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3 tips for boosting conversions + more online marketing links

by Nevin on May 14, 2012

The Little Book of Google Maps for Businesses
Over 20% of Google searches now contain a location (e.g., “lawyers Victoria BC)), and this number rises to over 40% of mobile searches. This means that it’s more important than ever before for local businesses to optimize themselves for local search, but how to do that? To help you out, Google has published the Little Book of Google Maps for Business.

Here’s a video to help you get started:

Google has just launched a new site www.whenisamap.com/retail aimed at showing the ways in which mapping can be put to work for retailers, and the site has examples of great implementations ranging from classic store locators, to promoting in-store events, and even indoor mapping.

6 Tips for Getting More Retweets
Here are the 6 most interesting data-backed tips that you can apply to your own Twitter efforts to get more retweets … and by extension more site traffic, more leads, and more customers.

Bonus links:

3 Tiny Tweaks to Help Improve Your Website Conversion Rate
What kinds of changes can you make in just a few minutes in order to keep squeezing out more “conversions” and more sales on your website? Read more here.

If you’d like to know lots more about the fundamentals of making your landing pages the best they can possibly be, check out 101 Landing Page Optimizations Tips.

Bonus link: How to Boost Your Email Conversion Rates

 

 

10 awesome marketing infographics, content strategy + more online marketing links

by Nevin on May 7, 2012

how to market content

Humor helps when marketing content

10 awesome marketing infographics
Infographics are a great way to quickly catch the attention of customer and ideally get them to share your content – thereby promoting your business to their friends and other trusted contents. If you’re looking for ideas, here are 10 awesome marketing infographics from 2012 – read more here.

New Twitter update makes it easier to market your content
Thanks to recent changes (again!) to Google’s algorithm, content marketing – creating content such as blog posts, videos, how t0-guides and infographics that provide valuable information that help your customers solve problems – is establishing itself as a key tool for promoting your business. Social media such as Twitter plays an important role in getting that content out there, and in turn driving customers to your business’ website. Twitter has a new update that makes it easier to market your content. Learn more here.

Social media marketing predictions for the near future 
Over the past 18 months or so, businesses have had to adjust to the new reality of social media and content marketing. But change is constant in the world of online marketing – how can businesses be prepared to benefit from the social media marketing landscape of the next few years? To find out, read more here.

8 ways to get the biggest marketing bang out of Slideshare
Salesforce.com’s Jennifer Burnham calls it, “a library in the cloud.” JESS3 co-founder, Jesse Thomas describes it as, “Wikipedia mixed with Delicious and Vimeo.” However you want to characterize SlideShare, remember this: It’s big. More than nine million uploads big. Twenty-nine million monthly unique visitors big. And, according to LinkedIn, $119 million big. To find out more about how Slideshare can help your online marketing efforts, read more here.

How some Olympians use social media to overcome limited budgets
Despite limited budgets, little-known Olympians have to get the word out somehow in order to attract the sponsorships that can help advance their sports careers. Over the past few years, social media marketing has transformed how these athletes brand themselves and attracting funding. Read more here.

Nevin Thompson writes for JumpStartWeb, leaders in content marketing in Victoria BC.

5 “local” search engines you need to know + other marketing links

by Nevin on April 30, 2012

Have your heard of these 5 “local” search engines?
Many “local” businesses tend to focus on getting listed on Google Maps and Google Places, simply because it’s relatively easy to get listed on these sites and doing so usually produces results. However, there are other local search engines you should know about in order to reach your customers: Twitter Search, Facebook Search, FourSquare Search, LinkedIn Company Search, and Pinterest. Read more here to get more details about each.

Why your email subscribers are your most loyal customers
According to one marketing writer,  of all the customers you have, people who subscribe to your email list are probably your best customer. Why is this? Generally speaking, email marketing is “permission-based”; your customers have indicated that they want you contact them with offers (along with highly valuable and relevant information). Email subscribers also tend to open and click on links, which is important when you;re trying to sell a product or a service. To learn more about why email subscribers make loyal customers, read more here. Bonus link:  7 clever email campaigns that get customers buying againlocal search marketing victoria

How to turn your business into a referral-generating machine
For local businesses, why can referrals seem so hard to generate? According to the Globe and Mail, there’s an art to generating referrals: you need to be systematic in your approach.  Here’s a step-by-step process to follow each week. Read more here. Bonus link: Ten simple ways to generate leads on Twitter

Google’s Mobile Playbook Aims To Educate, Simplify Mobile For “Busy Executives”
Something that should be of great interest to local business: earlier this week Google launched its “Mobile Playbook,” a simple but comprehensive guide that explains what  ”mobile” is and why anyone hoping to sell anything to anybody needs to embrace the channel asap. Google’s document is full of data and case studies that illustrate why it’s so important to have a mobile strategy, website and/or app. Read more here.

