9 of the best plugins for your WordPress site

Its usability, affordable pricing, and excellent features have made it one of the world’s most popular website builders – around 28% of all websites are hosted by WordPress!

If you’re using WordPress, you already know the incredible power of the mighty plugin. Plugins allow you to customise your site, and with nearly 30,000 plugins currently available you can adjust your website exactly how you want to.

Plugins aren’t difficult to use, but they do require a bit of maintenance. This includes culling plugins you are no longer actually using.

Too many plugins can make your website crash and affect its performance, security, and speed. Also, when you have plugins left unsupervised, you’re at risk when one of them is abandoned by their developers or hijacked by hackers, making your website even more vulnerable to malicious attacks.

Your first task in creating a brilliant, effective, and secure website is to assess your plugin situation, keeping in mind the adage ‘quality not quantity’.

So, what makes a quality plugin? Here are a few of our faves.

For caching

About 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will abandon a page that takes more than three seconds to load. So caching plugins are an absolute necessity for a fast-loading website and significantly better user experience – especially for mobile users.

Our suggestion is WP Fastest Cache, which has both a free and premium plan. This plugin works by creating static HTML files from any dynamic WordPress blog.

For security

Security plugins are a no-brainer. Despite WordPress having pretty sturdy firewalls, every user – especially businesses – should have a security plugin. This is even more important if your website gathers user data such as contact or payment details. A good plugin will block sensitive information from potential attackers without impacting usability for other users. You can choose between all-in-one solutions or plugins just to protect against specific issues.

Akismet, for starters, is a plugin everybody should have installed on their site to combat spammy comments.

Our favourite all-in-one security plugin is Wordfence, which has a free plan or premium plans starting from $99. If your site deals with e-commerce, we suggest iThemes Security.

For backing up

Possibly as important as security is ensuring your website is backed up. It just takes one unlucky event – a malfunction, a malware attack, or hacker action – and you could lose all your hard work. It doesn’t happen very often, but if you are that unlucky non-backer-upperer, it really sucks.

We recommend UpdraftPlus, which comes free with WordPress premium plans and has several premium versions available. This plugin can back up to a range of different cloud platforms, such as Dropbox and Google Drive, or can simply send the back-up to your email.

Here’s a nifty video from Updraft on how to back up your site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZCmAZ8rnMk

For search engine optimisation

Even if you have SEO specialists optimising your searchability, it’s always good to have an SEO plugin. It’s a big ol’ online world out there, and you definitely want your business to stand out at the top of Google search results.

In our opinion, the hostess-with-the-mostest is Yoast. Yoast SEO – again, available in free or premium – is easy to use, and tells you how to better your SEO as you go. It’s super-effective for blog-based sites, allowing you to make “bulk edits” to your site and manage SEO roles if you’d like your staff to also use it.

For image optimisation

Content is key, and words paint a thousand pictures (do we have that right?), but if you want to chuck a cherry atop your optimisation pudding, we recommend looking at your images.

Images – particularly big ones, or lots of them – can do terrible things to user experience.

Like any big gnarly files, loading takes time and can really slow down your website. So you might want to think about compressing some images.

When you’re decreasing an image’s size (or compressing) you want to retain its visual integrity – this ain’t Nintendo 64, after all (although wouldn’t be great if it was?).

We recommend TinyPNG for the job. It isn’t really a plugin per se, but it’s a very effective way to minimise your picture files without maximising pixilation. It’s free, easy to use, and there’s even a cute little panda on the dashboard smiling at you while you wait.

For social sharing

Social media is quickly becoming the most effective marketing option, especially for small businesses. If you’ve nailed your content, you need to have an easy way for people to share it. You need little buttons on the content – one click and it’s shared to the user’s preferred social platform.

Social Snap (free, the full version starts at $39) is our favourite button-making-plugin.

For forms

One excellent way to generate leads for your business is to include forms for users to fill out for enquiries, bookings, or e-commerce.

Contact Form 7 (a free plugin) allows you to customise and manage multiple forms in an easy coding-free way. This smart-form creator is also brilliant for preventing spam.

So, there you have it: the bare necessities of plugins. Tried and tested by us personally, these bare necessities (these simple bare necessities) will hopefully help you forget your WordPress worries.

On a final, more serious note (yes, we do serious): remember to check that a plugin has been updated recently (in the last 2-3 years) before installing it. This will help you avoid any nasty vulnerabilities.

