Image by Jeff McNeill

One of the absolutely most popular questions we get asked by CityMax.com customers is “how do I get on Google?”

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a complex game and sometimes it can take a while to get search engines like Google to notice you. It’s a delicate balance of targeting the right keywords, having the right content, using the right elements to build your website, and having the right sites link back to you – you can see how it can be challenging.

While SEO is definitely something you should focus on and ranking naturally through search engines is a fantastic goal, there’s a faster way to do it – it’s called advertising.

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Kenneth Cole, international shoe brand and fashion trend-setter, decided to comment on the horrific situation in Egypt this morning. In past blog posts, we’ve explored how your small business can leverage timely events to boost marketing efforts, but we didn’t mean like this:

Last week, we introduced Call to Action buttons (CTAs) as a great tool to help increase conversions on your small business website. This week we will give you some techniques to maximize effectiveness and boost sales! Read on for some great tips from our Brand Manager and Creative Director, Joe Deobald.

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Group the Elements

Grouping elements together is a great way to help emphasize the importance of the CTA button. In the example below, the text above the button helps earn the visitor’s trust - giving a sense of “it’s safe to click.” The whitespace to the right helps to separate blocks of elements from each other, allowing for a clear indication that they are different.

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Due to popular demand, today we kick off a new series of posts: Advanced Design Tips with Joe Deobald, Brand Manager and Creative Director at CityMax.com.

Call to action buttons: Let your visitors know what’s important

Congratulations! So you’ve finally got your site up and running. You’ve added products and great SEO content, and you’re ready to launch your site. You even have a great offer that you want your site visitors to buy. With Call to Action Buttons (CTAs), you can literally guide your visitors that awesome deal on a hand bag, or to join your special newsletter.

First off: let’s talk about what a CTA actually is. Simply put, it’s a button that tells the user to perform an action like “Buy this now!” or “Learn More…”
Before just throwing any old button up on your site, you need to plan it out. You want it to grab their attention - not just with a bright orange or green, but the text needs to be short, descriptive, and entice them to click. You want to tell them what to expect once they click the button: you need to build trust. Think about the questions and expectations your visitors will ask before making the decision to click. If it’s a free trial, then put that in the CTA.

The old wives’ tale that size matters isn’t a stretch in this context. For website design, the larger the element is, the more important it is. This is a main focus on your website. You need to figure out exactly how important the action is, and design your buttons accordingly.
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We’ve all been there. You are about to walk out of the store, empty-handed, when the salesperson suddenly works their charm - turning your skepticism into a sale. Then you get home, look at your purchase and think: how on earth was I convinced so easily?

The art of persuasion might seem like an innate talent for the lucky, but any serious entrepreneur must hone this skill in order to find success, persuading others to invest, to support, to buy. So how do you convince more people to buy online? These three business experts reveal their secrets.

• Peter Shallard explains there is only one question you have to answer to make a successful pitch: “Why?”

• Brian Clark of Copyblogger explores some basic strategies to write more persuasively - including using story-telling, repetition, and comparisons.

• The Six Minutes Blog lists several tips to become a more persuasive speaker, as Andre Dlugan emphasizes the importance of being understood, logical, and real.

Incorporating these techniques into both your website and your everyday life won’t be an overnight solution, but they will challenge you to look at your message through a strategic and more effective lens - no matter the audience.

When are you at your most persuasive? What was the last time someone used these tactics successfully on you?

Over the last year we’ve written a few articles on running an online business (hopefully you’ve found some of them to be helpful!). We have also had a few terrific guest bloggers and reviewed some expert speakers. Because our customers often email us with similar questions - about SEO, paid search, and the like, we thought it would be helpful to compile some of this information in one place. You might want to bookmark this post for reference!

#10 How to Boost Holiday Sales

#9 How to Optimize Your Website for Local Search

#8 New Year’s Resolutions for Small Business Success

#7 10 Free Software Apps to Manage your Business and Cut Costs

#6 10 Website Mistakes to Avoid

#5 Thoughts on Customer Service with Shep Hyken

#4 3 Secrets to Getting More Customers

#3 Using Paid Search to Increase Your Traffic

#2 How to Build an Army of Brand Loyalists (guest blog by Jonathan Kay)

And presenting the #1 blogpost of the past year…. *drum roll*

Basics of Search Engine Optimization (John Lyotier of MarketingClinics.com)

**Bonus** 3 Ways to Convert Website Traffic into Customers

Recently I read that 34 billion videos were streamed in the U.S. in May. I’m not big on stats, but some quick grade school math indicated that it’s equal to every single person on the planet watching more than five videos! More than 14.6 billion of those videos were watched on YouTube, with each user watching an average of 101.2 videos in one month.

