SEO basics for entrepreneurs: Easy tips for optimizing your website

This article was originally posted in June of 2014 by, Philippe Desjardins. It is very informative and helpful for newbies to internet marketing!

One of the obvious keys to growing a business is to get introduced to people who need your products and services. Great news! Research indicates that over 90% of people use the Internet when evaluating a purchase. In other words, the Internet is full of people looking for you.

But how do you get them to find your website?

There are two options: either you purchase the traffic by buying online ads or you don’t. If you’re one of the 100% of people who prefer free options to paid options, this article is for you.

The free option is search engine optimization (SEO).

What is SEO?

The term refers to techniques you can use to improve your website’s ranking on the results pages of search engines such as Google. If you want to attract more free Internet traffic, it’s something you need to focus on and get right.

SEO can be complicated when you dig deep into it. But, it’s relatively easy for you to understand the basics and implement them on your site. And, just by covering the ABCs, you will be putting your business ahead of the competition in many cases.

A simple SEO recipe

Here’s how to do it

First, take a look at your website and structure it so that each page is built around one single theme.

You want to do this because search engines aim to provide users with the information they’re seeking the first time, every time. In order to do that, they need to understand the content of your webpages.

Make it easier for search engines

By building each page of your website around a single theme you make it much easier for them to classify your page and present it when it’s relevant to a search.

Next, choose keywords you will use to optimize each page. Think about the keywords people are most likely to use to find the information provided by that page.

How to choose your keywords

Write down your choices for the 5 to 10 most relevant keywords for the page.
Go on Google AdWords. If you do not already have a Google Account, create one. It’s free.
Once on Google AdWords, go in the Tools menu and select Keyword Planner.
Select Search for new keyword and ad group ideas. This will bring you to a page where you can input the keywords you have written down as well as the address of the page you are optimizing and your product/service category.
Once you have entered your information click on the Get ideas button.
Right below the Search volume trends graphic, you will see two tabs; Ad group ideas and Keyword ideas. Click onKeyword ideas tab. It was a bit complicated to reach, but this is the magic page.
Here, you can plug in your search terms (the keywords you wrote down) and find the average monthly searches for each of them. Now you know if people are actually searching for the keywords you came up with and how often they do so. You want to make sure the keywords you will be optimizing your page for are as popular as possible while still being very relevant to your page theme.
Below your search terms you will find keyword suggestions from Google as well as their own average monthly searches. Look for relevant keywords with high average monthly searches.
Now, come up with your final list of five relevant keywords with the highest average monthly searches. These will be your targeted keywords for optimizing your webpage. It is likely to be a combination of some of your own keywords and ones suggested to you by Google.

Next, create your SEO tree. This is a document where, you will track six important optimization components for each webpage as a reference to use when you prepare your content. Here’s what it will look like.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO tree
Page name	Component	Details
Home	Keywords	Search engine optimization Online marketing SEO tips SEO marketing SEO training
	Page title	Search engine optimization (SEO) tips for small business
	Page description	Search engine optimization for small and medium business. How you can easily improve the ranking of your website in search engine results.
	Headings (H1, H2, etc)	Example: H1 = Search engine optimization for small and medium business H2 = SEO tips for your online marketing
	Image ALT tags	The SEO tree, a free SEO tool
	URL structure	www.bestseotips.ca

Keywords

Input your list of five targeted keywords for the page. Having them written here will help you to optimize the other components.

Page title

Search engines look at the page title, also known as the title tag, to understand the page’s content. They also show it in search results pages, as highlighted below:

Page titles have to be unique and include the most important targeted keyword for that page. The title should be compelling enough to trigger interest in 60 characters or less. Also note that the words at the beginning of the title have more SEO weight than the ones coming after. So, you should try to start your title with your keyword.

Page description

Search engines display the description under each page title on the results page to help searchers determine the best link to click on. See an example below.

Having a good page description is important because the information you put there greatly influences the decision of the searcher whether to click on your link or someone else’s. The description must be unique too and be no longer than 160 characters.

Headings

In website code, headings are designated <h1> to <h6>. These simply define the size of your headings, as they appear to the reader. Among these six levels of headings, H1 is the biggest and H6 the smallest.

The headings are more than shortcuts to quickly change the size and face of your text. They tell the search engines that the keywords in headings are more important. This is a great opportunity to use your targeted keywords. Remember, you must use one and only one H1 header per page. This is your main title and it should include your most important keyword.

