Should you be advertising on LinkedIn? If so make sure you follow these tips.

So to make the most out of your LinkedIn ads follow these tried and tested marketing techniques below:

1. Be direct, use punchy headlines and hyperlink your call-to-action.

2. Apply traditional marketing principles by finding and focus on your target market first.

3. Don’t focus on the hard sell. Most LinkedIn users aren’t in a purchase frame of mind, so focusing on softer conversion actions will get more fruitful results.

4. Pick your advertising times carefully.

5. Constantly check your stats to make sure you are achieving a good return on investment.

6. Test continuously. If your LinkedIn ads don’t meet the network’s average click-through rate, which is 0.025%, understand they’re not meeting the mark.  Pause underperforming ads and launch new test variations in such situations.

7. Who is placing the advert? Decide if you are going to run your LinkedIn ads from business or personal account and what message this will send.

Do note that payment for your LinkedIn ad is made per click or per 1000 impressions. So your call-to-action is, as always, the most important point for your whole advertising campaign.

Is your business ready for the day that mobile internet usage overtakes desktop internet usage?

As shown by the graphs above (and these are real stats from some of our clients) this prediction look to be correct.

The problem is that most businesses aren’t ready for what this means and the negative impact the lack of a website designed for mobile phones could have on their website’s conversion rate, especially the potential drop in revenue and/or enquiries. This could also be made worse if their competition already has a website designed for mobile phones.

An example of the potential problem to a business is highlighted by the statistics from one of our clients before they implemented a mobile version of their website. This client promotes and sells events online and the conversion rate by people using a mobile phone was half that of the conversion rate for people using a computer. This could potentially mean that by 2014, if mobile website usage is at 50%, the revenue generated by their website could be 25% lower than what it is now!

The good news is that creating a mobile version of your website doesn’t have to expensive. In fact it is typically a smaller version of your existing website with a more simplistic design.

The most important thing when designing your mobile website, however, is to identify the key actions you want your customers to take (conversions). This is obviously the case when designing any website but because there is limited screen size to utilise for mobile phone web design you must really make sure that every step your potential client will take is carefully thought out. This must also then be analysed once the mobile version of the website is live.

So if you would like to talk to someone about analysing your website’s statistics to check mobile phone usage or you would like help in implementing a web design for mobile phones do contact us at: contact@varnmedia.co.uk.

Most companies measure how mane leads turn into customers but do you know exactly where all those leads came from?

The old adage that says ‘half of my marketing works, but I just don’t know which half’ is no longer valid for clients of Varn Media.

This is because we use a unique website call tracking software that can help you identify where all your sales or enquiries come from, down to the advert viewed in a magazine to the keyword searched on a search engine.

Also because our unique website call tracking software can also record the call, track repeat calls, record the time and length of call, allow you to register a sales/lead value and have Freephone or any local rate numbers you wish you really can identify where your sales or enquiries come from and why.

So whether you are an SME, large company or small agency you can make sure every pound of your advertising works for your business. Whether that is measuring your organic search or pay per click (PPC) campaign’s return on investment to understanding where to focus your magazine advertising or spend on websites like Yell.com.

So get the best return on investment for your advertising budget and use our website call tracking software now.

Make sure your email marketing doesn't get left behind as more and more potential clients read their emails on their mobile phone

According to Gartner, in 2008, 30 million smartphones were sold. It’s estimated for 2011 the figure was in excess of 300 million. Moreover, looking at our client’s statistics for their email newsletters, an average of 30% of people now read their emails on their mobile phones; with the iPhone being the most popular.

With these figures in mind here are 5 tips for creating a success mobile phone email marketing campaign:

1. Think about the ‘from’ address
Whatever the actual ‘from’ address that is being used make sure that the ‘descriptor’ (the word or phrase that shows at the far left of the address) is clear and easily recognisable. In fact in tests we have run with our clients has shown that using your name rather than company name can lead to higher read rates.

2. Have an engaging subject line
Strong relevant subject lines are key to gaining email opens. When sending emails to mobile phones make sure important and engaging words are at the beginning of the subject and that the line as a whole will trigger the reader’s interest and make them want to know more.

3. Get straight to the point
Use engaging mini marketing messages or short calls-to-action at the start of your email and make sure they are connected to the information in your email subject line. This will either encourage your readers to visit your website or read the rest of your email for more.

4. Optimise the design and structure
For traditional emailing to computers the width generally should not exceed 650 pixels but remember that most mobiles only have a viewing area of half that. Also when we have tested optimising email open rates for clients the newsletters the newsletters that looked most like a normal email, by that we mean no images and easy to read text, have performed best when the aim was to get a response or to get readers to click through to the company website.

5. Test Test Test
Although these general mobile email guidelines will work for almost all email campaigns do remember that what works for one industry won’t always work in another. So from what time of day you send the email to your layout and how many images you use keep testing to see what gets the best results for your campaign; whether that is email read rates or click-throughs to your website.

