INTERNET MARKETING Archives - DBC Digital

Archive for INTERNET MARKETING

Posted by DBC Digital on

February 12, 2019

Avoid a Crash Landing: Targeting Your Landing Pages

We’re pleased to offer a free digital marketing consultation. Call today, (303) 357-5757, or e-mail dbc@dbcdigital.com.

Do you know what a ‘landing page‘ is and have you implemented one yet? If you haven’t, let’s explore what landing pages are, how they work, and what your options are for getting started. After all, landing pages are a valuable tool for lead generation and one that ~68% of medium-size companies regularly use to acquire leads. (source: Marketo, 2018)

What is a landing page?
Often the term, ‘landing page’ refers to any page where website visitors land when initially coming to your site. This is the type of landing page to which Google Analytics reports are referring. Yet, there is another use for the term — a landing page can also be a web page created for the sole purpose of converting visitors into leads by capturing a person’s contact information. This blog will be discussing the version of a landing page that is used for inbound marketing and lead generation.

How does a landing page work?
A website is a set of interconnected pages detailing your business. Business websites define who the business is, what it does, and explain products and services. Websites also may incorporate aspects such as a blog or login page. A landing page, on the other hand, is designed to explain an offer like a free trial, coupon, or ebook. Then in order to claim the offer, a visitor must provide personal information (name, email, phone number). Landing pages are solely focused on capturing leads to drive sales. Most often a landing page doesn’t even have navigation buttons or other links.

Landing Page Example

Testing, 1, 2, 3

So now let’s say you’ve got your marketing landing page and it is receiving a ton of traffic, yet are you converting those visitors into leads? A landing page with low conversion rates can be super frustrating, especially when it is hard to determine what the cause is. That’s where testing comes in.

Aspects you should consider testing:

Copy: Text on landing pages is normally brief, but what is there should be carefully crafted. Make sure your page’s copy has maximum impact by keeping things concise and action-oriented.
Tone: This is related to copy, of course. Keep your audience top-of-mind when selecting your tone. Having your page more casual or professional, light-hearted or serious, detailed or general, can have a big impact on your results.
Media: Add or change a picture or video for improving conversion rates. According to Wordstream: Using videos on landing pages will increase conversions by 86%. (Wordstream, 2018)
Keywords: SEO is always important, and selecting the right keywords can make a difference in who sees your page and whether the landing page is relevant. It’s a good idea to test multiple keywords in ads or on-page SEO and then assess the traffic and conversions.

Here are a few other common issues beleaguering your landing page conversion rates

1. Slow loading landing page

Website loading speed makes a huge difference in who stays and who moves along. Several factors can slow down your landing pages. The most common offender is having oversized images. In an analysis of 18,639 landing pages, pages without oversized images led to an average conversion rate of 11.4%, compared to 9.8% for pages with oversized images (source: Unbounce Marketing).

2. You have multiple CTAs

Competing CTAs create confusion among visitors which results in fewer leads. Each landing page should include one direct call-to-action that directs visitors as to what their next step should be. Research shows that landing pages with one link led to an average conversion rate of 13.5%, while pages with two to four links led to an average conversion of 11.9%. For five or more links, conversions dropped even lower to 10.5%. (source: Unbounce Marketing)

4. Your landing page is just plain boring

It only takes a few seconds for a visitor to determine whether they’ll remain on a particular page or not. Because of this, it is vital to include multimedia elements to liven things up — but don’t over do it. Opt for a simple, clean design over flashy with too many bells and whistles.

5. Not mobile-friendly

If your landing page is not optimized for mobile users, you will likely miss out on a significant portion of traffic. Also, keep in mind the different ways users interact with your site on mobile vs desktop. For example, mobile pages should include shorter, multiple-choice sign-up forms that are easy to complete on a mobile device.

6. Your landing page contains too much text

Most web users scan pages rather than read them entirely. As a result, landing pages with a high word count may receive fewer conversions. For this reason, we recommend that you cut down your word count and only include essential information within your copy. Also, consider text formatting. Use bullets, headers, and spacing to break up large blocks of text.

Attract Different Customers

Keep in mind that while your website generally stays the same, you can appeal to certain market segments by creating custom landing pages. Know that the content, offer, page style, and advertising you choose will determine how impactful the page is on the new market.

Demographic: Age, interests, education and other factors can influence what products or services customers look for and what types of landing pages they will respond to.
Location: Make it easier for customers in an area to find you by creating landing pages dedicated to that specific location
Price: Some customers shop by price alone, while conversely others may be looking for quality, no matter the cost. The correct landing page can assist you in targeting either group and direct them to the right products, services, or content.

