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How Offline Branding Supports Your Online Marketing

Offline branding, as well as traditional marketing materials and channels, continue to demonstrate their value to businesses large and small. Companies may have adopted larger digital marketing strategies, but print, TV, and radio still hold sway when it comes to capturing interest in a company’s brand.

When integrated into your overall marketing strategy, offline branding enhances the scope of your reach and can guide leads into the sales funnel. The real benefit to offline branding efforts is being seen by part of your target audience, a segment that might have potentially missed your digital marketing campaigns up until that point.

How to bridge the gap between offline and online marketing

offline-online

They key to successful marketing is using offline and online branding strategies to complement one another so that you cover potential weak spots in any given ad campaign.

Offline branding can be essential in guiding your prospects through the customer journey, from the real world to the digital. A billboard could lead someone to a website where they make a purchase.

That’s what successful offline branding looks like.

While that’s a good example of successful offline branding, it’s important to understand that your offline marketing materials should pave the way for a customer’s online exploration. A prospect should be able to take something away from your TV commercial or print ad that will lead them to your website or online store.

There’s also the chance that your end game won’t lead them to a website. Maybe you’re drawing them to a physical location, or encouraging them to make a phone call. Wherever you want your offline branding to take leads, it has to share the same direction and messaging as the rest of your collateral.

Offline and online may be two different worlds but your brand should possess a single, united voice. Inconsistencies between the two could confuse or alienate potential customers.

When offline branding succeeds

Trade shows, community events, and conventions provide companies with unique offline branding opportunities that allow businesses to meet with peers or customers in person, letting others put a face and personality to the corporation.

Gaining contacts or becoming part of an organization can lead to directory listings, or becoming a member and having your business mentioned through a link on the group’s website. In terms of ROI, this association and endorsement is great for the amount of time or money it takes to attend shows or run booths.

Car and truck wraps are another example of offline branding that can be optimized for your digital marketing campaigns. Including keywords you’ve optimized for online use along with your URL creates an intrinsic connection between offline and online. This sense of cohesion in your marketing tactics is what leads to conversions.

When offline branding fails

Offline channels still play a fundamental role in marketing. Media such as TV, radio, and print ads continue to drive online searches. However, they’re not always optimized to capitalize on the content you’ve published online. Someone might try Googling a phrase they heard in one of your commercials and wind up with any result but the website they wanted to find.

Offline collateral featuring brand mentions should be optimized for your website and landing pages. If you’re using keywords or phrases in your offline branding that don’t appear on your website then people won’t know how to find you online or learn more about your business.

When people have search queries, something online has to answer those—like a landing page specifically for an offline marketing campaign. Likewise, your digital marketing should be capitalizing on any printed materials and ads.

Checklist for optimizing offline branding

To ensure your digital marketing is benefiting from your offline efforts, follow this helpful checklist.

Spell out your URL. On the radio, on billboards, it doesn’t matter—spell it out so people can easily remember and write it down.
Words included on any printed material (ads, billboards, car wraps) should be keywords already optimized for content on your website. Don’t introduce any new terminology that wouldn’t point towards your site in a search.
Optimize websites for ads run on the TV or radio. Anything someone might have heard or seen in one of your ads should be useful in a search to find you and your content.
Take control of your video content. If you’ve aired commercials, make sure you’re the first to upload them to sites like YouTube and remember to embed the video on your website as well.

To ensure both your digital and offline marketing are coordinated, make sure that they share enough similarities, like keywords. Using keywords linked to your online content is the most efficient way to lead your customers from an offline piece of branding back to your website. Prospects will be left confused, frustrated, and with a sense of disconnect if one piece of marketing doesn’t lead to the other.

Learn how to coordinate your offline branding strategies with your online marketing tactics. If your customers see a print ad or TV commercial, you’re starting a conversation with them—one you should be able to finish online. Collaborate with the professionals who know how to coordinate your digital marketing efforts with intelligent, results-driven offline branding.

Our Lancaster marketing company works with clients on traditional and digital marketing campaigns. Give us a call to get started.

5 Things to Know About Reputation Management

Reputation management is about framing public perception of a company in a positive light. It involves shaping public opinion by influencing online information about that business, such as social media posts, search engine results, and user reviews. How the public perceives your business, goods, or services is your reputation, and managing that reputation is essential when user reviews and ratings are so influential in the minds of today’s consumer.

