When coming up with marketing strategies for your business, it’s essential to take web design into account. Web design is important for your marketing strategy more than ever. Your website is no longer just there so you can have something of an online presence; it’s a key component of how people discover you and decide whether or not to work with you. Here’s what you need to know about why web design is important for your marketing strategy and how to achieve success with your website’s design.

Web Design Is More Important Than Ever Before

Marketing is shifting more and more online. When you want to know about restaurants or businesses nearby, you turn to search engines. When you want to check the reputability of a business or a product, you look up online reviews and ratings. When you want to see what services a business offers, you want to be able to click through their website and have all the information you need at your fingertips.

As such, a beautiful, functional web design is important for your marketing strategy more than ever, and will likely only get more and more important as time goes by.

It’s About More Than Looks

You need your website to look good in order for people to want to spend time on it. But web design is important for your marketing strategy in more ways than just being aesthetically pleasing. A beautiful website that isn’t functional or designed well beyond presenting a pretty picture won’t help your marketing strategy much. In addition to being attractive, web design needs to take several other factors into consideration in order to be effective for your marketing strategy. Some of these factors are as follows:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is essential to a functional web design. While traditionally, SEO and web design have been pitted against each other, the truth is that you need both in order for your website to benefit your business. SEO increases your website’s visibility in search results by using keywords your target audience searched for, using correct links, positioning content in a way to increase visibility, and by making it easier for users to interact with your website.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Your CRO measures how your website performs in order to make for a better user experience. How your website looks affects how effective it is, so you want a good balance between functional and simple. Too complex, and your website will slow down, which will drive potential customers away. Too simple, and your potential customers will be bored and leave to find another site that is more engaging.

User Experience (UX)

The user experience is one reason why web design is important for your marketing strategy. A good experience, and people are more likely to use your services than that of your competitors’, because they like your site. You want your website to be easy to navigate, load quickly, and to be attractive, crisp, and clean.

Analytics

You may have had a fantastic web design a few years ago, but times are constantly changing. Analytics is a key part of having a good website that helps your business. As times change, so too does your website need to change. Analytics will help you see how your website is performing, so you can make any necessary changes.

Branding

Web design is important for your marketing strategy in regards to your branding, too. You need it to be consistent with your brand across other platforms, on and off-line. Your website should reflect your brand positively, so that when people click on it, they get a good impression of you. A bad web design can destroy your chances of this.

Marketing Success With Web Design

As you see, having a good web design is important for your marketing strategy in a number of ways. When you’re coming up with your strategy, don’t forget about your website. Your website should be a priority when it comes to marketing. It’s how people will discover you, learn about you, form impressions of you. It’s important that it’s designed well and reflects you. Many businesses spend a good portion of their marketing budget on their website, precisely because of how vital it is.

Professional Web Design And Marketing

Performance Driven Marketing offers professional web design and marketing services for all your needs. We have a free website SEO audit so that you can see how well your website is performing. If you need help with your website or your marketing strategy, schedule a consultation today! We’re happy to help however we can.

In our increasingly online world, if your brand does not have an online presence, it can be exceedingly difficult to grow and develop your business. The same way you want to be careful about your professional reputation, you want to ensure that you are doing everything in your power to manage your online reputation. It’s extremely easy for one bad review to escalate online, so how you reply matters a great deal.

It can be difficult to manage your online reputation when you aren’t sure what is helpful, what can be left alone, and when you should ask for help. Here are some effective steps you can take to manage your online reputation and ensure that your virtual presence is professional, positive, and reflective of you and your brand identity.

#1. Perform An Audit

If you already have an online presence, a good first step to take to manage your online reputation is to see what your online reputation even is. You can do this through conducting an online reputation audit, which will uncover whether the general public view of your business is positive or negative, the kind of websites that appear for your brand name, how most visitors find your website, whether or not you are popular online, and more.

