Month: March 2019

How To Position Your Website In The 1st Google Results

Written by admin on March 9, 2019. Posted in Marketing, SEO.

Google is an indispensable tool to make itself known today. It is the number 1 search engine with 100 billion requests per month in the world. Nothing can be done, it’s the best.

But Google is mostly a robot. A stupid animal and nice because it allows us to free to position his website on its first page. An old digital adage says: “If you want to hide a body, put it on the second page of Google”.

There are over 200 SEO criteria to position its site. By respecting only a dozen criteria, you have the opportunity to overcome the competition and position yourself in the first results. Be methodical and patient. Moreover, by paying Google or Bing, we can also find ourselves in the first results. We tell you more below.

Opt For Natural Referencing

One thing is certain: Google positions web pages. No websites. It is therefore essential to work methodically and accurately every page of your site. Depending on the query (keyword) that the user will write, Google will search, with its powerful engine, all pages that refer to this key-phrase. We will give you some tools for Google to hear you and position your page on the front page.

Create a professional blog on your site

A website is good, it’s pretty. But it is absolutely necessary to make it live. And the blog is a great tool to make your website live.

Add a tab in the menu of your site and write your first article. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers, share your knowledge and experience and start writing your blog post.

Be Regular! It is best to write an article a month for twelve months rather than 6 articles a month for 2 months. The search engine will prefer regularity because your website will be built in the long term.

Share your articles on social networks

Take the opportunity to share your articles on social networks. Social media is increasingly being taken into account by search engines: engagement (likes, shares, and comments) prove that your article is of interest to many users and your article will be rewarded.

Think mobile for Google and Bing

Today, art mobile searches are superior to computer searches. The search engines have understood this and today value websites with mobile navigation adapted.

Test your site today by opening it on your smartphone: if readability is good, navigation is fluid, access to the simple topic, everything is fine. Otherwise, it is essential to rework your website so that it is “mobile friendly”.

And, the loading time of pages is a paramount parameter. There are tools to check the speed of your site (Tools Pingdom for example). If the page loading time is slow, you need to make quick arrangements to improve it.

Opt For Paid Referencing

This is another way to position your services or your offers in the first results of Google. It will take less time than SEO. On the other hand, you will naturally need a budget.

By precisely defining your objectives, you will be able to control your budget and your results. Do not throw yourself too fast in each tool at the risk of spending a lot of money without result. Take the time to study each tool to optimize your campaign.

Pay ads from Google

This is the fastest and most effective way to appear immediately in Google’s first search results. You define the most relevant keywords, obviously related to your activity. After setting the maximum bid you are willing to pay, your ad will appear in first, second, third … position. It all depends on the auction of your competitors on the defined keyword.

To control your budget, take out your calculator and calculate your cost according to your investment. For example, if you pay a keyword € 1 per click. Arriving on your landing page, only 1 visitor out of 4 leaves his contact, 4 € the lead. And, after calling your contacts, 1 out of 3 contacts buys your solution, that is 12 € the customer. Do this calculation for your business and master your budget. It’s essential to succeed in your digital marketing.

Look after your ads, landing pages and especially the choice of keywords. Be consistent on the entire digital path of your visitor.

Paid ads from Bing

Google is a leader with 94% market share, but nothing prevents you to test Bing Ads. Bing is the search engine of Microsoft and is the 2nd most used search engine in France.

The costs are often lower and the contacts you can generate are just as interesting. Also, the platform for creating paid ads Bing is very close to that of Google. So you will not have a hard time switching from one to the other.

The vast majority of Internet users use search engines to find answers to their questions. If you want to know your products or services, SEO or pay is a great way. If you have time, write articles on specific keywords. If you have a budget in communication or marketing, use the Google or Bing ads tools to meet the needs of users. It’s never too late to get started. So go ahead now.

Social Selling: The Art Of Prospecting Without Selling

Written by admin on March 9, 2019. Posted in Marketing, SEO.

