Questions to ask your marketing person or agency.  And a few to ask yourself.

Before you start a marketing project – whether you are tackling it yourself or with the help of an outside agency or freelancer, it’s essential to ask yourself and them some questions to set goals, expectations, and the overall scope.

Finding the right marketing agency to work with can feel like dating. You want to make sure they’re a good fit for you, and you also want to ensure that you’re a good fit for them. Here are some things to think about as you decide whether to take the relationship to the next level:

Do My Values Align with the Agency’s Values?

It would help if you found an agency with values that align with your own. This approach ensures that you work with a team of people who understand your company’s mission and are committed to helping you achieve your goals.

Does the Agency Understand My Industry?

When working with someone on a marketing project, choosing an agency that understands your industry is crucial. This way, its team members can give you the best possible advice and help you navigate any challenges.  Ask prospective agencies for examples of similar businesses they’ve worked with, work samples, and references.

Does the Agency Know My Target Market?

It is vital to find an agency that understands your target market well. If it does, its experts can create targeted campaigns more likely to resonate with your best prospects.  Again, any prior work they can share to show you how they communicated to the target audience will be helpful.

Does the Agency Comprehend My Competitors?

Locate an agency that understands your competitors well. It will be able to help you create campaigns that are different from what your competitors are doing, and that will help you stand out in the market.  

You will be a valuable resource here.  There may be companies that you are aware of that you can share with your agency.  They can do their own research to identify companies that compete in your industry/area.  Compare your lists and see how many of the names overlap.  

Does the Agency Prioritize My Business and My Goals?

An agency must understand your business and your goals well. If it does, it can create campaigns aligned with your goals and help you achieve them.  Many agencies have a philosophy that leads them in a particular direction.  Maybe there is something that they like to focus on first, with other areas following in a sequence of sorts.  Does that philosophy align with your vision and, more importantly, your timing and budget?  

What if you feel that social media is vital to your business, but the agency thinks that a solidly established website is a core element of any marketing strategy and wants to focus on that first?  Can they explain their perspective, or do you feel they are too rigid?

Does the Agency Seem to “Get” My Style?

Finding an agency that “gets” you and your style is essential. When one does, it will be able to work with you in a comfortable manner that will help you get the most out of the relationship.

A good discovery and intake process should enable the agency to get to know you and your company’s personality.  How well do they adopt the language and personality of your business in the initial stages of developing an advertisement, website, social media posts, etc.?  If there feels like a disconnect between you and your agency, bring it up early, and see what you can share with them to help them find the right tone.

Are Agency Members Excited About Working with Me?

Finding an agency with a team excited about working with you is essential. When you do, you will experience their passion for helping you achieve your goals.

Admittedly, this is a pretty subjective question, but you can get a sense of how agency members feel about working with you on your company by the quality of the work, the research they’ve done, suggestions, and questions they ask.  Listen closely.

Do I Feel Like I Can Trust This Agency?

Hire an agency that you can trust. Working with a team you feel comfortable sharing information with is easier. They are more likely to have your best interests at heart.

Is Now the Best Time for a New Marketing Project?

Finally, and in some ways, most importantly, you have to make sure you are willing to make the time to work on this process, especially early on.  Hiring an agency and not being available to collaborate with them is a recipe for an unsatisfactory relationship.  

Talk to the prospective agency about whether you have time to improve your website or marketing strategy. How much time can you set aside? Do you know how to work with a website designer?

Do you already know the answers to these questions? If so, do you have the required assets ready, and are you willing to make time in your schedule to work with someone on a marketing project? Awesome! You’re ready to work on this. 

However, if there was any hesitation in your response, it might be best to put this project off until you’re confident. If you have questions about starting a new marketing project, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to schedule a short call.​

Picking a good web host is essential for several reasons. This company will provide the infrastructure that keeps your website up and running. You also need to consider price, features, performance, and support. For example, does the host support industry-standard features like WordPress web hosting?

Switching hosts can be difficult and expensive if you get locked into a bad contract. You should do your research before signing up for any web hosting service. Exploring the world of web hosting will help you make an informed decision about which company is right for you.

Servers

A good web host will have fast servers that can handle high traffic volumes without issue. When it comes to servers, you have several choices. You can choose a shared server, a virtual private server (VPS), or a dedicated server. Each option has its pros and cons.

Shared servers are the least expensive option but offer the least amount of control. You’ll be sharing resources with other sites on the same server, so your site may be affected by traffic spikes on other sites.

Virtual private servers (VPS) offer more control than shared servers, but they still don’t give you the full power of a dedicated server. A VPS is a good option if you need custom configurations or increased security.

Dedicated servers tend to be the most expensive but also provide the greatest control. You’ll have your own server, so you won’t have to share resources with other sites. A dedicated server is a good choice if you have a high-traffic site or need unique configurations.

Make sure the host you choose has fast servers. If your site is slow, it frustrates your visitors and hurts your business. Ensure your host has fast servers so your site can load quickly.

Tech Support

The quality of tech support is essential when choosing a web host. If you have a problem with your site, you’ll want to be able to reach someone who can help you fix it. Make sure the host you select offers 24/7 tech support.  Or at least confirm that their hours of availability work for you based on your timezone, hours of operation, etc.

Even the best web host can’t control everything all the time. Issues will occur. The real test of a good host is how it handles problems when they arise. 

Where is the support team located? How many options do you have to connect with the team? Can you access support instantly through chat?  Are phone calls an option or is everything strictly via email or a ticketing system?  When something goes wrong, a more immediate option like a chat or phone call can be a lifesaver.  Does the host own and operate a data center? These are all critical questions to ask upfront.

Backups

The frequency of website backups is one of the first things you should examine. If something goes wrong with your site, you’ll want to be able to restore it from a backup. Some hosts only backup your site weekly, while others do it daily. Verify that the company can restore backups quickly.  Or if you have to do it, make sure you understand how to find the backups and use one if needed.  An added tip, can you make a manual backup?  Sometimes you might be making a serious enough change to your website that you want to take a backup up at that moment and then proceed with the big change.

SSL

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) support is another important consideration. If you’re accepting payments on your site, you’ll need an SSL certificate to ensure that your customers’ information is safe. Make sure the host you choose offers SSL support.  Some hosts charge extra for their SSL certificates.  I think that’s pretty lame these days, so shop around if there are extra costs for something like this.

Uptime

Look for a web host offering guaranteed uptime, which usually ensures that your website will be up 99.999% of the time (AKA “five nines reliability” — the same reliability as a telephone line). Nothing involving technology works 100% of the time.

Malware Protection

Ask companies about how they deal with malware. You don’t want your site infected with a virus, so ensure the host you choose offers adequate protection. Most malware issues are not on the server side, so individual computers need protection.  Still, they should actively be protecting the sites they host.  And, even better, is if they offer to help, to some degree, if there is an issue.

DDoS Protection

A good web host should be able to prevent most Dedicated Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks occur when multiple computers flood a server with requests, overwhelming it and causing it to slow down or crash. Dealing with DDoS issues once an attack has started is challenging, so prevention is key to avoiding downtime.

Access Control

Access control is something to consider when choosing a web host. How many people have access to the servers hosting your content? Does the web host have control of the data center storing the servers?

Price Structure

Be aware of teaser rates. Many companies offer a very low rate in the first year that jumps up in year two. Read online reviews, look at Better Business Bureau reports, and ensure you understand the terms of service before signing up. You want to choose a company that provides clear and concise information and the best website pricing.

Finding a Great Web Host Is Worth the Effort

Choosing a web host can be daunting and involves considering many factors. However, if you keep the above notions in mind, you’ll find a great host that will keep your website running perfectly for years.

