Category Archives: Marketing

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Making it Hard to Say No Gets More Yeses in Marketing

The last thing we want to hear from our leads is one simple word: No. No is the death of a sale, the end of a funnel, the loss of a lead. So while it might seem pretty obvious that you want to give your leads more chances to say yes, some internet marketers don’t follow through with this. For example, think about the classic website that you land on after a Google search. You read through the content and at the bottom, there’s a link that you can click to learn more, or in reality, make a purchase.

But why is the only option to say “yes” all the way at the bottom? What this essentially means is that every other spot on the page is a chance to say “no.” That’s bad marketing. You never want more chances to opt-out than to opt-in. So what’s the solution? Make it harder to say no by giving more chances to say yes!

 

Increased Calls to Action

First up is the obvious: increase the number of CTAs you have on your site and in your copy. Now, this doesn’t mean simply put links at the top, bottom and middle of your content, get creative with it. Opt-ins and other calls to action can be placed all over your site, in the banner, on the side scroll, in a pop-up. The more chances you give your leads to say yes, the more likely it is that they will. If you make them search for a CTA, chances are you’ve already lost the sale by that point.

Remember, the three tenets of every good website are that the viewer should get there and immediately know:

1. Where they are
2. What they can do there
3. Where and why to do it

The third tenet is the one to be concerned with here, if they don’t know where to click or why, your page has failed. Which brings us directly to our next point, the why.

 

Increased Rewards

Back in the simpler days of online marketing, having one reward would be enough. Give me your email and I’ll send you a free eBook. Sign up for this newsletter and you’ll get 15% off your next purchase. But with so many different avenues of traffic, it only makes sense that you should have multiple levels of rewards. Yes, get the free eBook by joining my mailing list but also get 15% off by liking me on Facebook and get a free website health report by entering your website URL here.

The more points of contact you wish to produce and maintain with your leads, the more rewards you should offer to increase the viability of those contacts. Remember, most people are fairly savvy about what happens when they give a like on Facebook or a follow on Twitter, as savvy as they are about the spam that occurs when they give out their email address. Prove to them that there is value attached to each of these channels by giving them actual value for connecting.

 

Make the Choice Clear

One of the most effective CTAs out there right now include a combination of a pop-up, a reward and making it very difficult to say no. You’ve likely already seen it on QuickSprout or WordStream, when you’re surfing the site, a seemingly random pop-up occurs with a question that has a very pointed answer. You then have the option to say yes or no, with no being a fairly ridiculous choice so that you have to mentally admit that’s your intention.

For instance, a website about money investment might have a pop-up that says, “Do You Want to Learn How to Invest Like a Pro?” The two choices would be:

Yes, I want to retire early

OR

No, I’m fine living paycheck to paycheck

Which would you choose?

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Two Blunt Ways to Get More Clicks through Your Headline

Content marketing is bigger than ever so that means tons of articles and blogs are going up and being shared each and every day. With social media being such a large part of the virality equation, we all know the importance of a good headline. But with click-baiting reaching its slow, but inevitable death and so many other articles and blogs out there on similar topics, what’s to set your headline apart from the rest of the pack?

Now, we all know about the fundamentals of good headline writing, catchy, tells the “get,” puts the keywords or phrase in the beginning, makes the viewer want to click and read more, but hasn’t anything changed since we learned these rules? Absolutely.

 

Writing Headlines for a Weary Audience

The main thing that has changed is not the way we create content itself, but rather, the way our audience perceives it. That is to say, they’ve been there, clicked that. Your article likely won’t be ground-breaking (though it might be, in that case, I’d like to read you instead of the other way around!), but that doesn’t mean it can’t sound some horns and trumpets on the way in.

Here are two great methods for bluntly writing headlines that will bypass the red warning lights headlines like these can sometimes give off:

1. Here’s Why You’ll Use This Headline. I like to call this the “here’s why” blunt approach. Here’s why you’re going to buy my product. Here’s why you don’t need your cell phone anymore. Here’s why your dog is killing you. Whatever it is that you have to tell them, boom! It’s right there in their face now and there’s no denying it. What this does is it generates curiosity while literally telling them what they are going to learn if they click on your headline and read your article. It’s pure subtle genius and that’s why you’re going to start using it.

