Competition
is tough…
get BRANDWISE!

So you have probably heard the old saying "You can't Manage what you don't Measure". So what does this really mean? How can you apply it to your business? How does this tie into Inbound Marketing and your web site?

Your in luck, because today we are going to give you the answers. As with anything you do in your company eventually it is going to come under-fire from someone in your company. If you have no way to prove what you are doing is beneficial to the company, your job or at very least this project may be terminated. As it should be if it is not improving the company.

Well, that fine and we will show you what kind of things you are able to not only manage but measure in an inbound marketing campaign or a web site/internet marketing campaign.

Through our inbound marketing system, you can measure:

• Keywords and Key Phrases and your ranking on them in order to get found better on search engines.
  
  
• SEO Page Grade - how effective is each page on your web site and how can you improve the results on every page.
  
  
• Inbound Links - this shows how many external sites are linking into your web site. This is a very important way to climb the search engines. The more links you have, the higher and quicker you will rank in search engines.
  
  
• Competitive Link Analysis - research and find out what your competitors are up to and which sites are linking into their site. This is great information to evaluate your own site.
  
  
• Social Media Analysis - track and follow what people are saying in the social media about your brand or your industry. This tool makes it easy to keep your finger on the pulse of the social media.
  
  
• Prospect Monitoring - watch which companies are checking out your web site. Use this tool become aware of who is using your site an then reach out to the these prospects or include them on future marketing efforts.
  
  
• Leads -  this is a big one. This tool allows you to manage your leads from your web site (someone that fills out a form). Once they fill out a form, you can collect data on all the pages these leads have gone to. This also includes: Forms Submitted, Lead Details, Opportunity Details and LEad Nurturing Details.
  
  
• Lead Nurturing - when your site is producing leads, you want to be able to continue and build a relationship with your new leads even if your sales team does not have the time to follow up on the "B" or "C" leads right now. Lead Nurturing is and email campaign that works your cool leads automatically trying to warm them up for your sales team.
  
  
• Blog Analytics - measure the success of your blog. This tool tracks: Blog Subscribers, Visitors to your Blog, How Many Comments your Blog has gotten.
  
  
• Social Media Reach - how big is your social media reach. This tool helps figure out how big of an audience you are publishing to. Track: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, your Blog, your web site Leads.
  
  
• Competitive Analysis - find out how your site stacks up to your competition's site. Track up to 10 competitors and see where things fall over time. Track: Google Page Rank, Web Site Traffic Rank, Inbound Links, Google Indexed Pages, Keywords in Google's top 100.
  
  
• Visits Per Sources - find out where your web traffic is coming from. Track: Organic Search, Referrals, Direct Traffic, Email Marketing, Social Media, Others.
  
  
• Visits by Page - see your most popular web pages and evaluate what makes these so popular. How can you make the others even more popular?

Wow, with all this stuff at your finger tips the office bean counter is going elsewhere to look for things to cut. You on the other hand are going to be getting a raise for bringing a solid web based marketing system to your company. The CEO is now on a first name basis with you and living large while reading the stats you provide on a monthly or quarterly basis proving how successful your web site is.

Start managing your web site today and you can start measuring your new income tomorrow!

Request a web site redesign that adds all these tools and more to your web arsenal.

What is the number one problem most businesses struggle with? On-going sales… right?

Of course. If you do not have any sales than you hardly have a business. For small businesses the biggest problem is getting known as the expert or leader in your industry.

So many companies have a great product or service, but just do not know how to get the word out.

So how do you overcome the worlds best kept secret?

Unknown Businesses must try these ideas:

1. Make sure you have a professionally designed business card
   
   
2. Create a solid 30 second elevator speech that tells how you solve your clients problems
   
   
3. Join the chamber or other organizations and network like crazy
   
   
4. Build a solid web site based on SEO techniques, with the ability to update the site on a weekly basis through a blog
   
   
5. Build profiles on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and start becoming active in these communities

These are the foundations for pushing your company out into the limelight, but keep in mind this takes some time. Stick with it and you will start to become known.

