Align Your Landing Pages with Your Promotions for a Better Response

Align Your Landing Pages with Your Promotions for a Better Response

Not long ago, a Facebook ad appeared on my newsfeed that motivated me to click thru to the other side of their promotion.

Disappointingly, the destination of the click landed me on the company’s website home page.

The content of the home page provided me with something about the business and many link options—but nothing related to the initial message the prompted my initial response.

So I left the website.

Leaving the website cost the business two things:

  • Cost of the initial click from their Facebook ad
  • Cost of losing a potential customer showing an initial interest in their offering

That cost could be reduced if the company had connected their ad to a landing page that was optimized to the targeted audience and relevant to their promotional message.

Types of Promotions that Could Generate Traffic to Your Landing Page

While the example above illustrated a Facebook ad to generate traffic to a company’s website, there are other promotional media and platforms to keep in mind.

PPC Ads

Google Ads and Facebook Ads are probably the most popular means of paying per click to generate traffic to a landing page. Both can be highly effective at targeting demographics and user intent.

Direct Mail

The mailbox remains a highly effective method of generating interest in a company’s products and services. For example, a postcard targeted to a specific demographic could be effective at motivating the recipient to visit a website for more information. The response would be better if the URL published on the postcard sent the visitor to a specific page that complements the message and look/feel of the postcard.

Elements of a Landing Page Aligned with Your Promotions

To create a relevant and engaging promotions experience for your potential customer, effective landing pages should include:

  • Relevant headline matched closely with your ad headline and message
  • Supportive tag line
  • Attractive image that emotionally resonates with visitor
  • Copy that features benefits of your product or service
  • Testimonials or badges that foster trust
  • A very clear call to action (phone, lead capture form, etc.)

Before wrapping up your landing page, step back and ask yourself:

“Is the content on your page consistent with your ad?”

If the ad promotes a sale, is the offer front and center on your page?

If your ad is targeting a solution to a problem of a specific demographic (for example, hearing aids to elderly men), does your landing page speak to that audience?

When your landing page matches what your visitor expects to find after seeing your ad, the chances for conversion increases. After all, they did show interest in your message—it’s only fitting that you provide them with a continuation of that message.

Not only will they be more satisfied with making the journey to your landing page but, you’ll be happier with your return on investment.

Is Managing Your Promotions More than You Can Manage? Reach Out for Help.

If you’d like help, give Business Solutions Unlimited a call at (904) 429-4588 for a free consultation and to learn more about how we help your business today.

How to Encourage Strong Online Reviews and Why You Should

How to Encourage Strong Online Reviews and Why You Should

It’s been apparent for some time that Google is focusing much of its search results page for businesses toward branded search.

We provided insights into branded searches in a recent article.

When identifying their brand, many businesses will point to such things as their logo, color schemes, snappy tag line, consistent message, and value propositions as their brand. However, all of those items should be considered branding activities for shaping and influencing the public perception of your business.

Your brand is actually your customer’s perception of your business.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is widely quoted as saying, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

Today, it’s not so much what people say outside the room, but online that matters. Online reviews should be considered a major association to your actual brand.

Reviews reflect customer experiences with your business. It’s also what many potential customers look at before deciding to use your services or purchase your products.

Online Reviews and the Impact on Your Business

At the end of 2018, Bright Local published results of a study on online reviews. The following results show the impact reviews may have on your customers:

  • Consumers require 40 online reviews before believing the accuracy of a business’ star rating
  • Nearly 60% expect a business should have more than 11 reviews
  • Consumers look at an average of 10 reviews about a business
  • 85% believe online reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant while 40% only care about reviews with the last two weeks
  • 89% look for and read business responses to reviews

One survey result really stood out to us: 70% of consumers leave reviews when asked to do so.

Your consumers are helping to create your brand story as it appears online with either positive reviews, negative reviews or no reviews.

Fortunately, customers appear to be more than willing to provide their voice to your brand when asked.

How to Ask For an Online Review

Many businesses are under the impression that asking for reviews is a “no-no” with online review sites. That may be the case with YELP. However, Google encourages businesses to do so:

“Remind your customers to leave reviews. Let them know that it’s quick and easy to leave business reviews on mobile devices or desktop computers.”

They also encourage businesses to engage with customer reviews:

“Reply to reviews to build your customers’ trust. Your customers will notice that your business values their input, and possibly leave more reviews in the future. You can also create and share a link that customers can click to leave a review.”

Adding a convenient link to your website that customers can use to directly visit and add a review to your Google My Business profile can help increase the likelihood of a review.