In conclusion

As you build your digital marketing toolbox, including landing pages is now a must, and both you and your customers will reap the benefits. Landing pages help increase your conversion rates and lower your cost of acquiring a lead or sale.

How are landing pages a part of your business’ marketing strategy?

DBC Digital is a full-service digital marketing company that provides everything you need to run successful content marketing campaigns. We’re located in the Denver metro area, just south of the Denver Tech Center, near I-25 and Dry Creek Road. We provide marketing services for businesses and organizations throughout the United States.

Categories : Content Creation, Digital Marketing, INTERNET MARKETING, Marketing, STRATEGY

Tags : landing pages

Posted by DBC Digital on

November 9, 2018

From Value Proposition to Internet Marketing: Connecting the Dots

Is Your Message Connected?

Do you ever feel that your core marketing message is somehow disconnected from your Internet marketing activities? You know what your value proposition is, but when it comes to making it work for you across the web and in social media, something gets lost.

Here are some important action steps to take to ensure your unique value proposition gets through regardless of the platform you are engaging your clients with:

SEO

Bringing your value proposition into your Search Engine Optimization efforts means expanding your keyword targeting efforts to include more than just your primary and secondary keywords. Your goal is to turn your tagline or Unique Selling Proposition (USP) into context-building factors that increase the value of your search engine listings for your audience. For instance:

Add a “value proposition page” the same way you would add a mission, vision, and “about us” page. Of course, you don’t need to call it a value proposition page, but including a page that is called something like: “What Makes Us Different” will ensure a clear distinction between you and your competitors.
Use unique Meta descriptions in each of your webpages to ensure that they “talk” to your audience in search engines. Meta descriptions are those short sentences that are displayed when the search engines show your website listing. Make sure your descriptions describe why you are better.
Use Title tags in each of your major web pages (like your home page), and don’t just list your keywords but instead highlight your USP or tagline, like “Connecting Realtors, Agents, and Homebuyers, Hassle-free.“
Use “Alt” attributes in images, videos, and other webpage elements that search engine bots can’t read, and also ensure that the file names you use for these images are descriptive and relevant.
Use context building keywords as anchors, preferably Latent Semantic Indexing phrases. For real estate, try “home market,” “real estate agents,” and other similar phrases.
Include branding messages in every webpage in a uniform fashion; but don’t force them. You don’t want to sacrifice readability. Add a tagline such as “Connecting Realtors, Agents, and Homebuyers, Hassle-free” in the template of every webpage, always in the same position, just like a shopping cart button.

In addition, consider including press releases and other promotional blog posts in your blogging calendar with the sole purpose of reinforcing your brand and proving your value proposition.

Email Marketing

Email continues to play a central role in Internet marketing as a powerful lead nurturing tool that focuses on expertise and relevance to the subscriber. If you own a CPA firm for example, then:

Show off your core competencies by sending emails that offer tips, tricks, or expert advice. Include personalized ROI calculators or in-depth accounting advice that the subscriber will undoubtedly be interested in.
Send only relevant email by ensuring you have as much information about your subscriber as possible. You can include a small part of a lead capture form to ask what your reader is interested in or in what areas of accounting they need help with. Take their answers into consideration when planning your email campaigns. Also, triggered emails (drip campaigns) are an excellent way of staying in touch with your clients and prospects and we highly recommended them.
Highlight both your expertise and relevance when sending emails when focused on calling your readers to take action, such as downloading material, visiting a blog post, or setting up a consultation schedule.

Social Media

If the key to email in Internet marketing is expertise and relevance, the focus when it comes to social media is brand “persona” and engagement. Let’s say you own a law firm and you want to increase your presence in social media. You should:

Effectively communicate your brand persona to your social crowd. Most law firms are seen as more formal institutions, so for the most part you should portray this approach in your brand persona: an advisor always available to give meaningful advice. Your brand persona ties in to your value proposition, so be clear about your brand and how you want to portray it.
When possible, be open and ready to give advice in your area of expertise. Use your social platforms as open discussion areas and turn the conversations into calls-to-action for further counsel as a service. It’s an excellent way to drive social engagement since your fans and followers will appreciate your expertise.
Use social engagement as a means to avoid estranging your audience. Since you deal with legal conflicts and issues, many people will view your law firm as a third party trying to settle their legal issues for them. What you want them to see instead is an adviser and partner they can rely on, and social media can help you with that.

Categories : INTERNET MARKETING

SLL Security, SLLCertificates, Digital Marketing

Posted by DBC Digital on

August 15, 2018

SSL Security — Is your website looking the part?

We’re pleased to offer a free website consultation. Call today, (303) 357-5757, or e-mail dbc@dbcdigital.com.