Some next steps then are:

• defining who your perfect or most profitable customers are
• then building a customer profile for these type of customers

Once you have an idea of who exactly you are going after, then you can start looking for places these people hang out.

You want to be in the locations your customers are so this is very valuable. Plus as you are blogging, you want to speak their language. Remember it is all about them, not you when it come to marketing. If you are going out of your way to help them, your following will build like wild-fire.

Now get out there and implement these ideas and we'll know who you are soon enough.

In the past there were sales techniques where a company would talk about nothing more than the "Features" or their products. Then a few years later we started adding discussions on "Benefits".

The problem here is this is a very "ME focused" mind set.

Over the past few years companies have been starting to figure out they needed to be more "Customer Focused". Many threw around this new buzz word without much of an idea what it really meant to be customer centric.

The key, as we have been saying for years, is to ask the question - What's in it for them?

Obviously meaning your customer. This question needs to be asked at ever step of the way when developing marketing for a customer.

This is where Needs-Based Selling comes in.

Needs-Based Selling is basically getting into the head of your customers and defining what their needs and wants are. Understanding their everyday problems is the key. Once you take the time to do this you then start to figure out what problems you solve for your customer. Then when it comes to marketing, you stop talking about features and benefits of your products/services and start discussing the problem and how to fix it.

If you are using this needs-based selling approach already, but not using it on your web site then you need to know about Inbound Marketing.

Basically inbound marketing take the needs-based sales approach to getting found, converting visitors to leads/customers and then retaining those customers via the resource you offer through your site.

Here is the idea of how this works. You take your customers problems and you start listing all the keywords they would use to search in order to find a solution. You then develop a blog on your site and start writing articles that are related to your prospects problems. Maybe this is in the form of case studies, but these articles are only focused on the users and solving their problems.

After several of these articles you will start to have a very valuable resource for perspective clients.

You will need to have each article on it's own page and optimized for search engines and before you know it this resource will be found regularly on Google.

People will spread the word because your site is revolving around the users instead of your company.

The next thing you know you will have a solid community of users and prospects and more business than you can shake a stick at. Wouldn't this be a nice change.

If you would like some other resources on similar topics, check out these other articles that might be helpful and all give more details on how to use Inbound Marketing.

• 5 Key Success Measurements
  for effective web sites.

• Self-publishing your way to
  million dollar business success.

• Inbound Marketing allows
  businesses to out think their competitors.

• Become an expert in your industry!
  Personal Branding can help.

All of these articles focus on offering solutions to problems and hopefully will help the readers find a better solution to selling their products or services with the focus being on helping the customer and not themselves.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this article and the ideas shared in these articles mentioned. Please leave us a comment if you found this article helpful. 

When it comes to web sites very few companies understand what is truly important. Sadly most people get caught up on the look of a site and use that as a measurement saying to themselves "I like the look of that site, it is professional and easy to use." Although design and usability are a huge part of a successful web site, there is so much more you must have built into your site.

Here are the 5 Key Success Measurements
every business should track from their web site:

1. Web Traffic - this is the most common and sometimes most misunderstood. The first goal for any web site is to get found and regularly increase traffic to the site. So over time you need to be growing the traffic to your site having each month or each quarter bringing in more and more traffic to the site. Where this is misunderstood though is it takes more than just high traffic volume to be successful. Business is not a popularity contest, it is about being profitable. Tons of traffic does not equate to profitability. You also want to know where your traffic is coming from so you can understand the most effective marketing that is bringing qualified visitors to the site.
   
   
2. Interaction - are visitors coming to your site and leaving, or are they taking the time to make a comment on your blog, reviewing/rating your product/service or interacting in some other form. If you are able to get people to interact on your site you are doing something right. This usually takes some trial and error, but is well worth the effort. You should be tracking your visitor interactions on a monthly basis. This is something that should be growing over time. If you offer remarkable content and resources on your site people will not only come to your site once and leave, but come back often and recommend others uses the resource you are providing. Your site should be all about helping your prospect do what they do… better! Eventually this will start to build a community of like minded people and quality prospects.
   
