digital marketing

Ecommerce Website Platforms That Help Grow Your Business!

July 8, 2015 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

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!

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.

Small Business Marketing Tips for Online Marketing

February 25, 2015 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

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.

Marketing Tips for Businesses in 2015

December 24, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

This week, we’re pleased to feature a guest blog post from Ivan Serrano, a digital journalist hailing from Northern California. If you’d like to catch up with Ivan, you can hit him up on Twitter!

The New Year is a time for change and a fresh start. Whether your 2014 marketing strategy was solid or not, it’s time to look to the future and make some necessary updates for 2015. The most important ingredient for marketing success now and in the future hasn’t changed though: You must know your customers and understand what they want. These marketing tips can hopefully steer you in the right direction and give you some ideas for your own digital strategy.

Go Mobile

It is clear that it is becoming an increasingly mobile-first world. Worldwide there are over 7 billion mobile devices with smartphones making up 25 percent of the total. If you haven’t already gone mobile, now is the time to embrace it as more people expect brands to offer mobile optimized websites. While this might require a complete overhaul of your site, approaching your site design with a mobile- first mentality will lead to more traffic. Consider this: 61 percent of people will immediately navigate away from a site if it isn’t mobile-friendly. When revamping your site for mobile, use a responsive design instead of a new mobile site. A responsive site will automatically adjust your webpage to fit on different screen sizes.

Don’t stop at your site though. Make sure you optimize your email messages for mobile as well. Surveys suggest that 80 percent of mobile users will delete emails if they are not optimized for their screen. Keep your emails easy to read with larger fonts and a simple layout.

Use Long-tail Keywords

Over the years, people’s searches have moved more towards long-tail keywords, as it produces more personal and relevant results, especially with the increasing popularity of mobile. Choosing the right long-tail keywords can be difficult but there are several options you can use to find the best ones for you:

Google Keyword Tool or other similar services
The meta tags in your competitor’s source code
Common keywords on comments, forums and emails

Once you have identified the long-tail keywords relevant to your business, create unique content around it. Do not try to stuff all of your keywords into one post though. Instead, spread it out among several posts or pages. Not only will your content sound more natural, you will also attract the right audience to your pages. As an added bonus, the more pages you have the more likely your site is to appear in someone’s search results.

Personalize Your Communication

With so many businesses and sites vying for people’s attention, it is no longer enough to just send out a mass email or post a generic update and expect to see results. People now expect a level of personalization to their customer experience. Without it, they will move on to your competitors. Personalization isn’t necessarily difficult, but it will take some time. You might already dabble in it with your social media accounts by responding to comments and directly interacting with your followers. In 2015 you’ll need to go a step further by personalizing every interaction your audience has with your company. Some important examples include:

Emails – While including a person’s name in the subject of the email can increase open-rate by 22.2 percent, you can go a step further by tailoring your message to suit the customer. Where do they live? What have they bought from you in the past? How long have they been subscribers? If you take all of these into account you can create a more personal email message that will lead to a higher CTR.
Content – Before you publish another post or update, take your audience into consideration. Do they prefer videos or case studies? What influencers do they go to for information? Create a profile of ideal customer and then base your content around what they want.

Go Local

95 percent of mobile users have used their device to perform a local search, with 88 percent taking action within a day of the search. Local search has become so prevalent on mobile that Google has included location signals in their mobile algorithm. The quickest way to go local is to include your address, phone number and email on the homepage of your site. Make sure you add a click to contact feature so customers can easily reach your business with a single tap.

Incorporate Videos

The growth of video as the major form of content will continue to increase as more social platforms incorporate it on their sites. Video will no longer be about just providing a polished viewing experience; it is moving more about providing experiences to the viewer and starting a conversation.

Usher in 2015 with a Solid Marketing Plan

Personalization will be the name of the marketing game in 2015 as people become more selective with what they choose to read and watch. Adjust your marketing plan accordingly and then continue improving throughout the year.

How do you intend to update your marketing plan in 2015? Tell us in the comments!

A Guide to Marketing Yourself Using Content

September 11, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

This week, we’re taking time to explore a topic that’s a little different. You. Yes, you. Not your business, not your marketing campaigns, but you on an individual level. If you think about it, the time and effort invested in marketing yourself plays just as crucial a role as marketing your business. This is especially true when it comes to goal achievement. If you work for a large corporation, growth is always welcomed, and if you’re employed by a local start-up, brand establishment is the name of the game. Both of these can benefit from the individual efforts of employees, but the question is, “what’s going to be your approach?” Well feast your eyes on the steps you’ll need to get started!

