Plan Your Online Marketing Strategy for the Holidays

With the Holiday Season approaching it is necessary to take some actions to make the most of this time of the year which it is perfect to improve sales and strengthen customer relationships.

According with the consulting company Gallup “Americans' initial estimates of the total amount they will spend on Christmas gifts this year point to an above-average holiday season for the nation's retailers”. Companies can expect that the average U.S. adult will spend 781 dollars on Christmas gifts this year, which is significantly higher than 2013.

Xperience Marketing Solutions want to help you and give you some advice to plan and improve the appropriate online strategies that will help you reap the benefits that this holiday season could bring to your business. 

BE INSPIRED BY THE HOLIDAY 
Just as people decorate their home for the holidays, companies need to show to their customers that they are also enjoying the holiday’s season and are preparing for it. Decorate your social networks display areas and website according to the season. Create funny images and even a video for posts showing your holiday spirit and make sure you share the joy with for your clients. 

INCENTIVES TO BUY 
During the Holiday season people are going to be more willing to spend money; your competitors know that and they are going to flood the internet with unbeatable deals and that’s why you have to create strong incentives to buy.

You have to make more noise than ever to get noticed for your potential customers to pay attention to what you have to offer. A great way to get attention is through promotions and contests. There are different types of promotions that work better depending of the type of business and the objectives. You can use promotional codes, contests, limited time deals and coupons. 

EMAIL MARKETING 
It’s a good idea to share some information with your clients by email, but on holidays the number of emails in everyone’s inboxes will increase more than ever. So it’s important to take some actions to make your emails stand out from others in your customers email inbox.

First of all you have to keep clear the purpose of the emails that you're going to send. Do you want to promote a specific service or product? Do you want to let them know about a special offer for the holidays? Or do you just want to send some wishes? Depending of your goals, your emails need to have some distinctive images and keywords and don’t forget to segment your contact list into categories.

PREPARE YOUR CALENDAR 
The Holiday season is not just a date; there are various days that you have to keep in mind to get the most of this season. You don’t have to make promos or create images for each of these days; with a simple email to your clients you can make a big impact. 

Thanksgiving (U.S.), November 27

Black Friday, November 28
Small Business, Saturday, November 29
Cyber Monday, December 1

Free Shipping Day, December 15

Hanukkah, December 16-24

Christmas, December 25

Boxing Day, December 26

New Year’s Eve, December 31

For additional information and other great strategies to improve your digital marketing, please contact one of our marketing representatives.  www.xperiencemarketingsolutions.com    

Top 5 Mobile Marketing Mistakes

With 58% of American adults owning a Smartphone (PewResearch Internet Project, 2014) the prospect of reaching new customers through their Smartphone is heartening. However, sometimes companies get mobile marketing wrong and mobile campaigns fail. Find below some important tips and the biggest mobile marketing mistakes you should avoid:

1. Understanding how people really use their mobile.

According to the Harvard Business Review, mobile doesn't mean on the go at all times: “New data show that 68% of consumers' Smartphone use happens at home. And users' most common activity is not shopping or socializing but engaging in what researchers at BBDO and AOL call me time." Now, “me time” refers to activities seeking entertainment or relaxation, such as watching a funny video or even window shopping for fun. Therefore, apps don’t have one single purpose; the same app can be used for self-expression or socializing and connecting with users during “me time” is what make you able to reach shoppers through their Smartphone’s.  

2. Overlooking a mobile-optimized web site

A common mistake is to run a mobile campaign without a mobile-optimized web site. For example, pointing users to a flash web site that isn’t optimized for mobile is a letdown for the potential clients and landing page it’s useless. Then it’s important to have in mind that sites on a desktop don’t necessary work on a Smartphone screen, and user-friendliness is the key to keep customers engaged.

3. Tracking the results

It makes sense that if you are investing in the execution of a marketing campaign, you will be interested in measuring the results. However, many companies run a mobile strategy without considering its effectiveness. To improve the communication with customers and to create new ways of reaching them, tracking the results is a must of any mobile marketing effort.

4. Discounts & coupons

The number of consumers who participate in mobile marketing, represent the success of your campaign. Then, you need to tell customers what’s available in the stores for them. There must be links to redeem a special offer or see related items of interest. Your clients may use of their phones as they’re in your shop to check competitor’s prices, so another tool is to activate discounts if the user checks-in at your store location,  to prevent “showrooming”: customers going elsewhere if they find better deals.

5. Under-investing in mobile media           

Ten percent of consumer’s media time is spent on mobile. However, only 1% of all advertising money is spent on mobile. (eMarketer, 2011). You should consider elements such as your specific target market, percentage of revenue generated from mobile users, b2b & b2c trends and then make decisions towards your mobile marketing expenses.

For additional information about how can mobile marketing and mobile web optimization help your business, we invite you to visit our website and contact our mobile marketing team www.XperienceMarketingSolutions.com to get a FREE consultation.

Wordpress vs. HTML5 for my new website, which one is the best?