   
3. Sales Leads - generating leads with your web site is an often overlooked part of a web site. Once you start building traffic over time, you need a system to convert your visitors into sales leads. Typically people do not call or fill out a contact us form. These items are good to have, but you need a more strategic approach to generating leads. You need to create offers that will appeal to your target market. When done right, this will get prospects to take action and fill out a form tied to the offer you are making. Once you have a lead generation system on your site and you are making several offers to your prospects, you should start generating leads. Keep in mind however this takes time and practice to find the right offer to get really solid leads. This is a very important part of the success of your web site. If your site does not generate leads for your sales team, than it is unprofitable and costing you money. This is something that will probably start out slow, but as you master the best offers to get quality leads this will build. Each quarter you should be increasing your sales leads.
   
   
4. Customer Conversions - once your site is creating a large number of Sales Leads and your sales team starts working these leads, you are going to start converting the leads into customers. You should be tracking how many customers your site is generating each month. Again, it may take 6 months to a year to tweak your site to start producing quality leads that are easy to convert, but once it starts you will not want it to stop. As you get better focusing your content and offers specifically to your best prospects, you will start turning your site into a sales tool. This works for all business, not just retail or e-commerce sites. This works as well for one person shops as it does for large corporations. So do not be afraid to demand this from your web site and or web designer/developer.
   
   
5. Retention - your web site should not only be able to generate new customers, it should also help you retain the customers that you have. The key to successful marketing is finding better ways to sell to your current customers. It is ten times cheaper to sell to a current customer than it is to find a new customer. Your web site should offer advice, tips and tricks to make a solid resource for your customers. Then while they are getting the free remarkable content your provide, make another offer to get your customers to reconvert into the sales cycle. This is something that may be measured on a quarterly to annual basis depending on your sales cycle length.

You are probably thinking that this is kind of a numbers game. The more traffic your get, the more sales leads you can create. The more quality sales leads you create, the more customer conversion you will get. The more customers you get, the more you will retain. To some degree this is true, but it can also be totally incorrect as well. Numbers are good, but quality is better.

This is something that will take time to work out what works best for your company, but look at the example below. Every month you should create, track & review web data like the list below.

Imagine what would happen if your site creates:

• 1000 visitors a month
• 20 interactions with visitors
• 15 sales leads a month
• 2 customers a month
• 1 retained customer purchase a month

How would this change your business? If this sound exciting than you need to start demanding this of your web site. If you are seeing similar results from your site already, how much do these numbers change from month to month? The goal is not to reach these numbers, but keep growing the numbers until the company is comfortable or wants to stop growing.

Now's the time to get started, demand success from your web site.

RSS has been around for years, but is becoming more popular now than ever before.

So what is this RSS thing? RSS is most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary".

Basically RSS is a way to publish content to people that would like to read your content. It is kind of like subscribing to the news of your favorite company. This is usually in the form of feed updates from blogs. Most people use RSS to stay up-to-date with the blogs they are interested in.

Over the last few years you may have noticed that the local newspapers are struggling. This is partly due to the webs ease of use and quick delivery of pretty much anything you want to know. You no longer have to wait until morning to get the news, you can get it whenever and where ever you are.

RSS allows you to customize and create your own digital newspaper. It allows you to not have all the areas of the physical newspaper that you would just throw away. So if you only want sports and political news, you can subscribe to only these types of news sites RSS feeds.

So that is some of the reasons it is pretty helpful for the reader, but what about the publisher? Well let's define who is the publisher of this content. It is no longer just USA Today or your local newspaper. Publishers are now everywhere and publish any topic you can think of. The new publishers are the bloggers. People that are constantly publishing blog articles are now starting to build their following via RSS feeds.

So if you are currently blogging or thinking about it, you should start to learn more about RSS feeds and how to use them. You should also make sure that your blog has the ability to offer RSS feeds and email subscribers. This will help you build a loyal following - obviously if you publish quality content on a regular basis you will have a better following of your blog.

Blogs are the key to sharing your ideas and thoughts with your prospects and clients.