You can then sprinkle your most important and other keywords throughout your text. But don’t overdo it. Using keywords too much is called keyword stuffing. It can annoy your readers and cause Google to penalize your pages in its search rankings.

Image ALT tag

The ALT tag is used to display descriptive text when an image cannot be displayed. Obviously, using image replacement texts makes sense for users who prefer to browse the Internet with images disabled. What’s more important for you is that search engines can’t read numbers or text on images, let alone understand the context of the image itself.

Your keywords may look fantastic and eye-catching on an image, but the only way for search engines to see them is the ALT tag associated with the image. Therefore creating ALT tags and including your targeted keywords in them is another efficient SEO technique.

URL structure

The URL is the address of the page. The words used in URLs send one of the strongest signals to search engines concerning the content of the page. URLs should contain the most important keyword for that page. You should also try to avoid using strings of characters in URLs that don’t make sense to the visitor. Only lower-case letters and numbers should be used, and dashes should replace spaces.

Helping your pages to climb

If you create SEO trees for each of your webpages and make sure you optimize the six components, you will have covered the most important aspects of search engine optimization. You will definitely help your website climb in the search result rankings.

In some industries where online marketing is fierce, this may not be enough for your site to appear on the all-important first page of search results. But without optimizing these components, it’s very unlikely that your website will rank for any searches not involving your brand/company name.

Implementing your work

Now that you have all your optimized content, it is time to implement it on your website. If your website is built using a content management system (CMS), such as WordPress, all the changes can easily be implemented in it without the help of a programmer.

If your website is built using an older proprietary system, you will have to give your SEO trees to your programmer so that he or she can implement your optimization work on each page.

SEO is in constant flux

The search engines are constantly changing the way they rank websites in their search results. What’s important now may not be so important two or three years from now.

One development in recent years is the growing importance of social media in search rankings. If you are regularly involved on social platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, you increase the chances your website will rank higher in search results.

Great content is your best weapon

One thing that is sure to remain central to SEO is the need for good content. As long as people will be looking for answers, search engines will strive to find and deliver them the best pages to provide these answers.

So your best strategy to get to the top of search results and stay there is to create good fresh content regularly. This will help position you as a leader in your field and attract more visitors who you will be able to convert into customers.

July 21, 2015

IN-APP MESSAGES DRIVE 3.5X HIGHER USER RETENTION [NEW RESEARCH]

By: Dave Hoch

In-app messages are a great communication tool for engaging (or re-engaging) users who are already using apps. Yet, many app owners wonder how to create content that isn’t viewed as spam and doesn’t detract from the user experience. This may explain why only one third of app marketers are currently using in-app messaging as part of their mobile engagement strategy. [Share This Stat]

According to our recent research, when in-app messages are used effectively, there is a strong correlation with higher user engagement and retention:

Apps that send in-app messages show 2-3.5x higher user retention and 27% more app launches than apps that do not.
In-app messages triggered off of an event have higher click-through and conversion rates than those triggered at the start of an app session.
Photography and Sports apps see the highest lift in click-through rates when in-app messages are triggered by an in-app event.

Apps That Send In-App Messages Have More Loyal and Engaged Users

In-app messages are the perfect tool to guide users to the most valuable parts of an app, because they either act as directional guidance to get to the next step or serve as an opportunity to offer incentives delivered at appropriate points in the app. Once a user sees the value of an app, they are more likely to return frequently and often. Our latest data supports this idea.

Overall, apps that send in-app messages experience 27% more launches than apps that don’t send them, seeing an average of 13 launches per month.

In addition to a higher number of app launches, apps that send in-app messages have significantly more loyal users. For example, these loyal users return to the app 3.5X more often in their third month of using the app.

This means that these app owners are retaining nearly 50% of their users three months after their initial engagement, thanks in part to the effectiveness of their in-app messages.

In-App Messages Triggered From an In-App Event Are 4X More Effective

Delivering relevant in-app messages is the key to negating their perception as spam.

Our research observes the average click-through rate of an in-app message is 28%. But, on average, when the in-app message is triggered off of an event (i.e. an action taken inside the app), the click-through rate is 2x higher than an in-app message presented at the start of the app’s session. The same holds true for conversion rates, as in-app messages presented based on an event have 4x higher conversion rates, on average, than those shown at the start of a session. [Share This Stat]

July 21, 2015

WHY IN-APP MESSAGING IS THE SOLUTION TO YOUR ADVERTISING WOES

Finding the right monetization strategy for your app can make or break your mobile ROI, and often the search, model criteria and selection process comes down to specifics about how users will interact specifically with your app. One model that works for many apps is monetizing using in-app advertising.