Also, read user comments to find out if the plugin has unfixed errors that could put your site in jeopardy. This is especially important if you don’t have prior experience in coding or site development.

Alternatively, feel free to call us. You can also fill out our online contact form – it’s super-easy and spam-free.

How Content Marketing Creates Leads

Marketing in 2019 is impossible without great content.

As a marketer, I see my clients struggling to identify where they should spend their energy (and budget) to get digital leads, especially if they have a B2B service.

Marketing is becoming increasingly complex, with a range of platforms to choose from to speak to your audience.

Is your business still supposed to be posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram? What type of content should you share? How does creating social content actually generate leads?

As a forward-thinking entrepreneur, you know there has to be a better way.

Enter content marketing.

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach. It focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action.

Content marketing aligns with the new ways people engage with brands and content and develop brand loyalty. It’s integrated, intelligent, and customer-centric.

With content marketing you’re not simply pitching your products or services in traditional marketing copy. You’re providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects to help them solve their issues.

In some ways it is similar to what we see with the rise of the “freemium” product model. Now that people can access high-quality free advice and content online, it won’t cut the mustard to simply promote how great your product or service is. Your content needs to put your customer’s concerns first. This is especially important in light of the way Google serves any search query with the most relevant answers; your content needs to be accurately centring your customer’s questions if you want to appear on their Google search results.

Content marketing works to build the respect and admiration of your audience, but this will take time. First you need to earn their trust. You need to prove you have the relevant knowledge and (even more importantly) that you have integrity. Then you can become a guiding light that people turn to for authority in the noise of too much available information.

The authority you gain then transfers to your products or services, making customers that much more likely to choose you over the competition.

Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content marketing should be part of your process, not something separate. Because of the complexities of the communication strategy required, it’s also something that I would recommend that you engage a content marketing agency to do for your business, rather than attempting it on your own. Quality content is now part of all forms of marketing.

So, what are the other benefits to your overall marketing strategy?

The Tangibles:

Site traffic: Traffic may be the obvious benefit, but it’s also one of the most important. Great content will bring people to your site, where they’ll also find information about your company and your products/services.

Improved SEO: The benefits of content for SEO are far too numerous to get into here. Great content attracts editorial links, which tells Google you’re important and authoritative. Google can also crawl your content, getting a better idea of what your company is about, which allows it to return your site for more relevant queries (including a great many long-tail queries). The list goes on, but it can be boiled down to this: without content, what is there for search engines to optimise?

Social media marketing: content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy. An ideal mix of content for social media is always a mixture of unique and curated content based on the themes that relate to your audience interests. So high quality content based on informing your potential customers is ideal content to share on social media. It can also become great “lead magnets” if you are creating a Facebook ad funnel for inbound inquires.

PPC: for Pay Per Click to work, you need great content behind it. Content marketing is not direct sales copy- that is what landing page copy is designed for, but your content marketing is supposed to warm up your audience handling all of their objections and answering all of their questions before you make the direct offer in an adwords campaign. It is also useful in your Adwords remarketing campaigns, if someone doesn’t call or email from your initial ad then you can remarket to them to take them to more information where your content page may address common objections and give the information required to inform the potential customer of the process.

PR And Brand awareness: content marketing is all about championing the customer and solving their problems. It involves storytelling and providing useful and relevant customer-centred information. A flow-on effect from creating high-value content is that you can now position your brand as an authority on solving your customer problems. So, you can begin commenting on the “state of your industry” and sharing this as an opinion piece to your local media or business networks as an opinion piece to increase your brand authority.

If you’re looking for help to market your business, get in touch with our Content marketing team. We can help you to create a content strategy that will transform your sales and marketing activities. Contact us now.

10 small business marketing ideas for 2019

A New Year brings new opportunities, but if you are a small business owner, you probably have limited time when it comes to marketing your business. So, it’s vital that you know where to target your efforts to be the most effective. In this article we cover the 10 best small business marketing ideas in 2019.

1. Create a marketing plan for your business

If you think of small business marketing as the cake, your marketing plan is the recipe. And as any chef knows, without a recipe to guide you, your cake could end up a bit soggy in the middle! A marketing plan should include setting your goals for the year, and this should be targeted to focus your promotions. Ask yourself, which services do you want to promote? Which marketing channels do you want to try? If you are feeling stuck at setting your strategy or coming up with ideas, invest in professional help. Maybe all you’ll need is a video or marketing agency (even a copywriter). Make sure you start the year with a solid plan for the direction you want to take your business marketing.

