Before launching a website, you must determine the qualifications a website needs in order to be successful. There are several elements that must be taken into consideration, such as; website design, content, technical logistics, marketing, and much more. The list goes on and on…

Having a well-thought out strategy is what will make all the difference with a website’s success. Without it, you’re unable to design a site that will accomplish everything a business wants to because those goals haven’t been outlined. At Web Designer Vip, our strategy department likes to take phased approaches when we build a strategy for any type of business before the launch of a website. We begin by asking questions throughout all phases of the project—before it begins, during, and after. The following is a basic “game plan” for the major components of your strategy, and the right questions to ask that will help you create the most effective strategic plan, and reach your finish line to achieve the goals of your site.

Pre Game

The discovery phase is one of the most important parts of any successful website strategy because it helps shape the fundamental aspects of your entire project. Proper research will provide you with a clear understanding of your client needs, your competitive landscape, and the unique assets your business has to offer. Without fully grasping those components, you won’t be able to identify the right business objectives or goals, and furthermore, the tactics you need to implement in order to achieve them. Three crucial strategy elements that should be considered during your initial research phase include the following:

1. Target Audience

• Who are they, what will resonate with them the most?
• How do they behave? Will it be best to market to them offline, online, or socially?

2. Industry landscape

• Who are my top competitors in my vertical, direct, looking and goliaths alike?
• What are the industry trends, what is driving them?

3. Differentiators

• What is my competition not doing well that I can highlight or capitalize upon?
• What can I offer to offset or detract from any weaknesses?

Game Time

Determining actionable tasks and goals related to your website should be based on what you ultimately want your users to do. What your audience is looking for and how you can fulfil their need should be the basis for how your website is designed. The user-experience is crucial to the success of your online business and should be tailored to meet the needs of your users. These four elements of a strategy should be examined as you’re creating your website:

4. Social Integration

• Do I want posts to link to landing pages or just get the word out?
• How much interaction or commenting do I want between the company and customers? Does it need to be monitored?

5. Content Offerings

• Am I a catalogue, resource center, thought leadership portal, mix?
• How do I avoid dead ends and supplement with related upsells?

6. Conversion & CTAs

• What do I want users to do, buy, share, download, comment, or post?
• How do I prompt them to do so? With links, buttons, pop ups, and at what stage of interest?

7. Online Environment

• What are my users looking to do? Browse, buy, learn, or reach out?
• What atmosphere are they expecting any offline sites or other materials?

Post Game

After the launch of a website, you’re not done yet. In order to stay relevant and continue enhancing your online business, certain elements need to be evaluated and several tactics should be implemented. It’s important to look at what’s working and what’s not working so that you can adapt your strategy to most effectively meet the needs of your audience, and ultimately foster the growth you’re looking for with your business. After your website has launched, consider the following three strategy elements essential to your business plan:

Photo Credit: Kickify
8. Maintenance

• What CMS (Content Management System) is in place or should be in place?
• What resources are in house, or do I outsource?

9. Follow up Marketing

• What customer service is required or should be offered?
• What can keep them coming back? Remarketing? Newsletters?

10. What Next?

• Now what are the competitors and target audience up to, how do I keep up?
• What else can I add to my website and overall marketing to stay relevant?

An Effective Strategy

The right strategy helps any business take their goals and objectives, outlines them, and creates actionable methods to accomplish goals. By looking at a strategy in several phases, and ensuring that the most important elements, as identified above, are included, you will find the online success you’re seeking to be attainable. Reaching your customers in the most effective way will help foster sales, and build out business growth. A strategic approach will be crucial to reaching your objectives.

Rebranding is one of the most common marketing initiatives for businesses, and can occur for many reasons. Whether it is an attempt to dissociate with the performance of the past or to simplify the brand, this marketing tactic can be very effective if approached properly.

Some notable brands have undergone this process including Comcast’s rebranding to Xfinity, and the British Overseas Airway Corporation’s (BOAC) rebranding to British Airways. In the digital world, Quantum Computer Services successfully changed its name to America Online in 1991–and even Google rebranded from their original name, BackRub.

While rebrandings can be very profitable, it requires a very complex interplay of resources to be successful. One of those resources is search engines and the way they manage a change in domain. In some cases, the original brand has such a strong online presence that a Google search will still return several pages and results before the actual current page. BOAC returns several Wikipedia pages and YouTube video results before you start seeing the current brand’s site, British Airways. On the other hand, if you do a search for Comcast, you’ll find paid and organic results for Xfinity.com occupying the first two ranking positions and the Wikipedia page for Comcast down at position 5.

SEO Preservation

SEO Preservation can be a broad term that may include a variety of performance indicators including page-rank, traffic, ranking keywords, online purchases, bookings, and many more. When SEO preservation is not a key factor throughout domain migration or the URL restructuring process, there are some key lessons that can be learned. As search engine optimizers, we understand that often other factors like time-resources, budget, other marketing efforts, or even client buy-in to the SEO process may inhibit the preservation process. Brands that have failed at this process chose to focus on other priorities during their website migration process, and unfortunately, as a result they have seen dramatic dips in their site performance.

To highlight this, consider the following example. This company, started with 2,100 keywords ranking in the top 20 search results before the domain change and one month later saw a 40% drop to fewer than 1,400 terms in April.

Another “nightmare scenario” for SEO is to have domain migration occur so that both domains remain live for some time and links connect the old and new sites back and forth. To avoid this, coordinate the shift all at once because the existence of two live domains with substantial amounts of duplicate content and partial implementation of redirects will send conflicting signals to search engines about which site should rank. Consequently, the domain authority is then split instead of shifted from the old domain to the new one. In some cases we’ve seen domain authority drops for both the old and the new domain.

To illustrate this, consider this example below. Average daily site visits dropped in half due to falling organic traffic when the site no longer ranked for terms that they dominated only weeks before.

Rebrandings with SEO in Mind

What steps do you need to plan ahead for, in order to minimize the chance of these drops impacting your business?