In this business model, you offer your app for free with the goal to accumulate a sizeable user base and gather information on the people interacting with your app. Then, this data gets sorted and sold to app publishers who pay you to place targeted ads in your app.

Mobile ads are booming, and it can be an extremely successful monetization model when the ads are actually relevant, which depends on your ability to collect the user data to help companies target their ads to the right set of potential users.

Even when you’re serving smart, relevant ads, they are still often seen as spam by users, who at this point have grown somewhat jaded and fatigued by the constant pop-ups. Data-driven ads are still ads – they’re still asking users for something before they may be ready, even when the ad is relevant to who they are.

How do you monetize your app without compromising the user experience?

Because of this, ads can’t be the only thing you serve up in the user experience. Mobile ads can comprise your app experience by claiming a portion of the screen in the middle of a user interaction, potentially frustrating users and degrading their experience, which can lead to app churn.

The solution? In-app messaging.

In this post, we highlight three ways using in-app messaging augments in-app advertising to temper the feeling of spam and prevent churn.

1. Create relevancy for higher CTRs

If you’re serving up ads that are based on user data you’ve collected, then you’re already ahead of the game. This means your CTRs should be higher, because the ad content is personalized, right?

That’s not always the case. Because of the nature of ads, CTRs are typically low. While you can provide ads that your users might be interested in, you’re still asking for something instead of providing something.

In-app messaging, on the other hand, should act as a part of their current user experience to feel natural and fluid. In-app messages are often triggered based on an event completed or action taken in-app – this means you can control the content that your users receive via in-app messages and time them at precisely the right moment.

You can use in-app messaging not just to interest the user in relevant offers, but also to inform her of new and critical features, additional content she might find relevant based on her interests, or help connect her with the social portions of the app. It could be a number of interactions, most of which are valuable based on that user’s profile.

When this kind of messaging is targeted based on real-time mobile user behavior, you’re going to see higher CTRs:

Not only can you trigger real-time in-app messages based on user behavior, but with the right analytics foundation, you also have the benefit of historical behavior analytics and user attribute data (such as location, language, device, etc). This combination of analytics and real-time marketing gives you the opportunity to add real value to your app experience.

2. Offset mistrust with meaningful interactions

Here’s the worst-case scenario for mobile ads, and something you might have encountered: that these ads are seen as intrusive; pushing new products, services and brands on your users that they don’t care to learn about.

When this happens, you risk creating a foundation of mistrust with your users, concentrating more on your bottom line than on improving their experience with your app. Of course, this is never the goal an app owner starts out with – but it is the situation many end up with. This is where employing in-app messaging can help re-establish trust and regain user interest.

As a marketing tactic, in-app messaging serves to provide additional content, information or offers to users while they are using the app. As an engagement tactic, in-app messaging can and should provide highly-personalized, relevant content that is valuable to that particular user, and engages her further with the app based on her interests.

This provides meaningful user interactions, further establishing why users should be using your app. Say you have a group of users in your sports app whose favorite team is the Giants. You can send these users an in-app message alerting them to price changes on tickets, or new articles that mention the team. In sending this, you are providing information interesting to those users, and further engaging them with the app in alternative ways. You aren’t expecting or asking for a purchase, but rather adding something to their experience with your app.

3. Grow retention with valuable user experiences

Engaging app experiences are the key to creating short- and long-term retention – if you want users coming back again and again, they need to be given a reason to. Too many bad, or even just too many, experiences with mobile ads can lead to poor retention. With in-app messaging, you’re restoring balance to the experience.

Retention is going to have a significant impact on your mobile ROI. Without re-engaging users and giving them an experience they would to have again, you’re losing all future monetization opportunities with those users. Essentially: in order to have app users who actually convert on your mobile ads, you first need to ensure that those users are engaged enough with your core app features and functionality to return to the app multiple times. Pushing a first-time app user an ad is not only going to hurt your monetization plans, it’s also going to turn that user off, and perhaps turn into an uninstall.

We’ve seen that apps that use in-app messaging have much higher retention rates than those who don’t, because they’re able to provide additional value and tailor a better app experience using this tactic.

