The most important aspect to any marketing campaign is ROI. (Results!) One of the campaigns that we are proud of is taking one of our workshop events from only 6 registrations, to 30 within only one week! We had started to advertise our “Take A Bite Out Of Your Competition” workshop a couple weeks prior to the event. We used Eventbrite, event registration website, to get people to sign up for our marketing workshop. Just a week prior to the event we were only at 6 event registrations. This was so disappointing, we actually considered canceling the workshop! Even though numbers were small, we didn’t give up hope and continued to advertise and market our event. Due to our effort, the number of registrations started to ramp up to about 3 per day within one week! The event went off without a hitch and we successfully had 30 people registered by the night of our event. We only spent a minimal amount of marketing dollars on Facebook ads to have a maximized result!
If you’re a organization that hosts events, seminars or workshops, let us put your event registrations on hyper-speed to ensure your seats are full and your attendance is jammed packed! Reach out today to discuss some solutions that will produce results for your event.
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The landscape of doing business in the digital era has changed. The mainstream utilization of the internet was supposed to level the playing field for small businesses. Large corporations had the monopoly on advertising using big money to purchase television ads, billboards, radio spots and feature print ads. Once the first small business website went up online, the game changed dramatically. A whole new market opened up for small businesses to get exposure, not just on a local scale, but potentially global. But now look what has happened. You have a website, its sitting on the interwebs, but it’s not converting business like you would have hoped. Or even worse, maybe your reading this and you think that your industry or business doesn’t need a website so you currently don’t have one. All things considered, here are a few thoughts as to why your business is running on empty while your competition is squashing you like a bug:
5. Poor User Experience
So you have a website, but have you had it tested? Have you gotten feedback from peers or potential users of the site as to how easy it is to find things or the speed to which the page loads? All these things can be causing those who happen to actually find your website to click that back button and go on to your competitors page or to “x” out all together. According to a website called Kissmetrics, 40% of people say they abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. For an e-commerce site, this could cost you millions of dollars in sales per year.
4. Poor Design
Is your website dated? I view prospective clients websites all day and the first thing I’m looking at is the dates of the copyright at the bottom of the footer. If the last time your website had a face lift was back in 2003, or heck 2010, your site is outdated. Current web design trends change on average every 6 months. Now you don’t have to do a complete site overhaul every six months, but you should at least be giving your website a fresh look every two years. A poorly designed website created by your nephew, communicates something…amateur.
3. No Traffic
Ok so now you have a nice looking, professional website…now what? Who is actually finding you? Many website owners don’t even know the amount of monthly hits they are accumulating nor do they measure any kind of analytics. Make sure your website is Search Engine Optimized with at least the basic SEO techniques to get your website indexed with major search engines and be found.
2. No Call To Action
This is a very important feature you have to nail on your website. What do you want the user to do? Do you want them to call you, sign up on your email list or purchase something? All of these factors have to be taken in consideration to get the most use our of your website. Slideshare provides a helpful tutorial that includes some “Do’s and Don’ts for Clickable Calls To Action”.
1. You Don’t Have One
Are you still advertising in the Yellow Pages? Everyone knows that people use the Yellow Pages book for a door stopper, high chair for their kids or kindle. For the same price you advertise in the phone book, you should have your own piece of web real estate. If not your missing out on the the 95% of the human race that searches online for goods and services these days. According to an AT&T Small Business Tech Poll still only 67% of small businesses are using a website to market to their customers. Make sure you make creating an online presence part of your overall marketing strategy. Trust me, it will be well worth it.
If you still haven’t decided to get a website done or you have a website, but are seeing that its lacking, contact Severity Design to schedule a website evaluation or to discuss your project. We are happy to make our customers happy and can get your website up and on the web in as little as 3-4 business days!
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Is it just me or have you too been hearing lots of commercials and advertisements about getting a “free” website from Wix or Weebly on the radio. As I’m writing this, I also witnessed a Facebook ad marketing the same thing. When you hear or see these ads say this with me out load “Wix and Weebly, NO THANKS!” Oh don’t get me wrong, I shall explain…
Wix and Weebly have been around for some time now, so these companies are, obviously, not new. However, I think most of us aren’t stupid. Somewhere down the line, when we all started our business we were advised that “if its too good to be true, it probably is.” This definitly goes for Wix and Weebly’s free website builder.
1. Have you seen the templates? Ewwww
Generic templates, drag and drop images, stretched out logos. These are design nightmares that make the internet a horrible place to visit. Unless you are a professional designer with the proper software to create proper graphic images, please put the mouse down. Your pixilated photos are not going to appeal to your users and you’ll do more harm than good. Building a website is not as easy as Wix or Weebly make it sound. There is some design knowledge required to create beautiful designs. With a free template, your risking looking just like your competition.
2. Free means cheap. If you want quality, Wix and Weebly charge.
When something says “free” you should be skeptical. Yes, Wix and Weebly are free…to sign up. You’ll be able to go through the steps of creating a generic template of a website if that’s all you need. However, if you’re a serious business that is trying to compete in the online market, you’ll need a bit more functionality that Wix and Weebly may or may not provide, but at a premium. Don’t believe me? Does this look like “free”?
3. Good luck finding Wix and Weebly sites on Search Engines (not good SEO)
Wix can make a decent website. There’s no question about it. But did you know that if a website is all Flash-based (which Wix is, for the most part), it’s practically dead to Google? Flash does not scale to fit a screen size. This is important for many reasons, but mostly because of accessibility for mobile users. Even the Android users who can see your website may not be able to see all of it without scrolling around on their devices. Google looks at accessibility when they decide where your website will rank for a given search term.
4. Browser compatibility issues. Wix and Weebly don’t give you complete back end control, not allowing you to format for a variety of browsers.
Not to mention mobile compatibility. How does the Weebly and Wix website look on a iPad or mobile device? These types of variables and different browsers require additional coding that Wix and Weebly may not provide you access to. In most cases, its worth it to pay a web designer to get a sufficient guarantee that when someone goes to your website on Chrome or IE9 they aren’t going to get a black screen with a bunch of code on it and misplaced images.
The list goes on and on, but rather bore you, just Google the issues yourself and make an informed decision. I understand there are people out there that need something basic for a web presence…like my mom. But if you’re a serious small business owner, don’t be duped by Wix or Weebly just because it advertises DIY “free”. Remember, you get what you pay for.
So you have a website, but it’s not doing exactly what you want it to do. You’ve spent all this money to get up and running, but does it perform?
Download this FREE educational whitepaper that explains 5 of the most important things your website needs in order to be successful.
You only have a few seconds to gain the attention of the user. Often times our websites over promise and under deliver when it comes to SEO tactics and what is actually found on our page. In order to convert web visitors into customers, the first thing we have to make sure is that our website is grabbing their attention. If you have a website that is a sub-par, DIY template website, then chances are you are not going to convert visitors into leads.
Many small businesses are afraid of social media. Just think of all the companies that ban internet usage and Facebook usage and you’ll understand what I mean.
What these companies and businesses don’t realize is that social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN can create powerful brand awareness, advertising and customer relationships among other things.