Marketing for Plumbers

Running a successful plumbing business means bringing in positive cash flow from your investments. This holds true whether we are talking about employees or a marketing budget. Marketing for plumbers, having said that, is fairly simple and cost effective. But it doesn’t happen overnight.

Plumber Marketing Ideas To Grow Your Business

The plumbing industry, like most local business niches, can use the web to target customers in their market. A quality lead generation website, professional seo, an active social media network, and Google My Business (GMB) are a few of the big ways to do this. If you are the DIY type, just know that the plumbing niche is not the easiest to target and a professional may be needed to compete.

High Quality Lead Generation Website

It even sounds great right?

Your website can’t still be the same old 2013 cool site that you had made. Today’s web is so different and so are all the mobile devices.

Even if your website was made with great care, it still is too dated to be effective today when it comes to getting plumbing leads for plumbers.

So what makes a great lead gen site?

Today, the best pages have a contact form present above the fold, or before the user scrolls. You also want a couple key reasons why you are the best bet for the user. The final key is to put some social proof right there, in the form of a testimonial.

Gone are the days when a “fancy” slider introduces your company. When is the last time you actually waited to see all 5 slides on a homepage? Even worse, if you do wait, do you ever find what you came looking for?

Beyond that top section of each page, you need awesome content that tells your customers how you can help them. Also ensure that your navigation is simple and the site isn’t cluttered. Finally, use images that are of your business where possible, otherwise purchase quality stock images. Don’t just grab free ones from Google, it looks tacky.

Finally, make sure that your website loads fast for visitors. Nobody wants to wait 6 seconds for the fancy moving images on your page. Keep it simple and clean, a fast site is often the result. And lots of leads for your business.

Search Engine Optimization Gets Your Plumbing Website on Google

Perhaps you have heard the term by now. SEO. But what is it?

SEO, or search engine optimization is the act of attempting to make your web properties more visible in search engines for a given set of terms.

Take for instance, a great looking website in the plumbing niche. If it doesn’t even get seen on search, how many customers could it possibly attract?

Not many, so how do you fix it?

The answer is simple, you perform seo to get the website ranking higher for searches that your potential customers use when they search online.

White Hat vs Black Hat (or Gray)

SEO comes in many forms, but it is often classified between either white or black hat, and now gray hat has emerged as a term.

White hat seo is a term used by the “purists” that cling to every word that comes from the Google propoganda machine. They claim to strictyly adhere to every rule.

The truth is, nobody is abiding by every rule, or they aren’t performing seo.

Black hat seo means the gloves come off. Black hats do whatever is necessary to get the ranking. Often they are seen as lazy, since automation is one of their main weapons of choice.

Somewhere in between those 2 “factions” lies the gray hat seo scene. As you may have guessed, it’s a mix of the two. On the surface and when talking to clients, they claim to be clean (likely). In practice however, they only try to be. If a limit can’t be reached and a site won’t climb, they will stray to the dark side, thus the gray hat.

Whatever side of the color spectrum suits your plumbing business, some certain things need to be done. These are foundational seo tactics that every website should strive to perfect. Of course you know that everything you create needs to be centered around quality keyword research and planning.

 

• on page seo ~ optimize the title, description, headings, images, and text to make sure search engines understand the meaning of your content
• interlinking ~ to make your site more searchable, you want to link pages together where it makes sense
• citations/directories ~ there are still a few major data aggregators out there that send your data to websites across the world, get on those

One of the often overlooked pieces to seo, is the social media network. Having the popular social media channels locked down for your brand is important and powerful.

Branded Social Media Marketing Network for a Complete Plumber Marketing Package

Don’t make these just to get them online either. Make them being a solid representation of your brand. Your social channels can be a great way to instill trust in potential customers, don’t take that lightly.

I’m referring to the big ones like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and so on. Grab at least those 5 for the plumbing industry.

By now you have probably heard that having an active social media channel is important for business. I can surely tell you that blindly posting will not grow your brand.

However, properly building out these profiles, interlinking them all together and with your website, and syndicating your content is great for seo.

It provides backlinks from high quality websites, and they aren’t spammy links from fake fiverr gigs.

Aside from that, these profiles have the ability to rank. A well built, active and powerful Twitter or Facebook page can easily outrank a competitor’s poor website. You get 2 chances instead of one.

Then there is the obvious fact.

Social sites can generate traffic! Considering traffic is one of the main goals of seo, it just makes sense as a potential candidate in terms of marketing for plumbers.

Perhaps the easiest avenue for traffic in the plumbing industry would be from YouTube. Considering the number of DIY plumbing projects there are that you may not necessarily want a call from, your content options are big.

Fix a leaky faucet and make a step by step video. That could well drive thousands of visitors to your website over time. Will they all be in your local market? No, but the traffic builds the authority of your channel, and consequently the website it links to (yours). Since you do the work anyway, this is a smart marketing strategy.

That brings us to the final point of the plumbing marketing must haves. And it’s another Google product.