2. The Best Headline Tip Ever: Telling Them What it Is. Okay, so we’ve all fallen victim to writing “the best” headlines, that is to say, headlines with the phrase, “the best” in them. Of course! People Google “The Best so and so” all the time, we want to rank for that. Are you selling the best so and so of all time? Probably not. Do you have the best tip in the world for making money online? If you did, you wouldn’t be sharing it. Look, nobody really expects the best when they click on a headline, but they also know that if a headline is vague like that, chances are it’s just some lazy marketer trying to get some traffic. Not anymore! Behold, The Best Way to Use “The Best” in Your Headlines, Tell Them! Essentially, what you want to do is tell the reader what it is you are calling the best before they click. For example: “The Best Hot Dog Ever, Ball Park Franks.” Or, “The Best Online Marketing System: Bill Gates Finally Weighs In.”

 

Delivering the Goods

After you’ve come up with this killer headline for your content, it’s time to deliver on the promised goods. Don’t disconnect your headline from your content or you will never get another click from that reader again. When a reader clicks on your headline, they have an expectation and you have a duty to deliver on that, if you don’t, you will break their trust and no matter how great your product or service is, you won’t make one sale from that content.

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Three Enormously Bad Landing Page Copy Techniques

Do you have a landing page that is under-performing or not converting at all? If so, consider the fact that many landing pages out there follow three extremely flawed approaches for content creation. If your landing page falls into one of these three categories, it’s likely that any promotions, ads or other monetary boosters you try will fail as well, sinking more of your hard-earned money into a failing endeavor. Similarly, it’s unlikely that changing the design or aesthetics of your landing page will help.

 

Three Bad Landing Page Copy Strategies

So what are these three horribly horrible approaches to creating landing page copy?

1. Guessing at What Your Lead Wants to Read. This is how many landing pages are done: simply trying out random messages that might or might not have worked on other landing pages, to see the results. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of time and ultimately, costs you a lot of money in sales. Sure, guessing right the first time can be extremely easy and lucrative, but what are the odds you’ll guess right? Do you really know what you consumer wants to read, or are you too close to the sales aspect of the product to listen to the true consumer needs? Remember, guesswork is costly and most of the time, flat out wrong. If this is how you created your landing page, it’s time to reevaluate your under-performing copy.

2. Looking to the Competition. Okay, so every online marketer looks at what their competition does in order to keep their finger on pulse of the industry, but some of us use the competition as our basis for research. Figuring that the competition has done their marketing homework, we “borrow” from their landing pages and rewrite copy in the same vein as their copy. We figure, “They must know what they’re doing, so I’ll just do the same, we have the same demographic, after all.” But what if they are just guessing? Or what if they are dead wrong? You just anchored yourself to your competition’s success and furthermore, there’s now nothing to truly differentiate your two landing pages. Why should customers go to you instead?

3. Cliché Ad Copy. Finally, many marketers will turn to tired, old, boring and used cliché messages that they think sound good, they don’t. These messages don’t scream, “Buy me now!” They scream, “Help! I was written by a lazy marketer who might also be extremely corny!” Your message and copy need to mean something. If you aren’t the best-selling product, don’t call yourself that. Empty copy leaves prospects guessing. Be specific in the problems your product solves, it’ll be that much more impressive.

 

What’s the Right Way to Approach Landing Page Copy?

Now that you know the wrong way to approach writing copy for your landing page, what’s the best way? A little technique called Voice of Customer, or VOC. VOC is a marketing technique that relies on knowing your customer demographic in order to create viable copy that speaks directly to them in a language they prefer. VOC writing relies heavily on your understanding of your prospect’s problems and pain points, in other words, what do they need solved and what problems do they have with the solution you’re presenting.

When you know this, you can market the product or service in a manner that speaks directly to the lead, thereby eliminating friction. When you know their wants and needs, you can prioritize them accordingly, deconstructing each bit of friction with every line of copy on your landing page. This brings greater satisfaction to the lead as they read down the landing page and ultimately, all but guarantees the sale.

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Making Your Call To Action More Actionable

The standard call to action has become far too recognizable for the Internet savvy masses who know a hard sell when they see one. They know when they click “Sing Up Here” that they are likely going to receive spam. They know that when they click “Buy Now” they are going to have to spend money. And while these will still work for products and services that customers are actively looking to purchase or sign up for, it becomes a harder sell to pull off when you’re marketing niceties rather than necessities.

 

Writing a More Actionable Call to Actionable

When you have a product or service that you’re marketing which can best be described as “nice to have but not something I can buy on a budget,” you have to really think smarter about your pitch. This all culminates in the call to action, a place where you should be removing the final friction in the prospect’s mind, getting them to click on that button.