If you have questions about finding quality web hosting, please contact us to set up a short call.

This is a pretty common question for small business owners in Connecticut and all across the United States.  There isn’t a single easy answer, but we’re going to explore one of them here.  The short version of what you will read below is the having useful, high-quality, trustworthy content will go a long way to helping you get closer to the top of Google’s search results.  There are several other variables, but this is one that you have direct control over.

The Google platform dominates the world of online search across all devices – desktops, mobiles, laptops, and tablets – and if your business isn’t figuring prominently on it, many of your prospective customers will probably never know about the goods or services you offer.

Each Google page shows only a handful of search results, including paid ads. Generally, it’s 10 results per page.  The aim of businesses who understand digital marketing is to claim a spot on the first page users see when looking for a company like theirs – and the higher, the better.

People searching online for products or services are unlikely to go any deeper than this first page. Research indicates that sites on the first page of Google search engine results pages (SERPS) get nearly 95 percent of web traffic – and the average user won’t go farther than the first five listings.

There are several reasons why your business may not be gaining high visibility on Google. We’ll be looking at each of these problems and how you can fix them. First, though, we’ll examine briefly how Google works – armed with this insight, you should be better placed to improve your site’s ranking.

Understanding Google

It can be highly frustrating when you Google your own business only to find you’ve been consigned to obscurity, especially if your competitors are basking in the glory of a page one listing.

Your business rivals – or more likely their digital marketing agencies – understand that Google’s focus is on giving its users a good experience, not providing free advertising for businesses.

To this end, Google will prioritize sites that respond with the most relevance to whatever someone types into the Google search bar. It uses a complex constantly-changing algorithm based on many different signals with hundreds of factors at play.

Many aspects of this algorithm are shrouded in mystery, but Google has come up with a nice little acronym to explain what it’s looking for in a website – EAT:

• Expertise.
• Authority.
• Trust.

This means your site needs to reflect your business’s professionalism, reputation, and dependability. So, keeping EAT in mind, let’s look at factors that commonly impact negatively on a business’s Google ranking. 

Lack of Quality Content

Content is the most crucial aspect of your business website, and it allows you to demonstrate your expertise in a way that engages with potential customers. 

Google says low-quality content fails to deliver on what it sets out to achieve – insufficient main content to satisfy the reader or pages that show a lack of expertise in the subject.

Delivering quality content entails knowing what your audience wants and how best to provide them with that information.

This requires keyword research to determine what your audience is searching for and understanding the search intent underlying these search terms. You can use free online tools like LSIGraph to help with this. This research can also provide ideas for search engine optimization (SEO).

Quality content is also unique, so don’t be tempted to cut and paste from other sources.  There does seem to be a correlation between content length – the number of words on a specific page of your website – and how it ranks.  That being said, writing generic, repetitive content isn’t going to cut it.  As hard as it is to believe, Google is reading the content on your page, if it’s not detailed or is similar to something it has found elsewhere on the Internet, that’s not helpful.  Is there something different about what you are writing about?  A case study, data that you analyzed from public sources or from your clients?  A table or chart offering insights or perhaps a niche topic that you can write about at length?  Ideally, a page on your website describing a product or service should have somewhere north of 500 words, ideally over 750 and up for more detailed topics.

Lack of Links

Links from relevant authoritative websites are a huge factor in how Google ranks sites. Getting your website cited by highly-regarded sources tells Google your site is credible, and these backlinks are like a vote of confidence – crucial in building your site’s authority.

Strategies to get good backlinks and improve SEO include:

• Publishing evergreen content.
• Creating interactive content.
• Using infographics.
• Syndicating content on sites like Medium.

In addition to backlinks, Google also likes to see internal links on your site to other pages and external links to platforms with high domain authority (you can check the domain authority of websites with a free MozBar tool.)

Professional marketers look to link to sites with a domain authority ranking of at least 20, ideally 40 or above. If you were to check out the domain authority of external links on this page, you’d find they all score highly, most upwards of 90. That could be a factor in how you found this page in the first place.

Lack of Trust

While quality content and good links meet Google’s EAT policy’s expertise and authority elements, lack of trustworthiness can easily see your Google ranking slide out of view.

Building trust in your business and its online platform requires a reputation management strategy that includes proactively encouraging positive reviews. Research shows that almost 70 percent of consumers leave a review when asked to do so. An even higher proportion gives as much credibility to an online review as a personal recommendation.

You also need to monitor your reviews so you can respond to negative comments in a way that mitigates reputation damage.

The BrightLocal SEO resource in 2017 revealed that nearly all consumers used search engines to find local businesses, with almost one-third perceiving responses to reviews as important in evaluating a business.

Besides showing you have your customers’ best interests at heart, responding to a negative review will set you apart from competitors who ignore negative feedback.

Importance of Google My Business in Page Rankings

Besides having a website that demonstrates expertise, authority, and trust, you also need a Google My Business (GMB) profile – a snapshot of your business that enables prospective customers to find you fast.

Google My Business is becoming increasingly important for local businesses, but many fail to take full advantage of this free resource.  Even if you think your business doesn’t need a GMB profile, maybe you don’t have an office, or you think you’ll get bad reviews, you should still claim and optimize your listing by filling out all the sections you can.  GMB is Google’s tool, they like it if you use it…

Even a simple measure like making sure your basic business details are listed correctly on Google My Business can help your local search ranking.  

Make Sure Google Knows You Exist!

While it’s exasperating to find your business isn’t achieving a high ranking on Google, imagine how you’re going to feel if you discover you don’t exist at all in the eyes of the world’s most popular search engine.

This will happen if Google hasn’t indexed your site for various reasons, including:

• Your web pages have just been created, and Google hasn’t had time to index them yet – it can take a few weeks.  There is a way to request that your site be indexed sooner if you have connected your website to Google Search Console.
• Google spiders scanning your site don’t like its meta tags – the snippets that highlight the content of a web page.  This might be something to discuss with the person who developed your site or whoever is helping you with SEO.

Need Help to Improve Your Google Ranking?

Many small businesses in Connecticut simply don’t have the time or in-house resources to create a website designed to appeal to the Google algorithm and engage with potential customers.

If you find yourself in this situation, The Research Department is here for you – contact us to find out how we can help improve your Google status.

TLDR:  Thinking about the questions that your prospective clients and current clients ask on the phone is a great way to identify blog topics. If you hear the same questions several times in a month (or find yourself saying the same thing over that period), those are excellent blog starting points. Yes, there are all sorts of online tools to look at, but don’t overlook this kind of grassroots research.

“What should I blog about?” This is one of the most common questions I hear when talking with my clients about blogging and proclaiming its need and benefits. Their fear of not being able to come up with good blog content consistently stops them flat in their tracks. Look, I’m not asking for you to be the next Steinbeck or Asimov. 

As long as you can organize your thoughts and put them down in clear sentences, we’re in good shape.

Good blog content on your small business website enables you to stay engaged with existing customers and attract new ones while consolidating brand awareness.

Strong blog posts can attract a lot of traffic to the areas of your site where your calls-to-action are strategically placed – generating leads likely to result in purchases.

Many clients of The Research Department understand the necessity – and potential benefits – of blogging but find it challenging to decide what they should be writing about.

If you’re struggling to develop ideas for blog topics, here are some ideas to get you started.

Connecting with Your Audience

An obvious but often overlooked source of blog material is always available to you – your customers and potential clients, who can provide a rich mine of ideas for blogs.