Your company’s reputation is always on the line, and protecting it is a full-time job. Managing your reputation starts with learning to prevent the negative comments and complaints from being lodged in the first place. Consider these user review statistics:

4 out of 5 prospects will be influenced to change their mind on a purchase based on reviews—good or bad
80% of consumers consider reviews to be on par with personal referrals in terms of trust
90% of all review searches end on the first page

The customer can be a company’s worst nightmare or the brand’s biggest advocate. With the rise in review sites and their increasing availability, they’re being used to praise or condemn companies on a daily basis. A reputation manager’s job is to proactively preserve your reputation by responding quickly and implementing preventive measures that minimize the amount of damaging comments and reviews you might receive.

To understand why this role is essential for businesses, here are five need-to-know facts about reputation management.

1. You can’t do it all by yourself

It takes an immense amount of work and attention to detail to manage a company’s reputation. There are social media accounts to keep up with and customer review sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, and Google Reviews to monitor. Not only that, but customers expect you to respond to their problems via tweet and Facebook post right away or their level of frustration multiplies. That’s a lot of demand per customer, not to mention it calls for someone willing to be unbiased, apologetic, and restrained in his or her responses.

Many companies have made the mistake of writing hasty replies to negative reviews, only to further damage their reputation in the eyes of customers. Respond quickly with the facts, but remember that your comment is going to be read by everyone, not just the reviewer.

2. Reputation management is about more than handling the negative…

It’s also about accentuating the positive.

A reputation manager will spend most of his or her time addressing complaints and reviews on social media, but they’re much more than simple damage control. Protecting your reputation first requires you to build it. Regular upkeep of social media accounts and ensuring your information is positive and telling of what your business does is necessary. It’s imperative that customers have quick, easy access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter pages; and that they know how to contact you in the event that they have a complaint, review, or compliment.

Keeping your reputation intact also necessitates regular updates to your social media platforms or blog. This continuous wave of content will allow an individual to direct your audience’s attention to your successes, rather than your failures, as may be the case with inactive social profiles. Content generation is key to burying any bad reviews and making your company seem like it’s keeping on top of providing a better service and experience.

3. You can encourage customers to leave honest reviews…

Just direct them to do so.

Nearly 80% of the tweets on customer service on any given week are negative in tone. By letting all of your customers know how and where they can give you feedback, you may be prompting satisfied customers to leave good reviews when they may not have otherwise done so.

If a client is happy with a product or service they may simply move on, glad to repeat the transaction in the future; but the same may be true of unhappy customers who may not leave any comment at all. Instead, they share their bad experience offline.

“A dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15 people about their experience. Around 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people,” according to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs.

Having negative reviews won’t instantly destroy your reputation. It’s how you handle those reviews that dictates how customers see you.

4. A few negative reviews won’t hurt you…

But how you handle them might.

While they say it takes 12 positive reviews to undo one complaint, your reputation manager should be well versed in dealing with poor customer experiences quickly and sympathetically.

Respond to these negative experiences promptly.

Tell the customer how you’ve taken measures to prevent their problem in the future, and have the confidence to invite them back once you’ve solved the issue.

Obsessing over or attacking the customers who leave negative reviews will only exacerbate the problem and your reputation.

5. Your reputation is built on what you’ve done…

Not what you are going to do

It would be easy for a business owner to sit down and rave about all of the changes they have in the pipeline, but promising change is not nearly as powerful as demonstrating it. Your reputation will be built upon your actions, not your intentions; and going overboard with future plans will do nothing to alleviate the problems your customers have today. To manage your reputation effectively, you have to focus on what you’re doing now.

A sincere apology for a poor customer experience
Prompt replies to customer questions and complaints
Improving the quality of a service or product as a result of a customer complaint

If you’ve done any of the above then that’s something you can point to as a positive highlight. It demonstrates your company’s ability to listen to a customer’s problem and solve it. Even if your customers have had a few bad experiences in the past, knowing that you work as hard to keep your current clients as you do to secure new ones says a great deal about your business.

When you consider that it costs roughly six times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one (Bain & Company), you’ll start to understand the value of keeping clients happy. Building your authority with a reputation manager will help you grow your client list and turn your current customers into loyal brand warriors.

If you’re looking for a marketing agency near you in Lancaster or nearby York and Harrisburg markets, make sure you give us a call. We’d love to help.