There are 6 critical components to maintaining domain authority, digital presence, and accurate tracking of the domain migration. Some of which impact how the domain is perceived and some are related to how the migration is tracked. Keep in mind these crucial elements if your preparing for a rebranding:

1. Redirects
2. Resubmit Sitemap
3. Directory Listings
4. Social Media
5. Analytics and Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) Profiles
6. Audit Redirects

Redirects

The most obvious first step is to put in place redirects which automatically route a user from the old domain and page to the new one. There are a range of types of redirects that are available, but for these types of redirects, a 301 is best. A 301 status communicates to search engines and web browsers that the page has been permanently relocated and redirects the user to the correct page. A 301 redirect also transfers ranking power (sometimes called “link juice”) that the legacy page had built up to the new page.

In order to identify every page on the site that needs to be redirected, several tools, including Xenu Link Sleuth, Screaming Frog, Integrity for Mac, are available to “crawl” the legacy site. Pay special attention to URLs that have the most in-bound links, or receive the highest volume of inbound traffic from other sites. These pages are home to most of the site’s “link juice” and must be maintained. Tools such as Moz Open Site Explorer, Google Search Console and Majestic SEO, can be used to compare and make sure that nothing gets skipped or overlooked.

Once the list of legacy pages is complete they must be mapped to pages on the new site and redirected. A simple way to help you do this is to create an excel file listing the old URL’s in one column and the new ones in another. It also helps for verification purposes later.

It’s important to be prepared to make all of the changes at once instead of drifting a handful of pages at a time. Leaving both domains live sends conflicting signals to search engines and can damage the domain authority of both the legacy and new domains.

Resubmit Sitemap

Once the redirects have been implemented it’s important to notify Google and Bing Webmaster Tools that a change of address is happening. Leave the old site’s XML sitemap live for about a week after the migration so crawlers can still access it, follow the links therein through the 301 redirects, and start working the old URLs out of their indexes.

Create a XML sitemap for the new domain and submit it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools/Search Console. Typically, it can take a day or two before the new crawl takes effect and you can compare the number of indexed pages.

Directory Listings

Along with inbound links, directory listings are one of top sources used by both search engines and users to find a website or domain. It’s considered best SEO practice to make certain that listings in online and print directories are current and accurate. A domain migration requires returning to all of the directories that list the legacy domain and updating them to reflect the new address. These directories may include (most generically) FourSquare, InfoGroup, Localeze, YP.com, City Search, and DMOZ. An aggregation tool like MozLocal can help bring all of these directories into alignment.

In addition to the generic directories most businesses have an opportunity to be listed in industry-specific directories. From auto-dealers to law firms or home maintenance professionals, you’ll likely find a set of available directories. The longer a legacy domain has been in existence, the more directories that will subsequently need to be updated.

Social Media

There is a strong correlation between social media engagement and web traffic. Announcing and publicizing the domain name change to provide important social signals and promote the rebranding in its own right. This will generate higher than usual volumes of traffic to the new domain in order to compensate for the potential drop in organic traffic while Google is indexing the new domain. While it isn’t critical to update all legacy posts with a new domain, it’s crucial to make sure that any pages that have social media links to them are correctly redirected. Update social media profiles, especially Twitter, Facebook and Google +, but don’t neglect LinkedIn, Instagram, Blogger, YouTube and any others that are connected to the website.

Analytics and Search Console Profiles

The profiles in an analytics package, whether it is Google Analytics or a fee-for-service provider, will track the traffic to a specific domain, and if it’s set up correctly should not be tracking activity on other domains. In the Admin tab of Google Analytics, the property name and default URL should be updated to reflect the new domain. This is also the time to annotate Google Analytics in order to track the date of the migration.

In addition to Google Analytics it’s important to update settings in Google Search Console, only AFTER the migration has occurred.

1. On the Search Console homepage, click the name of the legacy site.
2. Click the gear icon; then click change of address.
3. Follow the instructions in the change of site address tool.
4. Monitor site traffic as indicated in move a site with URL changes.

Audit Redirects

Once everything is complete, it’s important to verify that everything is working as expected. The Screaming Frog web spider tool can help run an audit of the old and new site to examine the results.

1. Upload: The legacy URL’s

Switch the SEO Spider to ‘List Mode,” select the file with all the old URLs to audit and upload.

This is where the log that was saved from step 1, redirects comes back into play.

2. Select: The ‘Always Follow Redirects’ box

Navigate to the ‘Advanced’ tab inside the ‘Spider Configuration’ and select the ‘Always Follow Redirects‘ option.

As default ‘List Mode’ works at a 0 crawl depth, meaning it just crawls the URLs included in the upload. With this feature selected, it ignores depth and will follow redirects until the final destination (a no response, 2XX, 4XX or 5XX etc.).

3. Start the crawl

Now hit the ‘Start’ button let the SEO Spider crawl the site, reach 100%, and come to a stop.

4. Click on ‘Reports’ & ‘Redirect Chains’

This report does not just include URLs which have redirect chains, it includes every URL in the original upload and the response in a single export. If a URL has multiple redirects in a chain, this export will map out each hop along the way, redirect 1, to redirect 2, to redirect 3, and all the responses along the way until the final target. It will also show how many hops there are (remember 5+ Google might give up and treat as a 404) and identify any pesky redirect loops.

This report provides a comprehensive method to audit all redirects in a site migration in a nice, easy, single export.

Effective Domain Migration To Preserve Search Engine Rankings

While there are a lot of steps in this process and many intricate details to pay attention to, with preparation and a clearly outlined plan it can be possible to identify unexpected behavior or disparities before they have a notable impact on traffic and visitors. Following the steps to update analytics packages and audit redirects will help identify opportunities to make changes before they become problems.

Now, go forth and change that domain!

Social media marketing is a highly valued element of any decent marketing strategy. The benefits of using social media marketing are so great, that anyone not implementing the cost-effective marketing resource is missing out on a phenomenal marketing opportunity.

According to Hubspot, 92% of all marketers claim that social media marketing is important for their business, with another 80% stating that their efforts increased traffic to their websites. It’s easy to see that social media marketing is definitely making waves in the marketing field and many marketers report realizing the potential for business growth, however they are unsure of the best method.

Social Media Examiner states that 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media, but 85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best to use. There seems to be some uncertainty when it comes to social media marketing. With our help, we will diminish the confusion by thoroughly explaining the best ways to use social media to market your business.

