Online Marketing & Communications Agency, Stockholm Sweden
The better your editorial calendar template, the better the implementation of your business blog strategy is likely to be.
Developing a successful editorial calendar, however, is not always easy. What’s more it is often much more complex than just putting a bunch of dates and preliminary titles for blog posts together.
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Maximizing your landing page conversions is a serious business. Do you have Landing pages for your products and services that convert well?
Or are you struggling to get conversions from visitors to your site?
Landing pages are all about getting visitors who “land” on the page to do something: whether it’s sign-up for your newsletter, enquire about hiring you, download an ebook or purchase a digital product.
In this episode I discuss 5 simple changes you can make to maximize your conversion rates:
Great copywriting is meant to prompt visitors to your website to take action like sign-up for an email newsletter or purchase a product on a landing page.
Content marketing, on the other hand, is copywriting’s big brother; it’s blogs, podcasts, ebooks, white papers and video that are created directly for the purpose of marketing.
If you’re new to digital marketing, a first time business owner or just setting yourself up as a consultant, before you think about investing in professional copywriting services to tighten up or even create the copy on your website, it’s important to understand that online marketing is not just an online CV or newspaper ad.
Online content marketing, for example, is NOT:
Monday morning is often one of my favorite times of the week. It’s a clean page. A chance to start all over again and improve things for the coming week whether it’s keeping my desk tidy or sorting my receipts.
Monday morning is also a great time to get ahead with maintaining the success of your digital marketing and communications.
If you’re still struggling to get your digital marketing and communications into gear, Monday morning is a great time to take action:
95 percent of the time I tweet live; however, there are certain kinds of tweets that I put out that can be scheduled. For example, RTs of key posts I’ve gathered over the weekend, tweets to my landing pages or RTs of older much older posts that I think might be of interest. Since I started scheduling 2 Tweets a day the traffic to my website has doubled.
I don’t think you should be obsessed by your web traffic, but Monday morning is a good time to check how you did the previous week. Are you key landing pages performing? Is traffic from you keywords up or down ? Are there any new keywords emerging that are worth optimizing your content for ?
Your data is priceless because it gives you leverage to develop and fine tune your online marketing strategy. Monday morning is a great time to get ahead. [Read more...]
You probably already know that 80 percent or so of your business comes from repeat customers. So why is all your digital marketing and communications aimed at generating new leads, new customers? What are you doing for your existing customers?
With so much emphasis on digital marketing, social media marketing doing the rounds, it’s important to remember to reward B2B customers for their loyalty.
For example, when was the last time you produced an ebook for existing customers only? Or sent out an email newsletter that wasn’t designed to sell or generate more leads, but actually just help. For free. No strings attached?
Over the last couple of years it’s felt as if every business’s efforts online have been to drive traffic to landing pages, tweet links here there and everywhere, and broadcast their wares. Despite all the talk of dialogue, engagement and conversation, as far as I’m concerned the majority of what I see isn’t about genuine engagement: it’s about lead generation and, perhaps to a lesser extent, customer retention. [Read more...]
So many businesses seem to want to jump on digital marketing without understanding why it’s necessary to their business.
This episode then addresses the WHY as well as the HOW of digital marketing.
Why you should or shouldn’t consider it, and how important it is to know your target audience and key value proposition before you even consider investing in digital.
Listen to the show here:
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I was listening to a podcast this week by an internet marketer and content producer. He was talking at length about how his income had diminished since he stopped charging for premium content. He then went on to talk about trying to figure out which way to go next to generate business.
Sometimes I think we as small business owners can’t see the wood for the trees. The best business opportunities are right under our nose. For example, the consultant in question makes a variety of excellent digital training products for one of his niches in conjunction with a podcast. Yet he does nothing for an equally great podcast that he produces in a slightly different niche.
Some business bloggers put affiliate links on their sites to generate extra income. If you aren’t, do you know why? Is this part of your strategy?
As far as I’m concerned consultants that try their hand at also including affiliate marketing on their site is fine as long as it doesn’t water down the key value proposition. After all, if you make more money as a consultant you don’t want to be sending all your traffic away for a few pennies from Amazon affiliates.
But missing out on business could also be more complex. [Read more...]
In business there have always been people trying to get something for nothing. If you’re a consultant you probably know what I mean. The “Hey, can I buy your lunch?” which is just another way of saying: “Can I pick your brain for the cost of lunch instead of your regular consulting fee?”
On the social web there’s plenty of valuable, professional help and information out there for free.
As a content marketing strategy, it’s often in your interests to make some of your knowledge and skills available for free online. As any online marketer will tell you, it can be a great way of showing what you can do, who you are, and generating genuine interest in your business.
As the social web matures it seems to me that just being a friendly business online is an open invitation to ask for a free consultation, free advice.
In the last year I’ve been asked to:
From the outset the person who contacted me signaled that they were just looking for a bit of free and friendly advice. Because social media is social, right? [Read more...]
I spent half an hour on the phone last week explaining to a sales executive that I really didn’t want to invest 8,000 USD (50, 000 SEK) of a client’s money on an advert in a magazine.
I handle the marketing and advertising for a couple of educational clients. For one in particular we’ve focused on social media channels and online marketing for the last couple of years and it’s been a success.
Every autumn ahead of the annual student recruitment drive I get bombarded by portals, sites, newspapers and advertising executives trying to persuade me to persuade my client to invest in their services.
Typically prices start out massively high but the minute I play hardball the price comes down. Last year many traditional print outlets were offering half their initial asking price the minute I declined their first offer.
The exec who called me last week didn’t try that. Instead, she tried to persuade me that a magazine sent home to every 15-16 year old in the Stockholm region was cutting edge marketing this year. Then she threw in the fear factor.
“All the big schools are going to be with,” she said. “They’ve chosen to go with us.”
I was immediately suspicious. She was trying to scare me into buying advertising space. [Read more...]
Mr Teen (left) and his co-worker
I returned from my vacation in France to discover that my very own Mr Teen’s summer job sucked. Big time.
He loves it, of course, like all teens do. But I hate it. I bloody hate it.
I hate the fact that our local Stockholm mall thinks it’s okay to put 18 year-old boys outside its store dressed only in swim shorts and sunblock in order to lock punters into the store. I hate that it’s using his image to generate Facebook Likes with pictures and videos.
Sure, Mr Teen thinks he’s well paid; he’s nonchalant about showing his admittedly impressive abs in public for an hourly rate. And he’s flattered by the interest shown by modeling agencies and the promise of casting events in London and New York.
But I’m worried. I’m worried that his identity is casually being consumed by a clothes company’s social media marketing.
Yesterday, the store posted a video of Mr Teen on their website and Facebook Page. Lots of people commented and even more tried to friend him. Sweden’s a small country and word gets around.
The football club he plays for think it’s great they have an increasingly public face and Mr Teen himself has proudly shown us (some of) the feedback and responses he’s got.
What worries me is that despite growing up with a mother who has a PhD in Feminist Theory, and a very media savvy father, he’s been seduced by a few thousand kronor and the attention he’s getting because his employer is happy to promote him to increase their social media profile online. [Read more...]
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