 

To illustrate the best way to accomplish this, let’s look at three great strategies:

1. Illustrate Product or Service is Risk Free. If you are offering a service or product that is risk-free to try, show this through your call to action. A great example of this is Crazy Egg who uses the very successful CTA, “Show Me My Heatmap.” The prospect knows that they can get a sample of the service at no cost with no pressure to buy unless they like what they see. This works best with products or services that provide an ongoing report. Seeing your heat map for your website is going to help you, yes, that’s the point. But imagine seeing it constantly and with increased tracking statistics and analytics. That’s the selling point after the CTA.

2. Demonstrate Customization. Another way to really capture a lead with your CTA is to let them have some fun within the system before asking for the sale. For example, Manpacks is a website that allows users to bundle up their own “manpacks” consisting of manly things like razors, condoms, shirts, etc. Their CTA is very simple and very effective: Build Your Manpack. It speaks the language of men, mainly to “building” and the idea of customizing your own “manpack” before you have to part with your money at the POS further engages the prospect.

3. Give Actual Action. Finally, a great way to really get your CTAs more clicks is to actually put the action right into the wording. Perhaps the most widely-known use for this is with the eCard industry. Instead of saying, “Sign Up for an Account” or some other common CTA, the biggest eCard suppliers use some variation of “Send an eCard Now.” The CTA doesn’t bring up the costs or any mailing lists, it simply says to send the card now. This works well with any type of service where you can send a gift to someone, but is translatable across the boards. What is the final action that will take place? “Get Your…Now.”

 

Language and Results

As you can see, the CTA is more about how you word things and less about what the client is actually doing, at least, that’s how the client should perceive things. There should be a tie in with emotions through the language wherever possible. The “Manpacks” CTA does an amazing job with this, build something and feel more manly!

Unfortunately, not enough marketers spend enough time on their CTAs, instead just slapping up the standard “Click Here” bit.

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What Did We Learn from the Ice Bucket Challenge from a Marketing Perspective

So now that the ice bucket challenge craze has died down, and we’ve had a few minutes to not be frightened by every video we see of our friends and family pouring water on their heads lest they say our names, it’s time to analyze the social phenomenon. As any successful internet marketer can tell you, everything that happens on social media is related to marketing, whether we choose to see it or not. So even if you think the ice bucket challenge has nothing to do with how you make your living, think again. 

Here are some key points to take away from the ice bucket challenge while you’re setting up your next social media marketing campaign. These tips will help you achieve a higher level of virality, though probably not as high as seeing Hollywood’s celebrities dump your product over their heads!

 

Low Participation Barriers are Key

People want to participate in online challenges and events. They want to be part of the trend and they don’t want to have to buy any crazy ingredients to do so. What was so brilliant about the ice bucket challenge? It took ice, water, a bucket and a camera to participate. It’s safe to assume that the population of people who frequent social media has access to ice and water free of charge. It’s also fairly likely that they have a bucket around. And a camera? Name the last phone you saw that didn’t have a video camera.

Takeaway: If you want people to participate in your social media marketing campaign, make it easy for them to do so. The less friction there is between initial contact and participation, the more people will engage. Throw in some forms to fill out, specific sites to upload the videos to or an entry fee and the ice bucket challenge is a failure.

 

Self-Promoting Mechanisms Work via Social Invitations

The “challenge” aspect of the ice bucket event was brilliant. This plays right into peer pressure, with your friends and family looking “directly” at you from the camera and calling your name out. To drive the point home, they tag you in their post and everyone knows that you’ve been called out. You have to respond or you’re a horrible person who wants people to die! (Okay, not really, but that’s how it seems!)

Takeaway: Any marketing campaign where people are sharing the idea of their own free will, directly with other people is a winner. You don’t have to do anything to spread the campaign; it does it on its own. Keep in mind that the ice bucket challenge was initially only a three-person challenge, meaning you aren’t calling out a whole crowd of people. This makes it much harder to “hide” or get lost in a sea of tagged names. You’re in the spotlight and you must perform (or be shamed on social media), thus spreading the campaign once again.

 

Pay Attention to the Time Frame

There are two interesting factors built into the ice bucket challenge that have to do with time, both of which play directly into the success of the campaign. First, the urgency that is created through the issuing of the challenge, you have 24 hours to complete the challenge or you have to donate $100 to ALS. Now, forgetting the fact that people are dumping ice water over their head to avoid donating money to a good cause, focus on the fact that a deadline for action has been set, urgency created. Second, think about how short these videos are, 60 seconds was the longest one I saw and that was from a self-professed camera hog. Keep the content short and fun (yes, I do want to see some of my family members drenched in water and screaming, call me sadistic) and you’ll be successful.

