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Last week, we talked about confidence and how it can grow your business. This mindset helps in gaining new customers, along with other marketing strategies like:

• Online presence through your professional website, Google My Business, and social media.
• Leads through blogs, newsletter and email campaigns, and social posts.

But what most marketers take for granted is the third aspect of marketing, that is, customer retention strategies and nurture marketing.

Focus on Keeping Customers, too

Marketers focus too much on a marketing strategy geared towards customer acquisition. You may think this is the secret to grow your business. However, this can hurt business if not balanced with strategies that retain customers.

Imagine a water tank. No matter how much water you put to fill it up, if there’s a huge leak that drains the water, your efforts become futile and wasteful.

It’s common knowledge in marketing that having loyal customers boosts business more than having new customers. Increasing your retention rate by 5% will boost your profit 25-100%, according to Fred Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Effect.

So how do you boost customer loyalty?

Is it with special offers? Great customer service? Content marketing? Social media engagement? Rapid response time?

Here Are the Keys to Creating a Loyal Customer Base:

1)    Know your customers

2)    Listen to your customers

3)    Engage with your customers

4)    Be loyal to your customers

Let’s tackle the keys to keeping customers around:

1. Know your customers.

Knowing the pulse of your customers enables you to react according to their needs. Does your target audience consist mainly of millennials or baby boomers? What social media do they engage in? Do they want apps they can access 24/7, or would they rather receive email reminders in their inbox?

Will they respond to special offers or discounts? Or will they appreciate built-in services that make their lives more efficient?

How did you get these customers? Was it through networking or social media blast? You’ll gain insight into what they need and what increases customer satisfaction when you have a baseline knowledge of their preferences.

2. Listen to your customers.

Often, customers leave a company and search for other products or service providers because they feel disrespected, neglected, or unheard.

When was the last time you asked your customer about the value of your service? A good customer tends to fall in the fringes of our attention simply because we don’t hear anything from them. But if we want to build a long-term relationship with them, we must continue nurturing the relationship with strategies that engages them.

What about the hypercritical customers? Should we say goodbye to them?

True, negative feedback or review can spread like fire, but studies reveal that you can convert an unhappy customer to a loyal one by merely listening to them and addressing their concerns in ways more than they expect.

Often, it’s the negative feedback that pushes the company to improve or innovate. Sometimes, they can provide a solution to your underlying problems. Allow them give that feedback, all be it not praising. Some of them merely needed to vent off their steam. We all feel validated when we are listened to. And listening without being overly defensive opens the door to the next step.

3. Engage with your customers.

Once they feel seen and heard, they open up and engage. Some customers tend to be more forgiving with lapses in skills and knowledge when the attitude of the service provider exhibits humility, sincerity, and honesty. Acknowledging your mistakes and limitations often assuage most of the dissatisfied customers.

How do you make your existing customers feel like their input matters, especially when your business starts to grow?

The beauty of digital marketing is it enables you to reach your target audience in a personal way, even in a virtual manner.

Social media, for instance, creates a dynamic space where you can engage them wherever they are and whenever they want. However, make sure that you have dedicated personnel who regularly checks your channels. Social media will lose its engaging quality if your response time is slow.

Blogs and engaging content make a customer feel in-the-know and part of your family. The next time you get in touch with them, ask them what kind of content do they want to receive and how often?

Check your analytics for bounce rate and open rate. It’ll give you an idea of whether your content is valuable or if it’s merely cluttering their inboxes.

4. Be loyal to your customers.

When you have a new product or service, make sure you offer these to your existing customers. They would feel offended if they hear that a new customer got a much better deal from you.

That’s one sure way to earn disloyalty points.

And what about those who leave and opt for another service provider? Do you merely dismiss them or shrug your shoulders?

Remember those exit interviews that some companies conduct to employees who leave? You want to know why they opted out. What would make them stay or come back? Are their demands realistic? Will giving in to them improve the quality of your service? Is there room for adjustment of services without breaking your bank? Strategies to keep your customers from leaving need to be discussed with your marketing team. How do you elevate complaints?

Those who are in charge of chat boxes, social media, and Google Reviews need to have a firm grasp of such strategies.

When you are loyal to your customers, they will tend to be loyal to you.

We hope talking about business owners having a marketing mindset has helped you on your own journey. Stay tuned next time for more insights!

