Are traffic and engagement on your website less than you hoped for? How are you marketing it? Internet marketing is the umbrella term referring to many avenues for promoting your business online. It includes search engine optimization (SEO), social media, email marketing and more, tactics that drive traffic to your website and engage visitors’ attention once they arrive.
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Internet Marketing: 7 Tips to Improve Your Results Now
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SEO Success: 7 Elements That Help Search Engines Work for You
Anyone creating a business website has probably wondered: If I build it, will ‘they’ come? (like the question made famous in the movie Field of Dreams). Getting targeted traffic to your site is an essential for success of any online endeavor — and SEO (search engine optimization) is a primary means of accomplishing it.
According to the Wikipedia entry for SEO, the concept has been around since the mid-1990s. (The history of SEO on this page makes an interesting read!) Over the years, both website development and SEO have increased in complexity. But the goal of search engines and the process that drives them remain the same: to provide the most relevant and useful results to a searcher’s query.
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Email Newsletters: 9 Tips for Attracting and Engaging Readers
Does your email newsletter stand out from all the others in your subscribers’ inboxes? Research from the Content Marketing Institute indicates more than 80 percent of marketers use email newsletters. That’s a lot of ‘noise’ on the email channel, so how do you avoid getting lost in the crowd?
Competing for attention in email marketing requires many of the same principles as competing in other areas of business. It requires knowing your customers and prospects, having a well-planned strategy, targeting your message and communicating clearly.
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eCommerce Essentials: 11 Must Haves for Successful Online Stores
Hopeful entrepreneurs start up thousands of new eCommerce businesses every day. Nine out of 10 of the online ventures will not survive the first year. What makes the difference between eCommerce success and failure? For anyone with an online business or considering one, here’s our list of the top 11 must haves and excerpts from the online ‘buzz’ about them. Also check out Mailchimp’s article on how to start an online store.
1. A Niche Market
“Most people who are just starting out make the mistake of looking for a product first, and a market second. To boost your chances of success, start with a market. The trick is to find a group of people who are searching for a solution to a problem, but not finding many results.” Entrepreneur.com
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WooCommerce improves speed with “Dashing Dolphin” upgrade
WooCommerce released its latest upgrade, version 2.5 – dubbed the “Dashing Dolphin,” in January.
Here’s how the WooThemes product release announcement describes the new features:
This latest version focuses on getting the store itself to run quickly and is aptly named Dashing Dolphin.
We made several changes under the hood that improve the speed of your store.
First, we improved how WooCommerce knows who is on the site and what they have in the cart, known as a session handler. … We’re now storing less temporary data in the database, which speeds up every page load.
Several pages in the backend were improved, such as the tax settings screen. For store owners that collect taxes in a lot of regions, this screen will both save and load much faster.
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Social Media Marketing: Predictions for 2016
The abundance of new social media platforms emerging practically overnight has given new meaning to the adage “Social media never sleeps.” Have you checked out Periscope (live streaming)? Blab (live personal “talk show” chat)? Yik Yak (anonymous local conversations/chat)?
These are just a few of the new sites and apps seeking to tap into the ‘social’ scene — which the Pew Research Center found to include 65 percent of adults in the U.S. (October 2015).
Meanwhile, established players in the field such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus are introducing new capabilities in order to remain in the game.
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7 Key Components of Strategic Internet Marketing
Are your customers and prospects finding you online? Nine out of 10 consumers will research products and services online before making a purchase, phone call or reservation. And three out of five will complete their shopping online.
Businesses are increasingly depending on their web presence for both marketing and sales. Those who are most successful have a strategic plan, identifying their target markets, specifying the online channels to reach them, setting goals, etc.
Consistent with the ever-changing landscape of the internet, new tools and tactics for marketing and sales can seem to pop up overnight. For those operating a small business, it can be overwhelming to stay informed of the latest best practices. So we’ve compiled this list of key components for consideration in your 2016 internet marketing plan.
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Selling Subscriptions? Check out the WooCommerce Tool Upgrade
Subscriptions have gone digital, extending the term well beyond traditional newspapers and magazines. Many businesses are finding the ‘subscription’ model lends itself well to generating recurring sales and revenue.
Businesses like Birchbox (beauty products), Blue Apron (make-at-home meals), and Dollar Shave Club (men’s razors) serve hundreds of thousands of customers per month through subscriptions, according to an Inc. Magazine article. But success is not a shoo-in.
“You can’t just convert to a subscription business and expect your revenue to grow,” Michael Dubin, CEO of Dollar Shave Club, tells the magazine’s reporter. “Is the subscription an enhancement for your customer? If not, then don’t do it.”