 

Takeaway: Timing is important in that you:

1) Create a sense of urgency by building in a timetable during which the participants must act or face consequences AND

2) Keep the campaign short, sweet and fun.

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Tuning Up Your Marketing Strategies for More Effective Returns

A good marketing campaign is much like a luxury car, it’s going to get you to where you’re going without too many hiccups, but you’re still going to want to have it serviced along the way to make sure it’s in optimal running condition. The smallest problem in a marketing campaign (or car) can snowball into an out of control event that results in a PR nightmare.

Think about how many companies have seen sales plummet or flat out drop off after a social media blunder. In order to prevent things like this from happening, or at least lower your risk to exposure, it’s a good idea to ask yourself a few questions about your marketing efforts each month, just to gauge where you’re at, how it’s going and most of all, if you can tweak some things to affect greater return.

 

How Consistent are My Results?

An undeniable sign of an excellent marketing strategy is consistency in results. When you post a blog, you can expect that it will go viral. When you run a PPC campaign, you know that it will raise your sales by X amount of dollars. Predictions that are reliable make for a smooth and efficient business model because no matter what bumps come along down the road, you know how to fix them and turn them around in your favor.

Take a look at your results and see if you’re getting the consistency you desire. Are some of your blogs outperforming others in terms of CTRs? Are some emails getting more opens and clicks than others? Are social media platforms outperforming your website?

Look at factors of influence in each case and adjust your marketing strategy going forward. For example, if you blogs that you post in the middle of the week garner more CTA follow-throughs, post more in the middle of the week. Then, see how that affects your consistency. If you are triggering a certain type of emotion or time frame for urgency in your emails that are getting more opens, try to use hone in on that emotion or urgency some more. The point is, find what is consistently good for you and then make that the norm, not the exception.

 

What is My Competition Doing?

Another great avenue to explore each month is keeping an eye on your competitors. Look at the content they are creating, the channels they are promoting on. Are their efforts paying off? Go so far as to get up to the point of purchase on their site. How does their sales and marketing funnel feel compared to yours? Do they follow up and try to get your sale?

It’s always a good thing to keep feelers out there so you know what you are doing that is the same, and what you are doing that is different. Differentiation is an important part of branding and marketing, but if you aren’t providing the basics that all of your competition is providing, you’re differentiating yourself in a poor manner. You’re showing that you don’t have a solid foundation built.

Never be afraid to copy a technique that is working, as the saying goes, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The thing to remember is that a great marketer won’t just copy the technique cut and dry, they will tweak it to make it their own. For example, Pepsi Cola realized that it was never going to cut into Coca-Cola’s long-standing trust built over years with the older generation, but they knew that generational marketing was the way to go. Rather than going after the customers that were loyal to Coca-Cola, Pepsi decided to go after the younger generation, the untapped market.

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Are You Testing your Unique Selling Propositions Enough?

Conversion rates are all-important to marketers. The more we know about our products and how our audience perceives them, the better we can market these goods and services to increase conversion rates. Unfortunately, many marketers overlook one of the most important adjustable aspects of their products, the unique selling propositions (USPs).

 

What are Unique Selling Propositions?

USPs are the features and attributes of a product or service that sets it apart from its competition. It’s what makes the iPhone not the Android. It’s what makes a Mac not a PC, it’s what differentiates one product from another and causes a buyer to buy. The unique points of your product or service that you’re selling online should shine through in the product description, giving you a simple and fast way to get the USPs up onto your website.

 

Testing your Unique Selling Propositions

Of course, this all seems pretty simple if it weren’t for one thing, chances are, you’re not the manufacturer, simply a supplier or point of sale. As an internet marketer, you’re likely going up against tens, hundreds or even thousands of other websites and marketers selling the exact same product or service. That means these marketers are out there looking at the manufacturer’s product description and putting the standard USPs up on their sites.

So now, what you have is an over-saturated market full of non-differentiating sites, all vying for the same customers with nothing more than a small profit margin to work with to sway a conversion. Yes, there is SEO and sales and marketing funnels and a ton of other things that can help you out here, but that’s not the point of this article!

The point here is that a simple test of your USPs and how they are displayed and arranged can make your product or service seem different to a buyer, even if it isn’t.

 

Steps for Testing and Optimizing your Unique Selling Propositions

Here are simple and easy to follow steps that will allow you to increase your conversions by paying more attention to your USPs:

1. Identify all USPs.
First, find all of the USPs of your products and services. These are simply the strong selling points that appeal to consumers. Take careful note not to put your own prejudices in here as not all USPs are of equal importance in the minds and eyes of your audience. They are what matters, not your opinion, so be sure to identify all USPs.