When asking for a positive review, encourage your customer to add valuable details to help potential customers in their decision to engage with your business. A good review may include:

  • Details on services provided
  • How the service met their needs
  • The area the services were provided (“our St. Augustine home”) if conducted in the customer’s home (plumbing, fence, electrical, etc.)
  • Mention employee who helped the customer by name

Be sure to respond to the customer’s review. If the review doesn’t provide one or more of the three items listed above, feel free to add it in your response.

When your business develops and implements a review strategy, it will become an effective component toward establishing a strong brand online.

Is Managing Your Online Presence More than You Can Manage? Reach Out for Help.

Give Business Solutions Unlimited a call at (904) 429-4588 to discuss how we can help your business today.

How to Optimize Your Business for Voice Search

How to Optimize Your Business for Voice Search

Just the other day, we were contemplating picking up some food from a restaurant on the way home from an event. Unfortunately, we had no cash, just a credit card.

We wanted to make sure that the restaurant took our credit card before making an order over the phone. I pressed the little microphone symbol on the phone and asked: “does such and such restaurant take credit cards?”

The answer came back that “yes, this restaurant accepts American Express, Discover, Mastercard, and Visa credit cards.”

Once we parked, I curiously looked at my phone to see that the answer Google presented came from the restaurant’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

While waiting for our order, I scanned the restaurant’s FAQs. Subjects ranged from payment methods to open hours to types of food to nutrition. This was a rich source of information that Google was more than happy to access to present to their searchers.

It also reinforced the idea that local businesses need to optimize their online presence for voice search.

That’s Because a Lot of Users Will Be Using Voice Search

Today, 20% of mobile searches are by voice. Google predicts that 50% of searches will be by voice by 2020. In preparation, Google and other search engines are indexing content that will satisfy voice searches, which are typically:

  • 1% longer than text-based searches
  • More naturally/conversationally spoken
  • 3 times more likely to be for local purposes

And we’re not just talking about mobile voice searches.

Homes are Filling Up with Voice Assistant Devices

Your customers’ homes are filling up with voice assistant devices.

  • Google Home
  • Amazon Alexa
  • Apple HomePod
  • Facebook Portal
  • Microsoft Cortana

Soon, voice searches will be the primary way people get information about your business, products, and services.

A local business that optimizes their online presence for voice will be the businesses that provide the voice searchers with the answers they’re seeking.

How to Get Your Business Content Noticed for Voice Searches

Fortunately, optimizing your business’ online presence for voice search is primarily the same as optimizing for searches.

You Need to Establish Your Online Presence

All of these devices rely on information from the web. That means if you’ve taken the time to establish your online presence, you’ve provided these devices with the information they’re looking for.

Each of the devices tends to rely on multiple online sources for information about your business.

Google Home

  • Search Results: Google
  • Business Listings: Google My Business
  • Reviews: Google My Business

Amazon Alexa

  • Search: Bing
  • Business Listings: Yelp & Yext
  • Reviews: Yelp

Apple HomePod (Siri)

  • Search: Google
  • Business Listings: Apple Maps
  • Reviews: Yelp

Microsoft Cortana

  • Search: Bing
  • Business Listings: Bing
  • Reviews: Yelp

Facebook Portal

These devices are the new kids on the block. Facebook probably relies heavily on information found throughout their Facebook platform:

  • Facebook business pages
  • Reviews found on Facebook

Don’t Forget a FAQ Page

FAQs, when written correctly, can serve voice search queries better than most of the content on your website.

Content for FAQs is generally concise (under 30 words) and built to answer specific questions.

Develop and maintain a FAQ page on your website. Make a list of questions your customers tend to ask and answer them on your page.

Also, don’t forget about your Google My Business account. The search giant has conveniently added a section for you to add questions and answers about your business.

Is Managing Your Online Presence More than You Can Manage? Reach Out for Help.

Give Business Solutions Unlimited a call at (904) 429-4588 to learn more about the ways we can help your business today.

How to Get Facebook to Show Your Webpage the Way You Want

How to Get Facebook to Show Your Webpage the Way You Want

Your website is the hub of your online brand presence. Google, Facebook, and other online media will pull information from your site to present information to their audience.

When developing your website and webpages, you have an opportunity to recommend how you want these online companies to present your business.

For Google, you can provide title tags and meta descriptions on your webpage that the search engine will pull and show on their search results. Many small businesses already provide meta information on their site.

However, many neglect to provide Facebook and other social media with the information they need to present your website the way you’d like.

How Facebook Shares a Webpage That’s Not Optimized

A number of years ago, Facebook developed Open Graph Protocol that extracts titles, images, URL and meta information from shared webpages. This is a wonderful way for you to control how your business is presented to the social media’s audience.