The Value of eBooks, Whitepapers, and Case Studies

Content is no longer the pawn of SEO experts and their optimization tactics. The likes of eBooks, whitepapers, and case studies have become powerful lead-generation tools for marketers and businesses everywhere. A solid whitepaper will effectively drive high-value leads by educating and engaging them. And a great whitepaper will become a powerful viral teaching tool once others begin to share it.

The three different kinds of collateral (eBooks, whitepapers, and case studies) can be used as part of an opt-in offer, as an incentive to lure in new subscribers, or in the case of case studies, illustrate how something was accomplished. Take a closer look at each one to understand the value and impact they can have on you, your business, and your industry.

EBooks

What can help your marketing efforts without seeming like a marketing tool?

An eBook.

These digital books allow you to reshape your content and direct its tone, increasing its overall value and demonstrating the worth of your business, service, or product—but in a very non-marketing way.

Not only are eBooks subtle on the sell, they also boast two very important benefits:

Short production time
Fast deployment

Their value comes from how easy they are to implement into current campaigns, and the minimal time and monetary expense associated with their production. EBooks can be turned out relatively quickly with the right content and be put to use almost instantly, giving marketers the opportunity to reinforce a campaign or promotion with the smallest expenditure of resources.

Besides being cost-effective, eBooks are an efficient way to reuse and repurpose larger pieces of content. For example, a collection of quality blog posts on the same topic could be turned into an eBook. This allows you to deliver your expertise to a targeted audience. From a technological standpoint, eBooks are all about convenience.

Companies can track URLs placed in eBooks to determine ROI of marketing costs, while providing an almost immediate call-to-action that readers can follow. Prospects won’t have to remember URLs when they can consult an eBook filled with offers, coupons, and checklists. Further, they can be tied to your brand, making eBooks a valuable brand image enhancer.

Whitepapers

Some might say that the value or relevance of whitepapers has diminished, but they would be wrong. More and more businesses are using whitepapers to engage their industries, by either teaching with them or learning something new. In Q2 2015, 78% of the content leveraged for lead generation were whitepapers.

As the goal of a whitepaper is to educate, they often do so in a thorough, accessible manner that provides only the most relevant of information to the reader. They’re also extremely influential in helping decision makers in evaluating purchases. For example, a whitepaper outlining the top five best tablets could be useful in weighing the pros and cons of each device and helping you reach an informed buying decision.

Because of their educational potential, whitepapers are also used to generate leads. They can outline the steps of the decision making process, highlight key benefits, and explain subject matter in an easy-to-digest fashion that speaks to your ideal customer. Their ability to drive top-of-the-funnel leads is what has made whitepapers so consistently popular among businesses.

Like eBooks, whitepapers are easy to deploy. Prospects can be directed to download links, or you can share the whitepaper content piecemeal as social media posts. Sharing segments of your latest whitepaper on Facebook or Twitter is useful for smaller businesses who need help populating their social media pages. Posts will engage their followers while driving focus back to the business’s website or a download link to the larger whitepaper.

Case studies

The purpose of a case study is straightforward: to prove what you’ve done through visuals, facts, and figures on how a given product or service has worked for a customer. Case studies also build trust with potential and future customers. This allows businesses to show, rather than tell, how their service or product can benefit prospects. Case studies act as clear narratives that move from problem to strategy to solution.

Case studies help build relationships through proven results. When you can hand or email a client a piece of collateral that shows them what you offer and how it has helped solve the problems of your clients, they gain a better understanding of how their relationship with your business will play out. They’re given an impression of what they can expect. And matching expectations with results is a powerful thing in marketing.

The specificity of case studies is another reason why they work so well. Not only do they address very specific subject matter, but they can also illustrate the problem, strategy, and solution process in a “how X helped Y do Z” way. This makes the content of the case study much more appealing and searchable to prospects who may be having the same problem.

Case studies can be printed pieces or accessed through a link on your website, such as a gallery page filled with case studies, or a news piece written about a recent success you or one of your clients have had. If testimonials are powerful, then case studies are exponentially more beneficial to share with customers and prospective clients.

A case study can illustrate, through hard numeric data, the benefit of your product or service. Not only that, but case studies can be used to demonstrate your business’s ability to solve very specific problems, further highlighting your given expertise.

True value of eBooks, whitepapers, and case studies

EBooks are a subtle marketing tool capable of providing marketers with actionable deliverables that are both convenient and inexpensive to produce. With whitepapers, the value comes from how powerful their ability to engage is, and how valuable they become to others as educational tools. Finally, case studies provide specific, in-depth content that contributes to better relationships between businesses and prospects.

