If you are a devoted tweeter, you should be posting your most important content between 1 pm and 3pm Eastern (10 am to 1 pm Pacific). This will give you the best click rate, especially early on in the week. For best results, you should avoid posting after 8 pm throughout the week, and 3 pm on Fridays

Twitter will require a little more upkeep to be successful as the half life of a post is about 2.8 hours

To reach your fans on Facebook, you should post between 1 pm and 4 pm to get the most interaction to your post. The best time overall to post during the week is at 3 pm on Wednesday

According to bit.ly, although traffic on Facebook begins to increase around 9 am, it’s best to wait until 11 am to post your update. Similarly to twitter, traffic from Facebook begins to wane after 4 pm, and posting should be avoided altogether after 8 pm and before 8 am

If you are taking advantage of the benefits of  Tumblr, you will be on a completely different schedule. To get the best results here, you will need to wait until at least 4 pm Eastern, and posting after 7 pm will help get you the best return on your investment.

While it’s not the best idea to post on a Friday evening with Facebook and Twitter, this is the time that Tumblr will give you the best opportunity to post.

So what does all of this information mean? Mainly that each social networking site has it’s own culture, and each community has its own habits that you will have to adjust your strategies to. By analyzing the times your posts get the most attention, and maybe by doing some experimenting, you will be able to find the formula that works best for your network of people.

Because each site has different optimal posting times, it’s best to set up a schedule of when you will post on each social media site and stick to it. Setting up reminders will help you stay on track, and help you make the most out of your valuable time.

What is the time of day that you get the most results from your posts? We’d love to hear your feedback and see what has been working for you.

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Most people have had the horror experience of filling out a form and getting calls from 20 companies that have nothing to do with the service you were looking for. Because of situations like this, we’ve all become a little weary when we see a page asking for our information. Making sure that people trust your page enough to give you their information is a great thing to focus on after you’ve gotten your page set up. We’ve listed 10 ways to earn the trust of those visiting your landing page.

1. Make Sure Your Call To Action Matches the Landing Page Content

Advertising one thing in a paid ad and something completely different in the landing page is the easiest way to get someone to leave that site! Making sure that you have different landing pages for each campaign you are running is important. Sometimes we get so caught up in the idea that our call to action has to be amazing that it has nothing to do with what the next page they see will be offering. You just wasted your time, your customer’s time, and precious marketing dollars if they clicked on a paid advertisement.

To make everyone happier, it is critical that you make sure the call to action matches what you are selling on the landing page. If you are offering a free guide on how to resolve an issue they have, don’t offer them a 20% off coupon for you to solve the problem for them.

2. Write Clear Verbiage Explaining What They Will Receive With the Offer

It is very easy for people to misread copy or construe their own meaning when they are reading. This is why it is crucial to make sure your landing page fully explains what they will get in exchange for filling out that form. If you are clear in what you are offering, you will live up to your end of the bargain and appear trustworthy.

If you are offering a free newsletter in your call to action, but the page they land on next isn’t clear in what they can expect, there is a greater chance the visitor will leave your page. When our clients offer a free e-newsletter sign up through a homepage button, we make sure it is linking to a form that lets the user know what to except in exchange for providing contact information. On the Call to Action button, a newsletter is promised, and this is reflected in the next page as well.

3. Include Contact Info for Your Company

Although they probably won’t use it, disclosing contact information for your visitors to use to find out more information about you is an easy way to make them feel at ease. Providing your contact information shows them that you are a real company and aren’t afraid to hide your true identity. It adds to your credibility as a valid business, and lets them know you are not a fly by night overnight scam.

The more information you have (links to social media accounts, Google Maps, etc) the more your visitors will fill at ease.

4. Don’t ask Questions That are too Intrusive

Even if they feel comfortable with your landing page, the potential customer might still be reluctant to pass over too much information. If you include basic questions that won’t set them on edge, it will let you collect the information you need while avoiding questions that may send them running. Trial and error is the best way to test how deep you can dig. Trying different forms running side by side is a good indicator of what questions people aren’t willing to answer before speaking with you and allow you to create a formula that works for you and the customer.

Differentiating between required and option fields will also help signify that it isn’t required for the client to give out all of the information you are asking for. Using asterisks on required fields is a great way to set those questions apart from the rest.

