Obviously we encounter questions and queries from prospective clients – and their inherent need for making more from their website(s).   We’re also in charge of building enquiries and subsequent revenue from our own web activity and we have a dedicated campaign team making that happen.

That is to say I can play both agency (to clients) and client (to our internal team) and I’ve seen some common themes:

“I need more traffic, more traffic = more enquiries and more sales right?”

“We are not high enough on organic search, we need to perform better here”

“We need to be more active on social media to build our traffic levels”

All those statements are perfectly true but they overlook one vital element which underpins everything you can achieve online.

It is very rare that a client says:

“We’ve got more than enough traffic; we just need that to work better for us”

Fortunately, if you ever speak with us for some guidance on generating tangible revenue from your website this is our default position.  You see, if you’ve got over 2,000 visits a month and some search engine visibility you’re probably working with enough traffic to reach your goals but the fact is you’re not using that traffic intelligently enough to make a dent on your bottom line.

Does this sound like you?

First, some napkin maths to prove my point then I’ll jump into some headline techniques we deploy:

Current conversion headlines:   5,000 Visits > 17 contact form enquiries, 4 calls (estimated)

Here’s what you’re not doing

• You aren’t giving a method for might be interested users to give you their information (they aren’t ready for an enquiry as yet
• You aren’t deploying telephone tracking to know precisely how many calls are generated from their web properties but we’ll come on to that in a minute
• You aren’t engaging with your audience as an authority and you’re not really giving them any reason to return (remember, they visited your site for a reason so make each visit count!)
• You aren’t tracking which of those enquiries turn into a customer, but lets be generous and attribute 2 sales to those 21 enquiries

How our approach differs

We like to move conversation away from vanity metrics or straight traffic vs enquiry data (enquiries don’t pay the bills!) and move it more towards “real customers generated from web activity” as this is really what you should care about. Here is a simple diagram of how your conversion path should look in a modern, B2B, inbound marketing environment.

Where you could be: 5,000 Visits > 20 customers

It’s as simple as that, putting the right core elements in place you can build a reliable strategy that’ll deliver value from your web presence.  The workings are in the diagram above.

Here’s what you’re now doing

• You’re utilising a blog to improve the depth of content available on your site (both for users as well as search engines)
• You’re building great content (ebooks, videos or other “takeaways”) to persuade otherwise passive visitors to give you their information in return for the downloadable/access
• You’re tracking telephone enquiries to nail down the specific source (down to keyword/specific link) of your inbound calls
• You’re nurturing the leads you’ve been able to capture via email on an automated, ongoing basis to convince them you are the right partner for them
• You’ve committed to understanding that your web property is as good a lead generation function as your outbound call centre and you have a platform that’s able to give you easy access to the leads in your funnel currently

So where do you start?

Well there are lots of tenets to this of course, but fortunately we’ve built lots of resources to enable you to do this for yourself as well as wrapping all of this in a service. Leadbox is in beta mode now and we’re accepting applications, this is a managed service which enables your web presence to be taken from “where you are now” to “where you could be”.

If you are looking to take the DIY approach we can help there too, if you start with our ebook “Your 10 Step Lead Generation Strategy” which should fill in some blanks, then I put together a video detailing “What is lead nurturing”?. Finally, if you want to tie it all together I recommend you jump on the free course by email we put together Business Growth Kit.

Your customers are out there and they’re probably landing on your site, its imperative you invest in converting those otherwise passive visitors into customers.

Keen to hear if you implement any of these techniques!

Liam

The post Why it’s not more traffic that you really need appeared first on Tone Agency.

Yes it’s addictive, yes it can generate leads and, yes, it’s a whole heap of fun, but like any other social network Pinterest requires you to have a well-developed strategy in place before you dive straight into creating boards.

In simple terms it’s all about inspiration, community and, of course, just being social, so here are a few common mistakes to avoid when taking the leap into this brave new world.

1) Not filling out your whole profile

You’d be surprised how many Pinterest profiles I come across that aren’t filled out entirely. Firstly, I can’t stress enough the importance of uploading a profile image! The red pin you’re first assigned can make users just as wary as the famous Twitter egg and, no matter how great your actual pinned content might be, can make visitors wary of spam. Instead, use your company logo or the image you’re using on other social networks to keep your branding consistent across all platforms.

Then there’s your author bio. Fill it out as completely as possible to tell people about your business while including a seamlessly placed keyword or two, make sure that you link up your Facebook and Twitter accounts and verify your website to make it easy for visitors to click through and create a sense of trust.

2) Forgetting to register for a business account

Pinterest reached a milestone in December of last year when it created Pinterest for Business. It’s been a godsend for any company utilising the platform by letting them verify their website (as mentioned above) and, more recently, access Pinterest Analytics.

