picture, lettering, or any combination of them.

Why do You Need a Logo?

A Logo...

· Is the first impression and lasting impression - A logo is tells the public everything about you and your business.
· Represents your professionalism, creativity, reputation, and more. - A poorly designed or planned logo can automatically cause consumers to get a negative preconceived notion about your company or brand.
· Sticks into the minds of the consumers – We are innately visual beings with minds that are based on automatic association.
· Invokes emotion, thought, and judgment.
· Sets you and your business apart from everyone else.
· Speaks a thousand words. - The colors, words, lettering, design, detail, layout, symbolic items within, all give off subliminal messages.

Without a logo, your company is forgettable. A well-designed logo portrays everything you want your customers to know about your business and becomes the single-most important factor in the way of marketing and advertising.

Your logo is a simple, yet complex, entity which is the ultimate key to the success of your business.

Because the logo is so critical to the identity and success of your business, it is vitally important to make sure you hire a company, such as Blue Dog Marketing, that are experts in logo design.

It's Not About Building a Website - It Is About Building a Brand

Blue Dog Marketing creates many websites for our clients. We counsel our clients that their website should be thought of and used as another tool in the pursuit of making their brand stronger. Every aspect of the website, from the photos to the links, can be used to advance brand awareness and inform visitors about it.

Brand Building

Building your brand takes time and effort to get it established and should have identifiable traits. Quality should be a main focus for any brand, since you want customers to be loyal to it.

Website Design

The design of your website can help your brand in several ways. You will want the website to be as unique as possible and attractive to new and regular visitors alike. Adding useful information like the history of the brand and a mission statement can really help consumers get to know it better. Keeping content fresh and adding new features on a consistent basis will make your brand look like it is in style and current. Good ways to use your website to gain loyalty and make sales is to give your visitors information about current promotions and events.

Website Development

Your website development efforts should be ongoing and adapt to changes on the web. The website should be made as creative as possible so that it stands out from the competition. Your content should include words and phrases for SEO (search engine optimization), which will raise your website higher in search engine rankings, thereby leading to more visitors.

Your website should include social media interaction. You can add videos to your website as they are great ways to promote your brand, and plenty of people get their information from videos instead of text.

Brand Image

The look and design of your brand is a crucial factor to consider when designing your website. Using the right brand-colors is important since certain colors give viewers an automatic association with other things and an emotional response.

Your logo is also a key element of your brand. The look of it can tell people a lot about how serious your brand is. Doing little things like placing it in the upper-left corner of the webpage, and making it large, will have an effect on how consumers view it.

Brand building is a science, and the right steps should be taken if you want it to do well. If your small business requires assistance in creating a brand identity, contact Blue Dog Marketing. We’re here to help you grow your business!

Facebook Marketing Ideas

Facebook is a popular social network where family and friends connect easily with each other and where you can market your website and business.

How do you market on Facebook properly? Always reply to people when they write something on your page. Monitor your page for questions, comments, or messages concerning your company.

Make your Facebook page interesting and full of helpful hints and tips to attract more attention. Pay close attention to your Facebook updates or your followers will lose interest very quickly if you are not adding content that is useful to them. Use Facebook insights to learn which updates are the most successful to give your audience more interesting content.

You can gain popularity on your Facebook page through 'likes.' The first thing to do is to add the Facebook button to your website. This will help your customers connect easily to your Facebook page through your website. Responding to every comment you receive in your inbox and on your Facebook wall will give your customers the assurance that you care about what issues they might have. It is certainly very important to reply if the customer needs help.

Link all of your published articles, blogs, and your Twitter account to your Facebook page.

Always keep your profile updated and keep up on current information.

When you put a post on your Facebook, make sure it is accurate, current, and of interest to your audience. If there are any spelling errors, your customers will lose interest. Try to add a picture or an image to your posts.

Try to use the same keywords you used for your website with the Facebook page. This way the search engine will rank your Facebook page accordingly, and this is a great way to get back links from the Facebook page to your website.

You can add Facebook ads to your marketing plan. Posting to your page will only go so far and to get more traffic interested in what you have to offer, you need to look into purchasing some Facebook ads. They do not cost a lot of money and it adds another option to your Facebook marketing.

Remember be yourself – friendly and natural – when communicating to your customers. People will want to do business with you the

Mobile SEO

Today's technology has people surfing the web from mobile devices – their phone and tablets. As more of your customers use mobile devices, your mobile website must remain current.

