Using a Website Redesign Checklist

When it comes to redesigning your website, there are a lot of different elements you’ll need to address, which is why you should use a website redesign checklist. The following website redesign checklist will help you gather all of the data you need as well as address the most important aspects of your website’s design:

Analyze your current website

If you’ve committed to investing in a complete website redesign, then you probably know what you want to improve. However, you should use analytics to diagnose your site’s issues so that you know exactly what’s wrong. For example, if you’re visitor conversion rate is lower than you would like, look at data such as bounce rates, page load times, CTA click-throughs and shopping car abandonment rates to pinpoint where your issues lie. Other metrics you’ll want to pay attention to include:

  • SEO rankings for important keywords
  • Total number of sales generated
  • Number of visitors
  • Number of unique visitors
  • Domain authority
  • Number of new lead form submissions.

Establish your goals

If you don’t know what you want your website to accomplish, then you won’t know what direction to take your website redesign in. Without goals, you won’t know what to focus on, nor will you know whether your website redesign is successful once it’s up and running. Make sure that when you set your goals, you can tie them to measurable results. For example, if increasing your brand authority is your main goal, then track metrics such as:

  • The number of unique visitors,
  • Time spent on page
  • Social signals (shares, likes and comments)

Determine what works

Just because your current website might have a few issues doesn’t mean that there aren’t elements that work really well. For example, maybe you’re redesigning your site because you want to update its look; however, your content is actually very effective at drawing in visitors and capturing leads. More specifically, you’ll want to make sure that high ranking pages are kept in place. When auditing your site, take note of what you think is successful as well as what needs work.

Analyze your competitors

In addition to auditing your own website, you should audit the sites of your main competitors. Take note of everything you like and don’t like about their site. Your aim shouldn’t be to just copy what they do but to get an idea of what they are doing so that you can create a superior website experience.

Identify your UVP

Your unique value proposition (UVP) indicates exactly what your business does and what makes your services or products unique. A UVP helps you stand out from the competition. You need to know what your UVP is because it will inform all of the content that you create for your website.

Keep buyer personas in mind

Your website should appeal to your target audience. Your visitors need to be able to connect to your brand’s messaging, after all. To make sure that this happens, all of your content should cater to your buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer created using the available data you have from current and past customers, such as:

  • Demographics
  • Past purchases
  • Online behavior
  • Motivations
  • Needs
  • Wants
  • Concerns
  • Personal histories
  • Income

Here are the reasons why buyer personas are so important to a business

Map your buyer’s journey

Every visitor that comes to your website is going to be at one of three stages of the buyer’s journey. The first stage is the awareness stage, in which the buyer is seeking information that helps to define their problems or needs. The second stage is the consideration stage in which the buyer defines their problem and is searching for solutions. The final stage is the decision stage, in which the buyer chooses a solution. Your website needs to cater to visitors at every stage of the buyer’s journey in order to attract their attention, keep their attention and, finally, to convert them.

Set benchmark metrics

The goals you set should be general yet measurable. For example, the goal to increase brand authority is a long-term goal that doesn’t end. Because of this, you should set benchmarks so that you can judge your site’s performance. For example, social signals are a good metric for measuring brand authority. You could set benchmarks for how many shares you want to average per blog post by a certain date. If your metrics meet this benchmark by this date, then you know that your redesign is working and you can set the goal posts even further. If you don’t meet this benchmark, then you may need to make more adjustments.

Optimize your site for SEO

Implementing a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is vital to consistently attract new visitors. Google takes into account a variety of factors, including keywords, link juice and social signals. You’ll need to do keyword research to identify unique keywords relevant to each page. These keywords should be used naturally in your titles, headers, body content, anchor text, alt image tags, HTML tags, meta tags and title tags. External links are earned by promoting and linking to your website’s content via social media, submitting your website information to local directories and by writing guest blogs. Social signals are earned by getting visitors to engage with your content, such as by liking, sharing or commenting on it.