5. Provide a Link to Your Privacy Policy

Giving visitors a link to your privacy policy is a great way to let them see how you will use the information they provide. Reassuring them that their information will not be sold to other companies and letting them know they can request not to be contacted at any time will help set them at ease and feel comfortable with filling out your form.

6. Display Seals of Approval from Third-Party Companies

Displaying your 5 star Zillow rating logo or A+ BBB grade will help the clients know that you have been recognized by independent companies for the excellent service that you provide. Also providing security logos will help the client feel reassured that their information won’t be compromised.

7. Give Purchasers a Chance to Review a Summary of Their Purchase

If your landing page allows users to purchase a product, it is very important to disclose any extra handling or shipping fees upfront so they won’t be surprised by hidden fees. This will eliminate any chance that they will feel tricked. Allowing them to view all details of what they will receive and estimated shipping times will also help set them at ease before hitting that submit button to complete the order.

8. Include Reviews and Testimonials From Past Clients

Showing potential customers that you’ve made people happy with your services in the past is the best way to make them feel at ease. If you have feedback from several clients, this will help them see that you are offering a legitimate service that they will be happy with. If you are a current 220 Marketing customer with a landing page, ask one of our representatives about a customized Testimonial Scroll widget. This tool will allow visitors to see a list of reviews that are pulled directly from your site without taking up too much space.

9. Use Proper Spelling and Grammar

Having multiple spelling and grammatical errors on a landing page can make it look like you are lazy and don’t really care about representing your company in the best possible light. If you can’t take the time to have a professional proofread your page for errors, why would anyone want to hand over their information to you? Having another colleague read your copy and running it through a spell check machine will help save you a lot of headaches down the road, and make you appear professional and on top of your game.

10. Present an Overall Professional Appearance

If your landing page looks like a 10 year old put it together, chances are you won’t get much response from it. Besides having grammatically correct copy, it is also important to make sure that the layout and overall design of your landing page looks like it was put together by a professional, signaling that you really care about how you are perceived. Little things can provide a subconscious feeling of unease for some visitors.

Have a trusted third party take a look at your landing page and tell you their gut reaction of how the page makes them feel. If you have several designs you are trying to narrow down, show them all and get their feedback about which ones would make them feel safe enough to fill out the form. Asking them for specific details of what makes them feel the way they do will help you get a feel for things to make sure you avoid and include in each landing page.

Having too many different font sizes and types could your page look too busy. Using colors like red can have a subconscious effect in making the client want to stop what they are doing and leave the page. Including too many exclamation points can take away from the professional aspect while flashing animations can distract users from the most important aspect—the form!

Now that you have some tips to work off of, take a really good look at the landing pages you already have created. At 220 Marketing, we really work with our clients to ensure their landing pages are getting the best results, and we are willing to make adjustments until we find what will work best for your conversion rate! Our clients can always call our customer service department for some feedback if they need help with landing page design or content.

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1. Pop-Up Ads

If you have ever visited a website and been bombarded with pop-up ads, you know how irritating closing all of those little windows can be. While an email sign up or survey invite may help you generate a few leads, for the most part it is going to make people run from your site.

If you are asking for information before the client even has a chance to have the site completely load, you are probably losing several potential customers. Removing the pop-up ads and creating clear call to action buttons will help decrease your bounce rate, and increase the amount of leads you get.

2. Automatically Playing Media Content When the Page Opens

Yes, we get it; you spent a lot of time and money creating the talking head video on your homepage and it looks awesome. If you have video or music auto play as soon as the site loads, however, you may get a customer in trouble if they are trying to quietly view your site during their work day.

Setting music or video to begin when landing on your website may cause someone to click away from the site if they were not expecting any noise to come from their speakers. It is also a nuisance for clients who may be visiting your site frequently, as they have probably now heard this promotion several times. Providing access to this media content is very helpful, but letting the visitor choose whether or not they want to interact with the video will make for happier customers.

3. Distracting Animations

The flashing button you put in your header may draw attention to your lead capture page, but it can distract clients during the critical three seconds they have to focus on your page after landing on it and cause them to hit the back button to leave. While flashing animations and auto-play videos may look cool and have a great design, removing them from the site can really let your customer focus on what your site has to offer that is relevant to them.

