How to Get Online Reviews the Right Way

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Is it okay to ask for online reviews?

Most business owners are also facing this challenge. Either they have no idea how to get reviews the right way or are afraid that people will be reluctant in replying back. So, to answer the question: it’s just a matter of knowing what is allowed and what is not. If it’s a third-party review site, you have to be familiar with its terms and conditions. For example:

Yelp: discourages businesses from soliciting customer reviews as it will taint the site’s integrity

Google: encourages reviews for business

In this case, if you’re focusing on Google, then ask your customers to leave feedback on Google—but, still be careful when doing so. For Yelp, you can have a link to your Yelp page (don’t just say “leave us a review on “) It might seem a bit weird to ask for reviews, but it is harder for your business to compete if you don't have any reviews at all. You won’t get reviews until you ask for them.

But how?

You can do this by asking your satisfied customers for a review without pissing them off. For sure, if your customers had a great experience with your business, they'll be willing to share it online.

10 Ways to Ask for Online Business Reviews

1. Add a link on your website to the review page or review site you choose. You can say something like “Your feedback is important to us” or “Write us a review!”

2. Add the link of a review site at the bottom of your email newsletter. There's a huge chance that customers who have signed up for your newsletter have a good relationship with your business.

3. Add the link of the review site in the signature line of your outgoing email.

4. At the bottom of your cash register receipts or online transaction receipts, tell customers where they can leave their feedback.

5. Create a page on your website with links to review sites. Encourage people to visit these pages by saying, “Check out what people are saying about us! Don't forget to leave your feedback.”

6. Email your newsletter subscribers about a specific topic. For example, you can ask them to take a simple poll about your newest offerings.

7. Use the Facebook reviews tab for business pages. Make this tab appear on your homepage newsfeed to make it more visible and encourage reviews. Also, make it more engaging by asking them to share their favorite products.

8. Write a blog post about positive reviews. Let your customers know that you value their feedback. Be sure to share this blog post across your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages.

9. Craft a useful customer survey. It can be a short “slider” survey that appears as customers browse your site, or a longer, traditional survey. Try using these platforms:

Qualaroo: where you can conduct a brief poll or ask simple questions

Survey Monkey: where you can do full-length surveys and ask any type of question

10. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool. If you receive an email, a tweet on your Twitter page, or a good comment on your Facebook post, then save it. Ask permission if you can publish it in your website’s testimonial or review page. This surely encourages more customers to share their feedback as well.

Customer reviews are an important asset to your business. If you believe that your business deserves good publicity, then you won’t have to fear inviting customers to share their feedback. Keep this important tip in mind: Don’t simply ask for good reviews—ask for honest reviews instead.

13 Tips to Improve Search Engine Rankings

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By Maurice Ondoy

Search engines are looking for the right combination of qualifications in order to give them first page rankings and we’re here to show to how to achieve that.

Tip 1.

What’s most important is that you write your posts specifically for the audience that you are targeting. While doing this it’s important to be mindful that you don’t compromise what the search engine algorithms need in order to find your content. What’s the point of having great SEO rankings if the content that you are writing doesn’t convert, right?

Tip 2.

Previously, keyword density had been a major factor that dictated whether your content would be able to reach the first page of search engines. Now, search engines such as Google, Bing  or Yahoo favor a specific density that differ from each other. Yes, it is significant to utilize keywords that are relevant to what your content is all about, however, keep in mind that you have to use those keywords naturally. Putting excessive keywords into sentences or paragraphs where they do not really belong is no good. It harms content entirely actually. Thus, in order for you to perfectly use this strategy, use the keywords and forget about the detailed predefined ratio.

Tip 3.

Utilize grammatical variations, synonyms as well as related keywords. Search engines such as Google use LSI or Latex Semantic Indexing to match the intentions of the individual doing the search from its search results. Using these three will give your content more relevance without using excess keywords. Moreover, this is also a very effective strategy to target different search queries.

Tip 4.

Write content that is top-quality, in-depth as well as long. Usually, results that are on the first ranking page of Google contain 2,000 words on average. Also, articles that get shared frequently are ones that are in-depth , so, write content that will provide real insight. Do not write longer content for the sake of just writing a long post, because it won’t help. Write longer because you have have expertise in the given subject and are able to go in depth while still keeping things concise.

Tip 5.

Utilize Long Tail strategy. Ranking “fat” and “big” keywords in search engines requires huge effort. Thus, long tail phrases have smaller search volumes and will also result in higher quality traffic to your website because the visitors are more motivated.

Tip 6.