2. Place the USPs in Prominent Positions.
Next, start testing the USPs by placing them prominently throughout your site. Mention them on social media and highlight them in the product descriptions. What you are doing here is testing the waters.

3. Track and Monitor Results.
Next, be sure you track all of your USP placements to see which ones affect the highest rates of conversions. Some selling points will resonate more with your demographic than others, these are the USPs you want to continue to highlight.

4. Segment Your Audience.
As you keep testing different USPs for your products, you’ll begin to notice that certain USPs work better than others even within your target demographic. For example, you might notice that some trigger words work better with men than with women and among those men, some USPs work better in the 14-26 year old demographic. The more you are able to segment your audience, the better you will be able to reach them with targeted ads that harp on the right USPs.

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Is the Party Over Now that the FCC Passed Net Neutrality?

As you probably heard by now, the Federal Communications Commission recently approved new rules based on the principles of “net neutrality” that essentially finally put some sort of regulations over Internet usage. Some are calling it the “Equal Opportunity Act” for Internet speeds and access to websites.

But is this ultimately good or bad for the typical Internet user?

First of All, What Is Net Neutrality?

People banter the term “net neutrality” around like they understand what it means, but what the heck is it, really?

Net neutrality is the concept that your Internet provider should be a neutral gateway to everything that’s online. It shouldn’t act as a gatekeeper that decides to load some sites slower than others or try to extract fees for faster service.

Another way of looking at it is that net neutrality is a concept in which Internet service providers (ISPs) can’t discriminate when it comes to Internet traffic.

On February 26, the FCC voted 3 to 2 to adopt net neutrality rules to, as it declared in its announcement of the vote “protect the open Internet”.

Why Do We Need Net Neutrality?

So why should Internet users be concerned with net neutrality of the Internet? There’s plenty of great reasons.

First, without net neutrality, ISPs could, in theory, demand more money from companies like Hulu or Amazon to speed up traffic to their sites. Conversely, they could slow down traffic from sites that aren’t willing to pony up the extra cash.

Is this a big deal? Yes , it is. In fact, it’s a very big deal.

For example, during peak periods in the US about 30% of Internet traffic comes from a single service: Netflix. So let’s say your Internet provider is AT&T. They might tell Netflix, “We want you to pay us double what you pay now or else we are going to slow down your streaming speeds so that people watching ‘House of Cards’ will ditch it because it keeps dropping in the middle of President Frank Underwood’s best scenes.”

Or AT&T could cut a deal with Amazon making them their prime video service and speeding up their delivery to their customers at the expense of slowing down Hulu or Netflix.

At the FCC did was to get rid of all those scenarios and create a more level playing field for everybody.

So What Did the FCC Do, Again?

Technically, what the FCC did was vote to reclassify broadband access as a “telecommunications service under Title II”.

In English, what that means is that the FCC made broadband a utility, which in turn gives the FCC a lot more regulatory power over Internet providers.

This all began back in 2010, when the FCC actually passed rules that made the Internet neutral. But in January 2014, Verizon filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal agency didn’t have the authority to make such a declaration. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit agreed with Verizon, but added that the FCC could reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service. That way it would have the authority.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler did just that. And when Republicans in Congress recently dropped their opposition to the new rules – because the Democrats wouldn’t support it and they didn’t want to be the only ones left twisting in the wind – the stage was set for the FCC’s historic vote.

What Does This Mean for Me?

The FCC’s vote will ban three basic things:

1. Blocking – Broadband providers can’t block access to legal content, apps, services or non-harmful devices.

2. Throttling – Broadband providers can’s impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, apps, services or non-harmful devices.

3. Prioritization – Broadband providers can’t favor some lawful traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration. The rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates.

This is a big, bold move by the FCC and the consequences for Internet users probably will be felt for years to come.

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Visual Storytelling as a Means for Conveying Data without Falling Asleep

3 in 10 of the 3.4568% of all top-20 ranked Final Five finishers have all…hello? Okay, just checking to see if you’re still awake. Data has a way of putting people to sleep, not literally, but more of a “mental check out.” Data can be mind-numbing, even if the story that the numbers are telling is mind-blowing. Unless you have a real love for numbers and hard data crunching, chances are you’d rather have the information presented to you in a more amiable manner.