The one thing these pieces of collateral share is their ability to engage prospects in meaningful ways. Ultimately, their value comes from the amount of control businesses have over the content, allowing them to target their ideal customer in effective new ways.

If you’re struggling to find a better way to start a dialogue with your customers, talk to the experts who know marketing collateral. We can help find the right combination of eBooks, whitepapers, and case studies to grab your customers’ attention—and keep it.

How Professional Images Help Persuade Potential Buyers

Professional images help make your business stand out, whether they are digital or in print. Find out how they can help persuade your target market to buy.

Reach More Customers Through Remarketing With PPC

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising is one of the best ways to reach people performing searches on Google all over the country, and even all over the world. With Google AdWords, PPC ads appear as sponsored links on the results pages of Google above and to the right of organic search results. Your exposure is instant – and your ability to reach millions of people with your company is truly powerful.

Unlike a standard Pay-Per-Click campaign, remarketing using Google AdWords goes beyond appearing on search results pages. When you choose to advertise your company with remarketing, you’re able to reach potential customers who have already visited your site. Let’s take a look at how you really can reach more customers through remarketing:

What is Remarketing?

Remarketing is a method of advertising used to reach people who have already interacted with your business online – in one way or another. These actions could be a website visit, a product view, a form submission, or a click to your site from a search PPC ad. Remarketing allows you to reintroduce your product or service to someone who has already visited your site.

Advertising with PPC remarketing is an untapped marketing channel for so many businesses. Reaching the people that are already interested in your company is a priceless marketing investment. With Remarketing, you have the power to reignite interest in your product or service, driving traffic back to your website. This is how you can lead visitors back to your site, in hopes of nudging them towards a purchase.

How does Remarketing work?

Remarketing starts by gathering information about the people who have visited your site. The purpose of tracking users is to see how they behave on your website – like what pages they visit, where they exit, and how they all lead to a conversion. All of this tracking is made possible by scripts that are added to your site, running in the background of users’ sessions.

These same basic tracking principles that supply data for programs like Google Analytics are applied to remarketing. When a user visits your site, a cookie is dropped into their browser by the tracking script. Remarketing uses these cookies to add users to pre-defined lists based on criteria you set for your campaigns. If a user matches your criteria, like visiting your site without buying a product or filling out a contact form, they’re added to your list.

Users can stay in remarketing lists for up to 180 days. During this time, they’re eligible to see your display ads while browsing other sites within the Google Display Network. The whole purpose of remarketing is to gently nudge users closer to a sale or contact inquiry on your site. They’ve already visited your site, so you know they have interest in your company. More exposure with subtle reminders of your products or services is an effective way to lead users to a conversion.

Remarketing and the Google Display Network

To really understand the power of remarketing, you need to first understand Google’s Display Network. The Display Network is a collection of websites where ads are eligible to appear in sidebars, footers, headers, or even inside content like blog posts. Site owners opt into this network, making a profit by allowing Google to use their sites for display advertising. A typical display ad for EZMarketing looks something like this:

Ads like this are eligible to appear in a massive network of sites. The network is so massive that it’s made up of over 2 million sites. That means there are over 2 million advertising opportunities at your disposal with remarketing. From eCommerce stores selling knit hats to racecar blogs, the sheer diversity of sites is unmatched by other advertising platforms.

When you choose to advertise with remarketing on the Google Display Network, you have the ability to reach your ideal customer across millions of websites. You know you’re targeting the right people, because they’ve already visited your site. Other marketing channels and advertising tactics like link building or print media ads rarely have the ability to reach your target customer in such a scalable way.

Remarketing and scalability

In a world of smarter search engines and constantly updating algorithms, the gap between organic and paid search marketing grows smaller every day. Just 10 years ago, a business used to be able to run successful organic marketing campaigns like link building or content marketing with little effort. Those were the days of easy links and engagement, where automation got you results.

Today, organic marketing takes hard work from seasoned professionals. Getting links and mentions takes a vast network of connections and even greater patience. 10 years ago, paid advertising like PPC wasn’t necessary. In 2016, a well-rounded marketing plan isn’t complete without at least one Google AdWords campaign.

