ebook
Chapter 1
.jpg)
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re a C-Level executive, business owner or company that wants to maximize your online presence and increase traffic and conversions online.
Maybe you’ve hit a rut and are struggling to generate qualified leads, or maybe you want to test out different strategies to see what works.
Regardless, we’ll give you a rundown of the ins and outs of how to get closer to reaching the results you’ve been looking for.
Now, let’s get started.
First things first - audit!
An audit, in short, allows you to examine the current state of everything you’re doing online to see what changes you can make to improve your digital presence.
You might be thinking, “But, where do I even begin?”
That’s where we come in to shed some light on what otherwise might be an overwhelming task.
An overview of completing a self-audit of your online presence includes:
A visual audit allows you to review and analyze every part of, well, your visual brand.
Pay close attention to:
Think of it as a first date. You want to present the most cleaned up, authentic version of yourself to someone who could potentially be a romantic partner.
You’re not looking for love (or maybe you are, but I’m sure that’s not why you’re here...), but you are looking for prospects and hopefully, a more consistent lead flow.
And for all the single company owners out there...those might be even better than love, am I right?
You want to make a good first impression on your prospects. If your visual brand is lacking, they may not even consider pursuing what you have to offer and use the good ol’ bathroom excuse to bounce immediately.
It’s important to make sure that your website is:
Company logo
Your logo is what goes hand in hand with what people think of when they hear your company’s name. It is a visual representation of your brand.
Apple. McDonald’s. Starbucks. Coca-Cola. Target.
Notice, I didn’t have to describe what their logo looks like for you to imagine them because chances are, you already know them.
Questions to consider when completing your audit:
In a perfect world, every answer would be “yes” to these questions all of the time.
But, we know that’s not the reality of marketing when you’re constantly striving to change for the best. Even the companies mentioned above have undergone multiple logo changes to stay top-of-mind.
Hero image
When Bonnie Tyler released “Holding Out For A Hero”, how she describes her knight in shining armor can easily be applied to a hero image.
She mentions how her hero’s gotta be:
She uses a few other adjectives to describe her hero, but for the sake of the topic, we’ll dismiss those since they have zero relevance to hero images…
Hero images are large banners that are meant to be utilized to ensure whatever it is you want to gain attention, whether that’s a service, product, or event, does.
According to HubSpot, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text.
With that data, we would highly recommend that you pick a strong, fast (easily/quickly interpretable), sure (representative of your brand) image...and make it larger than life!
Those elements are sure to make your hero image an effective one that will speak to users.
You have one chance to make a good impression, and your hero image is what everyone is going to see as soon as they visit your website.
With that being said, it only takes 2.6 seconds for someone to focus on a website’s key areas, so make sure your image is relevant to your company and what you want to showcase.
Also, try to steer clear of using really bad stock photos. You know, the ones that people typically make memes out of?
Yeah, don’t use those.
Color palette
When trying to decide on what color scheme you want to associate with your brand, don’t just pick your favorite color...as tempting as that may be.
There is a psychology behind what each color conveys to consumers, which is why it’s important to carefully consider which color palette you want to use with your brand. For example, light blue, according to 99designs, signifies trust, tranquility and openness.
Questions to consider when completing your audit:
Once you know what you want your brand to be known for, picking a color scheme becomes a lot less daunting. Want to know what certain colors mean and how to use them? We like this article by 99designs.
Website design & ease of use
You’ve probably come across a website at some point that had you thinking, ‘Has this site not been active since the dial-up days?’
The layout of your website will either be as welcoming as your grandmother during the holidays or have them exiting out faster than you can say “sayonara”.
According to a behavior & information technology article, studies found that it takes 0.05 seconds for users to determine whether they like a website or not.
No pressure…
We might not like to consider ourselves shallow, but that statistic says otherwise when it comes to online browsing.
Attractiveness and simplicity in a website are every user’s dream.
When there’s too much going on or a site is difficult to navigate through, it quickly becomes easy to dislike.
Why?
Because people don’t want to put that much thought into their browsing.
Who does?
That’s why it’s up to you to make sure your website is up to par with their preferences.
Questions to consider when completing your audit:
It is absolutely imperative that your site offers an optimal user experience. The better the user experience, the better the chance of having more conversions! It’s a win-win for everyone.
These days, information is at our fingertips. If we want to learn more about how to build a mobile-friendly site (we’ll cover that here shortly, hang tight!) or the history of cheese, we can find out with one simple search within seconds.
This is all accomplished by the power of keywords.
Keywords are how users will stumble upon your page when they type certain words into the search bar.
Think of your keywords as hashtags for your website. Just what words do you want attached to your site so that people will find you?
A keyword analysis is a review of the words and search phrases that allow people to discover your site, via both organic and paid search. Picking the right keywords will place you higher on the search result rankings and therefore, boost conversions.
Before anything else, make sure you have conversion tracking installed. If not, ask your web developer to do so, or feel free to give us a call.
Keyword Analysis Tools
You want to stop wasting your time and money, right? And better understand trends in market behavior and even find new markets?
If you thought ‘duh’, keep reading.
Tools such as SEMRush, Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner and WooRank can help you do just that.
SEMRush
SEMRush lets you know which keywords will drive traffic to your site, track your ranking, traffic, and competitors, scan your site for any technical and SEO errors, among many other features.
Plans and pricing are here.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a great free alternative to SEMRush that was developed by marketing guru, Neil Patel. It offers keyword suggestions, domain overview, content ideas, top SEO pages report, and backlink data.
Google Keyword Planner
This is another free tool, that is...until your campaign goes live and you have to pay for your ads to show up on a Google search. You will need to have a Google Ads account for this one.