Leave the Marketing to Us

Not sure how to navigate all the details of a solid digital marketing plan? We can help! Schedule a free business review here to find out how we help. You can use these insights for a positive mindset, and let us do the marketing for you.

It happens to the best of us. You plan, you organize and you create what you hope will be a stellar content campaign.

And then, despite your best efforts, it falls flat. In moments like these, the most important thing isn’t just what happened to cause the “failure”, but how you respond and move forward.

Now is the time to start brainstorming how you can breathe new life into your content and come back even stronger.

Here’s How to Get Started

1. Get organized.

Get your ducks in a row before you do anything else. Think of it as a digital filing system with different folders for different types of content, i.e. blogs, newsletters, case studies, etc. This will help you get a better idea of the areas where you are strong (have a lot of content) and where you can improve.

Another idea is to partition your content per month or week.

For example, create a folder for May with everything you plan to post or share, a folder for June, July, and so on.

This strategy will help you identify discrepancies in your content strategy. Do you have an email campaign set up for May, but nothing for June? Or, maybe you have 5 blogs ready to go for May, but nothing in the queue for the following months.

Organization is the first and essential key to a content comeback.

2. Evaluate your outreach methods.

Where are you sharing the bulk of your content? Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, email?

The problem may not be with your content, but with where you’re sending it. If your primary market are professionals in their 40s-60s, you should be sharing on LinkedIn, not Instagram.

Timing is also crucial. If you’re sending an email blast out at 5pm on a Friday evening, it’s no wonder you’re getting no traction.

Once you’ve done your research and found the appropriate outlets, it’s time to start queuing up some content.

Check out these helpful articles to get started:

When Should You Post on Social Media?

5 Ways to Boost Your Social Media Campaign

Are You Creating the Best Content for Facebook Engagement?

3. Create free things!

FREE is the way to your audience’s heart. Create a free eBook, download, white paper, manual, webinar, video, etc. on a topic that is truly meaningful and valuable to your audience.

But first, do you know your customers?

Do you know what is important to them and what they want?

Start here: How to Truly Understand Your Customers

Once you know who your customers are and what they want, create content that will compel them to action.

4. Write an email telling about your free offer.

Now, let your audience know what you have for them. An email is the most reliable, respectable way to share information, especially if you’re sharing a download or valuable link.

Before you write your sales email, consider this

• It is NOT an order form.
• Pay attention to the details — add a personal touch.
• Update your calendar, especially if you’re sending a scheduling link.
• Consistency and attractive formatting is everything.
• Keep it brief, but content-rich.

Remember, sending an email is a privilege, not a right!

5. Share your free offer on your blog.

Write a blog about your free thing and get it up on the blog. Better yet, create a simple contact form, where they have to share their email in order to get the download/link or whatever it may be.

Repurposing your content will attract more attention to your content, without adding a ton of extra work to your day.

6. Keep creating content!

Don’t stop now! Keep things fresh and updated. Get into a rhythm of consistent posting on social media and your blog.

However, use posting with care. Here are some examples: for social media, don’t post more than three times a day; for blogging, up to 3 posts per week should be your maximum.

7. Measure performance and adjust accordingly.

Pay attention to site traffic, open rates, social media interactions, comments and so on.

What is performing well?

Where are you getting the least traffic?

Always be alert and attentive to your content, so you can catch a downslope in activity before it hits rock bottom.

Also, be willing to adjust and adapt your website. It should be a living, breathing entity, not something that is set in stone.

Check out these articles for more on performance and metrics:

5 Key Performance Metrics to Track Using Google Analytics

Three Metrics That Don’t Mean as Much as You Think

Your Guide to Online Reputation Management

6 Ways Generate Traffic To a Newsletter

8. Remember, quality is always better than quantity.

Don’t post just for the sake of posting. Don’t email your list just because it’s “been awhile” since you last send an email blast.

Make your words count for something every single time you connect with your audience.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, what would you want to read?

How often would you like to get an email, read a blog, see a post?

You know your audience better than anyone, so take the time to get to know them and their habits.

Do you like what you’re reading, but just wish someone would do it all for you?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the process of marketing your website on search engines. This means you pay for your website listing to be shown in a search engine results page (SERP).

In the past, “SEM” was a term used to refer to organic & paid search visibility. As the engines became more technical & refined, the optimization required more expertise. From this evolution, 2 major branches of expertise developed: organic search (SEO), and paid search (often referred to as “PPC”). Pay-per-click (PPC) & SEM are essentially used today as synonyms. PPC is actually just a bidding method which became popularized because users only paid when they click, so advertisers could show impressions at no charge.

