Why should you refresh your website for the purpose of inbound marketing?

• Because it's cheaper - a lot cheaper - than other marketing 
    (up to 61% cheaper 
  according to research)


• Because it can be measured - "What, I can measure real ROI on my 
  marketing? You're kidding!" No we're  not.


• Because it's where you can influence most of your buyers. 
    We are in the "era of the buyer" where 
  the buyer is searching for information  online, all day every day, if you're not 
  there they won't find you. It's that  simple. Over 85% of B2B buyers start their 
  purchasing journey online through  outlets like social media according to research from 
  Forrester.

The truism “You get what you pay for” is as true as true can be when it comes to building a company website. When small firms fail to budget properly, one of these nightmare scenarios is likely to ensue:

• The site ends up costing two or three times more than expected, causing all-important post-launch marketing activities to be cut back or eliminated.
• The site ends up having half or a quarter of the desired functionality, rendering it nearly useless.
• The site ends up as a series of compromises in design, content and functionality, making a mediocre impression on customers and prospects.

• Design. How much customization do you want? Will a standard WordPress theme suit your needs? Do you need a custom design from the ground up? Something in between? Do you have imagery for your new site, or will photos need to be taken? If so, how many photos (or other imagery such as charts and diagrams) will be needed?
• Content. How much unique content will your site need? 10 pages? 100 pages? Will it be easy or hard to write? Do you have the ability and bandwidth to write it, or will you need to outsource copywriting? If outsourced, will the writer need to do extensive research to write the copy properly?
• Functionality. Do you need more than a basic contact form? Do you want to offer downloadable PDFs or other information? Do you want leads from various forms to be tracked? Will you need e-commerce, and if so, what type of payment options? Are there any other functional requirements, such as integration with internal systems or third-party e-commerce sites? Do you want to optimize your site for search engines (SEO)? Will you need W3C or other compliance? Do you want Flash design or a customer portal?

• Design disconnects. Creating images is expensive and time-consuming. Often, firms don’t care about images in the early stages of a project, but later on, when they see boring, text-heavy pages on the test site, they desperately want a lot of customized imagery. Settling for tired stock imagery, the usual Plan B, results in a generic-looking, unimpressive site.
• Content disconnects. Content is far more expensive and time-consuming to create that most people realize. Firms often assume they can have an employee whip up content at the last minute, and learn too late that’s an impossible task.
• Functionality disconnects. Firms typically have no idea what pieces of site functionality — some of which were detailed above — actually cost. They become frustrated in mid-project when they ask the developer to “throw in” a little e-commerce and discover it costs $5,000 to do so.

Pinterest has quickly evolved from a simple idea to one of the most popular, revenue generating social media platforms. In the last 5 months alone Pinterest has grown its user base 43.7 percent to more than 70 million. These users aren't merely pinning pictures; they're buying products.

Most social media channels lack the ability to drive non-assisted conversions and rely on attribution to justify spend. New studies are constantly being released showing that referral traffic from Pinterest converts directly into e-commerce conversions.

So how can SEO professionals and e-commerce companies unlock the potential of this new channel?

SEO: Acquire More LinksBuilding relationships is at the core of any ethical, results-oriented link building campaign. Identifying related bloggers and key influencers is the first step toward building these relationships and acquiring new links.

Pinterest is a great way to discover new blogs for your outreach campaign. Pinterest's search functionality makes it easy to find relevant boards. For example, if you work with or for a lawn care provider you may search on Pinterest for “weed control” boards and get the following result:

• oEmbed
• Semantic Markup using Open Graph or Schema.org

Unless your organization watches its Facebook stats carefully, you may not have realized Facebook has become increasingly less accommodating to brands and companies over the course of the platform’s recent updates.  Some notable business owners, like billionaire Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban, have even spoken out against Facebook’s latest changes.

For example, in late 2012 TechCrunch noticed that posts made by brand pages were only being displayed to a tiny fraction of a page’s following, and were being hidden from the rest.  Facebook has been restricting how many of a page’s followers see a given post, a statistic known as “Reach,” for several years now.  However TechCrunch found that in late 2012 Facebook made changes to the newsfeed that caused the reach for brands to drop as much as 40% compared to what it was earlier in the year.

Posts for the average Facebook brand page are now being seen by less than 10% of their audience!  For example, if you spent time, money and effort to build your Facebook following to 4,000 people, that means now each post you make is going to be seen by less than 400 of them.

Facebook has a solution for this though…you can pay them money and then they will show your post to more people.  That doesn’t quite seem ethical though, does it?  First you spend money to build your following on Facebook, and then you spend even more money to reach the following you worked so hard to build?

It’s no wonder so many business owners, like Cuban, are upset and considering leaving the platform.  So, is it time for you to close your Facebook page?  Here are three important things to consider:

1. Does your business model allow for recurring purchases?  There is a rule in marketing and sales that says it’s always cheaper to sell more to an existing customer than it is to find a new customer.  If your business allows for customers to make repeat purchases, like an online store or clothing company with new items every season, then the chances are better that your company will get value from a Facebook page.  However, if your customers only need to buy your product once, like a video game or a book, then you will always have to be finding new customers because your product doesn’t lend itself to repeat purchases.  That will make it harder for you to come out with a positive return on your Facebook investment if you are continually having to find new customers instead of simply re-selling old ones.

2. Do you have other contact information for your Facebook followers?  Depending on your company’s approach to Facebook, you may know that most of the people on your Facebook page got there because they were already following your company on its website, email list, or elsewhere.  If that’s the case, there shouldn’t be much negative consequence to closing your Facebook page, because you can still reach those customers another way.  However this situation is probably rare, so what can you do if you don’t have other ways to contact your existing Facebook fans?

