Gulf Coast Local Blog

Quality Leads Come from a Quality Website

The internet and business are fused together more than ever. And in today's age of online marketing, a business won't last long without an online presence. And the heart of every business and its digital presence, is a home website. However, with snap judgments from customers and users, if you want to generate quality leads from your website, you must present a quality product. If your website is hard to navigate, is of low quality, or doesn't engage your visitors, you can plan on missing your target audience. To help you ensure you have a website worth its weight in leads, follow these keys:

Who Are You Going to Call?

A contact number may seem like an obvious piece to your website. Or, if you sell a strictly digital product, it may seem pointless. However, you can't overlook the value in customer trust that a contact number provides. You'll quickly find that while customers won't often use this number, it does give them a higher level of trust in your company and your website, as they know that direct line of communication is there, should they need it.

Put Forms Front and Center

If you want lead generation from your website, give your visitors easy access to lead generating forms! Include forms on multiple pages, or even every page. Don't make the form the focus of the page, but keep it above the fold to ensure its visibility to the user. Also, don't be too greedy with information requested from your web visitors. Keep the initial info simple and not too personal, and be sure to try and include an incentive for them, such as a "Free Quote" or "Special Discount."

Promote Your Reputation

You always want to include testimonials with your website whenever possible. Show your potential customers that you have a quality reputation backed by satisfied customers. Try to be specific with your testimonials without getting too lengthy. Don't just have quotes that say "They are great" but try to point out what specific areas of doing business with you the customer enjoyed. Take this one step further by including a photo of the individuals giving the testimonial. This humanizes your company, while also creating a deeper level of trust from potential customers when they can attribute a testimonial with the actual person.

Avoid "Build It Yourself" Websites

If you want quality results, you need a quality website...bottom line. If your website doesn't have a professional look, feel and layout to it, you aren't going to get professional results. While your customers may not be professional web designers, they can still tell the difference between a professional website and a website built in your spare time. Think of it like a business card. If the business card looks like it was printed on a home computer with regular stock paper, you aren't likely to trust the person handing it to you.

Using Pinterest to Pick Up Sales

Pinterest is a great marketing tool for visually engaging your target market and boosting sales. But if you want to take the next step to increase your sales numbers and user engagement, give these social marketing tactics and tips a try:

Sweeten the Deal

Along with creating specific boards and categorizing pins for your products, be sure to include coupons with these items. These coupons won't just encourage your followers to purchase your products, but you are showing them specific products within the board that they can use the coupon for. This greatly increases the point of purchase incentive for your followers.

And the Winner Is...

Along with coupons, give contests a try. This gives your audience incentive to continue to follow and monitor your pins and boards. Be sure to make the contest rules clear and available, make contest entry as quick and simple as possible, and be sure to include prizes that are going to interest your audience and give them clear incentive to enter. Once you get the hang of things, try running contests on a regular basis and switch up the prizes and products you offer.

Spread the Word

Don't limit yourself to just Pinterest. Be sure to cross engage your audience on all social media channels and share the work you're doing on your Pinterest account. Include links and posts to your Pinterest boards on your home website, Facebook, Twitter and even your monthly email newsletter. Let your audience know where they can go to stay up-to-date on all your social media efforts and products!

Show Them What You're Working With

Businesses in the retail sector are quickly tapping into the 150+ million Instagram users, and their bottom lines are reaping the benefits. The new social media giant is giving businesses plenty of marketing muscle with great photo sharing tools, branded hashtags and location based tagging tools. Combine all this and a visually appealing product can quickly start attracting followers and sales for your business.

Visual = Value

With it's custom image filters and easy sharing abilities, Instagram gives any retail business a valuable tool to promote and highlight their products. Research has already shown that producing pictures of products to go with your trendy description is sure to offer better brand recall and sales. The key here is design. These images can be great selling tools for your business, but you have to be sure your image quality and designs are the highest possible quality. So don't simply flood your account with sub-par work. Make sure you take the time and effort to reflect the quality of your product in the quality of your pictures.