There are an immense amount of benefits of using social media to market your business. We’ve chosen 10 to highlight:

1. Increased Brand Recognition

Social media marketing is one of the most cost-efficient digital marketing methods to syndicate your content and increase your business visibility. Implementing a social media strategy will greatly increase your brand recognition because your business will be reaching such a broad audience of consumers. To get started, create social media profiles for your business and begin networking. Have employees, partner businesses, sponsors, your mother, anyone “like” and “share” your business content on social media. Simply having content “liked” and “shared” makes your business more visible to new consumers which will lead to retaining customers. The more people who know about your business, the better – and social media is a fantastic outlet for showing people what your business is about. Social media marketing increases any businesses’ ROI (return on investment).

2. Improved Brand Loyalty

According to a report by Texas Tech University, brands who engage on social media channels enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. Social media creates the perfect environment for brands to communicate with their consumers and create a bond of brand loyalty. The report proves that brands who communicate with their customers on social media obtain higher levels of customer loyalty.

The millennial consumer generation is known for being the most brand loyal generation of all. The millennial generation is the largest generation in US history – born between the early 1980’s and the early 2000’s – and will soon completely consume the market. Studies show that the millennial consumer generation is 80% more likely to use a brand again if they are pleased with their first purchase. With these technology natives requiring communication between themselves and their brands, businesses must implement social media marketing to catch the eye of the most influential consumer.

3. More Opportunities for Conversion

The more visibility your business has, the better. Every blog post, image, video, or comment may lead viewers to your company website, providing the opportunity for traffic conversion. Social media marketing allows your business to give a positive impression. If a viewer comes across your content and has no need for your products or services, the consumer is more likely to think of your business when the need arises.

4. Higher Conversion Rates

There are several ways social media marketing results in higher conversion rates, the most prominent is its humanization factor. When brands are interactive by sharing content, commenting, and posting statuses on social media, it personifies a brand. People prefer to do business with other people, rather than companies.

Studies have also shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. When a brand is interactive on social media, consumers who follow your brand’s social media accounts often gain more trust for your brand and view your business as more credible. People use social media platforms to stay connected to their friends, family, and communities. Since people are already talking, why not throw your brand into the mix? More likely than not, they’ll mention your brand to a friend when your products or services are needed, overall providing your business with social proof of its quality. Putting your brand in an atmosphere where people are sharing, liking, and talking, can only improve the conversion rates on your existing traffic.

5. More Brand Authority

When consumers see your business posting on social media – a marketing strategy that only top businesses use – it makes your business appear more credible. Interacting with your customers frequently demonstrates that your business cares about customer satisfaction, and is available to answer any questions that customers might pose. When a satisfied customer wants to spread the word about a great product or service they received from your business, they often turn to social media (especially if social media is the platform where they heard about your business in the first place). Having authentic customers mentioning your business on social media will advertise your business to an even broader audience. The average person has over 300 friends on Facebook, that’s 300 more people that will hear about your business if they scroll through their news feed.

6. Increased Inbound Traffic

Without marketing your business on social media, your inbound traffic is limited to your usual customers. The people familiar with your brand are likely searching for the same keywords you already rank for. You’ll have much more difficulty reaching anyone outside of your loyal customer circle (if you have loyal customers) without social media marketing. Every social media profile you add to your marketing mix (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, etc.) is a gateway to your website, and every piece of content you post is another opportunity to acquire a new customer. Social media is a melting pot of different types of people from different cultures and backgrounds, and no two people have the same profile. With different people come different needs and different ways of thinking. Perhaps someone in an older demographic of consumers will search your website for the same keywords, however a millennial generation consumer could think totally differently. By marketing on social media, you are opening your business to versatile consumers all over the world.

7. Cost-Effective

Social media marketing is the most cost-efficient advertising strategy. Once you obtain a few satisfied customers who are vocal about their positive purchase experience, you can sit back and let the advertising be done for you by actual customers who enjoyed your product or service.

According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers found that as little as 6 hours a week spent on social media marketing efforts saw a benefit of reduced marketing expenses. Even paid advertising through Facebook and Twitter is the cheapest form of marketing compared to other methods. If paid advertising on social media is the way you decide to go, you can always start small and watch your conversion rates rise, which will pay off the money you initially put in.

8. Better Search Engine Rankings (SEO)

Search engine ranking is very important for obtaining traffic to your business website. More than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for one year or longer improved search engine rankings. Ranking in the top positions in SEO for your keywords will revolutionize your traffic. Let’s face it, everyone uses Google to find information, and they likely won’t click “Next Page” because they don’t have to, they’ll find the answer within the first URLs they click on. If your business website isn’t ranked high in search engine results, you should probably adjust your marketing strategy.

Although posting on social media might get your business some site traffic, more is required to succeed at social media marketing. First, you must create high quality content. Content such as blogs, infographics, facts, advertising your products or services, employee photos and events, and much more will make your business’s social media profile intriguing and credible. Once you begin posting quality content, you’ll begin to build a social media community. Your followers will “like” and “share” your content, which will give your business more visibility, however it is about quality over quantity. An engaged community is more likely to link to you, which will make your website rank higher in search engine results. Social media can be used to publish your content in order to obtain more links to your webpages, which will rank you higher in search engine results.

9. Overall Better Customer Experience

Social media is a networking and communication platform. Every customer interaction with your business on social media is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your compassion for your customers. Whether a customer has a complaint you can address, or a compliment to give, social media allows you to address the matter in an interpersonal dialogue. A brand devoted to customer satisfaction that takes the time to compose personal messages will inherently be viewed in a positive light, even if responding to a customer complaint.

10. Improved Customer Insights

Hubspot reported that 69% of marketers found social platforms provided market place insights. Social media also gives you an opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are interested in. By monitoring comments, you can see customers’ blunt opinions of your business that you might not be aware of if your business didn’t have social media presence.

Another insightful aspect of social media marketing is the ability to segment your content syndication lists based on topic and identify what types of content generate the most interest and then produce more of that type of content. With social media marketing you have the ability to measure conversions based on different posts on various social media platforms to find the perfect combination to generate revenue.

Now Get Started

Still don’t know where to start? First, create your business’s social media profiles, next, post engaging content, gain some links to your webpages (which will improve your keyword search engine optimization), and boom: you’ve got yourself a functioning social media marketing strategy.