Let’s take a look at how Facebook presents an unoptimized webpage. We’ll share a Facebook screenshot of Business Solutions Unlimited home page before we’ve optimized the Open Graph content.

Unoptimized Business Solutions Unlimited homepage Facebook image showing partial BSU logo.

This home page image is how Facebook guessed what information to present on a page without Open Graph tags.

Not very appealing.  Facebook randomly pulled what they considered to be an appropriate image—BSU’s logo. Unfortunately, the logo is not optimized to fit Facebook’s image ratio. So the logo is cropped.

Additionally, Facebook pulled copy from the page that isn’t likely to generate an enthusiastic click.

This is a missed opportunity to present our Brand the way we would like.

How an Optimized Open Graph Tag Looks on Facebook 

Business Solutions Unlimited home page Facebook image featuring a business woman juggling tasks with caption Got Too Many Balls in the Air? Delegate Your Busy Work to Us: Admin, Bookkeeping, Marketing & More

We’ve provided content for Facebook to extract from our home page that represents how we’d like our brand to be portrayed.

We’ve provided a 1200px x 630px image similar to what the audience will find on our home page.

Additionally, we’ve provided a Facebook title that explains how we help small businesses.

By adding Open Graph information to our homepage, we’ve provided a better-looking image and stronger content to Facebook and other social media platforms.

While creating and providing Open Graph content to your webpages adds another task to your website development, it’s well worth it. Being able to control how your brand is presented online with better images and content can generate more shares, more clicks, and more business.

Is Managing Your Branded Social Media Website Shares More than You Can Manage? Reach Out for Help.

We’re here to help…from just this project to managing your social media, website and overall marketing strategy and tools. Give Business Solutions Unlimited a call today at (904) 429-4588 and let us get busy optimizing Open Graph and more for you.

Why Small Businesses Should Be Concerned About Their Branded Search

Why Small Businesses Should Be Concerned About Their Branded Search

When people type your business name in a search engine, what do they see?

Typing your business name in a search engine is considered a branded search. If you haven’t considered what a branded Google search for your business would look like, you should check it out.

Branded searches can be great for your business. Most businesses have found that branded searches account for a high percentage of their website traffic. In fact, branded keyword searches have shown a 2x higher conversion rate than non-branded searches.

Branded searches aren’t just about traffic to your website. As we shared last month on the importance of conducting a Google My Business audit, Google is working hard to serve up answers about your business without sending searchers to your website.

Why would a potential customer want to do a branded search on your business? They might have:

  • Seen your ad in the mail, magazine or billboard
  • Glimpsed a mention of your business on Facebook
  • Been referred to your business by a past customer

In most cases, these searchers are considering doing business with you and want to check out your company.

What People Might See if They Google Your Business Name

Since these are potential customers, it’s important to understand what they might encounter when they search online for your business.

Here are some possibilities of a branded search:

At the top of the search result page: Pay-per-click ads from competitors who took advantage of your branded name as a keyword and paid to get their name above yours.

In the organic search section: They might see a link to your website that includes a meta-title and meta-description of your business. Also, they might see sitelinks to popular webpages on your site.

Other links they might see is your Facebook and other social media properties. Possibly there will be third-party review sites listing your business. If you’ve been mentioned in the news, there might be a link to the article. Also, if you have videos online, they might appear in the organic search section.

Your business information in a Knowledge Panel: If you have a Google My Business profile, likely you’ll have a Knowledge Panel showing the following information about your business:

  • Your Name, address, and phone number
  • Links to your website
  • A button to call your business
  • Hours of operation
  • Customer reviews
  • Links to directions and a Google Map with your location
  • Photos and videos
  • Google Posts
  • Questions and answers

How to Manage Your Branded Search

For the most part, Google will provide search results that the search engine company deems useful to the intent of the searchers.

Your goal would be to provide the information that Google would find useful for the branded searches.

Maintain a Google My Business Presence: Make sure you have a Google My Business profile and have fully provided content to all of the available sections.

Make Sure Your Website is Optimized for Searches: This includes making sure your webpages have:

  • Meta-titles and meta-descriptions
  • Consistent name, address phone numbers
  • Content that would be useful to potential customer searches

Create and Maintain Third Party Online Presence: Wherever you can create a profile online and provide content about your business, do so.

  • Facebook and other social media networks
  • YouTube
  • Business listings

Consider PPC Ads if You Find Competitors on Your Branded Search: Being on top of the search engine results page is advantageous—it’s the location that gets the searchers immediate attention. That’s why your competitors are there—and why you should be as well.

