Tips for Creating a Recognizable Brand Online

One of the most important steps in getting word-of-mouth, repeat business is to help people remember your company by creating an easily recognizable brand. In fact, if you look at the most successful e-commerce websites, such as Yahoo!, Amazon, Google, and Monster, you’ll see that it can be more important for your name to be easy to say, easy to type, and easy to remember than it is to be clear about your business purpose.

Here are five tips to help you create a brand that people will recognize and remember.

Design a Logo that Speaks for Your Company
In a very real sense, your logo symbolizes your company, so it’s worth investing the time and money to create one that’s easily recognizable, that can be used in a wide range of advertising media, and that conveys the essence of your company in a glance. Think of how Nike doesn’t even need to spell out its name– the swish logo is enough.

Create a Catchy Tagline
In television and radio advertising, companies use jingles to make their taglines echo in their customers’ ear. Chances are if you hum a few notes from a popular advertisement, most people in the room will instantly think of the brand it advertises. Although music may be a difficult way to popularize taglines online, you can use puns, wit, and the natural rhythm of words to create a tagline that will summarize the nature of your business while encouraging people to remember it and pass it on to other potential customers.

Develop a Signature Colour Scheme
Colours say a lot online. Cooler colours, such as blues and greens, are relaxing and soothing, while warmer colours, like reds and yellows, convey excitement and enthusiasm. Think about the colours you want to utilize, and decide upon a scheme that you will use to represent your company.

Make Your Web Pages Consistent
No matter which page of your website a visitor encounters, they should be able to immediately identify their current location and how to get to more information. You can help them do this by creating a good navigational system and keeping your look consistent throughout your website. This means using the same colour scheme and font choices throughout the site and displaying your logo and tagline on each page. Menus and other navigational aids should be placed consistently in the same part of each page.

Carry That Look Over into Other Advertisements
Not only should your website look consistent from page to page, but your other advertisements should also conform to the same style. Whether you are creating banner ads on other websites or flyers and newspaper inserts for offline advertising, your customers should be able to recognize your company’s ads even before they read a single word of text.

By following these five simple steps, you can start building a brand that people will notice and remember.

If you would like to improve your brand recognition, call 01491 614121 for a no-obligation consultation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can Viral Marketing Boost Your Business?

Viral marketing sounds like something that people should inoculate against, but in reality, more and more businesses are embracing it. In fact, research by eMarketer shows that the viral marketing trend is expected to grow steadily through at least the year 2011. So, what is it, and how can your business put it to work for you?

Why So Many Companies are Turning to Viral Ads

Simply put, viral marketing is an advertising method that spreads naturally and of its own accord. Word-of-mouth is one of the oldest and most reliable forms of viral marketing. For centuries, businesses have courted referrals from satisfied customers, knowing what a powerful influence those referrals have on the success of their marketing campaigns. After all, which are you more likely to trust, a newspaper ad for a new restaurant or a rave review from a trusted friend?

The online advertising arena is an especially good breeding ground for viral marketing. Internet technology makes it simple to tell friends about great products and services by sending links, forwarding email newsletters, or filling out forms that are pre-generated by companies.

Viral marketing online takes a number of different forms beyond simple referrals, such as the following:

Article marketing, where different websites and newsletters pick up your writing and publish it across the Internet, this is a very powerful form of viral advertising.

Free email providers, such as Yahoo and Hotmail, engage in viral advertising by appending links to their services to each email their users send.

Companies use content sharing sites such as YouTube for viral advertising by creating and uploading funny media clips which viewers enjoy and send to their friends.

There are four main reasons why viral marketing is so popular among online businesses:

1. Extensive Reach. Viral ads can spread into areas which paid marketing cannot reach. For example, although it may be impossible to buy an ad in a particular newsletter list, it may be possible to get an honourable mention or full-blown recommendation as a result of a funny, clever or puzzling video, quiz or forum thread. Similarly, your article may be published on websites and newsletters that do not accept online advertisers.

2. Low Cost. Usually, it costs little to nothing to get a viral marketing campaign underway. You will have to create humorous, unique, and creative content to encourage people to forward it to others, but you won’t be paying per click or per impression for your traffic.

3. Increased Trustworthiness. Many types of viral ads, such as personal referrals, carry far more weight with potential customers than simple paid ads ever could. The traffic that is generated is therefore far more valuable to your company.

4. Focused Targeting. If your viral media campaign is targeted to a specific consumer group, by featuring content that is relevant and attractive to that demographic, the likelihood is that it will get passed on to other people of the same grouping.

Using viral marketing is one of the best ways to reach the most people at the lowest cost and highest conversion rate. Don’t overlook this powerful tool in your own marketing campaigns.

If you would like a no-obligation consultation to explore how a viral marketing campaign could work for your business, please call 01491 614121.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How Paid Search Can Benefit Your Business

If there’s one type of website that nearly every Internet user is likely to visit, it’s a search engine. Billions of searches are performed on the major search engines every week, and a large percentage of those searches are made by people who are actively seeking products and services to buy online. If you want to get your offers out in front of these people, you have two major choices: search engine optimization and paid searches.

Many e-businesses pursue good rankings in the natural search results and ignore paid searches; however, there are some very good reasons for investing in PPC search advertisements. Here are a few:

Low-Cost Advertising with a Broad Reach

Get the Flexibility to Fit Your Budget

No matter what the size of your company’s ad budget, you can enjoy the benefits of paid search. You can set spending limits, target underused niche keywords, and focus on specific locations to maximize your ad spend.