How in-app messaging can work for you

In-app messaging is appliable to everyone; whether it’s new feature announcements, NPS surveys, targeted offers, or just more information, you can find a style that suits your app. As long as you’re using real data to inform better messaging, you’ll be able to create a strategy that works, improving your app user experience and complementing your monetization model.

July 21, 2015

Why A Blog Post + A Landing Page Is A Lethal Combination

Tracy Vides 6 Comments

It’s hard to run a business. You know that. And most entrepreneurs gleefully embrace this fact. The reality of it, however, can still give you goose bumps.

Think about this: Amazon has been in business more than two decades now and it still doesn’t make much in terms of profit.

While investors have undying love for the company, it barely scratches the surface of net gains. Meanwhile, it expands, offers free shipping, buys new businesses, and adds more products to its seemingly endless shelves. According to an article by Meagan Clark and Angelo Young on ibtimes.com, the online retailing behemoth recently reported $17 billion in sales but with a $41 million loss.

Meanwhile, Twitter is something everyone uses and its future is still uncertain (waiting for its advertising model to work). In the year 2011, Sprint Nextel, AMR, Sears, and MGM resorts were all losing money as Rick Aristotle Munarriz noted on Daily Finance.

Why are we discussing businesses losing money here? What has this got to do with blogging and landing pages? Now, these are large businesses. They have attractive stock prices and investors love them. Yet, these companies barely make money. What can a small business do? How does a small business hope to make a sustainable profit given a situation like this?

While there is no magic formula, a great piece of advice is “keep your expenses down and go smart”. Make use of resources best suited to lean businesses. The giants cannot adapt fast. But you can! Use content and digital marketing to your advantage; use blogging in combination with landing pages.

Here’s why it’s a lethal combination that holds its own over other free and paid options.

PPC + Landing Pages Works but it’s Expensive

Phil Frost of MainStreet ROI explains why AdWords could prove to be expensive for your business.

Don’t get me wrong. PPC is easy, quick, and gets you results. It’s highly targeted advertising and with much lower risk than other paid channels or traditional advertising. It is just that you would have to know how to do it right.

Phil points out that the default settings on AdWords are built to make you lose money. Second, not all businesses fully understand how AdWords works and they don’t go much beyond pointing simple ads to their homepages. Third, most firms do not have a framework or a checklist to work with Adwords. Finally, organizations don not always track clicks from campaigns to see if this works in tandem with their business goals (if at all they have them clearly defined).

There is a lot at stake here. If you have the budget, you can certainly do PPC with landing pages. It is just not as straightforward as you might think, though. For one, putting up ads on Google or Bing and then waiting for traffic to come in only to convert is not a one-time process. You would start with segmentation, move on to geographic targeting, adding and removing keywords, creating ad copy, assets, and message matching. You would then have to optimize your landing pages, test frequently, and then go back to work on your ads again.

It does not end. So even with a budget, you still need to have the expertise and embrace learning curve.

Blog Posts Provide Content, Landing Pages Trigger Action

If you have to spend resources, why not do it with blog posts and landing pages instead of PPC? Your budget spend is reduced, and you have more room to experiment.

That’s not the only thing in favor of blog posts and landing pages. Blog posts are informational. They provide context to your readers. When you make a relevant offer with a blog post, your chances of conversion are a lot higher than an ad with a few characters and a landing page that shows up from nowhere and only has a hope of matching the ad message.

For instance, see this WordPress Handbook for first time users. This is an excellent collection of resources for WordPress beginners, but you can’t expect users to access it in a browser all the time. As a result, it can be forgotten after a while. Giving it away an eBook or in a PDF format could get WPKube an email subscription while the PDF stays longer on the subscribers’ devices.

Some companies go even further to create landing pages, which are themselves doorways to more information instead of making any direct offers. Shopify, for instance, has a resource doorway to starting a retail business, leading potential customers to take action, with all options taken care of:

More Toom To Explain

How many times have you heard the phrase “Let me explain…”? You have heard it because it is common, and it often works. Salespeople use it all the time. People who have vested interested in your vote use it relentlessly. If you are a marketer or a business owner, so should you.

But when ads and updates have character limits, how much convincing can you possibly do? What if the prospect wants to know more? Your ad cannot explain so much to a prospect. If a prospect had to click on an ad, go to a landing page, figure out further details about your services or products, and then come back to signup as a lead, your paid advertising is not really doing justice to your budget, is it?