Your customers are no different. Sure, they do care that your service or product can increase their profit by 15% over the next 3 months if the quarterly return on their initial investment is plus or minus 5% (adjusting for a 2.5% margin of error), but they don’t want to read this sentence to find that out, I didn’t even want to write it!

 

Using Visual Storytelling to Compel and Inform

One of the easiest ways to get around this problem is to practice what we call, Visual Storytelling. The art of Visual Storytelling isn’t really a mystery, instead of telling a story with words, use a visual reference to get the point across. Perhaps the simplest visual cue that lends itself to data and numbers is the standard pie charts and line graphs we all grew to love in elementary school math class.

Still, as boring or standard as they might seem, it’s much more visually compelling to look at a line graph that goes way, way up rather than looking at something like this:

* 1/04/12 – 25.5%
* 5/28/12 – 28.5%
* 8/23/12 – 32.6%
* 10/2/12 – 41.8%
* 12/25/12 – 53.5%
* 1/29/13 – 69.1%

That’s a lot of information to take in, even if it is pretty simple to look at the right column and notice that the numbers are going up. But it’s still much easier to see a line graph shooting up through the roof showing profits and gains going up. Further, a line graph will get some points across better than data can. For instance, unless you have a real head for numbers and a keen eye, you probably didn’t notice that the rate the percentage above was going up increased drastically as time went on. Whereas the first percentage jump was 3%, it was followed by approximate jumps of 4%, 9%, 12% and 15%. And did you factor in the different dates? Of course not! That’s too much data to grasp just looking at numbers!

 

Infographics are Visual Storytelling Aids that Work

Of course, as mentioned, line graphs and pie charts are rather basic, so it’s a good idea to combine them into infographics. Infographics can have a number of different mediums for visual storytelling, all combined into one big sharable chart. They can also have blurbs next to the chart to get your main point across, giving you a simple, short and sweet way to explain your content and data without hitting people over the head with numbers and analysis. Of course, sometimes you need to do that, so don’t let this stop you, but thinking of alternative (and more viral) ways to get your point across is always helpful.

 

A good thing to keep in mind when relating data and stats to customers is that it doesn’t have to be boring just because it is informative. For example, you can have some humorous content in the infographics or even tie the data into something more lighthearted. For example, maybe your product increased sales for a specific brand at the same time reruns of the Big Bang Theory started airing on Channel 5. The point is, make your numbers more fun while still getting the point across.

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Why Every Business Should Be Linked In To LinkedIn

When it comes to internet marketing, most businesses have made the effort to try and have a presence on at least one of the popular Social Media sites: Facebook; Twitter; Pinterest; YouTube.

These sites are viewed as the ‘fun’ cousins of the Social Media world, the site everyone seems to want to play with. But are they the only networking opportunities worth using for businesses?

LinkedIn is a very well known but hugely under-rated and under-used avenue of opportunity. Most people view LinkedIn as the ‘stuffed shirt’ of networking, and it’s true that if you go to LinkedIn, you won’t find a video of someone falling down or a cute picture of a cat hanging on a washing line. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Each networking site attracts a different set of potential clients. and LinkedIn is no different. In fact you could even find yourself networking and promoting yourself to more important people to your business than you ever thought possible.

If you still need convincing of the power of LinkedIn, then take a few minutes to look through these reasons why your business should be on LinkedIn too:

 

LinkedIn – Business not Pleasure

Google any business or business person, and one of the first page entries in the search results will almost certainly be their LinkedIn profile (if they have one). These profile pages contain everything you want to know about the person or company, their products and services, and more.

So when creating your business profile on LinkedIn, it is vital to fill out and use every tool LinkedIn offers, including the customized ‘Products and Business’ section. This is a superb opportunity to create a stunningly professional yet informative section that can complement your website. In here, you can market your business and products with images, videos, detailed product descriptions, links to products on your website and more. What LinkedIn is really offering you is a virtual, digital brochure with tens of thousands of potential clients waiting to connect with you.

What alternative does a potential customer have if you don’t give them the information they are looking for yourself? Their only option is to go and look for the opinions of others in random blog entries and consumer forums, and you have no control over what is being said there, good or bad.