Get Your Plumbing Business on The Google Map

GMB is perhaps one of the best marketing channels for a business to generate inexpensive calls that are somewhat predictable and inexpensive.

One of the cool parts about the GMB platform is the Insights. This area tells you the number of calls, how many folks asked for driving directions to your shop, and the number of direct website visits generated by the map listing in the last 30-90 days.

Even Google is realizing the power of the map listing in local search. Consequently, they are testing paid service ads in that area of the search results around the country at times, and in certain niches.

The best part about Google My Business is that the listing itself is a free digital marketing opportunity!

The bad part is that getting your plumbing business listed is tough unless the searcher is in your driveway or you live in a small city.

I’m not trying to say the “average Joe Plumber” couldn’t rank in the map pack, but it’s unlikely. Unless you are a plumbing company in Tinytown, USA, it’s time for an seo specialist.

If you must go it alone, here is a guide that will help you add your business to Google Maps.

The Google Map Listing is one of the most powerful business profiles you can build online. For that reason, make sure you provide quality images and text, as well as completely building the profile.

Get Your Plumber Marketing Plan Together and Running

This is just a handful of plumber marketing tips you will likely need to run a successful campaign, but it is the foundation. Once you have these items together and in place, you are ready for your business to climb the ranks. And of course, if you need help, we perform awesome marketing for plumbers!

The post Marketing for Plumbers appeared first on Cloud Inspector Web Design.

Conversion Rate Optimization

At its most basic understanding, conversion rate optimization is about improvement. If you run a website or a social media page, you want to know how your content is doing.

To get a good idea of how your site is performing, you’ll look at a series of metrics and analytics that tell you what works and what doesn’t.

You can use CRO to measure how active any part of your site is, but it’s mostly used to learn how to acquire new customers, how to obtain new downloads, which features do a great job at attracting attention, and so much more.

Return on Investment

At the end of the day, CRO is about looking at the numbers. You’re paying good money for ads to drive traffic to a specific website, blog, or page.  In turn, you hope that driving enough traffic will result in obtaining a new customer who buys from you.

The CRO numbers tell you if you’re losing money paying for ads that aren’t working, if you’re just breaking even and might need to make a few adjustments, or if you’re on fire and don’t need to change a thing.

For every dollar you spend on ads, what are you getting back?  In email marketing, for every dollar spent, the average person gets a return of $38.  That’s an impressive rate of return!

Not every campaign will see that number.  Some even lose money.

If things are moving a bit slow in your online marketing, you may be pulling out your hair and wondering exactly what you’re doing wrong.  It’s a natural question.  All you want is to create the perfect campaign and BOOM, you’ll be making big money.

The problem is, nothing ever works as planned.

Why You Need to Optimize

Online marketing is a fickle business.  Odds are, you’re not going to get it right the first time around.  A lot of the successful marketers have been around the block a few times, learned from their mistakes, and went back to the drawing board.  Don’t fret if you find yourself making these same mistakes.

The good news is, only a small change may be required to bring in the sales you want.  Or maybe you’ll need a completely new vision.  That’s the power of conversion rate optimization.

We all know that words can be extremely powerful.  Your ability to tell a story can make all the difference when it comes to copy that works and copy that fizzles.

Headlines and other facets of the process are equally as important.  Does your wording encourage subscriptions and buys?  Or discourage them?

So many marketers fail to properly engage regularly and follow-up with their customers.  Good business sense isn’t just getting the sell and being done with them.  You MUST foster a relationship with your customers.

Learn about them.  Grow with them.  Your product or service should evolve as their needs evolve to remain successful.

The attention span of an adult is about 2.8 seconds.  They want to read a quick headline and move on to the next one.  Therefore, it’s important to have a content strategy that matches the way people consume it: quick, easy, and visually biased.

Why Conversion Rates Are Important

All the issues pertaining to marketing go back to whether you could optimize your process.  You get to track what people do with your content.  If you don’t get the type of numbers you’d like to see, then you change the process with the hope that the numbers increase.

Let’s take a look at the different terminology you should know.

1) Total Conversions

If your campaign was successful, you should have a number of people who did exactly what you wanted them to do.  If you directed traffic from Facebook for them to sign up for your newsletter, the number of people who did that will be reflected.

Your success would then be measured by the percentage of people who saw your ad, those who clicked on it, and those who went through with the process.

2) Conversion Rate

Your goal is to get a certain percentage of people to act.  You can check the percentage of people who ‘bought in’ by dividing the number of conversions by the number of people who made it to your site.

3) Bounce Rate

The bounce is when people go to your site, but don’t act.  They show up and leave.  This is not a good metric to have!  If your bounce rate is high, that means people aren’t sticking around for whatever reason.

4) Exit Rate

This will show you what pages people are bouncing from.  Maybe they get through the first page, but then you lose them on the second.  So, the exit rate will reveal where people leave specifically on your site.

5) Engagement

If you have a high engagement or “time on site” rate, that’s a good thing.  It lets you know that people are lingering around on the site.  They’re browsing and not immediately leaving.  That means they’re considering their next move.  Sometimes they buy, other times they leave and come back later.

