1. Website Design

As the face of your company, your website design needs to be professional, clean, and easy for all visitors to navigate. When designing your website, focus on:

• Including calls to action on many pages so viewers are continually thinking about what your company can do for them.
• Optimizing the site on all browsers, including those on smart phones. The percentage of people who surf the web on smart phones and tablets is growing. In fact, 25 percent of mobile Web users never or infrequently use the desktop to search the web.
• Incorporating relevant keywords naturally to help your search rankings.

2. Blog

Statistically, companies that blog get 55% more visitors to their websites than companies that don’t blog. Therefore, your website should include an integrated blog, which helps you provide customers with useful, relevant information. When creating a blog, ensure that it is:

• Easy for readers to subscribe through RSS and email.
• Easy to share through social media.
• Easy to interact with you by commenting on posts.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Many potential customers start at the search engines when they need what you sell. To be found, you must use search engine optimization techniques to help your website, blog, and social media accounts rank high in the search engines. Follow these steps in your marketing strategy:

• Make sure each page of your website is optimized for the search engines (read: 7 Ways to Optimize a Web Page for the Search Engines).
• Research specific keywords that people most commonly search for in your industry.
• Use these keywords on your website and through social media.
• Include long-tail keywords specific to your market, which are one of the keys to ranking well on search engines.

4. Email Marketing

Because you can’t always keep your website on people’s minds, email marketing is a great way to stay in front of your customers. Pay attention to:

• Creating a quality design for your email template so it ties in with the look and feel of your website, completing a comprehensive marketing strategy.
• Providing useful, relevant information through email on a regular basis to help you convert potentials into customers.

5. Social Media Presence

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, and Google+ are not just for individuals. They have several major advantages for businesses:

• Provide an opportunity to create a community around your company through interaction with the people who are interested in you.
• Help you remain on people’s radars by posting status updates, media, blog posts, and information about your company regularly.
• Allow you to reach exponential numbers of people at a very minimal cost because of the viral nature of these networks.

6. Analytics

Measuring the results and trends of your website, blog, email campaigns, search engine ranking, and social media reach plays a crucial role in any online marketing strategy. The most important metrics to measure include:

• Website: Site visitors, page views, pages per visit, average time on the site, bounce rate, top landing and exit pages, top content, leads & conversions.
• Blog: Subscribers, views / visitors, conversions, comments, clicks, rank, inbound links, social media shares.
• SEO: Page rank, # of indexed pages, # of inbound links, # of keywords sending traffic to your site, long-tail keyword rank & opportunities.
• Email Marketing: # sent, bounces, spam reports, opt-outs, opens, clicks, forwards.
• Social Media: # of likes, followers, connections, etc., growth, engagement, momentum, results.

Aspire Internet Design has created successful marketing strategies for hundreds of clients. Contact us for a free consultation and learn how we can help you take your business to the next level.

QR Code: Link to Aspireid.com

QR codes have been popping up and seem to be everywhere these days.  They are ubiquitous in Japan, and are growing in popularity within the United States.  In case you don’t know, these quick response codes are computer-generated codes that are decoded with smartphones (by using free software and the phone’s camera), and generate all sorts of useful information when scanned.

QR Codes Provide the Following Info When Scanned:

• Text
• Images
• A Web Link
• Email Address
• Contact Information
• A Facebook Link
• Coupons
• Specials
• A Menu
• Videos
• A Sign-up Form for an Event, Product, or Service
• Newsletter Subscription
• Google Maps Location
• A vCard
• Signage
• Or, Any Other Kind of Promotion

Newer smartphones come with a QR code reader installed.  Older phones can download free software.  The beauty of QR codes is that they are free and easy to create, provide instant access to more information,  and tie offline marketing to online resources.

Possible Uses for QR Codes

QR Codes can be used in an unlimited number of ways.  Here are 17 ways to use QR codes for marketing purposes:

• Catalogs
• Direct Mail Pieces
• “For Sale” Signs
• Newspaper & Magazine Ads
• Postcards
• Product Labels
• Menus (ex: QR code linking to a video of the chef creating the dish or nutritional info)
• Packages
• Clothing Tags
• Fliers & Brochures
• Business Cards
• Bumper Stickers
• Storefront Displays
• Clothing
• Trade Show Booths
• Billboards
• Promotional Items

Creating QR Codes is Free & Easy

You can easily create QR codes for free online or on your iPhone, using an app, in seconds by using one of the many available resources.  Here are a few sites with free QR Code generators:

• http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
• http://www.beqrious.com/generator
• http://goqr.me/

If you haven’t started using QR codes but would like to integrate them into your marketing strategy, contact us.  We offer custom QR code designs and can provide tracking tools to measure the success of your campaigns.

Custom usernames allow businesses to promote their presence on Facebook by providing a short, easy to remember, url.  Once you have 25 or more “Likes” on your page, you are eligible to customize the url.  This url can be shared across each marketing channel, and featured in all marketing materials.

How to Set-up a Custom Username:

1. Login to your Facebook page.
2. Go to http://www.facebook.com/username.
3. You may be asked to verify your Facebook account.  Do so by entering your mobile number and request either a text or call with the confirmation code.

   

4. Once the account has been verified, type in your desired username.  The username cannot have any spaces or characters other than letters and numbers. A common way to break-up multiple words is to capitalize the first letter of each word (the username will not be case sensitive, however).

   

5. With the desired username entered, click on “Check Availability”.  If the username is available, you will see the following screen:

   

6. Click on “Confirm”, and your new Facebook username will take effect immediately.

   

That’s all there is to it! Now, you can easily share and promote the Facebook page and new username across all of your company’s marketing channels and in all marketing materials (website, brochures, ads, business cards, etc.)

1. Find Keywords:

Pick a list of words relevant to your business.  Look for keywords on your website, your competitors’ sites, ask current customers, vendors, friends, and relatives what words or phrases they associate with your business.  Go to Google and type the keywords and key phrases in the the browser.  Google will return a list of related searches (found at the bottom of the 1st page of listings).

Add all of these keywords to a list and create a web page for each keyword phrase you are targeting.

2. Put the Keywords in Your Page’s URL:

Google and other search engines use the text of the url of the page to determine the page’s content.  Placing the keywords in the url (ex: aspireid.com/ways-to-optimize-a-web-page) will help optimize the page for your intended keywords.

2. Put the Keyword / Keyword Phrase in the Page’s Title Tags:

Well-constructed title tags contain the main keyword or keyword phrase for the page, followed by a brief description of the page’s content. The title tag should be less than 65 characters and avoid using stop words such as: a, if, the, then, and, an, to, etc. Your title tag should also be limited to the use of alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and commas.

4. Put Keywords in the Page’s Meta Tags:

The next step is to add keyword and description tags to the page.  These tags contains information about the page’s content and help search engines index the information.  The description is what appears in search results and helps to persuade search engine users to visit your web site.

The description tag should be between 25 and 35 words in length.

Your keywords meta tag should contain between 1-3 keywords or keyword phrases that are also found in the page’s content.

5. Keywords Should be Placed in the Heading Tags:

Your page should include your keywords in the H1 heading tag.

6. Use Keywords in the Page Content:

Pages should have between 300 and 700 words of descriptive content that contain the keywords specified in the keywords meta tag for the page. These keywords should appear in the first paragraph on the page, and also be those that occur most frequently on the page. The keyword density for a web page should be approximately 4%.  So, for every 100 words, the main keyword for the page would be mentioned 4 times.

7. Monitor Your Rank:

Give the search engines a few days, then check to see how the page is ranking with its intended keywords.