With Remarketing, all you need is a solid understanding of Google AdWords and time to put towards continuously optimizing your campaigns. Just like PPC advertising on the search network, running a successful remarketing campaign does take some time to manage and monitor. You don’t need endless resources to run an effective remarketing campaign, though. You can see real result and know exactly how much you’re spending every step of the way. Total flexibility and customization is what makes Remarketing such an excellent advertising channel for almost all businesses.

Remarketing and results

When flexibility and scalability combine, you’re left with an extremely cost-effective online advertising model. If you’re familiar with Google AdWords and PPC marketing, you know you set a budget for the month. This budget is then split into daily spends. Google will never exceed your monthly spend, ensuring your ad dollars are not spent carelessly.

It’s up to you to optimize your remarketing campaign with things like placement exclusions to avoid displaying on irrelevant websites. You’re in total control when it comes to your ad copy and design, where your ads display, and at what times. But, you never have to worry about overspending. Google AdWords takes care of the math for you. What you’re left with is a dashboard full of real metrics and results.

From here, you can easily see how many clicks your ads received, how many conversions happened after user clicked on your ad, and exactly what you spent to get every sale or lead. This is where you determine just how successful Remarketing is.

If a sale from remarketing cost you $10, and that sale is worth $100 to your business, your return on investment is 10 times what you spent.

This is where remarketing comes down to how much you spend, versus how much you make in returns. You rarely get this much solid, tangible data with conventional marketing tactics. From here, you can fine-tune your Remarketing campaign to better fit your business goals. Being in front of your customers when they’re ready to buy is invaluable to your business – making remarketing the right choice.

To learn more about remarketing, call the experts at EZMarketing and talk about your PPC campaign. We’re a digital marketing agency with offices in Lancaster, PA.

Lackluster Logos: 4 Signs You Need a Visual Update

If your logo is a visual representation of your business, then a poorly designed or outdated logo is like suffering an identity crisis. Prospects will lose touch with who you are or what you do. So the question becomes: “how do I know if my logo needs to be updated?” Advertising evolves with consumer and technology trends, so it’s natural to consider whether your logo needs an update. Companies have to adapt to survive, after all.

Logos create a sense of trust, and signal things like quality, value, and popularity. Just consider how consumers treat brand recognition—placing more value on a product’s logo than the product itself.

A recognizable brand is one the consumer is already familiar with, and is one they’re more likely to favor or trust. As a representation of your business, your logo is a key element in your visual branding, one that allows people to form an emotional association with you and your products or services.

Not feeling your logo anymore? Think it’s time for a change? Ask yourself these four questions to see whether your business logo needs a facelift.

1) Does it reflect my company’s brand identity?

Perhaps you’re in the middle of a rebranding or you’re simply not sure if your current logo still communicates, but an important question to ask is whether the logo adequately (and accurately) represents who you are as a business. In other words, your logo should tell your story.

If your brand identity changes, the logo might need to change as well to ensure uniformity of message.

Bottom Line: Consider changing your logo if it doesn’t reflect your company’s identity or current brand.

2) Does it help me stand out from all the other businesses?

It can be difficult standing out in a crowd of snowflakes, but there are plenty of companies who’ve managed to do just that. Like domain or business names, being unique makes you easier to find and remember.

Some of the most popular brands have the most iconic logos. Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola—consider how ingrained these brands have become in our culture. Their logos often represents an entire category of product in the minds of consumers.

Bottom Line: If your logo is blending in with the rest, it might be time for a new one.

3) How does my target customer feel about my logo?

You might be in love with your logo, but do your customers share that feeling? Maybe it’s your employees who are less than thrilled about the design. Lackluster logos can diminish a company’s visibility and cause prospects to turn toward a more recognizable, visually pleasing design instead.

Take Target’s logo, for example. They have something of an edge over other stores because of their easily recognizable brand symbol, which is a logo that can stand on its own without the store’s name or other words. It basically speaks for itself.

In a world where consumers favor visuals over words, a logo can make it that much easier—or more difficult—for a brand to succeed if the people love it (or don’t).

Bottom Line: When your employees, customers, or prospects begin to react unfavorably toward your logo, consider changing it up.

4) Does my logo work across all channels, from print to digital?

There are plenty of companies that got their start before the digital age. That means their logos weren’t originally optimized for the web, so over time they probably realized that the tried-and-true logo didn’t look too great online.

As computer technology improves, outdated graphics start to show their age. Low resolution, bad colors, and poor choice of fonts can render an otherwise attractive logo ill-suited for use across media large and small.