2. Make sure your business cards, brochures, and other promotional products are up to date

If your logo is dated, and your point-of-sale material looks like it could do with some help, it’s time for a revamp. Most businesses need to look at their marketing materials every 3 to 5 years, as brochures and logos can become dated very quickly. Always hire professionals for this – your son, niece, or well-intentioned neighbour is not the designer you want (unless they’re certified professionals with raving reviews on their portfolios). Remember your business card or brochure is designed to reflect people of your services. If you want your business brand to stand out and look professional, it’s imperative that your marketing collateral does the same.

3. Refresh your website

Keeping your website fresh is critical if you want to be found in 2019. Does your website look like a myspace site? Is it mobile responsive? Or, even worse, do you not even have a website? Unless you are so hipster it hurts, it’s time to hit refresh! As with your marketing collateral, your website is an investment, and you should only hire a pro. The website needs to be fully functional on all devices and user-friendly. Aim for a website that’s easily navigated, quick to load, and quick to inform your audience about your business. If you have too much content, or your site is slow to load and hard for users to navigate, it’s likely your customers will drop off your site and switch to the competition.

4. Be active on social media

If you’re marketing your small business on a smaller budget, social media is your best friend. While it’s no longer a free advertising tool, it’s still a lot cheaper than most other options. Its ability to convey targeted messages in real-time to a targeted audience also means way more bang for your buck. But user beware: due to social media’s popularity and constantly evolving nature, keeping informed and avoiding out-dated advice or “myths” can be a bit of a pickle. It’s highly recommended that you budget for professional help with your social media – even just to get you started.

5. Give free samples or trial periods of your product

Could you talk about your product on a Facebook Live stream or a webinar, or live stream your workplace activities? Or could you organise a Meetup event, perhaps hosted at your workplace, to talk about what you do? These are inexpensive activities that can create buzz around your brand, get people of your community together, and get the ball rolling about you and what you do at your small business.

6. Look into video marketing

Video marketing is what’s trending right now. People are reading less and prefer to consume content in video format. Fortunately, good video marketing can be done on a budget. You can even use your phone (assuming it’s somewhat modern) propped up on a coffee-cup tripod to start practicing your video skills. If you’re too shy to appear in the video, you can use software like Loom to do a voiceover presentation, or to make animated explainer videos. Then upload the result to your preferred social media channel (don’t forget YouTube) with a title and good description. Simple as that!

7. Get your small business on directories and social services such as Google My Business, Groupon, Yellow, and Yelp

Thousands of people use these platforms to rate, ask questions, and discover new businesses every day. Registering for an account is free (you just need a Gmail address to access the Google My Business platform). These platforms make it easy to share information about your business and promote products and services through pictures and video.

8. Up your content marketing game

Content marketing is still strong in 2019. Love to write? Update your small business’ blog at least twice a month with useful information for your customers or think pieces about topics relevant to your industry. You could even write your own e-book about your personal business experiences, your industry, or your market niche. If you’re more of a talker (and don’t sound like Fran Drescher), you could launch your own podcast. A nifty app called Anchor is a brilliant tool for DIY podcasting.

9. Invest in SEO

Long term, being in first position on Google is going to bring you your ideal clients. But as a small business, how do you get there? Being on the first page of Google can be near impossible – especially if you are operating in a highly competitive market. But it’s not all doom and gloom. The easiest strategy is to try to rank for unique services (which will have less competition) or what is called “Long Tail Key Words”. This is definitely an area where you need to call in the experts. Ideally, pick a marketing agency that can see the big picture and help you achieve great search results in the long term, while maximising any marketing activities in the short term for more instant wins.

10. Do some good

Do something really out of the box and good for your community, like volunteering or sponsoring a local event. Organise free workshops or classes related to your craft to the kids from local schools and universities. Giving is not only good in itself, but is good for the image of your business, and also gives you some extra promotion. Alternatively, go without your company name and just ride off the positive vibes, man…

Start 2019 with your right foot forward and market your small business in the right way. You’ll improve not only your cash flow but also your community. If you need help, give the marketing team at Creative Content a call to see how you can kickstart your marketing this year.

5 Creative Content Marketing Myths

creative content marketing | Creative Content NZ

In the modern marketing world, content is king. And with so many online resources, you may feel you’ve got a pretty good grasp on how to create it and use it well.