6) Average Page Views

This is another good indicator to see how long people are sticking around to view your site.  It averages how many pages visitors look at while they’re visiting.  The higher the percentage, the better, as it shows they aren’t leaving immediately, but hanging out awhile.

Improve Your Conversion Rates

If it’s one common thread a lot of online marketers and business people have in common, it’s that initial struggle trying to figure out how to convert leads into buyers. It’s this area in which a lot of marketers get stuck. Their mind keeps going back to the same thing: we need more traffic!

If we need to make more sales, we think of it as a traffic problem. But a lack of traffic is rarely the problem. You can throw $20 into a Facebook ad and instantly generate enough traffic to sell your product or service. Yet, a lot of these marketers are throwing thousands of dollars at their ads, but the focus is still on driving traffic.

If you truly desire to become successful, it is important for you to know what the real issue is behind you not making the sales that you want. You’re not having a traffic problem. You have plenty of traffic as it is and adding more traffic will not help you if you do not know how to convert that traffic.

For whatever reason, your content, your blog, your websites, sales page, your opt in, etc. is failing at taking the plentiful traffic you already have and making them want to open up their wallets for you. Here are five easy tactics you can employ to convert traffic.

Strategy #1: Follow Amazon

Amazon might not be a perfect website, but just digging around and taking a good look at things can give you ideas and inspire you in ways that will help you convert your traffic. The people at Amazon are experts at converting traffic.

They pull out all the stops because they do all the testing find out what works and what doesn’t. If it increases sales, you can bet Amazon is already doing it.

Let’s look at a quick example. Have you ever bought anything on Amazon and went to check out with your items and noticed how they took away navigation options at the checkout screen? If you take away navigation at the checkout screen, it will prevent abandonment and lead to more sales because there’s nothing to distract them. It forces you to buy.

Strategy #2: Create a Tool

Number one way to build authority in your niche is by providing value to the customer. If you can give them value and you’re not 100% focused on pitching, you will increase your leads and your conversions. People want content that helps them and your job is to give that to them.

Have you seen the Progressive insurance commercials? What do they regularly boast their website has? They have a tool that allows you to compare insurance rates between companies. You might be thinking it’s not a good idea for a company to share rates of their competitors because they might end up losing money that way.

That’s not necessarily true. Other companies have calculators that show how much money you’ll be saving or a way to compare spends. Just offer value and it will attract people to you if you don’t think it will.

Strategy #3: Embrace Reviews

You might think you’re the greatest marketer who has ever walked the face of the earth. You can sell a bag of ice to an Eskimo. One of the top reasons why people struggle in converting is a lack of trust and authority. We’ve discussed ways to improve your authority, but there is still one group of people who can sell better than you and it’s imperative that you tap into their power.

Customers. No matter how good you think you are at selling, your customers are better at it than you are. At least that’s the way you need to look at. Why? Because nothing will sell your product faster and better than with good reviews.

Nothing will sink your business faster than bad reviews. Listen to the people and embrace reviews. If you seek to improve bad reviews, good ones will always drown them out.

Strategy #4: Virtual Receptionist

You’re a very busy person. Constantly worried about posting new content, building relationships customers, playing out the future, and doing about 100 different things to make sure your business takes off. It can be time-consuming and complicated. But sometimes, you’re too busy to do work because you’re always on the phone chasing leads.

Converting isn’t an exact science. Someone can visit your site at 1 PM, yet not decide to buy until six that evening. It’s common for people that want to sit on it for a while and think the purchase through. But at 6 PM, you’re out of the office. Maybe your grabbing dinner, fighting traffic, or just unable to reach the phone. How many leads do you think you miss after business hours?

This is where the virtual receptionist can help you convert more leads and give you extra time to do your job. You might be thinking that virtual receptionist cost a lot of money, but compared to hiring someone new at the office, you can hire a virtual receptionist for peanuts. It usually cost between $200 and $300 per month. It’s worth the cost.

Strategy #5: Personalization

One of the newest strategies popping up these days is custom personalization. If you’ve ever done email marketing, and you know how important it is to speak directly to the person you’re sending the email to.

There are different types of emails to be sent to different consumers. You send one email to someone who just joined your list, and an entirely different email to someone who has been on your list long time.

You’re customizing your traffic in a way that makes it personal to the user. Some sites, like Product Hunt, have a bar over the top when you’re shopping it recognizes you as a person. It treats you like a person and greets you like person. This is a great way to build trust with your customers and the new visitors who come in.

Conclusion

The internet is an amazing tool you can use at your disposal to become successful.  No matter what niche market you’re in, you must pay attention to the numbers and adjust.  It might take you time to learn new strategies, but the only way to figure it out is by testing and knowing what the numbers mean.

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How to Advertise on Craigslist Effectively

I hear it all the time.

“How can I spread the word about my business if I don’t have a budget?”

One way, is to leverage your ability to advertise on Craigslist.