Meanwhile, a blog post can already be a pre-emptive explanation. A landing page with an offer directly related to the blog post can boost your conversions sky high.

Knowledge + Trust = Better Conversions

When you blog, you are letting your heart out with a voice. Your customers get to know the real you. Names have faces and your writing has a voice. This is as personal as it can get. Customers feel that there are real people behind a business.

From an advertising perspective, this beats any ad served by technology. It beats anything automated. It also beats any hard-sell tactic.

Landing pages, of course, are a means to an end, leading your potential customers from “reading and knowing and trusting” mode to a more active “take action now” mode.

That is why a combination of landing pages with offers highly relevant to the topic of a blog post makes tremendous sense. It is no accident that companies like HubSpot, QuickSprout and Unbounce use it all the time. For example, HubSpot includes a free resource with a CTA at the end of every blog post:

Wrapping it Up

We always believe that no one method or channel is a permanent bet. The best kind of digital marketing is usually a mix of strategies, tactics, and marketing channels. It is also about tweaking, experimenting, testing, and picking what works.

It is not just PPC, SEO, social media, or email marketing. The best marketing strategy is a combination of all of these. This is why we call it the “Marketing Mix.”

Are you using blog posts to drive traffic to your landing pages? Are you making offers your readers cannot refuse? Please share your content marketing tactics with us, and let us know what is working for you and what is not.

July 20, 2015

Survey Shows Millennials Willing To Pay For Loyalty Programs

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Free shipping and special discounts were top reasons for joining.

A recent survey by LoyaltyOne has found that 62 percent of respondents overall – and 75 percent of Millennials between 18-24 and 77 percent aged 25-34 — would join a fee-based rewards program if their favorite retailer offered one. Almost half (47%) of all respondents said paid programs have better rewards, and 61% of those 18 to 24 and 54% of those 25 to 34 said so.

The survey also found that free shipping (69 percent) and special discounts (67 percent) made the loyalty programs valuable to respondents.

Consumers reported that they gave high marks to paid loyalty programs like Amazon Prime or even membership-based warehouse retailers like Costco. The explanation is obvious: when loyalty programs require an upfront fee, it means that customers have already invested in the retailer and therefore is more likely to make purchases from them to recoup their investment.

A recent study from Millward Brown Digital found that Amazon Prime members convert 74 percent of the time on Amazon.com, according to, compared to 13 percent for non-prime members.

The LoyaltyOne study also found:

Nearly half (47%) said that fee-based programs offer better rewards than free programs, with a significantly larger number of millennials – 61% of 18-24 year-olds and 54% of 25-34 year-olds – reporting that fee-based rewards are better.
Slight more women (67 percent) than men (64 percent) reported that rewards are worth paying for.
Ranked by category, respondents ranked Grocery and Mass merchandise highest (35 percent), followed by Credit Card rewards (26 percent), Specialty Retail (13 percent), Travel (18 percent) and Restaurants (9 percent).
Meanwhile, roughly one-third of 18-24 year-olds (32 percent) and of 25-34 year-olds (34 percent) reported that they have never been offered membership in a fee-based program, compared to one-quarter for the general population. This would suggest a ripe opportunity for brands and retailers to target their loyalty programs.

“These results should attract the attention of brands considering a shift to fee-based loyalty programs as marketers look for ways to create competitive differences and lock in customer spend against a backdrop of waning program effectiveness and engagement challenges,” LoyaltyOne Consulting associate partner Lance Du Chateau said. “The traditional spend-earn-redeem reward program doesn’t make sense for all companies and customers, and fee-based value propositions increasingly are a topic of conversation. More marketers should explore this approach.”

July 18, 2015

Millennials Prefer Native Apps For Mobile Shopping

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Millennials Prefer Native Apps For Mobile Shopping

Native apps provided better experiences than companies’ mobile sites

A recent survey from Forbes and Stanford that polled more than 1,600 millennial consumers has found that native apps are the preferred tool for mobile shopping.

According to the results, almost half (47 percent) have downloaded at least one mobile shopping app to their smartphone, with Amazon, Etsy, Forever21, and Wanelo ranking as the most popular native app downloads. Millennials also favored apps from Forever 21, Starbucks, JackThreads, and Modcloth.

