Four Ways To Improve Your Email Marketing

One of the big misconceptions about email mobile marketing is that it has no place in a marketing program because no one reads emails on their smartphones or tablets. The truth is that the smartphone and tablet have not diminished the popularity of emails in any way, and ignoring mobile email marketing is a big mistake.

People read their mobile emails as much as they use their phones to make calls, which makes mobile email marketing and effective advertising tactic. The problem is that website and business owners do not understand how to create a mobile email message that will get read by their target audience. With just a few tweaks of your standard email marketing message, you can get your target audience to start reading your mobile emails and increase your revenue.

Be Selective In How You Use Mobile Email Marketing

It is much easier for a user to go through a series of marketing emails on their laptop or desktop computer than it is to browse emails on a smartphone. While your target audience has opted-in to receive your marketing emails, that does not mean that they want to delete messages from you several times a day just to get to their personal emails.

The best approach is to be selective in how you utilize your mobile emails and avoid filling up the inboxes of your target audience with messages they won’t read. When you have something important to say, then use email marketing to get your point across and make it more effective.

Keep The Subject Short

If your mobile email marketing message has a subject that is more than six or seven words long, then your target audience may not read your message. Remember that the smartphone and tablet offer a smaller readable screen, which will cut off your subject if it is too long. Keep your subject at between six and 10 words and you should have greater success with your mobile emails.

Grab Their Attention

One of the biggest differences between people who do read marketing emails on a smartphone and a standard desktop computer is that the smartphone users tend to scan their emails much faster than desktop users. Your mobile email marketing message needs a strong headline, an attractive and pertinent image and a short but effective message if it is going to have a chance at getting read by your target audience.

Remember The Format You Are Using

As you develop your mobile marketing emails, remember that your target audience will usually only see the subject line and the first line of text. That is why that information needs to be very concise, but it also needs to get your message across and inspire the reader to read the rest of the message. As you develop your mobile emails, remember the limitations of the smartphone format and use those limitations to your advantage.

Text marketing is a very effective way to reach an audience, but you are leaving money on the table if you are not using mobile email marketing as well. By developing a mobile email message that appeals to your target audience and fits the mobile format, you will see a definite improvement in your metric numbers for your mobile email marketing and an increase in overall revenue.

Should You Focus On More Than Just Google?

Internet marketing experts are constantly developing new methods for developing content and websites that appeal to a broad selection of search engines. To the average user, it seems like Google is the only option out there. The truth is that there are other search engines that get enough traffic to justify making them part of your Internet marketing plan.

More Than Google

According to eBizMBA.com, Google has the most monthly unique visitors in the entire search engine world. Google brings in more monthly traffic than the next four search engines combined, but not everyone is using Google to do their online searching.

The next three most popular search engines are Bing, Yahoo! Search, and Ask. Those search engines combine to bring in approximately 895 million unique visitors every month and it is your company’s best interests to not ignore those users. Some of these visitors use Google and other search engines, but many prefer to use something other than Google to get their search results. If you only cater to Google, then you are missing out on millions of potential customers.

Why Does It Matter?

What is the big deal if you only focus your website on Google’s guidelines? For one thing, every search engine has its own guidelines that determine where your website will rank in their results pages. If you take the time to look over the content requirements of the top five search engines, you can create content that will increase your website’s status on all of the top search websites, instead of just one.

Another thing to consider is that Google may not be the search engine your target audience is using. According to Aborg.com, audiences made up of people 35 years of age and older tend to use Bing more than Google. If you are trying to reach a more mature audience, then focusing on the younger demographic that prefers Google may not be the best approach.

What Should I Do?

The science of choosing the right search engine to appease is something that is best left to marketing professionals. If you are focusing all of your energies on Google, then you are utilizing a large search engine, but you may also be wasting your time because your audience is not using Google to do its searches.

When it comes to quality marketing approaches, most business owners tend to ignore demographics. But the need to understand an audience is something that runs through the veins of every Internet marketing professional and it can mean the difference between bringing in the traffic you need, or having your website ignored. Everything about your Internet marketing program centers around the search engines that your target audience is using and that means that you need the kind of detailed planning only a marketing expert can provide.

When you talk to business owners who have websites, you will probably notice that almost every one of those business owners talks about getting their website high up on the Google search results pages. But the problem is that those business owners have no idea if their target audience is even using Google as a resource.

A smart business owner realizes that focusing on Google is an option, but it is not always a necessity. Take a long look at the audience you are trying to reach and use that information to determine which search engine would work best for your business.