So how do you use a blog to create a million dollar business? Well, you start by writing remarkable content and then over time you become a thought leader within your industry. This build your personal or business brand online. From there prospects start calling on you to help them with the solutions you discuss in your articles.

In the early days publishing content meant you had to get a book deal. Although this is a great way to build your reputaion and get a group following your ideas, in todays marketplace this is not the only way. Today you are able to share idea, thoughts and concepts in as little as a few hours a week through blog posting.

I know many of you are saying, that's great if I was a writer, but that is not what I do or am good at.

This is very understandable and we understand how hard it can be for someone new to this idea. We also have tried several blogs and failed with them early on. The key is not to just say "Hey, I'm going to start a blog today.". Rather a better solution is defining why you want a blog. What are you trying to accomplish with your blog? Who are the readers that you would like to reach? What problems are they having? How can we offer advice to help them with their problems in order to become a resource to these prospects.

Once you go through this process and you commit to writting a minimum of one blog article a week. Guess what?

You have 52 new opportunities to set yourself up as an expert within your industry. When people start seeing you as the expert and subscribing to your blog via email or RSS subscriptions you are able to reach them on an ongoing basis. You will offer advice they may not have thought about and evenutally they will request a meeting or initiate the next step on their way to becoming a customer.

The great thing about self-publishing blog articles is this becomes a valuable resource for not only prospects, but also clients. You are now starting to add more value to your customers which will start to build customer loyalty, which will intern bring in more profitable business deals (since it cost a lot less to convert a pervious customer than it does getting a new client).

By developing remarkable content and self-publishing your blog, you will start to have a huge following which might also start landing you speaking gigs through industry organizations, your chamber of commerce or other groups.

In as little as a few months self-publishing will make a big change on your web site traffic. In as little as a few years you could be in a completely different business league.

The goal though is to get started and commit to at least a blog article a week. This can be done with a free blog through:

• blogger.com
• wordpress.com
• typepad.com
• etc.

Then there are also more branded blogs developped by more professional software. These do cost money, but they offer:

• a more branded blog
• a blog on your web site
• some offer SEO tools
  (to make sure each article is optimized for search engines) 
• some offer Web Analytics (to tell you how your blog is doing, how many email subscribers and RSS subscribers you have)
• Keyword research tools (to better optimize articles)
  

Today you can out think your competitors instead of out spending them with your marketing efforts.

Inbound Marketing is leveling the playing field of business. In the old days, it took big bankrolls to compete with large corporations within your industry. Now you are able to get big exposure through your web site.

Instead of buying high dollar advertising that is hard to do on a regular basis without serious funding, why not go to the people where they are? Online, right?

If you have a problem you are unable to answer and your friends, family or colleagues don't have an answer, where do you turn?

95% of you probably answered Google. Google has replaced the yellow pages because you not only get and ad that tells you how great the companies on the page are, but because now you can truly find out how good they are. Just search for the companies name or look for sites that rate these companies. Beyond this you can go to their web site and see what they have to say, if they look legit or a good fit to solve your problem.

As a matter of fact google helps you find the solution first and then research who would be the best provider to fix your problem.

So if you didn't already know, you now understand the importance of being found online. Keep in mind just because you have a web site does not mean you are getting found.

So what do you need
to do to start out thinking
your competitors?

1. Build a web site that is optimized for search engines.
   
   
2. Add a blog to your site
   (not some other site, but actually on your web site).
   
   
3. Post blog articles at least once a week,
   the more the better though.
   
   
4. Promote your blog through social media
   (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
   
   
5. Make offers on landing pages or micro-sites to
   convert web visitors to sales leads.
   
   
6. Measure the results through your web stats
   or analytics software.
   
   
7. Continue steps 3-6 all the while
   testing and improving these tactics.

By doing this, you will very quickly start to rank higher in search engines. You will be setting yourself up as the expert within your industry. Getting found on the search engines levels the playing field. You no longer have to be a big spender on marketing, you just have to commit to have someone on your team blog on a regular basis, promote the blog through social media and other tools, convert web visitors to leads via landing pages and then just measure the results and improve over time.

