Five keys to online success during the holidays

Online Marketing During the Holidays (MP3 – 2.2 minutes)

Happy holidays! As we celebrate the holidays, I want to wish each of you the largest ROI with your web marketing campaigns.

 Here are a five key web practices to keep in mind:

1. Know the season: Offer an updated look to your web site (even if temporary). Show that you have the holiday spirit.
    
2. Know your customers: Put your customer information to good use. Make sure that your site offers up a dynamic list of products and services that can help your customer locate that special gift for Aunt Susie.
    
3. Make the sale easy: Holiday shopping can be a pain so make sure that there are special holiday landing pages developed to make it easier for customers to locate the most popular holiday items. Use last year’s data as a point of reference, but be sure to also know the hottest trends and products.
    
4. Make it a steal: Like you, your customers love a great deal. Make sure that there are banners and other highlighted information about new products and savings that might be of interest to that customer. These items should be visible until the sale is completed.
    
5. Follow up: Offer the customer a reason to return to your web site. Give them the option to sign up for updates on sales, and new products and services. This will enable you to build and maintain a long term relationship with the customer. Be sure to send the customer a thank you (whether by mail or email) and include a special gift or offer to show just how grateful you really are.

Use these tips throughout the year and design your web site to keep your online customers and website visitors happy. 

Contact: info@clickgrafx.com

http://www.clickgrafx.com
Web: Plan. Design. Implement. Market.

Four keys to making web traffic analysis benefit your business

Using free, readily-available data, you can gather detailed information about your website visitors, your website’s search engine performance and traffic source, and much more. Google Analytics is one such free web analysis tool that provides you with useful data and you can use this free data to your benefit in numerous ways.

1. Take a look at the keywords that are driving traffic to your website. If the only keywords that being you site visitors are keywords that already include your business name, you may need to revisit your keyword strategy so that you rank better using less obvious keyword phrasings (watch for my upcoming article on developing an effective keyword strategy).
    
2. See where your visitors are finding you. It’s possible that your website visitors are all coming to your website through a popular portal. If this is your goal, then you can count yourself as successful. However, if the popular portal is not a popular place for your target audience to visit, take a look at your link and search engine marketing campaign. If you haven’t been thinking about targeting a specific audience, this may the time to re-evaluate your business objectives.
    
3. Evaluate the strength and variety of your web visitor’s technology. If GA has shown you that 85% of your website visitors are surfing to your website using IE6, then make sure that they are able to see and easily navigate your website. Be careful not to implement features that could cause you to lose a significant number of consumers.
    
4. Give them what they want and then give them what you want them to want. Use Google’s cool overlay tool and page stats to see what links are most attractive to most website visitors. Use the pages that are most attractive to lure your site visitors to related products and services that would lead you to generate more revenue for your business.
    

http://www.clickgrafx.com
Location: Houston, TX
Web: Plan. Design. Implement. Market.

Enewsletters. Why bother?

Email: We all get them and we love to hate them, but they wouldn’t be so popular if they weren’t effective.

So what happens when a friendly email becomes a marketing tactic? It can either annoy you and gets labeled spam, or it enlightens you and leads you to become aware of a great new product or service.

It can also lure you to purchase the same product and request more information about the services. And even if this tactic fails for 60% of its intended recipients, it still builds brand awareness for those failures and is the most cost-effective failure a business can experience.

So if you’re a business owner who has passed on email and has not recongnized it as a fantastic business generating tool, think again. Email marketing is likely to bring you the largest return on investment. Add an enewsletter to your companies marketing toolbox and watch for a significant increase in your company’s brand awareness.

http://www.clickgrafx.com
Location: Houston, TX
Web: Plan. Design. Implement. Market.

So why do you have a website?

So why do you have a website? Is it to market your personal brand, share details of your life with family, friends and associates… or are a business owner looking to market you company and services while one-upping the competition.

Regardless of your reasons for having a website… it’s important to note that building websites and uploading them to the Internet does not guarantee that your website will be easily found.
In order for your customers and general consumers to become aware of your website’s presence, it must be built in such a way that search engines are able to locate and rank your pages.

Doing this requires that you have a skilled webmaster with excellent search engine optimization strategies. So here’s the best advice I can give you.

Make sure that your webmaster does more for you than build a pretty web interface. It’s important that they are able and willing to clearly articulate the tactics they have used to help you rank well in search engine results. Your webmaster should also be able to clearly show proof in the form of reliable monthly or quarterly reports showing the type of traffic your website is getting.

Keep these points and practices in mind and you will be well on your way to owning a popular website which has the potential to bring you the results you are seeking.

http://www.clickgrafx.com
Location: Houston, TX
Web: Plan. Design. Implement. Market.

Crafting an Effective Elevator Speech

I once read somewhere that every “true” professional should have an elevator speech. So recently I have been working on crafting a really great elevator speech. First I wrote what resembled a short bio (below). Then I edited away most of it leaving just the paragraphs I felt delivered the most impact. So as it turns out my elevator speech now has a home in the About Me section of this blog. Feel free to send recommendations on how to write a more effective elevator speech. The final draft of my bio is enclosed below.

 Meanwhile, here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Type up a list of each professional position you have held – you would be amazed at what important and applicable work experience you can miss by not including this step.
2. Next to each position, list all skills ised – this should include tolls, applications, etc.
3. Print the document you’ve created so that it can be reviewed offline – we often miss so much when we read from the screen.
4. Using a highlighter, mark the 5 key skills that you would like to market.
5. Now type a short intro being sure to include all five items from your new list.
6. Read your document out loud checking for flow – we want to sound natural, don’t we? 
7. Make edits as necessary and keep reading aloud until the words flow naturally off your tongue - never ever sound rehearsed.
8. That’s it!

Of course, my elevator speech is still being perfected, so feel free to send me any tips you might have. I’m not claiming to be an expert at this, but these steps got me on the way.

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About Marcia

Marcia Hylton is a senior-level online marketing expert located in Houston, TX  -  where she develops web marketing strategies and tactics.

Marcia has over a decade of experience in website design and development as well as online marketing. During her career, her focus has been on project and team management, online business development,  print design and technical documentation

She has worked with a wide variety of clients including - colleges, a municipality, a hospital and a department of defense contractor. Marcia has also lectured on the college level providing instruction on various web tools and technologies (I.e. HTML, InDesign, CSS, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Director, Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator, Programming Logic as well as ASP and VBScript.)

Ms. Hylton’s educational background is in Computer Information Systems (Systems Analysis and Design emphasis) and English with a Technical Writing focus.

Hylton has been a member of several professional organizations including: American Marketing Association, Phi Theta Kappa and the Society for Technical Communication.

Contact: info@clickgrafx.com

http://www.clickgrafx.com
Web: Plan. Design. Implement. Market.