Answer your prospects questions. Prospects will type questions into search engines if they want to know more about your products and services. Providing answers to all of their possible questions ahead of time will give your content more credibility, and in return, generate more visits to your site. Providing your prospects with better answers will help you win the competition, meaning they will buy from you. Also, answering questions is one great way of taking advantage of the long tail.

Tip 7.

Make sure that your content get noticed and they’re shared. Traffic and links are what you get when your content gets shared, and the more traffic you get, the more popular and relevant it will seem to search engines such as Google. Make an effort to get your content noticed — – via relevant blogs, forums, newsletters, influencers and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn among others.

Tip 8.

Set up your Google + profile, add your authorship markup, form your content ownership, build AuthorRank, be active. Following these steps will help boost the authority of the content that you produce — – regardless of where they get posted.

Tip 9.

Do not forget title tags and snippets. In categorizing individual web pages, Google looks at the title tag. Furthermore, in the SERPs, “snippet” (Meta description) and title tag combination is what your prospects will be going to see. Including keywords and making natural tag and snippet combinations will motivate your prospects to click. CTR, or Click-through Rate, is definitely a ranking factor and the more clicks that you get from the SERPs, the better the outcome.

Tip 10.

Never engage in Keyword Stuffing. Use keywords where they might appear natural. As mentioned above, keyword stuffing does more damage than help when it comes to helping you rank up on Google. Make your content appear natural as much as possible.

Tip 11.

Link text over optimization is a no-no. This used to be an effective technique in improving rankings, but Google has become aware of these “link schemes” and they will penalize you if you do this. Keep it natural with naked URLs, long tail phrases and branded URLs.

Tip 12.

Keep in mind the ALT text in your images. Today, images seem to play a bigger role in helping your content or website in general rank up on search engines. A great idea is to use original but relevant images, and include keywords in its ALT text. Use the copy from the title tag as your image’s ALT text. For Google to be able to “read” it, keep it snappy and short. Furthermore, including a keyword that is relevant to the image is also a good idea.

Tip 13.

For inspiration purposes, utilize Google Suggest and ubersuggest.com to find and combine additional keywords, and Google trends to see changes in the search behavior as well as its seasonal spikes.

How Old Spice Rebranded and Saved Their Business

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Old Spice is a fairly old brand, founded back in the days of the Golden Generation (1937, to be specific). Their earliest ads positioned their products as a minor luxury for America’s GIs —manly and tasteful, with just a dash of pragmatic exoticism. That initial approach was a success. It helped Old Spice sell significant quantities of the sorts of aftershave your badass grandpa wore when he took his girl to the drive-in for date night after coming back from the war. Of course, times change. By the time the 70’s were about to begin, the brand shifted to appeal to the new young man: not the confident mans man, but the stereotypically insecure boy in dire need of assistance and assurance.

From then until Old Spice’s acquisition by P&G in 1990, you might say their marketing aged with that final cohort. They became known for a middle-aged, middle-class sort of product — something neither sexy nor distasteful, purchased by the sort of men who no longer held an interest in adopting new shopping habits. To be successful, P&G knew they had to re-orient the line to appeal to a new, younger demographic — to people like me.

I remember my first encounter with the brand distinctly. It was 2003. I was fourteen, and a newborn convert to the disproportionate use of aftershave in my pursuit of the ladies. Mercifully, a female friend of mine took her time to explain three very important points to me before I wasted mine entirely:

  1. A little goes a long way.
  2. Aftershave is not cologne.
  3. “Old Spice is what you wear to a family reunion, when you want to smell pleasant but sexually unattractive.”

I’d suggest that her thinking on those fronts fairly represented the majority opinion of the time. But, behind the scenes, things at Old Spice were beginning to change — finally. The primary driver of that belated wake-up was the unexpected success of Unilever’s “Axe” body spray products which I’ve written about before. Foul as they were, they were popular. Boys who had only ever worn (if at all) the deodorant that their moms optimistically snuck into their backpacks suddenly developed a preference, fueled by ambitious dreams of ensuring their own “Axe effect” experience.

P&G had to respond. And they did, with typical efficiency. By 2004, they had reclaimed pole position in the US deodorant market at 20% of the billion-dollar pool, followed closely by Gillette’s “Right Guard” line (19%) and Axe (16%).

How they went about that comeback, however, had little to do with the famous advertising campaign we often associate with them.

Their strategy was simple:

  • Rather than targeting adult men, they went after teens and tweeners who had yet to declare a loyalty.
  • They handed out free samples of their “High Endurance” sub-brand to kids in 90% of the 5th-grade health classes in America.
  • They focused on the sports crowd, suggesting a correlation between their products and athletic prowess.
  • They went grassroots, sending reps with promo swag to high-school games and skate-park events.
  • They expanded their product lines to include a suite of washes and sprays.