There are virtually no reasons not to implement social media marketing into your marketing strategy. Your competition is most likely already on social media. Don’t let your competitors hog the playing field. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see growth in your business. There is no reason not to market on social media when the potential losses are statistically insignificant.

The longer you wait, the more time you’re losing, the less traffic you’ll receive, and the less customers you will retain.

Nearly all industries and businesses use email marketing as a way to reach their audience. And it’s no wonder why–as email users, most of us are constantly connected, checking our inbox on desktops and mobile devices multiple times a day. By reaching users on devices that are just a touch or click away, marketers hold a major advantage if this initiative is properly utilized and appropriately implemented.

Email allows you to draw attention to any specific asset of your business. Whether you’re trying to drive immediate sales, remind users of an event, or bring traffic to a distinct page on your website, email marketing is often the best way to do so.If you have significant value to offer users, then the advantages of email marketing may seem endless. However, as a platform it won’t be effective if the message isn’t being opened or clicked on. In order for email marketing to be a successful channel, and for your click-through-rate to be significant enough to produce results, apply as many best practices as you can to your efforts.

We’ve asked some top digital marketing experts at our digital agency for insights, and have looked to outside experts at some top organizations to find out what their best tips are for producing emails with high click-through-rates:

1. Customer Logic

Bryan Clayton, CEO at Greenpal, points out the worth of thinking about your audience when you’re crafting emails, and suggests asking people unfamiliar with the content for feedback on how it reads:

“The biggest mistake we were making when crafting our emails was that we were using company logic as opposed to customer logic. You really need to put yourself in the mind of your customer when crafting your emails. Run your email copy by friends, and strangers. Get feedback because it’s so challenging to get out of your own skin.”

-Bryan Clayton, CEO, Greenpal

2. Timing Matters

Finding the best time to send emails to individual users will provide the best results. Austin Paley, Corporate Marketing Communications Manager at Web Designer Vip, explains the importance of segmenting contacts with consideration for timing:

“While there are some standard times that are widely considered the ‘best’ to send emails based on vertical and email type, you should try and go beyond just finding the best time to send for most of your users and aim to send at the best possible time for each individual on your contact list. For example, if you find that most people like to open emails at 9 am, it isn’t enough to just send an email at 9 am Eastern Standard Time and call it a day. Use the information you’ve gathered in your lists to try and segment your contacts down by time zone – that way you can send to each person at 9 am in their local time. Some mailing platforms will do this for you automatically as a final step before you send – but if your email service provider doesn’t include this it can be as simple as using phone numbers or city data to figure out what state a contact is in and then adding a new time zone field manually. It can be a lot of tiring manual work, but higher open rates and better results make it more than worth it.”

-Austin Paley, Corporate Marketing Communications Manager, Web Designer Vip

3. Think About Individual Users

It’s important to have relevant messaging, and an understanding of your users at a 1-to-1 level explains Shannon Johlic, Head of Marketing at Boomtrain. Then you can deliver only the most targeted content for that individual person:

“As email marketers, we must look to reaching the mythical segment of 1. No audiences, just individual people seeking more personal user experiences. But how do you do this? Previously thought a near impossible task, now, (thanks to machine intelligence), marketers have the opportunity to massively scale and automate not only the actual building of the emails, but the collection and processing of data that surfaces an understanding of the behavior of your subscribers/customers and a deep understanding of your content/products. This coupling of multiple layers of understanding with automation gives marketers tools that predictively populate emails with content most relevant to that individual person, and will deliver it to them at an optimal time. Powerful computers and algorithms have evolved so much that marketers are now able to distribute relevant emails as if sent by a close friend who has known that individual for years.”

-Shannon Johlic, Head of Marketing, Boomtrain

4. Quality over Quantity

Ashley Chavez, Director of Marketing at Get Smart Marketing explains that sending emails to a ton of leads that aren’t necessarily qualified is far less effective than sending to a smaller, qualified group:

“As a marketer, it is your goal to influence a consumer’s purchase decisions. Email is a powerful tool that helps marketers connect with consumers, delivering them useful and relevant content right to their inbox. So, it seems logical that the more people you can contact, the better your chances are at sending qualified leads to sales. However, more doesn’t always mean better. Adding unqualified leads to your nurture campaigns, won’t help close more sales. Grow your email list the smarter way by serving personalized sign up forms only to visitors who haven’t opted in and that fit within one of your target audience personas.”

-Ashley Chavez, Director of Marketing, Get Smart Content

5. Code Images

Andrew Jung, Corporate Marketing Associate at Web Designer Vip suggests always defining your image sizes in your coding, and labeling them with alt image tags for the best user-experience:

“If your images don’t render in your clients’ email platform, your email will display as an assortment of random white boxes and could come across as spam. By having the image sizes defined with alt image tags in your coding, it ensures that the layout of your email will retain its shape without being jumbled together and your alt tag images will explain and help identify what each white box is. This does not seem like a huge difference to you, but putting in the extra effort can be the decisive factor that might sway your clients to load those images and actually read and react to your email.”

-Andrew Jung, Corporate Marketing Associate, Web Designer Vip

6. Align Content with the Buyer Process

Aligning content with the buying cycle is crucial for every company and should be a focus of any successful email marketing campaign. Troy O’Bryan, CEO at Response Capture explains how organizations should consider where the user is in the buying process when crafting their emails:

“Each stage of the A.C.T. (Awareness, Consideration, Transaction) Model represents a different part of their journey and the content should be reflective. For example, if a prospect visits the “request a demo” page on your website, they are already in the Consideration stage. A case study or expert guide would be great content for your follow-up email strategy. By tailoring the content to fit the wants and needs of the buyer, they will be more likely to respond because you are providing something of value.”-Troy O’Bryan, CEO, Response Capture

7. What’s the CTA?

Having a strong Call-To-Action allows marketers to encourage users to take a desired action that brings them further into the conversion funnel. Saurbah Nangia, CEO & Founder at Targeting Mantra suggests making the CTA of your email your core focus:

“Marketers should focus on the CTA that goes with the email. Whether it is a template or a simple HTML message, your email focus should be on the CTA you are including in the mail. This is because you have just 1-8 seconds to catch the attention of the reader and you should be able to direct the reader in split seconds what you want him/her to do.”