It’s a good idea to separate websites that your business appears on into ones that you can control and ones that you cannot. For instance, you have control over your social media accounts, so you can use them to reach out to site owners and adjust information that is not accurate. In other cases, the most you can do is reach out and try to talk to someone about why they hold the view they do of your service.

#2. Establish An Online Reputation Management Strategy

Once you know what your reputation is, it makes it much easier to come up with actionable steps you can take to manage your online reputation. You’ll want to establish your goals, your boundaries, your limits, what aspects have the highest impact on your reputation, and what your priorities are. For instance, you’ll want to ensure that there are company-wide guidelines about how you deal with comments and reviews, as well as a consistent, professional tone-of-voice.

You’ll want to determine response templates, what sort of reviews necessitate an urgent response (negative ones that can hurt your reputation), and clear responsibilities within your business, for who does what to manage your online reputation.

If worst comes to worst, you don’t want to be blindsided. One of the most important steps to manage your online reputation is to have a plan in place should a crisis occur. You can help with this by creating alerts for when your brand is mentioned online, how to communicate with your target audience across various online platforms, having quick and personalized replies to bad reviews, and clear chain of command. Online marketing companies like Performance Driven Marketing can help you manage your online reputation and come up with an effective online reputation management strategy.

#3. Encourage Positive Reviews

As everything shifts increasingly online, people rely more and more on reviews to tell them whether or not a business is trustworthy and somewhere that they want to work with. Studies have shown that people are willing to pay more in order to work with a company that has higher ratings and better reviews. Important as it is to reply to negative reviews quickly and well, it’s just as important to encourage positive reviews, to cultivate a good online reputation.

How many positive reviews you receive also impacts where your website falls in search engine rankings. If you have a good online reputation with lots of positive reviews, Google will rank your business higher, while downranking those that have a poor online reputation and customer satisfaction rates.

You can encourage positive reviews through pop-ups, email signatures, and more. And of course, thanking customers who do leave positive reviews helps your online reputation too, especially if you add a personal touch to your thank you. This shows customers that you care and will encourage them to come back and give you more of their business in the future.

#4. Manage Negative Reviews

Oh, how we wish we didn’t have to worry about negative reviews, but this is one of the most important things you must do to manage your online reputation. Online especially, it’s easy for things to get blown out of proportion. A good way to manage your online reputation is to reply to all reviews – positive and negative – and to be aware of how time-sensitive negative reviews can be.

The sooner you address them, the less impact they’ll have, especially if you are courteous, address their concerns, apologize if you are wrong (but only if you are wrong), and communicate with the goal to understand, not confront. Thanking them for leaving a review, asking how you can make it better, and keeping a non-confrontational tone will help with your online reputation.

Giving them a solution and a way to take the conversation offline via a phone number or an email will help in cases that require more in-depth conversion than a review reply can provide. In many cases, people who left a negative review but felt the company responded well end up coming back and giving them another chance!

#5. Get Professional Help

Performance Driven Marketing offers professional online reputation management services to help keep your online reputation positive. It can be hard to know what is right or what steps you should take without professional guidance, and you don’t want to accidentally hurt your online reputation when you’re trying to help it. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help to manage your online reputation!

Every year, content and how it intersects with web design changes. Content is king, and with how much content is out there, yours needs to be top tier in order to lure people to spend more time on your site. Web design impacts content marketing significantly, heightening the importance of truly stellar web design for an effective content marketing strategy. For the best results, you need your content and your design to work in tandem. Here’s what you need to know about some of the ways in which web design impacts content marketing.

#1. Makes Content More Accessible

It doesn’t matter how well-written and engaging your content is if your web design makes it hard to access. Web design impacts content marketing through making said content easily accessible with the implementation of intuitive navigation, so that people can easily click through your site without having to put in a lot of effort to try to find the pages that they’re looking for. If your users have to click through pages that have nothing to do with the information they want in order to get to said information, they’ll likely abandon your site out of frustration and irritation.

