Following is a list of the hot trends going on in the digital marketing industry which business's are subscribing to today. WSI is a full-service provider of digital marketing tools and techniques, and can help businesses of all sizes with any of these opportunities: 

1. Mobile Websites. With the growth of the smart phone technology, all businesses should have a mobile version of their website and it needs to be optimized like a regular website so that it is highly visible to the search engines for your important keywords.


2. Mobile Advertising. Same as paid marketing or pay-per-click, only these textual ads are only displayed when the searcher is using a mobile device, and are linked to specific pages on your mobile website.


3. Mobile Text Messaging. Similar to sending out email newsletters, people are able to “opt-in” to your mobile text messaging campaign to receive information from you about special product promotions, event notifications, coupon downloads, and other opportunities that are only available via their mobile device. You have complete control of your campaigns through the broadcasting tool that we provide.
     
4. 5-star Online Customer Reviews. Putting these on a website and integrating them on to your business Facebook page is a great way to increase conversions. Site visitors are able to visually see how well a company is servicing their customers, and then more quickly make a decision to become a new customer. According to a study, 88% of all online reviews in the U.S. are positive ones, and 70% of consumers trust other consumers opinions, while only 27% trust what the experts have to say.
    
5. Blog posting, article and press release syndication. Integrating a blog with a business’s website does two things. First, it is a great way to communicate with existing or potential customers. Second, the search engines consider it fresh content, and will visit and index more areas of your website because of that. Many of my clients use our professional copywriting service, letting us write the blog posts, post them to the business blog, and then submit them to several online article or press release directories where they will also be picked up by other websites and search engines, and syndicated across the internet. We also hook up the business blog with your Facebook business page if one exists where the post can also syndicate across the social networks.
     
6. Search Engine Marketing. Paid search or pay-per-click advertising and organic search engine optimization is still the number one technique for drawing geo-targeted traffic to a business’s website:
   
   
   1. Organic search engine optimization includes on-page and off-page techniques. Detailed documents that explain what is all included will be provided upon request.
   
   
   2. Pay-per-click targeted search engine advertising is the largest advertising mechanism in the world. Advertising can be locally, regionally or nationally targeted.
             
   
   
7. Display Advertising & Remarketing – A “push” form of advertising also known as “banner” advertising. Your banner ad is displayed on other websites who have opted in to Google’s (or other search engine’s) affiliate program. You pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. Remarketing is a technique where your ads are displayed when people who have previously visited your website through your pay per click campaign visit an affiliate’s website. These ads can be static photo images, or include audio and video.


8. Microsites – small 2-3 page websites organically optimized for specific geographical areas. Great method for local targeting. For example, an auto repair shop may want to target people living in Madison, Fitchburg, Middleton, and Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. It is very difficult to optimize the main website for each of those locations, so the best method is to optimize the main site for the primary target area, and then create microsites and optimize those for the other locations.


9. Click to Call – Conversion tactic used successfully to convert website visitors into leads. Visitors simply click on an image displayed on your website, and the system then connects them to your business. Call lists can be set up so that calls follow the list, and then go to a recorded voice mail if nobody answers.


10. Groupon – Discount online selling to specific geographically targeted audiences, Groupon is the fastest growing company in the world. You negotiate a discounted price with Groupon who then sells your product via broadcast emails they send to their subscribers on a daily basis, and then they collect payment, keep their fee, and then write you a check for the balance.
    
    
11. Email Marketing – Monthly or quarterly newsletters, event notifications, special promotions, etc. This is a great way to stay in touch and nurture existing customers, as well as market to potential clients who subscribe to the newsletter through the business’s website. We offer a full-service option through WSI Integrated Ad Solutions (Inbox 360) as well as services through our partnership with Constant Contact.
    
    
12. Social Media Marketing. This is used in two ways. First, it is a great way to stay or get in touch with existing or potential customers, to monitor what they might be saying about your business, and be a part of that conversation. Second, the social media networks are a good place to market to potential customers without trying to sell them on your business. Use of Facebook and LinkedIn ads, additional pay-per-click advertising methods, are growing quickly. We offer social media services including the very basic setup to a fully managed social marketing strategy.
    