Today, SEM, Paid Search, & PPC (even if you don’t use the pay-per-click bidding model) are all just synonyms.

In the future (I think) marketers will use the term “search engine marketing” or SEM when they refer to paid advertising on all search engines or at least all of the search engines important to a specific vertical. YouTube, Amazon, & Pinterest are all examples of search engines which paid search strategies can be applied. Google & Bing are just paving the way and developing the model for which the other search engines follow.

SEM vs. SEO vs. PPC

With so many acronyms in a new industry, things can get confusing. Here’s an easy breakdown:

SEM

Search Engine Marketing

Keyword/search query based advertising, where we pay to show our ads in certain positions on the search engine results page (SERP). SEM allows you to become visible very quickly, and bid on search queries which are highly targeted (geographically, time of day, day-of-week, for example).

SEO

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the practice of getting your website to rank “organically”, without having to pay to show your website in the search engine results. Search engines change algorithms, and this is an on-going process. This process takes more time than SEM, but has sustained results which you don’t have to continue to pay for.

PPC

Pay-per-click

A bidding model popularized by advertisers being able to show their value proposition for free, as long as the user doesn’t click. Most ad platforms are auction-based, so advertisers get to input a cost-per-click (CPC) they are willing to pay for each click. This is not limited to search engines, PPC models are used in social media & other advertising platforms.

If you find yourself having to migrate your website – maybe your platform is out-dated and you figure why not restructure while upgrading, or perhaps your current web host isn’t performing up to expectations – you might wonder how the shift will impact your site’s credibility with search engines.

What is web migration?

Transferring your website to a new domain or applying major structural/design or platform changes constitutes website migration. The challenge is to retain your page ranks and clearly let Google know you have migrated your site and it should treat the new site as a new and improved version of the one before it.

As a site owner or SEO, there are many factors you’ll need to take into account during migration and a few key things you’ll need to do to ensure the following:

• Prevent drops in search engine ranking positions (SERPs) for your targeted keywords
• Prevent reduction in organic traffic
• Reduce broken links (404s)
• Prevent indexing of duplicate content

Migration is a big deal and it helps to sketch up a rough website migration checklist – from both a web development as well as an SEO point of view.

From an SEO point of view, a website migration plan should take into account the following:

Teamwork:

The SEO, developer and designer are all going to have different priorities and hence different points of view during the migration. Having everybody on the same page really smoothens the process. The designer and developer should consult the SEO if they’re planning on making any major design or structural changes to the ‘new’ website during migration.

If there are any potential penalties that may arise from such changes, the SEO is well placed to flag the same and suggest alternatives.

URL Redirects:

Mapping your old website URLs to the revised site structure is probably the most important SEO consideration during website migration. When migrating, your URL structure might change and content that was available on one URL on your legacy site will now sit on another URL on your new site.

Using a 301 redirect will automatically forward the user to the new page, and more importantly, will let Google know the page has moved permanently to a new location, thus allowing it to update its index.

Avoid using 302 redirects, as they don’t pass on as much value, and can instead lead to significant drops in rankings. MOZ has an excellent step-by-step write-up on the URL Mapping Process.

Change of address:

Just like when you shift homes you need to notify the post office and other legal institutions about your change of address, the same needs to be done when migrating a website. In this case, you need to notify Google you’ve moved to a new address, which is simple and can be done via Google Webmaster Tools.

Add your site to your Webmaster Tools account and verify it, then choose the Change of Address option in the settings menu. Select the new site under the drop down that appears and that’s it! Google now knows your website’s new address.

Disallow Indexing

You’re probably going to host your new website on a test domain to make sure everything is perfect before making it live. At this juncture, it’s important to not allow search engines to crawl and index this test environment.

Allowing indexing will lead Google to believe your site contains duplicate content (the original being on your still-live old site), and will also throw up many 404 errors and non-optimized meta information in search results.

Ideally, the test environment should be password protected, or you should allow access from only internal IPs till the website is live, but using the no index meta tag to your header for robots, or disallowing the entire url to be crawled in your robots.txt works almost as well.

