It’s commonly accepted that you should review your overall marketing strategy at least once a year.  When it comes to the digital portion of your marketing, we recommend a review every 60 to 90 days.  The ever-changing Google algorithms and the frequent updating of social media’s “terms of service” necessitates this constant reevaluation. 

Below are a few key points to consider when setting your digital marketing resolutions (goals) for the first quarter of 2015.

WEBSITE:

Your customer expects your website to be graphically appealing, easily browsed (on all devices) and filled with quality content establishing you as an authority capable of filling their needs.  Google is looking for much of the same.  However, you must first satisfy Google’s spiders (site scanners) if you want your website to show up high enough in the search rankings for customers to find you.

Just last month, Google began putting a “mobile friendly” notation (on mobile search results) next to websites that are easily viewed on a cell phone.  At the same time, Google let it be known that they’re preparing to rank websites denoted “mobile friendly” more favorably.

Is your website “mobile friendly” in Google’s eyes?  See the image below at http://goo.gl/vSXl5S and find out.

Keep in mind, the average lifespan of a business website is 2 to 3 years before the site begins to look dated. If you website fails the “mobile friendly” test, please reach out to Make It Loud.  We give you our honest feedback and direction.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

How effective is your current social media strategy?  Are you using the platforms your target market uses?  Does what you’re doing seem effective?  Should you restructure your social media mix or possibly expand the channels you’re using?  These are all valid questions and ones that must be objectively answered when evaluating the effectiveness of your on-going social media efforts.

Dramatic changes occurred in social media this past year and these changes will continue and only increase in frequency.  One easily recognized recent trend is the push by all the social media towards monetization or what is often referred to as “pay to play”. 

Facebook recently told marketers not to expect their posts to organically appear on their follower’s news feed and suggested they should plan to spend some greenbacks to gain the broader exposure.  (That’s paraphrased but you get the jist.) 

In 2015, we suggest allocating marketing funds towards “boosting your posts” on Facebook and promoting accordingly on your other social media channels.  At least give it a try and gauge for yourself.

DIGITAL MARKETING ASSESSMENT:

As a way of helping small to mid-sized business owners gauge their digital marketing efforts, Make It Loud is offering a FREE Digital Marketing Assessment.  If you will go to http://digital.makeitloud.net and answer a few multiple-choice questions, one of our Digital Marketing Consultants will reach out to you with a full review of your current marketing (including suggestions for improvement) and assist you in prioritizing your action items.  Please enter promo code 2015 to receive your free assessment.

THANK YOU for your friendship and business.  Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Many small to mid-sized business owners here the term “video marketing” and think two things- no time to do it along with giant dollar signs. It’s just too intimidating. Well, this post is designed to debunk that myth because that’s what we do here at Make It Loud- debunk.

First, some businesses need to be convinced that video marketing is worth the time and energy. Here’s some of the data we found:

• 100 million people a day watch at least one video
• 90% of online shoppers say a video helps them decide to buy
• Better retention- 80% of browsers recall watching a video on a site they visited
• 46% of that 80% took action-looked for more info, visited the website or purchased
• 64% of browsers are more likely to buy after watching a video
• 403% Austrailian realtors reported listings with videos received that many more inquiries
• Forbes reports 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read
  • 65% go to vendors website
  • 45% contact the vendor
  • 50% purchase
• Videos on email marketing campaigns have been shown to increase click through rate (2-3x)
• Reduces opt out rates (~75%)
• Has been shown to increase subscriber to lead rates by about 50%

What have videos been shown to accomplish? That’s simple. Videos can help you demonstrate your product or service faster and more clearly than written text. It’s a great way to introduce you or your business, and it keeps browsers on your site longer which contributes to better search rankings. Plus, when you have a video in the search results, we know that improves click through rates and helps drive people to your business. Some experts even predict that in less than 3 years, almost 75% of all traffic online will be video!

The point of all this is simple- your competitors are most likely using videos, and if you’re not, you could be missing very important leads.