There is not a clear choice or a single answer for this question.  There are many variables to take into consideration before you make the decision about what’s best for you. First of all, if you are still wondering what Wordpress or HTML is, the basic to know is: HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, and is the behind the scenes coding language that makes us able to see objects such as images and structured text online. HTML5 is the latest HTML update, which adds capabilities to deal with elements like video, audio, and graphic animation.

On the other hand, Wordpress is one of the most popular content management in blog publishing applications. It was released as blog engine; however it has turn into a full feature customizable website creation tool. Then, Both HTML5 and Wordpress can be an appropriate Content Management Solution (CMS) but to make your decision on which option is the most suitable for your company or personal website, it is important that make yourself the following questions:

Do you want to make changes?

Website changes include a variety of activities like adding, modifying and removing content –for example, when you include a blog–; modifying core elements and layouts; your in need of following the latest’s web design trends, and more. If you are planning to implement this for your business website, it’s recommendable to use Wordpress due to the easiness of content managing, page layout options, timely core updates and code-free HTML scripts.

On the other site, if you think that your content won’t need to be updated at short term, in other words, there is a very low probability of new content being added, HTML5 is perfect. Then, if you want to build a website with just the basic business information: operation hours, telephone, address, e-mail, and a few other pages like contact form, HTML5 is still the right choice.

How often do you expect to make changes?

If you are constantly making changes and your website requires daily updates, it makes sense to have a website that allows you to make those changes.   Wordpress allows you to make those changes rather easily, but you will need to have basic knowledge about it. HTML5 will also allow you to make changes if your web developer creates a content management application for you.  This can be a good option if you want a simple content management application that you can use very easily and it will be web-base (no need to download software).

Are you going to do SEO and SEM?

Search engines update continually. According to Google’s webmasters support page, the Googlebot –the program that does the fetching– discovers new and updated pages to be added to the index through the process of “crawling”: it continuously visits sitemap data provided by webmasters to detect links on each page and adds them to its list of pages to crawl. Also, the program determines if the content is relevant to the user’s query so the site will rank well for a keyword.

On one side, Wordpress provides a lot of plug-ins and SEO is pretty much built-in because as we said before, it was build as a blogging platform. Nonetheless, you will still have to work in SEO. On the other hand, HML5 allows you to use advance SEO techniques like incorporation of social media and implementing elements of the social graphs, so it adapts quickly to the changes on the search engines. But, you will surely need to have good knowledge about it.

Taking your budget into consideration

At this point you should start thinking what kind of website fulfils your expectations and your company real needs. There are several differences in the cost of using Wordpress vs. HTML5. For example, you might find a cheaper hosting plan for basic HTML5 than for hosting a Wordpress site, because Wordpress requires a MySQL database and PHP support in your web-host. Besides, the cost of a Wordpress well designed theme is higher than the HTML5 one.

As a conclusion, if your company’s budget is limited, and you want to consider cost efficiency in the long run, look over the question number two. If you are using HTML5 and you need new content and old content updates, you’d have to ask a developer to modify a new page, this translates into spends. However, with Wordpress you have capability of adding or modifying content without the help of the original developer. In this situation, Wordpress is more cost effective than HTML5. Conversely, if you are not planning to make changes very often and your website is going to be ecstatic you should definitely take HTML5 as lower cost investment.

For additional information about Wordpress or HTML5 for your new website, go to www.XperienceMarketingSolutions.com to get a FREE consultation.

Why do you need to optimize your website for local Search Engine & map listings?

Optimizing your website for local search engine listings is one of the most important basic steps needed for a complete SEO strategy. To put it in perspective and better understand the importance of the proper optimization for your website and business, it is important to be aware about some of the current statistics and data available.

During 2013, 97% of costumers performed searches about local business using their computers and mobile devices. This means that search queries carry not only the information such as the service or business category users are looking for, but also includes the geographical information; commonly a city or state name. As a consequence, search engines targets a user’s search results with local listings in order to bring relevant local results. For instance, to come up with local results, Google tries to identify your location.

Now, it is very important to provide accurate and complete information about your business location, name, phone number and hours of operation to improve optimization results. Although this information is standard, the user quickly sees if they are interested on your business based on things such as the average starts rating or the number of customer reviews. What's more, adding photos, videos, information about special offers and discounts will make it more appealing and it'll be easier for customers to decide and prefer your business among others.

One of the reasons why it is important to have your map listing up to speed is the extended use of smart phones. As stated by Pew Research Internet Project, 74% of U.S. consumers use location based services on their Smartphone. Then, when someone uses his or her smart phone to search for a service or a product, the first results they get are the local ones.

In addition, search engines have made some changes like locating the map with local business on top of the ads on the right side. Actually, local listings are appearing even above organic search results. That is why managing local map listings will help your business get high search engine visibility that will translate into new clients every day. The first step is to claim your business listings. There are over 130 main listings you could target; Google, Bing and Yelp are considered the main ones.

Outsourcing your website optimization for local search engine and map listings is always a good idea, since you will need to supervise constantly customer reviews, analyze the analytics and to keep updated your business information.

The message is clear: you want to optimize your website for local map listings and search engine to help users find your business faster & easily. In other words, if you want the best possible online exposure for your business, you must be there when customers and prospects are looking for you.