The Checklist:

The above points are the bare minimum you need to work when migrating your website to avoid SEO-related penalties, but here’s a helpful checklist you can follow to take care of other factors as well:

• Content Canonicalization (Avoid Duplication)
• Filter 404 pages to be removed or redirected
• Remove broken links
• URL Re-writes (301)
• Disable indexing by robots
• Prepare HTML & XML Sitemaps
• Change of Address on Google Webmaster
• Benchmark new site performance against old

It’s hard to even figure out where to start with a shift as major as website migration. We hope the checklist above helps you simplify the process. We can assure it’s not as daunting as it appears if you follow these basic guidelines, and stick to MOZs process for URL Mapping. If you need help migrating your website – be it from one domain to another or from one platform to another – do get in touch with us.

Website design is about more than just coordinating colors or picking out fonts. It’s about how your business presents itself to the world through your website. It’s your virtual storefront, and a prospect’s first impression of your business. In addition, the design of your site is a catalyst on how you create your brand, convert visitors to customers, and retain the loyalty of your clients.

Does that seem like a lot for web design to achieve? Well, with a thoughtful design, this is all possible. In this week’s blog, we’ll talk about how you can design a website that’s efficient and represents your business in the best possible light for prospects and customers.

Six Elements That Contribute to Good Website Design

1. Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Effective website design starts with a smart and strategic digital marketing plan. What is the goal of your overall digital marketing strategy – to bring in visitors and readers, to make online sales, or to generate leads? Narrowing this first goal down to the essentials will help you design a website that achieves those goals.

Why is this step so critical? Because if you dive right into designing a website without a concrete goal in mind, you may very well miss your mark.

For example, you can charge ahead and create a website that leads visitors right to your blog posts. If your goal is to attract lots of readers through a content-marketing strategy, that’s great. But if your goal is to get those website visitors to make a purchase, and your site lacks a clear call-to-action, you won’t see results. That’s why you need to start with a clear goal in mind that fits into your larger digital marketing strategy.

2. Customer-Centric Design

It’s common for business owners to think about their websites as a showcase for their products or services. And that is partly the purpose of good website design – to serve as a welcome mat for your customers and prospects.

But if you only focus on showing how wonderful your company is, you will miss out on what your customers really want – how your product or service will improve their lives. What’s in it for them? Good website design will show them.

Here are just a few examples. Instead of:

• endless pictures of just your product, chose images that show how your products delight your customers.
• a long list of every feature of your service, use a design that walks prospects through the journey of using your service – how easy it is to order, and how much value they’ll gain from it.
• focusing on lots of testimonials that tell visitors how great your products are, use just 3 testimonials on your home page that tell them how your product made their life better.

3. Consistent and Coherent Branding

Good website design doesn’t just look attractive. It tells the story of your brand and strengthens every visitor’s awareness of your brand. Your digital presence across all platforms should be coherent and consistent.

That means you should have a set of brand colors you use on your business website, your social media platforms, in your email marketing, and everywhere else online. You should take care to use the same font, similar design elements, and the same writing tone. And you should have a set of easy-to-reference guidelines you and your web development team, if you have one, can reference as needed to keep everything consistent.

Why is this so critical? After all, it’s not like most casual browsers of your website will notice if your Instagram looks a little different than your homepage. But while they may not notice consciously, our brains are quick to subconsciously pick up on these subtle differences. And creating that strong brand makes it easier for your company to stick in the mind of your prospects and customers.

4. Ecommerce Essentials

It’s challenging to be an ecommerce site these days – but it’s too lucrative a market for most businesses to skip.

Why is it so challenging? Customers in today’s age aren’t just comparing the experience of shopping on your website to your competitors in your industry. They’re comparing your shopping experience to sites like Amazon and other tech giants.

That means there’s no room to have a poorly-designed ecommerce site. You can’t have a glitchy order system, a confusing layout of your product pages, or other common issues. Your potential customers will get frustrated and abandon their shopping carts very quickly if they can’t find and order what they need.

What does that mean for your web design? A few principles to keep in mind:

• Your homepage and landing pages should have a clear call-to-action. Tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do, and make it easy to do it with the push of a button.
• Product pages in your online store should be descriptive and easy to navigate. Longer descriptions boost your SEO (search engine optimization), and give your customers the information they need up front to decide about making a purchase.
• Design every element of your website to be user-friendly, and make sure your design elements look good whether your visitor is viewing them on a desktop computer or a mobile device.
• Use contrasting colors and good graphic design to lead your visitors through your website to make a purchase (learn more about using web design to enhance marketing).