But as this marketing method’s relevance and popularity increases, so too does the number of myths and false expectations around it. Before these content creation traps trip you up, let us dispel some of the most common falsities.

Myth #1: Creative content should be highly produced

The reality: You don’t need to create a fantastic content marketing strategy with a high production value. Instead you should be focused on how to provide value to your audience.

Try to solve a problem that is relevant to your audience, answer a common question, or share an interesting new finding. You can do this easily in a 20-second video, a 400-word blog post, or even a simple post on social media. The point of difference in content marketing is how timely and “human” it is – over-production and big budgets won’t necessarily achieve that.

Myth #2: Produce content every day, because more content means more social reach

The reality: You should focus on providing better-quality content that helps your audience. If you’re focusing only on quantity, the quality is going to suffer.

Bombarding your audience with information every single day will make them ignore you. And the quality of your content and its social impact will diminish. Only better content delivers better reach.

Myth #3: No one is doing creative content marketing like we are, so we’re doing it right

The reality: Don’t assume just because you’re taking a different approach to creative content marketing it will be effective.

There’s a good chance someone in your industry is already making content to grab the attention of your audience. It might be video, podcasts, email, blogs, or some other type of creative content.

Just because you’re doing it differently, doesn’t mean you’re killing it!

It’s essential you understand how your audience wants to receive and digest information. This is just as important as knowing what kind of information they’re looking for.

Myth #4: Our creative content marketing is going to drive serious cashflow

The reality: The right kind of marketing can undoubtedly make you stand out. In a perfect world, you would see new customers roll in every time you publish new content.

However, that is rare even for major brands. Most of the content you create won’t directly increase your sales. And, if it does, it certainly won’t happen immediately.

Creative content marketing is a slow burner. It’s great way to nurture relationships and build a loyal audience who may eventually tumble to the bottom of your sales funnel and make a purchase. But first you have to win them over with your charming brand personality and your titillating creative content. So, don’t expect instant results.

Myth #5: We’ll only post long content because that drives the best results

The reality: It’s entirely possible to tell a story and make an emotional connection in content that is fast to consume. We can see this in the initial smashing success of platforms like Vine and Snapchat. You don’t necessarily need a lengthy blog post or a 10-minute video every day to succeed.

Of course, if you’re writing for a business-to-business audience you may want to put focus into longer posts to help build trust. But this is not essential, especially if your brand is focused on consumers. People don’t want to read anymore – they prefer videos and images. So, why not give them that?

Creating successful content can require a bit of trial-and-error. But from our experience, once you understand these basics it becomes a lot easier – and a lot more beneficial. Find a mix that works best for your audience and strive to deliver the value they’re looking for. And if you need more help developing a winning creative content marketing strategy adapted to your audience and your brand personality, contact us!

Content strategist vs copywriter: which one does your business need?

The goal of copywriting is to persuade, and the goal of a content strategy is to create purpose. So, does a content strategist have the same role as a copywriter? The answer is no!

Over 170 million blogs are active online today, but it’s estimated only around 20% of blog content is actually linked to and read. You want content that is found easily in a search, is read by users, and has a positive impact for your business. It’s critical to the success of your marketing messages that you have a strategy for what you write about.

What does a content strategist do?

A content strategist gives your content a purpose and vision that is directly linked to your marketing and communications strategy. They ensure any copy written will be useful, usable, and relevant to achieving your marketing goals.

A content strategist blends their editorial skills with their understanding of the user experience to create content that is a communication pathway with purpose. Their focus is to generate copy that provides real value to your clients while showcasing your unique value proposition.

This requires an understanding of your business niche and your clients as well as thorough knowledge of the “decision-making journey” to map a content pathway to attract, onboard, and convert the audience.

Content strategists ultimately create an overall purpose to the copy, called the core strategy.

They put themselves in the shoes of each business owner and their audience to consider a website or marketing campaign. With these different perspectives they look at:

What are the business goals and how can the website copy or marketing campaign accomplish that?

Is the content pertinent to the audience?

What is the desired call to action for people to do after consuming this content?

How can we provide the best user experience?

What does a copywriter do?

Copywriters focus on crafting compelling copy that tells a story. They combine wit, writing skills, and empathy to create a call to action that will compel someone to purchase a product, sign up for a service, or fill out an inquiry form on a website.