With YouTube being the second-most used search engine after Google, video is no longer a marketing luxury for businesses.

So how do you incorporate videos to work for your online business?

1. Testimonials

There is nothing more assuring than a real, objective person telling you how and why a product worked for them. Reach out to the customers that already love you and ask if they could put together a 30 second video testimonial if they find value in your product - and put that on your home page.

2. Education

You can find how-to videos these days on anything from online marketing to how to make a calzone. The plain fact is that people thirst for knowledge, and the best way to transmit that (aside from having a one-on-one instructor) is through a simple tutorial video. If you’re not comfortable in front of the camera, you may want to create a computer tutorial instead, using screen-capture video software. Some programs even have the ability to add captions.

3. Product Demos

This cheesy video demo for a remote car starter might not be your style (or budget), but it works. There’s a reason it has over 212,000 views! These are all people who were exposed to Viper’s branding, and they are all assured that the product isn’t a lemon. Sometimes a money-back guarantee isn’t enough - people want to actually see your product or service in action.

4. Entertainment

Sometimes you just want to show that your company has a human side - that you have a sense of humor. Recently on our staff retreat, our team ended up playing one of most challenging sports known to man: tether-ball. The sight of grown men (yes that’s me in the yellow) reduced to swinging away incompetently at an elusive ball is the kind of thing I can spare a minute to watch - and forward to a friend as well.

These are just a few ways you can start using videos for your business. If you haven’t already begun, get out there and start shooting! And, if you’ve already started using video for your business, let us know in the comments how that’s working for you!

So, what is Pay Per Click? In a nutshell, Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is a type of advertising that only costs you money when someone clicks on your ad. The most popular example is Google AdWords - you’ll see these ads on the side of search results on Google. As someone who handles multiple PPC accounts for our website builder, one of the most exciting things I get to do is introduce it to people building a new ecommerce website. Why?  It’s like a fresh canvas: a clean start to build something great.

One of the biggest problems I often see is new PPC users jumping right in with no plan, no goals, and no real strategy for what they want to achieve, and it’s pretty easy to waste a lot of money on it. That’s why I was thrilled to learn that I’d be talking PPC with Marco and Heather Barberini from OvernightPetTags.com, our winner of the 2009 Homepreneur of the Year competition.

Every successful PPC campaign begins with planning offline.  So before we even turned on the computer, I asked Marco exactly what his vision and goals were for his Google Adwords account. Google currently holds a 64% market share of all searches in the U.S.

Here’s what I asked Marco, and here’s what you should ask yourself before you take the plunge into Pay Per Click marketing.

1. What is the main reason to start a PPC account?

Obviously, to get more sales and make more money.  But how are you going to do that?  Are you going to be acquiring leads then calling them?  Do you want to drive traffic directly to a specific product?  Or do you want to to drive traffic to a catalog of products?  Maybe you offer a service and want people to phone you right away after finding your business website.  Even if you have an entire list of possibilities, write them all down.

2. What are you selling?

Of course you know what you’re selling, but can you organize it effectively?  Create a tree of your website and all of your products.  Make yourself a map and organize your products or services into different categories.  In Marco’s case, he sells pet ID tags.  So he would start by categorizing his website into two main top level categories: Dog ID Tags & Cat ID Tags.  These new main categories would be his “Campaigns”.

3.  How would you break down each individual product or service in each campaign?

Once you have broken your site down into its main categories or “campaigns”, you have created a backbone to structure the rest of your account.  You can then break things down further into Ad groups which fall under campaigns. For example, the Ad group “Sports Dog ID Tags” would go under the Campaign “Dog ID Tags”  mentioned above.

4. Who are you selling to?

You might know who you are selling to offline, but online is different.  When you’re advertising online, anyone can search and possibly click one of your ads costing you wasted money if they aren’t “qualified” (a good fit for your products).  So, make a plan offline for who you want to target.  Age, gender, what they might be searching for and why?  Try to create a customer persona and paint of picture of who you’re selling to.

Again, planning is the key to a great start with any new PPC account.  There are many other factors to consider, such as budgets - what are you willing to pay to get a new customer or sell a product?  These four tips above are just the basics to get your head wrapped around how to start.

Here is a list of key questions to ask yourself as your draw up your plan:

• What search engines do you want to target?
• What is your monthly budget?
• How many products are you selling? (this should help you break down your categories)
• What are your goals for PPC? (i.e. traffic, conversions)
• What will you use for track? (Our recommendation is Google Analytics but you may prefer Hitslink or StatCounter)
• How much are you willing to spend if it converts well?

In my next post, we’ll break it down further and discuss Ad groups, Keywords and Ads.  In the meantime, grab a pen and paper and start planning!