5. Optimize for Search Engine Traffic

SEO isn’t just important when you’re writing a blog post. It’s also a critical part of your website design. Without the right design elements, you will struggle to attract traffic from search engine users.

What are the key elements of web design for SEO? Here are just a few:

• Ensure each web page’s title is tagged as an H1 header, and write clear, descriptive titles for every page.
• Fill in the meta description for each page so you can control what comes up as a preview in a Google search.
• Don’t put lots of content into images on your home page – search engines can’t read words that are part of them. Ensure your design elements has all the words as text so they’re searchable.

You can read all about the essentials of SEO in our previous blog post.

6. Your Digital Front Door

Establishing a welcoming and credible online presence is one major goal of good website design. Welcoming visitors is an obvious priority – and it’s about creating an easily navigable site that doesn’t confuse or frustrate visitors.

But why is credibility a factor? It’s because in a world filled with online businesses, consumers have become wary shoppers. Many have had their money taken by sketchy online stores that were offering something too good to be true. Today’s consumers are looking for signs that you’re legitimate and trustworthy.

And your website design plays a part in developing this trust. Many marketers and small business owners fall into the common habits that kill your website’s credibility – don’t let it happen to you. Whether you’re designing your website yourself or using a professional web design service, be sure your site is professional. That means following best practices to provide a smooth user experience, checking all spelling and grammar carefully, and keeping product details up to date.

Investing in Your Online Presence via Professional Website Design

This can be an area of your business where hiring a web design company or website designer could provide a good return on investment. Having a custom website design for your business that presents you in the most polished, professional way reassures your prospects that you’re a reputable business. Website design services vary in cost, so be sure to think about the marketing benefits to hiring a web design company first.

There are plenty of ways to design your website yourself. It’s easier than ever with web design platforms like Squarespace and Wix.

But if you’re planning to grow your business, don’t just hastily throw up a website that will do for now. That’s how businesses struggle to grow a few years down the line – they have created just the shell of a website on a platform that’s not built for growth, and now they need to start over.

So, if you don’t have a website already, start off doing it the right way even if it costs you a few dollars. You’ll see the ROI you want on that marketing budget.

Tracking Your Success

Of course, the final step in creating good website design is testing and measuring how your design is working. Don’t just put up your site and hope for the best – take the time to make sure your design is getting you real results.

You can test your user experience before you launch by asking a staff member or friend to go through your site and see where they get lost or stuck. This is especially helpful if you created your site yourself. If you’re using professional designers, they will have taken best practices for user experience into account when building your site.

And once your site is launched, monitor your site analytics via Google Analytics or another tool to take note of trends. Are most visitors leaving your site after they scroll through your homepage, or click onto one certain page? You might want to look there for what you can tweak. Noting any patterns can give you hints about what isn’t working in your website design.

1. Start with a strategy, not design
   
   Because websites can be very eye-pleasing, it is easy to think of them as a design project. In reality, a website is essentially a product that has to be managed accordingly. You need to understand who the users are, how they arrive to your site, and what they are looking for. Based on this analysis, you can come up with your website strategy, messages, calls to action, and conversion paths. Only then is it time to get down to the design.
   
   Practical tip #1: if your website company is not asking you these questions before starting your website project, that’s a red flag.
2. Don’t fall into the SEO trap
   
   The most common statement I hear from companies that are looking to build a new website is that they want to improve their search engine positions. While this is a commendable goal, it is not necessarily the one that will get you the most for your investment. This is especially true if you sell a new solution that doesn’t fall into a well- established category, which means that you can expect limited search volume. With that in mind, getting the visitors that come to your site to take action (most of them will get there because you have directed them) is probably more important than search engine optimization. See an excellent explanation of the tradeoffs between website conversion and SEO in this Marketing Experiments article (page 68).
   
   Practical tip #2: don’t count visitors that search for your company name as “search traffic”; it’s just another form of direct traffic.
3. Measure everything
   
   A business website should be judged by how well it helps buyers engage with your company, not how “nice” or “cool” it looks. The only way to tell how well your website is working for you is with ongoing measurement of site performance against your goals. Google Analytics is a must and a good starting point, but truly measuring your website’s impact requires that you integrate the site with your CRM and/or marketing automation solution.
   
   What you really care about is how many of your target buyers visit the website and take action on it. Some of the things you would probably want to measure include:
   – Which pages are most visited by target buyers?
   – Which pages lead target buyers to take action (download material, request more information, start an evaluation, etc.)
   – Which offers and content assets lead target buyers to take action?
   