Tracking your most repinned pins, most popular pins and even click throughs to your site from Pinterest, it provides much more Pinterest-centric detail than Google Analytics and can be accessed with one click. To register for a business account or convert your existing page, all you need to do is visit business.pinterest.com and follow the instructions.

3) Sticking with the automatically generated board names

When you sign up for a Pinterest account you’ll be automatically allocated a few generic boards with titles like ‘Products I Love’ and ‘Favourite Places & Spaces’, but don’t be afraid to delete or rename them!

Leaving these boards as they are, especially when they aren’t relevant to your brand can come across as lazy and actually risk turning off the people visiting your page. Instead, either get rid of them or change the board name to something more personal and tailored to what you’ll be pinning there. ‘Favourite Places & Spaces’ sounds much more inviting when renamed to something like ‘Itchy Feet’, ‘Lonesome Traveller’ or even just ‘Holiday Destinations.’ It all depends on the approach that’s best suited to your brand.

4) Abandoning boards after one or two pins

Sometimes this happens because businesses get disheartened and don’t really know how to get their page off the ground, but I’m seeing more and more people jump on the Pinterest bandwagon to post a single, business related pin to a completely unrelated board.

Often it’s down to a request from their manager, but an image of loft insulation with an accompanying caption that promotes the product, pinned to a board named ‘My style’ is enough to raise alarm bells among Pinterest users and will gain no traction from the Pinterest community.

5) Forgetting your social media manners

Being well versed in social media etiquette is one of the keys to success across all social platforms, whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn or, indeed, Pinterest. This means that repinning other peoples’ content, liking their pins, commenting on them, replying to comments on your own content and following members of your target audience should factor into your daily activity. The image below is a prime example of the kind of community spirit I’m talking about…

Then there’s mass pinning and overt self-promotion. As ever, space out your updates to avoid spamming your followers or dominating categories, and get creative with what you choose to pin. Balance out promotion of your products and services with blog posts and other resources, images from events like staff days out and additional content that’s related to your business. Take the image above – you don’t need to be a riding school, vet or tack stockist to utilise this kind of picture, it’s also a great addition to the boards of a business in the outdoors sector (like the National Trust or a stockist of outdoor clothing). It’s all about getting creative and pinning inspiration and business promotion at a ratio of around 70/30.

6) Not using hashtags

Even Pinterest uses hashtags now and, just like on Twitter and Instagram, they’re a fantastic way of not just tracking down members of your target audience who’re pinning about things in your niche, but getting more eyes on your content and joining in a visual conversation.

However, while Instagram hashtags can take over an image description in their millions, I’d take more of a Twitter-style approach with Pinterest and post one or two that are related to your main keywords or phrases – three at a stretch – to avoid looking too hungry for repins.

7) Neglecting the power of Pinterest buttons

Having a ‘Follow us on Pinterest’ button above the fold on your website is a great, unobtrusive way of promoting the fact that you’re using the social network, increasing the likelihood of click-throughs and getting more eyes on your profile. Then there’s the ‘Pin It’ widget for your product pages which makes it easier for users to add your wares to their own boards. This metric can also be tracked in Pinterest Analytics, meaning you can visit the pin and thank whoever owns the board for sharing it.

One of the best Pinterest buttons though is the ‘Pin It’ bookmarklet. This tool can be added to your browser and allows you to pin anything you want from your travels around the net and, indeed, your own site. Original pins like these don’t just express your individuality as a brand but can garner more attention than repins, so don’t be afraid to venture away from the safety of Pinterest to find some inspiration.

I hope this has helped you see that Pinterest really isn’t that hard of a social network to break into. In-fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s easier to crack than Facebook; you just need to go about it in the right way. To summarise:

• Take your buyer personas and target audience into account throughout your Pinterest journey. Pin for them and you’ll attract more valuable leads than if you simply pinned your own interests.
• Create boards that bring your company culture, branding, ethos and products to life. Pinterest is all about inspiration, so share the things that you inspire your business as well as the products or services you produce.
• Create boards that tie in with the lifestyles and interests of your customers to show them you understand their needs, can relate to them and that you’re the right business for them.
• Forge strong relationships with other pinners by repinning, liking and commenting on their content, replying to their comments on your own images and thanking users for repinning your pictures.
• Always bear relevance in mind. Puppies might be perfect Pinterest fodder, but if they aren’t in the least bit relevant to your company then sticking them up there to guarantee some interaction won’t result in business benefits.

You can find out more about the business benefits of social media by clicking the banner below and downloading our ebook, ‘The Benefits of Social Media for Business.’ Or if I’ve missed out any crucial Pinterest mistakes that you’ve come across in your own campaign, tell me about them in the comments section :)

The post 7 Common Pinterest Mistakes and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Tone Agency.