A good copywriter understands sales funnels and will ask plenty of questions about their target audience before they start writing. Copywriters now handle most of the writing on a given website or within an integrated marketing campaign including:

Website copy

Blog posts

News articles

Press releases

eBooks

White papers

Billboard advertising

Posters

Flyers

Radio and TV scripts

Interactive social media posts

How can content strategists and copywriters work together?

A content strategist determines where the content needs to go, and then works with a copywriter to write the copy. After the content is published, the strategist will evaluate performance and make sure the strategy is delivering value to the business in line with its goals.

To put it simply, the content strategist defines how the site or campaign will be structured and what information will be included. The copywriter is responsible for crafting the actual words to engage users and drive them to those goals, getting them further into the conversion funnel.

When content strategy and copywriting have synergy, the result is a high-performance website or marketing campaign that helps you drive your business forward and stay relevant.

Are you trying to sell things over email but aren’t seeing results? Hire a copywriter. Don’t even know where to start your business content strategy? Hire a content strategist. Do you need both? Invest in a team like ours at Creative Content!

10 of the most useful apps for creating digital content

If you run a business, it’s likely you have to do some of your own marketing. This might be as simple as creating Facebook content or as in-depth as building a website. If you’re creating content without the help of a professional graphic designer, it can be a challenge to make your content look consistent and professional. Whatever your marketing needs, this list of 10 of our favourite digital marketing apps and Chrome extensions is for you. These are the apps that will ensure efficiency with everything from design to organising to communication. And even better, they don’t cost a thing.

Page Ruler

This Chrome extension is simple yet surprisingly handy. Page Ruler lets you measure pixel dimensions and positioning of any webpage element. This is useful for creating or recreating the look you want and keeping consistency throughout design elements. The ruler is a great tool for producing much tidier work, especially when you’re building your website.

Snip

Snip is a faster, easier way of taking screenshots – just click the snips and away you go.

The app has a feature that allows you to write or draw on the ‘snip’, which comes in handy for things like communicating edits to someone digitally, or showing your mum who lives 700 kilometres away where the ‘save’ button is.

Snip saves your screenshot image to your chosen file as a PNG, so you can insert it into documents, emails, social media, anywhere else that lets you add a picture. This app is a Windows feature, but if you are running on Mac there’s a similar version available in the App store.

Nimbus

Like Snip, Nimbus is used to take screenshots, but more specifically for web. The big benefit is that Nimbus allows you to capture shots of entire pages in one click. Similar to Snip, you can save the image as is or write and draw on it within the app. You’ll then have it saved as a PNG for later use, which is a major asset if you need to clearly explain specifics to web developers, designers, or clients.

Eye Dropper

Ever wanted to know what shade of blue the Google ‘G’ is? Or maybe you need the exact colour used on your webpage, but can’t get hold of your designer. Eye Dropper is a Chrome extension that allows you to pick, view, and copy colours from the web. Simply click the dropper on the colour you’re after and it will save to the app. It then shows you the colour formula in a range of formats so you can match it in any program you need.

WhatFont

Have you ever met a designer who can just look at a font and tell you what it is? Well, this is the more efficient (and less intimidating) app version.

WhatFont temporarily converts your cursor into a font detector that shows the name of a font as you hover over text. If you want to know specifics, simply click and it’ll show you the font family, style, weight, size, line height, and colour. This is super handy if you want to borrow another brand’s aesthetics (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all) or if you’ve simply lost your style guide.

Loom

We’ve talked about Loom before in our Top 10 Apps to Market Your Business, but it’s so good it’s worth another mention. Loom can be used to create quick videos of your desktop as you use it. It’s great for creating walkthrough videos that you can then share or link to. We use it to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face, but it’s also great for communicating clear, concise instructions or for creating social media content.

Lasso – Bookmark Manager

Lasso wrangles selected pages to bookmark, helping you herd them efficiently either into folders or by searchable tags. Each bookmark is saved under a ‘card’ that gives a brief, editable visual and description of the page. The interface of the app is a much more user-friendly way of managing bookmarks, especially if you have so many saved you forget what they all are (or why the heck you saved them in the first place). The dashboard also allows you to invite individuals or ‘teams’ to access chosen bookmarks or folders.

Reshot

Finding great stock images is key to creating good content. But if you have to post a lot of social media content this can get pricey if you’re paying $10 – $15 an image.

Enter Reshot: Reshot is a stock photo site that avoids cliché stock imagery.