The Panda, The Penguin and The Hummingbird

Each time Google releases a new algorithm change it sounds like the company is unleashing a new Batman villain. First it was the Panda, then it was the Penguin, and then we saw the Hummingbird. But these were not one-time upgrades, nor are these terms used to describe the same algorithm. These terms refer to three different algorithms that Google updates on a regular basis. In order to understand the changes in the world of SEO marketing, you must understand these algorithms.

Why Change The Algorithms?

Before we discuss the three primary Google algorithms, we should quickly discuss why Google introduced them in the first place. These algorithms did not replace the existing Google search algorithms, but rather they enhanced what Google already had in place.

When users complain about the quality of results they get with Google’s search engine, Google responds with algorithm changes. To get the changes Google wanted, it had to start adding new algorithms to the ones it already had. That is where these new ones came from and why we can probably expect new Batman supervillain names in the coming years.

The Panda

The Panda was the first new Google algorithm and it was released in 2011. Panda looks for the overall quality of the site and determines if the site is safe and useful to web traffic. If you are keyword stuffing just to bring in traffic, Panda will find you and punish your website. If you do not offer quality content on your website, then Panda will knock your website down in the search engine results. Panda looks for quality content and rewards websites that go out of their way to bring value to each user.

The Penguin

The Penguin appeared almost exactly one year after the Panda and the Penguin deals almost exclusively with links on websites. Prior to the appearance of the Penguin, website owners would buy links that were unrelated to their website content, but could still drive a lot of traffic. The Penguin can determine if the links on your website are purchased or organic (placed as a result of a relationship with the destination site) and if they are related to your content. If you used paid links or your links are unrelated to your content, then the Penguin punishes your website severely.

The Hummingbird

The Hummingbird is a complete renovation of the Google algorithm and affects the way that Google looks at content and resolves user queries. Hummingbird looks for quality content and long-tail keywords that will help to get the user the exact result they are looking for. If the user wants information about a specific type of business in a specific geographic area, then Hummingbird will search website content to filter out any site that does not match the business or geographic needs of the user. Hummingbird is an intuitive upgrade to the Google search process and it is the algorithm that currently gets the most attention from Google.

The Panda, the Penguin, and the Hummingbird have caused businesses to close, while launching other businesses to great success. They are constantly being altered by Google who wants to tweak these algorithms to bring more value to the users. Are these really Internet supervillains? According to Google, they are only villains if your website is trying to cheat the public. Does that make Google Batman? Holy ironic twist.

Why Brainstorming Is Essential To Good Marketing

Whenever we take on a new client, a huge part of our process involves brainstorming ideas. We brainstorm ideas with the client and then we brainstorm among ourselves. There is a significant difference between bouncing ideas off of our clients and sitting down in one of our conference rooms and creating the ideas that will be successful marketing campaigns. While we need client input to create those successful campaigns, we also realize how important it is that our marketing experts come up with the perfect flurry of ideas that will become your marketing program.

What Do We Hope To Accomplish With Brainstorming?

Brainstorming is not the uncontrolled chaos that it has been made out to be. When marketing professionals brainstorm, we look for ideas that are not part of the beaten path. It has become increasingly difficult in this day and age to come up with a unique marketing plan that will gather plenty of attention. When we brainstorm, we are looking for that angle that will help us to develop a logo, press release, pamphlet, or any other type of marketing material that will get your message out to the masses.

What Is Professional Brainstorming?

One of the biggest misconceptions about our idea process is that brainstorming is simply the process of jotting some ideas down on paper and choosing the best one. Good brainstorming, the type that results in good results, is done in a very methodical manner that would actually frustrate anyone who is not intimately familiar with marketing.

When a team of marketing experts is throwing around ideas on a customer topic, it becomes very easy to go off on a tangent that can derail the entire session. The part that our customers find impossible to believe is that brainstorming is not completely about random ideas that bring about spectacular results. Everything in a brainstorming session is carefully choreographed and the results are then analyzed and many are discarded. With professional brainstorming, the trick is to stay on topic while inviting enough creativity to come up with the marketing ideas that will help your company to stand apart.

The Results You See Are From Good Brainstorming

Most marketing companies want you to believe that they have a team of professionals who sit in a conference room and, just like Don Draper in Mad Men, they simply spew out these great ideas. But we want our customers to understand that there is a creative process we go through to help bring about the best possible results and get you a marketing campaign that you deserve.

It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of ideas that get discarded before our experts develop the marketing plan that will work for your company. After the brainstorming is done, then the best ideas are put to the functionality test to see which ones to pursue. Is this idea going to get us the best results, or is it limited by SEO requirements? When you understand the process, then you feel confident knowing that the marketing programs we create are our very best work.

