You have a fantastic source of information, great products or services but before you can get the word out, it’s important to understand who you’re looking to grab attention from. Marketing is a science and it takes strategic planning and observation of your specific genre in order to succeed. Today’s your lucky day, because we have a few tidbits of information that should get your target audience to notice you.

Know Who ‘They’ Are

Before the possibility of promotion arises, it’s important to get some sort of idea as to who would want whatever it is your company or website offers. If strictly working from home, getting to know the social side of the internet is imperative, as social media is a free and quick way to get your name and brand out there to the masses.

Who Wants What You Have to Offer?

Who are you trying to sell to? This can be a tricky question, especially if you’re trying to speak directly to a wide range of people. Make sure to pinpoint a specific group of individuals that are most likely to purchase from you or want the information your company provides. For example: people ranging from the ages of 10 to 90 could benefit from massage, whether for health reasons or stress relief. An audience that large is hard to accommodate for, so make use of the local library and online sources of information, such as Wikipedia where it will be easier to determine the age groups that are more likely to enjoy massage. For your company, this may be adults ages 20 to 50, but can vary depending on the exact services you provide and where you see the company going in the future.

Whenever adding anything new to your website, think about the people within that age group and what they would expect, since they are your most important customers (or form of traffic). The environment you create matters as well. Are you looking for a very professional vibe or a more casual experience? Do you want an abundance of information and tools on your site or would you prefer to be contacted for better explanation? The latter offers a more personal touch and a chance to get to know your potential clients one on one.

Set Realistic Goals for Yourself: Don’t Give in to Pressure to Please All

There is no way to make everyone happy. There are bound to be individuals who are directly within your target audience who simply aren’t interested. Check out websites or companies similar to your own and see who they are targeting. The way things are worded, the colors used and what types of products are sold all have to do with making the designated audience content that will grab their interest and keep them coming back for more.

Know What Your Customers Want

You may be asking yourself how it is possible to know what your audience wants, and this is a very difficult question but not one that cannot be guesstimated. Since you’ve already viewed companies similar to your own and researched your specific market, all you need to do now is let people know why they should choose you over other businesses out there.

Maybe your prices are a bit better. Maybe your service is much faster. Or, maybe, just maybe, it is obvious that you care deeply for them and respond to their questions and concerns quicker than most other business owners. A lot of the time, customer service alone is going to keep people around much more than a great product will.

People are much more willing to wait a little longer, to deal with a little hassle if it means saving them money and the stress of being treated as ‘just another customer’. Today’s world is all about ‘me, me, me’ and when you make it clear that you are not only there to serve yourself but also to serve your customers and make them happy 100% of the time, then you’ve definitely got something special. When you can be viewed as a human being and not yet another person wanting something from them, your customers are bound to fall in love with your business. That right there is the difference between gaining a customer base and keeping one around for the long haul.

Image Credits:

• ‘Promoted’ License: Creative Commons image source
• ‘Goals’ License: Creative Commons image source

Todd Ramos is the author of today’s guest post. An SEO by profession, he knows fully well the tricks of the trade and advises people about the nuances of his profession on his blog. He has also lent valuable contributions for the rise of Pentech Consulting.

It used to be all about Google. For years, if you were a wise webmaster or guru of search engine optimization (SEO), you would craft your websites to earn the highest ranking possible with Google’s search engine. Today, however, more and more people are utilizing Bing and Yahoo to do searches on the Web, so it is important that you also optimize your website for these two search engines.

Is it Worth the Effort?

According to a February 2013 TechZone 360 article, more than 65 percent of the searches done in the United States on the Internet are performed on Google. In comparison, Yahoo and Bing together are used for only about 15 percent of the searches done in the United States. While this may seem like a small number compared to Google, in is equal to about 10 billion searches a month.

In addition, Facebook, which already promotes Bing strongly in many ways on its pages, announced in January 2013 that it would also be using Bing for its new Graph Search feature. Having an important Internet giant like Facebook as an ally can only mean increasing growth for Bing.

So now you can see why it is a good idea to have your website optimized for Bing and Yahoo as well as for Google searches if you are targeting the US.

Algorithms

Google, Bing and Yahoo all use algorithms to decide how a website will rank in it search results. Of course, these three search engine giants try not to let webmasters learn exactly how their algorithms figure out page rankings, but most SEO experts believe they have a general idea of what each search engine is looking for when it ranks websites.

Higher Word Count

One of the things that experts believe that Bing’s algorithm is looking for is web content that is over 300 words long. This probably stems from the widespread practice in the past of very short, keyword-filled but poorly written articles that some companies were putting on their pages to lure in traffic from Google’s search engines.

If your site is now laden with short blogs and articles, it is probably a good time to update it with fresh, longer pieces that will be more attractive to Bing.

Linking

SEO experts believe that Bing likes pages that include both inbound and outbound links, especially if you are linking to reputable websites. While Google pays attention mostly to links pointing to your site, Bing pays some attention to the sites you link to.