Optimize your site for mobile use 

Many people use their smartphones and tablets to browse the Internet. This means that your website will need to load and display properly no matter how small the screen size is. The easiest way to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly is by using a responsive design. You can check to see if your current site is mobile-friendly by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Just type in the address for each webpage and it will determine how mobile-friendly it is.

Find opportunities for conversion

Calls-to-action should be used on every page to encourage visitors to convert. Without calls-to-action, visitors won’t know what you want them to do. Not only should you use relevant CTAs on every page, you need to offer something of value to visitors in return for opting-in. Depending on your what your business offers, this could include downloadable eBooks and white papers, email newsletter subscriptions, product discounts, free trials, free consultations and more. Unique landing pages should be crafted for every call-to-action that focus on the visitor’s needs, your UVP and how what you’re offering can benefit them.

Implement a content strategy

Whatever your goals are for your website, their success will depend on your content strategy. You need to provide high-quality content that is relevant to your buyer persona’s needs and concerns and that is informative, helpful and unique. The best way to do this is through a website blog. Additionally, you’ll need to regularly publish new content to keep your audience engaged and to make sure that they return to your site. While writing good content is important, you’ll need to market it as well. An important part of your content strategy is establishing exactly when you publish your content (it should always be on the same day at the same time) and where and how you promote your new content.

Continually improve

Don’t assume that once you’re done with your website redesign that you’re finished. A good website design is one that is always being improved. You should track your metrics and make adjustments to your design whenever needed. If you meet your goals, you should establish new ones. Move your goal posts further so that your website can continue to grow and improve. Additionally, you should always be uploading new content to keep your website fresh, thereby maintaining or improving your search engine rankings.

Want more resources on how to redesign your website? Click here!

17 SEO Myths
New call-to-action
first party cookies

How Using Data Can Inspire Great Marketing Campaigns

One of the biggest benefits of online marketing is that it allows you to collect valuable data about your customers as well as your target audience in general. It also gives you a chance to pinpoint what is and isn’t working as far as your marketing efforts are concerned. However, collecting all this data is useless if you don’t leverage it to your benefit. In fact, the information you have can help to inspire creative ideas to help craft great marketing campaigns.

How Data Can Spark Creativity

Data doesn’t just help you figure out what’s working and what isn’t, it can help drive creative decisions that allow you to create great marketing campaigns. A good example of this is Netflix. Everyone knows that Netflix has an absolute treasure trove of behavioural data from their subscribers. They leverage this data to inform the content that they produce.

For example, many critics were bewildered when they gave Adam Sandler a huge four-movie deal. Saying that his movies are panned across the board is putting it mildly, after all. However, according to their data, his older films were streamed an absurd amount. They knew that even if critics didn’t like his films, their subscribers certainly did — and that’s why they signed him to produce Netflix-exclusive films.

Netflix will often look at subscriber viewing habits and look at where they overlap to find a niche that they can fill with their original content. For example, the popularity of older series on Netflix has often resulted in revivals, such as Fuller House and Arrested Development.

Another good example is Equifax. Using their data, they realized that the average person’s credit score depended heavily on how old they were. They used this data to create a great marketing campaign that provided tailored benefits information to people at different stages of their lives.

How to Incorporate Email Marketing into B2B Campaigns

How To Use Your Data To Inform Your Creative Marketing Campaigns

How you use your data to influence your creativity and create great marketing campaigns depends heavily on the specifics of your business. However, the following are a few basic ways data can help you connect to your audience on a more emotional level when creating new marketing campaigns:

  • Learn what your audience connects with

    Look at how your audience engaged with previous campaigns. By looking at what worked and what didn’t work, you can figure out exactly how your audience was able to engage with you on an emotional level. For example, maybe certain types of content posted on social media were commented on and shared much more than other types of content. This will give you a better idea of what your audience is looking for, which can give you better direction on how to reach your audience on a more personal level during future campaigns.