 

Engaging Conversations

An essential element of any network is not simply to attract people to your profile, but to engage with and retain your audience for the long term. But while contact between users on sites such as Facebook and Twitter revolves around relaxed social interaction, LinkedIn is a business-orientated network. So if you can’t post pictures of cute animals in amusing situations, how can you keep interest in your brand going?

a) Daily Status Update
LinkedIn has many useful features, but none are so easy to use as the ‘Status Update’. These status updates appear in the feeds of those who are following your business page AND in the feeds of other LinkedIn members who are networked to your followers. So by posting an update on a daily basis, you are expanding both the exposure of your brand to more potential customers and giving more people the opportunity to network with your business.

b) Use A Poll
Polls are a simple yet versatile way of gathering useful information from your followers while still keeping them engaged. You can find out all sorts of relevant information about your potential customers; what they would like to discuss in the group; information about the group members themselves. Or you can use them just as a way of starting the conversation.

c) Useful Feedback
As LinkedIn members are business people themselves, use the opportunity to gather useful and significant feedback. Asking questions which relate directly to your brand can get you some incredibly valuable insights into both how your brand is seen and in learning more about what your potential customers need and want from your products and services.

d) Raise Your Profile – Sponsor An Event
Event sponsorship offers the opportunity to meet your online contacts in person. Within LinkedIn, members of a network can see every single upcoming event other members of the same network are involved in.

You may think your events look so interesting that everyone will want to come to them. But you can’t rely on people falling over your event on LinkedIn and being curious enough to come along, because it doesn’t happen that often. You have to make it happen – so make sure to send out individual invites to the members of your network in plenty of time and then follow it up with a reminder shortly before the event is due to happen.

Don’t just sponsor marketing events either. Getting involved with a charity fundraiser shows others that your business is a caring organisation, concerned about others and not just interested in profit and sales. After the event, publish and send an update with the results of the evening, pictures of people having a good time and a few testimonials if possible.

 

Don’t Go It Alone – Join A Group

When first joining any network, it’s only natural to start to connect with the people that you know. But in business, you constantly need to be looking for opportunities to increase the number of people you can showcase your business to. LinkedIn is perfect for that.

As you accept invites from other LinkedIn members, your networking potential and business profile grows. You don’t have to be shy in extending invitations to other members to connect with you either, especially if you think they will complement your own services.

Remember, it’s not just one connection you are making. Connecting with other LinkedIn members also joins you to their network of
contacts, growing both your own associated network of contacts and the amount of potential traffic to your LinkedIn business page.

Groups are a great way to find and join like minded business people. Look to join various groups associated with aspects of your own business.

Once you have the confidence, you can take it further and create your own groups around different aspects of your business or industry.

Not only will you be increasing the number of business contacts you have, but you will be actively taking and spreading the knowledge and awareness of your brand throughout the LinkedIn business network.

Companies themselves can’t join a LinkedIn group but individuals can. You could, as the business owner, join yourself, but how much more impressive would it be to your fellow LinkedIn members if some of your employees actively represented your brand within the LinkedIn group discussions and enthusiastically engages others on behalf of your brand?

 

The Power of Recommendations

To a potential customer, nothing gives more confidence than to hear someone do more than just praise a product, but to give it an outright recommendation. It says more than ‘I am happy with it’; it says to someone, ‘You need to use this too. It is so fantastic I had to tell you about it’.

The ‘Recommendation’ is a unique feature which separates LinkedIn from other Social networking sites. On LinkedIn, these recommendations, made by both clients and colleagues, allow others to give your business and professionalism a glowing report.

At the same time, you can forge new networking connections and opportunities, recommending the services and products of other members of the LinkedIn network AND using those recommendations to build up your own brand loyalty.

How? By using the Recommendation yourself to generate a good positive connection with other LinkedIn members.

When looking to recommend someone else’s product or service, don’t just choose someone who seems to be impressive and then add a standard vague ‘this product is good’ comment. Customers won’t be impressed, and it will simply look like one business doing another business a favour.

You want your recommendations to have merit and value to your customer. You want them to be able to trust what you are telling them, and for it to build confidence in you and your brand, so they will turn to your expertise when they need a service or product, so choose your recommendations wisely. Find services and products potential customers will find useful.

The other positive result of saying good, encouraging and generally positive things about the products and services of other LinkedIn businesses is they are far more likely to say something similar about yours.

 

Get Found!

You want your LinkedIn profile to increase your visibility on the internet and contribute to your rankings in the search engine results. By adjusting some of your profile wording, you can improve the Search Engine Optimisation of your LinkedIn site.

Inside the ‘Websites’ section, adding keywords to the title descriptions found in the ‘Other’ section will increase your page’s visibility on the internet searches.

When starting to complete your LinkedIn profile, keep key industry keywords and buzz terms in mind.

Try to subtly add a few key search terms your customers may use when looking for your services, but don’t stuff your profile with them as search engines like Google and Bing can penalize your site if there is an overload of keywords.