Providing your website visitors with a secure browsing experience is more crucial than ever.

Website security is now so vital that Google has stepped in with new security standards coinciding with their release of Chrome 68. Recently, Google announced that it will mark ALL sites as “not secure” that have not upgraded their SSL certificates from the old “HTTP” to the more secure “HTTPS”.”

This change in the way Google evaluates your site should be taken seriously since this type of warning will most certainly drive potential customers away. Not having HTTPS also will impact your search rankings and can increase your vulnerability to hackers.

Now, let’s take a look at what you should do about it.

What is SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is technology that keeps your site visitors’ data (credit card info, etc.) safe from hackers. The technology encrypts the information as it flows between your site and the servers. SSL shows visitors that you have been verified as the site’s official owner.

What Are The Benefits Of An SSL Certificate?

GoDaddy explains an SSL as creating a “secure tunnel through which information including usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and more can pass safely.”

SSL Certificates also:

Boost Google search rankings
Guarantees visitor data is secure between servers
Reinforces customer trust
Increases conversion rates

How Do I Know If My Webite Is Secure?

The two primary ways you will know whether your site is secure or not are:

Your website URL should start with “HTTPS” not “HTTP”.
Look for the little green padlock icon next to the website URL on your browser bar. All websites considered “secure” should have the green padlock.

One thing to note — SSL does not guarantee that your website itself is protected. While HTTPS keeps your visitor’s information secure in transit, SSL doesn’t do anything to help protect your website from being hacked so you will still need to keep your site current with the latest security features, themes and plugins.

What’s the Difference Between HTTP and HTTPS?

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the way data is sent between your browser and the website you are visiting. HTTPS uses SSL certificates to ensure that all communications are encrypted and is the secure version of HTTP. (Yep. The “S” means “secure.”)

When using an HTTP website, there is the risk your connection could be hacked — resulting in stolen or manipulated data. With HTTPS, your data is encrypted and the person on the other end must have the “decoder” for your data to be readable. To anyone else, your encrypted data is meaningless. In addition to providing security, HTTPS also results in better site performance by blocking ISPs (Internet Service Providers) from injecting those annoying and intrusive ads.

What is the first thing I should do?

If you have not already done so, purchase an SSL certificate today. You will need to install the SSL certificate and migrate your website to HTTPS.

Where Do I Buy An SSL Certificate?

Most larger web hosts (Go Daddy, etc.) provide SSL certificates and have services to automatically configure web servers to support HTTPS connections — making your life easier.

Or — You have the option to obtain an SSL certificate for your domain directly from a Certified Authority (CA). You will then have to configure the certificate on your web host, or on your own servers if you are hosting the site yourself.

You can also get a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt, a popular CA that provides certificates in the interest of creating a safer Internet: https://letsencrypt.org/

If you prefer someone to handle all this for you, you can contact us or your web programmer. We can help you get your certificate and then configure your website for https.

In Conclusion

Keeping your customers safe is good business. Update your SSL certificate today to ensure the data your website is processing, storing, and utilizing is safe and encrypted. Also, Chrome’s flagging of HTTP sites as “unsecure” is just one more step in a list of changes soon to come that are intended to better protect the privacy and security of sensitive information. There is no reason to jeopardize the trust of your users, so go get your green padlock today.

Please note: DBC Digital is a full-service marketing agency in the Denver metro area. We’re in Centennial, just off I-25 and Dry Creek. We work with clients throughout Colorado and the U.S., in a variety of industries, including: real estate, financial, insurance, and mortgage.

Categories : INTERNET MARKETING, Marketing, Search Marketing, SEO, WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

Tags : https, secure website, SEO, ssl, website design

Posted by DBC Digital on

June 9, 2016

How to Improve Search Results for Your Business

When businesses work to improve their local search results, they tend to get locked on the idea that most local searchers begin and end with the big three search engines.

Because of this belief, marketers spend most of their time solely focused on paying for and improving their website’s placement in Yahoo, Bing, and of course, Google.

In order to really profit from those buyers who go online to find businesses in their own city or even in their local neighborhood, it’s vital to understand how those buyers are actually searching online. The reality is that the definition of search engines should be expanded to include more than just the big three.

Where Do Local Searches Originate From?

For example, a survey published on Search Engine Land revealed that listings from the major search engines only make up a portion of what most marketers think of as “local search.” Some people may find these survey results surprising:

Only about 36 percent of searches for local businesses began with a major search engine.
An additional 13 percent began with a visit to a niche website on a specific topic about the product, service, or industry they were looking for.
Customer reviews and directories each accounted for another seven percent of searches
Promotions or coupons accounted for another six percent of searches
Additional sites included digital maps, phone apps, and other types of content that mentioned the business.