  • Learn what your audience’s needs are

    You can figure out what your audience wants by analyzing certain sets of data. For example, you can compare two PPC ads promoting the same product in two different ways. You can then use the conversion rates of both ads. The ad that converts more leads is probably presenting a solution that fulfils a need that your audience has more effectively than the other. This information can be used to reach your audience more successfully with future ads.

  • Continually improve your campaign

    Once you launch a new campaign, don’t just stay the course if it’s obvious something isn’t working. You should continually track the results of your campaign based on your specific goals. The data you gather can help you figure out whether your creative decisions are having an impact on your audience or not. If they aren’t, you can make adjustments even as your campaign is ongoing.

When building new marketing campaigns, make sure that you make use of the data that you have. Your data can be the difference between creating great marketing campaigns and failed marketing campaigns.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

Creating a Brand with Social Listening and What Tools To Use

Social media marketing is an important part of reaching today’s modern era customers. Setting up social media accounts that prioritize providing good content can be challenging. In order for your brand to stick out, you need to learn what your customers are looking for and how to provide them with that content. This is referred to as social listening. Those who have social listening strategies worked into their social media marketing gain an edge over their competitors.

Social listening plays a key role in growing your business and increasing your company’s brand trust with its customers. The good news is that the cost to operate social media channels and create engaging content is often right at your fingertips. If you are looking for ways in which you can handle all the comments, likes, and messages on your platforms fear not because we have a strategy for you.

The below content contains ways in which you can learn about social listening as well as tools you can use to make the process easier.

What is Social listening?

Social listening is all about looking into your industry’s trends, comments, and content in order to gain insights into your brand experience. Social listening is critical for understanding how your customer feels about your brand which is commonly referred to as social media sentiment. Correctly using Social Listening is one of the most valuable ways to increase brand trust and create a loyal customer base. One good example of social listening is Netflix promoting a DIY sock that pauses the TV show. Netflix looked at what people were talking about on social media through comments, posts, and stories which lead to this creative invention.

Social Listening Tools.

Keeping up with the constant change in social trends can be difficult. Thankfully, there are many different tools and programs that can help brands keep up with trends.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a premium service that helps brands and companies monitor data and trends on all social media platforms you are active on. Sprout Social can also be useful for identifying social media goals that your brand can create based on the data. While Sprout Social is an excellent service and can help greatly with social media needs, they are more costly than some of the other social listening tools mentioned below.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a marketer’s dream program. Whether it be for creating inbound content, social media uploads, or advanced automation HubSpot knows what tools a marketer needs. HubSpot has features that allow you to keep track of all social media posts, interactions, and total social media leads. 

Learn more about social media campaigns here!

One of the big perks of HubSpot is the ability to easily work together with the sales team to use social media interactions as a step to making a sale. Furthermore, Hubspot is a free-to-use platform which makes it a must-have.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a service that allows users to view and interact with their social media followers in an easy and convenient way. The dashboard that Hootsuite is able to keep track of all social media interactions whether it be messages, comments, likes, or mentions without having to leave the service.

In addition, Hootsuite provides top-notch analytics and reports from all social media accounts in use. This, along with the convenient dashboard, makes Hootsuite a premium service that competes with the likes of sprout social. Therefore the cost of the service is noticeably different than free services.

Buffer

Buffer is one of the more friendly tools on this list. Buffer allows users to “buffer” social media posts on many accounts. The UI for the service is very clean and not as complicated as some other services. Buffer can also respond to comments across many platforms. There is a free version available to use, however, the service will be lacking some features. 

SEMrush

SEMrush is different from many of the other services mentioned above. SEMrush is well known for its keyword research and online ranking data. Furthermore, the ability to manage social media accounts makes SEMrush a valuable service to have. Want to manage all your social media accounts in one place? SEMrush has you covered. You can also use many of the SEO tools and keyword tools to help monitor your social media accounts.

Social listening can be a tricky process to run. Keeping up with so many accounts and followers is no easy task. Thanks to services like SEMrush, Buffer, HubSpot, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social, Marketers are able to keep up with demand. Now it’s time for you to take the wheel, are you ready?

