Measuring Your Social Media Profitability

Measuring Your Social Media Profitability

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Wondering if your social media marketing efforts are paying off?

Reviewing your budget and calculating your ROI are important aspects of a social media audit but are often overlooked. While many businesses and marketers have a firm grasp of money, calculating total ROI from social media is more difficult, especially when you’re looking at purely social ROI instead of financial ROI.

To tackle this, pull up all of your records and look at how much you’re spending on social media. Potential costs include:

  • Ad spend
  • Consultant or agency fees
  • Third-party analytics and management tools
  • Contest software
  • Apps and tools to create images
  • Employees who help with your social media efforts
  • Professional photographers or equipment to take photos

Compare the costs and results. If you spend $199 on contest software and generated 304 leads and 102 conversions on a $20 per month subscription, for example, you’ll be able to see that ROI clearly.

When examining third-party analytics, management, and social listening tools, look at both the costs and benefits you’ve received. Have these tools made you more efficient? Also, look at whether they’ve helped you generate better results from your content.

Need help with your marketing?

As a small business owner, you wear many hats. Why not start the new year by letting Advantage Marketing take those marketing tasks off your plate?  Contact us for an complimentary initial consultation today!

Automating Your Business

Automating Your Business

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Automation is considered the next major frontier in marketing.

But are you extending your business’s automation practices far enough? If you’re going to make automation work for you you’ll need to put in the front-end effort to set it up. Get started with these tips:

Put Data in Its Place: If you want to take advantage of the full breadth of marketing automation options; spend the money to invest in a powerful CRM system.

Break It Apart: Taking apart the information feeding into your CRM will allow you to see how your current marketing campaigns are working and hone them for improved performance.

Set Benchmarks: Marketing automation is a multi-phase process and you should set benchmarks that can guide you and let you know how close to fully automated your business’s system is.

Automate Personality: You need to develop customer personas. These are templates that have particular perspectives on sales, customer needs, and that embrace a tone that’s limited to specific sales groups.

Remember: Embracing automation also means smoothing workflow, improving team management, and helping sales managers shift their responsibilities to more productive activities than sheer data wrangling. (smalbiztrends)

Need help with your marketing?

Get the Advantage Marketing Total Online Presence audit today!

How Can You Optimize Your Google My Business Page?

How Can You Optimize Your Google My Business Page?

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How Can You Optimize Your Google My Business Page?You’ve set up and claimed your Google My Business page. Now it’s time to optimize it! Here are a few tips from The Small Business Marketing Academy to help you get started. Read more

How to Remove Writers Block and Come Up with Awesome Content Ideas

How to Remove Writers Block and Come Up with Awesome Content Ideas

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How to Remove Writers Block and Come Up with Awesome Content IdeasNot sure what to blog about? Having trouble getting started on that white paper? Here’s what marketing expert John Jantsch has to say on the topic:

Removing writer’s block

Take a break and go outside

Seems simple enough, right? Stand up, walk away from your desk, and get away from your computer for a bit. Do this even if you’re on a tight deadline. There’s no point in just staring at your computer if it’s getting you nowhere. Getting some fresh air will help get your creative juices flowing and will make you feel refreshed so that you can return to your desk and conquer a stellar piece of content. Read more

What Is the Key to Ranking on Google Local?

What Is the Key to Ranking on Google Local?

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What Is the Key to Ranking on Google Local?You really can’t even dream about showing up for local searches unless you claim and optimize your Google My Business Page.

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7 must have website elements

7 Must Have Website Elements

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“Marketing-Focused” Thinking Should Drive Your Website Design Today

The homepage is often a prospect’s first impression of your website. Long, scrolling pages are the expectation these days, so think of your homepage elements as a bit of journey. Don’t try to cram it all above the fold, let people get further and further as they scroll.

7 must have website elementsSo that visitors can get the most out of landing on your website, consider implementing the seven elements below.

1. The promise

The purpose of the promise headline, above the fold on your homepage, is to show the visitor that you understand the challenges they face. You need to make them a promise that will solve their problems.

2. Call to action

A call to action (CTA) is an image or text that prompts visitors, leads, or customers to take a specific action. CTAs help to guide people through the customer journey and advise them on next steps.

Your call to action can be to request more information, schedule a consultation, or download a free report. Make sure it’s relevant and useful – the days when people simply signed up to receive an email from you are over, but people still want to be led to useful activities and resources that get them closer to solving their problems.

3. Video

Many companies are beginning to feature video on their homepage, and for a good reason! Video allows you to give people a real sense of who you are, what you stand for, and let people hear your story. It’s also a great way to produce content to engage your audience.

