Google’s Latest Update and What It Means For Your Business

Someone once said the only constant in life is change… The same can be said about Google and its search algorithm. Many business owners were frustrated once again by Google’s latest update to its search results.  In this episode of the ‘In The Trenches Small Business Marketing” video podcast I show you how it affects your business.  The biggest noticeable difference was that they started showing only 3 businesses in the Maps listings (formerly referred to as the “7 Pack”).

Click The Play Button Below to Watch This Video:

Now its even more competitive to show up in the Maps listings and in the future the Maps listings may even become a PAID listing in the future (do a Google search for “San Fransisco locksmith” and you will see an experiment Google is conducting in San Fran with Paid Maps listings).   This isn’t a widespread practice yet for Google BUT, if you know Google’s only two rules then you wouldn’t be surprised if they do eventually make this a widespread change:

Google Rule #1:  What makes Google the most money?  ;-)

Google Rule #2:  What provides users with the best possible search experience?

Understanding what motivates Google makes you understand why they make changes like this.

The Bottom Line Take aways are:  

1.  Optimize your Google Plus business page listing

2.  Get your online Business Citations cleaned up (we can help with this)

3.  Get Reviews on a continuous and ongoing basis

4.  Consider investing in Google AdWords if it makes economic sense for your business

To your success,

The post Google’s Latest Update and What It Means For Your Business appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

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Why You Need Facebook for your Content Marketing Plan

Why You Need Facebook in your Content Marketing Plan

It’s simply not possible if you’ve been marketing for any amount of time that you haven’t been advised that Facebook, and social media in general, is essential to your online success. I would say that’s totally true, but with one major caveat: you have to know how to use it, or you’ll come away believing that it is a useless time-wasting exercise in futility.

We I’m here today to tell you that if you’ve embarked upon any sort of content marketing, you absolutely need to make sure Facebook is included. Let me explain why.

Why Facebook Needs to be a Cog in your Content Marketing Machine!

One of the biggest reasons why you’ll want to employ Facebook in your content marketing is the fact that they are on the cutting edge of what’s happening with mobile and video online.

In video alone it’s believed they are now getting a paltry 4 billion views a day, definitely giving YouTube a run for their money.

Combine this with their mobile capabilities, and you have a prescription for the future of marketing online. Want proof? Facebook owns 4 of the top 8 non-gaming apps in the Apple Store, with the Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram apps.

Four Easy Tips for Winning with Content Marketing on Facebook

Employ visual media – Using videos and images in your content marketing on Facebook is an excellent way to get your content shared. It’s well known how visual Facebook users are, and tapping into this whenever possible is always a good idea.

Keep things short – It’s been shown that shorter posts get around 60% better engagement than longer ones, and this is primarily why you’re posting here in the first place, to create audience reach and new fans. This can be easy to do if you are basically leading your readers somewhere else.

Save promotion for paid ads – Facebook is tending to go after overly promotional posts, even from brands. You would be wise to heed this warning, and save the sales pitches for promoted posts.

Promote your blog posts on Facebook – One way sharp marketers get tons of new traffic to their blogs is by announcing or teasing their new blog content on Facebook. You will definitely want to do this, and definitely think about promoting this type of post as well.

The post Why You Need Facebook for your Content Marketing Plan appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

Why Do People Click on Your Links?

Best Practices for Getting More Clickable Links

Much of the time in our quest to connect with an audience, make sales, get opt-ins and more, we are depending on our visitors to make that connection via a web link. Thus it would stand to reason that one of our primary tasks in this quest is to make it our business to know how to get them to click!

Seems there’s more to this than simply hyperlinking “Click here” and expecting them all to show up and shower us with money, emails and more. You really have to coax these things out of them. (You didn’t really think it was that easy, did you?)

So to help make your pages a veritable clicking paradise, let’s examine 5 ways to optimize your links for clicks.

5 Tips for getting more clicks from your links!

Get informative with your click text – You have the opportunity to make your links both informative and enticing. Don’t waste this! “Click here” conveys very little in the way of information about what you’re offering or they’re getting. Studies show that link text like “Download your Free PDF Now!” perform significantly better.

Make every link serve a purpose – Don’t link to any other page without a clear purpose. This means to either an offer, resource or other content that will benefit your audience. (and you!) This is particularly true for landing pages, where you hopefully have a singular purpose for any links on the page.

Understand about the color of your links – There is a definite psychology pertaining to color, and you need to have this firmly in mind when designing links and buttons. For example, blue is a trust color, and orange encourages quick action. Get acquainted with these concepts!