As a marketing company, we need to be creative every single day to get the results our customers need. But it is important to us that our customers know that our creativity is the result of hard work and not something we just come up with off the tops of our heads. We work hard for you because you deserve it!

5 Things Your Website Needs

We talk a lot about creating robust websites, developing a mobile app for your site and utilizing the latest traffic-grabbing techniques to grow your site. But one of the details we have left out is a discussion about the very basic elements that every website needs, yet many websites do not have.

Some of the basic elements of a website are used by visitors all the time, yet we notice that may amateur website developers leave them out. Then there are the elements that do not get used constantly, but are sorely missed when they are left out. When we design your website, we include every element that your traffic is looking for, which is why our websites tend to draw so much repeat traffic and help establish a revenue base for your company.

Testimonials

One of the fastest and easiest ways to build trust on your website is with your happy customers tooting your horn for you. You may already have great reviews on yelp and google that you can use on your website.

A Search Function

Business professionals who own websites that do not sell product often make the mistake of thinking that they do not need a website search function. The key to a successful website is planning for every possible contingency, whether you feel those contingencies are critical or not.

Including a search function on your website is one of those things that you may not think of ever needing, but there is a decent percentage of your traffic that bounces from your site because you do not give them the option of search directly for what the content they need. When you take the time to include all of the important elements to your website, then you will start to see a lot more repeat traffic.

A Site Map

We put site maps on the websites we design because site maps are essential to getting a website cataloged properly by the search engines. But we have also found that site maps get used a lot by visitors and including site maps on websites has become an essential element for us. We also make sure to put the link to the site map in an spot where it is easy to see so that users can access the map whenever they need it.

The Contact Page

When a potential customer wants to contact your company, they may want to call you or email you. That is why putting only a “contact us” link on your site that allows people to send you an email is insufficient for your corporate needs.

If you want your website to look professional, then you need a full contact page that includes a form to fill out to send an email, the company phone number and the company’s physical address. This gives users all of the information they need and shows that you want people to contact your organization.

A Company History Page

We will always believe that people do business with people and not companies. That is why we insist that our customers include a company history page on their website. A company history page is a chance for people to learn a little about your organization and it is also a chance for you to show how your company was founded on the principles of delivering the best quality products and services in the industry.

You may think that your website is complete, but it probably is not. Contact one of our marketing experts today and we will give you a full Internet presence that includes a comprehensive website and a social media management plan that will drive traffic as well.

Marketing Essentials for 2015

It is our job to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to marketing information, which is why we are fully prepared to handle your marketing needs in 2015. The marketing world changes constantly and what worked in 2014 may not work as well in 2015. As the year starts to come to an end, we just wanted to point out for marketing realities for 2015 that we already know.

Keywords Will Be Less Important

Remember those good ol’ days of creating lists of primary and secondary keywords for your website content that would help to drive traffic? Well, those days will be all but over in 2015. As Google continues to change its algorithms, the emphasis will be on quality content and not the use of keywords.

Google’s Panda and Hummingbird updates are working together to try and make searching more intelligent and the Penguin update is being updated to make sure that the links on a website offer value to the user. If it all sounds confusing, don’t worry. We have it under control and we can put content on your site that will drive traffic in 2015.

Social Media Marketing Will Become Huge

Social media marketing is already something that we focus on with strong intensity, but it will become even more intense in 2015. One of the reasons that social media marketing is changing in 2015 is the changes being made by the major social media platforms.

For example, Facebook is no longer the free business marketing platform it once was. If you want to use Facebook to market your business, then you are going to have to pay a lot of very complicated fees. We will help you to understand the new Facebook and use the other social media platforms to your advantage as well.

Organic Links Will Be Critical

Organic link building is when you take the time to work with other website owners to develop relationships that are beneficial to your website users. Anyone who buys links with a lot of traffic going to them is going to be punished severely and that trend will continue to intensify throughout 2015.

Google started cracking down on purchased links with the first Penguin update and there are more Penguin updates being released in 2015. Google now considers it to be spamming when you put purchased links on your website and we have all of the resources necessary to avoid Penguin penalties.

Quality Content Will Become More And More Prevalent

Web content used to be crafted by professionals who knew how to build pages and articles around certain keywords and keyword phrases. As we touched on earlier, keywords are starting to diminish in importance, which means that quality content is going to be king.