When asked why they downloaded native apps, 54 percent of the millennials said it was because they offer a better experience than the company’s mobile site, followed by discounts or lower prices (27 percent). Just 2 percent said it was to shop while not on their computer, and 4 percent said using a native app was mandatory to purchase a particular product. This seems counter to prevailing wisdom that states that native apps provide a more personalized shopping experience.

According to Retail Dive, native shopping apps are the latest tools to help retailers cash in as sales executed on mobile devices are expected to nearly double to $280 billion worldwide in 2015. This is particularly true in relation to attracting the millennial customers.

And as Integrated Solutions for Retailers reported, sales via mobile devices are driving revenue. For example,Amazon has announced that sellers on Amazon sold more than 2 billion items worldwide in 2014, setting a new record for sales. In 2014, Amazon also introduced the Amazon Seller App to facilitate the management of sellers’ business on Amazon via their mobile devices. And sellers from more than 100 different countries were able to fulfill orders on Amazon to customers in 185 countries by using Fulfillment by Amazon services.

Coming Soon: Innovative Retail Technologies

We’re rebranding! In time for the Sept/Oct issue, Integrated Solutions For Retailers will become Innovative Retail Technologies. Renew your subscription or subscribe today.

July 1, 2015

5 Subtle But Effective Digital Marketing Strategies

Image credit: Entrepreneur Media Inc.

JUNE 29, 2015

The buzz phrase in digital marketing has been “content is king” over the past few years. As entrepreneurs, we all know the only constant in our world is change. And with that, content marketing is evolving. Most content is creating noise and assaulting our senses as consumers. It is time to maximize our efforts, simplify and build content that engages, acquires and converts.

Welcome to the age of the “sales trailer,” the creative pieces of content that get you to go to the movie that took millions of dollars, teams of talented people and years to create. The same is happening to our businesses: We have the drive and ambition to build incredible products or services and we want to tell everyone everything about it. We need to realize that it’s not about us but about entertaining them — the customers that buy the tickets to our movies.

But it’s no longer how much. Below are the trends I see influencing less-is-more in digital marketing.

1. Precedent set: Apple’s minimalism movement wins

The standard has been set in terms of design, product and messaging. The marriage of boldness and simplicity has changed the digital marketing game forever. The most successful and iconic brands of the day — Apple, Uber, Nike, Google — all market using bold strategies that say very little. Their success is due to creating massive channels of advocates. As well as their ability to brand an instantly recognizable image or slogan that instills particular values and warrants a calculable response.

2. No one really reads, they digitally skim

You are probably skimming this article. I was once told, paper is for the heart, the screen is for the head. The way people consume information has evolved – folks want information quick and easy; infographics, videos, pictures, you name it. Multimodality and omni-channel is the name of the game; people simply don’t have the time (or the desire) to consume information that requires a hefty time investment. Quick bursts that effectively summarize a topic get a message across far more effectively than a lengthy document.

3. Get to the info fast — like right now!

We want our information fast: a picture is worth a thousand words, a video could very well be worth a thousand sales. When I look at new client’s sites or marketing, 90 percent of what I see is endless noise. We fall into a habit of throwing so many words at the audience, very little of which make a genuine impact. Poorly marketed information nets minimal attention. Marketers must get to the point as soon as humanly possible through highly relevant and deliberate diction. Spread through the right channels, the right content is the difference maker and can create an astounding impact, even with just a few words.

4. Get advocates to spread your message.

In the current world of shares, follows and likes, build content I want to send to my friends, post to my followers and connect with emotionally.

Say it quickly and say it well. Content has to be exciting and it has to stand on its own legs so it can essentially market itself. Remarkable content speaks for itself and creates peer-to-peer endorsements.

Make your message something meaningful so people feel the urge to spread it. From there, sit back and watch as the digital marketing ecosystem works itself.

5. Sales trailers, no more books

So many tell their story around a product feature, advantage or benefit. The core of your digital brand is in your story. Craft a message that resonates, engages and impacts your audience emotionally. Take that story and whiteboard a piece of creative with your team only about that message and belief. Let everything else follow from there. Your team will start sharing it and then others will follow. Eventually, you will sell tickets to your movie and consumers will get the whole story, but start with the trailer.

May 25, 2015

How to Use a Mobile App to Increase Repeat Business

Studies show that it is more cost effective to market to existing customers, than it is to acquire new ones. With that being said, a Custom Mobile App is the PERFECT tool to help you do just that! Mostly people these days spend a good number of their time on their mobile phones. From playing games, surfing, shopping, paying bills to contacting their friends and family members, everything is now so simple, time efficient and straightforward.