Owners of all size businesses should have an online marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the online environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities or have us review your existing online plan, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies for many years. If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Five minutes. That's roughly the amount of time it takes for an online marketing partner or search engine optimization specialist to recommend that a small business launch a blog to go with their new website. There's a good reason that this advice has become to the web design industry what brushing your teeth and eating an apple a day is to everyone else: It's a great way to bring some fresh attention to your business on the Internet, and to keep the search engines interested in your website as well!

Unfortunately, a lot of companies – both large and small – are going about it the wrong way.

Why? Because too many blogs feature content and articles that are keyword-rich, but also completely generic. In other words, they use a whole lot of words to essentially say nothing. To get real marketing value out of your posts, you have to attract customer interest. That means concentrating on topics that matter to your readers, and going beyond the standard pleasantries of "we work hard" or "we have lower prices" to keep them coming back.

To help you out, here are a few quick ideas for turning your blog into something more than a placeholder for keywords:

Do less writing and more listening. Is there something that most of your buyers have on their mind? If so, make that topic a focus of your blog for a while. Tapping into what's already hot can be a great way to attract web traffic, especially if you can lend a new or different perspective.

Get ahead of the curve. On the same note, you can probably anticipate what your customers are likely to be discussing weeks or months from now. If you see a hot topic coming (and it isn’t confidential), be the first one to bring it up and explain it thoroughly.

Ask for opinions. Good blogging isn't always about what you think, but about what your customers have to say as well. Use your company's blog as a place to bring up interesting topics and watch the responses come in. You won't just get great feedback about your blogging business, but you might even come up with some strong ideas for future posts.

Don't be afraid of controversy. There's nothing wrong with taking an unconventional view, so long as you can back it up with some observations or statistics. Two words of caution apply, however: Don't stir up trouble just for the sake of starting arguments, and stay away from hot button topics like religion or politics unless they happen to coincide with your business – it's not worth it to anger existing and potential buyers.

Turn a great idea into a series. There's no rule that says you have to give away everything you know all at once. If you have a juicy topic that you can write about in detail, why not turn it into a series? Doing so will keep your blog stocked for weeks to come, and give readers a reason to come back time and time again.

Remember the keywords! I mentioned earlier that blogs shouldn't be all about keywords and meaningless information. But don't get me wrong, embedding the right keywords in your blog is still very important because the search engines are going to see your blog as another page on your website, and they are going to index it based on the theme of the blog post. This is just one more way to increase your brand visibility across the web.

And finally, keep the search engines happy. Always remember that what search engines are looking for is fresh, relevant content to share with their customers, who are the folks searching for information through their search engines. Posting to your blog on at least a weekly basis is going to bring those search engines to your web site more frequently, and your business will end up getting listed on the search engine results pages more often than your competitors who aren't yet in the "blogosphere". 

A lot of business owners still aren't blogging because they aren't aware of all of the benefits their business would gain by having one. Or they think that it will just take too much of their time. But the benefits far outweigh those issues. So get out there and start blogging!

You should consider integrating a blog and blog posting process with your website. If you're not quite sure where to start, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally integrated website blogs for many years. If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

As you've probably already figured out by now, ignoring social media sites won't make them go away. Facebook alone now boasts more than 500 million members, with Twitter and LinkedIn catching up very quickly. The men and women who log onto them – often daily – aren't just looking to chat with friends and see photos from summer vacations. They are also checking up on potential vendors, asking for product recommendations, and otherwise using them like search engines that can help them decide what and where to buy.

And if your company isn't participating, then it's probably already costing you a lot of money in the form of sales you will never see.

With that in mind, one of the things we like to remind business owners of is the need to actively play the game; you can't afford to ignore these sites, and the potential customers they represent. But as strong as those reasons, and the numbers behind them, actually are, there is actually one thing that's much worse than neglecting to try social media marketing in the first place: only giving it half an effort.

You can always tell the companies and owners who are phoning it in when it comes to social media. They have half-completed profiles, make posts that have all the spice and appeal of soggy bread, and use every available opportunity to bring the conversation back around to what they sell.