For a logo to really shine it should be viewable on all channels without being turned into a pixelated blob. When your company has a logo usable online, in print ads, social media, and billboards, you’ll have a logo that can endure. It won’t matter where your customers see your logo: they’ll recognize it and know it’s yours.

Bottom Line: Look for a new logo if you’re an older company whose logo was only designed for use in print, or if your logo doesn’t quite look right on other websites and print material.

Conclusion

Some logos may only require a small bit of polishing, whereas others could stand to be redone entirely. Either way, your company—your brand—is bigger than its logo; and your logo works for you, not the other way around. Don’t let your business be held hostage by a poorly designed or outdated logo. Our graphic design team has developed hundreds of bold, brand-appropriate graphics to represent our clients’ companies. We can help revitalize your old logo while sticking to the vision that best expresses your business and mission.

The Anatomy of a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

An email marketing campaign is an essential part of any successful marketing strategy. They nurture relationships with prospects, collect invaluable information regarding your customers, and enhance marketing ROI potential. While most email campaigns revolve around “blasting” large batches of emails, the process can easily degrade into something impersonal and annoying for your customers.

Taking the time to develop a thoughtful, engaging, and empathetic email marketing campaign can help ensure your emails are being opened—and read—instead of getting trashed.

A well designed email marketing strategy plays out like theater. First the stage has to be set—your opt-ins, contact gathering, and email marketing strategy development are taken care of first. Next comes the play itself, which includes writing a descriptive subject line, concise copy, and a strong call-to-action. Once you’ve performed, you can analyze the metrics—everything from testing, measuring, and tracking the performance of your email marketing campaign.

Set the stage for your email campaign

Before you can start sending any emails, you have to have a database of contacts to send them to. When you create your opt-in list—the initial exchange of their email and info for a promise of future emails from your company—keep things easy and transparent. You want to ‘set the stage’ for their expectations. Letting them know what you want from them and what they’ll get in return is a good place to start.

Create your objective

Without an objective, how will you know what your emails will be about? This determines the course of your campaign as well as the purpose of your emails. You should know what content you’ll provide your customers with, which will help you develop the content copy and subject line.

Only ask for relevant details

Only ask for the information you absolutely need to conduct your email campaign. This is usually at minimum, a name and an email address—and a business name if you’re a B2B business. Avoid asking for too much information or too many questions as this can easily annoy customers. Don’t worry about extra unnecessary information that you can find out later.

Tell them what they’ll get

Tell the customer why you want their information and what they’ll be getting in return, and make sure it’s something of value, such as a free webinar, eBook, video seminar, or a newsletter. Let them know when or how often they can expect to hear from you, and include information on how they can unsubscribe/opt-out in the future.

You have to offer them a reason to sign up for your email marketing list. What is it that you can bring them that has value to their business that will make them want to hand over their email address to get your emails? Whether it is a downloadable asset like an eBook or whitepaper, or the value of the information from a webinar or seminar, if you show them the value that they will get from signing up you will get more subscribers.

Empathizing with your customer’s needs helps you engage them in a meaningful way as opposed to the other emails they get that range from the overly demanding, to the cheesy and useless.

Develop a strong series of emails

The biggest challenge of email marketing campaigns is getting your customers to open and read the emails, and then following the calls-to-action you provide. How each email performs will dictate the course the rest of your campaign takes. The goal should be to make your email stand out, so avoid overused words in the subject line. Use different compelling subject lines for every email you send.

Entice them to open the message

If you don’t include a strong subject line, something that entices the customer to open it, then your emails will go unread. Ideal subject lines are clear and concise. A good subject line should tell readers what they can expect to see inside, or describe the content and its benefit to them.

Try to evoke immediate emotions such as urgency and curiosity, and frame subject lines as questions for best rests. Subject lines should be a maximum of 50 characters to avoid losing a reader’s attention.

Provide content that benefits reader

Following a great subject line should be copy that provides value—whether it’s an offer, more information, or marketing material to encourage further opt-ins. Write in a casual, conversational tone. Building relationships is a huge part of email marketing and personalizing your signoff lends each email a personal touch customers respond to.

Consider the length of your emails as well. We recommend decreasing length as you increase email frequency. Customers are less likely to read longer emails every single day, but a weekly or monthly email that’s a bit longer is fine.