Unlike the standard stock image libraries, the photos on Reshot reflect a photographer’s point of view. This means the photos are generally more interesting and higher quality than those on many other free stock photo sites. The site uses a simple license and terms that give you a lot of flexibility for using the photos.

Reshot photos are free, although you can also find photos for sale from Reshot partners. To browse the images or learn more, visit the website.

TinyPNG

If you are uploading images to your website, app, or social platform, you need to compress them to a small file size so they don’t slow down your website. Web app TinyPNG is an online PNG conversion tool that does just that. It makes your PNG image files tiny – or at least tinier then they were. It does this by selectively decreasing the number of colours in the image, which in turn reduces the file size. The visual changes in the image are practically undetectable and it can preserve any transparency (i.e., if it’s a clear-cut logo). TinyPNG can even convert animated PNGs. Converted PNGs can be used on your platforms but will use much less bandwidth, meaning they will load much faster.

Crop Photo

Crop Photo allows you to easily crop pictures without fiddling around with Adobe or other editing programs. Crop Photo features a bunch of templates designed to make cropping images for social media super easy, or you can use custom dimensions for your own projects (i.e., cutting an ex out of an otherwise great photo). You can then choose to save your image to your desktop, Facebook page, or Google Drive account.

So that’s our rundown of the 10 most useful marketing apps and extensions for digital marketing. Whether we are building a new website, creating digital content – or, let’s face it, just geeking out – we use at least one of these apps every day. For more great tools check out our previous blog Top 10 Apps to Market Your Business. And if you’ve got any projects that need a professional touch-reach out to us at Creative Content, we can help you to build your website, create great content and increase your online profile. Get in touch with us Here.

Top 10 Apps To Market Your Business

The online marketing world can be daunting, at Creative Content it’s our job to make marketing easy for our clients, so we love it when we find useful tools that make our job easier. Luckily there are many simple and inexpensive apps that make it easy for you to market your business in the digital age.

Apps can be amazing tools to help you streamline processes. And with the right set of tools, you can spend less time managing campaigns and more time developing effective messages. They can also create a more enjoyable experience for your clients so that people are more likely to recommend you to others.

Check out our list of the top ten apps that we use every day in our agency that will help you with marketing your business.

1. Loom

Loom lets you create quick videos that display a desktop view of your screen. You can create a simple walkthrough video in a couple of minutes and easily share it by email or via an embedded link on your website. This is particularly good if you want to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face. You can also use Loom to create social media content to share.

Get it now: https://www.useloom.com

Cost: Free!

2. Canva

Canva is an incredibly simple platform to create professional-looking graphic design elements in minutes. If you need a quick graphic for a social media post or to jazz up a presentation or report for a client, you can create it in Canva in no time.

Canva has hundreds of pre-made templates for all kinds of professional uses. It also comes with handy images and font suggestions so that even the most design-challenged among us can create something classy and professional.

Get it now: https://www.canva.com

Cost: Free to use, with some premium fonts, templates, and images having a nominal cost.

3. ContentStudio

ContentStudio allows you to organise all your social media marketing from a single place. You can curate engaging content, share it through multiple channels, and strengthen your content marketing.

A popular feature of ContentStudio is its ability to fetch fresh content from over a thousand sources, meaning you can delve in and compile trending content from any niche or market. You also have the ability to compose unique posts and schedule them to be published through your social accounts, helping you create better-looking posts at a faster pace.

Get it now: https://contentstudio.io/

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

4. Asana

Asana is a simple project management tool designed to help teams organise their workload and get more done. In Asana you can map out steps, assign work, see what’s currently in progress or what still needs to be done, track due dates, and see visually how work is tracking. It’s a great tool to help your team manage their workload and to give you visibility over how client work is tracking.

Get it now: https://asana.com

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

5. Biteable

Biteable is an awesome site where you can create unique video ads, explainer videos, animations, infographics, and much more. You’re essentially able to create pro-quality video in the time it takes to drink your coffee. You have the ability to choose from hundreds of styles, insert your own digital content, choose high-quality soundtracks, and easily share it through multiple channels.

With a lot of social networking sites becoming more video-centric, this is the app you should be using if you want to set your business apart in the digital world.

Get it now: https://biteable.com/features/

Cost: Free package available with a limit of 5 projects per month or a premium package offering unlimited use.

6. Yesware

There’s no doubt that you send and receive a lot of emails. This clever app allows you to use simple email templates, and then see who actually opens your emails and clicks on any links. It also offers other useful email tools and shortcuts. It integrates with Gmail and Outlook, so you don’t have to learn a new tool.

