Category: Digital Marketing

Digital marketing includes websites, landing pages, Pay Per Click Ads (like Google Ads), business blogs, video marketing, social media, inbound marketing etc.

Most of the time digital marketing involves creating content in the form of words, images and video (Content marketing) and combining it with call-to-actions to encourage website visitors to subscribe, register or buy something from you.

Digital marketing automation involves enables customers to subscribe or register to receive regular information or updates and enables businesses to stay front of mind so customers buy from them when they’re ready.

Categories
Content Marketing real estate agents

Your Personal Real Estate Agent Website: Much More Important Than You Think

Keep an Active Website

I’ve attended some business building and networking events and have been fascinated at the number of people who speak about the importance of good first impressions and having a professional website. What’s most amazing is that many of these people have a website that hasn’t changed in 2 years!

This is amazing because there are some very powerful website content management systems (CMS’s) like WordPress that enable you to get a website and change it whenever you want. You can even update the news section of your website (usually called a blog).

The most important thing about a website though is that it is often the first time potential customers get to know something about you and how you operate your business. Your warehouse and office are things that they may never see, plus, you can use your website to give them some important information that makes them buy from you straight away.

When we set up a professional website for real estate agents using WordPress, we add and modify the images and words regularly as part of their content marketing strategy, but if a member of their staff wants to make modifications they can – and we help them. Finally professional agents can have an online presence and build their online reputation. However, they can also make changes themselves if they want to.

Categories
Content Marketing Email Marketing

How Google Analytics Will Help Generate More Revenue

Split Testing and Personalised Email Marketing

I recently wrote about using web analytics to determine your website’s conversion rate, which can be used to generate sales leads but for those still unconvinced on the usefulness of analytics, I thought we’d break it down a little further.

Jump On Board the Web Analytics Train

If you’re not on board yet, here are four reasons why you should be!

  1. Search engine optimization: like it or not, SEO is still plays a huge part in how your customers arrive at your website. Using analytics you can see exactly what keywords and key phrases your customers are searching. Know this, and you’re able to create content that makes it almost impossible not to sign up for that newsletter, download an ebook, etc.
  2. Socially active: everyone knows that social media can drive traffic and result in leads, but what platform is best? Analytics answers this question without even breaking a sweat. For some businesses Facebook is the must-have platform, but for other businesses LinkedIn is more useful, so why waste your time on the wrong one if you don’t have to?
  3. A/B split testing: by combining the new-fangled world of web metrics with old school metrics like A/B testing, the internet doesn’t combust, but does, in fact, make fine-tuning your call-to-action strategies a cinch — particularly which ones to use and which ones to ditch.
  4. Personalise email marketing: ever wondered how to increase the open-rate of your newsletters and emails? Wonder no more! Say a user arrives at an ebook download and then subscribes to your newsletter — does that mean they’re interested in a certain product or service? Probably, so why bother them with irrelevant information? This is a particularly useful given the sheer number of emails most people receive today.

By now you should be asking yourself how and where you can find this analytics train so that you can board it. Your 123 brand manager will make sure your real estate agents website is setup for Google Analytics and highlight the most useful information for you.

Categories
Content Marketing Google Analytics

Google Analytics needs time and attention

Attention is What You Want From Readers

If you’re an average reader, I’ve got your attention for about 15 seconds, so here goes: many things we’ve been taught about the web are wrong. One of the biggest mistakes – thinking that clicking is the same as reading.

Not your average reader? Perhaps I’ve got you a while longer… I’ve mentioned on the EzyLearn blog that every business owner should be monitoring their web analytics – and it’s particularly important if you are counting on your website to bring in new enquiries and leads because it enables you to modify the journey and strategy to gain maximum benefit.

What Does Web Analytics Help You With?

Web analytics allows you to determine things like where your visitors originated from, your click rate and your bounce rate.

Google considers any visitor who spends less than 30 seconds on your web page before clicking elsewhere to have “bounced” – and the number of people who bounce from your website is your bounce rate.

Clicks and Conversions

Your click rate is the number of people who have clicked through to your website from a search engine, banner ad, or third party link. The goal is to keep your click rate high and your bounce rate low – this is supposed to demonstrate high engagement with your website, your business or your brand; it’s also supposes to guarantee conversions.

Except that it doesn’t – a fact that’s becoming clear to organisations with large web presences, as web users become more sophisticated as the way we use the web has evolved.

According to Tony Haile, of US company Chartbeat, which provides real-time analytics for companies like Time Inc, Forbes and NBC Universal, businesses should be looking towards something he calls Attention Web and away from clicks and bounce rates.

Time and Attention

Attention Web is not just valuing the number of clicks, but valuing the time and attention visitors give your site. “Time is a rare scarce resource on the web and we spend more of our time with good content than with bad,” Haile says.

For business owners this means you need to give your customers and clients, good, valuable content and start valuing the time they spend reading and engaging with it. Do this and your conversion rate will soar – and in turn, your bounce rate plummet.

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A key cornerstone of our websites for real estate agents offer is the tools to measure how your online presence is performing. Read more about how we measure performance.

Categories
Content Marketing Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

Is Google Your Sugar Daddy

Content Marketing in Your Google Plan

I wrote in an EzyLearn post about marketing action plans, where I mentioned referral marketing and/or networking as a marketing strategy in your marketing plan. That may seem silly to some people, since networking doesn’t always translate to sales straight away, but we’ve discovered another reason why you should include it in your marketing plan: Google!

Google Outlines My Referrals

We were recently at our web stats using the Google Analytics app for Android, when we discovered that even Google separates the traffic to your website from other websites as ‘referrals’. This really highlighted the fact that you can be receiving referrals online from any news or content you make available on the web.

How to Create Great Online Content

The most accessible way to create good content online that will drive independent referrals for your business is to maintain a blog. If you publish a few posts each week that are highly relevant and highly targeted to your readers (your customers), the more likely they are to tweet, like or share your content with their friends, families, and colleagues.

Use YouTube

You could even take it a step further. Maybe you’re an IT consultant and you’re looking for other ways to connect with your customers and provide them with informative content – why not create a few YouTube tutorials that you can embed in your website and share on your social media platforms. With a little care, and some thought to the execution, you’ll set yourself apart from the other IT guys who only talk in gigabytes and mainframes.

Move Up the Google Rankings

The other upside of creating regular content is that you’ll move your way up through the Google ranks, which in turn, will bring you more referrals from Google, too. SEO also plays a big role in your Google rankings, but only so long as you’re creating the quality content that people want.

If you truly want a Google Sugar Daddy, then you need to keep pushing relevant, informative content online, so you can engage with your customers and clients online. Read about Automated Response Marketing Systems (ARMS) as another way of generating regular website visitors (Google likes returning visitors too)