That’s because the company’s website tends to be its number one salesperson, customer service agent, catalog, and spokesperson. If it isn’t doing all of these jobs – or any of them – particularly well, then your ability to make money is going to be negatively impacted. That’s true with most of your orders: online, over the phone, or in person.

Don’t ignore the effect that a great business website could have on your company, and learn to see it as more than a brochure that tells people about your business. By having the right design and online marketing team on your side, you can do better in virtually every aspect of your business. A good web design might not be the most important thing about your company, but it’s probably one of your top two ingredients for success.

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That pursuit has led to all kinds of different ideas – and even a whole new industry of social media marketing consultants. As valuable as these services are, however, sometimes the best answers are the simplest ones. That’s certainly true when it comes to one of the easiest ways to make social media marketing more cost-effective, which is simply to get more people clicking from your social profiles to your regular web pages.

That’s not a complicated idea, but it makes strong business sense. Why spend so much of your time, money, and attention gathering fans and followers, if you’re only going to remind them that you’re out there once in a while? By sending them to specific product and service pages, you stand a much higher chance of ultimately turning them into buyers.

Look for places in your social content where you can naturally pull people from one part of your marketing campaign to another. The more of them you bring to your regular website, the more profitable your social media marketing efforts are likely to be.

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Before you tweet anything, ask yourself whether anyone would bother to re-tweet it?

That’s a simple question, but it will help you avoid producing the kinds of endless, mindless content that so many businesses and organizations are counting on to help them find customers online. But who wants to bother reading something that isn’t at all original, much less follow the person or group who wrote it?

Thinking about the “re-tweet rule” will force you to come up with something that’s informative, insightful, or even funny before you release it digitally out into the world. In other words, it will stop you from simply being another voice in the crowd.

The best thing about social media marketing is having people pass on your content for you, without any marketing expense or effort on your part. Remember that as you put together your tweets, and don’t waste the 140 characters you have to use.

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Conventional wisdom – based on observing the sites that seem to rank well in Google and the other major search engines – says that anything between 200 and 500 words is likely search-friendly. It helps if you have a couple of subheads or bullet points now and then, but that’s enough to share some information, include a few keywords, and generally leave your customer with a positive impression of your business.

Going a bit deeper, however, the best answer is that it really isn’t about any standard length at all… what matters most is that you are producing content that your ideal customer wants to find.

In some cases, that might be a few paragraphs about a topic like this one; and others, it could be an eight-page, in-depth piece explaining some feature of your industry. The same goes for videos, picture posts, and other types of content: it all just comes down to capturing the interest of your best customers.

Producing SEO articles that are too short or too long is obviously a good way to lose people, but don’t get so focused on lengths that you miss the forest for the trees. The point of SEO is to find customers, so put that focus first, and the rest will take care of itself.

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Because it tends to not be as exciting, however, and doesn’t have as large a following, lots of marketers ignore LinkedIn. That’s a mistake, and we will give you the biggest reason why: sooner or later, your company is going to want to attract bigger orders or clients. That’s going to involve C-level decision-makers, and more of them are on LinkedIn than any other social site.

With that in mind, realize that you don’t have to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn to make it work for you. What you do need to have, however, is a profile that emphasizes your company strengths, key contact information, and some great recommendations from past customers. Having each of these in place will make your LinkedIn profile easier to find, and offers some reassuring details for any executive who comes across it.

LinkedIn might not be the cornerstone of your social media strategy, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Someday soon, you just might need it to help you close the biggest sale in your company’s history.

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Even so, Facebook advertising carries one important advantage that the search engines can’t completely match: you can take out potential customers based on specific traits that they give about themselves.

This can be very important for certain kinds of businesses, and especially those who sell to portions of the public who might not know what they’re looking for. In other words, if the people you need to market to most aren’t aware of what you sell, or wouldn’t know how to identify it if they did, then Facebook advertising can offer a more cost-effective way to reach them.

Almost every company should consider trying Facebook advertising, if only to see whether it can work for them. For businesses that need to segment customers by specific criteria, however, it could be an especially profitable online advertising medium.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

The Biggest Problem With Social Media Marketing

Is Your Small Business Taking Advantage of Foursquare?

Is Your Dealership’s Site More Like a Brochure, or an Informative Resource?

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This is more than just an interesting question. As the Internet continues to become a bigger and bigger part of most people’s car buying process, shoppers are looking for more than photos, short descriptions, and odometer readings – they want help finding the best car for them, understanding financing options, and especially figuring out what dealership they should work with.

In a perfect world, they would come and sit down in your show room to find the answers. But, given that so many car buyers have to cram their search into a busy week, or are just too intimidated to meet with a salesperson, lots of them are opting to surf the web instead. And if they aren’t finding the answers on your website, you can be sure they’re going to look for them on someone else’s.

With that in mind, part of your online marketing strategy should be developing consistent articles, blog posts, frequently asked questions, and maybe even instructional videos, all designed to help people feel more informed and involved with the car buying process… not to mention becoming more comfortable with you and your team along the way.

Many of the trends that drive Internet marketing, like search engine optimization and social media, work so well because they help people find answers and advice quickly. And in no industry is that more true than with auto dealerships; giving out free advice is a great way to set yourself apart.

If you would like help making your dealerships website more of an informational resource, contact Marcy Design today. We have worked with dozens of dealers just like you, and can help you turn your website into something car buyers will want to bookmark and return to again and again.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.

It’s not hard to see how this kind of application could help you bring more customers into your retail space. From reviews by happy shoppers to specials, QR codes, and even having a “mayor” of your store or area, 4Square gives business owners something they have dreamed about for a long time: the opportunity to let other people create new customers and fans in an instant.

Like all social networking sites, however, you have to be involved if you’re going to benefit at all, and luckily it’s easy to sign up and get started at 4Square… and you might even beat the rush in your neighborhood. Don’t wait too long, though; while the site might only have 5 million members at the moment, it’s poised to grow quickly.

Retailers have long dreamed of a way to turn social media contacts into repeat buyers. With 4Square, they may have just found the best tool yet.

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That’s because, for all its might and fun, it’s just now beginning to become useful to most of us as a tool for reaching and connecting with customers. It isn’t only web designers and online marketing gurus who are taking notice, either – in the last few years virtually every major corporation has beefed up its social media platform.

So, with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn so clearly being a part of our digital marketing future, what could be the problem?

Well, the problem with social media marketing isn’t one of possibilities… it’s a matter of expectations. For larger businesses, networking sites are just one more way to reach their already massive customer bases. But for the smaller fish, business owners who are trying to compete to raise their profiles, social media represents a different type of animal.

The one thing that pay per click advertising, e-mail marketing, and to a lesser degree search engine optimization all had in common was that they could bring you new customers relatively quickly. If you did that you were supposed to do, and followed the rules, you could be pretty sure your bottom line was going to see improvement.

That’s not the case with social networking. As we mentioned, it is a good way to connect more deeply with customers, and even prospective customers; but, not many people are going to make a buying decision based on your Facebook profile alone. That means social media marketing is going to go a lot slower, and it’s going to need some help from your other online and off-line tools.

There isn’t anything wrong with social media marketing, so long as you go into the process with the right set of expectations. But don’t count on it to work too quickly, or by itself – its true potential is probably still a couple of years down the road.

Want help integrating social media into your marketing mix? Marcy Design can help… why not give us a call today?

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.