Social selling is an approach that relies on social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in particular) to identify potential prospects, connect with them, and bring them value by distributing qualified information without selling.

The Social selling is not just to create profiles on social networks. It goes further! It’s a process of researching, selecting, listening to and exchanging with potential prospects on social networks to generate opportunities and accelerate the sales cycle.

What Are The Objectives Of Social Selling?

Detect signals (job offers, search for partners, search for service providers …)
Promote the expertise of the company and its employees through the production and publication of content.
Social listening to better understand the needs of the targets.
Keep watch on posts posted on social networks, and exchange
Perform interactions on social networks (recommendations, likes, comments, sharing, congratulations …).
Connect with decision-makers via social networks.

The 4 C Of Social Selling

4 C, the 4 keys to building an effective social selling strategy.

Contact: Build your network and address book according to the priority targets and networks on which the targets are present: 74% of the decision-makers are on LinkedIn and 42% on Twitter.
Context: Learn to know the prospects (persona), study their needs, the themes that interest them to be able to respond precisely to the expectations of different targets by providing them with appropriate content.
Content: Broadcast relevant content on the right social networks, at the right time. 65% of BtoB buyers indicate that content marketing has a significant impact on their purchase.
Conversion: Create an exchange, a discussion with the prospect to enter a relationship of trust to convert it into a customer. Offer an exchange by telephone or an appointment to study their needs and provide appropriate solutions.

Why Develop A Social Selling Approach?

Before becoming a customer, your prospect will go through different stages between the moment he finds a need and the one where he makes the decision to buy, this is the purchase journey.

Buyers are now hyperconnected. They spend their time on the web and social networks and are constantly looking for information on products, services or brands that interest them.

They have gone from consumers to consumers. They do not need sellers anymore. They know more about the product they want to buy than the seller himself. When they decide to meet a seller, they already have a great knowledge of the market and products.

In BtoB, 92% of buyers start with a search on Google, and 75% use social networks, including LinkedIn. Professionals seek information and content targeted to their interests and issues.

If you or your brand is not present during the shopping journey of your targets on the internet, you are unlikely to be identified as a potential provider.

Social selling is no longer an option because your company has to adapt to the 3 phases of the buying process by providing more service, more value and developing a relationship with its customers.

The Prospect Buying Path

During the discovery phase: the client begins to worry about his problem or need and to take an interest in the idea of solving it. At this point, you must provide information by creating content tailored to the keywords searched on the web.
During the stage consideration: the customer does not know yet how it will solve their need, but he devoted himself to research products or services that will allow him to solve it. At this stage, the challenge is to help the customer find the right solution and evaluate them.
During the Decision Phase: At this point, the client has selected the different options available to him. The challenge is to position yourself as an expert to reassure the customer that choosing your product or service is the right solution.

For this, your website and your social networks are a major social selling tool because you can communicate, share content, and interact with your target prospects to promote the sales process.

However without a marketing strategy with a production of quality content, you will have trouble developing your social selling approach to your prospects on social networks.

Social Selling: The Inbound Marketing Strategy Guide

Written by admin on March 9, 2019. Posted in Marketing, SEO.

Social selling relies on inbound marketing and content marketing to communicate, and connect with customers and prospects without selling. What social selling strategy to be effective?

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a strategy that consists of:

Attract Internet users with a website optimized for content and SEO.
Turn visitors into prospects with free content to download.
Convert leads to customers with a marketing automation strategy.
Retain customers to become ambassadors of the brand.

Companies that have adopted inbound marketing generate 54% more leads than traditional methods.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the heart of inbound marketing.

Its goal is to create and distribute free, qualitative, creative and relevant content intended for its targets in order to touch it, engage it in a relationship and turn it into a prospect and then customers.

Quality content is content that does not speak for itself. To impact your audience, your content must solve a problem, hence the importance of knowing your targets better to meet them.

And to know your targets, you will use the technique of buyers personas: it is about creating the typical profiles of your ideal customers centered on their needs, their challenges, their brakes, and their motivations. In a process of social selling, the profiles of your buyers’ personas will allow designing a content strategy that will be attractive and shared on social networks to connect with your targets.