You don't want to be one of those people, and your customers don't want you to be one, either. To really make your mark on Twitter and Facebook, you need to create custom pages that reinforce your company's brand and personality.

Post consistently, but not for the sake of posting consistently. Yes, it's important to update your social profiles on a regular basis, but don't use that as an excuse to post something just for the sake of posting it. Take the extra time and creativity to find something that interests you and your customers. Otherwise, you are only wasting everyone's time.

Show off a bit of personality now and then. Not everything has to be about your company or industry. Mention your pets, your kids, or how that marathon training is going. Anything that makes you seem like more of a person and less of a faceless organization can only help your customer relationships.

Ask yourself the one key question that matters most. Following the golden rule of social media marketing is a simple as asking yourself, "Would I take the time to look at this?" If you would, then what you’ve written has value; if you wouldn't, then go back to the drawing board and start over again.

Work to develop friends and contacts first, customers second. For most parts of your online marketing plan, few things are as important as the metrics. Study the numbers closely enough, and you can be sure the new business will start flowing in. Social media marketing is a little bit different; while you can monitor how many friends or followers you have, what really matters is attention, not web traffic. Do what you can to be interesting and engaging, and you can be sure that the bottom-line business results will catch up later.

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

At first glance, having another company manage your social media marketing might seem like a strange idea; after all, isn't the point to get more up close and personal with your customers? Maybe, but a trained creative team – one that knows your company's online and offline marketing goals as well as you do – might be able to take your campaigns to places you couldn't.

In a nutshell, that's why so many business owners are turning to professional web design and online marketing companies to handle their social communications. It isn't that they couldn't do it themselves, but that they couldn't do it as well, or simply don't have time. Often, that's a pretty good trade-off when you consider that using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can help you to bring in hundreds of new customers every year… but only if you manage them the right way.

Here are three good reasons to consider outsourcing your social media marketing, and make more money for your business in the process:

A good social media marketing team can keep you posting more frequently. If you were to trace the path of a typical small business social media marketing campaign, it would go something like this: Business owner reads about the hundreds of millions of people who are using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to find customers, and decides to start some profiles and participate. This goes well for a couple of weeks, until they discover that they still have too many other time commitments, and the whole thing falls apart.

It's no good trying to find customers on Facebook if you only have time to log in once every other month or so. Leave it to the professionals who have time to write and post – social media marketing is one of those areas where consistency counts for a lot.

A writer who knows your business and customers can keep you on topic. In the same way, too many otherwise professional men and women fall into the trap of constantly telling the world about their personal thoughts and feelings, when they should be finding interesting things to say about their products and industry. Because a good social media copywriter can get to know you and your business, but not everything that's going on in your personal life, they can help you keep your posts and content on message and with the right tone.

You might end up with better social media content, and a much more effective campaign. In the end, your success in finding customers through social media sites is going to depend very largely on your ability to spread interesting articles, photos, and videos, and to do it consistently. With quality content, readers and potential customers always have a reason to come back to your website or social profile; without them, you're just another vendor trying to sell something online. If you don't have the time or creative ambition to come up with attention-grabbing content, then do yourself and your business a favor and delegate the project to someone who does.

Social media is a great way to express your thoughts and feelings, not to mention keep up with friends and acquaintances. But if your Madison area business decides to outsource your social media marketing, it can be an even better way to generate leads and find new business.
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Looking For A Turn-Key Solution To Manage Your Online Reputation & Leverage Social Media?

 

There are two things business owners and marketing managers need to know about promoting their companies over the Internet: First, that it's now the number one place that customers look for products, recommendations, and even business-to-business vendors. The second thing they have to understand is that there isn't any single way to reach those potential buyers.

For years, companies could find a steady source of new revenue simply by optimizing their sites for the major search engines, executing and refining a profitable pay per click advertising campaign, or circulating articles and press releases that brought attention to their websites. Those are all still good ideas, of course, but none of them is strong enough, on its own, to succeed anymore. The web has simply become too competitive.

That's easy enough to understand, but it doesn't make your job any simpler. There was hardly enough time to add regular posts to the company blog before, and now with trends like social media, online video marketing and  mobile marketing taking up more attention, the whole task of promoting your company online can seem like too much work to even attempt.

