Archive for Featured Articles
Lessons In The Engagement of Mobile Users: First, What Is A QR Code?
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Mobile Holds Incredible Promise For Businesses.
Today, nearly 40% of U.S. subscribers regularly access the internet on their mobile phones. By 2013, Google predicts mobile web traffic will surpass PC web traffic. Less expensive than PCs, laptops and tablets, mobile phones are incredibly pervasive worldwide. Before long, your mobile website or landing pages will attract more daily visitors and generate more sales than your desktop site. Even more interesting to LocalDirective, our strategic digital marketing agency partner, is that mobile users are more engaged, and in many cases, more likely to take an action that results in revenue. Oh, and did we mention, they are generally more loyal?
But, How To Capture The Opportunity?
The main issue with mobile users is how to give them just the information they need, when they need it, and in the most compact way possible. In fact, the easier and more intuitive the experience, the higher likelihood you’ll achieve all the things you want: engagement, action, loyalty. Enter, stage left, QR (Quick Response) codes.
QR Codes Hold A Wealth of Information And Make Capture Of Information Easy.
A QR Code is similar to a bar code, which has been used for consumer goods for years. Bar codes revolutionized point-of-sale management with the ability to represent data about the products on which they were affixed. QR codes are very similar in that they can hold information, but the difference is that a bar code can only hold up to 20 numerical digits and QR codes – since they are two-dimensional – can hold thousands of alphanumeric characters of information. Further, bar codes of the past required a special scanner to read the embedded information. Not so with QR codes. Only a camera-enabled smartphone with a FREE QR code reader is needed.
Bottom line, it is the ability to hold vast amounts of information and ease of use that will help QC codes revolutionize the way information is delivered to mobile users.
So, How Should You Use QR Codes?
The application of QR codes is vast for business owners. You are truly only limited by your imagination. A few examples, to get you going:
- Place a QR code on a product or service label, and offer a coupon for emails sent to the embedded email (bonus: you are capturing all-important email addresses).
- Place a QR code on your business card so that the reader can put your contact information in their database.
- Place a QR code on a brochure to immediately link the reader to your website.
- Place a QR code on your website to activate the email program on the reader’s phone so that they can immediately contact you for more information.
- Place a QR code on a direct mail postcard or letter to insert your phone number so that the reader can call you to request an appointment.
As you can see, there are many ways to use QR codes in your business, whether you serve consumers or other businesses. The ability of QR codes to connect prospective clients with your business and your content opens a whole new world for you to deliver relevant information to your eagerly-awaiting mobile audience!
If you would like some guidance, consultation or even assistance developing relevant, location-based mobile websites, landing pages and marketing programs, call LocalDirective today at 888.613.7174 or send them an email.
(Surprise) Social Media Actually Delivers Real Value
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With the dramatic rise in use of social media, entrepreneurs were decidedly placing themselves in one of two camps: those who saw NO potential value in social media and those who jumped on the bandwagon without a clue to where the train was heading. Game Over. Now, after a lot of experimentation and evaluation by experts and novices alike, it seems there are some real opportunities in social media for businesses of all sizes. Our digital agency strategic partner, LocalDirective, discusses some of these ways you might benefit.
FIRST: Social Media Definitely Helps With SEO
Most entrepreneurs have heard the terms Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM), and some have used these methods to target untapped market segments. What exactly are these two marketing strategies, and how do they hinge on each other?
SEO Is About Visibility
When people talk about SEO, it really means executing tactics seen favorably by search engines so as to increase the visibility of a site, page or profile in targeted Search Engine queries. There are many factors that impact where a particular page will display in the Search Results (SERPs), but a few of the factors include:
- Age of content (freshness) on the pages of the site.
- How relevant the content is to the search query.
- Quantity and quality of other sites that link to your site.
Social Media Can Be Critical to a Well Rounded SEO Strategy
While SMM may not drive rankings on its own, it can certainly play a vital role in an effective SEO Strategy. Not just Facebook or Twitter, Social Media also includes:
- Blogs
- Social Bookmarking (e.g., Delicious, Digg, etc.)
- Geotargeted Sites (e.g., Foursquare, Google Places)
- Social Review Sites (e.g., Yelp!, Google Reviews, Yahoo! Reviews)
- Niche Social Media Sites (e.g., MySpace, Digital Radio, Etc.)