They also brought in a new marketing firm in 2006: Wieden and Kennedy. Their mandate was to solidify Old Spice’s newfound hooks in the Millennial generation. One of the first big campaigns out of that partnership was called “Swagger” (2008). It was cheeky, but it was a hit. Combined with the outcome of their other efforts, Old Spice owned 25% of the market by early 2009. Also around this time, driven by W&K’s insistence, Old Spice began focusing on being better rather than just cooler. A big part of this was tackling “residue” issues, which they solved by porting the superior molecules of their dry solid varieties into traditional formulations that didn’t leave the dreaded “bar code” stains. Customers loved the result. But it wasn’t the sort of change that spawned water cooler conversations. Enter 2010, the year of the “Man You Wish Your Man Could Smell Like”. This was the campaign we all remember, that we all still point to, that we all agree changed the brand’s trajectory. 100 million YouTube views, an Emmy, a Cannes Lion award, and 1.2 billion earned media impressions later, there was a new favorite marketing campaign that everyone was eager to write about.

But here’s the rub: did that campaign actually translate to a meaningful lift in revenue?

Most of the “studies” will say yes, relying on the same oft-quoted stat: an alleged 107% sales increase.

But that metric (itself an estimate) is wildly misleading. It represents the sales spike from the month after the campaign began in earnest (the first ad was featured during the Super Bowl in early February, but a follow-up series of 186 unique response videos blitzed social media over a 3-day period in June).

Any campaign that size is likely to produce a significant month-long spike. But what about the long-term?

As of the most recent numbers I could find (November ’15), Old Spice now has a 28% share of a $1.4bn US deodorant market. That’s an increase of about 3% over a six-year period.

But here’s the thing: that share was expected to go up anyway. As those 11 year-olds they targeted in 2003 became young adults, organic growth was expected to follow. (Moms tend to buy what’s on sale, not what their teen actually prefers. As those teen age and gain their own economy agency, brand sales go up.) Even if we could contribute 2/3rds of that 3% jump to their 2010 ad campaign (almost certainly too high an estimate), that still pales to the earlier jump of almost 10%  they achieved from 1999 to 2008 — which is the real unsung hero of the story.

The resurgence did come from a re-branding, but not from the advertising we saw in 2010.

Was the advertising campaign iconic? Yes. Did it add value? Absolutely, but contrary to what many, including myself, may have thought, it had little to do with their overall success.

3 Reasons Your Business Should be Using Instagram

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instagram

Facebook and Twitter (though in decline)  have been the standard for online networking years. The demographics of social networking platforms are beginning to be stirred up as new stages develop. What’s more, as Facebook and Twitter  have begun to put more focus on paid targeted promotions, business entities are have a harder time getting an organic presentation on platform causing these organization to look to other platforms to generate leads and push out authentic content. One of these is Instagram

In an especially telling noteworthy issue, in September 2015 Instagram surpassed Twitter in number of users, making it the second most utilized networking platform behind Facebook, who owns it. Twitter is not third with 340 million users which are in steady decline as of late. Those sorts of numbers are difficult to disregard and this dazzling development is part of the reason that individuals are beginning to eye Instagram as the premiere spot to advertise their business offerings.

1. Instagram is continuing to displace its rivals

Throughout recent years, the development of mobile-friendly platforms has been paramount when considering social patterns, and we’ve at long last come to the tipping point. In 2015, we finally reached the point where people’s time spent on mobile media, whether it be phones or tablets, was essentially higher than that spend on desktop. Portable is no longer just a growing entity. It has turned into the essential way that clients are getting to online substance.

This gives Instagram promoting a gigantic preference point over its main three rivals, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Unlike its rivals, Instagram was initially imagined as a mobile application and not a desktop based entity. And despite other networking heavyweights putting gargantuan dollar quantities into their portable applications’ development, it’s troublesome for these stages to remain as consistent, organic and locally relevant. While these applications continue to hash it out with unlimited upgrades to more smoothly integrate various functions, pages, and menus, Instagram’s straightforward, stripped-down versatile interface makes it simple and instinctive for its varying clientele .

2. Organizations can market themselves through visual narrating.

It’s said that a photo is worth 1000 words and there is not a single place where this adage is more true than Instagram. Being a visual based platform serves a variety of functions, but none more so, from an advertising and marketing standpoint, than to tell a story without using words. The object of the marketing game, after all, is to convey a memorable idea or image that potential leads can relate to. In this respect visual content is king and will continue to trounce superfluous wording when it comes to memory recall and by extension, branding, for all time.