   Practical tip #3: ClickTale is a nifty service that will help you understand how well your pages are structured. It will show you how visitors interact with each page—where they click, scroll, and hover. You can see some of this information in Google’s In-Page Analytics but it’s not as detailed.
4. Build it for change
   
   Don’t expect to get it perfect the first time. Even if you do, things will undoubtedly change, with new products to promote, new messages to communicate, new competitors to battle… so make sure your website architecture and back-end are agile enough to allow you to make modifications quickly and inexpensively.
   
   Practical tip #4: Open source Content Management Systems (CMS) have come a long way, providing top-notch functionality and the benefits of a large developer community that continues to improve the system and create new templates and plug-ins. WordPress is my current favorite and seems to be getting a lot of traction with many website developers.

Are you debating on whether there are more benefits to hiring a web design company versus using those pre-made templates to build a website?

Is there a benefit of hiring a professional designer or website developer?

Let us consider this: If you want to put a huge ad on a billboard on a freeway, would you do it yourself? Wouldn’t you hire an advertising company to help you with the messaging, layout, and design? A website is way more efficient, useful and valuable than that billboard.

Consider a website as your virtual store and not just an extension of your calling card. Will you seriously consider doing the hammering and sawing to build your physical store? Unless you’re trained for the job, you will hire people to do the work for you. You may have the idea, the design, or desired functionality, but breathing life into your dream design will require expertise.

Today, we’ll talk about even more benefits of investing in a website design company to make your site come to life and reach your target audience.

Five Essential Benefits to Hiring a Web Design Company

1. Efficiency

You want to start with a solid foundation. As your business grows, it’s expected that you’d need more functionality built into your website. You may want to have a customer login portal for ease of transaction. You may want to add online appointment scheduling to your design.

But, if you’re not computer savvy, you’ll miss out on this benefit and your competitors will get ahead. A professional web design company can create a functional website that will make your business run more efficiently and more appealing to your customers.

2. Asset, not a liability

Some think that having a website is merely for show. If you know how to integrate website design into your marketing strategy, your website can give you more business even while you’re sleeping.

And that’s essentially what an asset is—something that generates income regularly. Yet a lot of times, websites have become liabilities for most business owners. They pay annual maintenance fees and yet draw no profit from it. Why does this happen?

They fail to realize that a website is part and parcel of the whole marketing act. In my video below, I discuss the three digital marketing elements. Watch and learn how your website becomes part of your grand marketing strategy.

3. Reflective of your brand

How many times have you visited a store simply because of how it makes you feel? When you enter Starbucks, you don’t go just for the caffeine. You crave the experience of individualized, hip, personable, fix-me-the-most-delectable-coffee-of-the-season customer service. Your website should feel the same. If it looks stale and cluttered, or loud and flashy, they’d imagine your physical store to be the same. You’ll run the risk of losing customers with an outdated website.

A web design company would know what works and what doesn’t. They won’t have trouble taking down a bold color palette and incorporating it in more subtle ways.

A clean website with plenty of white space, graphics that capture the message, and engaging content will project professionalism and quality. And it will definitely draw more customers.

4. Return on investment

With most businesses and customers going online, it’s not only logical but wise to invest in a reliable website. Each time a website crashes, the company loses customers and sales. Broken links can lead to broken relationships, especially at the fragile start of your marketing campaign. But a website designed to be search-engine optimized, powered with the latest technology, fast, reliable, unique, responsive, and dependable will in no time reap the rewards.

Search engine optimization may sound foreign to some business owners, but a professional website design company will live and breathe SEO. They will make sure that every page is keyword-optimized to compete in search engine ranking.

Furthermore, when you hire a professional web designer, they will design according to the needs of your potential customers. They will make sure that it’s adaptive to the latest mobile technology. Not only should the design be mobile-friendly, but also responsive to different mobile devices.

A good web design firm will produce a user-friendly website that will convert your potential clients to long-term customers. They will work on making sure your landing page would capture your leads so that they stay on the page, become engaged, and click on the call-to-action button.

Finally, a professional web design company will seek to know your marketing goals and ensure that your website has all the key elements that would outperform the competition.

5. Integrated platforms

A versatile website design company will be able to integrate your different platforms, so that they work in tandem. Your social media campaigns will have ads that would lead to your website landing pages. Your website content will contain share buttons that would make sharing a breeze. Customers can make payments easily with a credit card, bank transfer, or PayPal features.