The next thing I’d like to debunk is that favourite phrase of many sales guys – ROI. Now don’t get me wrong, in the right hands return on investment is a powerful metric that contributes significantly to many business decisions, but it’s also churned out almost irrespective of the product.  We recently enquired about having a water cooler installed where ROI was one of the tenets of their pitch. For bottled water – really?

So how should ROI be presented when thinking about investment in digital?

For me, if you’re going to promote it as an integral part of your pitch, you should be talking about these line items:

• What’s the cost and margin of a sale?
• How many inbound leads does it take to make a sale?
• What’s the current website conversion rate of visitor to lead?

It’s only by really understanding the statistical performance of your site that you can really look to benchmark where you are now and, by inference, what your traffic acquisition and conversion rate numbers need to be to reach ROI Mecca.

So, the purpose of my blog posts appears to have meandered down a path where I look at sales tactics or common conventions that piss me off and give you some insights into how we do it here. I’m a reasonably long in the tooth sales guy and in the main, sales pitches are big on promise and short on delivery – there are some great agencies out there (and I happen to think that we’re one of them – quiet you cynics!) but as a prospect, don’t be taken in by articulate sales people. Get under the hood of what they propose and look for evidence that they understand the real meaning of ROI.

For us then, the way that we approach scoping out a digital marketing campaign is to have some pretty frank and open discussion about the commercial proposition of our clients, asking all those questions bulleted above.

From there, it’s about understanding the results that clients want – usually in the form of increased revenues – and creating a campaign of activity designed to generate enough traffic and sales to meet those targets.

By way of example, we have a client that wanted to increase their web derived revenues from £10k per month to £35k per month.  Sure we looked at traffic increases, more search engine rankings and social media but for this particular client, the key was to improve their conversion rate. The results are amazing – they’re receiving more traffic, bigger average order values and are way ahead of their revenue targets.

The point here is that it’s not a one size fits all solution – if you’re going to get external help in generating more leads and revenue then speak to an agency that can identify the problem and provide a solution that’s right for you, not for them.

In summary then, don’t allow prospective suppliers to get away with throwing in the words ROI. In isolation they mean nothing, but in contrast and context however, they mean everything.

Give me a call if you’d like to talk context (not the sexiest call to action ever but hopefully you get the gist) and discuss how we can really help you examine ROI for your commercial benefit.

The post Bucking Trends Part 2 – ROI Debunked appeared first on Tone Agency.

In your travels across the internet you must have come across at least one website or piece of content that gushes the same keyword like it’s going out of fashion. Chances are that same text also made you roll your eyes, shake your head and leave the page and, perhaps, you’re even utilising that very same technique yourself. This is the odd, dated and shady world of keyword stuffing.

“But it’s working for me!” you say, “I’m on page one of Google!” you continue.

That’s all well and good, but how’s your conversion rate coming along? What about your visit to customer ratio? Has this perfect page one position actually increased your revenue at all?

The crux of the matter is that, whether on or off page, your content needs to convince potential leads that you’re the brand to deliver their desired product or service, and deliver it more effectively than anyone else on the market. You aren’t going to do that by repeating the same spammy keyword over and over, no matter how highly you manage to rank for it.

Once a potential lead gets to your site, they aren’t going to stay there if it’s built purely for search engines. Your content should allow them to further their information gathering and give them a reason to purchase/enquire by utilising easily navigable design or informative content, both of which still come secondary, incidentally, to some digital marketers.

The way I see it there are more than just two types of SEO ‘experts.’ Yes, there are the White Hats and the Black Hats, but there are also those who aren’t educated enough to realise how much they’re harming their own marketing strategy. Let’s call them the Pork Pie Hats, they’re comfortable in their old fashioned ways and are convinced that their vintage, keyword heavy strategies are still relevant.

It’s the Black Hats that really grind my gears though. Promoting a ‘quick-fix’ solution to clients who don’t know any better, they don’t only repeat keywords in every other sentence so their content reads awfully, but hide reams of keyword heavy text in drop downs labelled ‘Read more’, stuff their title tags, meta tags and page titles full of the same keywords, create deceptive anchor text that just links back to the same spammy page and even stuff their footers, like the example below…

The worst part, however, is that many of them manage to get away with it.

Google’s algorithms aren’t perfect. In-fact, many perfectly reputable businesses have been penalised for a Black Hat mistake they might have made one fateful day a year ago. However, they’re constantly evolving and are slowly but surely weeding out the websites that clog up search engines instead of adding something of substance to them.

So, what keyword practices don’t make me shudder, and what can you do to ensure that you’re practising SEO ethically?

1) Use your primary keyword in your title tags alongside a secondary word or phrase, and make sure they’re always relevant to the page rather than which keyword you want to rank for above all others. In other words, don’t do this…

Try something like this instead…

It tells the reader what the page is about, why it could benefit them and who the company is that’s offering this service, creating trust and familiarity.