What ever you do please remember that a bad quality video is far more damaging than no video!

With the growing use of mobile and the ability to view videos on mobile devices, the impending domination of HTML5 and the global expansion of video-hosting sites, make sure video is at the forefront of your marketer’s mind.

Online video in the business space started, mainly, as talking heads played on a constant loop on corporate websites. Today, the channels videos are being watched and shared on are growing and diversifying all the time.

When the iPhone came to market about five years ago, the way people used mobile devices changed forever. Ever since then, the smartphone has changed the way in which businesses and marketers talk to current and potential customers.

With mobile internet usage tipping over one billion users in 2011, and with 80 new tablets announced at the Mobile World Congress at the start of 2011, mobile should be rapidly climbing to the top of any online marketers agenda. Due to this trend, more and more people are watching and sharing video through their mobile devices, and video will become an increasingly integral part of mobile marketing strategies.

Of course though, with every silver lining there is a cloud. Apple and its iOS mobile operating system still dominate the market, and many of the interesting and engaging animations developed in Flash are replaced with a black box when a user attempts to view them. The rise of HTML5, supported by all mobile operating systems, may, however, ensure that video continues to be a popular content sharing platform through all devices.

So what next for online video in online marketing? As social networking and use of social media channels becomes part of the thread of marketing strategies, producing and sharing videos will become increasingly important to organisations. YouTube will continue to grow, but as online video matures, more video-sharing sites such as Vimeo will be put solidly on the map. If companies succeed in cutting the main barriers to video production – time and money – then the potential is huge.

Remember in online marketing content is king and online video may well take the crown.

Companies spend a lot of time and money getting people to their website but don’t think enough about what the visitor will do when they get there, effectively wasting a large percentage of their advertising budget.  To help you improve the ROI of your advertising you need to improve your website’s conversion rate so we have put together a brief five step process to help you do this:

1. Decide your long-term goals
   Spend some time developing a strategy and how you will measure it’s success.
2. Analyse your current website traffic sources
   Get a detailed understanding of your online sales process; starting at where your visitors come from through to how they navigate your website and where the leave.  Identify the pages that have the largest exit rate and ask why.
3. Understand your potential clients
   You cannot guess this, you need to find out why your visitors aren’t buying or contacting you.  To do this you need to identify the usability problems and understand your visitors objectives through analysis of your websites stats and collection of the website users objections/opinions.
4. Know your market
   Take the time to understand your competitors and what their customers are saying online, social media tracking software can help with this.  Then write down your company’s strengths and why someone should choose you over a competitor.
5.  Experiment
   Using the key strengths from no. 4, and your research, decide the areas of your website that most need updating. Bigger changes may seem daunting but they can give you more profit and get a quicker and bigger return. You then need to carry out the usability and A/B testing to test which changes have the best impact on your sales and then implement the changes.

This method is cyclical so following the tests you should take a ‘step back’ and look at the whole online sales process again and decide which part of your website you want to target next.

One of Google’s software engineers, Amit Singhal, outlined in his blog post that “different searches have different freshness needs”, this has now officially confirmed the start of the new era of Google searches – the aim of giving Internet users what they really want.

So what’s changed?

1. Regularly occurring updates
   Google will now assume that the searcher is looking for the most up-to-date information. For example, the most recent industry statistics, as opposed to statistics from last year. It seems logical.
2. Hot topics
   The second area is concerned with recent events or hot. When someone is searching for a hot topic, Google will assume that they want the very latest information.
3. Review updates
   The third area is frequent updates. This affects reviews of products and services rather than more news stories. It is now going to be more important than ever to keep an eye on reviews, as they will appear in general search results.

Google hopes this new update will make the search engine more intuitive which may mean that for searches on recent events or news Google may now display top results which may have only been created a few minutes before they show.

In order for businesses to maintain or increase their rankings, websites must host fresh and relevant content and use current industry trends for Google to pick up on and display.

The new shake-up is said to affect 35% of searches; that’s nearly three times as many as Google’s previous Panda update.

Refresh your search marketing
So how can we translate this into practice? The best way websites to benefit from this update is to jump on the hot topics aspect of the update, by having an awareness of and speaking about the latest trends and issues in your industry.

Make sure your business can offer any insightful input into its marketplace
Get uploading content and ensure you use keywords so content can be identified by Google. An efficient and easy way to have sight of trending topics within your industry is to keep an eye on Twitter and then survey industry media sites and competitor comments.

Companies are regularly updating websites with press releases, but can you offer more industry input, in the form of points of view? Setting up feeds to keep on top of the very latest industry news as it breaks will provide daily material to comment on, whether it’s about the market, your competitors or comments on general trends. This only need take 15 – 30 minutes a day and can have a profound impact on your online presence.

It’s crucial that not only is the content new and relevant to your industry, but that it is not duplicated content from elsewhere, hence an emphasis on ‘freshness’ rather than ‘newness’.

