11 Downright Spooky Email Marketing Stats
We all have our fears: Heights. Spiders. That horrifying clown from the movie It. But nothing scares today’s marketers quite as much as cold, hard data. That’s right – there are numbers out there…
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Scary, maybe, but these 11 statistics also point the way to opportunities to get it right. Boooo!
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5 Easy Ways to Make Local Marketing Matter
Local marketing – marketing that’s focused on reaching customers in a specific geographic area – is not for every business. But if you have a physical presence in a specific location and provide services to your community (think bank, florist, shoe store, restaurant, deli, dry cleaners, etc….), you will most likely be able to benefit by using a targeted approach to build your credibility as a local resource online as well as off.
Chances are, if you’re a local business and have done any sort of online marketing, you’ve already:
- listed your business on local resource websites and directories (Chamber of Commerce);
- set up a Facebook page;
- have a Twitter account and a Google+ Local page
But there’s plenty more you can do. And much of it is almost painless to roll in to your day-to-day plans.
Local Marketing Matters – Online and Off
The local, in-person or in-store activities you do often have “digital” parallels, and when they are managed in concert, they can have an amplifying effect. Of course, local events will bring physical traffic to your store. And promoting these events online can help confirm for the search engines that you are, indeed, a quality, local business. This in turn will help your rankings in search engine results and will help bring traffic to your website and, ultimately, your store.
Here are 5 simple ways to take “digital” advantage of your in-person activities.
1. Get involved in the community
- In person: Join a Local Chamber or Business Association
- Online: Get your business listed on the Chamber or Association website
2. Give back
- In person: Sponsor a town event
- Online: receive coverage in the local paper, by submitting a press release or inviting the local editors to the event
3. Partner with other local businesses
- In person: Co-host an event
- Online: Cross-promote the event on your and their social media sites; split the cost of advertising the event; submit a co-sponsored press release to the local papers
4. Reward loyal customers
- In person: Set up a loyalty system (like a frequent buyer punch card)
- Online: Loyal customers become your online “brand advocates”
5. Customer reviews
- In person: Ask for reviews and feedback after special events; provide an in-store comment book; save letters written by happy customers
- Online: Publish the reviews your website, etc. (with permission, of course)
Sales Renewal’s insight:
The local, in-person or in-store activities you do often have “digital” parallels, and when they are managed in concert, they can have an amplifying effect.
How Much Time Does SEO Really Take?
Getting started [with seo] is relatively easy, but in order to be successful in an especially competitive environment, you need to dedicate yourself to the strategy. You’ll have to acquire new skills…
The common solution for this is to simply hire an in-house SEO expert who can handle all these tasks. If you can’t, it’s on you to handle them all yourself. Either way, the cost can be prohibitive, especially if you’re an emerging small business. Likewise, spending all those hours doing it yourself can tie you up, preventing you from pursuing more productive activities that can’t be outsourced.
Before you make a decision, you need to know one thing: how much time does SEO actually take?
Sales Renewal’s insight:
How do you look at SEO? Does it seem like a daunting process? A set-and-forget item to check off your list?
Many small business owners believe they can “do” SEO themselves. But before you make that decision, please read this article. You might just gain a new appreciation for those who do SEO full time.
Consider the (what may appear to be) straight-forward process setting up on-page optimization (10-40 hours) and monitoring and troubleshooting on an ongoing basis (3-12 hours/week). Then there is content development, which could be something you can get away with spending a couple hours a week. Or, it could turn into a nearly full-time job (3-50 hours/week).
Off-page optimization opens up an entirely new realm of responsibilities and processes, from dabbling in looking for linkbuilding opportunities to following a well-thought-out relationship building program (5-25 hours/week).
Then there’s the additional work related to SEO for local businesses, like customer reviews (up to 15 hours/week), and then measuring and analyzing all you do to be sure it’s effective (1-2 hours/week).
Putting it all together, the author’s bottom line is sobering:
“Even for the small range of organizations I examined here (small to mid-sized businesses), you can see the vast range of potential time spent on an SEO campaign. Added up, it amounts to anywhere between 12 and 104 hours per week. If you put in 12 hours a week, don’t expect to climb to a top position anytime soon. On the other end of the spectrum, if you want the best results as fast as possible, you may need to hire employees, contractors, or an agency.”
Given this cost (in time and opportunity), we believe that the most cost-effective way to “do” SEO is to work with a specialist. That’s why, whether you’re a JointSourcing or Marketing Essentials client, we will work with our SEO partners to be sure your business receives the SEO attention it deserves.
Learn more about Sales Renewal’s Search Engine Optimization services.
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15 Mind-Blowing Stats About Generation Z
While many marketers still struggle to figure out the Millennials, a new generation-Generation Z-is growing up behind the scenes.