2) Use your primary keyword in your subheadings alongside a secondary word or phrase, but this time try and break it up to make it sound less spammy and help it fit more seamlessly into your page content, as Adam illustrates in the post ‘How to Structure Content, Place Keywords and Internal Link.’

3) Don’t try and force keywords into your content verbatim. It reads awfully and is painfully obvious to page visitors that you haven’t put any thought into the text. This is particularly good advice when writing your headlines. They’re the element that helps readers decide whether to tune in or back out, and although it does help to include a keyword, it helps even more if it grabs page visitors by the shoulders and won’t let go. Make it emotive, interesting and write with passion, and you’ll find that the keyword falls in of its own accord.

4) Don’t forget about the other elements of modern SEO. Keyword implementation might help you rank better in SERPs when it’s done right, but it’s also nothing without a concerted effort in content production, social media integration, optimised web design and ethical link building too. These are the elements that convince potential leads of your expertise and develop relationships with your audience.

So yes, keywords do have the potential to make me stifle a sigh, but they can also work to your advantage if you just take the time to forget about them for a second and allow them to come secondary to your other marketing efforts. Although when implemented correctly they do help with your rankings, creating fresh content of real quality that search engine spiders can regularly crawl is a much more effective way of convincing Google (and customers) of your credibility, especially with another algorithm update on the horizon.

Arguably more important than any other ranking factor today, it’s this commitment to producing interesting, user friendly content that has most traction with Google – not providing keyword fodder that’s been created to try and game the system.

Want to find out more about the changing face of SEO and keyword strategies? Take a look at our post about where SEO stands in 2013.

The post Why It Might be Time to Lay Off the Stuffing appeared first on Tone Agency.

Self-satisfaction aside, our foolproof methodology maintains our great reputation which in turn, helps us win new business through referrals. Check out our “Business Growth Kit” – an online video tutorial course which will help you build a similar legacy. Most companies employ customer retention teams that often need to enforce additional work, our clients actually ask us if there’s anything else we can do for them. That’s the difference between a world-class agency and one that gets lost in the ever-engulfing mist of digital marketing agencies and web design agencies.

That immense feeling of job satisfaction doesn’t come naturally; it takes hard work. But the secret for us lies in our triple-filtered approach to quality and a well-refined process of ‘handover’ from design to development.

FRAGILE – ‘Handover’ with care!

One thing that defines a good web agency is its meticulous ‘handover’ phase from design to development. Having worked alongside other web agencies, we’ve noticed that most (if not all) of them fail to have a handover phase. We’ve noticed a common disconnect between their web designers and web developers (unless the designer is also the developer on the project). It’s surprising how many of these agencies and, as a result, their web designers are of the impression that once the designs are signed off, their job is finished. They seem to think that it’s the developers turn while they concentrate on ridding their memory of all existence of the project and move on to get stuck into their next design.

This should never be the case; a designers job stretches way beyond design signoff!

Some issues you can run into without a great handover:

• The designers could muddle old designs up with new designs and could fail to inform the developer about what the most recent designs are.
• The developers could end up working on out of date designs (the ones that haven’t been signed off by the client). They’d be unaware of this until it reached quality assurance (QA) – by which time deadlines would be stretched and alterations to the site that should have been done before QA would not have been scheduled in for, thus delaying the site launch and causing inconvenience to the client.
• The client could end up changing their mind midway through the development phase and as there are no signed off designs, would be able to demand (so to speak) that new changes be made before they sign off the whole project.
• The project manager fails to brief in the developer about the project. As after all, the development phase is often the first time the developer becomes aware of the client and the project.

Thankfully, as our processes here at Tone are razor sharp, we evolve our processes based on risk assessments and experience when getting over previous stumbling blocks. We work collaboratively to come up with processes that make the transition between design and development seamless.

From experience, stumbling blocks tend to stem from the fact that the developer wasn’t given a sufficient enough project briefing. If a developer knows nothing about the client or its industry, how can they be certain that the functionality they’re developing for their website is even what the client wants/needs?

The short answer is: they can’t be sure!

So, for each project at design handover, we follow these 7 internal steps to world-class web builds:

Check the project specification before designing

Once the sales and account managers have drawn up their proposals, meetings with the client will ensue – in which the project manager will attend. Hands will be shaken, project specifications drawn up, production schedules amended and deadlines set.

The project specification is one of the most important documents a web agency creates. These are the client-agreed documents that the project manager works with. They contain everything from the introduction of team members and site direction to project deadlines and functionality requirements.