Get it now: https://www.yesware.com

Cost: $12 per user per month, with a free trial period.

7. Trello

Trello is a project management tool much like Asana, but it’s probably even simpler. It’s great for small teams that don’t need a ton of tools or features, but just want to get more organised and have visibility around their workload.

Trello works with a system of cards – like virtual index cards on a big virtual pinboard. You can move and arrange the cards any way you like and add due dates, files, and collaborators.

Get it now: http://www.trello.com

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

8.Pixel Me

Pixel Me is a great way to track and measure the links you’re posting and who is clicking on them. This means you can track the audience of the content you’re posting and target them again through remarketing. It gives you the opportunity to speak through different ad platforms to your custom audience and increase your brand awareness.

Get it now: https://pixelme.me/

Cost: Basic to comprehensive paid packages available

9. Missinglettr

Missinglettr increases traffic to your website’s blog by creating strategic, automated social media campaigns. It automatically pulls snippets from your blog posts to create promotional content – your only job is to review the content and choose how long you’d like to promote it.

Missinglettr markets the unique content you’ve created by connecting your social channels and running your campaigns for you. This provides regular social updates to your clients and encourages clicks to your content year-round.

Get it now: https://missinglettr.com/

Cost: Free, with personal and business accounts available.

10. Full Story

Ever wanted to know what your website visitors do once they land on your homepage? Want to find ways to convert more leads with your site design or copy? Then you need to try Full Story.

Once installed, Full Story tracks website visitors and shows you what those visitors actually do in a recorded video you can replay. It also shows you where your site traffic comes from and highlights areas of your site that cause visitor frustration. It’s great if you want to improve your online marketing and understand the effectiveness of recent online marketing campaigns.

Get it now: https://www.fullstory.com/

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

These are the ten online marketing apps we love the most in our agency. With new apps appearing almost daily, there countless possible solutions to boost your online marketing and communication efforts. What are some of the apps that you use that we haven’t mentioned? Send us an email if you have a tool that you think we have missed! Contact us

Five tips for effective web copy

It’s downright hard to write succinct and clear web copy. And copywriting can also be very time-consuming. But if you nail your copy, you can increase traffic to your website, the amount of time people spend on it, and potentially your conversion rate.

You might think it’s best to list as much detail as possible on your website. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Listing a lot of information is effective for print publications, but it’s ineffective for a web page. This is because web pages have unlimited space but their readers have very limited attention.

To help you combat the challenge of copywriting for web, check out our top five tips for developing sharp and concise web copy.

Place your most important information first

Web copy is different from other types of writing. On a web page your most important information needs to come first. Often a simple statement of what you do and how you can offer value is the key piece of information needed.

This style of writing is called the ‘inverted pyramid’. Here the most noteworthy information always comes first before detail and background information. Journalists use this structure of writing so that you’re able to understand the bigger picture of an article from the first paragraph.

Your customers also want to understand the big picture first. Your web copy needs to succinctly convey from the outset what you can do for them.

Avoid large paragraphs

Copy on each page of your website should be short and to the point. Large blocks of writing can be off-putting for browsers and can come across as clunky. Browsers are often scanning or looking for a quick answer when reading web copy, so it’s best to give them what they want rather than have them leave your page to find it elsewhere.

Keep in mind that you should also have around 250-300 words for SEO purposes so that your page can be optimised correctly and be discovered. Although 300 words may sound like a small number, you’ll be surprised how dense 300 words looks on a published web page.

Use customer testimonials

Reinforce the value of your business by putting client testimonials on each page. From a customer’s point of view, you are not the most credible source of information about your service. Testimonials from your clients will add to your credibility and increase the value of your proposition. They are a form of social proof with high persuasion powers.

Include a call to action

A call to action is vital. What steps do you want your browsers to take? What are they meant to do next? This could be simply a link to another piece of content you have, an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter, or a pop-up contact form asking them to get in touch. If you highlight what you want your browsers to do next, it’s a lot easier for them to engage.

Top tip: Always incorporate a ‘contact us’ link or contact details on every page so browsers can easily get in touch. Don’t make your visitors work hard by scrolling through every page searching for ways to make contact.

Establish a value proposition

Your value proposition is your conversation starter. It’s something that gets the reader’s attention and makes them want to learn more about you. Highlighting your value proposition enables your readers to understand your services and how you can benefit them. The quicker they can understand your abilities and why you’re better than the competition, the more likely they are to remember your business or product.