For additional information about how or why to optimize your website for local MAP listings, go to www.XperienceMarketingSolutions.com to get a FREE consultation.

Reasons why website design impacts your business marketing strategy

Website Design has become a crucial factor for all businesses; from small mom & pop businesses to well established enterprises, everyone expect their websites to deliver real value. Around 91% of online adults use search engines to find information on the Web. And, among all search users, over 90% always or most of the time find the information they were looking for.

As you probably have heard on many occasions, your website will be the first impression a possible new customer will get from your company. Nowadays, it’s understood by most people that one of the basic purposes of a website is to help potential clients find information about a business, a person -or anything that wants to be promoted or communicated thru the World Wide Web, more commonly called the “internet”.

However, when it comes to designing and developing a website, designers need to take into consideration a lot visual elements and many other factors that most people would not think about. Some of these factors include: the way the graphics and text will be arranged, choice of colours, logos, use of fonts, and more.

But is that all?

Is it enough to create a nice looking website and be a part of the www?

Charles Eames, one of the most important American designers of this century, once said: “Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.” Meaning that the main purpose of designing is meeting a particular goal, thus designers must ask themselves what the end goal is, before setting out to create a design. This can also be extrapolated to web design, because one of the objectives behind creating a website is to help a company to achieve its marketing, communication & business goals.

 As a result, website design goes further than paying attention to the elements mentioned before. Here are some examples, when choosing the colours, designers must think ahead about the brand of an organization or personality of the client; the layout goal should be to help the viewers to simply find the information they are looking for and at the same time look good in different browsers of formats; and most important, the content needs to boost up the message that the company is trying to communicate, plus it also needs to be optimized with relevant keywords for search engines.

Overall web design covers three important things: first, creating a visually compelling site with the intention of giving visitors the best experience no matter what device or browser they are using. Second, conveying the company brand, focusing on understanding each business market goals and fundamentals reflecting them with relevant content. Finally, considering the prospect clients as the end users of the web, then designers use a range of user-friendly techniques such as optimizing your content for faster loading time by reducing the number of images on a mobile site.

After all, website design is about managing viewer’s perception which leads them to prefer a specific company over others. The result of a well-designed web, should allow you and make you capable of influencing your prospects clients into buying or taking a particular service. With that being said, web designers more than building websites should also have a deep understanding of areas such as marketing and business strategies, to be able to add value to their clients. So, beyond being found on the web, the most important thing is the clients’ engagement and perception that a website generates.

For additional information about website or mobile design, go to www.XperienceMarketingSolutions.com to get a FREE consultation.

Great tips on how to make a good decision when hiring a SEO/SEM agency

Planning and implementing a successful SEO/SEM requires creating diverse strategies to communicate the valuable content and production of your company through some specific technical aspects that will make you stand out among the others. When SEO/SEM is performed correctly, you will experience positive results that will increase your bottom line.  The World Wide Web is flooded with all kinds of companies or freelancers claiming they offer the best marketing services related to SEO. Before you make a decision about hiring a company to help you with your SEO and SEM need, these are some things you should take into consideration.

First of all you, if you don’t know what a SEO/SEM solution is, you should start by doing some research about the overall tasks that it entails and the way it can affect your business. Then, you could be prepared to come up with some serious theoretic and practical questions when interviewing the SEO person or team. Now, thinking that the firm at the top of Google search or an attractive website will immediately translate into a great SEO is a big delusion. Then, what do you need to have in mind to hire not only a good SEO service but a great one?

• Thinking that the person or company that has a listing at the top of Google search will immediately translate into a great SEO is a big delusion.
  
• Work with professionals who have SEO knowledge and credentials.

• Know exactly what type of SEO agency you are looking for. There are two main options: An outsourced program where you only need to provide your business information and the SEO team will do everything for you The second option is to work in partnership with them, in this case you can expect from them support and expansion of your marketing team capabilities.

• Do you want organic optimization, sponsored placement or both. Learn the pros and cons and decide what’s best for your company.

• Don’t be afraid to compare. Having in mind that the majority of SEO agencies offer a free consultation in order to answer some of your questions but at the same time to have the opportunity to show you their services, then a smart thing to do is to take multiple consultations with the ones that seem more appealing to you, and then take the time to compare between them.

• Realistic time promises. A professional SEO agency will let you know that SEO/SEM is a long term investment and that fast results are just short-lived results.

• Ask for help. Probably, if you already knew who could tell you about the best SEO agency, you wouldn’t be reading this article. Nonetheless, it is important to have in mind that you can get some references that speak out for themselves about the results that other companies have achieved hiring the services of the agencies you have in mind.

• Reporting and analysing results. For the most part, there are no guarantees of a specific ROI when implementing a marketing campaign. However, your agency should be able to track results and offer suggestions to maximize the best return on your investment. There are some reporting tools such as Google Analytics where you should have easily access to.

At the end of the day, taking the time trying to hire a professional SEO agency will translate into a smart marketing decision and a satisfactory return of investment.

For additional information about what SEO or SEM is best for your company,  go to www.XperienceMarketingSolutions.com to get a FREE consultation.