There are more and more websites being created every day – people don’t have the patience to deal with an inaccessible site. Luckily, web design impacts content marketing positively when it works with a sitemap, to make finding what you’re looking for a breeze. When web designers ensure there are menus, such as drop-down menus and hamburger menus, and search bars at the top of the site, it makes it so much easier for people to navigate through your site, causing people to spend more time on your site and be more likely to use your services.

The user experience, as always, is key. If someone finds your site through one of the pages that popped up in their Google search, you want them to be able to navigate through your site with ease from any page that they’re on, not simply the home page. Web design impacts content marketing through ensuring this.

#2. Enhances Content’s Aesthetic Appeal

Have you ever clicked onto a site just to see a massive block of text and clicked right out to find another site with similar content arranged in a more aesthetically pleasing way? Looks matter a lot, which is a key way web design impacts content marketing. Content needs to be neatly spaced and presented in a tidy, easily readable manner that is consistently placed throughout the website.

A page that is well designed, with a nice font, colors that work with your brand and on the eyes, that uses white space well, that is aligned neatly – these are all ways that content’s made easier to read. The simpler the better. People don’t want to have to scroll and scroll and scroll to try to find the information they want. Web design impacts content marketing by designing pages that are cohesive, neat, and organized clearly, so people can instantly find the information they’re looking for.

#3. Engages Readers

This way web design impacts content marketing goes hand in hand with the above point. It’s fine to read a page that is organized well, and that’s it. But a well-designed page that makes use of visual elements such as pictures and videos and graphs and the like? That makes the content more interesting and gives readers something to engage with. It’s all well and good to talk about how to fix a plumbing problem, but when you include images and videos, it makes that information really sink in and makes it so much easier to understand.

The more engaged your reader is with your content, the more effective your content marketing will be. Web design allows you to work with visual elements to enhance your content, break complex information down further into something easy to understand by someone who has no knowledge of your industry, and increases the likelihood that someone will work with your business.

#4. Enriches The Reading Experience

Web design impacts content marketing too, with how it enriches the overall reading experience, both through the ways listed above, and through the colors and fonts used on the site. If your fonts and colors are all over the place, it makes your site look jumbled and disorganized and unprofessional.

Colors and fonts that are consistent across your site and that fit with your brand and your industry can make your site that much more readable. You want your font color to complement your background color. A good contrasting color, plain and easy to read fonts, and consistency across your site will make your site that much more professional and easy to navigate.

These are but a few of the ways in which web design impacts content marketing. As you can see, it’s vital to have a good web design in order to ensure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. Performance Driven Marketing has several professional web designers in house who can create a beautiful, functional website for your business that will take your content marketing to the next level. Contact us today for more information!

If you are having a difficult time getting conversions from your website then it may be beneficial to consider different ways that you can increase internet traffic. Your website conversion rate is made up of the total number of conversions that your website has received divided by the number of people that visited your website. Therefore, increasing your internet traffic, which is the number of people that visit your website, will help you get better conversions.

Create Great Content

One of the best ways to increase internet traffic for your website is by creating great content. Content is what web users interact with on your website. By creating quality content, you are giving your website more things that users can look at and use. Examples of content that you can add to your website include:

Blog posts
Videos
Podcasts
Photos

Regular content also alerts the search engines that your website is up-to-date, meaning that your website will rank better. A better ranking website will show up better to web users, naturally increasing your internet traffic.

Conduct Keyword Research

Another important tool for increasing website traffic is keyword research. Keyword research is the use of certain words and phrases in your content that website users look up on search engines that pertain to your website or business. The keywords and phrases that you want to include in your website are words and phrases that are commonly searched by your target market on different search engines. Having content that includes keywords makes it much easier for people to find your website and also increases the length of web viewer sessions on your website.

Be Present On Different Platforms

One of the best ways to increase your website’s internet traffic is to be visible and available to your customers and potential customers. A great way to become visible to your customers is to be active on different social media platforms. When you are frequently updating your information and providing content to your customers, you increase the amount of things that your customers can interact with and you make your website more available to them.