People looking at your website are often in a hurry and make quick decisions about whether you’re right for them based on your website content. That’s why it’s best to have your value proposition clear, concise, and credible.

Keep these top five pointers in mind to make sure your content copywriting is effective. Remember: don’t treat your visitors like information-hungry sharks. Position your information clearly and always get straight to the point. If you’re in need of a more professional copywriting hand to help, you can always contact us here for the right advice or to help you craft the right message for the web.

I have a new website should I be doing AdWords?

Is digital marketing including services like AdWords right for my business?

When a customer asks us this question, I always want to know:
Where do your current leads come from?

Understanding where you already get leads for your business is the key to finding value for your marketing budget.

Jumping too soon into an AdWords campaign when you don’t have a landing page squeeze page set up, or your sales copy in not compelling enough to convert any prospective visitors you do get can mean you can waste a lot of time and money on advertising that delivers no results.

From the outside digital marketing looks very attractive, as once you set up your campaigns, done right it seems you could set it and forget, watching the inquiries come in. The facts are, the further away the contact point between you and the customer you are trying to attract to your business, the lower the average conversion rate for acquiring that customer.

The reason most small businesses don’t succeed online is that creating a communication strategy where you don’t get the power of the face to face interaction, the harder it is to share, define and explain your offer to your customers.

I always suggest to a small business owner that you analyse where your current leads come from, and work on improving your content and presentation before stepping into the world of digital advertising.

Creating memorable media creates engagement and gets results.

Ask yourself what improvements in presentation, or communication could you make to your existing sales material? If your current conversion rate is say 40%, if you increased your ease of understanding around your offer with a new brand, flyer, and website would that increase your sales?

When you feel ready to enter into promoting your business with AdWords, get a good strategy set up first.

You need to understand the conversion process and all of the content that will need to be created to assist a customer to evaluate your offer from your website. You also need to be clear about the cost of customer acquisition Most AdWords agencies suggest if your business average sales value is under $250 because of the cost per click/ over the volume of inquires ad-words will never be able to deliver an effective return on your investment.

What advertising channels have you tried? What were your results?

Want to find out more about our small business AdWord services? Click here.

Speak to us for free one hour strategy session and we can assess what marketing channels we think would be right for your business.

Remarketing Cheat Sheet

What Is Remarketing

Remarketing is the process of tracking your digital traffic from a search campaign (Google AdWords) and retargeting your message to your potential customers.

Why use remarketing?

If you have a search campaign running (AdWords) and you’re paying Google for traffic to your site, on average out of 100 people that visit your website only 4% will take an action after viewing your landing page. So if you are paying $1 a click then that is $25 per customer!

This is because not everyone is ready to contact you straight away, statistics show 30% of traffic are in a position to act but many factors delay them from doing so.

But you still have to pay Google for each click.

So what are you doing with the 96% of people who didn’t convert? That’s where remarketing comes in.

How remarketing works:

If a customer visited your website or a landing page but didn’t call or contact you, you can remarket to them on the Google Display network, the YouTube ad network or through Facebook.

This means when they are browsing other websites and they are logged into their personal Facebook account, an ad would appear for your business so they are reminded and can click on the ad again. You can do this by adding a tracking pixel (cookie) to them after they visit your page.

The price tag for re-marketing is much lower than a standard pay per click (PPC) search campaign.
While a Google Pay Per Click search ad could have an average cost per click of $2- $3, a remarketing ad has an average cost of $0.25-$0.60.

Just like a PPC search campaign, you are only paying when someone actually clicks on the ad. If they do not click on the ad, there is no cost, but you still are able to give a visual reminder about your site to that potential customer.

The reason that remarketing is so effective is that seeing your offer appear multiple times, creates brand awareness and reminds your visitor to take action.
So when they are ready to make that decision to pick a solution you are the one they remember to choose! And guess what is even better, your competitors are probably not using retargeting so you get a bigger piece of the pie

Customer case study

443 contact form inquiries (leads) in the last month, 19% are coming from Facebook remarketing alone (86 users)
Cost of each lead through Facebook = 32 cents 86 x 32 = $27.52 for 86 leads Cost of each lead through Adwords = is between $1.20 and $2.26

Contact Us

Get in touch with us to find out more about remarketing for your business or click here to learn more about digital marketing strategies.

Category: Content marketing