Social Media Marketing Helps SEO Because It Drives Visibility
SMM, focused around a central hub (link to article blog as your hub of social networking), can drive key components of your SEO Strategy.
Fresh Content: Search Engines love to see fresh content on a website. Blogs allow you to easily add valuable content to your website (more than sales content).
High Quality Links: Part of the algorithm Search Engines use to rank a site is the number and the quality of other sites that link back to you. Generally speaking, social networking sites are pretty powerful links back to your site. When you can get other users of the social network to also link back to you (e.g., social bookmarking), you’re developing a tremendous base of powerful links back to your site.
Reaching New Markets: While this may not be a specific goal of your SEO campaign, it is vitally important to most businesses. Through social networks, you will reach people who may not actually be out searching for your product, but who may be very influenced by your brand message when you are not overtly selling. This helps build a long term foundation of awareness that will likely deliver greater long term sales.
SECOND: Social Media Now Offers Interesting For-Free Opportunities
Now that Social Media has become an integrated aspect of many of your prospects’ lives and is being used by over three quarters of marketers, it is definitely becoming mainstream. So expect the innovation in marketing and advertising opportunities to accelerate. Already we are seeing offerings from location-based service offerings to the tried-and-true paid search beginning to proliferate.
For instance, SEMPO’s recent State Of The Search Marketing Report 2011 (http://econsultancy.com/us/reports/sempo-state-of-search) indicates paid marketing in Social Media is expected to burgeon this year, with spending predicted to reach $19.3B, a 16.3% increase over 2010. However, paid Social Media campaigns are still relatively new, and the ROI, as compared to traditional search engine marketing, is still under evaluation.
LocalDirective will continue to provide insight into many of these offerings in the coming months. While your industry, your target market and your competitive milieu may determine which social media is best for you, what is certain is that social media will most certainly be part of the future of your business.
Meanwhile, now is the time to get out of whatever camp you were in, dust off or develop your Social Media Marketing strategy, and begin identifying the unique SMM opportunities that will deliver real value to your prospective customers and to your business. They are out there. Take advantage of this month’s coupon and save $100 on a custom branded Facebook, Twitter & YouTube Channel package that provides a look and feel that exactly matches your website.
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$100 Off Custom Branded Facebook – YouTube – Twitter Pages
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Will You Swap Links?
Posted by: | CommentsLink building is an integral piece of any solid Search Engine Marketing (SEO) program among professionals such as our strategic partner, LocalDirective. When you consider that authoritative reports consistently indicate link popularity and external links contribute over 40% of a page’s Search Engine Rankings, this is a factor you simply cannot afford to ignore.
One link building strategy is Reciprocal Link Building, otherwise known as link swapping. If you are the admin listed on a website, then you are sure to have received a request to place a link on your site in exchange for a link back. The universal question to SEO newcomers is: Should I do it?
What Does Yoda Say?
Ok, so the Search Engines may not be Yoda, but it’s important to know how they regard reciprocal links. Here’s how Google sees it, as posted on Google’s Webmaster Central:
“…some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”
So when we look at how Search Engines view links, think of it as a spectrum of authority. A link that is relevant to your site that has high authority on the web, which links to you without you linking back to them has the most authority. A link to a site that is irrelevant, that doesn’t hold authority and that you reciprocate the link has lowest authority. The links back could benefit you, but it could also hurt you.
Do Your Homework First
Before answering, or asking, for a link, make certain you’ve done your homework about the website in question. Here are some gauges for determining if you want a site linking back to you:
* Is the site’s content relevant to your own? (e.g., are you an engineering firm with a pizzeria pointing back to you?)
* Does the site you’re gaining a link from point to a lot of sites? If yes, it starts looking spammy to Search Engine robots.
* What is the Google Page Rank of the site you’ll gain the rank from? While this page rank does not impact your own search engine placement, it is a good gauge for how authoritative the site is considered.
The End Result
So you’ve done your homework and now you’re ready to answer those pesky emails asking for links. Or are you? If you think you’ve made up your mind, there’s one more very important question to ask yourself: “Will this hurt my bottom line?”