Use Advertising Tools

There are many opportunities to increase internet traffic for your business and website through marketing and advertising. This can include using paid search and display ads online. It costs money to use these advertising tools, but ads are also very effective in helping create traffic for your website. It is vital that you make sure that you have a goal in mind when using advertising tools in order to create a proper budget and to keep your website on track. If you do not have goals it can be easy to lose focus of what you are trying to do as well as to spend more money than you have to.

Do You Want To Increase Internet Traffic?

If these tips for increasing your website traffic have been helpful to you, we at Performance Driven Marketing might have services that would be useful for your website. We not only provide information to our clients about how to increase internet traffic, but we will also implement systems for you that will help you increase, track, and maintain traffic and your website as a whole. If you have any questions regarding our services or are looking for more ways for increase your internet traffic, please reach out to us today.

If you hear the term “environmental graphic design”, your mind might take that to mean “environmentally-friendly graphic design”, leading you to wonder how something that involves designing logos and the layout of promotional products impacts the environment. While understandable that your mind would go that route, environmental graphic design actually refers to the usage of graphic design elements such as typography and imagery to provide visual cues that inform people about how to navigate through a space.

Environmental graphic design is a key part of the interior design of a building, way-finding, and more. It does indeed impact the environment, but not in the kind of environment you may initially think. The goal of environmental graphic design is to implement graphics that ensure it’s easy for people to make their way around a facility, be it a stadium, museum, conference space, public transportation, and more.

Factors Involved In Environmental Graphic Design

It’s one thing to know the purpose of environmental graphic design, it’s another entirely to make effective ones. There are several essential factors involved in this type of graphic design that go hand-in-hand with traditional graphic design. You need to understand the intention of the people who will visit that environment, and what their experience there should be. A person’s experience in a place will be dictated by whether they are there to complete a task, to be social, to explore, to be entertained, or to learn.

Once you understand the purpose of your intended audience, you’ll be able to create a design that both speaks to their purpose, and yours. This includes:

Your unique brand personality
What sets you apart from the competition
Designs that create value for your customers

Environmental graphic design is more than just imagery that speaks to your brand identity, but that also conveys your values, your purpose, your vision. Good designs combine the customer experience of those who experience your environment with your brand, why people should do business with you, and garner an idea of what working with you will be like.

The Different Types Of Environmental Graphic Design

As you can see, environmental graphic design is incredibly broad, so we’re going to break it down to some of the most common types that you’ll encounter.

Way-finding

As the name suggests, this refers to designs that make a path throughout an environment that help people navigate an unfamiliar space. Way-finding utilizes icons, aspects of interior design, such as arrows, and placement of branding elements that both guide customers throughout your space and are consistent with your brand.

Environmental Branding

Plain walls and blank environments work in some cases to cultivate a minimal atmosphere, but they likely won’t help people move through your space. Environmental branding refers to utilizing graphics, such as your logo, to bring your space to life and set the tone for your space and your business. This gives people a sense of your brand while helping them navigate the space.

Signage

This works in tandem with way-finding, but can be set apart. Way-finding can use signage to assist people in finding their way, but signage not only identifies a place, but delivers information, and can be found on company vehicles, temporary mounted signs, and more.

How Environmental Graphic Design Helps Your Business

Just like the user experience is one of the most essential components of website design, environmental graphic design works in a similar way, through making the customer experience walking through a space more positive and higher quality. Architecture influences human behavior in curating specific environments and atmospheres that tell people how they are expected to behave in a space; environmental graphic design influences people in how they think of your brand, how it makes them feel, and whether or not they’re inclined to want to work with you.

Good environmental graphic design will create a positive experience that both informs and guides people in a way that remains true to your company brand, values, and mission. With how vital it is, it’s essential to ensure that the designs you have are high quality and professional, which one of the expert graphic designers at Performance Driven Marketing can make for you.