Which formats for your editorial strategy?

The blog article
Images and photos
Videos
Computer graphics
The case study
The white paper
The webinar

The video will be the preferred format because it is content consumed by Internet users, and it allows to interact with prospects in a simple and powerful.

Which Social Networks To choose In Social Selling?

75% of Internet users are present on social networks. The choice to deploy a social selling strategy will depend on the sector of activity and the uses of the targets.

Each social network has its uses, and we do not communicate in the same way on Facebook and LinkedIn for example. It will be a question of adapting the contents, and the tone according to the targets.

The goal is to share engaging content and generate interactions to engage targets and conversation. You have to be social on social networks and have a relevant presence.

It is the reference professional network, and the most suitable for social selling in BtoB and generates leads through targeting features for digital prospecting.

Twitter

BtoB or BtoC is the social network of the snapshot. It is adapted to social selling especially on niche communities, or influencers and opinion leaders. Prospects are responsive on Twitter. You have to be very active on Twitter because there are so many tweets, and you have to stand out to be visible.

Facebook

It is the most widely used social network in the world, and prospects are necessarily there. Nevertheless, it is a network especially adapted to a BtoC target. To practice social selling on Facebook, you will need to contact a different professional profile than a personal profile.

The communication on Facebook works well with publications on the employer brand of the company to make you want to join. It is not easy to develop a community in BtoB or with small business targets.

The visibility of company pages becoming increasingly weak on Facebook, it is necessary to communicate via a private Facebook group with content adapted to the expectations of the audience.

How To Be A Perfect Social Seller On Social Networks

Well used social networks are strong levers to engage prospects with a tailored and personalized speech.

Social selling is above all a position of expertise and credibility to establish relationships of trust with prospects. We do not sell on social networks, we socialize! The philosophy of social selling: “Stop selling, start by helping”.

A mere presence on social networks will be insufficient to have an impact on sales. It’s actions and interactions that will turn engagement into sales.

The perfect social seller knows how to “listen to customers” on social networks to meet their expectations. He is alert on the needs to show his expertise, and get in touch with them more easily.

Being a perfect social seller

To learn about the particularities of social networks

Social networks do not all have the same uses and the same codes. Understanding their operation is essential.

Be active to be visible and capture prospects

Build your personal brand and put your profile forward by multiplying content publishing and sharing. You have to show yourself on social networks to make yourself visible. It’s a way to work on personal branding and to heal your e-reputation.

Engage with prospects

The first step is to know the prospects before they become customers.
Start by following the target leads on social networks.
Identify their interests as well as the people with whom they engage.
Like or comment on their contents.

The second step will be to approach them with a speech adapted to their stage of maturity of purchase and to convert them into a buyer.

Put In Place An Effective Social Selling Strategy

Before you start social selling, think about your strategy:

What are your goals?
Who are your buyers’ personas?
What are their expectations, their needs?
What content to produce with which format?
Which are the social networks adapted to your strategy?
What messages to send to your prospects?
What indicators to follow to measure your actions?

Defining all these elements will allow you to have a clear and precise way to reach your goals with social selling.

8 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog

Written by admin on March 9, 2019. Posted in Marketing, SEO.

There are at least 400 million blogs on the global network, although it is safe to say that not all are active. In fact, many bloggers rush to leave after discouraged from seeing non-existent traffic.

That’s why we have rounded up the eight (8) main ways to attract more traffic to your blog. Whether it’s a new face in the blogosphere or an experienced influencer looking for more readers, check out these strategies to increase the number of visitors to your blog.

1. Make Your Publications Friendly With SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is key to boosting the visibility of your blog because having an optimized blog means that it will appear more easily on search engine result pages. This is so important that there is a whole industry dedicated to discovering what websites Google likes the most.