Don’t Overdo the Keywords

Bing suggests in its FAQs that website owners should concentrate on one or two keywords on their pages instead of trying to fill their pages with every keyword combination they can think of.

While Bing and Yahoo still have a way to go to catch Google, both search engines are starting to find their audiences. In the end, not optimizing your site to Bing and Yahoo could be a big mistake.

Jessica Bosari blogs in SEO at White Chalk Road Online Marketing Research.

Here then we will look at a few top tips that professional web designers know and understand, and that can help you to oversee the creation of a website that is more attractive, more functional and more professional looking.

White Space is Golden

Okay, so if you want to get literal white space is white. Still, in terms of how useful it is, including some white space in your web design may as well be rewarded with gold. Not only does this make your site seem less claustrophobic and cluttered, but it makes it easier to read and spend time on, and at the same time means that the items you want people to interact with gain more focus.

Work The F Zone

The F Zone is something that web designers understand regarding the psychology of your visitors – and that’s their tendency to look first along the top, then down the side, then across the middle (creating the ‘F’ shape). Understanding where your viewers will look first is very useful from a design perspective as it will allow you to choose precisely where to place the most important elements of your site such as the menu and the title.

The Devil is in the Details

Something all web designers know is that you can’t rush any element of your web design. If there’s one ugly icon or lazy banner then this will compromise the entire site and make the whole thing look much less professional. Spend your time on every detail and make every image as high definition and well-crafted as you can.

Use Mood Boards

Mood boards are a tool that many designers use when beginning a project. Essentially these are collages with the main idea being that you can use them to collect all the different influences you have on your design to outline a ‘creative direction’. These are great communication tools for a web designer and a client to use as they can give an ‘impression’ of the abstract style you’re looking at with your site without being too specific.

Images Face Inwards

Another little tip that only people in the industry know is that all faces in your images should face ‘inwards’ toward the text. This draws the eye in toward the content rather than leading it away, thereby giving it more focus.

Attached Images:

•  License: Creative Commons image source

Article by www.yarraweb.com, a Melbourne based web design company producing great designs for businesses all over Australia.

However, making an ad that you are going to use online is something that has to be done with a lot of care. One may think that you can easily get a marketing company to make one for you, but you also need to play a role in the making of such an ad if it is to have the effect that you want it to. This means that even if you are going to work with the best marketers you can find, you also need to have an idea of what will make a good ad. Some of the things you may need to consider when creating one include:

The purpose of the ad

Before you can pay for an online ad to be made, you need to figure out why you need it in the first place. This is very important since it will determine the kind of direction you take when making it. Of course, you may say that the point of making one is so as to increase your sales or make your company more well known. However, in order for such an ad to be more effective, you need to be a bit more detailed than this when coming up with your objectives.

For instance, if you are coming up with a new product that you are planning to introduce to the market soon, the goal of making an ad for it would be to notify people of the existence of such a product. This means that your ad will need to be done in such a manner that it will give information about what kind of product it is and what it can be used for. However, if you have a product that has been in the market for long and want to change its look or feel, you would need to do an ad to reflect this instead.

Consistency

One of the things that define a good ad is consistency. For instance, when you are thinking of making a series of ads for a product which you are going to use for online marketing, you may have a central theme that you want to impress on your viewers. For instance, when you make electronics of some kind, you may need to show them that the products you make are reliable. In such cases, making sure that all the ads you make bring this out clearly is going to be very important, and should form the basis of all the ads that you make. This way, your customers are going to equate reliability to your products, and this will encourage them to buy.

Use video as much as you can

These days, most people have access to high bandwidth internet, so the argument that you cannot use video for marketing due to bandwidth issues is not as relevant as it used to be a while back. In fact, video can be a very powerful tool for online marketing, as long as you use it properly. For one, you need to make sure that the videos you make have some value for the customers. You may also need to invest in a bit of creativity, since this is all you need to convert an ordinary video into a viral one. Once you have come up with a decent one, you would only need to promote it on sites such as YouTube and other social networking sites.

As you can see, the process of designing an online marketing campaign is not one where you can afford to take things lightly. In order to ensure that it is successful, you would need to make sure that you pay attention to the issues above. Once you have them sorted out, you will find that your marketing will be hugely successful without having to cost too much!

Allen Don is a leading Nashville web marketing honcho. His blogs give tips and advice, on how to make that perfect and attractive web ad, that attracts people, to increase the sales of a company.

The aim is to build the business through both online and offline marketing and ultimately to offer marketing services to website clients. That’s where yours truly comes in having accepted a position as Director of Online Marketing with Gymlink with particular focus on the new AusWebDesign business!

While I’ll miss my old colleagues and the clients at Magicdust, I’m excited by the challenge of being in a start-up environment and happy to be working with some equally great people at my new ‘home’.