It’s essential that the project manager works closely with the designer to ensure the page designs contain the correct functionality that the client requires. Web designers have a very keen eye for detail but often lack the back-end knowledge of web builds. This can create a problem whereby the designer designs something that requires huge amounts of advanced functionality which the schedule doesn’t allow time for and the client hasn’t agreed upon.

Make the designs visible

More often than not, the client won’t have access to Adobe PhotoShop, Fireworks or whatever platform the designs are created in, so rather than having screenshots scattered around in countless email threads, easily viewable images (JPEG/PNG/GIF) should be gathered and placed in one easy to manage place.

Here at Tone we have a bespoke ‘design concept viewer’ that’s visible online via a personalised web link. This allows the client to navigate through page designs, create comments, drag the comments to the area in question and essentially make amendments at their discretion. We then go away and make the said design amends based on their feedback. Once they’re happy with the page designs, they click a ‘sign off’ button in the concept viewer and that design is finalised. Design sign-off is essential going forward.

Get definitive design sign-offs

We’re all human when it boils down to it, and humans have a knack of changing their mind. So the way we see things often change on a day-by-day basis. Clients of web agencies are no exception. Clients often come with design alterations due to the fact that it’s been a while since they saw the designs and in that time they’ve been on another website and decided that they like the way that one looks. This is not their fault, it’s our animal instinct of curiosity, but in order for the developer to be able to have something to work to, they need to have confirmed designs and need to stick to them.

Signing off web designs eradicates the ever-so-common change of mind. That’s not to say that if the client wanted to change something that it couldn’t be done; it’d just then become additional work which would need to be charged for accordingly.

By ensuring the designs are agreed and finalised, the client is happy as they get the exact website they signed off in the design phase (unless we’ve come to a compromise on design changes) but certainly receives nothing less than agreed.

Collect, organise and prepare

Once the designs have been agreed and signed off, the designers job needs to continue. The designer should collect all the signed off PhotoShop/Fireworks designs and put them in a new folder that’s consistently named for every project (e.g. Final Designs) and save them in one unified place.

Doing this will ensure the developers always know exactly where they need to look and only need to associate themselves with signed off designs as opposed to all the amended concepts (homepage, homepage-new, homepage-3, new-homepage, homepage-final) and finding that they need to decipher the code just to get the right designs in front of them.

Have a handover meeting

To save time (and questions) during the web development phase, a handover meeting should ensue so the developer is briefed in properly.

At Tone, once the designs are signed off, the designer, developer and project manager have a sit down to discuss where the project is up to at that stage. They discuss the next steps, deadlines and quality of the finished product. We have a ‘Design Handover’ meeting where the designer explains their designs to the developer which eradicates the need to second-guess about certain parts of the functionality. For instance, the design could portray something as highlighted when in an active state but actually mean it to be highlighted on hover.

Responsive guidance

If the website is to be responsive and compatible in all devices, there needs to be some design input for these varied screen resolutions. The designers should offer some sort of guidance to how the responsive designs need to look in smaller/larger devices. It’s not necessary to create completely new designs for each device however; just some visual guidance for the developers regarding key elements like menu and heading structure for instance.

Without this, it would be a complete guessing game for developers when it comes to aesthetics and layout in mobile. In the modern world, it’s imperative that the mobile versions of the website carry the same quality stamp as the desktop versions. And, bearing in mind the developers aren’t likely to have the same design sharpness as the designers do, the only way to ensure this visual quality would be for the designers to have some input into how certain aspects of the design should look in mobile.

Triple Quality Filter

In order for a web build to get our ‘finished‘ stamp of approval, we have an in-house triple-filtered quality check before the client even sees the site.

1. Design Quality - The first filter is a design checklist for the designers which includes everything a website should contain before it goes to development – things like ‘all text to be free from spelling errors’ / ‘footer contains company number and copyright’.
2. Development Quality - The second filter is a development checklist for the developers which includes everything they should be checking before they send it through to QA – things like ‘Google Analytics installed’ / ‘cross-browser tested’.
3. Final Quality Assurance - The third filter is a final quality assurance check. This is a checklist for the project manager which includes testing it in mobile/tablet/laptop, checking that everything links to where it should and comparing it to the already signed off designs. The project manager then fixes the things the designers/developers may have missed (they’re only human after all).

However, if the initial two checklists are carried out well enought, the project manager will only be looking for responsive snags etc. rather than blatant design differences.

Following this process for every project makes the handover from web design to development seamless. It avoids any nasty surprises during handover stage and makes lives a whole lot easier for the designer, developer, project manager and client alike. There’s less to-ing and fro-ing; meaning that the designers can get stuck into the next project as the developers have everything they need after handover. Then at QA stage, the developers can get stuck into their next project as the project manager takes over and irons out the final snags before handing over to the client.

But most importantly, these 7 steps are the web build quality differences that continue to define our ‘world-class agency’ status and our 100% positive testimonial rate.

Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions that could contribute to making the process here at Tone even more efficient.

The post Web Builds – Triple Filtered for Quality appeared first on Tone Agency.

It’s really important to me that we continually push boundaries and continue to deliver great content and provide great value with techniques that can be implemented right now.

A couple of months ago we set about building a course which comprised of 5 exclusive videos a book and a ton of ‘addendum’ advice.

I’m delighted with the outcome, and would love you to take a look at the introductory video I put together.

Click here to check out the video and see what the fuss is all about

The post Introducing Business Growth Kit video course appeared first on Tone Agency.

It’s an intimidating prospect, and you could drown in a cauldron of spreadsheets, jargon, tweets, landing page conversion rates and email click-through rates. And that isn’t the least of it! What’s more, there’s a high probability that this is all just gobbledy-gook to you unless you’re part of the online marketing industry yourself.

So what does it all mean for small businesses? What exactly should you be measuring and how will it impact your bottom line? Read on to find out more.

Content marketing

One of the hallmarks of great content marketing is killer blog content, so it makes sense that you track how many people are reading your articles. You could always do this with an array of online apps and different websites, but the simpler route is to utilise Google Analytics. By measuring how many unique visitors are passing through your site you’ll get a great idea of how many people are seeing your content. This is your benchmark for how many prospects you’re reaching.

This information is also handy to help you find your most popular articles. By identifying which articles attract the most traffic you can, in turn, learn which are your most popular content themes and then create more posts that follow the same vein. In addition, tweets, likes, shares and comments also indicate how popular your articles have been with blog visitors, clearly illustrating how many people have passed your content onto their friends through social media platforms.

Posting engaging, well informed content that gives something back to readers is the only way you’ll experience real ROI from your content efforts, but don’t worry if your content doesn’t achieve lots of tangible shares. Certain industries just aren’t as capable of attracting them, but not because their content is bad. Marcus Sheridan (who dominated the US swimming pool market with his blog) recently said that one of his blog articles had been responsible for $1.7 million of sales, despite zero likes and zero comments.

Lead generation

Having people wandering around your site is great, provided you have design and content elements in place to nurture them into your sales funnel. Your visitors won’t become customers unless they’re ready to buy and, sometimes, they need tactical techniques to keep them informed and nurture them along to this end decision. One of the ways to do this is by creating how-to guides, ebooks, whitepapers and other ‘rich content’ but, as with things like blog posts, the results you create need measuring.

Again, the technique is simple. All you need to do is create a great looking landing page where leads can enter low-friction contact details like their email address in return for the above information. Once you’ve started capturing this information, you can start measuring how many of these landing page visitors are converting into downloads.

Lead nurturing

Now you’ve started generating leads, it’d be nice to just say “Abracadabra!” and get them all buying from you instantly. But if you’re not a master of the dark arts you’ll need to invest in a serious spot of lead nurturing to achieve those business conversions. One of the best solutions is to invest in email marketing which is, when done right, one of the most effective marketing tools for nurturing those leads along.

However, the most important thing to remember is not to hand these leads straight over to your sales team to call up. I previously worked for a financial advice company who were far too eager to call people up to arrange meetings, a technique that’s famous for scaring away business prospects; just because someone downloaded an ebook it doesn’t mean they’re ready to invest their life savings the very next day.

Instead, send your leads a weekly newsletter. Fill them in on what’s been happening in your industry that week, mention any company news they may be interested in, link to any new content you’ve released and don’t forget to be chatty and personable. Don’t see it as a sales-pitch, but as a way to share your wisdom that gently coaxe leads along until they’re ready to buy.

Now, when it comes to measuring emails the most important elements you should be looking for are open rates and click through rates, in other words, the number of people who are opening your emails and clicking the links in them. See this as feedback for your newsletters. If the the rates are increasing, that’s good, but if these rates are decreasing then it’s a good idea to take another look at elements like your content and email subject lines, tailoring them to be more relevant to your audience.

Testing is key to finding out what really works for your audience, so try creating two or three variations on the same newsletter before sending them to different prospects, measuring the reception of each one and tying together the most successful elements to create one really killer email.

Finally

Although content marketing and lead nurturing are both powerful tools for bringing in more high value customers, they’re also lengthy processes that require significant time and monetary investments to get them exactly right.

The average waiting time before seeing really significant results is around six months, especially for large purchasing decisions like machinery, financial products or enterprise software. After that period of time however, you’ll be able to accurately track how many of your leads became customers by adding up their total purchases. Then you simply work out your profit and your overall return on investment (ROI).

It’s always worth remembering though that these metrics can be improved. As time goes on, you and your content marketing staff can test and retest your content according to what your prospects are reacting to more favourably, gradually optimising it for increased conversions.