Granted this does cost money to build the web site, learn about keywords to get found and how to use social media, but it is much cheaper than all other forms of marketing (that bring worse results if not done by a professional).

If you are ready to out think your competitors with inbound marketing request a free demo and get started.

If you have been pondering what you need to do to make 2010 a highly successful new year, why not just become an expert in your industry. The end of the year is a time for reflection and a time to look at how to make the next year better. Do not, just do what you have always done- by the way this is the deffinition of insanity, just in case you were wondering.

Step up, take charge of your life, make something of yourself! Do all this by planting a flag on this mountain of knowledge you already have. 

I hear it so many times, companies are frustrated because they offer a better product or service than their competitors, but are still falling behind. What is the cause of this?

YOU ARE THE BEST KEPT SECRET!

If no one knows how much better you are than you competitors, you are doomed. Take action now. Decide that you've had it and you are going to do something different this year. This is your year to shine!

One way to do that is by getting the word out. I know you are thinking… "How much is this going to cost us?". Well the funny thing is it is already costing you a bundle. By not doing anything, you are loosing your shirt to the competitors.

One way we recommend getting the word out is through blogging. The premise behind this is writing remarkabe content on a regular basis. Unloading all the tips and tricks that you know, all the knowledge you have gathered over the years. Share this remarkable content to help others understand what you know and how to get started using your product or service. Over time this type of system is going to start setting you up as an expert in your industry. All this takes is the time you put into it.

Once you start developing this remarkable content you need to get it out to as many people as possible - the marketing term for this idea is expanding your reach.

The goal is to reach more people,
more often with this great content.

You can do this by using social media as your promotion tool. You post your blog articles and then promote them on your social media sites (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). 

In as little as 3 months you will start to be known as a leader/expert in your industry.

People will start to notice that you are very smart, that you are very active and people will start coming out of the woodwork to see just what you are doing because you are very busy and showing up everywhere these people are turning.

People want to associate themselves with successful people so you will very quickly start to build a following.

So what are you waiting for get out there and become the expert you know you are.

There are many free things you can do to unleach the expert within, but depending on your available free time, sometimes it makes more sense to set up a system that help you manage all this stuff in one place. If you would like help unleashing your expert give us a call at 817-244-0990 or click here to learn about how Brandwise helps you become an expert in your industry.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) there are some regular tips you will want to use in order to not only get listed in search engines, but also start to rank higher. Obviously the goal is to be in the top ten in order to get on the first page of google, bing, yahoo or other search engines.

In the past companies just came up with one Page Title and used it across all pages on the site. An example would be "Brandwise | Fort Worth Marketing Firm". On one hand we were trying to use SEO by using the company name and what we do and maybe even where we do it similar to the previous example. The problem is this, in order to get the best results, Page Titles have to be tied to the page content and keywords(keyphrases). So now you may want the Page Title similar to the example or our current homepage - Page Title is "Brand management firm | Brandwise". 

This works great for our homepage because it says what we do and then who we are. This is however the only page that uses this Page Title. The goal is that someone either does a search on "brand management firms" or "Brandwise". If you do a search you will see we come up on the first page for each one of these items (at least on google and bing).

Now let's look at another example. How about the Brandwise Portfolio page. On this page we use "Brand Design Portfolio" for our page title. You see how this is a little more relevant to this page than "Brand management firm | Brandwise". It helps to understand keywords and try to add them to your Page Titles. Because this is a more competitive group of keywords, it is harder to rank on the first page of a search engine for "Brand Design Portfolio", but because these words define the content on these pages, we have used this anyhow.

The goal is to get your Page Title using keywords that you have a pretty good chance of ranking for.

Search engines give a lot of priority to your Page Title so you want to choose it wisely. By strategically thinking like your prospects and how they search for the similar content on this page, you will be able to create a keyword focused Page Title.

Keep in mind that the first word in the Page title is more valuable to search engines. So instead of using a page title like "the best marketing ideas for Fort Worth real estate web sites", you might want to use something like "Marketing Strategies used by Fort Worth Real Estate web sites". So the longer the title the less value each additional word has in value. That being said, try to start out strong with your first few words. Make these words as relevant as possible to the content on that page and use keywords that you know you will actually be able to rank for.