Don’t promise what you aren’t delivering – If you think it’s a great idea to get them to click on your links by using techniques like “clickbait”, think again. You’ll have broken any trust you may have had, and be rewarded with massive bounce rates.

Think about page placement – Knowing where to put links is nearly as important as knowing how to make them. If you have a clear purpose for the page, you’ll want them to be able to click early and often. Have a link above the fold, especially on landing and sales pages.

The post Why Do People Click on Your Links? appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

How To Use an Online Sales and Marketing Funnel to Grow Your Business

Hello business friend! In this episode of the ‘In The Trenches Small Business Marketing Podcast” I share a graphic of a simple sales and marketing funnel and I show you how you can apply it to your business.

Click the play button below to watch:

If you found value in this video please do share the love with some of the social media buttons below. That will help us get this in front of other business owners who need this info.

To your success,

The post How To Use an Online Sales and Marketing Funnel to Grow Your Business appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

5 Effective Ways to Optimize your Google AdWords Landing Pages

See How to Easily Optimize Your Google AdWords Landing Pages

Although most business owners will move heaven and earth to optimize the smallest of details on their websites, getting them to pay the same amount of attention to Google AdWords landing page optimization is a tall task indeed. And yet these are the same people that will wonder aloud why their landing pages don’t convert as well as they think they should.

There are some definite best practices you’ll need to make sure you are following to get the best results you can. Let’s have a look at 5 of these, and see if you can’t improve the performance of your landing pages!

5 Tips for optimizing your Google AdWords landing pages

1.  Employ Responsive Design for your pages – Make the effort to ensure that your Google AdWords Landing pages are mobile ready, and render well on all devices and formats. Having a responsive site is essential in today’s mobile-first environment, as more than half of all search now emanates from a mobile platform of some sort.

2.  Write great headlines – This is your first, and in many cases only chance to hook your visitors into reading on and absorbing your offer. Studies are showing that you have less than 5 seconds to make this connection, or they are gone. Study how to create awesome headlines, and test several.

3.  Create crystal-clear Calls to Action – Leave no doubt about what you want your readers to do. Not only lead them there; tell them exactly! Buy Now! Click Here! Download your free report! Don’t leave your intentions or their next step to their imagination.

4.  Use social proof – People are given to following the crowd, so if you have testimonials, reviews or product endorsements by all means find a way to get some of these in front of your audience. Your conversions will improve if you do.

5.  Split Test everything – Many people don’t test simply because they think they don’t have the time. This is wrong-headed. Would you rather have fewer sales? This is the alternative to testing. A simple A/B test on the important elements of your landing page can do wonders for your conversion rates!

There you have it my friend – 5 ways to ensure your Google AdWords landing pages are optimized for the best results.

To your success,

The post 5 Effective Ways to Optimize your Google AdWords Landing Pages appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.

Why You Absolutely Need a Content Marketing Calendar

Check Out how to create your Own Content Marketing Calendar

One of the hallmarks of companies that rock content marketing is that they without fail have a content marketing plan along with a content marketing calendar. Content marketing has become a many-headed hydra, all of which require care and attention.

Keeping track of all the many venues in which you publish, tracking production, holding people accountable, and certainly not least, executing a coherent strategy makes going forward without a content marketing calendar downright foolhardy. So let’s have a look at how you can construct a workable content marketing calendar and strategy.

Who should do this?

Even if you are a large company with several departments making use of the calendar, you’ll want to have a person dedicated to ensuring the overall plan is advancing, and people are being held accountable. This presupposes that you have a single content marketing calendar. We think this is best as even while there may be different people or teams working on different aspects of content creation, it is vital that there is a common vision and goals at play here. Having more than one calendar is asking for it, and really hampers efforts at promotion. Resist the calls for independence here.

This is to lessen the chances for assignments and deadlines falling too far behind, and jeopardizing marketing promotions that are inextricably intertwined.

What should you use for a content marketing calendar?

This can be a simple spreadsheet customized for the task. This is usually sufficient. There are many other forms of collaborative software if you have a large organization or want more automation.

Software like Basecamp, Teamwork and others provide useful platforms for running projects, and can help you keep track of complicated campaigns easily. There is a cost and learning curve involved with this, however.

In most cases a simple solution is best, and we would encourage this to start. Moving up to more sophisticated systems can always happen down the road if need be.

The post Why You Absolutely Need a Content Marketing Calendar appeared first on NH Strategic Marketing.