Also we are seeing more integrated results, with maps, reviews and paid search creating a more blended Google results page than what we were once familiar with. Local results are also appearing in both local and organic searches – this is another area that you need to make sure they are on top of. This means that businesses need to have all aspects of search covered; having a listing on Google maps, images associated with trending issues and correctly tagging multimedia.

At the end of the day if you or your company are an expert in your field then let the world know about it and Google will help promote you.  If you are just trying to cheat the system Google will eventually find you and drop you from it’s listings.  Google’s aim is always to show the most relevant information and catch and remove websites that are spamming the internet – so be careful.

Failing to respect your recipients’ in boxes and sending poorly thought out e-mail newsletters or campaigns can cause more damage than they’re worth for the tiny number of sales it may achieve. If you aren’t doing it properly it is better to not do it at all.

Here are five common mistakes to watch out for:

1. Sending without consent
   This isn’t just bad for business, it’s actually illegal. If a customer gives you their e-mail address during the course of a sale, or if they haven’t opted out of receiving e-mails when given the option, then you’re fine. Of course, you should still treat their inbox with respect.
2. Contacting for no reason
   Consumers do not care if the head of marketing wants a weekly marketing e-mail; they only want interesting and useful information reaching their inbox. If you have nothing new to offer since the last time you e-mailed don’t.It can be different if your leads have signed up to a regular newsletter, although you will have to work hard to keep subscribers. Decide what the point of your newsletter is and stick to it; don’t just send half-hearted sales pitches with no benefit to the recipient.
3. Sending inappropriate content
   Maybe you’re a retailer and this week you have a great deal for families. So, you package it all up with a load of other family-friendly content and send it out to your list. Unfortunately, because you’ve failed to target only families, you end up sending it to a bunch of single people and child-free couples. All these prospective customers feel like your content isn’t relevant and unsubscribe.
4. Offering poor content
   No matter how good your deals if your copy is badly written and your layout is poor it’s not going to get the click through rates you need and it won’t make your business look good. It doesn’t matter if you’re offering half-price tickets to the Wimbledon final; if your copy is riddled with typos and poor grammar, you won’t get the response you’re expecting. What’s more, you’ll damage recipients’ perception of your company.It’s such a little thing to get right, but get it wrong and your e-mail marketing will fail to sell and alienate your potential customers.
5. Making it hard to unsubscribe
   Perhaps a potential client receives your e-mail and it doesn’t annoy them, but they just don’t want to receive any more of them. They scan your message but can’t see an unsubscribe button, or worse; they click the unsubscribe button but have to log into your site or navigate a complex form in order to complete the process.Make unsubscribing easy or you’ll turn a disinterested recipient into a downright hostile one, effectively ensuring you’ll never make a future sale with that customer

Conclusion
It’s important to ensure you’re making the most of your e-mail marketing campaigns and that all your online marketing is measured and integrated to work together.

For example, you may find that the non-converting paid search keyword, which you just stopped bidding on, is actually generating e-mail subscribers to potential customers at an early research stage of the cycle affecting sales further down the line. You need to track each stage of the buying cycle and measure all of the possible the goals and actions you want people to make in their user experience; not just the main goals.

We would suggest that if you want to maximise the revenue generated from your website that your website’s visitors should design your website so that it works for them and therefore you.

With this in mind we have come up with this list of five potential problems to watch out for when designing your website’s pages and the fixes for them:

1. Lack of Credibility and Trust
   Problem: The visitor doesn’t know who you are therefore the visitor doesn’t know who you are so why should they trust you and buy from you?
   Fix: Borrow and Solidify Trust – Feature endorsements and trust symbols prominently, use client logos/brands/media coverage as “badges” and remove anxiety with generous policies and guarantees
2. Unclear Call to action
   Problem: The visitor is unclear as to what to do on the page therefore they’ll spend precious time deciding what to do and get confused and frustrated
   Fix: Strengthen your call-to-action (cta):  Making sure the cta is clear and draws the eye and that the cta should be “above-the-fold”
3. Visual Distractions
   Problem: The visitor doesn’t know where to look and therefore gets confused and annoyed because there is no clear separation of content and navigation
   Fix: Make it boring – Don’t compete with the call-to-action, review/remove colourful page elements and animation/motion and replace generic photos with specific relevant images
4. Not Keeping Your Promises
   Problem: The advert mentions a service or offer that is not easily found on the landing page. Therefore the Potential clients feels mislead because this page is not what they expected and they disconnect and leave.
   Fix: Keep Your Promises: Repeat the ad-text or keywords on your landing page and provide clear access to information from the advert
5. Too Much Text
   Problem: Do you really expect the visitor to read all of the text on your landing page? Visitors have short attention spans don’t use it all up on over complicated explanations otherwise the visitor may be daunted by all the text and click the ‘back’ button.
   Fix: Shorten Your Text: Put important information first, use short bullet point lists and ruthlessly edit and shorten your text