3. More posts are seen on Instagram

It’s been verified that posts published by you on Instagram are far more likely to be seen by your followers than on Facebook or Twitter. Often times content looks like it’s  in pole position in the news feed on Facebook, but what a lot of people don’t know is that Facebook’s algorithm tailors peoples’ feeds according to their interactions, search histories, and more. Twitter on the other hand, keeps posts in chronological order,  but due to declining health as a social platform remains at most a back up plan. 

Growing your Online Business: Top 3 Lead Generation Strategies You’ll Need

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Putting up your own online business is never as easy as 1, 2, and 3. If your ambition is to run a successful business and grow it to the next level, you’ll find yourself  working day in day out to reach your goal. It’s a tougher job across the board, but at the core, the most crucial part to help your business to grow and flourish comes down to finding potential clients and converting them. This process of conversion into actual customers is where the power of lead generation comes into play.

Definition

In marketing, it is the generation of interest or inquiry of consumers into products or services that a business offers. Consumers, or more simply put, leads, can be created for a variety of purposes such as e-newsletter list acquisition, list building or for sales leads purposes. It is all about drawing in or attracting the right prospects, and getting them in touch with you and vice versa. To get them attracted, below are the top 3 strategies that you can utilize.

Strategy 1. Content That is Fresh

It is vital to keep your content updated and fresh. You ought to consistently be adding new content to your website, whether it be blog entries, upgraded information or even design changes. Envision strolling into a store in a shopping center and seeing that the majority of the items being displayed there were dusty, the edges of the room had spider webs and the sales representative didn’t exactly look congenial. You most likely wouldn’t have any desire to purchase anything there, would you? Truth be told, you’d be out of there before a sales representative had the opportunity to inquire as to whether you need anything. The same situation is valid for your website. Potential clients need to realize that you think about what you’re putting forth.

Strategy 2. Email Lists

Email addresses are one of the most ideal approaches to create leads. The potential client has offered their email address with a specific end goal to get more data about the product or service that your business offers. You now have the chance to transform them into actual clients. Email is the most ordinarily utilized lead generation form, so it must be done well.

Strategy 3. Social Media

Social media’s viral nature means it is a hotbed for linking with new leads. By persistently captivating your existing clients with high quality content you will increase new leads more naturally. On the chance that you can make content that is engaging, that your customers will forward to friends and family members, then you’re on the right track. You are on your way to effectively generating new leads.

The Top 3 Content Marketing Metrics to Pay Attention to

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When it comes to content marketing, there is a long list of metrics that marketing professionals pay attention to in order to determine the best course of action moving forward, but often times different metrics take precedent depending on the business. That being the case, when asking marketers what the most important metrics are concerning content marketing, you’ll receive a variety of answers. This is all well and good. Different product and service avenues are going to be more focused on different metrics, but despite that there are three content marketing metrics that underscore every business and are the topic of discussion in today’s blog. That shouldn’t imply that we should track just these metrics exclusively, but focusing on these  will provide a foundation for you to draw conclusions from more advanced metrics and achieve tangible results.

Monthly Sessions

This marketing metric is one of the simplest to understand which indicates how well your business is doing at the top of the funnel concerning things such as social media, PPC, and other things that drive traffic to your website. Stemming from this metric are plenty of other specific metrics that measure more detailed facets of website traffic such as number of organic sessions vs. referenced sessions,  session length, landing pages and time spend on these pages, etc., but highlighting and understanding monthly sessions in general provides a quick overview of your website traffic and insight into potential leads.

Conversion Rate

This is the bread and butter of any digital marketing campaign: converting complete strangers into devoted customers. The number of conversions is the end all be all metric when it comes to determining success. Therefore, tracking this number is crucial when is comes to reaching a concrete target such as a goal number of leads or customers and for determining trends in your marketing performance. When you track the conversion rate you’re able to compare sessions and conversions more objectively.

The One Metric That Matters

The first two metrics covered are like the bumpers in a bowling alley, guiding every marketer to their objective goal and making the process easier. They clearly indicate if you’re on track to hit business goals like monthly recurring revenue or customer growth. This third metric, the one metric that matters, is how you improve the first two metrics. Granted, it’s more of a concept than a concrete metric but it’s important to include because as was previously mentioned, metrics vary from marketer to marketer according to the business and transform over time.

The concept of the One Metric That Matters, coined by Alistair Croll, means focusing on the most important metric at a given moment. In his original explanation of the term, he presents it in the context of a company as a whole, but the idea can be tailored to fit marketing specifically very easily. If you take a look at your website’s metrics right now what would you see that needs work? Does any one metric stand out more than another in the context of needing to be modified or having its game upped? Generally speaking, the metric that matters at a given moment should be one that fits the following three criteria:

1. It will have the most impact on your overall company objective
2. It has the most potential for improvement
3. You have means to improve it now.