Do You Need Environmental Graphic Designs?

Performance Driven Marketing has several experienced graphic designers in house who can both help you come up with a brand identity and come up with designs for your website, promotional materials, environment, and more that help generate you more business. We also offer digital marketing services such as SEO and web development. To learn more about how we can help you, don’t hesitate to contact us today!

If you’re dipping your toes into the world of marketing to launch and better promote your brand and your business, you’ve probably heard the term “SEO” bandied about. SEO is one of the key fundamentals of online marketing, so if you want to grow your business, implementing the current SEO strategies is one of the best ways to do so. Here, we’ve broken down some of the basics of SEO to get you started on your journey.

What Is SEO?

SEO is short for “search engine optimization”. This refers to the process of optimizing your website to rank better on search engines, such as Google. When people search for a keyword, such as ‘low back pain from shoveling snow’, by utilizing SEO practices, you can get your page or article about that to show up in the first few pages of Google search results. At its core, SEO is how you increase the visibility of your website.

SEO isn’t purely about optimizing your website, though. It also involves other aspects of digital marketing, from the user experience, to web development, to the design of the content, to your branding, to content marketing, and much, much more. Thus, in order to have a high-ranking site in the search engines, you need to have excellent digital marketing practices as a whole, in addition to SEO expertise.

How Google Ranks Content

Google ranks your content in multiple ways, and to be successful at SEO, you’ll need to understand how this works. In order to rank well, you’ll need high-quality, original, and relevant information on your site’s pages that relate to what the searcher looked up. Google determines how relevant your content is through having “crawlers” evaluate it based on the keywords (like ‘low back pain’) within the page and whether or not the majority of the page’s content is just copy and pasted from another site or if it’s something quality and new.

Quality is also determined by how many sites link to your own, and the quality of those sites. If a reputable website links to yours, this will tell Google that your content is high quality and relevant. If a little personal blog that no other site has linked to links to yours, this won’t help your rankings. You’ll want links within your content too, to prove it can be trusted. These include .govs, .edus, and .orgs.

How long people stay on your site will also inform Google how relevant it is to the search result, as will how quickly your site loads and whether or not it is mobile friendly. The way Google ranks content is ever-changing, though, so in order to maintain a high-ranking in search results, you’ll need to stay on top of new and emerging tactics.

How To Build Your SEO Strategy

There are several key steps that you can take to build an effective SEO strategy. They are as follows:

Create your list of keywords
Study Google’s first page – what are the highest ranking results doing?
Create something new, better, and/or different from what’s already out there
Add a hook, which is why people link to specific types of content
Optimize your on-page SEO (keywords, internal, and external links)
Optimize for searchers (make sure it matches search intent)
Up your content design with pictures, graphics, charts, banners, and more, so it’s more interesting to look at and easier to read and understand
Audit your site
Be continuously improving and updating your content to meet current SEO standards

Keeping Up With Changing SEO Standards

Something that frustrates even the professionals is how SEO is an ever-changing practice that you need to stay on top of in order to continue seeing good results. What got your site to the first page of Google searches years ago will make it practically invisible now. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms which means that you need to be learning constantly and stay on top of all the latest changes. SEO is complex enough already, the last thing you need is to complicate it even more through utilizing strategies that no longer work. Staying informed will help you know what tactics to add to your strategy and what to toss.

Keeping up with changing SEO standards can feel like a never-ending race because it is. In order to stay ahead of the rest of the pack, you’ll need to both understand and keep track of: up and coming trends, new features in search tools and products, your audience, and the latest technological advances. Luckily, there are professionals who can help you out.

Do You Need Help With SEO?

Performance Driven Marketing has SEO experts in house who can help you increase the visibility of your website and generate more organic traffic. We want to help you get more customers and garner a stronger online presence. In addition to our professional SEO services, we can help you with web development, graphic design, and more. Contact us today to learn how we can help you grow your business.