There’s a good reason why many of the best blogs are headed by titles such as:

• How to…
• What is the Best Way to…?
• Why You Need…
• Benefits of…
• Comprehensive Guide to…
• Top Tips to…

Blogs like these give people like your customers valuable information. This is why they tend to be ranked highly in search results by Google, which favors content that gives users a good experience, answers their questions, or offers valid, detailed, authoritative advice.

What Blogging Means for Your Business

Think about planning regular blogs with informative, pertinent content that answers the questions your clients and prospective clients regularly ask or help solve common problems.

Keep a list (either on paper or on your computer) of issues or questions that regularly crop up in your interaction with clients and prospects. Review the list after a few weeks. Are there any topics that keep coming up? Blog about these subjects. If you don’t answer the phones, ask the people who do to let you know common themes they hear when talking with callers.

Similarly, if you find yourself explaining something over and over when meeting with customers and potential clients, that’s potentially a good blog post.

Example

Let’s say you run a dental office offering several types of treatments. You could create blogs with titles like:

• How to Improve Your Oral Health.
• What is the Best Way to Keep My Teeth Clean?
• Why You Need Regular Dental Exams.
• Benefits of Dental Implants.
• Comprehensive Guide to Cosmetic Dentistry.
• Top Tips to Prevent Bad Breath.

The content that follows needs to deliver on what the title offers or promises. This usually entails a little research and your experience and expertise, which can lead you to other blog ideas.

Expanding Your Blog Topics

Search engines can be a big help in expanding your blog base with new ideas – especially Google, the largest online search facility in the world.

You’ll find that Google acts as a vital research tool if you already have an idea for a blog. It can suggest topics for future blogs. 

Let’s see how this works with our hypothetical dentist as they start looking for ideas for their “Benefits of Dental Implants” blog.

They type the search term “benefits of dental implants” into Google, which straightaway pops up with half a dozen recommendations relating to the topic, including;

• Benefits of dental implants over dentures.
• Benefits of dental implants vs. bridges.
• Benefits of mini dental implants.

This gives our dentist three subsections for their blog that they may not have considered themselves.  This is what it looks like on Google:

They glance through the main search results and immediately get a rough idea of how other dental practices blog on the subject – helpful food for thought for their own blog. 

However, before clicking on one of these sites, our dentist is savvy enough to scroll down the page, where they find a list of “Searches related to benefits of dental implants,” including:

• Types of dental implants.
• Dental implants procedure.
• Best dental implants.
• Uses of dental implants.

Way at the bottom of the page, you’d see this:

Our dental blogger now has four more ideas they can incorporate into one long, 1,500 words-plus blog – and “Benefits of Dental Implants” becomes “The Ultimate Guide to Dental Implants.”

This could be used as a cornerstone article, with each of the sections linking internally to its own stand-alone blog – probably shorter but delving into more detail on the particular topic.

Free Tools to Help You Find Blog Topics

You can get help on coming up with blog subjects and their associated themes with free online keyword research tools like:

• AnswerThePublic.
• AlsoAsked. 
• Ubersuggest.
• LSIGraph.

If you have a Google Ads account (formerly Google AdWords), you can source more ideas for blogs by using the Keyword Planner tool. You don’t have to pay for an active campaign to do this – just set up the campaign. 

Other free resources that may not be immediately apparent as you search for blog ideas include:

• News items related to your type of business. A recent example: if you’re an accountant who works with day traders, you could blog about how day traders sent GameStop’s share price sky-high. 
• Ted Talks. With the slogan “ideas worth spreading,” Ted Talk videos can often provide ideas for blogs, mainly if you can find ones relating to your industry or profession. Share them with a few paragraphs about why you think they’re important or inspirational.
• Business research studies. If you have research data from your profession or a local trade association, share it on your blog. Google loves a good table or chart. Don’t be overwhelmed by the use of the word “research” here. Your data might be something that you already have or can easily develop.  
  • For example, If you are an accountant, maybe you track how many tax returns you file in February, March, and April. How many of those receive a refund via direct deposit or a check? Are there any interesting findings in this data that you can share? Is there a correlation between when you file a return and how quickly the refund is received? What data can you find hidden in your records?

Benefits of Coming Up with Good Ideas for Blogs

Blogging with quality content regularly can boost your search engine rankings while increasing visits to your business’s website and helping you to establish yourself as an authority on the topics you write about. 

Posted consistently, blogs consolidate your professional credibility in your niche and form an integral part of content marketing strategy. 

This is one of the critical aspects of what Google looks for on a website…is the information helpful and authoritative?

By providing fresh, relevant, and interesting content to your readers, you give them a reason to keep coming back, which increases the likelihood of future purchases of your goods or services. Plus, websites that get clicks are noticed by Google, it makes the association that people like what you have to say and is inclined to place your website higher in the search results.

However, it’s not always easy to pump out new content, especially if you feel you have nothing to write about anymore. We hope these tips on what you can blog about will help you break through any writer’s block to create many quality posts in the future.

One final, cautionary note: be careful to avoid breaching copyright laws in your blogs.

Thinking about how potential customers use technology to find goods or services you offer is crucial for your Connecticut small business.

This is especially true when it comes to the exponential growth of smartphone usage when it comes to online searches.  This growth has only applied the need for your website to be visible AND usable on a smartphone.  Baically, this means you have to ensure you have a mobile-responsive business website.

Visitors to a mobile-optimized site will see a user-friendly platform whether they’re using a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

According to the device they’re using, the website will adapt – to give them the best scanning, browsing, reading, and interactive experience.

Rise of the Smartphone

Originally seen as expensive new toys, smartphones quickly became part of everyday life, and in 2009 their use mushroomed.

Until mid-2019, mobile and desktop online searches were more or less neck and neck, but then mobile web browsing really began to take off.

By June 2019, mobiles were being used for more than half of searches. Market observers predict that desktop searches are likely to continue to decline.  Think about how you use your phone these days, texting, emailing, playing games, and searching for stuff.  Maybe you are looking for a product nearby or someone to provide a service, those minutes in a waiting room, online, or grabbing a quick meal, suddenly turn your phone into an indispensable research tool.

All this makes a mobile-optimized website essential for any small business to connect with as many prospective customers as possible – and stay fully engaged with existing customers who may give you more business.

What is a Mobile-Friendly Website?

We’ll let Google answer this question. As the world’s largest search engine, they should know what they’re talking about!

According to Google, a mobile-responsive site meets the following criteria:

• Uses software commonly found on phones – which rules out Adobe Flash Player.
• Has text you can read without zooming in.
• Automatically adjusts content, so you don’t have to rotate your screen.
• Has links far enough apart, so it’s easy to click the one you want.

So far, so good, but how do you find out whether your site is mobile friendly.

Is Your Site, Mobile-Responsive?

You can get a fairly good idea of whether your site is mobile-friendly by viewing it from a user’s perspective.  Pull out your mobile phone and use the browser on it to look at your website and answer these questions:

• Is it easy to read?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• How about clicking on menus and buttons?
• How quickly does it load the first page…and any other pages?

If you struggle with these things, so will your prospective customers – and they’re likely to give up on you and look elsewhere for whatever they need.  Any kind of friction in the online browsing experience – and this can be a slow website to one that is hard to read or navigate on a phone – will almost surely

Getting Help from Google

You can get technical assessments of whether your site is mobile-compatible from Google resources such as the Mobile-Friendly Test.

This will give you a detailed explanation of:

• How easily people can tap, swipe, and navigate your website on their smartphone or tablet.
• How quickly your page loads on a mobile device.
• How quickly your site loads on desktops.

If you want to take it a bit further, I highly recommend this blog entry from Neil Patel about improving your site’s mobile experience.