Which Kinds of Shoppers Rely On Local Search the Least?

The survey did cover a broad range of services and products. Your type of industry may impact results to some degree, but what really stood out was the way that customers and prospective clients searched differently, depending on their familiarity with the type of business they were searching for.

For example, almost half of experienced hotel shoppers said that they tended to visit an industry-specific travel sites for information about local hotels, such as Trip Adviser, Hotels.com, etc.

In other words, casual travelers might start searching on Google or Bing first; but seasoned travelers will already have their favorite resources bookmarked.

Since experienced travelers consume travel services more frequently than casual travelers, it only makes sense for travel-related companies to target these travel-specific sites as much or more than the big three search engines.

In any case, placing a portion of your ad listings on review sites, local industry directories, and a variety of other platforms will serve to increase your visibility. In turn, this increased visibility is likely to help your search rankings on the big search engines.

By understanding how buyers research companies like yours, you can see better results from many different aspects of your digital marketing.

Let DBC Digital Help Your Local Customers Find You

At DBC Digital, our marketing team has helped countless businesses reach out to local shoppers online. Let us help you analyze your current internet presence and expand your reach in the places where your customers are most likely to look for the products or services that you offer. Contact us to discuss your unique company and location.

*Photo credit: Copyright: <a href=’https://www.123rf.com/profile_alexmillos’>alexmillos / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Categories : INTERNET MARKETING, Marketing, Search Marketing, SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING, STRATEGY

Tags : local search, search, search engine marketing, sem

Posted by Greg Sherwood on

March 15, 2016

The A, B, C and D’s of Inbound Marketing

The Best of Both Worlds

While Inbound Marketing has been around for a few years now, the concept is constantly being refined. Because of this, we still get questions from some pretty smart people about what exactly “Inbound Marketing” means and how they can benefit from it. Of course, without a clear understanding of this key approach, it’s impossible to benefit from it.

According to Hubspot, a large provider of tools for marketers, companies that understand and use inbound marketing enjoy what is called “…the proven marketing methodology for the digital age.”

In other words, Inbound Marketing leverages the best of traditional marketing with the benefits of digital.

The Four Basic Steps of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing can be easily described in four straightforward steps that help coax your prospects and customers through the buying process.

Here’s how companies use inbound marketing to improve sales, brand reputation, and ROI:

A. Attract and convert strangers into online visitors: Marketers can use the content of their own websites, their blogs, social networking sites, and other content to attract new, potential customers.

Marketers then use these different online platforms to distribute their important information (tips, product reviews, etc.) which in turn helps attract prospects that are doing research to buy a product or service similar to yours. The object is to help these prospects become aware of your brand, product, or service so you are at least included in the decision-making mix.

The difference is that this step not meant to find customers, it is to make sure that customers find you.

B. Convert website visitors into prospects: Once your marketing content has been found by the right people (people that are interested in your product or service), the next step is to turn them into actual prospects.

Successful marketers use a number of tools to accomplish this. These tools include lead forms, landing pages, calls-to-action, and other tools that encourage your visitors to either connect with you directly or to have them give you their contact information. Your job is to build lists out of these leads so you can nurture and stay connected while they are in the decision-making process.

C. Turn prospects into customers: This is the time when sales actually get closed. Marketing tools here include emails, sales pages, promotional offers, and phone calls as appropriate. Pro Tip: The more personalized your message to specific customers, the more effective the conversion from prospect to buyer.

D. Delight customers: The real potential of inbound marketing is when first-time customers become loyal customers who then make repeat purchases and even let their own social circles know how happy they are with your brand.

During this step, marketing automation tools, referral programs, social media, and customer surveys help marketers stay connected with their customers in order to increase loyalty and repeat business.

Why Inbound Marketing Works Online

While the traditional approach to marketing (direct mail, etc.) still plays a vital role in helping to grow your company, these approaches are much more effective when you combine them with inbound marketing.

As your prospects have learned to use online tools to research their purchase decisions, using these strategies is more essential to helping you continue to grow your business. In this digital age, inbound marketing helps you get found by your prospects who are looking for solutions.

Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how good you are if your prospects don’t even know you exist.

More on Inbound Marketing

Check out some of our earlier DBC Digital blogs here and here for more information and some suggested analytics tools to use in building your inbound marketing strategy.

To learn more about Inbound Marketing or to discuss a new marketing project with us, give us a call at (303) 357-5757 or drop us a line at dbc@dbcdigital.com

Categories : INTERNET MARKETING, Marketing

Tags : digital marketing, inbound, inbound marketing, internet marketing, marketing

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