Is Managing Your Branded Search Results More than You Can Manage? Reach Out for Help.

Given the importance Google is placing on branded searches, it’s imperative for your business to start managing what potential customers see.

If you’d like help, contact us for a free consultation. Give Business Solutions Unlimited a call at (904) 429-4588 and let us start helping your business today.

Why You Should Audit Your Google My Business Presence

Why You Should Audit Your Google My Business Presence

In recent years, Google has not-so-quietly been staging a bit of a takeover on the Web. Not content to be the largest search engine in the world, Google is actively working toward a “zero-click-query” environment.

Basically, Google wants to serve up answers to searcher queries—without sending them to a website. Google wants to keep users on Google.

That’s why Google is investing heavily on adding new features to their Google My Business (GMB) platform.

To stay competitive in local online search, businesses should take full advantage of the features available on GMB. Doing so will help the business develop and maintain a robust online presence that’s not solely dependent on a website for converting searchers to clients.

Today, GMB will display clickable phone numbers, hours of operation and other business information plus options to book or schedule appointments—even to make a purchase.

If you want your business to remain relevant in Google local searches—particularly branded searches—it might be time to audit your GMB presence.

What an GMB Audit Should Entail

When we conduct GMB audits for small businesses, we look at seven factors that have shown to have a significant impact on local searches and conversions.

Confirmation of a GMB Presence

A Google My Business (GMB) presence is considered the hub of your online Google presence. It’s important that businesses claim their Google My Business listing. This will be where businesses can manage the majority of information as it appears in Google.

It’s also a key factor Google references to generate a Knowledge Panel on branded searches for your business.

If you’ve been in business for a while, you probably have a GMB presence—whether you created one or not. Google is active at crawling and finding businesses.

If a GMB exists for a business, we’ll determine if the business has actually claimed it.

What Business Categories Are You Listed Under?

Business categories in GMB can be one of the most influential factors in ranking on Google and Google Maps. Being specific in your primary category can help influence rankings in a competitive environment.

Consistent Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP)

Your business name, address and phone number should be consistent throughout your online presence. A mismatched NAP between your GMB listing and your website could create consistency issues—impacting how Google shows or doesn’t show your business.

Customer Reviews

Reviews on Google continue to increase in importance in local search and reputation building. They influence both ranking and customers’ decision making. Google looks at various signals to influence its search rankings and reviews can provide the search engine with valuable information.

During an audit, we’ll look at:

Number of Reviews: Nationwide, local businesses that rank in the top 3 positions of Google Local Search have an average of 47 Google Reviews. While having a large number of reviews doesn’t guarantee rankings, it could be considered an important signal to Google that you’re an active business.

Responses to Reviews: Business responses to reviews is a signal to Google that you are an engaged business.

Keywords in Reviews: Reviews that include keywords such as specific services and products can help boost rankings for those specific searches.

Photos and Videos

Google reports that businesses with photos receive 42% more requests for directions and 32% more clicks than businesses without photos. GMB has made images an important and prominent feature in the Knowledge Panel.

Google advises businesses to include at least three strong exterior and interior images. An image of the common area and reception area. A minimum of three management and team photos.

Additionally, Google encourages businesses to include videos as part of its GMB visual presentation.

Google Posts

GMB provides businesses opportunities to post images, copy, call to actions (book an appointment, learn more, sign up, etc.), URL links, and events that will appear on their Knowledge Panel.

Posts can be a great way to add more information and grab searcher attention to your Google presence. Google posts are limited to 300 words of which 100 characters appear in the Knowledge Panel. Posts can appear for a maximum of 7 days on GMB. Event & offers will appear until they expire.

By adding keywords in the copy, Google Posts may appear on relevant searches.

Google Questions & Answers

GMB Question and Answers feature allows searchers to pose questions to your business. This provides the business with an opportunity to provide authoritative and expert answers that remain on your Knowledge Panel.

Google also encourages businesses to create a Frequently Asked Questions and Answers list and post these on your GMB. This is an opportunity for businesses to get out in front of potential questions the public may have about your business or services you provide.

Questions and Answers can be “upvoted” by both the business and searchers. By being the one of the first to add Q&As, your postings can be “upvoted” more frequently over time.

 Don’t Have Time to Audit Your GMB? Reach Out for Help.

Surprisingly, there are a substantial amount of businesses that haven’t claimed, developed or fully used their GMB profiles. Given the importance Google is placing on this, these businesses are doing themselves a huge disservice.

We understand this all takes time to complete, manage and stay on top of. That’s why we’re here. Give Business Solutions Unlimited a call at (904) 429-4588 and let’s discuss how we can start helping your business today.