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

marketing dashboard

The Importance of Implementing a Marketing Dashboard

At this point in time, most businesses realize how important data is and how analyzing the data that they collect can provide valuable insight into the performance of their marketing tactics as well as into how their audience behaves. The challenge lies in making those metrics easy to access and easy to read for everyone in your company. Fortunately, tracking data is easier than ever with the use of dashboards.

What Are Dashboards?

Dashboards are apps or platforms that collect all of your KPIs (key performance indicators) and critical metrics onto one easy-to-read display. The information is pulled from multiple data sources, often both internal and external. The data displayed on a dashboard can be viewed at any time and in real time. Essentially, they act as real-time reports, eliminating the need to wait until the end of the month to receive an analytics report from your marketing department.

Tactics

marketing dashboard for social media

There are tons of different tactics dashboards out there that you can integrate into your system. This can range from email dashboards and website dashboards to search dashboards and social media metric dashboards. While these types of dashboards are often effective in displaying certain metrics, they don’t typically paint a whole picture. They may show you how your tactics are performing individually, but they don’t show you how they are impacting your company’s revenue cycle. It’s why you should implement a marketing dashboard.

The Benefits Of Using A Marketing Dashboard

Tactics dashboards can be useful in that they showcase soft metrics (engagement, awareness, interactions, etc.). However, you’ll want a dashboard that can also display hard metrics (such as the internal rate of return and the net present value of your current campaigns) along with online marketing metrics (such as bounce rate, total visits, click-through rates, etc.). It’s why you’ll want to use a marketing dashboard. The following are just a few more reasons why integrating a marketing dashboard will be hugely beneficial for your business:

The Power of an Influencer Marketing Strategy: How and Why It Works

Customize your dashboard to your needs

Instead of being limited by tactics dashboards, a marketing dashboard allows you to customize which metrics are displayed. You can then pull what you deem to be the most important of your social media, email, and search metrics so that they are visually represented on one single display.

Track the performance of your marketing efforts

A properly optimized marketing dashboard will make it easy to see how your marketing efforts are performing in real time. This can be from engagement on social media to lead generation on your website. Not only can you identify how individual tactics are faring based on your KPIs and metrics, but you’ll get an idea of how well your overall strategies are performing as well.

Keep your team on the same page

One of the challenges of running a business is that many of your employees aren’t always on the same page. If everyone has access to your marketing dashboard, everyone can see what’s working and what isn’t. This makes it easy for company-wide communication to take place. This can result in more effective adjustments to marketing and sales strategies to improve performance.

Allow for more informed decision making

Being able to see how your marketing campaign is performing in real time allows you to make adjustments to your strategies and tactics on the fly. In theMarketing Dashboardpast, simple reporting would only tell you how you’ve done. The use of marketing dashboards gives you the chance to make more informed decisions on a daily basis. In turn, this can reduce the cost of your marketing efforts and improve their impact on your revenue cycle.

While a marketing dashboard can be considered a real-time report of your marketing activities, it’s much more than that–it’s a decision-making tool. The potential success of future marketing campaigns depends heavily on your ability to collect and analyze your company’s most important metrics and KPIs and determine how your marketing efforts are affecting your revenue cycle. The best way to do this is by integrating, customizing, and optimizing a marketing dashboard.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

The Use of Inbound Marketing in the Manufacturing Industry

When it comes to B2C marketing, inbound marketing has long surpassed traditional marketing as the most popular way to advertise a business. However, many businesses, especially manufacturers, still assume that traditional marketing is the best way to go when it comes to B2B. This is no longer true. In fact, there are some real benefits when it comes to inbound marketing for manufacturers that you will want to take advantage of.

What is Inbound Marketing?

The big difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing (which would include TV commercials, print ads, direct mail, etc.), is that inbound marketing is essentially done online and focuses on positioning your company to be found by other businesses. For example, instead of sending out a pamphlet highlighting your manufacturing capabilities, you would publish content relevant to the manufacturing industry (and whatever niche within that industry you occupy) online. This content lives online from that moment on, giving visitors the chance to find it at any point.

