If there’s one form of online marketing that’s emerged in the last few years that you MUST get on board with, it’s video marketing. Read on to learn why video marketing strategies are increasingly necessary for all businesses, large and small.

1. Any successful online business revolves around focusing on two metrics- traffic and conversion. Websites that feature online video marketing converts up to 85% more traffic than an equivalent website that doesn’t feature marketing videos (Internet Retailer, April 2010). Would you like to increase your sales 85%?
2. You see, your potential clients love to watch online videos. On any given day of December 2010 an average of 88.6 million people watched videos online. Around 90 million people is a significant enough crowd on its own to make YouTube video marketing sound like a sweet deal, and it’s made more impressive by the fact it represents a 32% jump in online video watching from just a year earlier (Comscore, February 2011). Also keep in mind volume- those 88.6 million viewers watched 14 hours of video that month (a 12% increase from the previous year) and 201 videos that month in total (an 8% increase from the previous year).
3. These numbers don’t simply represent a horde of bored teenagers- videos are the preferred information medium among many highly influential and powerful people. A study published by Forbes Insight in December of 2010 showed that over half of all senior executives (59% in total) would rather intake information from watching a video than from reading text. The vast majority of all senior executives watch online videos and nearly all of them (80%) have increased the amount of videos they watch compared to a year ago.
4. Website visitors love small business video marketing and so does Google and the other top search engines. Getting in good with Google and its ilk is a great way to massively increase your traffic and to take your business to the next level. If you’re able to score high for your keywords with the search engines than you’re going to massively increase your chances of successfully pulling in tons of free traffic. The search engines have collectively decided that video marketing represents the future of the internet and as such they rank websites with online video marketing media far more favorably than websites that only feature text and images. Just how much more favorably will your website rank when you dive into online video marketing? A well optimized website featuring relevant videos is 53 times more likely to hit the front page of search results for their niche than a website without a video on it (Forrester, January 2010).
5. Due to the combined preferences of both online visitors and the internet-shaping search engines videos are set to continue to dominate the web in an increasingly big way. Making online videos for your website just keeps getting easier and easier while more and more visitors prefer to consume your website’s information through these videos. The trend towards a predominantly video-based internet is accelerating rapidly- while in 2010 only about 30% of all online traffic revolved around videos, the experts at Cisco estimate that by 2013 an enormous 90% of all online traffic will revolve around watching videos.

Small business web marketing requires a strategy. Putting up a website and expecting your ideal prospects to automatically visit your site doesn’t work.

What’s your online strategy? Is it to gather leads, provide up-to-date information on your products, services and company, sell goods online or is it to facilitate customer service?

Regardless of what you want your website to do, you may be making the same BIG Mistake that 80 to 90% of small business make when web marketing.

What’s the BIg Mistake?

Not displaying your phone number on every page in a large font, that’s easy to find on the page. The top right header is a perfect spot.

Don’t let your website designer tell you it will interfere with the design or balance of the page. Are you in business to grow sales and profits by attracting new prospects who are interested in what you sell, or in a pretty design, where it’s difficult to find your contact info?

When prospects visit your website they are there for a reason. Most are looking for information, that’s easy to find and read. For those who like what they see, several will take the next step, which is to call your small business. The phone is still one of the fastest and easiest ways to get specific information.

If your contact info is hard to find, or buried at the bottom of the page in a tiny, hard to read font, a majority of interested prospects will simply leave your site, likely never to return. Don’t make the mistake thinking that your web visitors will take the time to navigate their way to find your contact info. Some will, most won’t. The online world is far to competitive to make assumptions. Every prospect who “bails” during the sales process is money lost forever.

Here’s what you need to do now.

Go to your website, is your phone number on every single page? Is it easy to find? Is it legible?

If your phone number is easy to find and on every page, congratulations, you’re part of the small minority who understand that small business web marketing is more than having a pretty website.

If your phone number is difficult to find on your website, make it a priority to get it placed on every page.

