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Apr 07
Professional web design

Can Your Website Do These 5 Things?

By Web Design

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes most marketers and business owners make is that they overlook their website’s true potential. We know that a website is a necessity to do business. We know how our site should function and what kind of information it needs to contain. But a lot of times we don’t quite grasp the importance of how—that with a few changes—our company’s website could be modified to work harder for our businesses.

Below are 5 things you didn’t know your website could do. More than a pretty face —your website has much more potential than you think.

1. Make you look bigger than you are
If you’re a smaller business looking to attract big clients, your website is the first step. In today’s digital world, impression and trust is everything. A website can communicate your brand’s unique message and connect with your prospect. Microsoft Research reports that people spend only 10 seconds on your homepage before leaving if they don’t immediately connect with your marketing messages. With the aid of professional website design and targeted and clear messaging, you can present your company as a reliable, professional partner that keeps your visitors on your website longer.   

2. Generate revenue

Through methods like blogging, social media, CTA’s (call-to-actions), premium offers and landing pages you can essentially create a completely new revenue channel to grow your business. This process, termed “inbound marketing” is a method that attracts, converts, closes and delights customers to grow your business online. This methodology is proven in the digital age and can significantly affect your bottom line. Consider these following statistics:

  • According to Social Media B2B, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t.
  • The Content Marketing Institute reports that 8 out of 10 people identify themselves as blog readers, and 23% of all time spent online is spent on social media sites.
  • ContentPlus published that blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links.
  •  Search Engine Land shares that up to 80% of people ignore Google-sponsored ads.
  • HubSpot’s research shows that 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
  

These trends show that one way to grow or market your business more effectively is by utilizing an inbound methodology as a way to increase traffic, leads and convert visitors to customers. When these mechanisms are in place, and given time to work— your website turns into a 24/7 lead generator.

3. Build your brand
With the right content marketing tactics, you also can build your brand locally and nationally quicker than traditional advertising and marketing methods. Unless you have 20 million for a national ad campaign to spend, inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional marketing. 54% more leads are generated by inbound than outbound or traditional advertising and marketing methods. If you are able to generate relevant content that solves your customer problems—and do that consistently, your brand will begin to take root in the minds of your customers.

4. Attract talent
90% of all online applicants will visit a company’s careers page. Data suggests that just because you have a strong corporate brand, doesn’t necessarily mean it translates into a strong employer brand. Websites that have a video that showcases their company’s values and culture will receive more applicants than a company who doesn’t. (SOURCE: LinkedIn Employer Handbook. December 1, 2012) With a strong careers page, your chances of attracting top-tier talent increases.



5. Connect your brand to your customer
Having a professional website design created with your customer or buyer persona in mind can allow you to connect your brand to your customer more effectively than traditional push marketing can. By utilizing your website as the cornerstone in your social media activities you can drive traffic from social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest that connects your brand to your customers that creates real affinity and preference.  

In conclusion, your website may not be able to cure world hunger or create peace in the middle east, but it can make you look bigger than you are, generate revenue, build your brand, attract talent and connect your brand to your customer. By adopting an inbound marketing methodology, you can turn your website into revenue generating machine and a valuable and effective marketing tool.

If you need help or have questions on how to make your website work harder for you, please contact us.

Apr 03
How Much Does A Website Cost

How Much Does A Website Cost?

By Web Design

I started my first HTML page back in college in 1997 before the internet was ‘thee internet.’  Since then, I’ve architected and built sites for start-ups to public-traded companies with hundreds of thousands of users and yet even in 2014 the question of cost is a tricky one.

    
Here’s why…

Today, I think it’s a fair assumption that most people view websites as a commodity. Due to recent hard economic conditions—that seems to be letting up—small business owners and start-ups can’t afford to spend big money on a website which they see as just ‘a website’. With the bad economy brought the emergence of crowdsourcing and discount website building companies. Websites now have a terrific low barrier of entry—with little differentiation in how they function which has brought the perception of their value down.