SEO Problems if Your Site Isn’t Mobile-Friendly

Frustrated visitors who abandon your online platform aren’t the only issue if your website isn’t mobile-responsive. It can also impact SEO (search engine optimization) significantly.  In April of 2015, Google started to insist that every website offer a mobile-optimized option, and not having one could result in a penalty resulting in lower search rankings.

Because Google strives to give its users a good experience, it now insists that websites be mobile-responsive and rank sites based on the mobile version instead of the desktop.

This Mobile-First Indexing was announced in 2018. It means Google will look favorably on your site if it’s mobile-friendly and penalize it in search results pages if it isn’t.

The result has been a hefty reduction in traffic for non-mobile-responsive sites as they plummet down the Google listings due to poor SEO rankings.

Why a mobile-compatible site is crucial for local businesses

The importance to local businesses of a site well optimized for mobile users – and search engines – is underlined by a 2020 State of Marketing Report by HubSpot, the marketing, sales, and customer service software company.

The report concluded that:

• Almost 46 percent of Google searches are looking for local information.
• Nearly 90 percent of potential customers looking for local goods or services on their smartphone contact a business within 24 hours.
• If your site is mobile-responsive, over 60 percent of mobile searchers are more likely to contact you.

How to Optimize Your Website for Mobiles

With half of your website visitors likely to be seeing your online business platform on the smaller screen of a phone, it’s critical to give them a good experience.

How you ensure your site works as well for mobile users as it does on desktops depends on who built your site and what they used to build it.

If you’re using a site-building service like Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly, your site should be mobile-optimized out of the box.

However, sometimes they don’t do a good job of converting the desktop version into a mobile-friendly experience. Menus, headings, and images can end up in the wrong places, and blocks of text may overlap. You should be able to work within their content management system (CMS) to address these issues.

If you use WordPress and you have an older site, you can generally install plugins from your site’s administration panel to make it mobile-friendly.  Though if that’s an option you are looking at, then the next section of this post is really for you.

Do You Need to Upgrade Your Site?

These days, most sites are built to be mobile-optimized. If your site was built in the last few years, it should be good to go.

You can also talk to your website developer – or whoever helped you build your site – about ensuring mobile compatibility.

Older sites may not have the coding for mobile compatibility, and you may need to think about an upgrade – updating the whole platform and relaunching it to ensure mobile responsiveness. This also allows you to fix many other problems that may have developed, such as dated content and broken links.

All websites built by The Research Department include mobile-friendly versions.

Need Help to Optimize Your Site for Mobiles?

If your website isn’t mobile-optimized, Google penalties will make it extremely difficult for prospective customers to find you online. And if they do, they’re not likely to hang around long because of a bad user experience.

This double blow could be devastating for small businesses, bearing in mind the continuing popularity of mobile devices – estimates predict 17.7 billion in use worldwide by 2024.

Feel free to contact us if you need help optimizing your website for mobiles.

If you’re running your own small business, a website gives you a powerful marketing tool to stay engaged with existing customers, attract new ones, and strengthen your brand awareness.  Your website is your company headquarters on the Internet.  Yes, I know that Facebook and Instagram have billions of users…I still maintain that a website, even a 1 or 2-page site, has incredible value.

When setting up your online platform, the first considerations are important but can be confusing:

• Choosing a domain registrar.
• Choosing a web hosting service.

How do you go about this, and what are your options to effectively ensure you get your online message across to the masses?

A basic understanding of what web hosting services and domain registrars do will help you make an informed decision about what’s best for your site and your business.

We’ll start with…

Why You Need a Web Host and a Domain Registrar

You need somewhere to host your site and a name for it, and that’s where web hosts and domain registrars come in. 

Your web host is your virtual house, containing everything that makes up your website – text and images, and the framework that holds it all together. Your domain registrar is like your street address – telling people how to find you.

Here’s what you need to know about web hosting services and domain registrars in a little more detail. Hopefully, it will help you make sense of all the baffling sets of initials and acronyms you’ll encounter. 

What is a Domain Registrar?

The first step in building a website is choosing a domain registrar. This enables you to pick a domain name and register it to an IP (Internet Protocol) address. Your domain name is part of your URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

Computers can’t communicate using domain names, so instead, they find one other through IP addresses – these are combinations of numbers and periods that tell your browser or search engines exactly where to find you in the infinite mass of the Internet.

Registering your domain name involves going through a DNS (Domain Name System) registrar. These registries are managed by the International Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), a wing of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Most domain names are acquired from a domain registrar and web hosting companies such as GoDaddy, Register.com, and Namecheap.  Heck, you can even use Google to manage your domains (I’ve used them and the prices are very competitive and the interface is quite good).  

Although people often talk about “buying” domain names, it’s the registries that actually own the names. Registrars allow you to reserve a domain name for a limited period – like a lease.

Picking a Domain Name

Picking a domain name is similar to choosing your business name – it needs careful consideration. 

Your domain name should reflect your business and make it easy for people to find you, so: 

• Use keywords in the domain name.
• Make the domain name easy to type.
• Keep it short.

There is a benefit to having your location in your domain depending on your service, so a plumber might want SpringfieldPlumbing.com as an option.  Length and detail are two competing elements you will want to consider.  For example, which might a lawfirm want to use:  DeweyCheatumandHoweLLC.com or DCAHLLC.com?  In these situations, I usually will get both domains and use one for the primary domain (the longer, more accurate one) but use the shorter one for all the emails and have the shorter one forward – as an alias – to the longer one where the website is located.

What is a Web Hosting Service?

Without the services and technologies provided by a web hosting service, no one would see your site.

Web hosts store websites in powerful computers called servers, linked to a high-speed network. When an individual uses your website address, the internet hooks up with the webserver containing your site’s files and transfers this data back to the individual’s computer.

Different types of web hosting include:

• Shared hosting – the most common type of web hosting, with multiple people sharing a single server. 
• Dedicated server hosting – your own server and all its resources, solely for your use.
• Cloud hosting – cloud servers sharing hardware but using virtualization technology to ensure each server has its own dedicated resources. 
• VPS hosting – using Virtual Private Servers that work similarly to a fully-dedicated server while running multiple operating systems.
• Website building packages – typically offering a free domain name and web hosting account. 

Web hosting providers often provide a domain registering service, so you probably won’t have to directly deal with a DNS registrar.

So, next, we’ll look at…

How to Choose Your Web Host

When deciding on your web hosting provider, it’s advisable to look for business web hosting companies that ensure a high level of security to protect your customers, such as safeguarding payment information. 

Web hosts like these also frequently offer:

• Integrated email hosting, including spam filtering.
• Unlimited bandwidth and storage.
• E-commerce tools. 
• Automatic backup.

The web hosting service that’s right for you depends on many factors, including:

• Your website’s goals.
• How much traffic and growth you anticipate.
• Your budget.

You’ll also want to consider what you need in terms of:

• Uptime and load speed.
• Customization of content.
• Support services.

Your Web Hosting Options

As technology has evolved, so have your options for choosing a web hosting service that meets your businesses and your customers’ needs.

Shared Hosting 

Shared hosting is a popular choice for small businesses on the grounds of affordability and ease of use. However, it can be less flexible than other types of web hosting.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting creates an infrastructure that can expand with your requirements over time while providing the flexibility to scale up quickly to deal with unexpected traffic surges. 

VPS Hosting

A hybrid of dedicated hosting and shared hosting, VPS hosting is the option many larger businesses choose because it’s less costly than a full dedicated hosting plan using a physical server.

Website Building Packages Incorporating Hosting

Web building packages with hosting are popular among small businesses, so we’ll look at them next…

Web Builders with Hosting

Many web building platforms integrate web hosting with site-building tools to make it relatively easy to create a site and get it online, with multiple templates to choose from. 