Inbound marketing involves using a variety of strategies (such as creating a user-friendly website, producing high-quality content, using SEO, engaging on social media) that makes it easy for your target audience to find you online and to do a majority of the research about your company and services on their own. This is different than traditional marketing, which involves finding your audience and directly advertising to them.

How Can You Keep Up With the Future of Inbound Marketing?

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing for Manufacturers

The following are four reasons why you should strongly consider implementing an inbound marketing strategy for your manufacturing business:

1) Businesses are doing research online first

Around 70 percent of buyers will do research about manufacturers online before they make the decision to reach out to a potential partner. For example, maybe a buyer is looking for a PCB (printed circuit board) assembly manufacturer for their electronic products. They will probably begin researching PCB assemblies by looking for general information online. This will lead to them to a variety of blogs with informative content that they can read at their own time. Content that strikes them as particularly helpful will stand out, and they will do more research into the manufacturer that published that content. If you do not have an online presence, then you’re missing out on buyers like these. A good inbound marketing strategy will help position yourself online to be found by buyers who are doing research.

2) Inbound marketing provides long-term results

As you build your online presence through inbound marketing techniques, you’ll have the opportunity to nurture many potential leads over the long term. For example, let’s say you’re a PCB manufacturer. You have a blog on which you regularly produce PCB-related content (such as, for instance, the benefits of flexible circuits). There may be leads out there who read your content regularly and have done so for years. They may build their own PCBs in-house and a change in strategy has resulted in them deciding to outsource its build. At that point, they’ll be familiar with your site and will be more likely to reach out to you. Traditional advertising doesn’t have such a long-term impact. 

3) What worked once won’t always work

You may have had a lot of success with traditional marketing methods–and you may continue having success with those efforts. However, if you expect to grow your business, then you’ll want to expand your customer base, which means that you shouldn’t limit your advertising efforts. Otherwise, the day might come where your traditional marketing efforts aren’t as effective as they once were, and you’ll be left scrambling to implement an inbound strategy.

4) Find out what your audience needs

Unlike traditional advertising, inbound marketing allows you to engage directly with your target audience, making it easier to develop relationships, receive feedback, and discover the needs of your leads.

As you can see, there are many benefits to inbound marketing for manufacturers. By implementing an inbound marketing strategy in your advertising efforts, you can position your company for marketing success well into the future.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers
visual storytelling

Visual Storytelling Techniques That Will Take You To The Next Level

Not only has video content become incredibly easy to consume due to the quality of smartphones and tablets, but it’s become much easier — and affordable — to produce as well. Considering the fact that 72 percent of consumers would prefer to learn about products or services via video and that the average consumer watches around 1.5 hours of video a day, your marketing campaign needs to have a video content marketing strategy.

However, your video content will only be effective if it’s of high quality. The following are ten visual storytelling techniques and promotion tips that you should keep in mind:

5 Storytelling Techniques You Should Use For Your Marketing Efforts.

  1. Maintain a single POV

    Make sure that your video focuses on a single idea or message and that you don’t stray off topic or else you’ll lose the attention of your viewers.

  2. Be human

    Use emotion to connect with your audience. A video full of dry facts with no personal point of view isn’t going to be very engaging. Additionally, showcase actual people in your videos so that your viewers have someone to relate to.

  3. Be memorable

    If there’s nothing memorable about your video, then it will fail to impress. Viewers are less likely to share video content that hasn’t made much of an impact on them as well, so strive to make content that is memorable in some way.

  4. Be more visual than verbal

    Video is a visual medium, so instead of just showing a talking head explaining your message, tell your message in a visual manner. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.

  5. Start with what’s real

    It can be easy to get wrapped up in the visual style of your content, but substance will always trump style. Begin with what’s real and use that as the foundation for your video. The video’s style should be the unique way in which you convey that message to your viewers.