Savvy companies and brands know that their website is an invaluable marketing and sales tool that allows them to achieve their sales and marketing goals. It supports their marketing and sales efforts and provides assurance to their customers and employees in the form of innate trust. Through social media, content, video and imagery, modern companies understand that the look and feel of a website is just the first step in a broader strategy.

Below I’ve compiled 4 things to help you understand how and why a website is priced and what separates the free websites or discounted website builders from a true marketing tool that transforms your business.

1. Start with your goals
When we start with a new client the first thing we ask is: “What are your goals?” Is your goal just to have a great looking site with great pictures and products and photography or do you really want it to be more than a pretty face? Today, having a website is just the first step. That free website you started and launched a few months ago isn’t enough to build a business or a steady stream of revenue in today’s digital landscape. Businesses must adhere to a specific set of standards, rules and best practices if they hope to ever be found online according to Google’s recent algorithm changes. If you can’t get found, then what’s the point of having a website? Sure, you can have it on your business card and point your customers/clients to it, but in today’s competitive environment is that enough?

If your goals are to increase traffic, there are ways to do that through blogging, social media and search engine optimization. If you want to generate leads, there is a process that creates offers your visitors can’t resist; offers so good that they will gladly trade their contact information for your offer that allows you to continue the conversation. If your goal is customer acquisition, there are methods through things like workflows and lead nurturing that can be utilized to move a potential buyer further down the sales funnel to the close stage. All of this begins with your goals. Design and functionality should be built around your goals and not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solution.

Bottom line:

  • Research
  • Traffic generation

  • Lead generation

  • Customer acquisition
  • Search engine optimization
  • Content creation
  • Social media management
  • ROI analysis and reporting
    COST = $500 – $15,000/mo. (depending on how fast you want to achieve your goals)

2. Build a solid foundation
Once your goals are set and we know what kind of website you want to build we start with building a strong foundation. There are numerous platforms and applications out there to build a website. You can even start with a blank html page and start building one from scratch. Each are different and come with a set of standard features and functions. Names like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and Expression Engine come to mind. We use an open source platform called WordPress. WordPress comes with a basic content management system and thousands of free plugins that function like apps on your iPhone. Plugins add extra functionality to a WordPress site like spam blockers, newsletter signup forms, contact forms, maps, buttons, sliders, Facebook feeds and more. It’s also one of the easiest platforms out there for our clients to use—which is why we use it—and it’s for a great price (FREE!). Hosting is also quite cheap to come by. We host with Rackspace Cloud that provides our clients with a cost–effective hosting solution backed by Rackspace’s fanatical support guarantee.   

Bottom line:

  • WordPress: FREE
  • Hosting: $4.99 – $14.99/mo.
  • Domain: $9.99
  • Premium domains: $50+
    COST =$4.99 – $100

3. Design, integrate and optimize to get found
You can go out and by a theme for WordPress for around $40. However just plugging in a theme assures your website will look like a thousand other websites out there. We offer two cost-effective options that take a theme as a base design and modify or “skin it”. “Skinning”
 means taking a native theme design and customizing it to your brand’s unique look and feel. This way the theme takes on a completely different look while customized to your specifications. If you were to build a website from scratch, or through a base code program like Bootstrap the costs would top into the tens of thousands. Fortunately today, small businesses have the option to start with a theme and modify it to match their desired look and feel for a reasonable price.

Additional design costs begin to incur in the form of content. Content can be anything from written text, custom graphics, buttons, background patterns and more. All these add to the time and effort the team must put into the project. You may need diagrams, a video, or downloadable collateral to help customers understand complex products or services. All of this will need to be taken into account.

Then comes photography. No one EVER wants to invest in photography—which is a shame. You basically have the choice of buying quality images or low-quality images. High-end stock photo sites like Getty and Corbis start at $250+ each. Mid-grade sites like Veer and Jupiter start around $50+; and low-quality sites like Shutterstock and iStock prices start at $5+. However the quality shows. Cheap images don’t add visual value to your website and they look cheesy. Most visitors will pick up on this and leave and forget your site ever existed. Photography is always a huge line item in any web project. So be prepared to invest to make your site look polished.