4. Generic Stock Photography

Having photos on your site can help engage clients and make your page more appealing. Having pictures of attractive models sitting around a conference table looking at a computer can defeat the positive points of having images.

Providing generic photos can be insulting to your clients’ intelligence (they know your employees don’t really look like that) and also take away from a great opportunity to advertise yourself as a local company. Providing a photo of all of your staff, your office, or even a local landmark can really drive home the point that you are down the street and really know the area and the people around you. If you brand your company nationwide, adding images that showcase your products or the services you offer can help you as well.

5. Having a Contact Us form instead of Contact Information

If your Contact Us section only leads to a lead capture tool, you may be missing out on potential customers. If a person wants an answer to a single question, and doesn’t want to have to worry about receiving your newsletter every month, they will not fill out the form that you provide.

Providing a Contact Us form for regular customers is great, but you should also include additional ways for people to get in contact with you without guessing what else they will get besides an answer to their question. Listing a phone number, email address, or social media site they can reach you through will help you answer questions for potential customers that may help lead them to finally make a purchase.

6. Incoherent About Us page

Was your About Us content written for your consumers to understand, or is it filled with industry buzzwords that may confuse them? Reading your profile information after writing it and weeding out ambiguous or confusing language can really help lay out what you provide for your customers and let them know it is relevant to them. Sometimes it may also help to have a friend or family member not in the industry proofread your copy. If they can understand it, chances are your customers will as well.

7. SEO-Driven Copy

If you went through Web 101 when people first started focusing on being picked up on by the search engines, you learned that providing a couple paragraphs of keywords at the bottom of the page would help get you found.

Google has become a little wiser over the years, and it’s time you grew along with them. Not only will writing solely for the search engines make potential customers leave because it is visually unappealing or they can’t understand it, Google is now punishing sites with content written just for bots that crawl through the site. Write for humans first, and then go back in and add a few key terms for the search engines.

8. Not Including Share Buttons for Social Media Sites

If you have really interesting content on your site that gets customers excited, but they don’t have an easy way to share this information with friends, you are missing out on a big opportunity. Including share buttons for all social media sites on each page is an easy way to promote your content and help get it seen by a bigger audience while driving traffic to your site.

9. You Don’t Have a Blog

Blogging is a way to expand the About Us section of your website and really showcase your expertise. It will allow you to show your personality through your writing style, as well as allow readers to see your growth over time. This allows you to let people researching you or your company to find out a little more information and have a place to return back to with information that is constantly being updated. For most web hosting companies, it is really simply to either link to or frame in a blog that you update regularly on a blog website. This will also provide a reciprocal link back to your website from a relevant source.

10. Titles and Content Don’t Match

If a customer clicks on a link from an email or the search engines about one topic, and is taken to a page about something completely different, you are going to have an unhappy customer on your hands and leave a bad taste in your mouth. Having catchy titles for pages is important to get that reader on to your website, but matching the content to that title is even more important to convert that visitor to a customer. This will help you appear reliable, and not make them feel like they were tricked into clicking on that link.

11. Your Call to Action Doesn’t Match the Offer

Promising a client 50% off any product on a call to action button, then including a disclaimer that the client has to spend $500 first is the quickest way to ruin your reputation and make that campaign fail. Pulling the bait and switch will make customers lose faith in you, so make sure your call to action isn’t a far stretch from what you are really offering.

12. Your Internal Linking Isn’t User Friendly

Internal linking can be your best friend to make your website easy to use and easy for the search bots to navigate when crawling through your site. The key to making the most out of your internal links is making sure that they link to relevant pages. Linking to pages that don’t match up with the wording will confuse clients, and make the search engines think you don’t have content relevant to what you are speaking about.

Sometimes we may have to settle linking a phrase that isn’t the most keyword friendly to have it make sense for the client, but it will be better for you in the long run. It is also important to open all links in a new tab or browser to allow the customer to keep reading their current page.

13.  Slide shows That Take Forever to Load

Slide shows offer a great way to showcase several products or services while saving on the precious real estate of your pages. If you have a slide show that requires the page to reload for each slide, however, you may be doing more harm than good. If a client has to wait to long to see the next slide, they will lose interest and leave the page. If possible, create a slide show that allows the client to easily navigate between slides without having to visit a new page to allow them to see all you have to offer with ease.

