1. Visual Appeal

2. Well Written Content

3. Easy to Navigate

4. Give Perspective

This business serves a finite local community with their services. At the peak, the business was receiving approximately 450 visits per month with marketing. After cutting out marketing activites, the site only received 45 to 50 visits per month. Don’t let this happen to you.  Continue marketing your business.

Not enough time to get it all done?  Screen Caffeen offers reasonable rates for online marketing and personal branding.

Prior to creating your strategy you need to take time assessing:

• marketplace
• customer profile
• your unique value
• competitive landscape
• product pricing & positioning
• online tools available for promotion

From here you can build your strategy, so that the messaging on your site speaks to the intended audience.  From here there are many tools that you can use to promote your products and services, driving traffic to your site. Pick and choose which tools are most appropriate to your audience.  For example, if you are primarily offering B2B services, then LinkedIn is a good vehicle for reaching business professionals. If you have B2C customers Facebook or Google Plus might be more appropriate. Twitter can help you reach both types of customers effectively.

As you choose the promotional avenues, make sure that your messaging is consistent, clear, and on target.

I signed in to G+  a little over one week ago. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of the interface.Within a short time, I was very comfortable with the interface.  Some of the features that I like include:

• Being able to segment my social media stream into “circles”
• Integration  with other Google tools
• Interaction with other social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter
• The interface has a faster feel to it than other social networks, allowing for capture, drag, and drop.

You wear many hats during the week, including one that has a card for marketing tucked into its decorative band.

The end of the week is approaching along with the deadline for that email marketing piece nagging at the back of your mind.  Before you can get to your weekend plans, that email  must be  sent. Your designer has created an aesthetically  pleasing template to use over the course of the campaign.

Just add the words and you are ready to go…

In reality, adding the words is not that simple. Writing effective copy takes time. We’ve all seen hastily written copy that makes you want to ask the author, “What are you trying to say?”.  Most effective writing requires thought, planning, and editing. I’ve noticed that copy written in a hurry often either:

a.) Doesn’t communicate the real message clearly

b.) Rambles on…

Having time to proofread and edit makes an enormous difference. Poorly written text usually doesn’t capture the reader’s attention, present your business in the best light, and may turn people away from receiving your message. When proofreading, it is helpful to read the text out loud. Reading out loud uses two senses, which helps catch errors that the eye might skip over.  Spending time wordsmithing and proofreading;  pays dividends in the end.

I know businesses that trade many of their  services with other companies. There are companies that have now cropped up as trading networks. No money exchanges hands, but what happens is that that non-paying client can take up a lot of time that should be used on maintaining core, revenue generating business.  If the client can’t pay for your services, are they your ideal customer? Not making personal judgments, but from my experience the ideal client understands that a job well done takes time and money. This is the client that I want to envision for my business.

Monique

In the prehistoric days of Twitter, tweets were not searchable by search engines like Google and Bing. The marketing potential of 140 character microblog postings had not been realized.  Initially, Twitter was seen as a tool that allowed friends and family to keep up with each other, a new way to send text messages. There was much more conversation going on. Since its inception in 2006, Twitter has grown to over 200,000,000 users. At one time it seemed like there was an unspoken understanding of how to interact in Twitter. Now some of these “DOs and DON’Ts” seem to have been forgotten. 

Happy Tweeting!

Monique
@MoeneekH

Using the example of an email marketing campaign that I recently ran for a local construction company.  The campaign had a 50% open rate. Phenomenal! According to Mail Chimp’s campaign benchmarks published in December of 2010, the construction industry averages a 28.7% open rate. What made this campaign so successful?

1. List Building: By carefully growing the email list using  organic methods, the email was very relevant to list members.
2. Subject Line: Grab the reader’s  attention by telling them what they  gain by opening the email.

3. Aesthetics: Using clean layout and high quality images makes an email more readable and appealing.
4. Clarity: The offer was simple, direct, and did not require a lot of explanation.
5. Window of Time: A limited time offer drives the urgency of taking action.
6. Reputation: The general contractor has a good reputation. (If you don’t follow good business practices and have a bad reputation, you may get more business from good quality campaigns, but eventually reputation will proceed you.)

The main image in the campaign was slightly campy and stood out visually from what other many other construction companies use in their campaigns. Usually construction companies highlight their projects. Yes, we had images from projects in the email to show the quality of work, but the main image, paired with the headline, “Have You Heard?”,  gave a reason to read further. In the end, construction contracts were signed. Making the return on the campaign, well-worth the investment.

Need help on your next email marketing project?  Contact Screen Caffeen.