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Expand Your Home and Garden Business With Digital Marketing

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Digital Marketing comes in all shapes and sizes. For those with businesses in the home and garden field, there lies a recognizable opportunity for your business to grow and bloom with digital marketing. Email marketing, Pay per Click (PPC) advertising, and social media can all positively impact your business if you develop the right niche and utilize the right tools to do so.

Home and Garden

How Can Email Marketing Help with Sales?

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing yields an average 4,300% return on investment for businesses in the United States. By implementing email marketing, you can reach all of your current and potential customers while sharing the latest and greatest news and promotions your company is offering. Say you’re a lawn care business and your company is promoting a seasonal special, “20% off Lawn Care Services.” By adequately utilizing email marketing, your current and potential customers will be able to access your promotion all within the click of a button. Along with sharing promotions, emails marketing allows you to successfully measure your campaign and the performance on lead generations or sales.

Are you taking advantage of all Social Media has to offer?

If you are not taking advantage of social media, then you need to get into the game! Social media is the quickest and most cost effective way to share new products and showcase projects or work that you have just completed. Social media allows your business to directly interact and engage with customers, which now goes both ways as well. Your customers are able to reach you with any of their questions in a timely fashion. The personal touch you include in your social media pages will help humanize your brand and allow you to reach a whole new audience.

Can PPC help attract the right audience?

Email marketing and social media are great for showcasing your promotions or new products, but if you want to attract customers searching online for specific products or services you offer, then Pay per Click (PPC) is the way to go. Pay per Click (PPC) allows you to connect with the right customers across all platforms and devices, makes sure your ads are shown in the right place at the right time, and easily tracks and measures how your campaign is performing.

Whether you want to promote a special offer or showcase a finished renovation, having an effective digital marketing strategy can help your business blossom into a marketing producing machine!

Contact us and learn how DaBrian Marketing can help your business flourish.

Ecommerce Website Platforms That Help Grow Your Business!

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Make Sure Your Ecommerce Website Platform Is Up To Par

With summer time quickly passing by, the daunting thought of back to school shopping approaches every parents mind. If your Ecommerce platform is not up to par with your competition, parents will be choosing them over you for their back to school needs. Even if your website doesn’t have a shopping cart, you may lose business to competitors who do. Did you know that U.S. eCommerce sales will increase over 11% this year, and over 10% again in 2016 and 2017.

If you’re considering changing or adding an Ecommerce function to keep up with the shopping trends, here are a few platforms that can give your website the shopping power it needs, when it needs it the most!

ecommerce

Volusion

Volusion has a lot of features, simple interface, and good security. It has over 900 features which include store builder, design, built-in marketing, social media tools, inventory management, secure hosting, and 24/7 customer support. It also features a mobile-responsive website and administrative section. If you have a small number of products (100 or less) and still want all the features, then a $15/month Mini Plan, which includes unlimited storage and no transaction fees, is perfect for you. The Premium Plan is $135/month for unlimited products. Could this platform help you with the influx of shoppers online?

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce is easy-to-use and has a lot of built-in features which let you create a store that converts interest into sales. It offers mobile responsive themes, flexible product management, inventory control, optimized checkout, analytics and 24/7 support. In addition, a setup wizard and Bigcommerce University offer lessons in online store design and marketing. Standard pricing is $29.95 per month, with a 1.5% transaction fee, in addition to other credit card processing fees. A Plus account is $79.95 per month with no transaction fees. Will bigcommerce be the right platform for your business needs?

3dcart

Opening and running an online store is fast and effortless as 3dcart includes many of the most needed features. The dashboard is easy to navigate and quickly allows you to access the most important store areas. The dashboard includes data on SEO, social media, mobile store templates, product management, statistics, and security. 3dcart also offers an app store with a substantial number of add-ons. Their “Mini” costs $19.99 a month for up to 200 products, while the Power Plan costs $129.99. Both plans offer no transaction fees. Will the 3dcart platform help your business when it needs it the most?

Shopify

Shopify’s features include over 100 themes, mobile commerce capabilities, your own domain name, marketing/SEO, a blogging platform, the ability to host an entire website, and online education. Shopify also has many apps that you can download and install in your store. Pricing starts at $29 per month, with a 2.9% plus 30 cent rate if you use their credit card processor. Higher plan’s have lower per-transaction fees. Does Shopify seem to fit your business needs?

Big Cartel

Big Cartel is a basic platform which targets artists looking for easy solutions to sell their products online. If you are looking to sell a few products online and don’t mind basic features and limited themes, this is for you. A basic Gold Plan allows you to feature five products for free, with no inventory management. The Platinum Plan is $9.99 per month for up to 25 products, while Titanium is $29.99 per month for up to 300 products. The more you pay the more features you unlock. Does the Big Cartel have all the things your shopping platform needs?