14. Using Flash

Flash can make your site look amazing, but it’s not the friendliest format for your customers or the search engines. It takes a while to load, requires the customer to have the latest version updated, and is not legible to the search engines. It also may prevent some clients from seeing the information that is relevant to them if they don’t want to wait for the presentation to end, or make them irritated if they do have to wait to see simple information.

15.I Don’t Know What To Do

If a customer comes to your website and doesn’t know what to do or get to what they are interested in finding, they won’t have the patience to click around to find it. Putting the main elements of your product under easy to find buttons will help lay out what you want your customers to find. 220 Marketing websites are designed to showcase the things we know our clients need to make accessible to their clients with buttons at the top and all other distracting links hidden. This allows customers to come into the site, click on the type of product they need, and fill out a form within seconds.

If you are responsible for having any of these annoyances on your website, 220 Marketing is always here to help. As one of our clients, you can always come ask us for feedback on features that are currently on your site, or bounce ideas off of us before you implement them. This is one of the many service we provide for our clients at no extra charge!

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The features are currently only available to a few select groups like Samsung Mobile and Dell, but there have been screen shots and product features released to give each of us a taste of what we have to look forward to.

Targeted Updates

Targeted Updates allow admins to send their company updates to targeted users, making sure that only relevant information is being sent to each audience. Companies will be able to narrow their filters by these choices:

• Company size
• Industry
• Job function
• Seniority
• Geography
• Including/excluding company employees

This feature will allow you to control what shows up on a user’s LinkedIn homepage when they log in to make sure they see the most relevant posts while still making all of your content available to them when they visit your company page, even if they weren’t included in the original target group.

After 24 hours, admins will be able to view statistics to let them know how many people were targeted, the impressions that post received, clicks, likes, and the number of times that post was shared. It will also allow you to see the interaction it’s received and the original targeting criteria. The post-metrics will look like this:

Follower Statistics

In addition to being able to target your audience, there will be a new feature released called Follower Statistics that will allow you to see more than just the statistics of your pages.

Follower Statistics will provide information about your follower demographics, engagement levels, recent followers, number of new followers from month to month, total following, and update impressions.

*This image is not an actual page sample, it is sample data released by LinkedIn

What Does This Mean for Me?

Targeting your content to a more specific audience can be used to increase your results, no matter what marketing tactic you are using or what site you are on. These new updates provide you not only a better way to direct your LinkedIn strategy, but also a way to analyze your consumers and make the most of your other marketing campaigns.

If this isn’t enough to get you excited about the new changes that are coming, an internal LinkedIn study found the targeted updates help increase audience engagement by about 66%–do we finally have your attention?

LinkedIn marketers should use these new features to make sure that their content is relevant to the people they are feeding it out to. This will also help you in content creation because it allows you get a better feel of who your main demographic is so you can create content directly targeted at them. Additionally, you will be able to track the success of your posts and tweak everything until you have a seamless formula that allows you to get the most out of the content you are posting and help you get better results!

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If you haven’t had a chance to add a cover photo or just put a place holder in for now so your page wouldn’t look bare, we’ve come up with some examples for you to follow that can really help you make an impression on your fans. Whether it is a graphic that is completely unrelated to your brand that is just to get peoples attention, or one that lists the products offered by your company, having a personalized cover photo will really help your page look more professional.

1. Keller Williams

Keller Williams had really focused on what their company really stands for. They are a company that lets their employees feel like they are a partner in their business, not just another number. They have several tools available to help their agents be successful, but also give them the freedom to use those tools in the way that best suits them. The motto in this cover photo along with the photos of the agents really helps to push this motto.

2. Trusted Choice

Trusted choice is another company that lets it’s agents operate on a more independent basis. They provide access to a network of insurance agents who are expected to uphold to the highest level of customer service. The company decided to brand more for their customers in their cover photo by showcasing their services offered. There are images that hint towards the types of insurance available, as well as photos of women and children. This helps people see that they can trust their families to be protected and provide a feeling of comfort to consumers.