Get Personal

You want your business and your products to be unique, and your Instagram account and posts should reflect this. Along with the custom designs of your photo posts, make sure to include some custom hashtags to go along with them. If your in the jewelry business, try tagging things such as #CustomJewelry, #JewelryDesign or just simply #Diamonds. These hashtags all your images to be pulled up in relevant searches and boost your reach in your social media marketing efforts.

Keep Up with Conversation

When you have an eye catching product and post design, users are sure to comment on these images. So be sure you comment back. You want to always make sure you are taking the time to engage your followers and let them know you appreciate them as an individual. Be sure to address them by name and make the comment contains a personal touch for the individual. These comments will foster a genuine relationship with your audience and is sure to lead to both brand loyalty and sales.

Tuning In to Your Audience

Video marketing is a great way to engage your audience while also providing a form of entertainment for them that promotes and generates a genuine relationship between the company and the target market. Videos allow you to share information, products and business news in a direct and engaging way, as compared to traditional written content. YouTube is the perfect social media site to promote your videos, and here are a few simple key factors to help you maximize your channel traffic.

Add Your Personal Touch

YouTube receives millions of unique visitors every month, with over 6 billion hours of video being watched. In order to get your slice of the marketing pie with this type of traffic, the first step is simply setting up your page. You want to make sure to include the essentials, such as a link to your home website, as well as some well designed page art to grab the audiences attention and give that initial impression of what your business is all about. Be sure to alter your page design on a regular basis, it is recommended to do so quarterly. This keeps your page fresh and lets your followers know you are active.

Variety is the Key to Success

Be sure to use a variety of subjects for your posted videos. Alternate between topics such as new products, how-to instructional videos and even question and answer videos. By alternating your topics, you widen the range of the audience you are attracting. Be sure to include links to your home website and other relevant sources to tie in with the videos that your audience and follow for more information or even to purchase the product you featured.

Be Sure to Share

Don't limit your videos to just your YouTube page. You want to be sure to integrate your videos across all your social media channels. This allows you to build your audience across all of your social platforms. This means you want to link up your pages as well. Make it as simple as possible for your audience to find your other pages, such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn, where they can begin to follow you as well.

Excel in Engagement

Videos are a great marketing tool, and social media networks are making it easier than ever to incorporate them into your marketing strategy. Facebook, Google+ and of course YouTube are allowing for new forms of integration across platforms to allow you to engage and attract your audience like never before.

Do a Demo

Demonstrating a new product or giving your audience a how-to process to solve a common issue are a great way to not just grab their attention, but also grab their loyalty. These videos provide a great platform to demonstrate the options, and uses of not just your products, but ways they can find solutions to common problems in your industry or field. This is a sure way to build a genuine relationship with your target market.

Let Your Audience Get to Know You

Another great way to foster a genuine relationship with your audience is to bring them into your business. Post videos that give a tour of your store, office or restaurant and feature the employees that make the business run. This associates a human side to your business and puts a face with your product. This allows your audience to relate to you more and builds that friendship with your fans. You can take this even further by posting videos that show involvement between you and your community. If you are helping to sponsor a community event or have employees that are participating in that event, use videos to show and share this! Also, ask questions and provide video answers to your audience that addresses both the question, answer and the individual that asked it! This gives that personal touch that people love to see.

Webinars are the Way

Everyone loves education and webinars are a great way to encourage that. Host a webinar where you teach individuals about solving issues, addressing concerns and sharing general knowledge about your field of expertise. This also allows you to take their questions and interact with them individually which lets your fans and audience know you care about them as individuals.

Give THEM a Turn

Host contests or encourage interactions with the audience where they post videos to your page. This not only is a great tool for building your brand awareness and brand loyalty, but it gives you a great opportunity to know your audience and your market even better. It also lets them know you hear them and their ideas, concerns or even their positive feedback about how much they enjoy your business, products or services!