-Saurbah Nangia, CEO & Founder, Targeting Mantra

8. Testing

Like all other marketing tactics, in order to understand what’s going to resonate best with your users and what types of email messages they’re most likely to open and click through, you need to do some testing. Jeff Tomlin, CMO of Vendasta Technologies highlights the importance of this in his tip:

“Get them into the email. First, you’ve got to get people to open the email and they choose in milliseconds whether to do so or to delete based only on who sent it what the subject line is. So make both count. Remember, emails coming from a person usually perform better than those coming from an entity. And while there are plenty of guidelines on creating open-worthy subject lines, if you’re looking for the BEST subject line, you need to test. Test. Test. And, you got it, test.”

-Jeff Tomlin, CMO, Vendasta Technologies

9. Videos

Owner at The Media Captain says his team has had great success with embedding videos in their email marketing, and suggests using it as an opportunity to engage users in a way that many companies don’t:

“When you mention “video” in the title it typically has a higher open rate percentage. We will then embed the video within the email blast and when people click on it, it drives them to a landing page specific to the email marketing message that we’re delivering.”

-Jason Parks, Owner, The Media Captain

10. Build Consistent Confidence

If you’re not delivering in content, you likely will not be converting clicks. Owen Powis, Founder and CEO of Mailflow, stresses the importance of instilling confidence in your users:

“Focus on creating the best possible experience, and people will click when they have confidence that the email will contain something they want to see. If they know when you send them an offer it’s always a great offer they are far more likely to check it out. The more effort you put into creating a fantastic campaign that genuinely benefits your audience the better your CTR will become. This is a far healthier and longer term strategy than just looking at making the subject line stand out.”

-Owen Powis, Founder and CEO, Mailflow

Effective Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best marketing tactics for reaching an audience, and boosting a brand’s ROI. To understand if your efforts are paving the way for your business, take a look at your key performance indicators and examine your open-rates and click-through-rates to identify areas of improvement. If you’d like to enhance the overall performance of your email marketing, and increase your click-through-rates, incorporate some of our experts’ ideas throughout your next campaign.

Building the perfect website is hard. From the right color scheme, to choosing a font that engages audiences, to making sure that technical SEO elements are perfect, there are a lot of different things that require a great deal of thought and effort in order to get right. However, one element really stands above all the rest in importance for any website that is trying to get a user to do something – whether that is buy a product, request a quote on a service, or learn new things about the value a business might provide them. This essential website item is known as a call to action button, and it can be unbelievably difficult to get right.

From choosing the right shape, to its placement on your website, there are a variety of different elements to consider when trying to create the best call to action buttons for your website. With so many different factors to consider, it is easy to get overwhelmed and settle on a button quickly and without much thought – but beware! The right call to action button can mean the difference between hundreds or even thousands of conversions over the lifetime of a website. A great place to look when you’re feeling stuck on what to do is to check out some examples of websites that are doing their calls to action correctly. Here are 8 of our favorites:

1) Uber

All of the best call to action buttons feature copy that gets users to click and see what comes next in a website’s conversion funnel process. However, an equally important part of any good call to action button is whether or not it stands out from the rest of the website it is on. For most pages with ctas, contrast is extremely critical when it comes to making sure that the button actually converts.

There are few better examples of consistent contrast usage than Uber’s website. The homepage features three separate background images that scroll behind a CTA button that doesn’t change in color, shape, or positioning on the page in the middle left-hand side of the site. It provides three versions of copy for three very different demographics. What is so interesting about this call to action, outside of contrast, is that the three scrolling backgrounds are effectively going after each of their target audiences – in order. First they go after riders with a very simple “sign up” copy, and then drivers with the same message. Finally they provide information for people who are interested in what the business is doing for the community through a “learn more” call to action.

While the copy isn’t particularly earth shattering in it’s originality, it is clear, to the point, and draws the eye so strongly that most user’s initial interaction with the website is almost solely based around the CTA’s location on the page.

2) Flex Studios

Call to action buttons come in lots of shapes and sizes – but all of the best ones offer an emotional trigger while standing in stark contrast to the rest of the page they are featured on. While CTAs are important, sometimes the actual emotional trigger that a CTA uses to be effective isn’t in the button – it’s in the copy that surrounds it.

A great example of this idea in action can be found on Flex Studios’ website. Featuring scrolling background images, the page changes the text that accompanies each image while giving a consistent green CTA button with the copy “Book a Class”. What’s particularly interesting about this site is that each set of copy provides different emotional triggers that could feasibly interest someone enough to book a class. The initial copy focuses on highlighting Flex’s location in New York City’s Union Square, as their target customer is in that area. For the second image and batch of copy they focus on the three different workouts they offer in an effort to get users to see what different classes they could book by clicking on the call to action. Finally, they highlight their discount pricing for a first class.

In this way the page and its CTA are not addressing just one possible emotional trigger that could get a user to click on it – but three. In this way the page is able to capture a variety of different users with different needs, and this is what makes the call to action button on the page one of the best around.

3) Crazyegg

While a simple button for users to “click to learn more” or “purchase a product” can be extremely effective, some of the best call to action buttons are a lot more interactive and serve as a way to push people down the conversion funnel as opposed to acting as a final step before a purchase.

A great example of an interactive CTA leading to great results for a business is Crazyegg’s website. The homepage is extremely simple – it features the company’s logo and poses a very simple question that a lot of users want to know the answer to: “What’s making your visitors leave?” It then goes one step further and provides a solution by suggesting that audiences find out by entering their website and then click on an extremely alluring CTA – “Show Me My Heatmap”.

This call to action is so effective because it primes users by presenting and then offering a simple solution to a problem. By the time they end up on the next page, they really want an answer to the question Crazyegg posted on their homepage, and are much more likely to sign up for the service as a result. The whole process is a phenomenal example of emotional triggers combining with user interaction to get a business tons of conversions in the most efficient way possible.

4) medCPU

Sometimes the best call to action buttons are the most subtle. While this would seem to go against all logic, if your product is a sizable investment, sometimes it’s important to keep your call to action present, but secondary to providing audiences with information about why they need to purchase what you’re offering.

For B2B healthcare provider MedCPU, this was certainly the case. A technology solution for hospitals, their product is not something someone would buy on a whim – they need as much information as possible beforehand. As a result, the call to action button at the top of the page, “How It Works”, is a very soft call to action not in the vein of a “buy now!” or a “sign up”, because most users aren’t going to be at the step in the conversion process upon initial entry to the site – they need to learn more about the product first.