Finish your copy with an objective-focused call-to-action

The call-to-action should urge customers towards making another purchase, booking an appointment, making a phone call, or visiting your website for more details. The objective of your email marketing should align with your call-to-action. If you want to boost site traffic or generate new leads, then your call-to-action should tell the customer how to help you do that.

An effective call-to-action describes an action to the reader and shows them how to perform it.

Test, measure, and track the success of your email marketing campaign

Metrics to consider are the Opens to Send Ratio and Click to Open Rate. These can tell you whether people are opening messages and following the calls-to-action. What you really want to track are the results of these opens—are you getting leads, making sales, and getting more form fills. The goal with any email campaign is to generate more sales. It’s important to ensure people are opening the email and then following your instructions, thereby moving further down the sales funnel.

Email marketing campaigns are great for recapturing leads your website previously generated but those that never exited the sales funnel. Email campaigns are designed to foster and grow the relationship between you and prospects, to guide them through the rest of the sales funnel.

As you develop and restructure your email marketing strategy, remember that it’s always beneficial to test what you’re working on. It will save you time and money in the long term, and present you with a stronger chance of turning your readers into leads.

If you don’t have the time to design and manage an email marketing campaign, we can take care of the leg work while you reap the benefits. Contact EZMarketing today to see how we can help grow your business through better email marketing practices.

Picture-Perfect: Why Quality Graphic Design is Critical for Your Business

Your prospects’ awareness of your company is everything. It means visibility and exposure, and having a presence customers recognize and can relate to. If no one knows who you are then you can’t establish yourself as an authority or expert in your industry. And that means no one will care about who you are or what you have to offer.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Increasing brand awareness is a problem many businesses are faced with at some point. The fix usually requires the company to address one or more visual aspects of their marketing strategy, such as a logo, website, or even a lack of visual content. Branded products are arguably one of the most effective tools a marketer has in their arsenal, and a company’s logo has the power to evoke the entire company’s identity without saying a word.

Without visual content a company only has its words and reputation. But, in an age where prospects demand shorter forms of content and eye-grabbing visuals, companies have to evolve if they want to boost their visibility and the public’s awareness of their product or service. So, what’s the answer?

Hire a graphic designer.

Professional Graphic Design

A talented graphic designer can change perspective, and that’s the kind of power companies need in their marketing lineup. Visual content redefines short-and-sweet by packing information and visual stimuli into a single, easily easy-to-swallow package. Infographics are a prime example of visual content at its best. It gives companies a creative way to display copy or hard data in a digestible, attractive way. They’ve become so big that in 2014 alone, the use of infographics was more than 5 times higher than it was in previous years—from 9% to a whopping 52%.

The art of graphic design includes more than infographics. From photography to videos, visual content includes both visual and interactive content, including presentations like slideshows and webinars. The popularity of websites such as YouTube, Tumblr, and Pinterest should vouch for the average internet user’s interest in visual content. Companies can capitalize on that information by adopting visual content into their marketing strategies.

Your company’s level of exposure—the degree to which the public is aware of you—requires being seen. You need to have impactful visuals to draw the attention of your ideal customers and keep them engaged. Investing in professional graphic design can help you achieve that.

Visual Content is on the Rise

Visual content was cited as a key component in each of the top B2B marketing tactics that included videos, case studies, and webinars. Look at it this way: 93% of all human communication involves visual content. It’s no wonder. The brain can process visual information so much faster than it can text. Other companies are slowly gravitating away from longer forms of content such as whitepapers in favor of shorter, visual/interactive content.

Images already rule social media marketing. Facebook and Twitter are saturated with photos, making images and photos an invaluable social media tactic.

Boost Your Company’s Exposure with Printed Materials

Graphic design isn’t purely digital, and a good designer can create more traditional marketing material that inspires our customers to remember you. Visually stimulating, print is tactile and offers access to memory and information. Online, an ad might pop up and disappear in a matter of minutes, but a business card or brochure can be picked up at any time. Customers have the freedom to engage with you whenever they want to, allowing them to remember you or access important information about your company. And now that so many businesses are going digital with their marketing, print stands out even more. Professional graphic design can easily benefit both digital and print campaigns, so take advantage of its versatility before your competition does.

DIY: Hire Professional Graphic Design

Just because you made a couple of cool doodles doesn’t mean you should also create your company’s visual content. Graphic design includes knowledge of typography, color theory, layouts, and the right tools. A professional designer has the ability to implement these things in a provocative but cohesive way; to execute designs with a creative vision appropriate to a company and its brand.