At the end of a professional webdesign design process you also will need to optimize the site for your keywords. Search engine optimization consists of having relevant title tags, descriptions, image alt tags, on-page links and inbound links all based on the keywords someone would punch in to find you. Google accounts for almost 90% of all search traffic so everything is typically geared toward their requirements.

Bottom line:

  • Theme = $40
  • Customizing (Skinning) = $1,500-$2,000
  • Custom graphics = $800-$1,200
  • Photography = $500
  • Good photography = $1,000
  • Search engine optimization = $400
  • Content creation (provided by web company): $1,500-$2,000
    COST = $40 – $10,000

4. Have a back-up plan
After the site is launched the site isn’t over. Websites should not be viewed as a “one and done”. Now you have to factor in the possibility of any malicious attacks, customer service problems, billing errors etc. that add to the costs of maintaining the site. Most sites can go for years without any major issues, but you will need to keep someone on hand who can address any required updates and any other issues if they arise. The old saying: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong —is true. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had clients going into a meeting and their website goes down.

Bottom line:

  • COST = $0-$1,000/yr.

To wrap up, pricing a professional website is a very difficult thing to do. As a small business you are trying to cut costs and do things right. You have to start with your goals and work backwards on what you have to spend.  Only by setting goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely can you accurately quantify ROI and what a realistic investment is.

Jan 25

How to Implement Inbound Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Inbound Marketing

 

Now that you understand the differences of what inbound marketing versus outbound marketing is and have seen how inbound marketing works, now it’s time to learn how to implement this methodology into your own marketing program.

Below, I’ve included an infographic on How to Implement Inbound Marketing and divided it into 9 steps. To read more about each step, click here to skip to the bottom that describes each step in more detail.

Click here to enlarge graphic

 How to implement inbound marketing

If you would like to discuss and learn how you implement inbound marketing, please contact us today for a free 30-minute marketing assessment and consultation.

 

How to Implement Inbound MarketingStep 1: Analysis of your current brand and marketing

To begin, you need to evaluate your brand. Is it aligned? Brand alignment is described as this: Does the brand mean the same to your employees, your customers and to yourself? Do you have a unique story and message that allows you to stand out amongst your competitors?  To maximize your inbound marketing efforts it will be critical to have a well-defined and differentiated brand position. A comprehensive brand development process will give you what you need to apply your brands voice, message and unique value proposition.

 Brand AlignmentYou will also need to look at your current marketing efforts. What is working what is not? Can you augment any current outbound methods that are working well with the new inbound program?

Lastly, you’ll need to install Hubspot™. HubSpot software includes all the tools you need to do inbound marketing, plus award winning services and support to help companies conduct successful inbound marketing campaigns.

Step 2: Competitor analysis

After your brand and marketing has been evaluated and tweaked accordingly you should then take a look at your competitors. The competitor analysis tool in Hubspot will allow you take a peek under the hood on their efforts. You can also utilize a tool like MOZ to garner strategic insight into what’s happening online. This will also give you insight into figuring out their current online strategies. Use this information to find the “whitespace” and create targeted brand messaging.

Step 3: Goal setting and key performance indicators

Next up is to take an honest look at organization and set some goals. Look to set goals using the SMART method: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timebound that meets the C-Suites demands and then go for the “BHAG” (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).  Inbound has the potential to blow your doors off if you’re not ready to deliver on your customer demands. Be prepared for the ‘what-ifs’ like; what if your close rate of qualified leads increased by 20%? How does this affect your company’s ability to scale? Are you ready? Be ready… As Mike Tyson said, “everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face.” Here are a few example goals:

  1. Increase web traffic by 5% in 3 months
  2. Increase qualified leads by 5% every month after month 4
  3. Convert 6% of leads to customers

Wrap it up with listing your biggest obstacles to obtaining these goals and some specific ways to overcome them.

Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should incorporate what you’ve learned in the competitive analysis step. Hubspot will track leads, traffic, conversion rates, lead history and other key metrics for your reporting needs. Cross reference these benchmarks with your sales metrics and other brand reporting tools you may be using to give you a clear baseline. 

buyer personasStep 4: Create buyer personas

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal prospect that assist in the strategy and execution of a more targeted marketing campaign. Although fictional, they are based on real data, behaviors, and demographics learned through customer interviews and polls. (Source: Hubspot)

Who exactly are your customers? Do you know them as well as you should? I once read an article that said the “CMO is dead” and that it should be renamed as “CCO” – Chief Customer Officer. As marketers, it’s our responsibility to know our customers better than anyone else in the company. Begin by thinking how you will add value to the people you are targeting. Start by finding out everything you can about them. Here are a few examples:

  1. How is their job measured?
  2. What skills are required to do their job?
  3. Who do they report to? Who reports to them?
  4. What publications or blogs do they read?
  5. What are their biggest challenges?
  6. How do they receive their information? LinkedIn, Blogs, News?
  7. How do they prefer to communicate?

After you’ve interviewed them, create a dossier of them and keep it up on your wall. Begin to create all your content around solving their problems with remarkable, educational content.

Step 5: Setup website

You will need to get your website setup to conform to inbound standards by making the necessary adjustments. You will need the following:

  1. Blog
  2. Social signals
  3. Hubspot tracking script
  4. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest
  5. Forms
  6. Landing page and email templates
  7. CTAs

Hubspot has all the resources necessary to help you integrate these elements, but a good design agency can also customize and set these up as well.

Step 6: Create the content calendar and compile a strategy

Now that your brand is aligned, you’ve set some goals, you got some benchmarks in place— now it’s time to put together a strategy based on the inbound methodology (ATTRACT > CONVERT > CLOSE > DELIGHT) to market and grow your business through inbound marketing. This will be the game plan that you will use to guide you over the next 12 months. Summarize all the main points into a strategy outlining the key points of your plan. They should include how you plan to attract, convert, what happens when they convert, how you plan to delight them and then how you close them.  Each phase should include specific content that moves them to the next step.  

Get out a calendar and determine the time you have to devote to content creation every week and stick to it. Begin by listing a wide range of topics specifically tailored to your buyer personas. Put together dates as to when you want these topics to be posted. Try to create a back log of content as time permits.

Inbound Marketing StatisticStep 7: Content creation, landing pages and social media

Coming up with something to blog about can sometimes be difficult. Hubspot offers a great tool to help you generate some ideas. Content you publish should be in the form of blogs, infographics, whitepaper and eBooks, webinars, videos and social media posts and links from other sources besides your own. Create value for your prospects and become a resource to them. Blog posts should have social signals so users can easily tweet, like or share your posts as well as a way to sign up to receive updates to your blog.

Once you have created a few whitepapers, ebooks it’s time to start creating some landing pages. The landing pages will feed prospect data into Hubpsot so you can easily track their click patterns on your site. This allows you to give a better customer experience by understanding what they are interested in.

Use Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn to push your content far and wide.

Step 8: Lead nurturing

I can tell you from first hand experience that once you start blogging regularly you will start to see an increase in traffic. At about the 6 month mark traffic suddenly begin to shoot up as your content approaches a “critical mass.” At this point you should be moving customers along the marketing lifecycle and nurturing your prospects through the sales funnel by offering them specific content that solves their problems. Content should be highly personalized and manicured at this phase to be relevant. At this point, they will be asking for case studies and product pricing. Be prepared to offer this information to close the deal.

Step 9: Monitor and adjust

At this point you should have a significant, steady flow of traffic to test in real-time and be looking to make any adjustments or tweaks to make your landing pages, CTAs and content perform better. You can make big differences by A/B testing, trying out different subject lines, titles, colors and even buttons.

In conclusion, this is a brief snapshot of what is involved in implementing an inbound marketing campaign. There are several other components we did not get into like email, analytics, workflows and forms and ways to use social media.

If you would like to discuss and learn how you implement inbound marketing, please contact us today for a free 30-minute marketing assessment and consultation.