It’s only when users get to the bottom of the page and have read everything medCPU can do for their business that they are presented with a much stronger set of calls to action to “Contact Us” and “Request A Demo”. This site is a great example of an initial call to action that is subtle, but moves users along the conversion process in a non-intrusive way, teaming up with a much harder sales-centric call to action later on in the user’s journey through the website.

5) Litmus

We’ve already discussed how the content on the rest of the page can affect a call to action’s worth to a business – but lack of content can play a role as well. This is particularly true in above-the-fold calls to action on a website’s homepage, where text and image clutter can distract users from seeing (and clicking on) what would otherwise be a perfectly decent call to action button.

One of the best examples of spacing leading to a call to action button that converts is on email provider Litmus’ site. Their orange call to action button, which reads “Get started now”, would be pretty efficient on most sites – but with how they’ve structured their page it works even better. In particular, their use of an extremely high quality image of a desktop with their email testing suite open in the background, paired with their call to action is impressive. It provides imagery that answers the “why” of their CTA – mainly that their product suite looks great and provides result. There are two lines of text above the CTA that answer the “why” to really drive this idea home.

While this is all impressive and effective in terms of making sure the call to action button performs, what is important here is that a single background image, two lines of text, and standard navigation elements are all users have to contend with outside of content that users have to scroll down to see the rest of. This means that a CTA that is already prominent gets even more prominence on the page – driving more conversions as a result.

6) Spotify

When a website has two unique goals it can be difficult to choose which one to prominently display. We’re already gone through a couple examples of how scrolling background images can be used to solve this issue – but they clearly pose a problem in terms of click-through-rate as your calls to actions on the second and third scrolling images get less face time and less opportunities to drive clicks as a result. If your business is facing this problem, sometimes it’s a better idea to go with two calls to action side-by-side using different color schemes and font choices.

One of the best calls to action that demonstrates this concept in practice can be found on music streaming service Spotify. Spotify has two clear goals when it comes what they want to do with their online presence – drive as much usage of their platform as possible, while simultaneously trying to convince existing and new users that purchasing their premium package is a worthwhile investment. In order to make sure that both actions can be feasibly taken from their homepage they feature two call to action buttons side-by-side that are designed quite differently. Their “Go Premium” CTA features bold white text on a green background, while their “Play Free” button features black text transparently overlayed on their background image. It’s clear that the primary goal of the site is to drive premium sign-ups as a result of both style and positioning (buttons and clickable navigation elements to the left of a page tend to drive more clicks) of the buttons – but at the same time it’s very easy for users looking to listen for free to find what they’re looking for as well.

7) Unbounce

A lot of the highest-converting calls to action do a phenomenal job of incorporating testimonials on their pages without detracting from their button’s conversion rates. While this might seem relatively simple in practice, getting a testimonial on a page that actually provides value while not pulling user attention away from a call to action button is anything but child’s play. There’s a very fragile balance between allaying some user’s fears of buying your product or service while not negatively impacting those who would otherwise convert with you without a second thought.

A great example of a website that does this perfectly is Unbounce, a landing page creation service. They do an impressive job using vertical space to make sure that their call to action is the star of the show while still including a testimonial. The button itself is big, contrasts nicely with their background color, and features the extremely engaging copy, “build a high-converting landing page now” in big white letters. It’s hard not to be immediately drawn to the call to action – but it’s clear that Unbounce knows that there might be some concerns about their product, so they go to great lengths to make everything as clear as possible. Not only do they map out the exact steps for using their service in the simplest terms possible, they provide a testimonial at the very bottom of the page right below the fold. This way the testimonial is there for users who are looking for it, but the person’s face and the quote they’ve give about how useful Unbounce is doesn’t distract users who have their minds made up about the service and just need to have their attention driven to the CTA button.

8) Giftrocket

Sometimes the best way to get someone to buy your product is to simply get them started with the purchase process. While this is a rare case, occasionally people will see the value that your product brings as they fill out each required step to complete the purchase process. This is particularly true for the gift-giving industry, where the initial purchase step is intimidating, but the feel-good effects of giving a gift to someone helps steer a user to completion once they start the process.

In this instance, the call to action buttons are tailored so that they make the process seem easy, and not intimidating to users. While you might be slightly misrepresenting the difficulty of sending a gift, once you get a user to click on a button with the intention of buying someone a gift, you can rely on the feel-good power of doing so in order to offset the slight misrepresentation of how easy the process is going to be. There are very few businesses that take advantage of this strategy as efficiently as GiftRocket.

Their CTA, “Send a GiftRocket” dramatically underplays how difficult their service is to use. While it isn’t rocket science (pun intended) to get through their relatively simple fields – it does require you take about 5 minutes to sit down and fill everything out. It isn’t quite as simple as snapping your fingers and immediately sending a GiftRocket, as the CTA would suggest. That being said, because the ease of use expectation is set before a user starts the process and they’re going to be sending a gift – they stick with the process. After all, who starts buying a gift for someone they care about and then stops halfway through – even if the CTA is slightly misleading?

The Best Call to Action Buttons are Tested

Without a doubt these are 8 of the best designed call to action buttons out there in terms of the amount of thought and time that have clearly been put into them. Most of them have been on their respective sites for some time, and all signs point to them being extremely effective converters of traffic. However, it is important to note that just because a call to action button looks nice, doesn’t always mean it will function correctly. At the end of the day the purpose of a call to action button is to convert traffic – not look pretty. So don’t just create a great looking call to action button and think of the task as done and dusted. Test it! You’d be surprised by how often data can go against common conceptions of utility and beauty when it comes to calls to action on a website

There’s no question that producing a well strategized and maintained content stream is crucial for the success of any digital business. The benefits are numerous and include everything from an increase in visitor engagement onsite, improved search engine rankings through SEO, and if your content marketing initiatives are done correctly, the establishment of a “sticky” factor that keeps people coming back to your site.