Step 1: Realize That LinkedIn is Your Friend

Your position as a thought leader is highly influenced by the people your message reaches. That should be a given. You wouldn’t want to spend your time and effort crafting content that embodies both your work and your personality, only to have it sit in perpetual stagnancy. The best remedy here is social networking, particularly using LinkedIn, self-proclaimed as the “World’s Largest Professional Network.”

LinkedIn contains distinct advantages over other popular platforms like Facebook or Twitter, including:

An environment for professionals to connect. This works to filter out audiences that may ignore your message
Groups that allow you to hone in on audiences within your industry, your geographic location, or your level of experience
An environment that’s becoming a big part of recruiting and talent acquisition processes

By taking advantage of this powerful networking tool, you’ll be able to easily contribute to the industry-wide conversation, connect with influential people in the space, and explore opportunities to progress in your field.

Step 2: Seek out Media to Showcase Your Insight

While LinkedIn is a very powerful tool for getting your name out there and having discourse with others in your industry, the platform can sometimes lack recency and structure from the standpoint of interesting and innovative content creation. In other words, LinkedIn may offer a place to discuss your thoughts on a particular topic, but you’ll need a way to more formally (and regularly) share your ideas. In this regard, a great place to start is by using the resources already at your disposal.

Get together with colleagues and propose a company blog or YouTube channel if they don’t already exist. If they do, you’ve got a few options. You can develop a regular blog series that appears alongside your company’s posts or set up a YouTube playlist that features content that incorporates your unique personality. If you’re comfortable exploring digital roads-less-traveled, there are a host of less-traditional content outlets at your disposal, including SlideShare, infographics, screencast tutorials, or microcontent sites like Vine and Instagram).

No matter the avenue you choose to carry your message, keep one thing in mind—whether you try to or not, you are always representing your employer when interacting online. Your individualized content marketing endeavors should be approved by the higher-ups, portray your company in a positive light, and offer relevant information to your intended audience (Basically, upload those cat videos on your own time).

Step 3: Maintain and Measure!

When your personal digital marketing gets off the ground, there are a few important maintenance items to consider. First off, don’t embark on any content-driven marketing medium if you can’t maintain it. You’ll have to be strategic about allocating your time to satisfy your existing work responsibilities and your chosen “side project.” This point can be summed up very succinctly: “Any digital asset, if left to languish, will leave you worse off than if you hadn’t created it in the first place.”

In addition, consider your process for demonstrating the value of your efforts. If you’re approached by your supervisor and she wants to see the “results” of your self-marketing campaign, what will you do? Incorporating a measurement plan that shows your time is paying off with tangible goals, key performance indicators, and metrics will be invaluable. Not only will you be able to quell your boss’s wariness, but you’ll also begin laying appropriate procedural groundwork, should your content become company policy down the line.

What form of content best suits you? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments!

The Pitfalls of Isolating Digital Marketing

August 7, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group 1 Comment

What is Digital Marketing?

For years, traditional marketing was the primary form of communication between businesses and their potential customers. It helped these businesses to create brand awareness and get the word out to potential customers about their product or service. Although traditional marketing continues to play a huge role in the business world, digital marketing has become just as, if not more, important. As the use of the Internet continues to soar, so does digital marketing. For the most part, digital marketing provides an inexpensive alternative to traditional marketing. When it comes down to it, business professionals are looking for “instant gratification,” two words that are not necessarily associated with the traditional side of the house. Digital Marketing gives businesses better insights into what marketing tactics are working and if those investments are contributing to ROI.

How Can Digital Isolation Affect Your Business?

When it comes to engaging in digital marketing, decision makers too often think that a single service is going to drastically impact their business and instantly change the competitive landscape. The fact of the matter is, looking at digital marketing in its entirety and developing well-thought-out digital strategies are what lead to success. When you isolate digital marketing, it can open the door to reckless budget spending on campaigns with no way of accurately measuring performance. Failing to see digital as a whole can greatly reduce your chances of reaching your target audience and leave you looking up at your competitors.

Putting the Pieces Together

Digital marketing can be very puzzling to some. It’s important to realize that digital marketing is not a solo act; it is performed in unison. Only when you begin to look at digital marketing as whole instead of one element or service, will you begin to see better results. For example, while social media is a great way to increase brand awareness and manage brand reputation, it does not often directly impact conversions and sales. However, increased brand awareness can help drive more site traffic and improve search engine optimization–related metrics. Ultimately, the more site traffic you gain, the more likely you are to generate conversions and see increased ROI.

Conclusion

As we move throughout the 21st century and beyond, digital marketing will continue growing and become a vital step toward a business reaching its organizational goals and objectives. Building and developing long-term relationships and strategies is what digital marketing is all about. The sooner you begin to realize that digital marketing is not just as simple as a one off service, the better off they will be.