3. McDonald’s

McDonald’s chose to bring up a feeling of nostalgia for their cover photo, taking their fans back to a simpler time. The older cars showcases just how long the company has been providing excellent service to customers and let’s us travel back to our first experiences with the brand.

4. Go Daddy

Go Daddy didn’t go out of its way to put in any fancy graphics to impress consumers; they went will the tried and true approach of keeping it simple. They selected a bright color that matches their website as well as calls attention to the photo. They opted to have a simple list of what they have to offer and what makes them the best instead of using gimmicky images.

5. Chase Freedom

Chase decided to lay their services out in plain sight and let consumers know what they will get in exchange for using their Chase Freedom credit card—cash back! Showing viewers what’s in it for them if they use your product is a great way to promote your brand and get them to sign up for your services.

6. Geico

Geico used their most recognized branding image in their cover photo, the Gecko that is used in their commercials. If you already have a recognized branding signal established, tying it into your cover photo is an excellent way to tie in all of the marketing efforts you have in place without having to rack your brain for new ideas.

7. Old Spice

What do a tiger and volcano have to do with body spray? Absolutely nothing! This didn’t stop Old Spice from putting both in their cover photo. Using an image that really stands out and makes you think “what in the world?” will really help your page to catch on. I’m sure there are several Facebook users who have shared this page with their friends or told them to check it out.

8. Remax

Remax chose to use their slogan to really push what their company stands for. They also used pictures that helped back up this attitude. From newlywed couples to couples that are pregnant and need of a bigger house, Remax really reached out to these demographics in their cover photo. They also took advantage of their profile photo to let people know that they are rated #1 among real estate companies with a simple image.

9. Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut used the power of their product in their cover photo. A huge picture of a peperoni pizza lets consumers know what they offer at their stores, as well as make them crave the pizza. They also remind you that they provide excellent customer service by featuring one of their happy employees.

10. iStockphoto

If you provide stock photos for your clients, your Facebook cover photo better be up to par with the quality of the photos you offer on your website, and iStockphoto’s cover definitely is. They chose to feature one of their own photos that are available to their clients for purchase. To get around the not being able to put in a call to action, they included a link to purchase the photo in the caption section of the cover photo so visitors can access the site after clicking on the cover photo. Pure genius!

11. Mountain Dew

Mountain Dew did a great job in showcasing the type of person who uses their product. They are active, they are daring, and they have fun. Using this type of branding really helps push others to want to be a part of this lifestyle, and makes people want to make sure they are associated with it.

12. 220 Marketing

Of course we had to showcase the hard work that we have put into our cover photo; it would be shameful if we are not practicing what we preach. Our cover photo showcases all of the services we offer for our clients and shows that we do more than provide people with websites, we help them build their business.

Still stumped on how to incorporate your brand or mission statement into your cover photo? We have designers and marketers on hand to take your ideas and make them into a professional design. Ask us how we can help you take your Facebook Fanpage to the next level!

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Recognizing that static banner ads are bringing fewer results as they used to, many marketers have moved towards putting videos or other rich media that has animation as this provides a bigger incentive for someone to click on it. Providing this content also creates more of a lasting brand impression, as the consumer will most likely remember a jingle or any funny line that was in that video when hearing it rather than reading it.

Ad solution provider MediaMind recently completed a study that tracked the responses ads with rich media or video got over standard banner ads. They found that web users in North America were almost three times more likely to end up at a marketer’s website after viewing an ad with rich media than if the company just placed a standard banner ad. In this study, the visit didn’t have to occur immediately; it also increased the likelihood of people visiting at a later date after seeing the ad. While that may seem very impressive, the likelihood of a consumer visiting the site was 5.6 times more likely if the ad included a video compared to consumers exposed to standard banner ads.

The study hints that adding rich media and videos works for both an immediate response and a more lasting branding affect. When measuring immediate results, a consumer was nine times more likely to click on an ad with a video the first time they see it.

When analyzing the branding results, they numbers aren’t as spectacular, but still impressive. A user who didn’t visit the site immediately after seeing the ad were twice as likely to visit the site at a later time when seeing rich media or video content rather than a standard banner ad.

What does this mean for the future of marketing? Because the results of the study were so positive, we can expect that the amount of money being spent to provide media rich or video ads will increase by about 54.7% according to eMarketers. They also expect an increase of about 20% in standard banner ads despite these findings, while rich media ad generation will most likely increase by about 4% as people opt to create video ads instead.