These web builders include:

• Wix.
• Weebly.
• Squarespace. 

WordPress web builders, a favorite with small businesses, come in two different flavors – hosted and non-hosted.

If you choose WordPress.com, you’ll need to arrange your own hosting, but with WordPress.org, you don’t have to sign up for hosting on your own.  If you choose to build a site with WordPress using your own hosting, an option to look into is Managed Hosting.  It is the most costly but offers you excellent customer support, nightly backups, hacking recovery, and other features that you might not get with some of the other hosting options.  Two vendors to consider are WP-Engine and Flywheel.

There is a more detailed and helpful article that talks about the specifics of these hosting options and talks about some of the providers to consider.  Personally, I’ve used Siteground for non-managed hosting and been very happy with the service and support.

The Importance of Keeping Tabs on Hosting and Domain Registrar Details

It’s important to make sure you always know your login details for web hosting and domain registrar accounts. The contact information and payment method they have for you are up to date.  If your credit card number changes for any reason, be sure to update the information for your registrar and hosting providers.  An invalid payment option can cause all sorts of headaches that are best avoided by a healthy dose of prevention.

If you lose access to either your registrar or host or your payments expire, it can cause huge problems, even if the payment option is kept up to date.  Your company should have access to and control of your domain and hosting accounts.  If someone at your company or an outside developer built your website, ask for the login information for these accounts.  If for some reason you don’t know this information, the hunt to figure it out starts with these two resources.

GoDaddy’s WhoIs database will usually tell you the registrar that someone used to reserve a domain.  It generally won’t tell you their name if the privacy option has been selected.  But, it helps narrow it down to a specific registrar.  Getting access to that account is another matter.  Hopefully, whoever set up the account can then recover the account access (if that’s the issue) and turn control of the domain over to you, preferably transferring it to an account you control.

WhoIsHostingThis is a query tool that can help you figure out where a website is hosted.  Again, the goal is to narrow the range of options to help identify who might control an asset so it can be turned over to you.

The key points of this article would be that you should:

• Be thoughtful about the kind of hosting & the registrar you select
• Retain and update the account and payment information to avoid painful disruptions
• Find the hosting situation that fits your business needs

Tracking how new clients find you is crucial for any small business. It plays a key role in expanding your business by helping you fine-tune your marketing efforts and your brand message.

It also helps you to:

• Reveal weekly/monthly/quarterly trends about how people find your business and why they are contacting you.  
• Identify new openings so you can target prospective customers on platforms you might not currently be using.
• Enable more people to discover how your business can solve their problems or make their life easier.

Word-of-Mouth Referrals

Understanding how word-of-mouth may be gaining you new business is still important in the digital age.

Word-of-mouth referrals occur when you provide goods or services that people rate highly and tell their friends about – a dialogue that revolves around your brand between current, loyal customers and potential future customers.

You can find out whether you’re getting new business this way just by asking if a new client acted on the recommendation of an acquaintance. 

For example, let’s say you are an attorney, asking how prospective clients find you is helpful, but “word of mouth” has limits.  

Online Searches

It’s also important to know how new customers find you online. 

A quick online search for your business name can give you an insight into this. You’ll probably see that new clients are coming across you on outlets such as:

• Your own website or blog.
• Your Facebook page or other social media.
• Review sites like Yelp or Trip Advisor.
• Online listing platforms like Google.

If you’re not showing up in search results, there may be issues that need addressing with how you’re marketing your business online.

Gathering Information from Clients

Satisfied customers are likely to be willing to let you know how they arrived on your website or at your front door.

Your options for getting this information include encouraging staff to ask for details during face-to-face interaction with new clients.

For example, employees who answer the phone or greet new clients could be given intake forms to prompt them to ask how a prospect found you or remind them to make a follow-up call.

Other methods to determine how new customers are finding you include:

• Having a section on your website for new clients to tell you where they found out about your business.
• Setting up an online survey – you can also send this to new email subscribers and post it on social media.

You can put all this information to good use in a spreadsheet, including the date, name, origin, and outcome of every contact with a potential client. This can be set to add up these data points to reveal trends over time.

For example, let’s say you are an attorney, asking how prospective clients find you is helpful, but “word of mouth” has limits. What if your intake form had an initial column that asks, “how did you hear about us?” and the options were a) Online Search b) Advertisement c) Word Of Mouth. Pretend the prospective client indicates c) Word of Mouth. You could have another question of “Who Referred You? a) Past/Present Client b ) Attorney/Law Firm c) Other Profession.” If they respond with “b) Attorney/Law Firm,” you can have a space to record the referring firm’s name.  

Imagine a few months down the line, you can total up all the attorney/law firm referrals, and suddenly you see that two or three firms are regularly sending you clients…what would you do with that information? How about if you see a firm sending you clients has been referring fewer and fewer? In both cases, you know, have information that might lead you to reach out to those firms to cement or rebuild a relationship?  

Another option is…

Keeping Track of your Clients with CRM

Keeping track of contacts – current and new clients and leads (new, warm, hot, and cold) – is essential for analysis to help you identify trends to generate more business in the future. 

Many businesses choose to do this with CRM – a customer relationship management software tool to track clients, origin, and outcomes. Many CRM systems also integrate ways to communicate with your customers – a key extra feature.

What is CRM?

Unlike a basic spreadsheet, CRM can share data across multiple users who can be logged in simultaneously to make edits and assign each other contacts. The systems track everyone’s activity separately.

It enables you to create pipelines that show customer progress through aspects such as:

• First contact – by email or phone, and what needs to happen next.
• Proposal – telling the client how you can provide what’s best for their business.
• Follow-up – staying in touch to answer queries and offer more suggestions.
• Financial details – how much the deal is worth and your client’s budget. 
• Closing the deal – and noting future requirements and prospects for continued business.

Benefits of CRM for Tracking Prospects

CRMs can keep track of any communications you have with a prospect or potential prospect. Many can send or track emails, and some even integrate with outbound phone systems. 

They can automate many calculations on your performance in converting prospects into customers and remind you to follow up with them on a timeframe you select.

CRM Options

We tested several CRM systems and decided Nimble CRM was the best for us. However, it may not be right for your business and its budget and technical needs.  They do have a free trial and if you use this link, I get a free month.

The main CRM consideration for a small business is usually ease of use. Here’s the best CRM software for 2020, according to PCMag.

You don’t necessarily have to buy CRM software. Free CRM systems are available, including HubSpot CRM and standalone CRMs.   Many of them also offer free trials and some even have free options if you have a minimal number of users.  Hubspot is one and Streak, which works within Gmail was an option I really liked as well.

Other Ways to Help You Keep Track of Customers

Besides CRM, there are other systems – such as Google Analytics – to help you track your visitors online, how they behave, and what they choose to do and not to do. 

Phone call tracking is also a useful tool that can help you to see who calls your business, when they call, for how long, and how they found you.

Other ways to help you track customers include:

• Invoicing tools such as Harvest or FreshBooks that act as a digital Rolodex.
• Online calendars to schedule client engagement.
• Organizing emails in your inbox with labels or filters features.

Making Informed Marketing Decisions

Your clients are the beating heart of your business. They bring you your profits and keep you and your staff at work. So it’s essential to keep track of them and know how new clients are finding you.

Gathering, organizing, and tracking your clients’ contact information can give you insights into your performance month on month and year on year and help you make informed decisions on future marketing efforts.

Tracking where your new customers are coming from enables you to measure your online traffic so you can’t tell whether a new promotional campaign is working and gauge the return on investment for your marketing endeavors. 

This can help you to:

• Get repeat business. 
• Target your marketing more efficiently.
• Strengthen client loyalty.
• Tweak your business practices to drive greater customer satisfaction.