As a company owner, you most likely have tried all sorts of different things to help build up your business. One of the best ways to boost your business and attract customers is to have promotional products. Promotional products are typically items that have your business’s logo on them or something that describes your company. There are all sorts of different types of promotional products, and oftentimes the best promotional products are simple items that people will use. Usually promotional products are sold to passersby or customers, but they could also be given away for free, depending on your focus.

Why Promotional Products Work

The reason why promotional products work is because they are typically things that people want and need. The purpose of promotional products are to spread awareness about a cause or company and the reason why they are so useful to companies is because they are a visual representation of your company. Promotional products help people remember your company, associate your company with good things and recognize your brand.

Individuals seeing their friends or families using your promotional products may make them want to get some of your products. Or, more likely, will remind them of your company. Those that own the product will also think fondly of your company if they like the product. When they are in need of the service that your company provides, they will remember your company and call you to get that service completed.

The Best Promotional Products

There are several great products that would be useful to have as a business, however there are certain products that rise to the top when it comes to being functional for your customers and displaying your company well.

#1- Writing Utensils

One of the most common promotional products that are on the market today are writing utensils. Pens, pencils, markers, etc. are all great options for promotional products. Writing utensils are useful to people, and that is why they are a great choice for a promotional product. Every time a person uses their pen or pencil, they will think of your company. People will love it, especially if you have a high quality promotional product.

#2- T-Shirts

Another great promotional product is a t-shirt. People love free or low-cost t-shirts. Also, t-shirts are a great promotional tool because they depict your company well and in a spot where everyone can see. Having promotional shirts gives you cheap, willing billboards.

#3- Cups Or Water Bottles

A promotional product that many people go crazy for is cups or water bottles. Most of the time people do not care what is on their water bottles or cups and will use them for a long time. Water bottles are useful to the customer and are also great for the environment as well.

#4- Calendars

Calendars are great promotional products for older generations especially. Even if you are selling products to millennials or younger generations, they will most likely also like having at least one calendar in their home. Calendars are a great marketing tool as well because people will see your company whenever they need to check the date, every month of the year.

Do You Need Promotional Products?

If you are in need of promotional products for your business, we at Performance Driven Marketing would be happy to help. We not only provide you with all sorts of solutions to your online marketing problems, but we also have the ability to help you create the perfect promotional products for your company. We have several experienced graphic designers who would be delighted to help you find the perfect design for your products and will ship the products directly to you. Reach out to us for more information.

Social media has turned into an integral part of many people’s lives. It’s how we connect, it’s how we learn, it’s how we are entertained. Social media marketing rose with engagement rates, meaning that social media is also how many of us discover new products and services. Companies and marketing firms recognize the importance of adapting to the ever-changing online world.

But most people get annoyed by ads on TikTok and Instagram and the like, right? So, does social media marketing even work if it seems like most people will just scroll right past or skip what you’re trying to market to them?

So long as you understand your target audience and are aware of how to use social media as a marketing tool, yes, social media marketing can work, and work very well, at that. Here’s how.

Different Social Media Platforms Are Good For Different Things

A key part of social media marketing is understanding what each app is intended for and how to optimize that for your business. Knowing the target audience of each social media platform and what they do will help you craft appropriate marketing strategies. What works on Facebook won’t work on TikTok. You have to adapt to what each platform is good for and who it’s targeted at. As time goes on, new social medias develop and older ones fade. This is why it’s important to…

Stay On Top Of The Trends

It’s a truth commonly acknowledged throughout the marketing world that an effective marketing strategy is one that is targeted, clear, distinct – and current. What kind of ads are doing well at the moment? What are hot topics, and can you relate them to your products or services? This is especially common for holidays and seasons.

Another essential part of staying on top of the trends is understanding how social media changes. Sites and apps that were popular five years ago could be nonexistent now. The ones that stay popular are constantly changing in order to stay relevant. For example, a while ago, Instagram made a switch from focusing on photo-sharing to optimizing reels, meaning that if you wanted to be seen on Instagram, you had a better chance with a reel than a picture.