The copywriting portion of content marketing is the fun part, but in order to truly get the most out the content you produce it’s vital that you begin thinking about how effective your content is analytically. A truly effective content marketer combines both the creative and analytical aspects of proper content marketing to produce engaging, hard-hitting copy that is backed by significant amounts of quantitative research to inform what is being discussed. The following are some of the most important elements of proper data driven content marketing to keep in mind to help give your content marketing program a substantial edge over your competition.

Before Posting:

Surf a Little
The key to ensuring that what you’re writing is engaging is making sure that you’re staying on top of trends in your industry, and being aware of what your audience finds valuable. A fairly simple way to do this is to monitor social media conversations on Twitter and Facebook to stay abreast of news and developments. Regularly check industry news outlets and the social profiles of industry influencers to see what “hot topics” are circulating amongst your audience. The content you create should offer some fresh perspective or an appropriate response/reaction to the particular topic.

Leverage Google Trends as a tool for your research efforts to see what terms and trends are significant in searches and just how many people are expressing interest in these terms. The tool also allows you to see a forecast for any given term and topic allowing you to gauge the projected amount of interest users will have in this subject as time progresses. Build this data into your planning phase so that you can identify which topics and subjects users are seeking to learn the most about, and ultimately allow it to help you define what your content should be related to and how effective it will be in providing value to readers.

The content you create should always be substantiated by correlating data so that you know your efforts aren’t going to be useless. To highlight the benefits of utilizing Google Trends, consider the idea of a relatively new subject within your space and perhaps there isn’t a lot of existing content on it. Take a look at Google Trends to see if this subject may gain traction within the next few months, allowing you and your organization to get an edge over competition, and be one of the first to provide insights on the topic of interest.Keyword Research
Once you have a relevant topic, you’ll want to do your site a favor by ensuring that the final product benefits your search engine rankings and is easily accessible to users. To do this, create content that contains keywords appropriate to the article topic as well as your business’ products or service offerings. A great tool for this is Google Keyword Planner.

The goal here is to find keywords that have a high monthly search volume mixed with low competition, which greatly improves the chances of your content appearing prominently on the search results page when a user searches for the particular set of terms or keywords that you’ve identified. These keywords cannot simply be plugged into your content in any way possible, but instead should be naturally occurring in a way that provides an excellent and relevant user experience while simultaneously giving you as much SEO value as possible.

After Posting

Hopefully you’re using a tool like Google Analytics on your website to help you monitor your site’s performance. If so, allow a week or so to pass after posting your content to allow data about how users are interacting with your content to aggregate. Once you do, dig through the following metrics to analyze the performance of your content and it’s effectiveness in reaching the goal of the content. Identify what types of content is repeatedly producing the best results, and what content could use some improvements, is one of the best ways you can enhance your SEO by using data to drive your content marketing initiatives.

Key Metrics:

• Page Views: While it shouldn’t be the only metric that informs whether or not your content marketing initiatives are successful, page views are a solid metric that can be extremely helpful when it comes to comparing different pieces of content. It will inform you about what your audience is interested in and also help you identify what pieces of content are the most important on your site for generating traffic.
• Page Bounce Rate: You’ll want this as low as possible, as it indicates the content was engaging enough to send people elsewhere through the site. Remember that if you’re posting content on a blog a bounce rate at or just slightly below 90% is perfectly normal.
• Time on Page: These metrics are tied to bounce rate, and reiterates a visitor’s engagement with the content. The longer the average time is that users are interacting with your content the more likely they are to be finding that content helpful.
• Session Duration/Page Depth: Looking at these two metrics for the overall site will give you a good idea of how effective the content you’re producing is to the overall user experience, and how extensively users are engaging with your website as a whole as a result.
• Social Engagement: If you share your content on social media, monitor the traffic that comes through that source and how it behaves by utilizing UTM parameters that are linked to your analytics account. Keep track of how people are responding to your content by paying attention to audience follower growth and the amount of likes, shares, comments, and retweets on each of your pieces of content.

Data Driven Content Marketing Informs Success

With data backing what you produce, you can work on continual topic optimization and mold your content program into a tool that cannot only increase your business’ success in terms of online traffic and sales, but also position you and your team as thought leaders in your respective industries. By utilizing tools and programs that allow you to optimize your content, and then examining what’s working and what’s not, you can proactively develop a content program that is tailored to most closely fulfill the needs of your audience, and significantly improve rate that your business grows.

Content marketing is a crucial component of any successful business plan. Effective content not only helps drives growth but serves as an intricate aspect of audience engagement, allowing marketers everywhere to reach and interact with their users in a way that provides value as well as showcases an organization’s expertise. From traditional written content such as articles for a company blog, to more modern forms of content such as infographics or videos, content marketing collateral forges a connection between companies and their users.

With any successful content marketing plan, a cohesive content marketing editorial calendar is usually the foundation. Not only does it outline what’s expected within a given time frame, it allows you to develop a strategy for accomplishing all of your content-related objectives. By planning ahead you can ensure that all the forms of content you want to include in your initiatives are accounted for.

While the importance of a content calendar is widely known, creating one that can effectively drive your entire content marketing plan often requires some effort. We’ve looked to our internal team of experts that frequently work with content calendars, as well as consulted with some external experts to discover unique tips that have helped to shape successful content marketing programs. Consider our top ten tips when it’s time to build a content calendar for your business:

1. Consumption On An Individual Level

 

Photo Credit: KLP.com
With drastic shifts in how users are consuming information, the importance of engaging the audience with content that is tailored to personal needs is becoming increasingly important. Marie Still, VP of Marketing at AAMP, shares her tip that has enabled her company to produce both high quality and effective content that reaches the audience at all stages of the buyer journey:“We use the McKinsey Loyalty Loop to guide our content strategy. When we are planning for the month, we are creating content for all points on the path to purchase. For example, if we were just creating content to drive awareness we could fall into the leaky bucket scenario where we are gaining new customers but not gaining loyalty; on the other side of that coin, if we are creating content just for our loyal customers then we run the risk of not attracting new buyers and hindering growth.”

-Marie Still, VP of Marketing, AAMP

2. Don’t Be Afraid of Change

When you have the goals of your content calendar clearly outlined, it’s easy to see what material is playing an instrumental role in accomplishing those objectives. If you see that something isn’t working, change it so that you’re better reaching your content goals advises Bryn Dodson, Content Specialist at Web Designer Vip :

“It’s valuable—if not critical—to experiment with different types of content. But make sure you have a strategy in place before you start your calendar, and you stick to your strategy long enough to assess how it’s working. If it’s not meeting your goals, don’t be afraid to change it.”