Unfortunately, this also means that SEO is too complex to be reduced to a couple of key points. However, to begin with, you can follow these basic principles to make your blog SEO friendly:

Do not just write your blog posts according to your caprice: identify the main keyword phrases in which your target audience is interested and create content around them.
Make your destination keyword present in the URL of your publication.
Structure your publications using headings and subtitles, which help search engines better understand what your content is about.
Write titles and descriptions that will attract attention and that will help your publications stand out in the search engine results pages.
Link to quality websites related to your blog, which will tell Google that your content is not spam.
Tools like Yoast SEO in WordPress can help with basic optimization on the page, but they are also useful for controlling changes within the SEO industry.

2. Find A Niche

Trying to cover a dozen topics on your blog is a dispersion approach that will reject readers. How is that? Consider this scenario: publish an impressive publication about the payment of credit card debt. Interested readers mark their blog as a favorite, and eager for more content of a similar nature, they return in a few weeks. To his dismay, his next piece is about something completely unrelated: gardening tips.

However, when you choose to focus on a niche, returning readers will be happy to see more updates on the chosen topic. Not only that, but constantly writing about a topic will help build your authority about it. Google’s search predictions can give you an idea of which topics are trends among users.

To determine what to focus your blog on, ask yourself:

What are you well informed about?
Which topic are you most interested in?
And, if you want to monetize your blog in the future, does this niche have an income potential?
If so, how competitive is this niche?

Investigate what content already exists in your target niches to get an idea of what gaps you can fill. From there, you can start to build the content strategy of your blog.

3. Create Quality Content

Bill Gates, and almost all other content marketing gurus. But there is a reason why this saying has been repeated so many times, it is true.

The tarnished content filled with typographical errors will not make anyone want to click on your website more than once. Quality content that is informative, error-free and easy to read, on the other hand, will do so. But what exactly does the content make good?

Actually, this means making your content better than your competition. When it comes to blogs, you can improve the quality of your publications by following these tips:

Find a unique angle or something new that your competitors have not done before.
Always check and use the spell checker.
Make blog posts easy to read using bullet points and lists.
Give useful tips and advice.
Include images, videos and other forms of multimedia in your content.

4. Write Attractive Headlines For Your Blog Posts.

The first thing readers see is the title of a blog post, which means you can make or break traffic results. After all, if it sounds dry or boring, who is going to click? Take a look at how Gizmodo writes his titles to attract his audience.

To write a compelling title, remember:

Be honest, do not lie to readers about what their blog posts are about.
Use vivid and descriptive language.
Avoid making it too long. It is best to aim at less than 70 characters so that search engines do not cut your title.
Appeal to the emotions of the readers.

In addition to these tips, there are several approaches you can take when it comes to formatting the titles of your blog posts. Try one of these the next time you are perplexed with the title of your blog post:

Listicle – “The 15 most important outdoor holiday destinations in the world”
Practical guide – “How to get your first freelance concert”
Question: “Is it worth getting Lasik?”
Negative angle: “Why should not you eat meat?”
Surprising fact: “Climate change is worsening social inequality”
Controversial statement: “Standing desks are overrated”
Secret: “The # 1 way to teach your dog new tricks”

5. Share Publications On Social Networks.

It is estimated that 2.77 billion people use social networks worldwide, representing more than a third of the world’s population. As a result, social media is a powerful dissemination tool to attract more viewers to your blog.

The more you share your posts on different social networks, the more likely people will find them.

Keeping this in mind, it’s not a problem to promote your content on networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. To increase the reach of your publications, be sure to:

Include relevant hashtags
Label influencers in your industry
Share your content at the right time
Make your publications short, catchy and attractive

Be sure to attend your social media posts in their respective networks, that is, do not recycle the same social media posts on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Adapting your publications to each network will help your content resonate with your respective audiences.

6. Participate In The Community Of Your Niche.

The world of blogs works much like the real-life society, because it is made up of communities of people who interact regularly with each other.

You can find many different blog groups on Facebook, including those specific to your niche.