We have a team of professional writers who will create your quality content and get your website the attention it deserves. We are prepared for the changes coming in 2015 and we put quality content on your site that will drive plenty of traffic.

In 2015, Google will be looking to change the way that websites create and utilize content. We are prepared for those changes and we are ready to get your website the traffic you need throughout all of 2015 and beyond.

Three Reasons You Need A Pay-Per-Click Campaign

One of the more powerful, yet subtle, online marketing tools available is a form of advertising known as pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC advertising. This is a form of advertising that utilizes search keywords to help put your message in front of a target audience that is interested in what your company has to offer.

At Tom and Company, we are experts in utilizing PPC advertising to get you maximum results for your marketing investment. If you are unsure about using PPC advertising, then here are three good reasons to give us a call and get a PPC campaign started today.

Your Ads Get Seen By A Very Targeted Audience

There is no such thing as an all-encompassing PPC advertising campaign. When we sit down with you to discuss your advertising expectations, we will talk about several segments of your target audience and what keywords we can use to reach those segments. With PPC advertising, you are able to dig deep into your target audience and find something for every consumer.

You can use PPC campaigns to advertise individual products, launch a new product or get exposure for a new promotion. We can develop PPC campaigns that will reach the people in your target audience who are interested in what your company has to say.

Your Ads Get Seen On Some Very Impressive Websites

A PPC campaign operates on a network of websites that can include just about any site you can think of. Your PPC advertising also has a chance to be seen on the front page of Google search results, which allows you to leapfrog the competition and gain valuable real estate on those Google results pages.

A good PPC campaign gets your ads seen on websites that are complimentary to yours. When your customers do a search for your products or services, your ads could show up on a site that offers companion services to yours. You will expand your audience and you will reach more people.

You Only Pay For Results

When you utilize any advertising campaign, you want to get the best value possible. With a PPC campaign, you only pay when someone clicks on the link to your website. We will work with you to develop a realistic budget and help you to get the best return on your marketing dollar. Whenever you can get involved in a marketing program that only charges you when you get positive results, then you have found something worth investing in.

Start Planning A PPC Campaign Now

A good PPC campaign takes time to plan and implement. The longer you wait to contact one of our experts about your PPC campaign, the longer you will have to wait to benefit from the results. We have a step-by-step process that we go through that will determine what we need to do to get your message to the right audience.

A PPC campaign is one part of a comprehensive marketing program. If you want to bring in revenue-generating traffic to your website, then you need to do everything you can to gain maximum exposure for your website. With a PPC campaign from Tom and Company, you will get your marketing message in front of the people who want to see it the most, and that will help to consistently increase your company’s revenues.

Professional Presentation Folders Get People’s Attention

There is the right way to make a good first impression with an important presentation, and there is the wrong way to do it. The wrong way involves using standard presentation folders with sticker and writing on them to try and give the impression that the folders were customized. The right way is to contact Tom and Company and let us create professional presentation folders for your next presentation.

Prove Your Professionalism

True professionals attend to all of the important details and understand the critical nature of looking, as well as acting, like a refined organization. From the moment you walk into the conference room to give your presentation, your customer will be watching every move you make and monitoring everything you say. When you start handing out your hard copy information in our professionally printed folders, then you will establish a first impression that will get your customer’s attention.

Give Your Information Credibility

Our professional presentation folders have a silk finish to them that shows how seriously you take the information you are about to present. If you take your information seriously, then your customer is going to take that information seriously as well. Utilizing our professional presentation folders will help you get the attention of your audience before you even start your presentation.

Create A Lasting Impression

When your presentation is over, your customer will be left with the information you have presented and the care you took to create that presentation. One of the prime examples of the respect with which you treat your information and your customer will be the presentation folder you use to hold your hard copy information.

Your presentation could be a standard PowerPoint presentation with some photocopied pages to accompany it. While your information could work to set you apart from the competition, your familiar presentation will allow your information to get thrown in with everyone else’s and forgotten. But when you use our professional presentation folders, you will make a lasting impression that will give your information and your organization respectability in the eyes of your customer.

We Have An Array Of Options

Along with a variety of colors and a silk finish, we have an array of effects and options that you can choose from to make your presentation folders unique. Contact one of our marketing experts today and we will help you to create a corporate presentation folder that will make your next presentation impossible to forget.

We can highlight your logo with a different texture, or we can add an effect to your presentation title that really makes it stand out. Gives us a call and we can discuss our full line of options for our presentation folders that will give you the professional appearance you are looking for.

When you want your customers to take your message and your company seriously, then you have to show that you are serious about what you do. Our presentation folders allow you to set the proper tone for your next presentation and help you to elevate your level of professionalism in the eyes of your customers.