The requirements for mobile SEO (search engine optimization) are actually different than traditional SEO. This difference of optimization is expected since browser compatibility issues are also different for the two. Browser compatibility has a very important role for mobile processing of search engine optimizations.

When taking your website mobile, remember that the content, along with how it is presented on mobile websites, is different from your traditional website, which is viewed from a desktop or laptop computer. This difference occurs since mobile web users are always on the go, varying their searches with location specifics. Users searching for information using mobile websites prefer simple sets of information. They also appreciate a more precise and private browsing experience. Your mobile SEO strategy must be based from these behaviors as well as the different requirements of users.

For your small business mobile SEO, you must focus on search terms that are specific and predictive. Most experts believe that users perform mobile searches that are based on location and tasks. Primary search engines such as Google and Yahoo explore searches in a unique manner and they present mobile content according to their own uniqueness, making their mobile SEO results as accessible and device-oriented as possible.

Can SEO be easy?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a method through which you can optimize your website so that it ranks higher in search results. Most of online searches are performed on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

SEO for your website can be easy. Here’s how:

Choose the Right Keywords for Your Website

The keyword research should be based on volume and competitiveness of a desired keyword. There should be a balance between high volume and low competition.

Select Right Domain Name for your website

It is very important for you to choose a right domain name for your website. Choose a domain name that would reflect the type of business you are dealing in. If possible, try to add one or more keywords to the domain name that are relevant to your business.

You should avoid changing the domain name of your website as older websites have better ranking power than newer ones. If you have an old website, changing its domain name can decrease its traffic.

Include your keywords in the page titles

You should use your keywords in your page titles. Avoid using conjunctions, prepositions and use your keywords instead. Use dashes between phrases in titles.

Regularly create useful content

Update your website regularly with new content that contain the main keywords. Insert them repeatedly in the content. However, the content should be relevant to the keywords so that the keywords do not sound awkward to the reader. New content improves the ranking of your website as spiders examine them and elevate your website higher in the search results page. Our blog is part of our website. It’s updated twice a week with new content.

Include Keywords in the META Description

Include the keywords in the META description text as well. Some search engines use the content of description META tag to display the content of a web page in the search results.

Develop a site map page

A site map is very useful to attract spiders and facilitate them walking through your website easily. A site map is a separate HTML page that works like a directory of pages on you site. Every page that is in the list of site map is connected to other pages on the website. Use keywords and their synonyms in the link anchor text. Also, put your links in numbered or bulleted list since spiders consider the links put in this way more important.

 

5 Tips to Market Your Business on Pinterest

I love Pinterest! For my personal life, it’s a fun way to share fashion ideas and find new craft projects. But did you know it can be a very valuable tool to market your small business? Pinterest can be just as important as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn... as long as you know how to use it properly.

If you're already loving Pinterest for your personal life, but aren't quite sure how to integrate it to your business, here are some tips for you to market your business on Pinterest.

1) Include your business' information. Many businesses overlook this on Pinterest, but it is essential for potential customers to be able to find your business online. Write a short blurb about your company, include your website address and your contact on your Pinterest page.

2) Brand your account. Your logo, colors and images should remain consistent with the look and feel of your brand. This will help support your overall brand image and allow for clients and customers to recognize your brand easily.

3) Support your fellow small businesses. Make an effort to follow other businesses, especially those in your local area. They can easily be found using the search tool. Most small businesses are in the same boat and helping each other out can go a long way. So, join the Pinterest community of small businesses, spread their word and see them spread yours in return.

4) Utilize email marketing to promote your account. Do you use an e-newsletter to stay in touch with your customers on a regular basis? Promote your Pinterest account in your e-newsletters. This can be a great way to get followers quickly and to help stay in contact with your customers outside of the quarterly e-newsletter.

5) Create useful group boards. What does your target audience want to know about? What can you teach your potential customers? What would people think about your new product? Not only can you broadcast information about your products by using Pinterest's boards, you can also gain valuable insight and feedback from your potential customers that will help you better serve them.

The most successful pins on Pinterest have traits in common. They combine great images with content to solve a problem, inspire, offer something desirable or appeal to an interest in a hobby. Now that you have these simple guidelines to follow, you'll be able to better market your business through one of the top social media platforms. The one overall principle that should guide your social media marketing: the content you deliver should benefit your current and potential customers.