Content strategist Nevin Thompson “curates” a weekly collection of online marketing links for JumpStart Web, a Victoria online marketing agency specializing in local search marketing.

32 ways to get people to link to your website + more marketing links

by Nevin on April 23, 2012


content marketing ideas32 ways to get people to link to your website
While many local businesses resort to a variety of desperate tactics to get other sites to link to them in order to improve search results, there are actually many “white hat” and reputable ways to build up your online presence. For example, if you’re a source of great content and you get it in front of the right people, they’re going to share your bussiness’ website with others, and send customers your way. Read more here.

Do you have a mobile marketing strategy yet?
Analysts report that mobile devices such as iPhones and other smart phones, will overtake Local Search by 2015. This means that local businesses must be prepared with a mobile marketing strategy if they want to remain competitive. Read more here.

Tips for leveraging social media in email marketing campaigns
Permission-based email marketing is an incredibly powerful tool for connecting with existing customers, generating leads and making new sales. However, as we all know, due to social media the online landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. Here are some tips about how to integrate social media with email marketing, in order to create powerful, integrated campaigns. Read more here.

How to measure your social media success
Social media can be very labor-intensive, which is a problem for local businesses needing to prioritize where they spend limited marketing budgets. While it can be difficult to immediately show results in social media marketing campaigns, it’s also difficult figuring out just what to measure. Here are a few tips to for determining how to measure social media success. Read more here. Bonus link: Integrating social media into your integrated marketing communications plan

Have your heard about AdWords’ new “local” features?
Local campaigns are a focus for many businesses–from finding directions to looking up a phone number, more people are going online to find local information. In fact, according to Google, more than 20% of searches on Google are related to location, and people often act quickly on local searches. Research shows that using smartphones, 88% of people who search for local information take action within a day. To help businesses with local ad campaigns this spring, Google is introducing three new features in AdWords to help create ads that are more relevant to local customers. Read more here.

Nevin Thompson works on content marketing campaigns for JumpStartWeb

15 things customers hate about your website + more marketing links

April 16, 2012

15 things customers hate about your website Why do so many websites feature elements that visitors (that is, potential customers) absolutely hate? Poor user experience can cause high page abandonment rates, low visitor-to-lead conversion rates, poor organic search listing positions, and a bad reputation. Here’s a list of the 15 most annoying things on websites, [...]

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Should your business create a mobile website and other useful marketing links

April 9, 2012

What businesses benefit most from creating mobile websites? Thanks to the continued and sustained exploding growth in consumer adoption of tablets and smartphones, there is an uptick in “mobile first, desktop second” business strategies. Are there certain types of companies that can benefit more than others by retooling for mobile? According to this article, consumer-facing businesses stand to gain [...]

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Landing page optimization tips and other useful online marketing links

April 3, 2012

Here’s a collection of the best online marketing links from the past week. If you have any you would like to share with us, please let us know! 8 Frequently Missed Lead Gen Opportunities for Your Homepage While most businesses have a website, more often than not, that site isn’t optimized to generate leads. Research shows that 78% [...]

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Kony 2012: lessons for video marketing and other links

March 12, 2012

Kony 2012: lessons for video marketers Im just one week, KONY 2012 had been shared more than 7.6 million times on Facebook,  embedded in more than 6,200 blogs, and according to Google News, 4,950 news sources have written stories about the video campaign aimed at bringing a rogue African warlord to justice. The Kony 2012 campaign provides lessons [...]

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Everything you ever wanted to know about online marketing for Local businesses

March 6, 2012

Everything you ever wanted to know about online marketing for Local businesses In the era of the Smart Phone, and when more and more people are using the Yellow Pages as a monitor riser, it’s more important than ever before for Local businesses to master online marketing. Want to learn more about conducting keyword research? [...]

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Mobile Marketing With QR Codes – I

March 1, 2012

Interested in Mobile Marketing with QR codes? Let’s start with a few of the basics… A QR code (as pictured) is a “scanable” graphic that links smartphone users to a web page. The process is quite simple. A smartphone user opens their QR app, scans the code, and are immediately taken to the web page [...]

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