Members of Gen Z, born after 1995, are quite different than their Millennial counterparts, with their own set of expectations when interacting with companies.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
You might not realize it but more than 25% of Americans belong to Gen Z, and with 361, 00 babies born in the U.S. every day the segment is growing fast.
All of their 15 stats are interesting but we found these 2 to be the most intriguing … and scary:
- Millennials use 3 screens on average, Gen Zers use 5 (smartphone, TV, laptop, desktop, iPod/iPad)
- The average Gen Zer has the attention span of about 8 seconds.
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New Survey Shows Engineers Most Likely to Look Online for Information
Analysis of TREW Marketing and ENGINEERING.com new survey on how engineers find information online. Engineers love online information over others.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Marketing to engineers? Be sure you pay attention to online and digital marketing, as online is a valuable source of information for engineers.
More survey results:
- The way engineers most often interact with e-newsletters is scanning subject lines.
- Engineers most often consume work-related content on their desktop computer throughout the workday; mobile devices are used most often when they’re on the go and commuting.
- In viewing webcasts, features engineers prefer most are real-world examples and images and diagrams.
- Online resources such as websites and search engines are the most valuable source of information versus offline sources such as conferences or publications.
- Engineers have the highest trust in content written by an engineering expert at a vendor company, followed by industry analysts and editorial pieces in an industry print or online publication.
- Most engineers use social media in their personal life where they may stumble upon work-related articles, but nearly a third say they use social media for work.
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Google’s Local Snack Pack Shake-Up: What You Need to Know
Google recently shook up the local results in its SERPs, killing the local 7-packs in favor of a 3-pack that resembles the mobile experience. This post tells you everything you need to know about the change and what it means for your local marketing.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Did your local listing make the cut?
As you can see from the example in the image (and yes, both our local florists made the cut!), Google has made some pretty big changes to the map and listings that show up for local searches. SEO experts say this is the biggest change to SERPs (search engine results pages) since the Pigeon update in July 2014.
If you’ve ever searched for a local business, chances are you’re familiar with what is often called the “Map Pack” results, or the businesses and map results Google shows when someone does a local search – “florist mendon ma” for example. These recent “Snack Pack” changes include a reduction in the number of Map Pack results from 5-7 to 3. And, much of the previously visible information, like business address and phone number, has been removed.
As with most changes Google makes, speculation abounds as to why, but a streamlined view, better alignment between the desktop and mobile experience, and – the biggie – positioning to become a money maker are three well-founded explanations.
Staying in or Moving into the Top 3 Positions
While the impact of these changes are still unknown and a clear “how to” has yet to be determined, local businesses are advised to continue to optimize for local search as they had been doing: website optimized for search; good quality link building; citations and directories; and focusing on customer reviews.
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Search Ranking Studies: Trends and Important Factors
Annual search engine ranking studies have been recently released by both Moz and Searchmetrics, relying on slightly different methods to arrive at their conclusions about what’s important and what’s not. According to the reports, the impact of relevant content continues to grow…
Sales Renewal’s insight:
These two reports offer lots of good insights to the current important factors in today’s SEO rankings, but in essence, it seems to boil down to: content quality and links continue to be important factors of search rankings, though as the Searchmetrics study argues, the importance of links is declining.
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John Wanamaker Would Die for This: We Now Know Which Half is Which!
There is a popular saying which goes “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Over the years, I have heard many a CEO/CFO substitute the word “marketing” for “advertising” as they lament about all the money they are spending on brand awareness and demand creation with little demonstrable return on investment. But those days are over.”
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Thanks to analytics, trackable phone numbers, trackable emails and marketing automation software you can now know which half of your marketing budget is working and which half is not … and adjust your marketing activities and budget accordingly. The author provides a few interesting examples of the old and new ways of marketing.
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Cost of Marketing: What Is the Average Budget?
As today’s savvy businesspeople know, to have a strong business people have to know who you are and what you offer. You need good marketing. The first step is a marketing budget to help you figure out practical steps to achieve those goals. But, how much should you spend?
Sales Renewal’s insight:
We agree, this is the best way to think of your marketing budget if you’re a small business:
“Allocating a specified percentage of sales revenue is one of the most popular methods for developing a marketing budget. The average allocation usually ranges between 9-12% of the annual budget, while the smallest businesses may go as low as 2%. … The main advantage to using a percentage of sales is that the marketing budget will increase, or decrease, with the sales revenue of the company. The marketing budget will never spin out of control and deplete sales revenue.”
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11 Ways to Improve Your Click-Through Rate
Your emails are being read, but how do you convince people to navigate to your site? Here are 11 tips to improve your email newsletter click-through rates.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Some good, concrete tips that you can use to improve your email click through rates.
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