With Ecommerce sales on the rise year after year will your platform be able to handle the rush at back to school time or during the Holiday season?

Contact us today or leave us a comment below for more advice and information.

Why Landing Page Testing Solutions Are Needed

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You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. This is especially true when it comes to website landing pages. These pages should be search engine friendly so you can draw visitors there first. You also want to catch visitors’ attention, provide some basic information, engage them and motivate prospects or customers to take action.

This is where landing page testing solutions are used. These tools allow you to build and run “A/B” tests or multivariate versions of a landing page to answer questions such as whether you should have a navigation bar, will visitors click on a video, what color is most appealing, or would testimonials support your cause. Here are some available online platforms which help design and test landing pages to fit your business needs:

Unbounce focuses only on landing pages, with customization features and A/B testing functionality. They provide over eighty templates geared towards maximizing conversions, whether a sign-up, form submission or sale. You can capture leads on your landing page and send them directly to Salesforce, MailChimp, Constant Contact or AWeber. It’s also easy to add KISSmetrics, Google Analytics, and other conversion tools like surveys or a live chat. Different plans are available, from $49/month to $199/month, with a 30-day free trial.

Optimizely provides one optimization platform for websites and mobile apps. It offers an intuitive, easy-to-use landing page editor with a strong focus on A/B and multivariate testing. Highlights include a reporting dashboard with a testing focus, cross-browser testing and integration with common analytics tools. Benefits include increased interactions, engagement, and conversions (leads and sales.) Different pricing plans are available from $17 to $359/month. A 30-day free trial starter program is also available.

From Left to Right, the company logos are Unbounce, Optimizely, Instapage, and SiteSpect.

Instapage

Designed to quickly build and customize A/B testing landing pages, Instapage focuses on turning visitors into leads and customers. Over seventy templates are available for uses such as click-through, lead generation, and “coming soon” pages. It also has the capability to learn based on visitors who come to the landing page, and will serve up the best possible landing page to help increase your conversion rate. Users can view real-time data to determine the winner of split tests, while tracking conversion types including thank you pages, button/link clicks, and shopping cart checkouts. Instapage integrates with a variety of marketing platforms such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Build your first page free, then upgrade to plans from $29 to $179/month.

SiteSpect

A little more technical in implementation, SiteSpect is designed to allow a broader range of testing options for every aspect of your site. Advanced behavioral targeting is available to create deep and engaging experiences. Users can test content, functionality and features across various websites, mobile sites, and apps, in order to uncover new optimization opportunities. Pricing is dependent on the solution chosen and the user’s ongoing website needs. While pricing can get expensive, if it helps solve your business needs and increase conversions, then it might be worth the investment.

DaBrian Marketing Group understands the importance of having a tested and proven lead generation and sales process. Contact us today to make a great first impression.

Small Business Marketing Tips for Online Marketing

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Small Business Marketing

Earlier in February, DaBrian Marketing Group hosted a Google Partners Event that showcased the capabilities of Google AdWords and online marketing. The infographic summarizes the top 5 small business online marketing tips to leverage Google to improve your business’ online presence and marketing efforts. Any questions and comments should be directed to DaBrian Marketing Group, and if you are interested the full Google presentation is available on YouTube.

Small business Marketing Infograph

Paid Search Keywords using Personas and Intent

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A search starts with a problem or question. As a business, your goal is to begin to resolve their problem/question with your paid search ad. Before you can accomplish this goal, you must uncover the person/personality of these users and the intent of their searches. While knowing each individual user who searches and their personal intent is impossible, it is practical to create a persona to represent each group/segment of your target audience in order to better reach and begin resolve their problems/questions.

Personas - Fictional Character behind PPC Searches

Creating personas to represent segments of your target audience can greatly benefit your paid search marketing tactics. Although the process of dividing your target audience into segments and then creating representative personas for each segment will be time consuming, the effectiveness of your paid search marketing campaigns will prove that the time was well spent. Instead of building a list of keywords including how your entire target market should, could and would search for your product/search, you can focus your attention on how a single persona thinks and searches for your product or service. Being able to focus your attention will streamline the keyword list building process and make it more efficient. Also, this allows you to tailor your ad copy to the needs/wants of that single persona to compel them to take action and interact with your ads.

Intent - The “Why?” of Paid Search

How a user responds to your ads will vary depending on the purpose of their search. Fortunately, users often give marketers a glimpse into their motives through the search terms used. For instance, someone looking for “reviews for …” or “best…” is currently comparative shopping. While searchers who include “cost” or “price” are closer to making a purchase. Another indicator is the specificity of the search. A comparative shopper still researching will use general terms like “shoes”, “sneakers” or “runners.” On the other hand someone that is ready to make a decision will use brand names like “Nike” or “Reebok” or even specific product lines “Adidas Springblades.” Determining how personas search for your product or service at different stages of the purchasing cycle will help you finalize your paid search keyword list. The biggest benefit from knowing the user intent is being able to direct them to a landing page with content that answers their questions and pushes them into the next stage of the purchasing cycle.