If you have any questions about tracking how clients find you or on improving your marketing efforts, The Research Department is always on hand to help.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” – Benjamin Franklin

There are many headaches associated with running a small business in Connecticut.  Payroll.  Taxes.  Bookkeeping.  Many of them are unavoidable.  This post is about the avoidable mistakes that I’ve seen in the 20+ years I’ve been helping small business owners with their marketing.  I hope that you are able to take something away from these suggestions to help you avoid a headache in the future.  And trust me, headaches related to your digital assets – your domain, email, website, and more – are pretty awful

Protecting your digital assets should be just as important as keeping your offices locked, having backups for your office computers, and paying your lease or credit card bill each month.  Here are the major areas that I think you should examine or talk to your web developer, marketing person, or IT person.

Back-Up Your Website. 2 Ways – And Check Them

Just as your computer is prone to data loss through factors such as damage or hacking, so is your business website.  Hopefully, your work computer(s) have a backup system in place.  Ideally, you’ll have a local backup and on offsite backup in case of fire, water damage or some other situation that compromises your offices. 

Backing up your website requires a similar approach.  If something does go wrong, having a backup means you don’t have to start from scratch, which is a painful and expensive process. Having a regular website backup with a copy of your site data allows you to easily restore your site. I suggest having two backups, one might be provided by your hosting provider, but the other should be an off-site backup where the file is stored in a location you control (e.g., Google Drive or Dropbox folder).  I tend to use a plug-in on my WordPress sites called UpDraft, though there are several plug-ins and third-party services you can consider.  I’ve had a few clients have an issue with the billing from their hosting provider and lose their site AND the hosting-provided backups, hence the off-site backups.  There are several ways to configure your backup setup.

• Manual backup – creating a copy via a web hosting control panel or using file transfer protocol (FTP).
• Automatic backup – scheduling a backup to run at regular intervals – daily, weekly, or monthly. This is usually accomplished through a 3rd party backup service or plugin.
• Cloud backup – the cloud provides an ideal place to back up your site, regarded as more reliable than other backup data and recovery systems.

My configuration looks like this:

1.  WordPress backup using Updraft.  Scheduled to run daily and backup to either a DropBox or Google Drive account.  The system is set to keep 2 or 3 copies.
2. Automatic nightly backups provided by the hosting provider
3. Each month I confirm that the UpDraft backup is working properly.  Errors can occur, so you want to check to make sure the backups have completed successfully.

Take a moment to explore your backup options and make adjustments as you need.

Keep Your Information Updated and Check Them Annually or Bi-Annually.

I have had clients encounter major issues when their credit card information expired on one of their accounts and that account had an old email address on file.  Confirming your company registration, email, and credit card details are up to date is a good business practice in the digital age. If the email your hosting company or registrar (think GoDaddy or Network Solutions) is outdated or one you don’t check frequently, you might miss an important email about an upcoming renewal or that the billing information on file has expired.

I suggest keeping all of your accounts listed in a spreadsheet organized by business, the login email/username, the password, and what credit card is on file (and it’s expiration date!). Then, at least once a year, confirm that information is correct. In addition, if your credit card is compromised, replaced, or updated, be sure to go in and change the information on all of your accounts.  Most of these systems will send you an alert or two that there is an issue processing payment, but then they may shut down your account.  This can result in a website not showing up any longer or worse.  I’ve had clients lose their entire websites (and backups) and control of their domains from these issues.  My advice?  Don’t wait for them to notify you that there is a billing issue.  Use your spreadsheet to go through your list of accounts to make any changes.  My spreadsheet looks like this:

This advice is true for most of your accounts, this includes items like:

• Your online bank accounts – to guard against fraudulent transfers.
• Your passwords – make sure you have a separate, secure password for different sites.
• Email addresses – to ensure those linked to your online accounts are still in use.

Many of these businesses communicate via email to alert you of an issue. If you don’t get an email alerting you to a problem, you could end up in hot water. 

Security for Email and Your Website

There are many ways in which your accounts can be compromised.  Websites can be hacked, emails can be spoofed or phished.  Your email provider or IT company can talk to you about what steps you can take to protect your email accounts.  There are basic items like having strong passwords in place as well as additional security to scan emails and talk to staff about not clicking on attachments from unknown senders.

As a marketer, I’ve received some emails that looked legitimate but were odd enough that I didn’t respond immediately.  One email was from someone who said they were looking for a website but also wanted to let me know that they were deaf and would only communicate via email.  They went on to ask if they could pay me via credit card.  It didn’t register as odd to me until I received a second email with the exact same wording from another email address.  At that point, I took a few sentences from the email and entered them into Google.  Suddenly, I found several listings talking about this phishing scheme and what happened when the contractor had responded to these emails.  An ounce of caution here prevented a pound of pain…

Websites can be hacked as well.  Sadly, WordPress is a favorite target of hackers, probably because WordPress is an incredibly popular platform to build websites with.  There are several steps you can take to protect your website including:

• Don’t use the username “admin” for any user
• Assign strong passwords to all user accounts
• Delete any unused user accounts
• Install a security plug-in like WordFence or iThemes Security Pro and configure it properly.  I prefer the iThemes product, it seemed to be a bit less eager to alert me about every security issue.
• Make sure to keep your theme and plug-ins updated.

When should I work on these projects?

Take an hour to pull all of this information together. It may be a bit of a scavenger hunt. Still, I’ve seen too many businesses find out too late that they don’t know a vital login or that the person who set everything up is no longer with the company and can’t be reached.

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but adapting to new business practices and opportunities in the digital age is crucial as ever-evolving technology drives constant changes for small businesses. It might be worth learning to “fetch” some of these ideas vs. learning how to roll over and play dead.

Picking up new skills and knowledge can be particularly difficult for small businesses with limited resources or lack the support of a full-blown IT department. However, you can take certain steps to help your Connecticut small business thrive amidst all the challenges of the fast-paced digital business world. 

To help you find your way across the small business digital landscape, this article offers some ideas on how to harness the power of online marketing, plus a few tips to help you come to terms with doing business in general in a hi-tech era.

How to Market Your Small Business in the Digital World

A solid online marketing strategy is imperative for small businesses to remain competitive in the digital era. It enables you to attract new customers as well as retain existing clients.

Modern marketing strategies may include a social media presence and online advertising. Still, your business’ website is by far your most powerful marketing tool.

Your website and other digital channels showcase your products or services and are likely to be the first contact potential customers make with your business, so a strong first impression is essential.

What Makes a Good Business Website?

As well as being visually appealing, a successful small business website needs to be easy to navigate and designed to ensure a good user experience.

The best business websites also:

• Mirror the brand image of the business.
• Target the right audience – consumers looking for the types of services or goods the business offers.  
• Are well-organized with an easy to follow navigation.  When people come to your site they will ask themselves “am I in the right place?  How do I find the information I want?”  if they can’t easily answer those questions they will leave.  There are millions of websites out there, don’t have one that causes people to leave before they had a chance to look around.
•  Load quickly.  A slow website is another reason why people will “bounce” out of your site without looking around.  There are tools from Google and GT Metrix that help give you an idea of how your site speed ranks.
• Converts – what actions do you want your visitors to take?  Are you there to educate them?  Do you want them to fill out a form, set up a call, or call you directly?  If those options aren’t clearly marked on your site, how are you going to accomplish your goal?

Your business site also needs to be optimized for search engines so prospective customers can find you when they’re browsing online. 

Mobile-Friendly Websites 

Not too long ago, you only had to make sure your website looked good on desktop computers. Today, your business site needs to perform well on mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. For several years, Google has given preference to websites that offer a mobile-friendly user experience.  

