TWP Publisher, Author at TotalWeb Partners • Page 29 of 33

May 5, 2016

Email Marketing Can Give Small Businesses a Boost

Small businesses that are just getting off the ground likely won’t have large marketing budgets. Advertising campaigns and billboards are probably well down the road. But email marketing can be an effective and inexpensive way for small business owners to spread the word about what they have to offer. Here’s a look at some of the benefits.

Consider the Pros and Cons

There are positive and negative elements to email marketing. It’s more cost-effective than direct mail, for example, which can be significant in saving money on postage costs. It also gives small business owners a better idea of how their message is being received, as Chad Brooks writes for Business News Daily: “… Businesses can see which emails were received, which ones went to addresses that were no longer active, which ones were opened, which ones were deleted before they were read and which ones enticed clients to click through to the website and make a purchase.”

But there is a common complaint when it comes to email marketing, and it involves the dreaded word “spam.” As Brooks explains, “… Some consumers may consider the emails to be spam and hold it against a brand’s reputation. If customers feel they are being bombarded by unwanted emails from a business, they will be less likely to become new or repeat customers.”

Explore the Different Methods

There are several ways that a business can engage in email marketing. Newsletters, for example, are a way to reach customers on a regular basis. Emails can promote an upcoming sale, as Brooks writes, or be posed as an invitation for customers to attend an event. And “lead-nurturing” emails can “keep brands at the top of mind for prospective clients,” he says. “These emails are sent out regularly until a potential customer is converted into a paying customer.”

May 3, 2016

by TWP Publisher

How To Successfully Outsource A Web Development Project in Five Simple Steps

Website Design Practices Web Development

Victoria Elizabeth is a content executive for Expert Market, a B2B marketplace for office products and services.

Whether you’re a budget conscious small business owner, or a corporate manager who’s strapped for time, you’ve probably thought about outsourcing more than once since starting your business.

More small businesses are relying on outsourcing today for a host of different activities, and marketplaces for finding designers and agencies are hardly in short supply. One of the most daunting tasks you may consider outsourcing is web design and development work, since hiring someone in house, or bringing in extra hands for the project, may prove too expensive and time-consuming.

But while outsourcing may be a quicker and less expensive option than hiring, planning is still essential and requires dedicating time and effort to manage expectations along the way.

Here are some tips to keep in mind if you’re thinking of having an outside agency design or redesign your site:

#1 Know What Your Website is Going to Do
#2 Cement Your Measurement Tactics
#3 Compare Yourself to the Competition
#4 Explain the Limitations of Your Project
#5 Wrap All This Information Up Into a Brief

April 7, 2016

by TWP Publisher

Small-Business Marketing Budgets Continue to Rise

Marketing Small-Business Marketing

According to the 2016 Local Pulse Report from Thrive Analytics, 42% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are increasing their marketing budgets this year. This is an increase from 35% at the same time last year. The study reported that top growth areas among the more than 1,100 SMB owners who responded include mobile marketing at 49% (an increase of 15% from last year) and online display and paid search at 44% (both up 11%).

Just six out of 10 respondents to the study have a website, but 80% use social media platforms, including Facebook (70%), Twitter (32%) and LinkedIn (26%). Seven of 10 owners expect social media to generate leads, while more than half (57%) use it to build awareness and another 57% utilize it to engage their customers. Only 19% of respondents report paying for advertising on social media.

“Digital media continues to be SMBs’ main focus when it comes to marketing, especially with newer businesses,” said Jason Peaslee, managing partner of Thrive Analytics. “However, older and more established businesses continue to see value in traditional forms of marketing too. As SMBs view local advertising as a more strategic source of leads and essential for keeping up with competition, more dollars are being invested across a growing number of channels.”

Almost half (49%) of all respondents stated that mobile is their top growth area in terms of marketing, but approximately the same number state that their websites are not mobile-optimized. In fact, the majority of respondents reported they do not have a solid mobile marketing strategy.

The Local Pulse Report is a comprehensive bi-annual study that examines social media use, ratings and reviews, mobile marketing, marketing budgets and technology adoption.

April 5, 2016

by TWP Publisher

How to Attract B2B Buyers to Ecommerce

Ecommerce Ecommerce

Today’s B2B buyers have fewer constraints than those of 10 years ago. To decrease costs, even enterprise companies are streamlining their purchasing processes, including increased online purchasing without the traditional purchase order or invoice.

In “B2B Ecommerce Growing; Becoming More Like B2C,” I explained that B2B buyers are looking for an ecommerce experience that is comparable to buying consumer goods. That expectation will grow in 2016. B2B buyers often make purchases on B2C websites when products are available, so the opportunity to sell to businesses exists for B2C online merchants. Interestingly, 82 percent of B2B buyers have made B2B purchases on Amazon’s consumer site, versus on Amazon Business, according to research firm Forrester.

The Statistics

In a recent survey of enterprise buyers, Forrester found that 32 percent of respondents made half or more of their work purchases online. Fifty-three percent expect more than half of their business purchases to be made online in 2018. The rate of online business purchasing is likely even higher among smaller companies that don’t have rigid purchasing rules.

Reasons for switching to online purchasing include the convenience of being able to purchase 24 hours a day and the speed of completing the transaction. Even if purchases are not made online, business buyers use websites extensively for product research. Sixty-three percent of respondents researched at least half of their work purchases online. While 70 percent of respondents start their research on a search engine rather than a manufacturer or distributor website, the majority make their purchase on an industry distributor website (30 percent) or a manufacturer site (26 percent).