Start by going to your page and looking at the cost for promoted posts.  Figure out how much money you’d wind up spending to reach your desired number of fans each month.  This will let you know how much money you can potentially save by moving people to another platform like Twitter, Tumblr, or an email list.

From there, come up with a budget for a contest, and an ad campaign to promote it to your Facebook following, that encourages people to switch to your new platform of choice.  This will allow you to justify the expense of the contest and the promotional campaign because you can show that after a certain amount of time, say six months, you will have saved enough money in Facebook expenses to pay for the contest.  And every month after that those savings will be contributing to higher profits for your company.

3. How are you measuring the value of your Facebook fans?  This is the most important question to ask yourself about whether or not you should keep your Facebook page.  Do you know the average revenue generated per fan?  Or how many new fans you need to acquire in order for one to make a purchase?  Unless you have some way of proving that having a Facebook page is making your company money, you’re running the risk of wasting a substantial amount of time and resources.  It’s time for you to start making sure your Facebook page is creating a positive return on investment.

For example, if you know that for every 10 new fans you acquire on average one makes a $20 purchase, then you can look at how much it costs in advertising and administrative costs in order to get 10 new fans.  It’s important to factor in the labor and admin costs because those are resources that could be doing something else potentially more effective at generating money for your business if they weren’t tied up running the Facebook page.

So, if it costs you less than $20 to acquire 10 new fans on Facebook, then it’s worth it to keep your page and pay money to grow your following.  However, even if you’ve determined that your page is generating positive ROI now, that doesn’t mean that it will continue to do so.  Especially if your business doesn’t allow for repeat customers, like the first question pointed out, make sure that you check in on your Facebook ROI regularly.

First, there’s no guarantee that Facebook won’t make changes in the future that will further reduce your ROI.  You may also find that as you sell more of your product it will become harder to sustain the same volume of sales.  You may reach a point where all of the people who are most likely to buy from you have already done so, and the only people left to target aren’t as interested.  This would cause your sales to drop and require you to look at a new strategy to address the changed marketplace.

The bottom line is if you’re going to have a Facebook page, make sure you’ve got a justification for it.  And “I’m doing it because all my competitors are doing it” doesn’t count.  Just because they like to waste money doesn’t mean you should.

By Alon Popilskis

Are you getting the results you want from your email marketing campaigns? Email marketing has been around for a while now, and there’s a reason it’s such a popular channel in most marketers’ toolboxes. Savvy interactions can deepen customer relationships, inspire new ones, nurture and convert leads, and strengthen brand awareness. By delivering compelling messages tailored to specific customer triggers, marketers can take leads from engagement to purchase.

That said, not every marketer is getting the maximum results possible from their email marketing initiatives.  In fact, some are completely missing the boat. To learn more about how to maximize your email marketing initiatives, be sure to download our new ebook, A Decade into Email Marketing: Where Are We Now?

The Evolution of Email Marketing

It’s true that we’ve come a long way from the early days of blast campaigns that usually hit the wrong customers, ended up in the spam filter, or simply created feelings of annoyance and intrusion. In fact, the time has never been better to be a marketer. Technologies like marketing automation allow companies to design polished messages that deliver the most relevant conversations to the right prospect at the perfect time. Lets face it, email has always been a cheap medium as well, with no printing and shipping costs to worry about, email helps mid-market and emerging businesses compete with the big leagues.  Consider the cost of executing a digital campaign these days vs. the postage driven campaigns of just a few decades ago and you can see how powerful email is not only in terms of engagement but also as a cost cutting measure.

These days we use email for all kinds of initiatives. Whether we want to reenergize fading leads, deepen engagement with existing customers or launch irresistible upsell and cross-sell offers, we’ve got the tools to tailor our messaging with unprecedented precision. And as mobile rises in popularity with countless users, leads are more connected to their email than ever before.

Creating a Seamless Cross-Channel Experience

So what’s the problem? The truth is that there are so many strategies and channels to consider that many marketers feel overwhelmed. Some are uncertain of which tactics they should be using; some are pursuing unproductive initiatives; some are jumping from strategy to strategy without sticking to one long enough to see results. Still others are applying one overarching plan across all channels, without considering the specific parameters for social and mobile campaigns or the role of smartphones and tablets. To create a seamless cross-channel user experience, email strategies must align with the appropriate platforms.

Authenticity Through Relevance

The rapid evolution of marketing technologies has left many marketers with a skill gap, and others completely in the dust. Even businesses that have invested in good marketing platforms often lack the training to fully understand how segmentation, testing and analytic tools can help them drive ROI and measure campaign performance. Another common issue: the failure to understand the necessity of tailored and engaging content. The days of predictable promotional emails are over, and marketers must create relevant emails that foster an authentic connection with customers. Not only can such relevance make the difference between a delete and a transaction, but techniques such as initiating transactional emails or driving readers to dynamic landing pages on marketing platforms can boost conversions, revenue and brand visibility.

So let me ask you again: are you getting the most you can out of your email marketing campaigns? Are you using the right strategies for the right channels? To help you decide – and learn some new tricks – we’ve put together a new ebook, A Decade into Email Marketing: Where are We Now?, which focuses on deft marketing strategies to help you maximize the potential of this rich marketing tool. We’ll share the 5 pathways to high-impact campaigns that attract, convert and close. Take a look and discover how you can design emails that turn leads into customers and engagement into sales.

Want to learn even more about email marketing? Be sure to pre-register for Marketo’s upcoming Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing available on August 7th!
Author: Justin Gray

DealerNet Services