I’m sure you are asking yourself, “Is this guy nuts? Can I get any real business from Craigslist?”.

The answer is almost always YES!

Understanding the Marketing Potential on Craigslist

Ok, you’re right. Every business isn’t going to kill it with some craigslist posts.

You would be surprised how many will though.

If you are an attorney that deals with business litigation, yeah this isn’t for you.

A painter or a plumber however, get ready for lots of free business leads if you advertise on craigslist.

Of course every lead isn’t going to be a homerun either, although some niches deliver solid gold.

How to Advertise on Craigslist

Craigslist marketing might seem hard, but is a fairly simple and straightforward process that anyone can do. The key is in the posting regimen.

If you have a quick peruse through your local services section on craigslist, you will quickly see how many businesses are using this tactic.

When posting, the thing to remember is that you can only post 2 new ads, every other day. Additionally, you can repost one old post, and renew every post.

Ready to learn how?

Get Your Own Account

In order to start posting ads on craigslist, you need to get a phone verified account. Head on over and sign up.

Once you have signed up, go ahead and click your location. You should have a screen similar to this, but with your area listed.

Before we actually post, I want to go over a couple details to keep your account safe and your ads live.

1. You can only post to the cities listed from within your account. (seen in orange in image above – yours will be different)
2. Only 2 new ads can be placed every other day
3. Repost 1 expired post every other day
4. Renew all eligible posts every other day

It is important that you follow the posting maximums in order to effectively advertise on craigslist. They will let you believe you are getting 5 or more posts out per day. And they will show you the live posts.

It happens through the use of a technique called ghosting. Essentially, they show you the live ad. Only you though. It’s junk, spammed, blocked, outskie! But they let you think it’s all good.

Eventually, they will block every post from you and possibly ban your account.

Follow the directions for posting laid forth here and you will have a whole page of live ads within 2 months.

Admittedly, this account shows some slacking. Normally, it would be a full green page and yours can be too.

Where to Advertise on Craigslist

As in the first note above, you can only post to the cities that are located in your area. Your area, is the area you were in when you signed up.

You can get away with posting to any city listed, but I like to keep it to a few. Generally the largest cities in your area will be the best option.

A decent sized city with no competition can also be a gold mine. Essentially, every area can generate leads.

Bigger cities equal bigger numbers of course though.

Making Your First Post

An easy way to make a post is to simply click “post to classifieds”. I want to get you used to using the “my account” button instead, since we will always have renewals anyway.

Go ahead and click my account now.

This takes you to the main area of your account. To create our first post, we need to choose our city from the dropdown (#2 in figure).

The dropdown is every city, not just your region. Be sure that you do not choose a city outside your area mentioned earlier.

Once you have your city selected, click the “go” button.

Choose a Post Type

On this screen, you choose the post type. In most cases, you will choose “service offered” or maybe “gig offered” depending on what you will advertise on craigslist.

One thing to keep in mind. You can post an ad anywhere. The more “out of place” viewers find it though, the more likely it gets flagged.

Flagging happens, but our goal is live ads. The more we do to slide by those that like to flag people, the better so let’s play nice.

Once you choose your post type, click “continue”. The next step is choosing a post category for your craigslist ad.

Choose a Post Category

The selection shown is the result of choosing services offered, as mentioned earlier. As you can see, the selection is large to accommodate many types of services.

Go ahead and choose one that makes sense to you. For instance, if you are an HVAC contractor, it wouldn’t make much sense to post in the “writing/editing/translation section”.

Real estate services would be a great spot though. You could also use just about any other section in this list. The reason, any business posting in those sections also has a home or business location that needs heat!

This wouldn’t be the same for many other business types though.

Now, it’s time to actually build our ad.

The Anatomy of a Craigslist Ad

A craigslist ad has 3 entries that must be made in order to complete a listing.

1. The posting title
2. The postal code
3. The posting body

Choosing the Title to Advertise on Craigslist

The title is the most important part of any craigslist ad (#1). It is the clickable link in the sea of other mundane ads.

You have to make it stand out. I don’t mean pasting a bunch of bull shit peace signs either.

Is it ok to drop 1 entity, sure. The ace of spades always draws a look. But don’t over do it.

Add the Zip Code

One thing to note here, this isn’t your personal zip code (#2). This should go without saying, but I will make light of it anyway.

If you are posting to another city in your region, make sure you use an appropriate zip code.

Yes, that may mean searching for the zip code of a city if you don’t know it. Remember, it’s free marketing, not effortless marketing.

Make Your Posting Body SEO Friendly

The same could be said of the title as both are searchable. The posting body (#3) can only be seen once a user clicks through to the ad though.

Make a body with a lot of content. Use terms relevant to your trade and your area.

Perhaps the most important part of the title and description is focus. Your ads needs a reason.

If you want to generate leads from your ads, SOLVE PROBLEMS!

Yeah, it isn’t about you. Put your name out there, but do so in a smart way.

People are searching for service providers on craigslist because they want someone local to them. And they likely don’t want a giant chain company.

They want the little guy. They need you!

Additional Craigslist Ad Details

As mentioned, there are 3 must fill fields on the craigslist ad.

There are several others though, that you may fill out if you like.

The “specific location” field allows you to enter a city, town, or actually anything. You can use a keyword, although I don’t think it will have any benefit aside from being visible on the listing.

Next is the license section, a radio checkbox. This makes sense for some fields such as various home contractors.

After that, you can enter contact information that is only visible when the viewer clicks the “reply” button.

You can see a screenshot of the information as it lives on an ad. The personal contact information on this ad has been blurred for privacy purposes.

The reason this method of entering contact information is simple. It can’t get scraped.

If you click “reply”, you will be forced to enter a captcha and prove you are not a bot. That’s great since you don’t want your info everywhere to post these ads.

After all, you do get enough spam already right?

The final section is the “show on maps” area. You may enter a location if it makes sense. Brick and mortar locations would surely want to take advantage. If not, unselect the box.

Add Your Images

The images are sometimes the most important piece of the ad. Depending on what you advertise, you could earn their trust right now.

Key takeaways for images are simple. If it doesn’t add to the overall trust of your brand, don’t show it. You can enter up to 24 images.

That being said, some people will not click an ad with no thumbnail, so consider adding a square high resolution logo for your brand.

When complete, click “done with images”.

Preview Your Craigslist Ad

This is the preview screen, which allows you to take a look at what the live ad will display like.

Make sure that you read through the title and description to check for errors.

For this post, I quickly put up a post. Your screenshot should have a solid title of more length.

And your posting body should look like an article! No kidding, don’t be afraid to drop a text bomb in here.

The key is to make the very beginning to the point so a reader can get “the jist” right away.

Once you are done, go ahead and click “publish”.

Go Rinse and Repeat

You did it! Your first free advertisement of craigslist is officially live on the internet. Now go do it again!

After all, I said you could do it 2 times right? You get those two chances today, and many more free chances in the future so take advantage.

Let’s Repost an Expired Listing

Craigslist posts only have a lifetime of 45 days. Once they expire, they are listed below your live ads in your account. They aren’t dead though.

Click “repost” next to your chosen ad. On the next screen, scroll down and click continue. Finally, click the publish button to repost the ad to live status.

You can repost (#3) 1 ad every other day. There is an exception though, it can’t be a duplicate.

For instance, you have 2 expired ads from your first day. You can repost one of them each time when they become eligible. You can not repost any more than one time though.

Be careful too, you will get away with it. Eventually, maybe even immediately the ad will get ghosted. A mistake is reasonable, but a habit is bad.

What I mean, you may get lucky once but I would just be careful to avoid this. It can happen since reposting an expired ad does not remove it from the expired list.

Don’t Forget to Renew Your Old Posts

We touched on this before. It’s listed as #4 above, the renewal process.

An ad on craigslist has a “new shelf life” of 48 hours. After that, you can renew the listing and get it lifted to the top of the pile.

When I say 48 hours, I mean that many. Good practices is to do this first thing when you wake up on day 1. Every other day, start a minute or more later than last time to ensure you can post new ads and renew old ones in the same visit.

The renewal process is simple, just click the link. That brings up a screen such as the one below.

You simply need to click your username in the upper right corner to get back out to the dashboard. Renew every post in your list.

Use Craigslist to Make it Rain

When you start to advertise on craigslist, you will quickly start to make short work of the task. In just a couple minutes while your coffee cools, you can have the job done.

Keeping a spreadsheet of ads and ideas can help speed up the process. Better yet, you could get someone else doing this for you! Let us know if you need help with this or any other local digital marketing services.

I apologize for not having the time to open comments on these posts. Feel free to hit me up on social media if you have any questions. Maybe you could help out and share this post as well.

The post How to Advertise on Craigslist Effectively appeared first on Cloud Inspector Web Design.

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan

You might think that social media is just a way to communicate with people from all over the world. You can share what you had for lunch, what your golf score was, or who your dinner date is.

However, it is not only for personal use.

Because of the fact that social media reaches people from all over the world, it is a great way to advertise the business that you have.

Whether it is straight up marketing with ads on social media network sites, or actual posts from your company’s social media accounts, social media is a great platform to expand your audience and in turn gain more profit.

But because it can be used for business, strategies should be planned and each move you make should be carefully evaluated and tested so that you will get maximum results.

You need to have a social media plan, basically. In order to do that, you are going to have to find professionals in this field so that you will be able to find a social media plan template that will cater to you and your business’ needs.

But before we dive into the actual template that you will be needing for your marketing strategy, first you need to know what a social media plan is all about.

What Makes a Social Media Marketing Plan?

A Social Media Plan is basically your overall plan with regards to how you will be making good use of your social media networks to promote and advertise your business.

In creating a social media plan, you are going to have to be meticulous with the details so that you will take full advantage of what social media has to offer. When making a social media plan, a social media plan template should be the framework of your plan.

Although there are a lot of articles and blogs about social media plan template, you should be careful on which ones to choose because some might just have general and flowery words to attract your attention.

Don’t fall victim to click-bait. It is all about the specificity and accuracy of the information that you gather. It is not about how much is written in the template, it is about how specific it is.

There are several procedures to follow in creating a social media marketing plan template. The following are the steps that you should strive to follow:

Formulate social media objectives

Just like any other business, whether online or off, creating the objectives should always come first in making your plan. These objectives serve as the guidelines and the overall focus of what you are trying to accomplish.

In a resume, you list objectives so that the employer will know what you are expecting to gain from getting hired at their company. In a social media plan, the objectives are the backbone of the plan itself. It will hold together all the ideas and have coherence between each bullet point.

Keep Track of Your Target Market

Once you have formulated the objectives of your social media marketing plan template, it’s time for you to keep tabs on potential customers.

By being organized, it will be easier to know which social media networks work best and how to approach your target market more efficiently. Keep an audit of social networking sites and make an estimate on which social media platforms your customers use the most.

If you keep a close eye on the statistics of social media usage, you will already have an advantage over the rest. This is partly because the more popular a social media network site is, the more exposure the ads get if they appear on these websites. It all depends on how you organize all of the necessary data to make your life a lot easier.

Constantly Update Your Social Media Accounts

In order to stay connected, you must be active on your social media accounts. If you have someone who will handle that, then you are good to go.

However, it is not as easy as it sounds. Allotting a specific amount of time on an app takes a lot out of your day if you don’t pay close attention. If you leave your accounts dormant, people will start unfollowing and unsubscribing, which defeats the purpose of making a social media marketing plan template.

Furthermore, you can’t just post anything just for the sake of keeping your account active. If it is within your budget, you should hire a social media specialist to handle all of the press release and company updates.

In today’s modern age of technology, it is easier and a lot faster to get information. But the downside of that is people believe just about anything. Make sure to only post appropriate and business related updates. This will slowly build the reputation of lesser known companies.

Create an Editorial Calendar

It is important to have a calendar dedicated to what should be published, posted, and uploaded when and where. If you just post ads during random times, you will have less productivity.

As previously mentioned, the audit will serve as a guide when the peak hours of usage for each social network would be. By setting a specific time and specific date, you will have a more organized and efficient way of marketing your business on your social media accounts.

A good social media plan example would include all of the steps above. There may even be additional steps for maximum profit of your business.

Social Media Plan Recap

As a recap, first you need to formulate broad but clear objectives that correlate to your overall business plan.

Next, you should pay attention to statistics and graphs regarding the peak hours and amount of traffic a social media site would have especially for your target audience.

Then, you should be active with all of your social media accounts because not doing so will result in loss of followers and subscribers, and in turn, loss of sales.

Afterwards, make a detailed editorial calendar to have everything scheduled accordingly to get the best results.

For professional help, we can provide the best strategies for your social media marketing plan. We will guide you every step of the way and provide expertise in the field of social media, marketing, and advertising your business.

In order for one to create a social media marketing plan, one should consider having a social media campaign. Word of mouth is a good way to advertise your business. But utilizing social media is even better. By creating a social media plan template, you are ready to start profiting from the phenomena called social media.

The post How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan appeared first on Cloud Inspector Web Design.

How To Get the Most From Testimonials

Every company says the same thing.

How can I get customers to write a piece about my company?

To be honest, that isn’t even the important part.

The key is to get them to be eager to share their experience, and get them to go in depth.

For a testimonial to be valuable to your business, it needs to relate to the potential customers that view it.

It won’t strike a nerve with every one, but we just need a segment. Pile up those testimonials and you soon reach many segments of your audience with the vital “social proof”.

Gain enough and you can segment them based on the page someone is viewing and match it with the review content.

So how do you get them?

I’m going to start with telling you what not to do.

I know that is a bit backwards, but the reason is simple. Too many people do it wrong!

Don’t Offer Incentives

For starters, don’t offer any “freebies” for testimonials. There are a couple good reasons:

1. You need to tell every future potential customer that the previous testimonials were based on such freebie
2. They probably won’t be honest since you are “giving away the farm”
3. Google strictly prohibits using incentives for testimonials. Certainly don’t ask them to review you on your Google profile if you offering incentives

Don’t Fake It

Don’t fake your testimonials by having friends and family SPAM your online profiles either. I know it doesn’t seem like spam to you, and technically it isn’t.

Would you want 5 of my “happy users” to provide you with reassurance only to find out later that they are my relatives?

Of course not.

It goes beyond them finding out. If they use social media to spread the word, your business is sunk before it left the harbor.

Don’t Display Poor Converting Testimonials

Simply having a testimonial isn’t the same as having testimonials that drive business to your brand.

Let’s look at an example. Take this website into account, you are considering hiring me to help your brand with digital marketing (I hope so!).

If I show you these two testimonials, which one is more likely to help you pull the trigger.

~~“This is a great service!”