Having trouble seeing the bigger picture? Share your thoughts or questions in the comments below or give us a call at 610-743-5602!

10 Business System Integrations for Better Marketing

January 23, 2013 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Everyone wants something for less, but as a business owner, you’re consistently trying to increase sales and improve profit margins. So, the question is: What are the most effective ways of achieving these goals? In my opinion, the integration of business systems or solutions is one of the most under-utilized elements toward achieving these goals. By integrating online business solutions, it allows your business and team to do less manual work while improving efficiencies and overall turnaround time.

Below is my list of top 10 online business solutions that should be integrated to put your business on the path to better sales turnaround time, identifying insights, and improving profit margins:

Web Analytics

Your web analytics solution needs to be implemented onto the entire website accurately. Many times I’ve noticed that prospects or clients have launched websites that do not incorporate tracking into their application, sales, or lead generation processes. In most cases, you should be okay with tracking into these areas as long as you’re not collecting personally-identifiable information. By tracking these areas, you’ll be able to identify opportunities to improve the process as well as your conversion rate (completion).

Search (SEO, PPC, & Onsite)

Search can be used to improve your conversion rate. A few of the easier elements to integrate are SEO, PPC, and Onsite search. An example would be to enable AdWords, Google Analytics, and Google Site Search; however, there are other solutions that have these capabilities as well (Adobe CQ, Search&Promote, and Search Center+). By integrating these solutions, it will give you insights into what keywords or search queries are most critical to the conversion process and cut costs on ineffective keywords.

CRM Solutions (Salesforce.com)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions are important for all business types, but not every business integrates their CRM with other solutions. This can lead to inefficiencies as well as negatively impact response times and reduce sales volume. Through CRM solution integration, your business can more easily connect account records, automatically import prospects or leads, and segment prospects into different groups. An example would be the integration of Salesforce.com with email marketing solutions.

Billing & Invoicing Solutions (QuickBooks)

You can manage customer and client accounts without juggling separate databases. By integrating with your billing and invoicing services, you can automatically add new customers to your email marketing audience or estimates with CRM solutions. Going this route significantly limits the possibilities for errors.

Email Marketing Solutions

Email Marketing Solutions’ integration capabilities continue to grow through APIs and login authentications. With some email marketing solutions, you have the ability to integrate web analytics, search, CRMs, billing solutions, and a lot more. This also gives you the ability to implement automatic responses and send notifications directly to your sales team.

Publishing Solutions (Drupal, WordPress, etc)

Many CMS’s (Content Management Systems) allow you to leverage plug-ins that make it easy to add signup forms to your website. If you’re already gathering new subscribers with an online form, there are opportunities to connect it to your email audience in order to easily gather new audience members with the tools you’re already using.

Shopping Carts

By integrating shopping carts with your website or email marketing solution, you can grow your audience right from your shopping cart. With eCommerce plug-ins or applications, your online customers can subscribe to your mailings with a single click during the checkout process. You can also sort your audience using information from their purchase history to send them the most impactful messages.

Events Management

With event management integration, you can better communicate with your event attendees. Connect email marketing solutions to your event management account to gather email subscribers from your events. This integration makes it easier to automatically add new attendees to your email audience and sort your audience by attendee information.

Testing Solution (T&T)

Every business should be testing things like content, landing page variations, email subject lines, etc. With testing solutions, you can evaluate the effectiveness of content, landing pages, ad copy, and more. This integration can be completed between your Content Management System and the testing solutions. It makes it easier to get the right message and design in front of the right customers or prospects.

Project Management

My team uses a project management solution to help organize projects, but I would recommend that marketing professionals as well as business owners consider integrating a project management solution into their processes. No more sending documents, waiting for status updates, or looking for meeting information. Many project management solutions are now cloud-based with applications to integrate with Outlook, QuickBooks, and more. Helping your team to stay on track, stay on budget, invoice accurately, and deliver on your brand promise.

Let me start by saying that this list is not all-inclusive, but it is a start. The truth of the matter is that clients, customers, and prospects demand more from your business. They demand solutions to their problems or ideas for improvements. Your business can deliver more with less if you effectively use online marketing solutions and integrate them to work together. So what’s that mean to your business? It could mean more satisfied customers, better prospecting, improved processes, cohesion among online business solutions, internal solutions, and better information that will increase your likelihood for increased sales and high profit margins. Once upon a time, a business owner or marketing professional would need an army to effectively manage all of these tasks but with applications, plug-ins, and CMS solutions, you can get away with one or two really good people to manage it all.