5 Reasons to Add a Shopping Cart to Your Website

Adding a shopping cart to your e-commerce website design announces your intentions and credibility to the internet. It says, “I’m here to do business, with a site you can trust.” As mobile browsing continues to grow, so do online sales. Shoppers are flocking to websites such as Amazon, Etsy, or their favorite online store to take care of everyday purchases and seasonal gifts. Making this experience secure, easy, and profitable has become the number one goal for entrepreneurs selling their goods online.

A shopping cart is more than just a centralized place for a user’s potential purchases. It helps them calculate total costs, keep track of their order (or make edits to it), and makes the payment process painless. When a shopping cart is installed, it can offer the business owner just as much, if not more.

Here are five reasons to suit up with a shopping cart if you want to be taken seriously in the e-commerce arena.

You want your website to be an e-commerce site

You absolutely need an online shopping cart if you’re trying to become an e-commerce website. A shopping cart is a crucial component to a successful e-commerce store as it allows you to fluidly process payments, take orders, and encourages users to continue shopping after they’ve made an initial selection. This multifaceted component acts as the customer user interface, an online product catalog, back-end inventory infrastructure, and even the payment gateway. Responsible for so many invaluable aspects of an e-commerce site, shopping cart software will really end up doing most of the work for you.

Convenience = customer satisfaction

From allowing multiple payment options to keeping tabs on everything a customer wants to purchase, shopping cart software makes the buying process easy. Without a cart, users would be forced to make multiple purchases, checking out several times in the process; or worse yet, call you to confirm your order. This creates an uncertainty in the shopper: every time they type in their sensitive information, they run the risk of having that data skimmed, hacked, or stolen.

Customers are also able to remove or add items in their cart without having to start all over again. And the biggest convenience factor: users can shop and purchase on any device with an internet connection.

A shopping cart builds trust with customers

Convenience aside, having a shopping cart for your online store signals that your website is secure. Shopping cart software is designed to make handling payments a breeze—letting users know how to pay (and then letting them do it) and making the transaction secure through the software’s built-in security features. In an age where identity theft is becoming more and more common, online shoppers are cautious about where and to whom they give their personal information and credit card number to.

Installing a shopping cart offers users payment assurance and establishes you as a credible online business.

Better product management

As e-commerce websites grow their catalogues inevitably change as well, which requires proactive product management. Many shopping carts and their software provide business owners product management tools to adapt to trends in growth (or the lack thereof). Any software that can make running your business less time consuming is one entrepreneurs shouldn’t miss out on.

Shopping cart software provides backend data for business growth

With the right software, you can use shopping carts to track what products or services people are coming to your business for (and which ones they might be neglecting). This data can be used to positively impact SEO or marketing strategies. Depending on your software, you may also be able to analyze sales trends and visitor patterns. Carts aren’t good for just collecting products for purchase—they also collect data,

Taking into account the various shopping carts— Magento, WooCommerce Marketing, Zencart, Prestashop, etc.—business owners have plenty of options for how their online cart will look and function. E-commerce software benefits webmasters because it takes the basic needs of a customer (and business owner) and provides a solution to meet those needs. In fact, there’s so much more to having an online cart than customer satisfaction.

The amount of data shopping cart software can collect on the backend is instrumental to running a good business. Carts build credibility by establishing trust between you and your clientele, but it also tells you about those same clients—their patterns and behavior while browsing or making a final purchase.

Adding a shopping cart to your online business turns into this magical gateway for customer data that can be used to grow your business, run ad campaigns, or even save yourself from the red. It’s part of being a proactive entrepreneur: you build, adapt, and grow. If you are interested in learning more, contact us today. We’re a website designer and SEO company in nearby Lancaster, PA.

Pop-Ups: The New and Right Way to Use Them

Pop-ups, formerly synonymous with spam and viruses, are making a comeback. Studies have poured in indicating significant boosts in lead conversion rates. The numbers are so good that businesses and marketers alike are examining the ghosts of pop-ups past—and considering whether the old tactic might be of some use today.

Whether you’re for or against the marketing device, we’re here to show you the right way to use them if you’re curious enough to try them out yourself. Plenty of marketers are already breaking from the stigma associated with pop-ups and the results they’re seeing is proof enough that vintage is making a comeback.