Make it easy for prospects to contact you. Lower the barriers. Each step you take driving traffic to your website needs to be thought out. Reduce the friction in the sales process and you’ll likely find your small business web marketing budget producing a much better ROI.

What’s your experience in having to dig for contact information on websites? If your phone number was buried, did you update your site? Let me know by posting a comment below.

Local online search volume for most offline brick and mortar business sectors keeps growing. What does this mean for your business?

Most business owners are surprised by the number of people in their local market who use the search engines to find a preferred supplier for what they want to buy.

Often the number of people using a particular keyword phrase in a local market can number in the hundreds, sometimes even thousands. Imagine what your business would look like if you were able to attract even a small portion of these prospects to your business through your website.

Instead of just entering a generic term like “widgets” in the search engine, prospects who are in an active research mode or are ready-to-buy are searching for “blue widgets AND the name of their town”, or some variation. They are actively engaged in online local search.

Prospects are pre-screening who they want to do business with online, before even contacting a business. They also want business hours, a map, and directions on how to get to your store or office.

The key to attracting these “ready-to-buy” prospects is to make sure that your website is optimized to attract local online searches.

There are multiple steps involved in local search SEO, including, getting listed on Google Maps, Yahoo Local and Bing Local. Submitting your business profile and contact information to the online directories is another step that will help in getting your site ranked. Knowing which keyword phrases people are using in their search queries is key to optimizing your web pages. There are several keyword tools that will help you do so including www.wordtracker.com and Google’s keyword tool.

The easiest way to see how your website measures up to your competition as well as how to improve your online local search engine ranking is to request a FREE consultation.

Local Search marketing may be a new term to you, but it’s quickly growing in importance when it comes to promoting your business.

This is especially true in today’s challenging business climate.

There are still lots of prospects out there looking to buy, either from you or a competitor. Knowing this, there are two questions to answer. Who will they find first and do business with? And is that expensive, traditional media you”re using to market, attracting those “ready to buy” prospects?

A big majority of “ready to buy” prospects are using Google, Yahoo and Bing to find the local product or service provider that best matches their needs. If your website can’t be found on page one of the search results, for all intents and purposes, your business doesn’t exist in the opinion of these “ready to buy” prospects.

Consider this: each month in the US alone, over 10 billion unique searches are done online.

Of those searches:

73% of activity online is in one way or another “related to local content.” (Google)

What does this mean for your business? If your website doesn’t show up on page one, you’re missing out on attracting a lot of new customers who are actively looking to buy what you sell.

If your business sells locally, Local Search, also known as geo-targeted search can no longer be ignored.

Your customers and prospects are turning to the web to get the information they need to make a buying decision, before ever stepping inside your business or calling.

Whether it’s buying a pizza, professional services or big ticket items, over 54% of consumers (and business buyers) are
now searching online for the supplier they will ultimately buy from, rather than use traditional media, such as the Yellow
Pages or newspaper ads. They are making up their mind, before you even get a chance to talk to them. The playing field has changed dramatically. Your business website has to engage this new breed of prospect and entice them to do business with you.

The Local Search trend continues to accelerate, and with Mobile Marketing entering the picture (smart phones), your business needs to be proactive in securing a page one listing on the search engines for your local business.

This is were we can help.

There are two critically important pieces to marketing online. First you need a website that converts prospects into buyers, meaning your website has to provide prospects with a compelling reason or offer to do business with you. Second your website (as part of your automated sales funnel) has to show up on Page 1 of the search results for the keyword phrases your prospects are using in their search for your products and services.

Do these two things right, and the number of new customers you’ll attract with Local Search is phenomenal. The reason, prospects who find you online, are looking to buy, and are much easier to turn into customers than if you continue using traditional advertising and running an ad to appeal to the masses.

Don’t allow your competitors to dominate Page 1 of the Local Search results. If you do, you’re missing out on attracting prospects who have their wallets open and are ready to buy.

To find out how to get your business ranked in the Local Search results contact us today for your FREE consultation

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