Do you prefer to measure your content marketing and lead nurturing in a traditional way, or are you braving some newer, bolder techniques? Start a conversation below.

The post Understanding and Measuring Your Content Marketing and Lead Nurturing appeared first on Tone Agency.

Here are some of the major causes of project procrastination and what to do about them:

Lack of time

Most of the time there just isn’t enough time in the day. You have to go to work, come home, prepare dinner, feed your family, watch your favourite TV show and read your emails / Hacker News / Reddit feed / Facebook feed / Twitter feed (the list goes on, these are just a selection of my preferences). But somehow, despite these hours upon hours of procrastination you never seem to have any spare time to yourself to just sit down and work on your latest project, whether that’s the next big social application or another chapter in your book.

I won’t lie, there’s no quick fix for this. We as humans are very easy to distract and disconnecting isn’t as easy as it sounds, but the best tips are actually relatively simple ones:

Multi-task
While it may not be an optimal solution, why not try to fit in some coding, writing or design while you watch your favourite TV show? Sure, you won’t be quite as productive, but the good news is that you won’t be any less productive either. Even if it only results in a few more lines of code or another paragraph on your blossoming blog it keeps what you’re working on in your mind and concentrating on it while you watch TV will help to foster familiarity with the inspirational side of your subconscious.

Set time aside
I personally hate schedules, but sometimes it’s hard to argue with them. I’m at work for the hours I’m supposed to be, I eat at the times I’m supposed to, I spend time with my girlfriend during the times I’m supposed to (there is of course a certain level of spontaneity here), and this all boils down to one simple word. Routine. We get into habits both good and bad but if you can train yourself to sit down for 2 hours, 1 hour, 30 minutes or even just 10 minutes per night you’ll find that over time it becomes easier. To use an analogy: it’s very difficult to jump off the cliff, but once you’re airborne, it’s easy to keep falling.

Too much hype, not enough delivery

As with most projects, you start with everything seeming beautiful and shiny. Your code was confined to the highest quality of standards, your design implemented magnificent layers of complicated CSS3 and your content was in a league of it’s own, holding its own line for line against the sculpted perfection of pieces of renowned classical literature. But then, everything started to fall apart.

Hack, hack, hack
After a few days you should start seeing some progress and have scrapped some of the ridiculous ideas you had on day one. A complete array of Raspberry Pi’s powering lifelike models of 300 Samurai was never going to happen, but as you became more realistic, you also became more relaxed. You may even start to implement certain features faster, but this comes at the cost of code quality or the standard of your text.

This is where you should take a hiatus. More often than not you’ll return after a few days to find a mess of spaghetti awaits you; tangled lines of unfamiliar words resembling a Salvador Dali painting spray across the screen and you just don’t have the patience or the will to unravel it.

At this point there isn’t much you can do to remedy the situation but get stuck in. It isn’t nearly as bad as it looks, there must have been some internal consistency in there to begin with… or so you can hope, and even if there isn’t you can always iterate over it. Rewriting the same code or the same page once you have a visible Minimum Viable Product is often a rewarding experience, teaching you how you should have done it the first time around and making you aware, in retrospect, of the challenges you may very well face again in the future.

Time for a reality check?
Another problem with reality is that it forces you to accept that your idea probably wasn’t as good as you first thought. There are probably around 10 other applications already dominating this area, all doing it bigger and better than you and making you feel as if you’re failing miserably. So what do you do?

You keep pushing
Even if at the end all you have is a portfolio piece which never gains any significant traction, it’ll still look great on your CV and will prove a valuable learning experience.

Boredom

After you’ve been working on a project for a long time you’ll begin to fall out of love with it to some degree, but like any lover, the key to a lasting relationship is a little faith and a lot of hard work.

I just don’t love you any more
You’ve been working on your project for a while now (or a few days, depending on your preferred level of fidelity) and you’ve begun to tire of it; it isn’t fun anymore, it’s constantly niggling at you and it won’t do anything you tell it to. Plus, you’re embarrassed about it and don’t want to tell your friends and colleagues you’re together! The key here is to remember what made you fall in love with this project to begin with, what made you decide to give it a go and what you thought the merits were.

After working on one project for a long time it’s in our nature to begin to tire and lose the initial spark and passion we harbored. Things do get harder, but you’ve come so far now that it would be a waste to turn back and, remember, if all else fails it’s time to show the world what you’ve created so far. Post it to your blog, your Twitter feed or whichever other social outlet you prefer – perhaps the comments you receive will remind you of what made this project seem so special in the first place.

Although this post mostly address the problem of procrastination, there are plenty of time management hacks you can utilise to overcome the intimidation that stems from information overload too. Click here to pick up some tips from our blog post, “Time Management Hacks – How to get your Inbox Six-Pack” or, in the mean time, comment below with your own tips for beating the procrastination bug.