So why struggle with website design when you can leave it to the experts and make it work for your business?

LinkedIn is arguably the best online space for professional marketing and networking. When done right, it offers the opportunity to expand your network, enhance the credibility of yourself and your brand and connect with lucrative clients and partners.

If you’re making any of these nine networking mistakes on LinkedIn, you could be harming your brand and causing irrevocable damage.

1. Being too wordy or long-winded.

LinkedIn is a marketing tool, and as with any form of marketing, projecting word walls or long-winded paragraphs of text are not attractive to readers.

Focus on the core message of your brand and extract snippets of information, which are most valuable for a reader to know.

When it comes to contributing content via blog posts, group posts or statuses, keep it short and sweet. If you’re in a group, be sure to interact with other member’s content, as well as posting your own.

2. Only thinking about yourself.

Networking is a two-way street. In fact, successful networkers know it’s more about giving than receiving. A great rule of thumb (for any networking activity) is the 80/20 concept.

That is, spend 80% of your time focused on others, such as congratulating them on a new job, thanking them for a recommendation, commenting/liking a post and supporting your contacts. Allocate the remaining 20% for actively promoting yourself and your brand.

3. Coming across as needy.

Before you can expect to receive, you have to give — without being asked. Don’t ask for a recommendation, endorsement, etc., without building a relationship first.

You must offer something of value. Otherwise, you’ll build a reputation for being too self-involved. Build trust, offer value, and then ask for what you need.

4. Being inconsistent.

Never underestimate the power of an engaging, genuine, complete profile. Before branching out, making connections, joining groups and engaging with content, get your ducks in a row and make sure your profile is the best representation of your brand, including:

• Professional headshot/brand logo
• Compelling summary and headline
• Links to your website and relevant sites

Also, keep in mind, some groups have rules for contact policies and contribution. Know the rules before making a mistake and jeopardizing a potential relationship.

5. Too pushy or demanding.

It should be seemingly “obvious,” but don’t ask for a recommendation or endorsement from a remote acquaintance or someone you don’t know! Asking a practical stranger to speak to your skills puts them in an awkward position, and likely won’t end well for you.

Another common mistake is asking your first-level connections to connect you with someone in their network when you don’t have a very strong relationship with your first-level connection, to begin with. Don’t abuse your relationships by asking for too much.

6. Being impersonal or generic.

If you choose to message a connection or potential connection via LinkedIn, personalize your message. It doesn’t take much effort, and the rewards are well worth it.

When you use a generic message, you’re implying you don’t value that person enough to build a genuine relationship, or you’re not willing to put in the time to get to know them. In other words, you’re just looking for quick access, to serve your interests.

Take time to write a customized salutation and include a personal touch showing the recipient you’ve chosen to speak specifically with them. Finally, don’t be overly casual by using “hey,” “hi” or skipping a greeting entirely.

7. Forgetting to say “thanks.”

When someone endorses or recommends you, thank them! Even better, take it a step further and return the favor. If a connection comments or shares your posts, be sure to express your gratitude.

Showing gratitude means more than just shooting a quick “thank you” — it’s also about giving back, including sharing posts, commenting, endorsing for skills, writing recommendations and congratulating on new jobs/positions. Remember the 80/20 rule!

8. Focusing on quantity over quality.

Having 3,000+ connections doesn’t necessarily mean you have the best network. You’ve probably received dozens, if not hundreds of unsolicited, random connection requests, from people you don’t know and have no common connections with.

Accepting every connection that comes your way, begins to dilute your feed, causing you to miss out on updates, posts, etc. from the people you actually want to hear from.

9. Not doing your homework.

Technology should make you smarter and more efficient, not the other way around. For example, LinkedIn will notify you when a connection has a new job. However, it could just be they changed the title or how it appears on their profile — it’s your job to do your homework before making a silly blunder like congratulating them on a “new” job.

Doing your homework also means researching and knowing your audience/connections before reaching out, especially if you’re asking something from them.

All nine of these networking mistakes share a few common themes:

• Put yourself in your audience’s shoes.
• Think before you act.
• Give more than you take.

Recently, we have talked about improvingyour company’s website and using social media for successful digital marketing. But today we’d like to hone in on a very important feature of your website: the landing page.

Are you using your newsletter to tell clients and prospects about your business, products and services?