Track Your Effectiveness
PPC search ads give you unprecedented opportunities to track the return on your investment. Tweak the wording of ads, keyword specifications, and the time of day that your advertisements are run to ensure that you are getting the most for your money.

Ensure Placement for Competitive Keywords
If you are in a competitive business, there might be keywords that you’d love to use in order to attract customers, but you just can’t get into the top natural (free) search engine rankings results. Paid search advertisements can get you onto the first page of even the toughest keywords related to your business.

Reinforce the Effectiveness of Your Natural Results
Having paid and natural search results on the same page actually increases the trust that searchers have in the results. In other words, even if you’re already ranked for a keyword, a paid search can reinforce the positive impression that visitors have of your ad and increase the likelihood that they click through to your website.

See Results Fast
High natural search results can take months or even years to achieve. Paid search campaigns, on the other hand, can be online in just minutes. You can get immediate results while you wait for your search engine optimization to bring you to the top of your industry listings.

Sound interesting? Why not test a paid search campaign with Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter today. If you would like a no-obligation consultation regarding a paid search campaign, please call 01491 614121.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Directing Your Visitors With Calls to Action

Building a website for your business requires a significant investment of time, energy, and money. The last thing your company needs is for your site to be merely decorative. Instead, you want to use your web presence to attract, inform, and convert visitors into paying customers.

To do this, you need a site that engages your visitors and uses calls to action to guide them along the path you want them to take. Here are five steps that will help your site be more engaging and produce better results for your business.

Define Your Goals
If you don’t know what you want your website to achieve, the chances are very low that you will be successful. In order to be productive, you need to outline the results that you would like to see. The benefits that your website could provide for your company should be considered from a number of different perspectives—sales, branding, customer service, human resources, and technical support—for a start. Then, prioritize your goals so you know which should receive the highest emphasis.

Create Your Content with Those Goals in Mind
Consider which types of content are most likely to attract your target audience. What questions might they have? What concerns can you resolve? For example, if selling a product is one of the goals of your e-business, you might consider content such as photographs of the product from different angles, customer testimonials, articles that describe how to use the product effectively, and case studies that show results.

Use Strong Calls to Action to Show People Where to Go Next
Never leave a customer stranded on a web page or wondering where to go next. Instead, use a strong call to action to provide legible road signs that will help visitors find more information or take the next step in fulfilling your goals (e.g., filling out a contact form or making a purchase). Most importantly, don’t be oblique! Use clear language in your calls to action to show them how to take the next step.

Give Visitors Reasons to Get Involved
Websites that talk “at” visitors are not as effective as those that engage visitors in a dialogue. To this effect, you want to encourage your users to interact and get involved in your site. Offering them a chance to fill out a survey or win a prize are a couple ways to encourage your visitors to connect with your site.

Make it Easy for Customers to Find Help and Give Feedback
One of the most common reasons why visitors leave the action path that you’ve created for them is that they experience a problem or issue that you didn’t foresee. If your visitors can’t find easy solutions, they are likely to simply walk away from your site. Make it easy for visitors to get help, search for information, and get in contact with you if they need further assistance, and they will be much more likely to stick around.

By following these simple persuasion architecture techniques, you can have a dramatic effect on the productivity of your website. It’s a good idea to test the effectiveness of your changes by asking people who are not familiar with your site to try out your navigation and see how easily they can complete your website goals. If some of the methods covered in this article interest you, please call 01491 614121 for a no-obligation consultation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why is Article Marketing So Powerful?

Most people are only willing to invest time in creating high-quality content in order to draw people to their websites, or perhaps they aim to make money directly by selling articles for publication; however, more and more people and companies are creating great articles and simply giving them away.

Why? Article marketing is a fantastic way to earn more money for freelancers, consultants, and corporate websites alike. Here are five ways that free article marketing can result in a huge payoff down the road.

How Writing Free Articles Can Benefit Your Business

1. Express Your Views About Your Industry - Article marketing gives you the chance to communicate very directly with your customers and contemporaries in your industry. Instead of having to stick to marketing verbiage, you can give advice, express opinions, and go into depth about your products and services. Article marketing also gives you the opportunity to express your thought about your industry in general and not just your specific little corner of it.

2. Viral Marketing Spreads Your Message Across the Internet - Article marketing can be extremely viral. If you write an interesting piece, it may be picked up by websites, newsletters, and other publications, spreading across the Internet at breakneck speed. It would be hard to purchase this sort of exposure, and you can get it for free.

3. Create a Buzz About Your Brand - Article marketing also helps you place your name or your company’s name in the forefront of your customers’ minds. People who might never have heard of you will now associate you with the insight and quality of your writing.

4. Establish Yourself as an Expert - If your articles are solid and informative, people will start to see you or your company as a true leader in the industry. This will increase the trust that they have in your company and raise the chances that they’ll become paying customers. Your articles can be the difference between not existing in the minds of consumers and becoming the go-to organization for your industry.

5. Drive Traffic and Business - Article marketing allows you to include links back to your website that will be included every time your article is used. This can help to build your Google ranking while driving direct traffic to your website. This traffic will be highly targeted, and the visitors who come through this link will already have positive associations with your business. The most valuable traffic is that which has the highest chances of becoming paying customers – and you got it for free.

Article marketing is an extremely powerful tool for anyone looking to make money online, from independent writers to huge companies. If you would like a develop an article marketing strategy, call 01491 614121 for a no-obligation consultation.