Mobile-compliant sites can be particularly important for small local businesses. According to Google, more than 90 percent of U.S. smartphone users look for local information on their phones. Unless your website is mobile-friendly, it can be difficult to view and navigate on a portable device, with users having to zoom or pinch in to read your content. 

Many people find this annoying and are likely to leave and start looking elsewhere for the information they want. On the other hand, a mobile-friendly version will be easily readable and immediately usable.

With more and more people using portable devices, a mobile-friendly site is a necessity to:

• Enhance visitor experience.
• Generate more business.
• Build a strong reputation.
• Rank better in search engine results.

Organic SEO, Search Engine Marketing, and Link Building

Increasing the visibility of your website so that the home page (and specific service pages or blog entries) rank highly on Google’s search results (page 1 is always the goal) is the focus of most digital marketing campaigns. 

Several different options fall under the digital marketing umbrella.

Search engine optimization (SEO) focused on generating leads is vital for small businesses. This basically consists of Website content aimed at getting top listings for free on major search engines like Google. The goal is to match up what your business offers with the information your potential clients seek. The richer your content and the greater that content’s depth, the more Google will recognize your website as authoritative in your industry or area of experience. 

• Having this content properly organized and formatted to make it easy for Google’s search engine to index it is one of the key goals of a strong SEO effort.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This tends to refer to paid-for search engine marketing – pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through platforms like Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords). Here you are bidding on keywords and phrases to get your ads to show when relevant search queries are entered. A good SEM program can work hand in hand with SEO and tend to have a quicker result. But, it comes at an added cost due to the need for an advertising budget. Be sure to factor an ad budget into your decision-making process.
• Off-page SEO link-building – This refers to the process of getting references to your website from authoritative sources, which tells search engines your website is credible.

This could be from a news site, a site related to your industry or profession (your state legal bar association, for example), a blog article that focuses on your industry, or a local directory. These “backlinks” help Google know that you are a reliable source in your field.

Local Search Marketing

If you’re running a business like a shop or offering localized services, local search marketing can play a major role in helping you target prospective customers.

It’s a form of search engine optimization that makes sure your online listings keep appearing for relevant local searches.

You need to ensure that your business details – including name, address, and phone number – are accurate and consistent across directories like Google My Business, Yelp, and Bing Places for Business, which can greatly impact your local search ranking.

Keeping those listings updated, adding new photos regularly are all good ways to leverage these free and influential platforms.  Google My Business provides a direct link that you can copy and send to your clients and colleagues to have them leave a review.  Incorporate that link into your closing emails with clients.  Reviews are another excellent way to set your business apart and there is strong data that suggest those reviews play a role in what businesses Google suggests when someone types in a search like “Best accountants near me.”

Google My Business Listings

Creating a free local business profile on Google My Business – or claiming an existing listing – allows potential customers to find you easily and quickly in a hectic online marketplace, especially when they’re on the point of making a purchase or hiring a service.

You need to make sure your listing is as comprehensive as possible to make the most of: 

• Establishing your credibility online.
• Appearing in local search results.
• Convincing more prospective customers to take action.
• Persuading former customers to return.
• Maximizing your online advertising.

Why Your Website Needs An SSL Certificate

If you think maximum website security is only necessary for e-commerce sites, think again. The absence of an SSL certificate for any business website can lead to distrust among prospective and existing customers and see your site spiraling down search engine result pages into obscurity. 

SSL Certificates – Secure Sockets Layer – safeguards both your business and your customers against cybercriminals by establishing a coded connection between your server and the browser. Tech-savvy individuals are likely to shy away from sites tagged by Google as “Not Secure” because they’re not SSL protected.

Google and other top search engines also consider SSL certification as part of its ranking process, so failing to ensure SSL compliance will reduce your online visibility. If you go on your website and don’t see a padlock (it will show differently depending on what browser you are using), talk to your web developer about adding an SSL certificate. These days, a certificate is included with most hosting plans. Squarespace and Wix also include it on their platforms. If you don’t have one, get one.

Professional Resources to Help You Navigate the Digital Business Maze

Many small businesses turn to professionals to help with digital admin matters and online marketing because it can be time-consuming and in some cases downright bewildering for the uninitiated.

For example. search engine optimization, local search marketing, and link-building ideally need to be an ongoing process, which typically demands the attention of specialists, who can also help with other marketing aspects such as:

• Online reputation management.
• Social media marketing.
• Email marketing.

Adapting the running of your business to the digital arena also brings its own problems, with a plethora of detail to take care of while you try to focus on the multiple challenges of growing your business.

Here again, professional help can be invaluable, particularly in taking the headache out of business website building.

Many business owners realize the importance of digital marketing but are uncertain which channels to choose. The confusion arises because it can be challenging to grasp how different platforms operate in the online advertising maze.

To make things more complicated, what Google used to call their advertising platform, Google AdWords, has been rebranded as Google Ads. Let’s not forget YouTube, the massive video-sharing platform (and social media outlet) as a possible place for advertising, which also happens to be a Google subsidiary. 

Throw a few other promotional channels – such as social networks Facebook and Instagram and business interaction site LinkedIn – into the mix, and things get even more complicated when you’re trying to decide where to concentrate your online advertising.

In this post, we’ll guide you through how these platforms can provide a powerful marketing tool for businesses, and help you understand the ins and outs to help you get the best results.

Two platforms definitely worth considering are Google Ads and Facebook. I know that many of my clients are confused about advertising on these two sites, so we’ll look at them first.

How Do Google Ads Work?

Google Ads is a form of pay-per-click (PPC) search engine marketing (SEM). Google runs the largest search engine globally, and Google Ads can get you top rankings fast – connecting with people looking for the products or services you offer.  You have probably seen them countless times during a Google search you’ve done.  There are usually a few ads at the top of any search results page you see.  If you are doing a local search (e.g. “West Hartford divorce attorneys”) you will see the ads above the map and above the “organic” search results.  Take a look at the image here for reference:

You bid on keyword phrases (e.g., “family dentist”) and fix your budget by setting a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) for each keyword. You only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement. You can narrowly focus your ads on localized focusing in your market. For example, you could indicate you only want your ad to show in Hartford County. You can also control your budget to not exceed a specific spending limit per day or per month. If you hit your budget, your campaign gets paused. This helps give you a measure of certainty on what your ad spend will be per month.

It’s easy to set up a Google Ads campaign, but it can be challenging to run your ads cost-effectively. You need to continually fine-tune your campaign to get the most clicks for your budget. Keep in mind, the amount you will pay for each click is an auction of sorts. 

The more competitive the phrase (e.g. “divorce attorney”), the more likely the cost-per-click will be higher – it could range from $1 up to (and above) $50. You will very quickly learn if the budget you have set for your business is adequate or not.

Another problem is choosing the right keywords relevant to your business. This may seem straightforward but requires extensive research to create a strategy to keep your cost-per-click fees as low as possible while maintaining high visibility among potential customers. Keeping an eye on your campaign and seeing if specific keywords are yielding unwanted results. For example, if you were an electrician, you would ensure you aren’t getting traffic from people looking for commercial services if you only do residential electrical projects. The great part of Google’s platform is how detailed it allows you to be. The downside is it takes time to master it.

Google AdWords became Google Ads in 2018. The new brand includes display and video advertising options across all its channels and partner sites.

Google Display Ads

Google Display Ads are a type of PPC remarketing that don’t show up in search results but appear as banners or boxes on various websites. This puts you in front of people who’ve previously searched online for the types of goods or services you offer or have looked at related content.