If not, you could be missing out on a highly worthwhile tool for offering value and connecting with your audience.

However, the success of your newsletter is only as strong as your mailing list and number of subscribers. So, how do we get subscribers?

There’s one sure-fire way: an attractive landing page.

Your landing page is the first point of contact for customers and your business. As we know, first impressions are everything, so it’s important to create an attractive landing page to intrigue users and urge them to stay connected.

If your landing page isn’t enticing enough, users won’t subscribe and will probably not be back. To avoid this, let’s look at a few tips for creating an attractive landing page and ultimately growing your mailing list.

1. Create a Powerful, Attention-Grabbing Headline

You know and understand the pain points of your prospects, so address them! When a user lands on your page, they should immediately be drawn to your headline, and have the feeling “yes, they understand me.”

With the ever-increasing number of options, resources and information available to consumers, it’s no surprise; attention span has decreased significantly. Your goal should be to grab their attention in one sentence or less.

2. Keep Your Copy Brief, Yet Upbeat

The landing page isn’t the place to go in-depth — you’re still courting your prospect. Choose language which is uplifting, inspiring and motivates the user to read on.

Avoid wording that is aggressive or “sales-y”; the user should feel they can relate to and trust your business.

Keep it brief by avoiding “word walls” or lengthy text — stick to paragraphs of no more than three sentences and use the power of bolding to highlight key concepts.

3. Add a Personal Touch

Putting a face to your business can greatly increase credibility and trust. Consider including a photo or video to drive the message home and create real human connection.

4. Use Attractive Graphics

Visuals should be attractive, yet uncluttered. If you’re considering using a series of images, make sure they are consistent and either come from the same source or have a similar style.

Be sure to include an image for your “lead magnet”– your primary offering in exchange for their contact info. For example, getting a free eBook when they sign up for your newsletter.

5. Include Your Credentials

Tell your prospect a bit about yourself, as well as why you’re the expert. If you have testimonials, use them here to grab their attention and position yourself as trustworthy and experienced.

A more in-depth version can be included on your “About Us” page.

6. Don’t Forget a Signup Form

Most importantly, give your prospect the opportunity to stay connected! It can be in the form of a traditional sign-up sheet, pop-up or attached to your “lead magnet”– just be sure it’s visible and simple to use.

7. Track Your Progress

Once you’ve created an attractive landing page and have begun to gain new subscribers, you’ll want to track your mailing list growth.

A key metric to look at is conversion rate or the number of times a user subscribes to your newsletter after viewing your page. This will give you an indication of how well your landing page is working and if adjustments should be made.

The number of subscribers your newsletter has is a direct indication of its success. If few visitors are submitting their email addresses, then it’s not going to yield many benefits regarding marketing power.

Unfortunately, you won’t get many newsletter subscribers unless you put forth the effort to advertise your squeeze page.

Don’t get me wrong, you may receive a couple of visitors from direct type-in traffic and other sources, but it’s not enough for a sustainable business model.

If you’re willing to put the effort, however, you can boost your subscriber rate and turn your email marketing campaign into a successful stream of passive revenue.

One of the most effective ways to attract traffic to your newsletter is to offer your visitors some incentive for signing up.

This can be something as simple a digital download eBook, free software, or even private label rights (PLR) articles. If a user knows he or she will get something in return for submitting their email address, you’ll have an easier time generating signups.

If you asked ten different email marketers what the best way to generate traffic to a squeeze page is, you would probably get ten different answers.

Rather than focusing on a single source, we recommend you diversify your portfolio by using as many methods as possible.

1. Article Marketing

This method involves writing and submitting articles to directories such as EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com. At the end of your articles, you can include a backlink to your squeeze page.

2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Google Adwords, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads are powerful PPC platforms that can drive tons of traffic to your squeeze page.

3. Social Networking

We can’t talk about ways to generate traffic to a squeeze page without mentioning social media.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This involves optimizing your website, so it’s more search engine friendly and ranks higher on Google, Yahoo, Bing and AOL.

5. Blog Commenting

This technique involves finding and commenting on related blogs and including a backlink to your squeeze page. The secret to successful blog commenting is only to leave relevant comments which are high-quality and don’t come off as spammy.

6. Forum Commenting Some forums allow you to create signatures or “sigs” that attach to the end of any messages you leave in a thread. In addition to text, you may also be able to include a link pointing back to your squeeze page in your sig.