There are other alternatives to burying your head in the sand, however. With WSI's ReachCast service, it's becoming easier than ever for organizations of any size to add new, high-quality content every week, and in all the areas that matter most. By solidifying your marketing message and spreading it in a variety of ways, we have found a simple and efficient solution for the business that wants to do it all but doesn't have the time or budget.

Here are just a few of the things you get with WSI ReachCast:

• Submissions and updates to a specialized blog created just for your business, plus to all the major search engines, social media sites and local business directories. No more filling out forms or going through complicated verification checks. We will take care of all of that for you, ensuring that your company gets listed everywhere it needs to.

• Content that's more than keywords. Anyone can generate a set of boring articles, social updates, and online videos. ReachCast gives you access to top tier creative teams that devise the kind of content that puts your business in the right light to get spread around your industry on its own. In fact, our base package includes professional copy writing and syndication of 8 articles per month.

• Online reputation monitoring and management. What are customers, competitors, and vendors saying about you? Watching the web for any accurate and fraudulent information is important in this day and age when a single bad review, showing up in search engine results, can cost you hundreds of future sales. And guess what, with the WSI ReachCast service, we not only monitor your online customer reputation, we also make you aware of any negative comments, and we re-promote the positive ones!

• Comprehensive social media marketing. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube already have hundreds of millions of members, and they are gaining steam every day. There's never been a better time to start creating and strengthening relationships via social media sites. With WSI Reach Cast, we create and help you manage your presence on these social media sites.

If you're tired of watching opportunities to take advantage of Internet marketing go by, try WSI's ReachCast today. It's a great way to make sure that new customers can find you online, and that they hear the right things when they do find you.

Call us today at (866) 531-1686, or submit our request form.

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Thanks once again to Chuck Bankoff, a highly successful and respected WSI business associate of mine with a WSI office in the southern California area, for putting this clip together.

Once again Betty (a composite of several of WSI's actual clients) has a mistaken impression of what digital marketing is all about. She thinks that just having a Facebook page is “doing” social media marketing.

It is true that social media and search technologies are currently the most powerful advertising options that are available to all business equally today.  However like anything else, it doesn’t just happen without a strategy.

Betty’s online strategy is a little weak…

For some expert social media guidance in the Madison Wisconsin area, visit our website

 

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

WSI Franchisee and Internet Marketing Consultant Andre Savoie recently offered his digital marketing know-how to an honorable cause. Collaborating with the Louisiana Tourism Coastal Coalition (LTCC), Andre put his social media savvy to good use in an effort to increase tourism after the terrible BP oil spill of April 2010.

We all remember the disastrous oil spill and the horrible effects it had on several coastal communities in the United States. In effect, the LTCC aimed to rebuild the reputation of the fishing and tourism industries affected by the disaster. And for Andre, who is based out of New Orleans, the initiative hit close to home and collaborating on the project was a no-brainer.

Launching an Online Campaign

The LTCC already had a web presence – www.visitlouisianacoast.com – but along with WSI and a newly launched integrated digital marketing campaign, their online visibility soared to a whole new level. The launch included:

• Social media consulting
• Split A/B message testing
• Creation of custom social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr
• Ongoing management on their company blog (blog.visitlouisianacoast.com)

Boosting Online Visibility

By launching an integrated social media marketing strategy for the non-profit organization, Andre’s efforts have generated terrific results. The Louisiana Tourism Coastal Coalition has gone from having no social media presence to developing increasingly stronger visibility. Some social media successes so far include:

• Building a Facebook network of over 500 friends
• Building a Twitter following of over 400 followers
• 1,000 views on their YouTube channel
• Soaring blog traffic
• A Pay Per Click campaign that has generated triple the traffic they received in the last month

And amazingly, all of this was accomplished within only 3 months!

This is an outstanding accomplishment. It’s a great testament to WSI’s commitment to incorporating online expertise to our social responsibilities around the world.

To read more about the ways your local Madison and Mount Horeb-based WSI Consultant can transform your business, Visit Our Website

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255