The key here is to remember if you’re giving a link on your site, you’re driving visitors from your site to another destination that belongs to someone else. If your site is a blog, that’s not that big of a deal. But if your site is where you sell products/services or if it is your corporate headquarter site, then you need to consider this question very closely. The pages you’ll want to link with are ones that are relevant (from the Search Engine’s perspective), and that means they could be your competitors. Or someone who could direct visitors to a competitor. For this reason, you should carefully consider linking to outside sites, and make sure you carefully evaluate these destinations.
Consider Allowing A Specialist To Help You
As you are starting to realize, reciprocal link sharing may not be such an easy decision. If you are unsure about which choice is best for your company and your circumstances, consider consulting an expert, such as our strategic partner, LocalDirective. As a full-service digital marketing agency, they can help you navigate your options, whether for Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing or Social Media Marketing.
Why All The Hubbub About Facebook?
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If you’ve been exposed to any popular media lately, it probably has caught your attention that there are quite a few news stories – and more than one movie – about Facebook. In fact, The Social Network, a recently released movie about Mark Zuckerburg and Facebook, won 4 Golden Globe awards.
From a business perspective, what is more interesting is that Facebook was the most visited site in 2010, outranking even Google. And, on average, the length of each visit is a multiple of a visit to Google’s search engine.
So why all the noise about this place where people play games and rediscover old friends? Read on to learn how you might gain new business by connecting to the Facebook powerhouse through programs offered by our strategic partner, LocalDirective. Now is the time to join the more than 2.5 million websites that have integrated with Facebook, including over 80 of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 sites.
The Fact Is: Even If Facebook Is Social Nonsense, Everyone Is Participating
Social Networking has often been looked at as a waste of time where young people gripe about work and life, or play games and engage in other unproductive activities. When we look at the potential impact Facebook offers to businesses, here are some vital statistics you should know:
- Facebook currently boasts more than 500 million users worldwide, about 70 percent of which are outside the United States.
- About 50 percent of Facebook users log on in any given day (that’s roughly 75 million in the US).
- The average Facebook user has 130 friends and connects with 80 pages, groups, and/or events.
Here are some of the important statistics, as reported by Facebook:
Clearly, Facebook is more than teens gossiping.
So What Happens On Facebook, Anyway?
Great, so it’s apparent there are a lot of people on Facebook, but just consider the reasons people go to Facebook:
- To connect with others.
- To connect with brands.
- For relaxation and recreation.
- To make purchases or download coupons.
- To read reviews/opinions on products/services/brands.
- To voice opinions on products/services/brands.
Now you begin to see that Facebook is quickly becoming a hub of social information. And with more companies making their presence known on Facebook, consumers are increasingly connecting in this virtual world to the businesses with which they have existing or potential relationships. This is your chance to win new customers in a new way.
How You Can Make The Most of ‘The Social Network’ For Your Business
There are a few ways to make the most of Facebook, which should be implemented carefully:
- Well Developed Fan Page: This is where companies can directly interact with customers/clients. You can sell your product through a (branded) Facebook page, as well as communicate and engage with your target audience, and even direct them to your website.
- Dominating Search: Aside from being visible directly on Facebook, a well developed page will help you begin to dominate search results. Your company website should already be performing well for targeted keywords, which is accomplished through Search Engine Optimization, but your Facebook Page can also perform well for these keywords if set up properly. With both your website and your Facebook page showing in search results, these multiple listings will drive your competition even further down the search results page.
- Integrated Blog-Facebook-Twitter Programs: Companies that wish to develop deeper and more interactive communications with current and prospective customers can choose a program that allows the integration of Facebook posts, Twitter tweets and blog posts, so that your customers choose their most comfortable method of coordinated communication, yielding deeper and more loyal relationships. All branded, all integrated. Your company begins to look like it has an incredibly powerful online presence.
Social Media Is A Major Opportunity, So Be Sure To Follow The Keys To Success
If you’re going to leverage Facebook effectively, you need to have a thorough understanding of how to do it. Many companies try the Do-It-Yourself method and don’t succeed. Peer-to-peer marketing facilitation and community development are quite different methods of interaction. Internet marketing firms, like LocalDirective, know how to help not only develop a good looking social profile, but how to guide you to continued success through leverage of social networks.
This is definitely a bandwagon for your business to jump on!
Save on Your Payment Processing Costs – Or Get a $250 Gift Card*
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*Please note that the above offer is only available to customers within the USA
Some Interesting Tips
• Did you know – you can minimize your exposure to PCI-DSS compliance requirements by using a hosted payment application to process online transaction from your website? A hosted payment solution is simple to integrate, and provides a safe, secure, and efficient way to process credit card data. The sensitive transaction data is stored with your processor and not within your store environment, protecting your customers and minimizing your risk.