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A recent Forrester study reported that the market for enterprise social collaboration is projected to increase tenfold over the next four years as more traditional services like video conferencing decline. In this new era, the tools that succeed will combine communication and collaboration services with social features in a way that Google+ does. The following are some of the features that make G+ a great tool for social enterprise collaboration.

Circles – The Circles feature of G+ allows users to segment their followers into groups which are a very powerful concept in enterprise. This feature allows companies to create Circles for specifieddepartments, clients, referral partners and more. The ability to compartmentalize helps G+ users to save time and share content and a targeted fashion. To make things easier on everyone G+ allows users to share Circles so anytime you have a new hire he or she gain instant access to ones client base.

Hangouts – Hangouts can help any company cut costs if used for an impromptu meeting with your office or for a customer demo. All G+ users should consider eliminating pricey web conferencing services and start implementing Hangouts for company-wide web meetings. Now all Google needs to do is integrate Google Voice with Hangouts and the ability to dial into a Hangout via a phone line.

Google Docs – In addition to providing word processing and editing capabilities, Goggle Docs allows you to share your work and collaborate with co-workers in real-time. On top of that, Google Docs has been integrated into Hangout allowing users to update documents with co-workers from around the world with the felling of being in the same room.

Search Functions – The Search Plus Your World feature that was added to Google’s search function has a lot to offer a brand from a marketing perspective. G+ allows workers to brand their pages with the company’s image. Every time an employee page is shared or +1 it creates another impression for your business. What Google should consider now is giving users the ability to easily switch back and forth between a personal account and a work account using the same login. This is a feature that Facebook has adopted well.

Organic Connections – G+ provides a platform to organically build meaningful connections for your business and career. Employees can easily adopt the same connections as other co-workers and follow important influencers in their company and industry. At the moment, creating and maintaining Circles can be tedious. A helpful addition by Google would be an auto-suggest service to assist in populating and creating new circles.

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To make sure you are keeping your number of contacts consistent, it is your job to make sure that you are constantly adding fresh contacts to replace those that are leaving you. If you haven’t yet started to grow your email list, or have used up all of your ideas to generate new addresses, here are 25 tips that may help you get inspired again.

1)  Create great email content. Remember that old saying “If you build it, they will come”? It’s the same idea with email marketing. If you are writing awesome content that is relevant to your client base, they will stay subscribed and encourage others to sign up

2)  Create a new lead generation offer—write a new ebook or checklist that your clients will find useful and put it behind a lead capture tool. This will give you a chance to get someone’s email in exchange for their information.

3)  Host an online webinar about a hot topic your clients are interested in and gather emails at registration.

4)  Create a free online tool that will help your clients and gather their email address (Free Home Value Assessment or Website Grader)

5)  Add a QR code to your print marketing and send that to a sign up for your updates.

6)  Promote an online contest and have entrants sign up with their email address or by sending you an email.

7)  Add an email sign up tab on your website or on your Facebook page.

8)  Run a promotion on a referral partner or affiliate site to gather email addresses from a whole new pool of potential customers.

9) Collect email addresses at trade shows and any other events you attend and import them into your database. It’s always best to send them a welcome email letting them know how you got their contact information and what they will be receiving from you moving forward.

10)  Encourage your current subscribers to share your content and make it easy for them to do so. Add “share” buttons that allow them to share the information on Facebook or email the newsletter to a friend. You should also include a Subscribe link at the bottom of all emails so new readers can be sure to receive your updates.

11)  Create a Google Adwords email capture campaign. While this is still experimental, several companies are giving this a shot. You can also leverage the paid ads you already have out there by linking them to a page that gathers an email address. New to the paid advertising world? 220 Marketing has several specialists that can guide you through each step of the way and tools to help make your campaign successful so you get a return on your investment.

12)  Create multiple email subscription types. This will help you to send more targeted emails while ensuring your clients are getting what they really want and therefore staying subscribed. This will also increase the likelihood that a new subscriber will find something to sign up for that interests them.

13)  When making an appearance as a guest on another blog, include a link to allow readers to sign up for your updates in the author byline.