We outlined three ways to create a business video. First, there’s the old school way of getting a video camera, shooting and uploading that video to your computer where you’ll need to edit what’s there. This is effective, but can be time intensive. Next, grab your cell phone and shoot what you need to. Upload, edit and share. Easier, but still can cost you some time. Last, there are image based videos where you take 10+ images and use software like Animoto to build a video for your business. This is the least time intensive approach and can lead to beautiful results.

Plan out what you want to accomplish with the video- demonstration, brand awareness, etc. This will help you decide what images and text to use, but with some software, you can have a video in as little as 10-15 minutes!

Let the staff at Make It Loud show you how. Call us today and ask for Make It Loud Academy session on video marketing!

(See the full boot camp notes on our website at http://makeitloud.net/boot_camp_notes)

Imagine if you will, being able to tap into conversations with specific keywords and such that directly relate to your brand, your business and exactly what you do. It would allow you to be more efficient with the time you spend on social media. Welcome to, well, this blog post!

Sure, it’s cutting edge stuff, and most businesses don’t really understand it all that well. And, don’t think this kind of prospecting is cheap my any means, but there are some tools out there than the small business owner can use to accomplish some of the same things- finding conversations that directly relate to your business.

It works like this- there are bazillions of conversations that occur on all the social media channels, and a percentage of them either indirectly or directly relate to your business. If you provide a vital service (like say, digital marketing. Hmm!), you would naturally have a list of keywords that pertain to what you do (web design, website design, social media marketing, SEO, etc). Developing this list and referring to it while using these tools can alert you to conversations that are related to those terms. You can then insert your message into that thread which can lead to higher engagement, conversions and mo’ money!

Now, some business owners are still thinking they don’t need to be on social media- that it’s just a fad, it’ll go away, etc. My response to those people is simple. Is your target market there? If the answer is yes (which it obviously is!), then if you’re not there talking to your people, your competitors are. That means you’re ignoring a major avenue to the very people that are looking for what you do. To us, that’s leaving money on the table.

But, the question always comes around to “How do I know if I’m doing well?” It’s a good questions certainly, but it also depends upon your goals for social media- increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your site? Make sales? Regardless, measuring your efforts requires you to look at some data or social analytics.

The cheapest way to check your social analytics is to look at the data each channel provides. That tells you at least some basic numbers like “likes”, “shares”,” +1’s”, etc. Besides what’s available there, you can always check out these:

• Google Analytics-if nothing else, you can see which channels are feeding your website
• Cyfe-free to start, upgrade to $29/month
• Agorapulse- helps you measure your FB & Twtter, some free stuff, $29/mo
• Sprout Social-pretty analytics $60/month

Social Media Monitoring

Different from just measuring how well things are going, social media monitoring is where you’re actually plugging in to conversations about your business. Think of it as listening to Twitter or the others for posts about what you do so that you can jump in there and engage at the right time with the right people. Powerful stuff! As with any other listening, there are two types- active & passive listening.

Active listening/monitoring is where you go to a website and plug in your keywords to see what people are saying. Here are some tools that seem useful:

• Addictomatic-let’s you browse a variety of channels across the web
• Social Mention- gives you “mood metrics”
• Topsy-search out trends, topics & discussions about your subject
• Icerocket- let’s you search out and find people mention keywords

Passive social monitoring is where you go to a site, set up some keywords, brands, etc and these tools notify you when a conversation is taking place that might interest you. Some of these tools include:

• Google Alerts
• Buzzsumo-has tools & free account
• Mention-free account, will give alerts
• Hearsaysocial-good for financial, insurance, etc
• Bottlenose-maps the trends
• Gnip-starts at $500

Some of these tools offer both social analytics that’ll help you measure how well you’re doing with your social media as well as social monitoring abilities.

The point is, there are a host of tools that exist to help you become more efficient in what you do to attract people to your business. This gives you a good list to start with to match your business goals and your budget. Now, get out there and start listening!

(See the full boot camp notes on our website at http://makeitloud.net/boot_camp_notes)