Although they may seem like competitors, at first sight, other bloggers in your niche have the potential to become your biggest supporters, even friends. Putting them on their side could mean more actions and, therefore, more long-term traffic.

Stay active in your blog community through:

Publication in subreddits, Facebook groups, and forums used by your target audience
Commenting on other blogs.
Responding to comments on your own blog.
Retweeting or responding to the tweets of other bloggers.
Attend conferences and meetings, either in real life or virtually

Do not be that blogger who only promotes his own content. You will find that when you get involved in a meaningful way with your niche community, others will be more open to sharing their work and may even invite you to contribute to their blogs.

7. Interlink

Did you know that the way you organize your blog can affect the way readers see it? For example, if your blog has poor navigation and zero links to any other place on your site, your readers will be stuck on whatever page they arrive at. That’s why you need to bond. That means linking to other blog posts within your content or even including a sidebar of related posts in your web design.

By providing links to other parts of your blog, it will make it easier for interested readers to stay and explore your site, which will allow you to get more visits to the page in the long term.

8. Guest To Write On Other Sites

You can think of a publication as a guest star on another website. This involves writing an article for another blog, which may or may not allow you to link back to one or more posts on your own site.

By doing this, you will accumulate the backlink profile of your blog, which is essentially a portfolio of websites that link to yours.

Why do backlinks even matter?

The backlinks of quality websites tell search engines that your website is also quality; This, in turn, will increase the chances of your blog getting a higher ranking on the results of the search engine page.

Links on other websites help attract new readers who would not otherwise see your blog.

Contributing to other blogs in your niche is better for guest publications because it will be easier to link to your content than if you were writing for a completely different niche.

You can find blogs that are open to invited posts by searching your target niche in Google and keyword strings such as “write for us”.

For example, let’s say you wanted to start a niche gardening blog. You can use the following searches on Google to find guest publishing opportunities:

gardening “write for us”
“Taxpayers” of gardening
gardening “send guest post”
“Guest post” of gardening

Simply replace “gardening” with the niche where your blog is located, and you will find opportunities to publish guests in no time.

Wrap

The increase in traffic to your blog will not happen overnight. It will take strategy, effort and time before seeing measurable results. Sometimes, you may even need to redo your work, such as rewriting a blog post to optimize it better.

But do not be discouraged. Months, even years, pass before some blogs see a boost in their traffic. Continue experimenting with the strategies above to see what works best for yours.

SEO, SEM And Everything You Need To Get The Most Out Of Your Website

Written by admin on March 9, 2019. Posted in Marketing, SEO.

What is the difference between SEO and SEM? Which is more important? What does each one work for? These are some of the most common questions from users who start to optimize their search engine web.

In this post, we answer them and explain how to get your website to reach the top of Google, either through SEO, SEM or the combination of both.

SEO – Online Success Through Organic Positioning

The acronym SEO refers to the optimization of websites for search engines such as Google. That is, work a website so that it is perceived positively by Google and other search engines. If you want to perform effective optimization you will have to pay special attention to the content, structure, and metadata of your website. In addition, there are other disciplines within the organic positioning such as local SEO or link building that will help you get better rankings. This is an essential technique for any website that wants to achieve online success and ensure it in the long term.

SEM – Online Success Through Paid Positioning

The acronym SEM refers to search engine marketing, which is synonymous with improving the positions of a website in the search results Google and other search engines through payment strategies.

One of the most known strategies within the SEM are Adwords. These are ads that Google places in the top positions of its search results, recommending websites of companies that have paid an amount of money to appear in said place. This is a technique that seeks to achieve online success in the short term and fully compatible with SEO

SEO And SEM, Better By The Hand

While we have seen that both are different disciplines, they are also complimentary. While SEO will offer you lasting results, the SEM can give you an initial boost.

However, keep in mind that investing in SEM without having a website that interests your visitors, may be wasting your budget. Therefore, it is always recommended that SEO and SEM go hand in hand.

Keep in mind that an ideal online marketing strategy should be distributed in figures of around 25% SEM – 75% SEO.