What Is Remarketing & Why Do You Need It?

If you spend enough time looking for a good Internet marketing firm, then you are bound to see all of the industry buzz words thrown around and used with reckless abandon. At Tom and Company, we are determined to make sure that our customers not only understand what all of those buzz words mean, but that they also know how those processes can be utilized to increase their revenue.

One of the buzz words you may have heard from other companies is remarketing. This is a process that should be part of your business process and utilized on a regular basis. By examining information from customers who showed strong interest in your site, you can focus in on the keywords and SEO tactics that will generate more revenue.

Remarketing Prevents Customers From Forgetting About Your Company

The concept behind remarketing is actually very simple. Let’s say a customer fills up a shopping cart on your website with $50 worth of products and even goes as far as to give you their email address as well. Then, before the checkout process is completed, that customer suddenly ends the transaction and leaves the cart filled.

With remarketing, we will examine that cart and create a focused marketing campaign designed at grabbing the interest of the client and getting them to complete that shopping cart and buy more product. We will use focused marketing to put links and ads in front of that customer which will make sure that the customer never forgets your company.

We Use Remarketing Information To Expand Your Exposure

Another effective use for remarketing information is to put together advertising programs that reach a more focused audience. For example, that customer with the $50 cart may have put together a collection of products that seem unrelated. But we look at it as a buying trend, and we will create a marketing plan that reaches out to customers just like this one. We will grab people who want that same combination of products and hope up an entirely new client base for your website.

Never Assume That Lost Customers Are Lost For Good

There are many reasons why customers fill up a shopping cart and then leave the transaction incomplete. But regardless of the reason, customers who abandon shopping carts are going to be easier to convert into buying customers than cold leads. When you do not have a remarketing plan in place from Tom and Company, you are leaving money and recurring business on the table.

Remarketing allows you to create focused marketing programs that are designed to inspire customers to buy from your site and become loyal customers. Since the customers we target in a remarketing program have already expressed a strong interest in your business, we can use the products they almost purchased as the foundation for an effective marketing campaign.

Give us a call and we will be more than happy to explain what remarketing is and how it can help you. We will also be more than happy to explain any of those other marketing buzz words you have heard that may be confusing you. At Tom and Company, we want to be your main Internet marketing resource and we want to be the one marketing company you trust to bring you the revenue you need.

Five Reasons Why Your Website Is Failing Miserably

When you start a business website, you naturally hope that your website starts to generate revenue and adds as an enhancement to your primary revenue streams. If your website is the primary way you do business, then web traffic becomes extremely critical to your success.

Despite the importance of your website and all of the effort you put into it, you are still not getting the kind of traffic you need. We can give you five good reasons why your website is failing miserably and we offer the solutions to those problems as well.

1. You Are Trying To Do It On Your Own

If you owned a brick and mortar store, would you build the storefront on your own, or would you hire professional builders? If you want a storefront that lures foot traffic into your store, then you hire a professional to build it for you.

The same principle applies to your website and its maintenance. When you try to build and maintain your own website, you are not getting the professional results you need to bring in traffic. When you allow a professional organization such as ours to build and maintain your website, then you will have something that will attract customers.

2. Your Site Is Dormant

How often do you add new content to your website? If you want to bring in a steady flow of new clients, then you need to add new content to your website every single day. Whether it is a slew of new products or an engaging new blog post, you need to give people a reason to visit your site and spend their money.

3. Your Coding Is Sloppy

Sloppy website coding will cause your website to take longer to load and it will also steer the various search engines away from your site. Our staff of Internet professionals will make sure that your coding is always clean, which will keep the traffic flowing and put your website in a position to be ranked higher in the search engine results.

4. Your Website Is Boring

Creating an exciting website is definitely a job for professionals. Bright colors and animated graphics are not what make a website exciting to users. You need a site that offers the things that your users want in ways that are interesting to them. If you sell products, then put your pricing promotions on the front page to entice people to enter your site. There are many ways to make a website exciting and our experts know them all.

5. You Don’t Do The Right Marketing

As a company of marketing experts, we pride ourselves in knowing how to get exposure for your website. Doing the right kind of marketing is much different than doing a lot of marketing. You can pay for ads on your own and spend all day on Facebook, but that is not going to bring you traffic. You need to find people who are interested in what your site has to offer and then get your message directly to those people. That is what our team of experts is extremely good at.

Let us show you how a successful website looks and works. Gives us a call and we will make the changes to your site that will bring you the success you are looking for.