Display Ads can be an effective long-term marketing campaign, with customers not immediately responding to your ad but looking for you later – and you don’t pay for clicks you don’t get. This remarketing strategy is cost-effective and becomes an option once enough of your potential audience has been exposed to the initial ad campaign. 

You need to reach a critical mass before you can start a remarketing campaign.

Google Video Ads

This system shows video ads in YouTube search results or before, during, or after videos on YouTube and the Google Display Network, with demographic targeting to reach your audience more efficiently. For example, you might structure a campaign to run whenever anyone in Connecticut views a chiropractic video if you were a local chiropractor.

With Google Video Ads, you may find less competition and much cheaper keyword costs. However, you need a professional-looking eye-catching video designed to spark interest. This then is an additional cost to factor into your plans.  

How Do Facebook Ads Work?

Popular social media site Facebook employs state-of-the-art geographic and demographic targeting technology that can help you attract more business.

Facebook Ads basically work on a pay-per-click basis like Google Ads. Or you can choose to pay each time the platform displays your ad, whether or not anyone clicks on it. Click-through rates (CTR) have been increasing for Facebook advertisements since the platform began introducing further measures to improve is marketing tools for businesses. 

With Facebook advertising, an analytics system measures your campaign’s performance, so you can see how it’s doing in comparison with promotional drives of your competitors. This enables you to fine-tune your campaign as and when needed.

Demographic and social science research suggests that a vast majority of people in the U.S. who go online use Facebook – and they include potential customers in your catchment area. Facebook is popular with individuals and businesses alike, and it allows you to tap into a broad audience of prospects while maintaining contact with existing clients.

The platform offers advertisers an array of precise targeting options, including geographic locations and age ranges, enabling you to engage with a narrowly-defined local audience. For example, you can target an ad to people in Connecticut who are a certain age and gender. It also provides a remarketing facility similar to that offered by Google Display Ads.

Google Ads Vs. Facebook Ads

Many companies use a combination of Google and Facebook advertising to maximize their reach. The two systems have much in common but some significant differences.

Google Ads is basically paid search, while Facebook Ads are paid social advertising. With Facebook, you’re paying to get in front of prospective customers on social networks, while with Google Ads, you reach them organically.

Google Ads tend to cost more per click than Facebook advertising. However, potential customers clicking on your Google Ads maybe later in the buying cycle. 

Facebook is good for building brand awareness, but Google Ads is best to reach people at the point of making a purchasing decision. People generally go on Facebook to relax and socialize, not to shop. However, Facebook can still be useful for building your audience.

Both Facebook and Google offer options to target specific audiences by factors such as location, age, gender, and income. Also, Facebook allows you to designate audiences based on an extensive list of behaviors and interests – thanks to the wealth of information they collect from their users.

How Does YouTube Advertising Work?

Online video channel YouTube gives small businesses an affordable alternative to TV advertising and can be honed to target prospective customers by location, age, parental status, and gender.

Many YouTube visitors look for information about goods or services they’re interested in, which gives you the ideal opportunity to introduce your business and the benefits customers can get from it.

One of the most popular sites on the web, YouTube, tends to hold the attention of visitors for longer than other social media platforms and build a stronger emotional connection.

Running an ad on YouTube enables localized businesses to engage with potential customers through a more targeted approach than TV, radio, or print channels.

YouTube ads are cost-effective because you pay per video view. A further benefit is a powerful analytics tool. This gives you a clear insight into how your video marketing campaign performs, so you can fine-tune it as and when necessary.

The YouTube network offers several options for both video and text-based ads, including:

• In-stream ads – your video ad is shown before, during, or after another video. 
• Display ads – you only pay if someone clicks on your ad.
• Remarketing video advertising – to target people who’ve previously watched your video.

How to Get the Most from Your Advertising Campaigns

Pay-per-click can be a robust advertising tool but time-consuming, and unless used properly, there’s a risk of throwing good money after bad. The best results from Google Ads, Facebook, and YouTube advertising are achieved by specialists in pay-per-click and video services.

So, when you draw up your digital advertising budget, you should factor in the cost of hiring a pro to set up and manage your campaign in addition to your monthly ad spend budget. Getting professional help can save you money in the long term by maximizing results and avoiding painful and costly mistakes as you learn the intricacies of an ad platform.  

For the uninitiated, pay-per-click advertising can be intimidating. Both Google and Facebook pitch their advertising methods as simple to set up, but their targeting options and advanced features can be complicated. It takes a lot of time and energy to become an expert on either platform.

The problem for many small businesses is that they don’t have the time or in-house resources to ensure optimum PPC results. 

Pay-per-click specialists can help you with a systematic approach that can help to set you apart from your competitors by maximizing PPC benefits. Their ability to closely monitor how a campaign performs, make adjustments, and report on a campaign might exceed what you can handle internally.

To work as a marketing tool, YouTube videos need to get your message across fast in a persuasive way. A reasonably polished video-ad can help your business stand out from the competition and generate new customers. For most YouTube ads, the viewer has to watch the first 5-seconds before they can skip the ad. Therefore, make sure that your videos’ first 5-seconds are geared towards getting someone’s attention and encouraging them to watch more or to get them to click on the link included in your ad.

Other Digital Advertising Sites

Besides Google, Facebook, and YouTube, other online marketing options you might want to take a look at include:

• LinkedIn – to establish a consistent, businesslike presence that can ultimately result in more customers.
• Instagram – a highly popular image-sharing site that’s particularly effective if you want to target young adults.
• Bing – allows SMEs to become big fish in a smaller pond.

Tracking Your Ads

You also need a cohesive online marketing strategy – you can’t just place an ad and forget about it. It’s crucial to understand where your ads are directing people (do you have an effective lead-generating landing page?).

You also need to know how to track your ads to gauge how well they’re performing, with tools like Google Analytics and pixel-based tracking. 

Another aid to determine the effectiveness of your ad campaign is CRM (customer relationship management) or a spreadsheet to track all prospects who phone or email you. Even a system of call-tracking numbers can help provide additional data. In the end, you want to be able to look at both the ad campaign’s performance and what happened internally with the potential customers that the campaign generated.  

Systems like these to identify the origin of response to your ads can also help you track offline print ads, and so can having a separate web page address. Tracking the results of every interaction with a potential customer will help you understand where they are coming from, what they are looking for, and, more importantly, what they were worth to your business. Knowing that one campaign brought in customers who each spent, on average, $85 vs. another campaign’s customers’ $225 is vital to assessing the impact and value of that pay-per-click campaign. A well-designed spreadsheet or CRM that everyone in your company uses can efficiently and effectively gather this kind of data.

Now what?

Take some time to think about:

• What services and products you sell, and which are the ones that have the best margin?  
• What would you be willing to spend to acquire a new customer for that product/service?  
• What kind of advertising budget do you think you can manage for 3-4 months? If you work with a PPC specialist, they may ask you to consider a monthly budget starting at $350-$500/month (or higher depending on your industry). Is that something you can live with?
• Do you have an internal system to track all the phone calls and email inquiries?
• Are you able to update your website to create a unique “landing page” for an offer tailored to the people who click on your ad?
• Do you have a system like Google Analytics installed on your website to help you track the traffic that comes to your site?

These are all excellent questions to ask as you think about starting a PPC advertising program.  Online advertising is much more complicated than placing a newspaper ad. It can be incredibly effective for some businesses, and it can also quickly become expensive and frustrating. A poorly designed and/or tracked campaign can leave you wondering where all the money is going.  No business owner likes to wonder about where their money is going.  Take the appropriate amount of time to consider your options when it comes to PPC, talk to professional search engine marketers who specialize in PPC and see what feels like the best option for your business.