These are especially interesting since analyzing the behavior of your Adwords will help you modify certain aspects to achieve online success.

How To Optimize Your Website For Voice Search In 2019?

Written by admin on March 5, 2019. Posted in Marketing, SEO.

With 2019 here, it feels like we’re getting closer and closer to the future – every single day. And that means that more people are performing voice searches, whether they’re on the go with their smartphone or using their smart speakers like an Alexa or a Google Home. These voice searches are definitely on the rise and they’re not slowing down anytime soon. This is going to be super widespread in cars and everything else. You’re definitely going to want to be optimized for it.

Basically, one in two smartphone users uses voice search every day. Half of all searches are going to be voice-based by next year in 2020. And 72 percent of people who own one of those smart speakers like an Echo say that it’s part of their daily routine. And people want quick easy answers in one of two categories the first being, they want to know something, or they want to know how to do something or want to go somewhere or buy something.

How you can optimize your website for Voice Search

If you’re a local business it makes a whole lot of sense to want to be found in those near me searches. And it doesn’t even have to be a brick-and-mortar location if you just kind of serve a specific local area this is still going to be great for you. If you’re more of a national or online business this may be a little less important for you it still will help you get a little bit more business around your area.

To do this your first step is going to be to claim and optimize your Google my business listing which includes choosing the right categories. You’ll also need to make sure that all the info that’s in your Google my business profile is reflected back on your website itself. You’re going to want to include your business name, address and phone number on your site exactly as it appears on Google my business. And there are a few extra things you can include on your website as well that are really going to cement you into your geographic area like an embedded google map and links to the neighborhoods or cities that you serve.

A lot of these voice searches don’t act like Siri, don’t actually use Google my business listings for their results instead they use third-party sites like Yelp or Foursquare for those results. You’re definitely going to want to make sure that you have those profiles all optimized filled out as completely as possible. And you’re probably going to want some good 5-star reviews as well. And that’s pretty much all there is to getting found in those near me searches. Because the number one main factor is just proximity. If people are searching near you, you’ll pop up if they’re searching further away your competitor who’s closer to them is likely to show up there. But you do want to make sure that when people are close to you, they’re finding you.

But what about if you want to get some of your great content to show up as an answer to questions that people may have. So that you can you know become the go-to guide that they want to work within the future. You’d want to create and optimize that content to be findable in these voice searches. Usually what would be shown in a voice search is the same thing that would otherwise be shown as a featured snippet.

Brainstorm And Find Actual Question That People Are Likely To Be Asking

The first step here is that you want to brainstorm and find the actual questions that people are likely to be asking. Think about the problems your business all so were the services you provide and think of what are the most basic versions of those solutions or services that people may be trying to figure out how to do on their own.

If you’re an electrician it might be how do I change out a wall plate, if you’re a dog groomer might be how do I trim my dog’s nails. And if you’re stuck with finding these questions just start with YouTube type in the keywords how-to and then the general keywords of the topic that you’re trying to figure out. And then see what kind of videos pop up since Google loves showing a video is an answer to most how-to questions you might want to make one of them yourself.

It’s the best way to build trust and brand recognition with your potential customers. If you make that video make sure that it’s hosted on YouTube because Google owns it and they give preferential treatment. You’re going to want to optimize that videos title with the exact question as people are going to ask it. You’re also going to want to include that question and variants of that question in the tags when you’re uploading your video.

And then you want to write out a really detailed description of that video in this space they provide. You’re going to use that question verbatim in the description as well. If you don’t want to do a video you could just write a really detailed article explaining, how they can do something from start to finish? Just include lots of images, headers, lists, numbered lists if possible that’s just the overall structure that Google likes to see. Also think of questions that aren’t even how to’s they’re just general knowledge questions, like how often do dogs nails need to be trimmed, or can I switch my outlet with a USB outlet, things like that.