Don’t overlook your URLs. When you join and create your LinkedIn profile and pages, LinkedIn automatically creates the URLs with random numbers not a name, but these links are customisable. Change it to something the search engines can pick up on – your name, job title or location. By being creative, you may even be able to get keywords in.

 

Statistical Analysis

Studying statistical data may not be everybody’s favourite task, but it gives an impression of how effective your LinkedIn profile is, and within LinkedIn you can get detailed facts and figures on who is visiting your page, how often (or, more worryingly, not) they come, how many times someone clicks through the ‘Product and Services’ tab, which members are following your page, and a whole wealth of other stats broken down into very useful information.

But there are even more targeted marketing opportunities available to businesses on LinkedIn.

The Admin of a business page can set up customized Product and Services pages.

This means when a visitor comes through to your page, the information shown to them will be tailored to them depending on things like: How local they are to your business; what business they are in; what position they hold in their company.

Being able to modify information in this way enables you to give other LinkedIn members more relevant business information about you.

 

Network Your Network

Maximising your brand exposure is an fundamental key in getting new followers, so the easier you can make it to follow you the better. LinkedIn has 2 easy ways to do this:

‘Follow Company’ Button
By putting this button on your site, it lets followers connect quickly, and they can then track your LinkedIn activity easily and conveniently from within their own LinkedIn profile. Once your followers have grown to a decent number, add the number of your followers onto this button.

‘Share’ Button
By adding this button to the articles and content in your LinkedIn pages, you show your page visitors that they can share articles from your site with their own followers.

By making your articles informative and useful to others, you encourage others to take your business knowledge and expertise to a much wider audience of potential customers.

 

Market To A Captive Audience

With a rapidly growing membership, with hundreds of millions of business professionals worldwide, it would be a criminal oversight not to consider marketing your business to such a captive audience inside LinkedIn.

Not only does LinkedIn offer its business users ad campaigns with a massive audience, the ads themselves are immensely flexible and customisable.

Available as Pay Per Click or Pay Per Impression, the ads can be tailored to an exact audience based on a specific customer demographic like the size of the company, the business area, and occupation, to name just a few factors.

These ads can also be shown on specific pages. So you could target profile pages, company and group pages, member’s inbox or message pages, and more.

This type of targeted approach helps in getting the relevant information to the right sector of your audience – your potential clients.

There is also a choice of Ad Type:

Display Ad – An ad that can be placed on the page in a range of shapes and sizes, rather like a classified newspaper ad.

Content Ad – An ad that lets you stream several types of contend in one organized packet – like video, Twitter, Status updates, etc.

Text Link Ad – A static html link to a specific page or place

Social Ad – Social ads are a highly targeted, highly efficient way to sign up fellow LinkedIn members and to encourage them to share messages and recommend products.

They encourage a particular course of action like the ‘Follow’, ‘Recommend’ or ‘Join Group’ ads.

 

Upgrade and Expand With Advanced Apps

Once you have a good work-ing knowledge of LinkedIn, it’s time to take your LinkedIn page to the next level with some of the many advanced applications that allow you to give your LinkedIn pages greater appeal and marketing power.

Here are just a few of the great Advanced apps available to use with LinkedIn:

SLIDESHARE
Rather than having a simple static photogallery of products or business statistics, you can really impress visitors with a professional and visually interesting slideshow presentation.

MY TRAVEL
This app lets you share all your future travel plans and trips with your network, so they can see not only where you are now but where you are going to be and when.

This gives people a great opportunity to arrange to meet up for different business events and functions.

BOX.NET
If you have something you’d like to share with your followers, why not make it downloadable? Box.net lets you share every-thing from photographs to portfolios, charts and presentations.

BLOG LINK
Linking your blog up to your LinkedIn page is so easy with Blog Link.

If you use WordPress, there are many specialist WordPress app or plug-ins that can do it for you simply and easily.

HUDDLE WORKSPACES
Collaborations can be notoriously tricky things.

Huddle Workspaces is designed to smooth out this rocky road. It lets you give different groups their own workspace, which means you can provide private remote access to documents that only they will see and have access to in their workspace.

TWEET
We couldn’t possibly forget the social network that many businesses use daily!

Tweets lets you access and use your Twitter account from inside LinkedIn.

Do you feel inspired to explore the world of LinkedIn?

Or have you previously registered but didn’t know about many of the features that we mentioned or have not had much success with it? If so, please contact us.

So many businesses have either not used LinkedIn to its full potential or they don’t understand.

As a result they are missing out on a lot of potential business and useful connections.