14)  Create a campaign on Twitter for a free ebook or checklist and link them to a landing page that gathers their information.

15)  Use your Facebook business page to let people know about your ebooks and other promotions and include a link to those landing pages. You can also create an app on your timeline that promotes your updates as well as adding sharing buttons on your landing pages so that people can share your promotions with their friends.

16)  Post offers redeemable with an email address in your LinkedIn groups or recommend one of your offers as an answer in LinkedIn Answers.

17)  Promote offers and email sign up in your Google+ posts and the About section of your Google+ account.

18)  Use Pinterest to link to your lead generation offers. It will work best if you create a cover image for your campaign and pin that image on a Special Offers board that your clients can click on and repin.

19)  Use your YouTube channel to drive people to your sign up pages. Adding a call to action at the end of each video letting them how they can get more information will help drive them to those pages. You should also include this information in the text video information section.

20)  Partner up with one of your affiliates in a related field and advertise one of your offers that will be relevant to their client base in their email campaign. Include a link that lets them know how they can continue to receive updates from you.

21)  Encourage clients that you are currently targeting via postal mail to sign up for your email updates and opt out of postal mail. Let them know they can be environmentally friendly while receiving updates in a more timely manner. Be sure to include a URL in the piece of mail they can visit to sign up for your email campaign.

22)  Host your own offline event like conferences and educational panels and require each attendee to register online with their email address.

23)  Link to offers that capture email address on every page of your website. Keep the calls to action and special offers visible so they have access to sign up without having to dig for the right spot. Critical places to have links would be the main page of your blog, your About Us section and the Contact Us page.

24)  Breathe some new life into your old email lists. Send an email asking your older database to re-opt in to your mailings, but make sure the email is exciting and full of things they will have access to by opting in again. Also promise to remove any people who wish to be removed.

25)  Host a co-marketing webinar with a referral partner where you can both share your expertise and gain a new list of contacts through the registration sign up.

While many of these ideas may seem too simple, they are most likely something that you are not currently implementing. Trying all different angles will give you a wider pool to gather new lead information and grow your email list. These are all things you can start working on today without a lot of effort.

Do you have something that has worked in the past for gathering new emails for your database? We’d love to hear your ideas and tips that you can add to our list in the comments!

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Using the analytics on your site that you are already gathering, you can pinpoint the pages that are contributing to giving that final push that drives the customer to hand over their information and replicate that success through out the website.

What is a Conversion Assist? Why Should I Care?

In the marketing world, the term Conversion assist references the page that a customer viewed before filling out a lead capture tool or purchased something on your site.

Finding and understanding these pages will help you go a long way with generating more leads. If you notice a common trend among these assist pages, you can replicate that to other pages to try and get that success from more pages. This can also help you pinpoint what is not working on successful pages so that you can make the necessary corrections.

How to Analyze Your Conversion Assists and Improve Conversions

So now that you know what a conversion assist is, you probably want to learn how to identify and benefit from them. Here are some steps to make this happen.

Step 1: Identify Your top Conversion Assist Pages

If you don’t yet have AdWords Conversion tracking set up on your site for the campaign you’re running, you will want to set this up first. Once you have the code in place and have given the campaign a chance to generate some information, you can check your results but using Search Funnels to find out what customers did after clicking on your ad.

Keeping track of this information is important, especially since your time and money are going into these efforts. Click here to learn a little more about understanding these reports.

Step 2: Identify Patterns Among Your top Pages

So you have used your reports to identify the top pages in your site; now what? Using simple logic to identify what is working on the page is a good start. If you notice that the top conversion assist page is the price page, it’s obvious that seeing the cost of your product or service will move them to make the final leap.

Using simple logic like this on the other pages that rank high for conversion assist will help you discover common trends. Looking at your most successful landing pages is a good start. Is there something that all of them offer (newsletter updates, ebooks, etc) that is the same? Is there a common topic that all of them talk about? Are they in the same format? The same questions can be applied to your blog posts that contribute to leads. Are they all about the same topic?

Once you have identified the elements that make the successful pages work for you, you can take a look at the pages that get the least amount of results and make some fixes. Sometimes something as simple as adding or removing a picture can make all the difference in the world.

