ImageWorksBlog

As a small business owner you need to contemplate one simple but very important fact. When people perform a search in a major search engine (i.e. Google) for your products or services only one of two outcomes is possible: they will find your website, or they will find your competitors. Showing up in the first few results in a search for your products or services can have a huge impact on your business. Getting in those top posititions can be incredibly difficult though. The process can be daunting and elusive for any small business.

Landing pages are the nucleus of all your inbound lead generation efforts. Think of it this way: every campaign that you run, funnel offer that you create, and event that you host is tied back to an optimized landing page. To ensure that your efforts are not in vain, you should make sure your landing page design positively presents your brand and attracts & converts targeted traffic into qualified leads. We have designed hundreds of landing pages for our Inbound clients. Here is an infographic by INVESP, which depicts how to test your landing pages. After all, we all want success, right?

Landing pages are widely used to launch webinars, products, and other various offers to persuade visitors to give you some of their contact information. And as we all know, once you have a visitors email address you can communicate with them on a much more personal level, which helps to establish relationships and also encourage them to do what you wish them to do.With landing pages, your prospect has initiated some sort of relationship with you. Your landing page acknowledges this and provides additional information – benefits/features – and a clear path to the next step.

Landing pages are widely used to launch webinars, products, and other various offers to persuade visitors to give you some of their contact information. And as we all know, once you have a visitors email address you can communicate with them on a much more personal level, which helps to establish relationships and also encourage them to do what you wish them to do.

Once you have traffic coming to your site, the next step is to convert them into leads and customers by gathering their contact information. Start by identifying how your business defines what a prospect, lead and customer is. Prospects and leads are looking for different types of information at each stage of the process. In the early stages, prospects and leads are more interested in how your product or service will help them. Then they're looking for information about your company, your credibility, expertise, proven results. Next, when they are ready to convert, they will want to know what the buy/purchase process is and what to do.

By now, I'm sure you know about the immense power of inbound marketing. It has proven itself time and time again when it comes to increasing sales, traffic, and leads. Although inbound was designed to attract more prospects to your online presence, a great inbound marketing strategy can do so much more. With the right methods you can improve your businesses' credibility, brand awareness, engagement, and even your value to your customer.

The explosive success of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ (and many more) can be overwhelming when you really think about it. Almost everyone is online, and most people act like it's their day job. From toddlers to adults, social media can provide companies with a large target audience. And, since the popularity of these social networking sites is constantly growing every day, small business, internet marketers, and even large corporations are beginning to understand the opportunities within this digital marketing space.

Someone asked me the other day where I get my news from, and “Twitter” was my automatic response. While I still get the content from news-worthy sites like CNN or AP, it’s not like I’m combing their homepage anymore but rather clicking a quick link to exactly what I’m looking for. And I don’t have to search far for the public’s comments. Simply by exiting the article, I can see how my friends and even people I don’t know are responding to the story through Twitter as well. Since Twitter is acting as a “second screen” for me and many other consumers, brands should be aiming to become part of this social commentary and push out their messages to the millions of users using real-time marketing. And that’s exactly what Oreo is doing.

As you know, your business must have a social presence if you want to generate leads online. Many of your opportunities are hanging out all over social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In fact, Twitter has more than 200 million active monthly users, a statistic that your business can't ignore. If you want to take those prospects and turn them into real leads, then your business needs to get tweeting, right now!

Have you ever entered a store and were so overwhelmed by chaos and messy displays that you walked out almost immediately? Well, if you have an improperly designed online store, instead of walking out, a visitor who clicks on your mess of a website will navigate away from your page probably for good. If your website includes ecommerce, there are certain best practices that should be followed in order for your website to be effective. Good ecommerce websites can decrease costs and lead time, increase sales, increase global reach, and ultimately generate more revenue for your business. If you have ecommerce on your website, read the following characteristics of the best ecommerce sites to ensure that your business is offering its customers the best solution available. 

1. Thoughtful product descriptions. The description of your product is one of the most important elements of selling a product online. The description can make or break the sale. The likelihood that the manufacturer's description is enough to sell a customer on the product is small. Your product description should reflect the voice of your brand and business, not to mention the image that it is describing. When thinking of how to describe the product, it helps to keep in mind why the customer is looking for the product in the first place. Be descriptive! While customers enjoy the fact that they don't have to leave their homes in order to buy a product, they are not able to physically touch the product. Use as many descriptive words as possible and remember to highlight the most important features.
   
   
2. High quality photos. The images of your product are just as important as the description. You'll want to use the highest quality photos available and include multiple perspectives for your customer to get the full visual representation of your product. Make sure that the image can be enlarged without becoming distorted or pixilated. The better the photo, the less questions your customer will have about the product, which means they are more likely to actually purchase it. 
   
   
3.  Visible policies. Customers will want to know what happens if your product does not suit their needs, who to call if they have questions, and what your policies are in general. An effective website that includes ecommerce will inform its customers of its return policies, customer service hours, FAQs, delivery dates and more. Don't make your customer look around for these answers. Have them readily available and easily acccessible. 
   
   
4. Clear call-to-action buttons. Your website should clearly display buttons that invite your visitor to take action. These buttons should be spread throughout your website and advertise different products. These buttons should lead to landing pages that either have form or purchase options. Make sure that your buttons are visually attractive and easily understood.