Today almost all businesses have websites, and the mobile app is also becoming a staple in most business’ marketing repertoire. For a business to not only survive but thrive, it is imperative that all avenues to connect and engage with perspective clients be embraced.

Some Recent Mobile Apps Success Stories

Denim Industries, Back to Cali, Organico Vitamins and Natural Touch Rehab, are all Small Business Success Stories. Each of the apps developed by these savvy businesses helps in different ways. Some of them aid in driving traffic to their bricks & mortar locations, some keep clients informed of appointments and policies while all give the business owner the ability to enhance their companies perception with their clients. Many of the apps also have full scale loyalty programs built in, as well as a plethora of marketing tools, add that to the not too subtle ability to have your logo on a device that is used by your customer constantly.

Benefits

Companies need to build an app that boost up its repeat business using mobile coupons, loyalty programs, real-time deals and much more. A company can drive customer engagement when and where it counts with push notifications and location-based messaging. These apps help a lot in promoting brands plus the spread awareness among your customers about your business. You can provide social sharing tools and options so that not only the purchases will be made but customers will be able to share their experiences too, thus giving your content the ability to go viral.

These apps help company in sending news alerts, information about new products, coupons and deals to their customers. No longer does a business have to rely on marketing efforts that are not able to reach a customer effectively. Today a business that has their customers download their apps, have the ability to reach them 24/7, and not only reach them, but know that they are receiving their messages. Traditional paper advertisements or other media channels, are pretty expensive and are less likely to be noticed by most of the customers. Mobile apps help you boosting your repeat business by targeting people that want to receive your content.

March 25, 2015

App Install Addiction Shows No Signs of Stopping

By: Simon Khalaf

It has been just over four years since Apple was awarded a trademark for “There’s an App for That.” Since then, mobile apps have multiplied at an accelerated pace and have even surpassed the weband TV in total time spent. Lately, however, many industry analysts cautioned that in mature markets such as the US and South Korea the rate of app downloads is decelerating and the app market is reaching a saturation point. For example, in August of this year, CNN Money ran a segment on app overload and the slowdown of app downloads. This fall, Paul Adams of Intercom, wrote a thoughtful and provocative post on the future of apps, predicting that apps will become more of a service layer, replaced by enhanced notifications as the consumer interface. At Flurry, we were curious to see whether our Analytics data validated these theories, so we took a look. We found that consumers are still downloading apps at very nearly the same rate since 2011.

Deceleration? What Deceleration?

For our research, we focused on the US, one of the most mature app markets. We found that in the US, consumers are downloading apps at the same rate over the past four years. The chart below shows the number of apps an average US consumer downloads per month from 2011 till now. On average, US consumers are downloading 8.8 apps per month in 2014, compared to 8.8 apps in 2013, 8.6 apps in 2012 and 8.9 apps in 2011. This is both iOS apps downloaded from the Apple AppStore and Android Apps downloaded from Google Play or any other Android App store operating in the US. That is a lot of apps downloaded by a single consumer.

This means that there is actually very little change in the rate of downloads since 2011. It doesn’t mean that consumers are continuously using all the apps they’ve downloaded over the years. In fact, they are not. You can look at previous research we’ve published where we shared the half life of apps and their rate of decay.

In our research, we also looked at the percentage of apps downloaded as a result of app marketing (or app install ads) by dividing the estimated yearly app install ads market in the US by the average Cost Per Install (CPI) in the same year. Despite the fascinating growth of app install ads, the vast majority of app downloads are still organic. In fact in 2014, 93% of all app downloads in the US were organic, compared to 95% in 2011. The only thing on a slight decline here is organic downloads. This is a very small change and a further validation of the growth opportunities in app marketing in general and app install ads in particular.

“Install Addicts” Are Keeping up the Pace

We dug a little deeper into our data to gain better insight into the US consumers responsible for these steady download numbers. The distribution is shown in the chart below. The majority of consumers (54%) are actually downloading less than eight apps per month. What is keeping the average up is a new segment of mobile consumers that we are calling “Install Addicts.” These are US consumers that download more than 17 apps a month. This includes apps downloaded on all smart devices such consumer owns. This segment represents 20% of the US mobile consumer base or an estimated 32 million people.

The Profile of “Install Addicts”

We were intrigued by the large number of Install Addicts, so we dug a little deeper in our data to better understand the audience behind these 32 million US consumers.