If you want to be seen, you have to stay up to date with changes.

Have Distinctive Branding And Goals

This works for marketing in general, not just social media marketing. Distinctive branding is what sets your marketing strategy apart from your competitors. If you have a specific look, feel, and understand your audience, it’s much more likely that you’ll draw people in rather than risk them ignoring your efforts. If your business has a specific look and personality associated with it, it’s more memorable and impactful than one that is more general.

This is true for your social media pages too. A social media page that is all over the place and is trying to do too many things at once won’t have as much traction as one that has a cohesive look and purpose. People aren’t going to stay on a page that’s ugly, confusing, or doesn’t know what it’s trying to do. They will stay on one that is aesthetically pleasing and concise. How your page looks matters greatly if you want to bring in followers and reach more people.

Consistency Is Key

Common across most social media platforms is the fact that their algorithms favor consistency. You’re more likely to be seen if you have a consistent posting schedule. If you post whenever you feel like it, that can drop your visibility and make it so that only a tiny percentage of your following even sees your post.

The Power Of Influencers

Influencers can be a fantastic way to increase your brand awareness and reach. Influencers are people with big followings, aka a lot of influence. Businesses and brands often send influencers free products and payment in exchange for them to promote them to their followers. If an influencer tries and likes your product enough to promote it, their followers will be inspired to at least check it out and often want to try the product or service as well.

Be Engaging

This is true both for creating engaging, distinctive content, and for engaging with people who try to interact with your social media posts.If you aren’t responsive to comments and posts, people are less likely to pay attention to your business or think that you don’t care about your customers or clients.

Do You Need Help With Social Media Marketing?

At Performance Driven Marketing, we provide exceptional internet marketing services, including managing social media accounts. We have experience in staying up to date with the ever-changing realm of social media. We also offer multiple other digital and traditional marketing services, including graphic design and sales. If you would like to learn more about social media marketing or how else we can help your business, please contact us at Performance Driven Marketing today!

Content is an extremely important addition to your website. Having compelling and consistent content will cause your website traffic to skyrocket with users coming back to your website more often and for longer periods of time. There are many different types of content including blogs, videos, and photos.

You may ask yourself: “Blogs? I thought those were those write-ups where people complained about their neighbors online?” Yes, there are still blogs where people journal their personal experiences, but these days blogs are used for much more. In fact, according to HubSpot, 60% of people read a blog once a week. This is because blogs have many functions including providing information to readers.

Now to answer the overarching question; is blogging dead in 2021? The simple answer is no. You’re reading this blog right? However, the purpose of blogs and the way they are written is constantly changing. Blogs have many purposes and are useful tools for content creators and businesses.

Blogs Create Connections

Blogs are a great way to make closer connections with your customer base. This is because you are speaking directly to the customer and they can respond with their own thoughts and opinions. With that said, it is important to be careful with your comment settings and be aware that if you allow for comments, the opinions that some users may post on your page may not be to your liking. But if you are creating content that your target market wants to know, you will attract and keep users who are likely to become customers. Blogs are also a great way to create content for your social media platforms to connect to and vice versa.

Blogs Answer User’s Questions

Is Blogging Dead in 2021?

One of the big reasons that blogs are an important part of the content you put on your website is because they are an easy way to share your expertise and increase your credibility. You can answer user’s questions in a professional format or discuss your knowledge of your industry in an article targeted towards a new customer base.

Blogs are where Google and other search engines collect information about obscure or popular topics and are often where people can find information tailored to their specific needs. When you answer your customer base’s questions, you establish a reputation and authority in your industry.