Step 3: Leverage Insights From top Pages to Improve Lead Nurturing Efforts

Now that you know the content and topics that are generating the best results within the website, transfer this over to your lead nurturing campaigns. Tweak your email campaigns to include the successful keywords and content. This will allow you to see a higher ROI and convert more leads.

Step 4: Create More Content on Topics Similar to Those Pages:

If you discover that certain types of offers or topics covered in your content help in conversion assists could be a good indicator that your target audience is looking for a certain format or certain subject. Use this insight to create your future content and write it for your target audience. Making sure you include what your audience is looking for will help gain more customers and give you more business. It will also make content creation a little less daunting if you already have knowledge of what you should be including.

Step 5: Improve Calls to Action on Poorly Performing Pages

This step will force you to analyze your worst performing landing pages and take a closer look to the calls to action on that page. The theory here is that if the page is not driving people to take that step to provide their information or purchase something on the site, it is probably not getting people to click on the call to action, or it is not directing the client to a page that will help assist in the conversion.

To find out where the problem lies and how to fix it, there are some simple steps you can take.

Problem 1: If your call to action is linking to a page that usually has a high conversion assist percentage, the problem most likely lies in the call to action failing to generate a click through. Are your directions clear on how this product/information will benefit them? Is the button located in an easy to find place?  Does the button get lost in the rest of the content or lacking something in its’ design? A great way to test this is to play around with the button by putting it in different places on the page and different designs. Test the page in different forms with others and see which layout they find the most appealing.

Problem 2: If your call to action is pointing to a page that has a low conversion rate, this probably mean that the page has nothing much to offer for your customers. Sometimes changing the link the landing page directs to can mean a big improvement in your results for that landing page. Point towards a page that has a high conversion assist rate to get more out of your efforts.

You can take this one step further by linking to a page that not only has a high conversion assist percentage, but also is the most relevant to the offer you are putting on the landing page and has different things for both customers that are at all stages in the buying process with you.

Analyzing your conversion assist stats can help improve all parts of your marketing efforts by helping you see both strengths and weaknesses. Taking the time to follow these steps will help you develop better lead gathering and lead nurturing campaigns.

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This is another step in the direction Google is trying to take in order to make sure that consumers find the information on a website useful and relevant, and that the information is not just a list of popular keywords.

While the new algorithm has not been implemented yet, it will be within the next few weeks. Here is what you will need to know to prepare for yet another change.

Why the Update?

Announced by the head of Google’s search spam team at the SXSW panel last week, the new algorithm is said to be a way for “mom and pop” websites to have an even standing if their content is relevant but not professionally optimized. This update will reward sites with relevant content throughout and punish those that spent a lot of money and time optimizing the homepage to make it saturated with keywords. Sites with too many links exchanged will also be penalized as this will be seen as a manipulation to gain better placement instead of a concentration on good content.

What Does the new Update Mean for Marketers?

If the content in your website is topic driven rather than keyword driven, this update will not harm you. This is another way for Google to move towards recognizing content written for consumers rather than search engines like they’ve been trying to do for a while.

The update will not punish people who write the content so the consumer first then edit it to make sure it contains keywords that search engines pick up on. If this is the way you already approach writing content, you should not have anything to worry about and may even benefit from the changes.

So what are some ways to make sure Google will smile upon your site? According to Cuts’, you should “make a site that is relevant to people’s interests”. Write about things that your consumers will find useful and things that are necessary for them to know first, then go back in and optimize for the search engines.

A good indication of whether or not your content is relevant and interesting is to monitor social sharing. If your content or posts are being shared through out social media sites, then you know you are doing a good job. If they are not, you should take a step back and try to find out why. Take a look at information that is being shared and try to learn something from it.

Cutter did clarify in the end that they won’t punish people who have been doing everything they were recommended to do to gain placement such as optimizing pages with keywords. This will solely be to give smaller sites with great content a fighting chance and keep the people abusing keywords in check; mainly those sites that wouldn’t be legible to a human that doesn’t crawl through looking at just phrases or links like the search engine spiders do.

In the end, it looks like the updates won’t affect things much. Google is just working to implement the suggestions they’ve put forth in the past: write content first for consumers to make sure they understand your message and learn something from it, and then make your content easy for search engines to crawl through and find all of the good content you’ve written.

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