March 15, 2016

by TWP Publisher

3 Email Marketing Metrics for Mobile, Multi-device Consumers

E-Marketing Email Marketing

Email metrics provide critical, quick feedback for a campaign. This is key because most opens and clicks occur within 72 hours after a send.

But measuring opens and clicks is often just scratching the surface of the actual performance of a campaign. In this post, I’ll compare three traditional email marketing metrics to newer, more meaningful ones.

Open Rate vs. Open Rate Churn

Many email practitioners believe open rates are misleading. There are several reasons for this. First, for an “open” to register, the recipient of the email must download an image. Depending on the content and type of email, recipients who actually open and read it may never need to download images. Also, some preview screens will allow recipients to read an email without opening it.

Thus, open rates are oftentimes higher than what is reported. Despite this, the open rate has stuck around as the most popular benchmark for email engagement.

When I look at open rates across an email program, it’s important to understand who is opening. If a program consistently has a 15 percent open rate, does that mean the same 15 out of 100 people open every email? Or is it a new group of recipients each time? The answer is likely somewhere in the middle.

I call this the “open rate churn.” It’s the percentage of recipients who open every email versus those who seldom do.

Analyzing the open churn rate will produce a more complete picture of the overall engagement of a subscriber list. It will help determine the offer and frequency, too.

March 10, 2016

by TWP Publisher

The power of email marketing for building relationships

E-Marketing Email Marketing

If you want to build relationships, don’t forget the power of email marketing. Consumers may be addicted to social media but that doesn’t make it the best relationship marketing channel. While social is great for brand discovery and content sharing, it is an unreliable way to continually speak to your customers.

Even if someone goes so far as to like your Facebook page, essentially saying that they want to hear from you, there is no guarantee that they will see your message because of Facebook’s algorithms. A Facebook user could see something like 15,000 things in their newsfeed at any given time, so the social media user may never see all of the content shared by their friends and the fan pages they like. Facebook uses an algorithm to figure out the best content for each user. If somebody likes your brand’s Facebook page they only have a 6.5 percent chance of actually seeing one of your posts each time it comes out. So even though that consumer has liked you and told you that they want to hear from you, they won’t necessarily get every message that you put out there. The same is not true with email.

As long as you have a good deliverability score, if a consumer opts into your list, the chances are they are going to get your content in their inbox. This relationship is a lot more valuable because instead of catching you when they happen to be in their social news feed, your message exists in the inbox where consumers check all of their messages.

February 23, 2016

by TWP Publisher

5 B2B Website Design Trends for 2016

Website Design Practices Web Design

We know from research that nearly everyone considering doing business with you will first look at your website. And nothing deters a prospect faster than a website that looks outdated.

Thankfully, even small tweaks to your design can help you to keep pace with design trends can make a big difference. Let’s take a look at the latest trends.

1. Less Photography, More Illustration

In 2015, B2B websites were dominated by impersonal or un-inspired stock photography. In 2016, we will find friendly and relatable illustrations being used far more to help companies tell their story.

2. Bolder Use of Color

You have probably heard of flat design (minimalism that emphasizes usability) and its use in B2B websites. Unfortunately, flat designs often have equally flat color palettes. But in 2016, expect that to change. This year you will find many designers upping their color game.

3. More Creative Typography

All hail! The days of sticking to only a handful of “safe” typefaces, like Arial and Times New Roman, are over!

4. Material Design

Seen by some as the next step up from flat design, material design was developed at Google for use on Android devices. It’s principles have since been adopted across many mobile platforms, as well as in the design of desktop websites. Material design is an evolving standard with resources and best practices for designing for devices.

5. More Vertical Layouts and Scrolling

2015 saw the possible end to the debate of non-scrolling websites. We are finding more and more that is that it’s easer to scroll than to click.

February 18, 2016

by TWP Publisher

6 Web Design Trends That Are Here To Stay

Website Design Practices Web Design

Web design thrives on two things: innovation and imitation. Unfortunately, there’s often a lot more of the latter. We all like to seize upon the latest trends, use them until they’re ubiquitous, and then look desperately for the next big thing. Think about sliders. They were all the rage a couple years ago. Today, they feel dated. What to do? Stop chasing microtrends, and start looking at the big picture. Here, we’ve isolated six web design ideas that are here to stay.

1. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Context is everything. Where and when an interaction happens is now as important as how or why. Is it on a phone? A tablet? Indoors or outdoors? What is the user doing in that moment? Users interact with a product in all kinds of different situations.

2. DIVERSITY

One consistent complaint about the web design world is how often it engages in, shall we say, less than original practices.

3. RICH ILLUSTRATIONS

Traditionally, websites use stock photography and other photos for visuals. Moving forward, we will start to see more hand-drawn art.

4. MOBILE/WEARABLE FIRST

Mobile-first design is already well underway, but it will become even more pronounced as the wearables market, which is estimated to be worth $31 billion by 2020, heats up.

5. MICROINTERACTIONS

As information becomes platform-agnostic—available on our watches, our phones, our TVs, and everything in between—seamless user experiences will be more important than ever.

6. RICHER ANIMATIONS

Finally, we get to the good stuff. The whole point of design is to look good after all. And what looks better than rich animations? The web has never looked more dynamic than it does today, and it’s only going to get better.

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