Lindsay Kolowich says, “What does being in a “content rut” mean to you? Perhaps the words remind you of writer’s block, when you couldn’t think of fresh topic ideas. (We’ve all been there.) Or maybe it makes you think of those days, weeks, or even — horror of horrors — months when your content seems to be falling kind of flat. There’s one other thing it might make you imagine — the kind of content rut with the same types of content getting created over and over again, instead of mixing it up. A big part of building a strong content strategy... [...]

Sam Oh says, “With the power of the Internet so readily available to every small business owner, it never ceases to amaze me how many companies insist upon using offline lead generation methods. They hand out fliers instead of sending out emails. They knock on doors instead of “knocking” on social media feeds. They write articles in local magazines instead of creating awesome blog posts. They basically do everything the slow way, hindering their own growth and guaranteeing that their competition will have the upper hand. Maybe you are a small, local business owner reading this and you... [...]

Sarah Quinn says, “Leads are the lifeblood of any business. After all, without leads, there can be no sales. Lead generation is the act of establishing interest in your products or services among a target market. Lead gen is a tricky business because leads can be at different stages in the buyer journey and therefore require different levels of nurturing. Here are 5 lead gen mistakes that you have to stop making if you want to increase sales. 1. You’re too general We’ve all heard the saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none,” this is not how you want customers... [...]

Khalid Saleh says, “Sites like Facebook and Instagram are just for people to browse through family pictures and look at cat videos, right? Because this is how many see these sites, traditional social media marketing efforts have largely focused on using social platforms as branding tools, not lead-gen tools. While this is partly true, it’s not the complete truth. Social media isn’t there just to brand your business anymore. If used effectively, you can generate high-quality leads and drive sales through social platforms. In this post, I’ll show you four tactics you can use to generate... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “From blog posts to landing pages to job postings, your website may be made up of tens, hundreds; even thousands of individual pages. But regardless how many pages you have on your site, you’ll find that the vast majority of your traffic comes in to a few, very specific pages — often your homepage, your “About” page, your “Contact Us” page, and maybe one or two of your most popular blog posts. And because so many people are landing on those four or five pages, it’s very important that you take special care to optimizing... [...]

Gregory Kennedy says, “Most marketers have one goal in common: increasing the amount of traffic to their website. There are various tactics for accomplishing this goal including search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC), blogging, social media marketing, etc. The problem is that SEO takes times, PPC is expensive, Google is becoming oversaturated with blog content, and social media has always had a problem proving ROI. One often overlooked tactic that can potentially have the greatest impact is referral traffic. So, what is referral traffic and how can you use it to... [...]

Ehsan Jahandarpour says, “Not every customer who visits your website is willing to buy immediately. In fact, it takes time to build trust and prove your value. After you’ve done that, you might get a few customers to pay for your product. However, there are efficient growth-hacking strategies you can use to increase your conversion rate and get more leads every day. One of the best techniques is to set up a compelling lead magnet. In plain English, a lead magnet is a tempting offer that provides a very specific value to a very targeted customer segment. In other words, when you offer... [...]

Gregory Kennedy says, “Sometimes a prospect comes to your website, finds exactly what they want, and makes a purchase. This post is not about these people. This post is about the vast majority, who visit your site a few times. They also visit other sites and comparison shop. They mull over the decision to buy something — researching, searching, reading, and thinking. This post is about these prospects. The people who just need a little nudge to get them over the finish line. We know from research that on average it takes six touches before a prospect converts. So the obvious question... [...]

Paul Cheney says, “Does UX really make that much of a difference? Besides being an important business question, there’s an entire industry of UX professionals who count on it making a difference. Sure, intuitively, we think it will. And there’s even survey data to support it. But what about at the company-level? Has anyone been able to measure the impact of UX on an actual company’s bottom line? Bryce Miller of MasterControl, an enterprise quality management software company, has measured it. It happened on a template for 45 of their product pages. The team at MasterControl working... [...]

If there’s anything any business needs, it’s a steady stream of new potential customers or clients. Current customers drop out through death, moving out of area, or changing needs, even if they like the business, so profits will go down unless there are new customers coming in. Businesses that know how much a new customer/client will spend, on average, know what they can afford to pay for a new lead. They more they hope to earn, they more they will pay. This creates an intriguing business opportunity for the marketer who knows how to find good leads. They can find the leads at a small... [...]