A perfect example of this is if a user is searching for reviews, you might want to direct them to a landing page with customer reviews and testimonials. From there, offer links to showcase additional features, make a purchase, or contact a sales representative. Allow the user to discover the answers to the questions that initiated their search while guiding them through your sales/conversion funnel. This customer nurturing process all starts with the Pay per Click (PPC) keyword list building.

Pay Per Click Keyword List Building Combining Personas and Intent

When using both personas and intent breakdowns your keyword lists should form a matrix structure similar to the one depicted below.

Breakdown of Paid Search Keywords
Simplified breakdown of Paid Search Keywords per the Intent of Persona.

The more personas with different intent will multiply out the number of column and rows of your chart, but it will also allow you to get more personal with real searchers. By combining persona segments with user intent, you will be able to connect with more of the real searches within your target market through you paid search marketing efforts. This personal connection will result in higher performing keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and ultimately more conversions (leads or sales.) Setting aside the time to fully work out personas and their intent could greatly boost your Pay per Click advertising ROI, proving that it was time very well spent.

If you have not created personas or leveraged user’s intent, we highly recommend that you set aside the time to give it a try. If you have done it previously, let us know what your experience has been in creating and using personas to represent your paid search target audience! In addition, if you have split your keywords into user intent segments, has it made an impact on your Pay per Click efforts?

We at DaBrian Marketing Group would love to hear your thoughts, comments, and experiences with personas and user intent.

PPC Christmas Time KPIs

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That’s right; it’s Christmas shopping time. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are quickly approaching. The question is—Are your PPC Campaigns ready? Whether you think you are prepared for the holiday season or just starting to get ready, here are a few things to keep in mind.

What to Expect this Holiday Season

During the 2014 Christmas season, everyone is going to be searching for that perfect gift. This means more online searches and more impression opportunities. Below is a screenshot from Google trends showing that search volume for retail-related keywords and phrases   this time of the year. Although the graph only goes back 3 years, the trend is consistent for much longer.

Annual search trends for electronics, toys and retail during the Holiday season
Annual search trends for electronics, toys and retail during the Holiday season

While an increase is search volume may be the only guarantee, it is safe to assume you will also see an increase in Impressions, Clicks, and Cost. However, the real Christmas joy comes from seeing the increase in Conversions and ROI, which is never guaranteed. Keeping your focus on specific KPI’s and not the rising search volume will help you achieve PPC success this holiday season.

Important Christmas KPIs for Your Pay per Click Campaigns

Important Christmas KPIs for Your Pay per Click Campaigns

First off, ensure that you maintain your IS compared to previous months, and not miss  out on impression opportunities due to low bids or insufficient budget this holiday season. This will at least guarantee that your Ads are being shown.

Click thru Rate (CTR) and Quality Score

More Impressions are great, but more Clicks are even better. Monitor your CTR to ensure that this influx of impressions is maintaining or improving your CTR. If not, take action immediately! Whether it is new ad copy testing, increasing bids, or changing keywords and their match types, make sure that you are at least maintaining your average CTR. Dropping CTR could lead to lower Quality Scores and worse positioning, which means you will need to increase your CPC to stay competitive. Of course, the inverse is true too. A higher CTR can allow you to lower CPC without hurting position and performance, which means increased profit margins.

Conversion Rate and Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

Again, more impressions are great, more Clicks are better, but more Conversions is the best. Seeing how this is Pay per Click, more Clicks also means higher Cost. So, an increase in Clicks without an increase in Conversions will seriously lower profits and drive up your CPA. Although it seems obvious, monitor your CPA and make sure it does not exceed the value of your Conversion. This should not be a problem if you are able to maintain your Conversion Rate during the holiday season.

Have a Wonderful PPC Christmas

During all the craziness that is the holiday season, if you are able to stay focused on the basic KPIs of PPC you will have a wonderful PPC Christmas. Remember that more impressions are great, more Clicks are better, but more Conversions are the best. Keep an eye on CTR and Conversion Rate. While growth is always the goal, just maintaining these rates through the holidays will lead to higher totals of Clicks and Conversions, since searches will be increasing. Most importantly always remember to watch Cost, especially CPA, compared to revenue of your Conversions, and keep your PPC out of the red this Christmas.

If you have any feedback, questions or other holiday preparation suggestions, please leave a comment below. Wishing everyone a Safe and Happy Holiday Season!