Blogs Help Customers Learn About Your Products

Blogs in 2021 are often run by companies and businesses in hopes that people will click on their website to learn about a topic and then buy a product or service. This is a wonderful system because users are already searching for information about something that you are an expert on and will be more likely to buy from you when they decide to make a purchase in that area. Having a blog also allows you to speak to certain products or services that you have that are unique to your company that your target customer base may not be aware of.

Blogs Help You Rank Better on Search Engines

If a business has a website, it is important to rank on search engines. A ranking on a search engine is your spot on the list of websites that show up when a user enters in a search query. Website specialists use search engine optimization to increase a website’s ranking. It is important to use SEO because search engine optimization brings more users to your website which often leads to more conversions. One of the most important components to optimizing your website is to have great content that is relevant to user’s questions.

Contact Us For Help With Your Blog

Here at Performance Driven Marketing, we write articles and blogs for your website that are crafted specifically to be optimized for Google and other search engines. We also have many other services and resources available to you to help you build your ideal website. Contact us for more information about blogs, SEO, web design and much more!

How important are customer reviews to a business? Nine out of ten customers claim they read online reviews prior to working with a business. With at least 88% of consumers trusting online reviews as much as a referral or personal recommendation, it is an essential component of your online marketing strategy.

Online reviews have an impact on your sales. However, obtaining reviews has always seemed to be a challenge for businesses. How do you know your most satisfied customers will leave reviews? What should you do in the event you receive a negative review?

Getting Started with Online Reviews

Understanding how reviews work is the place to start. Business owners need to take some time to familiarize themselves with Google My Business and other social platforms where customers leave reviews. Depending upon your industry, you may find yourself dealing with reviews on websites like:

Yelp
Facebook
Yellowpages
TripAdvisor
Manta
Amazon
Citysearch
Foursquare

Local Businesses and Online Reviews

Multiple studies show that 53% of customers will visit a business within 48 hours of performing a local search. In addition, 33% of customers surveyed by ReviewTrackers say they will not eat in a restaurant with less than 4 stars or multiple negative reviews.

Bad reviews will hurt your business and can drop your website ranking. In fact, one single negative review can drop sales by 5-8% or more!

Google My Business

Each month, Google averages about 158.3 million visitors. With such high exposure, it pays to spend some time optimizing your profile. It is free to claim your Google My Business profile and it does give your business a stronger local presence. Once you have verified your business listing, your website will start to appear in the search engine results and people can start leaving reviews.

Google My Business does provide an option for businesses to post updates and share information directly with the customers. If you do not have a website, or you feel your website is not that impressive, your Google My Business page will become one of the best free resources you have available to keep focused on attracting customers.

Asking for Customer Reviews

It is important to ask your customers for reviews. We utilize services that make it easier for customers to submit a review. We can customize a personalized email and SMS text message tool that will go directly to the customer, making it easier for them to leave a review.

Never be afraid to ask customers directly for a review. If they are in your store and having a great interaction, ask them to leave a review. Most customers are happy to leave a positive review when they have a good interaction with the business in person.

Handling a Negative Review

What happens when you have a negative review? The most important thing we can stress is to avoid attacking the reviewer. Before you even respond to the review, you need to make sure you know all the facts. One thing you can do is make sure you read the review, take the information into consideration and respond positively.

When you respond, the upset customer may update their review or might even remove it entirely. Potential customers will be able to see the response and notice that the business does care about customer satisfaction and is seeking to always improve.

Add Reviews to Your Website

Customers love testimonials as it gives them peace of mind. People want to know what type of experiences people have been experiencing with the business. Use a variety of clients to provide feedback in multiple industries and continue improving the conversion rates for your business.

Online reviews are vital to each industry. Failing to prioritize online reviews can be detrimental to your business. Reputation is everything in the modern Internet-driven world. Successful reviews may not happen immediately, but with the right tools and engagement strategy, you will be able to see a boost in your online reputation and website traffic!

Monday	8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday	8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Wednesday	8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Thursday	8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Friday	8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Saturday	Closed
Sunday	Closed

Why Web Design Is Important For Your Marketing Strategy