You can get keyword suggestions and volume estimates during a particular time frame and a visualization of mobile trends.
WooRank
WooRank has a plethora of features to choose from: keyword tool, site crawl, SEO monitoring, sales tools and even a WooRank extension.
In regards to their keyword tool, you can target your keyword tracking, search volumes & positions versus your competitors, track your ranking changes and view top keyword competitors.
Plans and pricing are here. The best part? You can try it for free for two weeks!
The bottom line
SEMRush & WooRank may be beneficial if you:
Ubersuggest & Google Keyword Planner may be beneficial if you:
Questions to consider while completing your audit:
Bill Gates coined the phrase, “content is king” back in ‘96 and it has flooded the marketing realm ever since.
For a reason.
Content has the power to make or break your company. If you want a foolproof content marketing strategy, the content on your website has to be up-to-date, relevant and something that is palatable to your target audience. You want your message to resonate with them!
Before you get started, review your goals and create user personas.
To perform an audit, you will need to…
You could also track your competitors’ websites and offsite content performance to expand your audit.
From that point, it will be a whole lot easier to determine whether you should eliminate, consolidate, update or keep particular pieces.
If your content is...
Outdated: Make appropriate revisions to ensure that it is timely.
Irrelevant: Whether it be to your target audience or to your company, find an angle to make it relevant.
Sounding like Yoda wrote it: Han Solo personality you must add.
Otherwise, consider scrapping some pieces so everything on your website has the potential to bring you success.
Questions to consider when completing your audit:
According to Pew Research Center, as of 2019, 81% of Americans own a smartphone. It is also estimated that U.S. mobile retail commerce accounts for 44.7% of the total retail e-commerce sales in the U.S.
What does that mean for businesses?
People are not solely using their desktop to visit websites anymore. Your website has absolutely, positively got to be mobile-friendly!
If it’s not, you might as well be shutting the door on every mobile-using prospects’ face.
So, what does ‘mobile-friendly’ look like exactly?
Users base a lot of their opinions on website display, which in turn, affects their opinions on the business.
Remember we mentioned earlier that we can be shallow when it comes to online browsing?
That is especially true when it comes to mobile browsing.
As of 2014, 57% of users claimed they would not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. (It’s safe to say that number has probably increased in the past five years.)
47% of users expect a page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will bounce if a page takes longer than three seconds to load.
Again, no pressure…
Users just want their information delivered to them in a quick and convenient manner, and it is possible to meet their expectations.
PageSpeed Insights is a useful website that lets you know just how optimized your website is for mobile and desktop with suggestions on how to improve your score.
It seems like everyone is on social media these days - your mom, your neighbor, heck, maybe even your friend’s dog.
There’s roughly 3.49 billion social media users worldwide with the U.S. making up 247 million of that number.
You want to be present on social media to reach your customers as well as those who aren’t customers...yet.
Today, we’re going to focus on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Facebook
With over 1.59 billion daily active users on Facebook who spend nearly an hour on the platform, it’s not a complete shock that they’ll discover new products.
About 80% of American consumers have found products via Facebook. (I have a hunch that might have something to do with their targeted ads. We’ve saved that for last.)
Wondering just how many business pages there are?Try 80 million. This applies only to small and medium-sized businesses.
LinkedIn
The country with the highest number of LinkedIn users is the U.S. with 154 million workers, and 30 million companies have hopped onto the social platform.
The site is filled with users who have a college degree and are in upper management. Think of LinkedIn as Facebook’s older brother who just graduated from Harvard.
Get this: When looking at B2B leads generated off social media, LinkedIn made up 80% of the total amount. Holy Schnikes!
Keeping these statistics in mind, it would be bonkers to disregard social media.
If you want to see a difference in your online presence, be active!
Questions to consider when completing your audit:
Social media is a prevalent tool that can really impact your business simply by posting and analyzing what’s working and what’s not when it comes to your online presence.
You’ve likely heard the phrase, “You have to spend money to make money.”
Before you roll your eyes at the cliché entrepreneurial saying - it is applicable when it comes to paid advertising.
If you have a phenomenal product or service and want to show it off for the world to see, paid advertising is the way to go.
Although it comes at a cost, paid ads undoubtedly have some great benefits:
You want to make sure that you’re not blowing your money on just any ads though.
You want to spend wisely, of course, and make sure your money is going toward effective results, which is the purpose of going through and auditing your paid ads.
Paid advertising is offered in a variety of forms: pay per click, pay per view, pay per download, display ads, video ads, etc.
The two platforms we’re going to hone in on are Google and Facebook ads.
Google Ads
Google Ads is the head honcho when it comes to online advertising platforms. Thousands of companies use Google Ads, making it the largest and most popular.
When completing your audit, you want to have a clear focus of what your goals are and what you’re hoping to achieve with your ads.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-adwords-audit/202600/
Facebook Ads
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/11/06/facebook-ads-account-audit
Sources:
https://conversionxl.com/blog/first-impressions-matter-the-importance-of-great-visual-design/
https://99designs.com/blog/tips/branding-colors/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449290500330448
https://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/249863/us-mobile-retail-commerce-sales-as-percentage-of-e-commerce-sales/
https://www.formstack.com/infographics/mobile-marketing-mistakes
https://neilpatel.com/blog/loading-time/
https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-network-profile/
https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/
https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/average-daily-time-on-social-media#post-navigation-3
https://www.kleinerperkins.com/perspectives/internet-trends-report-2018
https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2018/Q2/Q218-earnings-call-transcript.pdf
https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/resources/linkedin-workforce-report-january-2019
https://news.linkedin.com/about-us#statistics
https://www.forbes.com/sites/henrydevries/2018/11/16/the-best-social-media-for-lead-generation/#70d2fc3046ab