  6. Make it compelling

    Remember who your target audience is in order to create video content that they will find relevant and interesting. If you aren’t targeting the right audience, your video content won’t end up being compelling, no matter how well produced it is.

  7. Optimize your videos

    Don’t forget to optimize your videos by using strong keywords and links in your titles and descriptions.

  8. Use strong CTAs

    Just like written content, video content should have calls-to-action at the end to encourage your viewers to do what you want them to do.

  9. Use YouTube

    YouTube has over 1.8 billion monthly users. You can’t ignore an audience that big, so be sure to post your videos on YouTube.

  10. Share your videos

    Promote your videos by sharing them on all of your social channels to help attract more viewers.

Using visual storytelling techniques will help audiences connect with your video content and make them more likely to engage. Just remember that all the visual storytelling techniques in the world won’t work if your videos aren’t being watched, which is why promoting your video content is important as well.

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

The Use of Inbound Marketing in the Manufacturing Industry

When it comes to B2C marketing, inbound marketing has long surpassed traditional marketing as the most popular way to advertise a business. However, many businesses, especially manufacturers, still assume that traditional marketing is the best way to go when it comes to B2B. This is no longer true. In fact, there are some real benefits when it comes to inbound marketing for manufacturers that you will want to take advantage of.

What is Inbound Marketing?

The big difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing (which would include TV commercials, print ads, direct mail, etc.), is that inbound marketing is essentially done online and focuses on positioning your company to be found by other businesses. For example, instead of sending out a pamphlet highlighting your manufacturing capabilities, you would publish content relevant to the manufacturing industry (and whatever niche within that industry you occupy) online. This content lives online from that moment on, giving visitors the chance to find it at any point.

Inbound marketing involves using a variety of strategies (such as creating a user-friendly website, producing high-quality content, using SEO, engaging on social media) that makes it easy for your target audience to find you online and to do a majority of the research about your company and services on their own. This is different than traditional marketing, which involves finding your audience and directly advertising to them.

How Can You Keep Up With the Future of Inbound Marketing?

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing for Manufacturers

The following are four reasons why you should strongly consider implementing an inbound marketing strategy for your manufacturing business:

1) Businesses are doing research online first

Around 70 percent of buyers will do research about manufacturers online before they make the decision to reach out to a potential partner. For example, maybe a buyer is looking for a PCB (printed circuit board) assembly manufacturer for their electronic products. They will probably begin researching PCB assemblies by looking for general information online. This will lead to them to a variety of blogs with informative content that they can read at their own time. Content that strikes them as particularly helpful will stand out, and they will do more research into the manufacturer that published that content. If you do not have an online presence, then you’re missing out on buyers like these. A good inbound marketing strategy will help position yourself online to be found by buyers who are doing research.

2) Inbound marketing provides long-term results

As you build your online presence through inbound marketing techniques, you’ll have the opportunity to nurture many potential leads over the long term. For example, let’s say you’re a PCB manufacturer. You have a blog on which you regularly produce PCB-related content (such as, for instance, the benefits of flexible circuits). There may be leads out there who read your content regularly and have done so for years. They may build their own PCBs in-house and a change in strategy has resulted in them deciding to outsource its build. At that point, they’ll be familiar with your site and will be more likely to reach out to you. Traditional advertising doesn’t have such a long-term impact. 

3) What worked once won’t always work

You may have had a lot of success with traditional marketing methods–and you may continue having success with those efforts. However, if you expect to grow your business, then you’ll want to expand your customer base, which means that you shouldn’t limit your advertising efforts. Otherwise, the day might come where your traditional marketing efforts aren’t as effective as they once were, and you’ll be left scrambling to implement an inbound strategy.

4) Find out what your audience needs

Unlike traditional advertising, inbound marketing allows you to engage directly with your target audience, making it easier to develop relationships, receive feedback, and discover the needs of your leads.

As you can see, there are many benefits to inbound marketing for manufacturers. By implementing an inbound marketing strategy in your advertising efforts, you can position your company for marketing success well into the future.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers