Many small to mid-sized business owners here the term “video marketing” and think two things- no time to do it along with giant dollar signs. It’s just too intimidating. Well, this post is designed to debunk that myth because that’s what we do here at Make It Loud- debunk.

First, some businesses need to be convinced that video marketing is worth the time and energy. Here’s some of the data we found:

• 100 million people a day watch at least one video
• 90% of online shoppers say a video helps them decide to buy
• Better retention- 80% of browsers recall watching a video on a site they visited
• 46% of that 80% took action-looked for more info, visited the website or purchased
• 64% of browsers are more likely to buy after watching a video
• 403% Austrailian realtors reported listings with videos received that many more inquiries
• Forbes reports 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read
  • 65% go to vendors website
  • 45% contact the vendor
  • 50% purchase
• Videos on email marketing campaigns have been shown to increase click through rate (2-3x)
• Reduces opt out rates (~75%)
• Has been shown to increase subscriber to lead rates by about 50%

What have videos been shown to accomplish? That’s simple. Videos can help you demonstrate your product or service faster and more clearly than written text. It’s a great way to introduce you or your business, and it keeps browsers on your site longer which contributes to better search rankings. Plus, when you have a video in the search results, we know that improves click through rates and helps drive people to your business. Some experts even predict that in less than 3 years, almost 75% of all traffic online will be video!

The point of all this is simple- your competitors are most likely using videos, and if you’re not, you could be missing very important leads.

We outlined three ways to create a business video. First, there’s the old school way of getting a video camera, shooting and uploading that video to your computer where you’ll need to edit what’s there. This is effective, but can be time intensive. Next, grab your cell phone and shoot what you need to. Upload, edit and share. Easier, but still can cost you some time. Last, there are image based videos where you take 10+ images and use software like Animoto to build a video for your business. This is the least time intensive approach and can lead to beautiful results.

Plan out what you want to accomplish with the video- demonstration, brand awareness, etc. This will help you decide what images and text to use, but with some software, you can have a video in as little as 10-15 minutes!

Let the staff at Make It Loud show you how. Call us today and ask for Make It Loud Academy session on video marketing!

(See the full boot camp notes on our website at http://makeitloud.net/boot_camp_notes)

Imagine if you will, being able to tap into conversations with specific keywords and such that directly relate to your brand, your business and exactly what you do. It would allow you to be more efficient with the time you spend on social media. Welcome to, well, this blog post!

Sure, it’s cutting edge stuff, and most businesses don’t really understand it all that well. And, don’t think this kind of prospecting is cheap my any means, but there are some tools out there than the small business owner can use to accomplish some of the same things- finding conversations that directly relate to your business.

It works like this- there are bazillions of conversations that occur on all the social media channels, and a percentage of them either indirectly or directly relate to your business. If you provide a vital service (like say, digital marketing. Hmm!), you would naturally have a list of keywords that pertain to what you do (web design, website design, social media marketing, SEO, etc). Developing this list and referring to it while using these tools can alert you to conversations that are related to those terms. You can then insert your message into that thread which can lead to higher engagement, conversions and mo’ money!

Now, some business owners are still thinking they don’t need to be on social media- that it’s just a fad, it’ll go away, etc. My response to those people is simple. Is your target market there? If the answer is yes (which it obviously is!), then if you’re not there talking to your people, your competitors are. That means you’re ignoring a major avenue to the very people that are looking for what you do. To us, that’s leaving money on the table.

But, the question always comes around to “How do I know if I’m doing well?” It’s a good questions certainly, but it also depends upon your goals for social media- increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your site? Make sales? Regardless, measuring your efforts requires you to look at some data or social analytics.

The cheapest way to check your social analytics is to look at the data each channel provides. That tells you at least some basic numbers like “likes”, “shares”,” +1’s”, etc. Besides what’s available there, you can always check out these:

• Google Analytics-if nothing else, you can see which channels are feeding your website
• Cyfe-free to start, upgrade to $29/month
• Agorapulse- helps you measure your FB & Twtter, some free stuff, $29/mo
• Sprout Social-pretty analytics $60/month

Social Media Monitoring

Different from just measuring how well things are going, social media monitoring is where you’re actually plugging in to conversations about your business. Think of it as listening to Twitter or the others for posts about what you do so that you can jump in there and engage at the right time with the right people. Powerful stuff! As with any other listening, there are two types- active & passive listening.

Active listening/monitoring is where you go to a website and plug in your keywords to see what people are saying. Here are some tools that seem useful:

• Addictomatic-let’s you browse a variety of channels across the web
• Social Mention- gives you “mood metrics”
• Topsy-search out trends, topics & discussions about your subject
• Icerocket- let’s you search out and find people mention keywords

Passive social monitoring is where you go to a site, set up some keywords, brands, etc and these tools notify you when a conversation is taking place that might interest you. Some of these tools include:

• Google Alerts
• Buzzsumo-has tools & free account
• Mention-free account, will give alerts
• Hearsaysocial-good for financial, insurance, etc
• Bottlenose-maps the trends
• Gnip-starts at $500

Some of these tools offer both social analytics that’ll help you measure how well you’re doing with your social media as well as social monitoring abilities.

The point is, there are a host of tools that exist to help you become more efficient in what you do to attract people to your business. This gives you a good list to start with to match your business goals and your budget. Now, get out there and start listening!

(See the full boot camp notes on our website at http://makeitloud.net/boot_camp_notes)

Marketing in the 20^th century was primarily done three ways: In person, via phone or by mass communication (television/radio spots, newspaper/magazine ads and direct mail).  All of these are still valid components to consider today when developing your marketing plan.  Add to these the 21^st century goodies: websites, social media, email marketing, pay-per-click, etc.  As you can see, there’s lot of marketing choices these days but please make sure your foundation is in place before you get too far down the path. 

What makes a solid marketing foundation?  I suggest it’s all the items that you own and fully control.  Do you own your social media channels?  Can you dictate exactly how your brand is presented and the breath of exposure you get on social media?  No, you are always one “terms of service” change from potentially losing all the momentum you’ve built.

So what are central components of a strong marketing foundation?

1. A domain name you own and control.  You’ll want to secure both the .com and .net version of your domain.  Buy each domain for two years or longer (because Google likes that!)
2. A high quality logo for your business that’s easily recognizable and represents your brand well.
3. A professionally designed website that’s graphically appealing, easily navigated and converts (makes browsers become customers).  It also must auto re-size for easy reading on a cellphone.  You website is the center of all your marketing efforts.
4. An email marketing program where you constantly capture email addresses of prospective customers to add to your list of regular customer who receive your company’s monthly, branded email newsletter.  Remember, they came to your website so there must be an interest in your product or service.  Every email you send moves them closer to buying or using your service again (or trying it for the first time).

The items listed above all have one thing in common. You are in control!  You set the rules and decide how things will work.  Can your business survive with only these four tools in your marketing toolbox?  Probably.   Can you excel and grow using only these tools?  Probably not.  You’ll need social media to create the “digital word of mouth” for your company and drive your website activity and rankings.  Broadcast/print advertising will get your message to the masses fast while pay-per-click places your ad on page one of Google search.

Build your foundation and make sure it’s stable. Then focus your attention on the supporting elements like social media and mass advertising.  It’s called marketing strategy for a reason.  It takes careful planning and consistent monitoring to insure your marketing effectiveness.

PS:  Let’s not forget the oldest form of marketing in the world: person to person.  Make sure you get from behind that desk and out in front of people whenever the opportunity permits (maybe even create a few networking opportunities at your office!)   There are hundreds of business networking events across Atlanta every month.  Here’s a list of the most popular ones: www.joelslist.com. See you there!

Oh, for the good ole days…  Back when all of your social media posts were seen by all of your followers.  Not today!  (In fact, your Facebook posts rarely reach 15% of your followers.)

What’s one to do?  The answer lies in your wallet.  You might want to “Pay To Play”.  Social media channels are actively seeking new ways to monetize their business model.  One way is by charging you a fee to expose your company’s posts/updates to a larger audience.  It’s not just Facebook.  LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest all have paid options.  We’ll discuss a few of these “Pay To Play” options below:

Facebook – Boost A Post:  As was mentioned in the introduction, most of your followers on Facebook never see your post. But, you can increase the number of people who do see your post by boosting it.  This service will cost you but you are able to set how much money you’re willing to spend.  (The less you spend, the lower the exposure.)  You can also select the demographics, geographic location and interests of the individuals who will be shown your update on their news feed.  The persons you target can be people you already know or people you don’t currently interact with. Tracking the success of your post is easy thanks to the Facebook Ads Manager.

LinkedIn – Sponsored Update:  This is LinkedIn’s paid service.  LinkedIn is the business social media channel, so naturally anything you promote on LinkedIn is geared toward the business customer. (Think B2B not B2C.)  Unlike Facebook, your shared updates are currently seen by all your connections.  However, LinkedIn Sponsored Updates can expose your update to an even wider audience.  You can define your targeted audience based on variables like age, gender, location, job title, job skills, company size, company industry, etc.  You will need to decide whether you want to pay per 1000 impressions (CRM) or per click (CPC).  CRM is good for building brand awareness while CPC is good for lead generation.   This is an auction for ad space so will need to select your maximum bid amount.  Results from sponsored updates can be tracked via the LinkedIn Ads Manager. 

Twitter – Promoted Tweet:  Twitter is home to the tweet, the very popular 140 character social media message.  (Factoid: The tweet has the shortest lifecycle of any social media update at about 18 minutes.)  Just like Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter has paid options for expanding exposure. One such item is the Promoted Tweet.  With this, you can target by keywords, interests, geography and device (cell phone, android or iPhone, laptop/PC, Mac, etc.)  Promoted Tweets appear at the top off a person’s timeline and then scroll through the timeline.  Simply select your bid based on your budget. You’ll be charged when someone follows your account or clicks, re-tweets, favorites or replies to your Promoted Tweet.  Use Twitter analytics to track how well your Promoted Tweet is doing.

Pinterest – Promoted Pin:  The Pinterest Promoted Pin has not been rolled out to the general populous but Pinterest has invited select individuals to use the service and serve as a beta tester for what will be offered to the masses very soon. Pinterest Promoted Pins are a great if you have something to sell because it gets your product in front of a lot more eyes and you can point the customer directly to your website for purchasing. (Factoid:  The Pinterest pin has the longest life cycle on social media.) To create a promoted pin, select one of your recent pins.  Then choose the keywords you’d like to target, demographics and location.  Like Twitter, you can also choose which devices will show (or not show) your Promoted Tweet.  You are charged when someone clicks on your pin and is directed to your website. (You do not pay for views, re-pins, or likes.)

Should all businesses use the paid options above? Probably not.  Should your business use a couple of the options? Maybe.  Should you at least try one of the paid options? Yes, absolutely!  (Suggestion: Start with Facebook’s “Boost A Post”.)  

Have you ever found yourself standing in front of the numerous social sites wondering which are right for your business? So many times I hear business owners overwhelmed with the amount of options for social media they have that they decide to either pick the wrong ones or not be involved at all. The key to deciding which sites to be involved in lies in how much you know about your target audience. When you can tell me the most obtrusive and invasive information about your target audience (How old are they? How many kids do they have? Do they vacation in the South of France?) then you will know how to properly market to them. This information will clearly show you where you need to focus your digital marketing efforts.

YouTube is the 3^rd most viewed website after Google and Facebook and 4 billion videos are watched EVERY DAY on YouTube. YouTube acquires more than 800 million visitors per month, so your business has one of the best chances for exposure on this platform. People assume that they have to be professional videographer to participate in this social media site but do not let that deter you from participating. Not only was this site designed around the video “selfie”, but also there are also numerous different video-editing sites that allow you to put your photos into a video format to add a little something else to your marketing.

           YouTube has multiple applications for customer service as well! Think about the surprised and impressed potential customers that you will have when they call in to ask about solving a particular issue and you can point them to a YouTube video you creating specifically addressing that problem. You have now gained a customer for life. Embedding those video tutorials on your website will improve your SEO dramatically due to the increased time people will spend on your site to watch the video. Google will recognized the increased time and boost your ranking accordingly. 

Top 5 Reasons to use YouTube for a business would be:

1)   Creating original video content improves your SEO

a) Embedding a video increases the quality of your website, visitors stay longer which helps rank better than competitors.

2)   Video Content is a powerful branding tool

a)   Adds emotion and visual attributes taken out of purely written conversation.

3)   Great potential to get your message in front of a wide audience

a)   Videos are much easier to syndicate via social media, industry websites, and brand partnerships to reach potential customers.

     4) Video Content is easy and inexpensive or free to produce

a)   Many viral videos on YouTube were produced by webcam or smartphone.

    5) Video plays better on mobile devices

a)   The # of webpages accessed via mobile devices is growing rapidly. All smartphones are optimized for video content.

Check to see how your website performs on mobile devices here: Pagespeed Insights

Recently, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about business blogging, so we did a boot camp on the topic that was well attended. We thought we’d take some time to summarize some of our main points on the topic.

Believe it or not, there are still some people out there who don’t know what a blog is. Basically, it’s just another opportunity for a business owner to tell the browser more about what they do. If a resume covers your work history, think of a blog as your cover letter. Or, as some people have recently inferred, think of the homepage as the hotel lobby and the blog is the bar where all the fun people hang out.

Why Blog?

It’s a good question really. Who reads this stuff? Well, your target market does for one. So does Google. Here are some quick facts:

• Small businesses with blogs generate around 126% more leads
• More than 80% of consumers say they trust the content on blogs
• Websites with blogs get indexed by Google more than 400% more times
• Sites with blogs get nearly 100% more inbound links
• B2B marketers with blogs generate 67% more leads

If this data is remotely correct, it makes a good case for blogging.

The point is that more people are at least glancing through blogs to get a feel for the business they’re considering doing business with. Browsers are looking for relevant, useful content that helps them solve problems in an entertaining way. Plus, Google loves new content that is keyword rich and helps them determine what to do with your site.

Who Has Time To Blog?

Truthfully, no one feels like they have enough time in business- especially, if things are going well. That’s why you have to make blogging a priority, and there are certainly ways to be more efficient about it. Here are our top tips:

• Use Evernote or some other app to record ideas for blog posts
• Look for blog post ideas from your clients (i.e. what are the top 5 questions they ask or should ask?)
• Look for ideas from competitor’s blog posts
• Try newsjacking (connecting current events to what you do)
• Connect what you do to seasonal events or holidays
• Set aside 2 hours a month to write all your posts
• Review all your ideas & create an outline for each
• Use bullet points so that your outline becomes most of your text
• Proofread what you write then schedule your posts!

Best Blog Designs

How your blog looks should really be about you and your industry, but we do have some basic ideas that we think will help business owners across the board. Here’s what we think works:

• Run your content on the left side and add sidebars on the right
• Have a call to action with links to relevant pages on your site
• Include a bio in your sidebar
• Allow comments to get readers to add content of their own (moderate the comments though)
• Include an ad in your sidebar to something elsewhere on your site
• Always include a relevant image on your blog

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make about blogging is, well, simply, they just don’t do it. Or, they don’t do it enough. If you’re looking to rank better for a particular keyword or phrase, obviously, use those terms in your blog, but it’s important to blog anywhere from 1-6 times a month (more like 4-6 times a month if you’re really working on SEO).

The more you blog, the easier it gets. Good content helps win browsers over to customers and that’s really what blogging is all about.

Each year, the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce selects 25 businesses in our county to receive the Pinnacle Award, which is their award for being one of the Top 25 Outstanding businesses in our community.  This year, Make It Loud was chosen by the Chamber as one of those top 25 businesses!  We're so very thankful and grateful for this honor, in what is our 10th year in business.  What a wonderful anniversary present!  

As if that were not enough, the Chamber also selects a Small Business of the Year in three different categories:  1-9 employees, 10-99 employees, and 100+ employees.  Make It Loud was again selected as the Small Business of the Year by the Chamber for 2014.  We can't thank them enough for this honor as well. 

All that being said, our owner and CEO, John Lehmberg, has a philosophy on leadership that relies heavily on team.  It's always been his desire to create an environment where people LOVE what they do, so that they always give their best.  He believes that each person in his company is uniquely created to brings their gifts to the team, to enhance the ability of Make It Loud to serve its clients well and to achieve.  In that sense of the word, being a part of the Make It Loud team probably feels more like "family" than "business" for those of us who work here. It is these people, who have put their love, excellence, expertise, creativity, and passion into this endeavor we call Make It Loud, and these awards are just as much a result of their efforts as anyone else on our team.  Those of you who have encountered them and have gotten to know them have seen them in action, and it's a beautiful thing.  Our work is deeply personal to us because of its importance--  it literally helps put food on the table for small business owners and assists small businesses in the Gwinnett and Atlanta areas in their success.  To that we are committed and will continue to strive, delivering whatever we can to business owners to make them successful.  

So with that, I (John) would like to extend some "thank you's." 

• First to our our team:  Cliff, Andi, Gregg, Chris, Audra, Mitch, Joe, and Lindi.  Thank you all for your hard work and for giving your best to Make It Loud.
• Also to those who were on our team prior, those people who have served at Make It Loud for a season. Thank you for bringing your unique gifts and talents to our company.
• To the Gwinnett Chamber, thank you for showing us what it was like to network in the community and who helped John in getting the business started. 
• To all of the fantastic local networking groups that we have been a part of over the years:  The Gwinnett Business Network, The Suwanee Network, The Suwanee Business Alliance, The Buford Business Alliance, The Dacula Business Association, and the North GA Business Connection.  
• And last but not least, to our clients.  We hope you know how serious we take our work for you, how much we adore you as people and as small business owners, and how proud of your success we are.  We work hard for you, and I can't promise we'll always get it right, but we sure strive to because we care about your company and our work deeply.  

In closing we want to tell you that we're grateful beyond words for this honor, and grateful to God for his kindness to us. 

Blessings.

John Lehmberg
CEO

Make It Loud

When it comes to digital marketing, business owners in this day and age struggle to get everything done. It's hard to balance working in your business and doing all that needs to be done to market the business. It can be even more difficult to find the right tools to help you get everything done. That's why it's important to have a full toolbox of digital marketing tools. 

So, where does the overwhelmed business owner turn? The good news is that there are so many good choices that it's really a matter of personal preferences. When it comes to digital marketing tools, it's important to have good image management tools so you can crop images, write captions on the pictures, etc. It's also important to have some familiarity with the various social media tools that can help you save time by posting in one pace versus having to log in to all your social media accounts. Sites like Hootsuite, Buffer, Cyfe, etc. can be terriffic timesavers. Naturally, business owners need a simplified way of managing their email marketing campaigns. Constant Contact or Mailchimp do a great job of tracking open rates and click through rates as well as helping the business owner keep track of their email lists. 

When it comes to digital marketing, the fact is that there are so many tools to chose from that it can get overwhelming. It really boils down to using whatever is easiest to use, gets the job done and takes the least amount of time. Check out our notes from the last Free Business Boot Camp we did for more ideas of helpful digital marketing tools.

Make It Loud provides digital marketing services for business owners in Lawrenceville, Buford, Suwanee, Duluth and the rest of the metro Atlanta area. 

At MIL, we get asked all the time, “What makes a website great?”, so we thought we’d spent some quality blog time going over a few ideas to not only improve the looks and functionality of a great site. This is from some of the best web designers in the world as well as from right here in Gwinnett.

First, when it comes to creating a great website, it’s important to think about three main things. Naturally, it has to look good. The more of a “WOW” factor the site has, the more time the browser is going to spend on it which improves your user metrics. Next, the site has to have a high user friendliness factor. If your users can’t find what they’re looking for, they’re just going to bounce. Lastly, but probably most importantly, the website has to have a high conversion rate. This means that once your target market finds your site, the site needs to do all it can to convert them into actual paying customers. Conversion can be defined by either the person goes through with your call to action (i.e. call, email, fill out a form, buys something, etc.) or the browser actually becomes a customer. It depends on how strict you want o be in your definitions. As always, it’s a numbers game. All of this can be defined as improving your user interface (UI).

Here’s a list of ideas to improve the UI of your site (in no particular order):

-On your homepage, try using one column versus two or three. This simply controls where your users eyes go more efficiently rather than giving them choices that could take them away from the call to action you want them to make

-All website design has at least one purpose in mind (i.e. get them to call, buy, etc.). Rather than trying to close the sale right away, consider giving the user something like a free (useful) report, a free month of service, etc. That establishes a relationship rather than jumps into a hard sell.

-Testimonials do help. People argue about whether people believe testimonials or not, but studies show that real people saying how great you are is more effective at converting browsers than you saying how great you are. The fancy term for this is social proof.

-Repeat your primary call to action, but don’t beat them over the head with it. Give the user the option above the fold and then again down at the bottom where they may get to the bottom of the page and stop to think about what to do next.

-Studies have shown that if you give people three choices, the often take the middle one because of perceived best value, but try recommending the best choice. This nudges the user into going down the path you’d most like them to take.

-Don’t bring a shotgun to sniper school. Some websites seem to be for everyone. Use your text to define exactly who your target market is to help you convert the customers you most want to work with.

-Beware of uncertainty in your text. Reread your website copy and consider whether or not you’re telling users that you are the best choice for them or are you being wishy washy at all.

-Use contrast to make your call to action stand out. If you use a button to get the user to buy, make sure the button stands out on the page rather than blends into the design.

-Make your forms simple. People are in a hurry, you can get their mother’s maiden name and their pet’s zip code later if you really need it.

We’ll add more to this list later, but this is a good start to help you improve your overall website design. Take this list and use it to measure what you have to better connect with your target audience.