If you’re stuck thinking of these questions there’s a website, I like to use called answerthepublic.com just type in a keyword related to your field of expertise. And it’s gonna show you all the different types of questions that people type into Google about that topic. Just try to get the ones that are really structured to ask questions. Because that’s going to be what people are going to verbally search for into their smartphone or smart speaker. Just make a list of all the questions that you think you can do a good job answering and then create an FAQ page. And just be sure to structure the question in the exact words that you found it in your research and use that as a headline. And then make the answer body text below it. When you structure it that way Google can just detect that it’s a question and an answer.

Other than that, there are a few things you need to keep in mind in order to increase your chances of being found as a featured snippet and as a voice search:

Make sure your site loads really quickly. Just go to Google PageSpeed insights, and run a test and see if there’s anything they recommend you can use to speed your site up.
You want to make sure your site is authoritative, to begin with. That’s definitely going to help all aspects here. The way to do that is to start creating really high quality relevant consistent content on your site. And you’re also going to want to start building some really high-quality backlinks to your site.

Video Marketing Tips To Skyrocket Your Results In 2019

Written by admin on March 4, 2019. Posted in Marketing, SEO.

If you want to transform your website into a customer or lead generation machine, we’ll give you all our best tips, tactics and secrets to get there fast.

Using video in your marketing efforts is only gaining popularity in the new year and for good reason. 72 percent of businesses say that using video has actually improved their conversion rates. And 52 percent of consumers say that watching some kind of a product video online makes them more confident in their purchasing decisions. It’s for these reasons and more that we highly recommend that you make 2019 the year that you finally start using video in your business. But here’s the thing, it’s not enough to just make any video. There are a few kinds of videos that’ll let you do the most good in the new year.

1. Tell Your Customers A Story

Use video to tell your customers a story with your business as a guide. A few years back when video marketing was just more of a new trend many businesses jumped on board without really thinking too much about it. It was going to be a great way to tell their own story, how they got started, why they got started and what makes them so great as a business. We shouldn’t be telling our story but our customers’ story. And how our business can act as their mentor and guide getting them from point A to point B. By making a really simple 60-second video and that’s really all it has to be, 60 seconds long where do you call your customers out.

You talk about what they want and the problem that’s standing in their way how you can fix that problem and the potential amazing outcome that’s waiting for them on the other side of it. Now you’re making a video that makes your audience sit up and pay attention. And that can even just be a really simple talking head style video kind of like what I’m doing right now with some b-roll footage just to kind of liven things up.

2. Emphasizing People Over Business

Emphasizing people over the business you know in today’s world people really value authenticity in all forms. And they would rather see your business for the people that make it up. We really want to see you in the New Year dropping some of those barriers that overly polished and overly professional videos can create and just get a little more real. The level to which you can do this is going to depend on the industry you’re in. Some industries are just naturally they have to be a little more professional than others.

But there is a way to find that balance between personality and professionalism. And we are willing to bet that even if you’re in an industry that’s a little more buttoned up and professional. You can probably get a little more personal than you think you can. How do you do this though you know basically what we recommend is when you’re speaking to the camera try to think of it like you’re speaking to a friend rather than just a faceless audience of customers. And if you’re actually going to go through the process of scripting your video out rather than outlining, make sure that you script it more like the way you converse. Don’t try to really overly focus on grammar rules that are not very important even in written copy it’s not that important. And don’t use bigger words that are unnecessary.

You really still can demonstrate authority while making your video relatable at the same time. And if you do that you will connect more with your potential customers and they’re going to like you more. And at the end of the day that is a huge motivating factor. People always want to work with or buy from people that they like rather than stuffy businesses.

3. YouTube Advertising

YouTube is definitely one of the biggest sites in the entire world you’re on right now. But we think most businesses are still late to the party advertising on it. Probably mostly because they’re scared of actually making videos particularly small businesses. But the truth is YouTube ads are one of the best ways to put your brand and your offer in front of the exact right people at the exact right time.