What helps you ship your projects?

The post Finishing Projects – Major Hurdles, Overcoming Them and Just Getting Stuff Done appeared first on Tone Agency.

For those in need of a quick refresher, sales funnels are metaphorical structures through which leads are generated and nurtured with a cocktail of data capturing techniques, engaging and informative content, follow up emails and the offer of something useful in return for their browsing efforts. When combined, this wealth of information works together to help nurture prospective leads to the bottom of your funnel and, hopefully, towards a buying decision.

Sound too good to be true? Trust me, it’s not. We practice what we preach every day and have reaped numerous rewards from simply planning out a sales funnel. And the even better news? We can help you plan your own right now.

It’s best to go a bit old school here and have something tangible to refer back to, so first, take a piece of paper. Now take a pen and draw yourself a big, bog-standard funnel before splitting it into three sections.

The first section represents a consumer’s research phase. Here they’ll need to know what benefits you can bring to the table, skills that can be demonstrated by providing enticing content (think blog posts, free ebooks and other titbits of information that highlight which of your services is right for them), tweaking your website to ensure a good level of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and capturing site visitors’ data for the later stages of your funnel. Something as simple and low-friction as requesting an email address when they sign up for an ebook should suffice.

Now, onto stage two.

People will now be researching the competition, so start nurturing the interest they’ve shown in your business to make sure they don’t forget that you were once in the running. Although trust-building videos and case studies are essential, one of the best techniques to employ here is follow-up email.

Sent intermittently, they remind leads that your business is there and that you care about their custom. After all, these people have busy lives to lead and may just have forgotten to act on something you offered. Don’t be pushy though, a short message reminding them of your benefits, your USP or even the offer of more ebooks is enough to pique more curiosity.

Et voila! You’re at stage three, the bottom of the funnel; crunch time.

Here consumers will be looking to make a buying decision and is the perfect opportunity to get a little more direct. But don’t get overexcited; reign in your sales pitch and give them something back for expending all of that valuable browsing time. Offer a free report, consultation or trial that takes into account their business’s needs and demonstrates not only your expertise, but great customer service too.

And there you have it, not only a great sales funnel but a ready-made, built-in lead generation and lead nurturing plan. What was so complicated about that?

The post Plan an Effective Sales Funnel and You’ve Planned an Effective Lead Generation Strategy appeared first on Tone Agency.

Wrong! Search engine optimisation has undergone a radical evolution. Thanks to Google’s Panda and Penguin updates and thousands of employees named search quality raters, websites that employ unethical SEO techniques like the sins mentioned above are being hunted down and punished. And don’t think that just because they’re human beings the process will take far too long for them to wheedle out your own site, because eventually their techniques will be passed on to even more sophisticated robots.

It isn’t just search engines that are responding to unethical and outdated SEO though, internet users themselves are too.

They’re now looking for content that speaks to them, that offers something of value in return for their visit and doesn’t take an age to decipher because it’s more keyword heavy than info savvy. They want ebooks, blog posts, whitepapers, on-site content and even videos that provide scannable, easily digestible tips and advice about not just your products and services, but why you’re so different to the millions of other businesses in your industry.

That doesn’t mean you should discount keywords altogether though. The careful and relevant implementation of just a few keywords in your main body of text and choice appearances in your titles and headers will go a long way in improving both search engine results and website traffic, especially when used alongside a host of other up-to-date SEO techniques.

First, put a considerable chunk of time aside to improve your website, ensuring that it’s user friendly as well as search engine friendly. Give the design a makeover that encapsulates all aspects of your branding, improves its navigation and boasts content that would make even the most seasoned digital marketers green with envy. You’d be surprised how much difference something like a responsive website can make to not just traffic retention, but conversions; modern consumers expect their user experience to be absolutely flawless or, that’s it, you’ve lost them.

Then there are social media channels.

Helping to strengthen your search engine optimisation efforts and vastly widening your potential to generate valuable new leads, social media is gaining momentum where maximising your bottom-line impact is concerned. Social media channels are also a great place to run targeted adverts, share your fantastic content, show off what great customer service you offer and demonstrate your expertise by commenting on industry blog posts. Who knows, you may even get invited to write a guest post, a sure fire way of getting your name out there and showing potential leads that you know your stuff while building quality links.

So there you have it – keyword and link overload = Google’s nemesis. Ethical link building and content creation = Google’s star pupil. But (and there is a but) this new SEO landscape isn’t for everyone.

Although Google’s new algorithms succeeded in penalising some of the most black-hat companies in the business, they also affected the rankings of some brands who’d actually done nothing wrong. Were you one of them? And what do you think will happen to the future of search engine optimisation?

The post The Evolution of SEO – Where We Stand in 2013 appeared first on Tone Agency.