~~“With our last web designer we were just a number. Dan with cloud inspector took the time to design a webpage that uniquely fits the aspects of my business and is always there to answer any questions I have. Cloud inspector does an amazing job with optimizing my search results and I would recommend him to any business owner! “

I’m guessing you chose number two.

The reason is simple. It speaks exactly of what you are here inquiring about. The writer talks specifically about what you can expect, the services you seek, and seems really pleased.

This is the type of testimonial that will increase conversions on your site, by providing social proof and instilling trust in potential customers.

With our last web designer we were just a number. Dan with cloud inspector took the time to design a webpage that uniquely fits the aspects of my business and is always there to answer any questions I have. Cloud inspector does an amazing job with optimizing my search results and I would recommend him to any business owner!

Jason Marten's Heating October 31, 2015

Where Can You Get the Most From Testimonials

Testimonials are best displayed on your website of course. That doesn’t mean you should worry about gathering them there though.

In fact, I would aim to get interested customers to share their experience on social media. Everyone has some social profile and you should be using them all for your business. Even if for no other reason that this one!

Social Media Sites Promote Reviews

Social media can be the death or the lifeblood of a company.

For those that do awesome work, you are going to love what people say on your profiles. The rest should prepare for damage control.

If you are confrontational or don’t handle constructive criticism well, it would be a good choice to let someone else handle you social profiles.

What to Expect

To discuss your offerings with clients or window shoppers on social media, you need thick skin.

Everybody that uses your service or product won’t completely love you or your company. This is inevitable. The key is how you respond.

Always try to be complimentary of those who interact with your brand on social media. They took the time. Plus, you could learn something.

Every person that praises you, or pounds your company into the ground for the world to see is doing you a favor.

They are helping you in a couple ways:

1. They offered you honest thoughts without you asking for it, many marketers spend piles of money on specific campaigns just to gather this info. You got it for free.
2. You have an opportunity to respond. More importantly, show the potential community how you take care of customers.
3. You found someone that will likely spread the word about your awesome product, provided you have shown them that is what you provide.

The key with social is simple. ALWAYS remember one thing…the whole world is watching!

Do exactly what you want the world to think about your brand.

As someone who works in the SEO space, I can tell you that a bad review with tons of social interaction is far harder to bury in the search results than one with a polite response that you hit head on is to raise to the top.

On Site Testimonials

This is an option of course.

Here’s the thing. If people know that they have no possible way of confirming this testimonial, at least in their own mind, they won’t believe it.

If they can’t track it down to Facebook, Google, Yelp, Twitter or wherever, they consider it a fake.

Quite frankly, neither of us can blame them. If I see a crappy site with testimonials that the author had to type in, I become a skeptic.

That’s where social proof comes in. If that quote is attached to a human, with friends, we buy into their story. We might even be connected.

Take every possible effort to ensure that your testimonials come through a social media profile of some sort.

Hand Written Reviews

I almost forgot.

There is one more way that I can think of.

You could request hand written testimonials and take them with you in a cute scrapbook when you go and offer a quote to your customers.

If you do that, please send us pictures!

Protect Your Company Testimonials

You back up your website and everything on your computer without even thinking about it. At least you should!

You should also save testimonials for your own use (ALWAYS).

Think about it. Do we own Facebook, Google, or any of them?

No.

If they close their doors, you know you don’t technically own the stuff on your profile right?

They are not going to “fire the site back up” just for us to grab our user’s thoughts.

Of course I know Facebook isn’t folding anytime soon, it’s just good practice.

Tons of bloggers have been flocking to Medium recently due to the high domain authority that their website carries. It gives their posts a lot of power right out of the blocks.

Now Medium is in trouble and all of their efforts will wither into a digital pool of quicksand.

The point is simple.

Keep your quotes held tightly, even if just a screenshot from the site they were posted on. They will always serve you even if nobody can go there to see them. If a social site falls, everybody will know about that. And where those testimonials were posted before, based on the look of them.

Most importantly, strive to make customers happy at every possible step of the journey.

It’s hard to get someone to leave a positive testimonial, but when they do it carries tons of weight.

Getting a poor review is simple, and unfortunately very hard to get rid of.

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WordPress Management: Do it Alone or Hire a Pro

Today WordPress powers a huge percentage of the websites on the web. It allows anyone to create a website with every “feature” that they could need.

Those features come with a cost though.

Every plugin that you add to your website to make it do this cool thing or that one, adds additional load on your website. It makes the site heavier for those loading, especially important on mobile devices.

Beyond that, all of those plugins get updated by their developers, sometimes for sake of security. As a website owner, it is your responsibility to make sure your site is updated and safe for your users, all while making sure nothing breaks.

Below are some of the things you should consider when deciding if you want to manage your own website, or sleep well at night knowing you have a pro on your side.

WordPress Management is a Commitment

One thing in the world of WP is certain, the system isn’t designed to be a “set it and forget it” website. It is a constantly evolving script the builds your web pages on the fly.