They actually have some of the best targeting options around. Because you can put yourself in front of people who are actively looking for the services that you provide by using what they call in-market audiences. To explain that you know YouTube is owned by Google. They know who’s searching for Web Design companies or accounting firms or family attorneys for instance. Then you just make your ad and tell YouTube I only want this ad to show in front of people who are looking for those particular services. And that’s just one targeting option there’s actually way more as well.

You can target people who are watching a particular topic of the video who live in a certain either state city or even zip code. You can even target things like income level you know if you had a high ticket service you provide you can make sure that only people who are qualified to pay for your service can actually see your ad. You can even make a list of your competitors websites and tell YouTube to show your ads to everyone who’s been to any of those websites recently. If you were to make that customer saag a story video that we talked about earlier and use it this way on YouTube that would be a really compelling and strategic ad that you could put in front of your ideal customer for pennies of you.

4. Email Marketing

Even with all the social media platforms out there we are a big believer in email marketing. Email is still the best way to develop a relationship over time with potential customers. Giving them really helpful advice and helpful content which allows you to build up Authority and Trust over time. If just using plain text emails can do all of that imagine 10 Xing the power of that by including a simple video in that email. You basically just take whatever the content you were going to share in that text email.

And you can still list it out in text from within the body of the email but make a video about it as well. And these videos don’t need a whole lot of production value either if you have an iPhone or a smartphone that is generally good enough. You can do it selfie style if you need to just get the content out there that’s much more important than the way you’re presenting it. And in some cases having that selfie style is actually going to be preferable. Because remember it adds to the authenticity factor and it makes you seem more personable and relatable as a brand.

Just upload the video to youtube and then get a screenshot of the thumbnail of the video and then put that as an image right in the body of the email that’s linked to that video on YouTube. This is gonna majorly increase the likelihood that your message is even going to be received at all. Because people are about three times more likely to consume a video as opposed to reading the same content in written form. And not only that but if you put the word video in your email subject line letting them know there’s a video in the email. People are about twice as likely to even open that email.

5. Custom Welcome Videos

If your website exists largely to schedule consultations or appointments. Then you can use really simple custom videos to increase the show-up rates for those appointments. And build a lot of really good loyalty and Trust right up front for a very little effort. Imagine if someone were to schedule a consultation on your site and then a few minutes later they get an email with the video in it that’s welcoming them to your world by name. This sets the stage immediately that they’re gonna have an amazing customer experience with you and your business.

If that sounds hard or time-consuming it doesn’t have to be. But it just goes a really long way toward building goodwill. We recommend you give them welcoming by name, reiterating the appointment day and time, letting them know what they can expect from the consultation and anything they need to have prepared. By the time you do this a few times, you’ll probably have your sales pitch down cold. It’ll be a really easy process every time you get a new consultation.

6. Process Video

Process video covers the biggest obstacles that a lot of your potential customers are probably going through when they come to your site. They don’t really know how the process is going to go if they choose to work with you. Especially if you offer something that’s a little more complicated, so why not make a really quick video that distills the entire process into three or four really easy to understand steps. Imagine if you are about to climb a rock wall and you look up and all you see is just a big flat surface.

That’s probably gonna look pretty intimidating to you right. But what if instead of a flat surface you saw little rocks jutting out that was labeled one, two and three. So you knew exactly where you were gonna grip and where you were gonna step all the way up. That would make the whole process seemed a lot more doable. And this is the kind of thing that you want to accomplish with your video. Just say something like you know first schedule a consultation. Second, we’ll meet and put together a solid plan. And then finally we’ll put that plan into action notice. How that didn’t even have to be super detailed in fact sometimes it can work better that way by keeping things really simplified. In most cases including too many details is gonna be overwhelming to people and lead to fewer conversions, not more.

Try to keep it to three simple steps five at the most and even if you have the kind of process, that’s more complicated like three steps or something long like that. Try to consolidate some of those steps into phases, so you just have three different phases to walk people through. And when you’re done you can use this as a youtube ad or a Facebook ad and you can even put it right on your homepage.