• Adding payments to your existing Web site, while maintaining the look and feel your site already has is easier than you think. By using the First Data Global Gateway Web Service API solution, which leverages XML/SOAP-based messaging technology, you can easily integrate the payments portion of your online shopping environment with the shopping carts, order management, accounting software or other applications you already have. By providing a seamless online shopping experience, your customers don’t have to leave your site to complete a purchase.
• Did you know - payment alternatives to debit and credit are expected to grow to 30% over the next 4 years? Giving customers multiple payment options such as PayPal, Google Checkout or eCheck, increases the likelihood that a customer will complete the purchase and not abandon their cart. Industry studies show that by adding more than two payment alternatives to your checkout can increase sales conversions by 14%.
• A payment gateway provides your website with simple acceptance of electronic payment transactions and leveraging the gateway’s online transaction administration tool enables you to manage your payment transactions more effectively. This tool should provide a Transaction Terminal for manual processing of orders taken over the phone or face to face. It should also provide access to extensive transaction reporting and administrative tools that manage your business the way you want.
• Online fraud is one of the biggest concerns that merchants have today, accounting for over $3.3 billion in lost revenue in 2009. Additionally, merchants reject, on average, about 2.4% of all orders due to the suspicion of fraud. How can you prevent these losses and potential good orders that are rejected (false-positives)? By leveraging a fraud scoring and management solution, you are able to identify fraudulent transactions, score them according to your business requirements, and track these scores over time to more effectively accept or reject order transactions to get the highest rate or return by minimizing losses and accepting more good transactions.
Accelerate Your Business Growth in 2011: Go Mobile!
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As you sit down to map out 2011 goals for your business, consider this: The adoption rates of smart phones and other 3G technologies are some of the highest ever seen.
This growth means many customers and prospective customers can no longer be counted on to view your website from a desktop or laptop browser; instead they may be viewing your website on their mobile devices. Since it is probable your browser-based website does not render correctly on these mobile devices, working with companies like LocalDirective can help you set up an affordable mobile presence and a marketing plan to harness this incredible opportunity.
The mobile web is continuing its explosive growth of more than 2000% in the last 2 years. And these high end mobile devices, such as iPhones, Androids, Palm and Blackberry, are an ideal platform for advertisers since consumers carry their network-enabled smart phones at nearly all times.
Currently, there are approximately 5 billion active mobile devices globally as compared to 1.7 billion active PCs. Morgan Stanley analysts believe, based on the current rate of adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015.
Even more interesting, the demographics of these users is very appealing. The average mobile media user is 32 years old, 53% male, and 47% female. And smart phone users are wealthy, with 51% making more than $75k and 34% making more than $100k.
Mobile is a great way to reach this “on the go” audience whose search demands are immediate, location-sensitive and focused on actionable information. Now is the time to create a mobile landing page, microsite or full blown mCommerce site.
Here are just a few ways LocalDirective can help you build just the mobile presence for your business, and then drive these loyal and wealthy prospects right to you:
- Mobile Microsite & Mobile Search Engine Marketing A custom microsite developed to display appropriately on different smart phones to protect your image, extend your carefully tended brand ‘look and feel’ and provide just the pages you need to increase customer conversions and send loyalty skyrocketing. When your microsite is completed, LocalDirective will drive traffic from targeted, high-ROI Search Engine Marketing programs.
- Mobile Landing Pages & Mobile Search Engine Marketing When a full mobile presence is not necessary, LocalDirective will create the targeted landing pages necessary to give your prospective customers the information they need to take action and deliver visitors to these pages through search engine marketing that is only seen by your geographically targeted mobile audience.
- Custom Mobile Websites & Mobile Applications If your business model calls for a robust mobile presence that is seamlessly available on multiple mobile devices, and that has any one of a number of custom functions, LocalDirective can deliver for you. Receive instant updates from back-end system integration, keep your content synced with your regular website, improve your workforce productivity, or even provide mCommerce to your target market.
Whichever path is appropriate for your business, now is the time to take action. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. Contact us today or call 1.888.613.7174. Let 2011 be YOUR year of Mobile!