All of the options and customizations you make are essentially building templates. These templates are then pulled together when someone requests your web page.

Sometimes, changes to the script can mean minor changes to the theme you run or plugin(s) you have installed.

Frequency of Theme, Plugin, and Core Updates

The WordPress core gets updated frequently. Patches are sometimes weekly.

Generally, themes will get updated at most monthly. Plugins also get updated once per month at most.

This isn’t the issue. In order to update these plugins, you have two options. Either test the updates in a staging environment, or take a leap of faith and hit update all.

Anyone that has a WordPress website can tell how the frustration of hitting update to find that your website no longer works.

White Screen of Death

Many times what happens when a website “crashes” is the white screen of death. It is named this because attempting to view the website or the admin dashboard results in a white screen.

Fortunately, in this instance I faked what you would actually see instead of actually suffering it.

This can result in lost revenue on a sales site or potential business on a lead generation website. The cause is usually one culprit.

Plugin Conflict

This is know a “plugin conflict”. The WordPress repository has thousands of plugins. Also, outside vendors sell plugins. This results in over a hundred thousand listings in the support forums.

This makes it impossible for every vendor to test their plugin with every other. It just isn’t practical.

A plugin conflict resulting in the white screen of death is basically an impossible fix for someone without server knowledge.

Not a big deal for a seasoned website admin, but a real kick in the shorts for your average business owner though.

Now it’s time to pay for a developer to fix it in real time. Doesn’t sound cheap does it?

Plugin Abandonment­

The average business owner doesn’t know the WordPress landscape.

Plugin abandonment is when a developer just quits actively maintaining a plugin. This is troubling because it could open up a future security leak.

A normal business owner would have no way of knowing that this has happened to a plugin on their website. They don’t know the people or companies with a track record of keeping products up to date. They generally only go by the number of users. This can be a costly mistake.

An active WordPress user (Manager) however, would have this info and find a replacement for the dead plugin.

Theme Updates

Other times updates can have less noticeable, yet significant changes to your website. This is especially true if you have many customizations on your website.

Sometimes the changes can be as simple as the theme updating how it does things and you simple re-check some options.

Other times, it can be css changes, which would require coding knowledge to fix the layout.

Site Backups

Keeping you website backed up is important. Both the database and the WordPress files.

While a plugin can be set to automatically back up your website and erase the oldest copy, this can be troublesome.

Imagine your site is hacked and they were clever enough to not let you notice (likely). Now they can do what they want with your website, including sending users to other malicious websites.

Your site backup schedule carries about it’s business and makes copies of the now infected website. Think that backup is any good now?

While this can happen to anyone, even a managed website provider, it is less likely. This scenario happens way to often to business owners that aren’t even aware until they get threatened by their hosting provider.

It also brings up my next point.

Website Security

The security of your website shouldn’t be taken lightly. As mentioned, WordPress is used by millions. Thus, it is the target of attack.

Using a security plugin is a must. And they aren’t set up the way you want them “out of the box”. They can and should be configured to increase the security of your website.

Wordfence is an incredibly popular option and the choice that I use almost exclusively. With over 1 million users and 4.8 star rating you can’t go wrong.

Without security, hackers can literally test your login page all day, every day.

This will piss off your web host and make your website slow down to a crawl. That is if a potential customer can reach it at all.

If you run your own site, you are going to have to pay for a hack cleanup. With a managed provider though, in the unlikely event this happened, you would pay nothing.

A Couple More Reasons to Choose a Managed WordPress Website

One of the biggest things that is tough for someone is the actual server itself. Getting WordPress installed and adding files to the server. Setting up and maintaining email through an unfamiliar platform. Redirecting web pages to new versions. The list can get big in a hurry.

I know that you can use the one click script to install WordPress, but with a professional setup that wouldn’t be the case. It would be a clean install with no unnecessary software running to make it happen.

In fact sometimes you don’t have anything more than your WordPress install to worry about.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed hosting is when you pay for someone to manage your hosting environment. You actually manage your WordPress website though, complete with the ability to break a beautiful layout.

If that happens, they will restore it for you of course, but it will likely be queued up and you wait in line. It is nice however, that you don’t have to follow a tutorial or call a developer to hit up your server and fix up the site.

Fully Managed Plan

This is our plan to completely take website management out of your hands.

• Hosting is provided so you know you get a great choice
• Server management is completely handled for you, everything
• Email that is dependable and simple (Google Apps)
• WordPress is completely managed for you…updates, backups, security
• Deeply discounted website build pricing
• Minor changes to website content ~ not to exceed 1 hour per month. Client must provide assets (images, proofread .txt files for written content, change instructions)
• 99.9% uptime for your website
• Access to premium tools
• Beyond that, as a client you can get discounted pricing on additional services to grow your business. You have a digital expert to discuss needs with and someone that you can trust to be straight with you.

Managing a WordPress website isn’t the most difficult thing in the world. Their will be bumps in the road though, if you choose to go it alone.

The question is simple.

Does it make sense for you to try to be a website admin and run a business?

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