Over the years we have seen a lot of small businesses decide that marketing or building a brand was how they were going to start getting more customers. It is exciting when I talk to these businesses in this phase of their business growth. The problem though is that although these businesses are ready to get serious about looking into marketing their company, they really have no idea what they are getting into. Here are a few mistakes we see small companies make time and time again.

1. Lack of understanding of Marketing or Brand Building. Although companies what to be the next Nike, Startbucks or Coca-Cola, they have no idea what it took these companies to get where they are today. So many companies see a competitor doing a tri-fold, web site or direct mailer and say, well I had better start doing that too. In order to stand out from the competition you actually want to go places and do things that your competitors aren't doing. Building a brand is all about setting you apart from your competitors, not by doing the same thing. We recommend either read up on this topic or look for a professional with the heart of a teacher who will hold your hand until you understand this stuff.
   
   
2. Lack of a Marketing Budget. It never fails every time we talk to a prospect we ask them what their budget is, and inevitably they say "We don't have a budget". I know many people do not like to share there budget because they are afraid the marketing person will want to use every last dollar. The real truth though is that a expert marketing person should not just do a project because you want them to do it. An expert should ask you what you are trying to accomplish and then offer solutions to reach the goals your are setting. If you do not feel comfortable sharing your exact budget offer a range $1500-$2000, $5000-$10000- this will help the marketing professional can get a feel for what will work for the price range you are talking about. Keep in mind spending $10,000 annually is a normal starting price for professional branding or marketing. Some companies like to keep it focused on their income so they devote 10% of their income to marketing. The key is to set up an annual budget and know that this is an investment in your company, just make it a part of doing business.
   
   
3. Rampant Inconsistency. Building a brand is simple, just keep your marketing constant across all mediums (business cards, web site, brochures, vehicle wraps, signage, etc.). This includes using the same 3 fonts for all your marketing efforts and the same colors. This is where hiring an expert helps. So often a company hires a web designer for their web site, a graphic designer for their business cards, logo and brochures, a trade show company to do their trade show booth design. At the end of the day each of these items looks like several different companies. This is where a brand management firm comes in. Hire a firm like this to help you manage your brands consistency. By doing this you will save money by not having to redo marketing items over and over again.
   
   
4. Boredom or Lack of Commitment. I see this so often with small companies, they get bored and feel like they need a change. I know companies that have changed their logo 3 times in 5 years. The problem here is you are confusing your target audience as to what you offer of who you are. The money you are spending on redoing the logo could have been more wisely spent on a new direct mail campaign or updating your web site. Actually web sites are a perfect example of this. People change the design of their site pretty frequently. This is not a bad idea if the goal is to improve usability for the customer or create a stronger lead generation system, but more times than not the site change is just because the business got tired of the look and feel. Keep in mind just because you see it everyday and are becoming tired of the new design, your prospects or clients are just getting used to your site since they do not view it everyday like you may. The point here is it is not all about you, everything revolves around your client/prospects and their needs. If the change is not to make their life better, DON'T DO IT!
   
   
5. Impatience. Anytime you decide to start a marketing campaign, you must know, success is not something that is going to happen over night. Building a brand is something that happens over time and through regular marketing efforts each year. Commit to the fact that, this campaign is the first step in an ongoing process that will improve and become more successful over time, will set you up for better results from your marketing efforts. Persistence is the key to success. Marketing is an ongoing effort. The reason for that is you learn so much about the strengths and weaknesses of a campaign only after you put it out there for your prospects and clients to use. Let's say you send a 4 postcards over a year. At the end of the year, figure out how many sales this campaign got. Where the leads this campaign produced quality or just more unqualified prospects. Then ask yourself- what could we do better next year? Make a few changes and send out another campaign. You see markeitng and branding is part Art and part Science. If you do not apply the things you learned from this campaign to your next campaign than the money invested was for nothing. It is much easier to keep the ball rolling once you start so continue to improve your campaigns and you will sart to build the next Nike or Starbuck.