Some put this in the nice to have category, but I think it’s a must these days for small business websites.

4. Trust elements

You need to have elements that build trust on your homepage, whether they be logos of current customers or testimonials for your audience to glance over. Have reviews or accolades you want your audience to see? Make them easy to find and place them on the homepage.

This is almost a content category for many businesses as things like reviews, case studies, and testimonials should be part of your ongoing content building efforts, but once you collect them use them to build trust and social proof.

Wondering why your website doesn’t generate traffic and leads like you thought it would? Our Total Online Presence Audit  can help.

5. Changing content

It’s a good idea to feature frequently changing content from your website on your homepage. For example, place a blog or social feed on the homepage that shows recent activity. It’s a great way to show your company is active and to keep content fresh on the homepage.

6. Content upgrades

A content upgrade gives people the ability to download premium content in exchange for an email address or capturing a lead. This is an essential element for conversion on your website. If they download this content, this expresses interest in what you do. Take this opportunity to give them more valuable content moving forward to nurture them through to the sale.

The key is to make the upgrade, a checklist or eBook for example, highly relevant to the blog post or content where it is featured.This is an essential element for conversion on your website. If they download this content, this expresses interest in what you do. Take this opportunity to give them more valuable content moving forward to nurture them through to the sale.

This is an essential element for conversion on your website. If they download this content, this expresses interest in what you do. Take this opportunity to give them more valuable content moving forward to nurture them through to the sale.

7. Core services

Create boxes that feature your core products or services and include about 100 words of content with each. Since these are your core services, you’ll likely have full pages or sections of your site related to each, but by placing them on your homepage accompanied by descriptive content, you’ll also get some additional SEO value.

Get help with your website

The experts at Advantage Marketing can help you develop a website that generates leads for your business. Contact us to learn more.

Reprinted from 5 Step Marketing Blueprint by John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing

Your website is more than a digital brochure

Why Your Website Doesn’t Attract Customers

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Gone are the days of your website just being a digital brochure for your company.

Your website is more than a digital brochure

A website now has many jobs, including:

Get found – The website should be optimized for search to help you get found online.

Build trust – Your website is a key element to building trust. Once a person arrives on your website, it needs to validate their challenges. Your website needs to function the way your customers need it to and expect it to.

Educate – Your website should teach people how to recognize what their problems and challenges are. · Inform – Once a person has found you and trusts you, you need to inform them on how you can solve their problems.

Nurture – Often people need to come back to your website numerous times before making a purchase. Capture their email address and continue to create valuable content that is relevant to their stage in the customer journey to nurture them through to the sale.

Convert – A conversion can be many things from subscribing to a newsletter, to calling you, to making a purchase on your website. Conversion opportunities need to be an element of the design of your homepage to help guide the journey.

In today’s world, your customer’s journey starts by researching online. People are coming to a conclusion on their own as to whether or not they are interested in buying from you far before you even realize you are being looked at. You need to make sure you have a presence in these early research stages, and completing each of the jobs above will help you do that.

Wondering why your website doesn’t generate traffic and leads like you thought it would? Our Total Online Presence Audit  can help. Find out why you need this audit.

Tell a story

The main goal your website should achieve is to be able to immediately tell a story. What you may get wrong about storytelling on your website is that the story is not about YOU. The story must be the story your customers and prospects are telling themselves. They need to see themselves in the story which starts with their challenges, problems, and issues that they don’t know how to solve. You have to immediately let your website visitor see that you know what they’re struggling with and that there’s a good chance that you know how to solve it.

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Hiring a marketing consultant

How to Hire a Marketing Consultant: 4 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself

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Small businesses hire marketing consultants for many reasons. But do you know what you should consider when evaluating marketing consultants?

In this video, Duct Tape Marketing founder John Jantsch discusses the four key questions you should consider when hiring a consultant for your marketing. Read more

Improve Your Online Marketing with a Total Online Presence Audit

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Wondering why your prospects don’t find you on Google? Why your website doesn’t generate traffic and leads like you thought it would? Why your competitors seem to show up for coveted keywords?

With our audit and the subsequent plan of action we build for you, you’ll have a complete picture of your current online presence and a roadmap to help you do the things you need to do to dominate your market. Read more

AM’s Loraine Kasprzak Achieves Certified Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Status

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Advantage Marketing’s managing director, Loraine Kasprzak, has successfully completed the rigorous initial Duct Tape Marketing training and has continuous access to training throughout the year ensuring she is the best at the marketing game. Read more