First we looked at gender. Install Addicts are 53% female and 47% male, compared to 48% female and 52% male for the average mobile consumer. That means that females over-index by 10% compared to the average mobile consumer.

We then looked at age groups. Install Addicts over-indexed in the 13-17 (Teens), 18-24 (College Students) and 35-54 (Middle Aged) age groups and under indexed in the 25-34 (Adults) and 55+ (Seniors) age groups.

The analysis gets a lot more interesting when we looked at the differences in Flurry Personas. On the female side, the following Personas over-indexed as Install Addicts: Gamers, Mothers and Social Enthusiasts. For males, the following Personas over-indexed as Install Addicts: Gamers, Social Enthusiasts and Parenting and Education.

The “over-index” is shown in the chart below. It refers to the division of the percentage reach of that Persona in the Install Addict segment compared to the percentage reach of that Persona for the average mobile consumer. For example, in the female Install Addicts segment, Mothers are 32% of the total, compared to 4% of the average female mobile consumers. In other words, female Install Addicts are much more likely to be Mothers than non-Addicts.

Looking at the three charts above and comparing this Install Addicts audience to the mobile addict audience we highlighted earlier this year, it is becoming clearer to us that what we call family devices (or shared devices, or hand-me-down devices) make up a good chunk of the Install Addicts audience. Such devices are for the mother or the father, but the children (teens) have access (and most likely passwords) to them and routinely visit the App Stores and download their new favorite app.

It is also hard for us to ignore the over-indexing of the Social Enthusiast persona. This is the Flurry Persona of consumers that heavily use social apps, including messaging apps and photo and video sharing apps. It could be a mere coincidence that Install Addicts are also messaging and social networking addicts, but it could also indicate that consumers are discovering apps through social and messaging applications. In the United States, both Facebook and Twitter have solid app install businesses. In Japan and China, LINE and Tencent, respectively, have bet big on game and app distribution, organic and paid, as lines of business. While it is still hard to measure the true impact of social discovery on app downloads, the chart above seems to indicate a big one.

We are a week away from the height of the holiday season, one that traditionally accelerates app downloads and brings app developers in general and game developers in particular more consumers to their apps. But as the data above suggests and as the past four years have demonstrated, app developers don’t need to wait for Saint Nick. They simply need to keep hoping for app install addiction to keep going strong.

March 23, 2015

Canadian Small business, improve customer relationships by developing smartphone applications

Great Article in the Toronto Star as to how important Mobile Apps are for Business Owners.

Apps – those things you install on your smartphone or tablet to perform specific tasks – have traditionally been seen as a luxury offering available only to large or tech-savvy organizations.

By: Jeff Quipp Special to The Star, Published on Wed Mar 27 2013

Apps – those things you install on your smartphone or tablet to perform specific tasks – have traditionally been seen as a luxury offering available only to large or tech-savvy organizations.

A small business can’t easily afford to invest $10K – $40K to develop a customer-friendly app. But new products available now let small businesses purchase their app services on a monthly basis, just like internet and phone. These cover areas such as payments, scheduling, and appointments, messaging and marketing with coupons, deals and social sharing. This means that, for the first time, apps are now affordable for small businesses — and they may be one of your best secret weapons to staying competitive. With more than one million applications available across the Google Play and the Apple App store, and users spending nearly half a day each month using the programs, the message is clear: users like apps. With this in mind, here are five reasons why a small business should consider investing in its own mobile application:

Customer service – providing information at the fingertips of your customers is a significant value add. From the convenience of wherever/whenever they are, they can find information that is essential to their purchasing decision.

Retention through brand recognition – Staying top of mind is easy when an app puts your company’s logo in front of your customers.

News and information updates – Whatever you need to share, an app gives you the ability to ensure a customer’s smartphone has up-to-date information. From holiday closures to extended hours to trending news and reviews or something as simple as construction they might want to avoid while making their way to your business, an app can be a valuable information resource.

Company image – Having your own app projects a professional, tech-savvy image. It shows you’re invested in the latest customer trends and can make your business appear larger or more well established than it may in fact be.

Push out messages for promotions/launches – Apps are a new direct line of communication with customers. You can push out notifications for promotions and new product and service launches, literally putting the news in the palm of your audience’s hands. Plus, these notifications tend to stand out from the stream of emails most people receive about the other guy’s promos.