-Bryn Dodson, Content Specialist, Web Designer Vip

3. Utilize Employee Insights

Discovering innovative topics that will be of interest to your audience can be difficult. For many organizations, it can feel as though the topics you cover are redundant with each passing month. Try consulting those who know your business and audience better than anyone else for unique ideas. Jennifer Rosenthal, Community Manager at Pearson suggests reaching out to your employees for ideas when it comes time to create your content calendars:

“Our goal when creating content is to produce resources that will be interesting and/or useful to our target audience. So, we’ve started to create internal employee resource groups to provide insights into what themes and content topics are relevant to our audiences. We learn a lot about what content themes resonate by listening.”

-Jennifer Rosenthal, Community Manager, Pearson

4.Tailor Content for Each Audience

Depending on your business, you may have several audiences with different preferences or user behaviors. It’s important you have content that appeals to each of them says Matt Woodruff, Social Strategist at Ogilvy & Mather:

“For brands with multiple target audiences, tailor each piece of content specifically for one of these groups. This way, you are ensuring that your content is as relevant as possible and the consumer can more easily see the value for them.You can take this contextualized messaging a step further by creating different targeting groups for each audience using paid social. The targeting options available on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are very sophisticated, allowing marketers to extend their CRM efforts outside of their existing customer base.”

-Matt Woodruff, Social Strategist, Ogilvy & Mather

5. Plan Keywords in Advance

With a tool like Google Keyword Planner, you can see which relevant terms are going to have the highest search volume, and plan the subject of your content around what users are searching for. This way, you aren’t simply creating high-quality content, but you’re creating content that a significant amount of users want to find says Austin Paley, Director of Corporate Marketing at Web Designer Vip:“The beauty of a content calendar is that you can pre-plan out every facet of what you’re going to write about. This doesn’t just mean having deadlines set up and different types of content appropriately spaced out – it means you can take the time to plan out what the title of the piece should be. This is important for SEO – it means that you can figure out what target keywords you want to go after ahead of time and then tell your writers (whoever they may be) what keywords they should be thinking about as they write. This doesn’t mean they have to use it x amount of times or try and stuff it into their header tags – it just helps prime them as to what specific topic they should be focusing on. Doing this goes a long way towards helping to create great content that is also created with keywords in mind.”

-Austin Paley, Director of Corporate Marketing, Web Designer Vip

6. Research Unique Ideas

Before you begin your calendar, you should be doing research on various topics so you know what’s already been over-covered within in your space. The topic you wish to write about may not have a lot of data to support it, or you may discover that a variation of that subject might be a better fit explains Heather Ferguson, Content Manager at Main Path Marketing:

“Make sure to research each topic before you commit to writing it sometimes you will find that the topic you’ve picked has been covered many times and is not unique enough to provide you with value. Other times you will find that there is not enough easily accessible information and that writing the topic would be very difficult to cover without some in-depth research (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s better to know in advance and give yourself enough time!). If you do find a topic that has been covered extensively, is there any way to build on it? Perhaps you can update the concept with recently discovered information, or apply it directly to your line of business.”

-Heather Ferguson, Content Manager, Main Path Marketing

7. Competition and Quality

Conducting competitive analysis to see what peers in your industry are producing is important for any content plan. Even if you can’t produce as much content as your competitors might be—you might be able to produce far more valuable content, which will benefit your company much more in the long run highlights Alex Reichmann, CEO at iTestcash.com:

“One trick I have for content creation is to see what my competitors are doing. Are they putting out content daily, weekly, monthly? Also how can I “up” what they are doing? If I can put out better content at a less frequent rate I consider that an advantage over putting out content for the sake of content. I think quality content that will engage users can be important when putting out articles and marketing them.”

-Alex Reichmann, CEO, iTestCash.com

8. Timeliness

Any good content calendar recognizes dates or special events that play a role in the lives of the target demographic. Paying attention to what’s important to your users and reflecting that awareness in your content is important for any successful content marketing plan says Brian Pitre, Marketing Manager at Web Designer Vip.

“Incorporate seasonality and take note of holidays or special days that are relevant to your industry or business as you develop your content calendar. Understand the audience you’re messaging and pay attention to cultural trends or events that are of significance to them. By building these events into your content plan, you can leverage timeliness to ensure that your messages are resonating well with your audience, and begin fostering both credibility and trust.”

-Brian Pitre, Marketing Manager, Web Designer Vip

9. Update Old Content

Aside from creative, fresh content, your content calendar should save room for some repurposing or updating of old content. If you have old articles that perform well, make sure your calendar is allowing time to make them more relevant shares Carly Fauth, Head of Marketing and Outreach at Money Crashers:

“Base part of your content calendar on the purchasing habits or other habits of your current customers. If a certain topic area is quite popular with your readers, devote more content to that area. Do the same for your top-selling products, if you have them. Devote part of your calendar to updating already published posts. If you did a piece on the top gaming systems for 2012, add that to your calendar so it can be refreshed for the current year.”

-Carly Fauth, Head of Marketing and Outreach, Money Crashers

10. Ask Yourself Four Questions

Determining the perceived value your content will provide readers should serve as the foundation for your content calendar. Cameron Conaway, Content Marketing Manager at Flow describes the questions his team asks themselves before they start actually curating content:“There are seemingly infinite content calendar plugins and apps. Most of them do help teams keep a consistent schedule, color-code writers or topic names, and much more. But I’ve always liked to create four separate calendar columns to keep our team’s core values and content mission at the heart of each piece we create: What, How, Why and Who. What core value does the piece exemplify? How does it provide “Youtility” for our target audience? Why would our target audience share it? Who do we hope to influence?”

-Cameron Conaway, Content Marketing Manager, Flow

Content Marketing Editorial Calendars Build Strong Content Results

Regardless of the vertical that your business is a part of, a successful content marketing plan is crucial for effectively reaching your audience. However, in order for your content to foster the kind of results you want, a content calendar is key. By aligning all of your efforts into a cohesive and well thought-out content marketing editorial calendar and incorporating some of the above tips as you begin developing it, you’ll be setting up your content marketing plan for success.