One of the best ways to catch your audience’s attention is with video…but how do you connect with them?

4 Reasons Why

As a business owner, you probably wear many hats, although the marketing hat doesn’t always fit right. Our digital marketing agency is happy to wear that one for you and do all the thinking, strategizing, and mobilizing that comes along with it.

We know all too well that it’s important to understand the way people think (especially the way that people buy) when it comes to marketing and developing strategies. When it comes to social proof, 9 out of 10 times people will be influenced to purchase based on another person’s positive experience with a company. It’s just human nature to be influenced by those around you.

Our job is to leverage that information and use it in a way that will benefit your business. What better way to do so than by filming and producing a video testimonial. Here are 4 reasons why you should consider working with a Fresno video production company to film your testimonial videos.

1. Video is the primary way that people receive information nowadays.

More than ever before, video is mainstream. The creative possibilities are endless and the marketing opportunities are infinite.

When it comes to creating testimonial videos, our local video marketing company can handle the entire process from start to finish. The most you would need to consider is who your ideal customer would be for testimonials and proving to them that you have a business worth bragging about.

2. Whether you know it or not, your customers respect credibility.

When you think of what your business has to offer at the baseline–simply your products and services–there are probably at least a few competitors out there. Although you may have a competitive edge in a few advantageous ways, customers don’t look for what makes you different. Among other determinants, they look for factors that build trust to make them feel comfortable buying from you. 

High-quality testimonial videos show that other customers have been pleasantly pleased with your products and services straight from your loyal customer’s mouth. 

3. Your customers are connecting the dots.

As mentioned above, humans are social creatures. One of the best ways for us to learn is to provide a visual. This is especially true if we can remember a face. 

When your past customer appears on video, your potential new customer has a better chance of connecting with them personally depending on how they relate to them. 

It’s also possible to strategize emotional testimonial videos, pulling on your audience’s heartstrings. The more ways that your new viewers are connecting with your videos, the better the chance of them clicking that “buy” button.

4. Make a lasting impression on your customers…and the internet.

What goes on the internet, staying on the internet. Why not make a great impression with an all-inclusive Fresno video production company? Leaving testimonials for future customers to find is a great way to plan for longevity in this whole digital marketing game. 

Unlike other forms of marketing such as commercials, radio, and even PPC ads, you won’t have to purchase these over and over again. High-grade testimonial videos are the gift that just keeps on giving. Plus, you can place them anywhere–on your website, landing pages, YouTube channels, and social media platforms.

Ready to start rolling?

As you can see, the benefits of testimonial videos alone are practically limitless. When you choose to work with us, we can help you plan your perfect testimonial video plan from strategy to even filming on-site or in our all-encompassing Fresno video production studio. From there, our team is already thinking of the best ways to market your brand new video to your ideal audience. 

If you’re ready to start, feel free to contact us to discuss your next video project or fill out our quick contact form here!

Are you taking advantage of the holiday hustle and bustle? Increase sales with video marketing during the holidays!

There’s usually two reactions that take place when the holidays approach: either an excitement that adds a little pep to your step or dread that’s followed with ticking anxiety of the approaching dates. For most business owners, there’s a combination of these feelings. On one hand, the holiday season offers major opportunities to boost sales. On the other hand, a mental stirring pot of confusing marketing tactics to mobilize those plans of boosting sales.

One way to increase your revenue year round is to implement video marketing–but this is especially true if you capitalize on the holiday season, which means timing is everything! Here’s why meeting with a local Fresno video production company could be a gamechanger this year.

Why is October the best time to start thinking about video production?

This seems like a simple question to ask but there are many factors that need to be clarified before this can be answered “yes” or “no”. We actually responded to the message from one of these companies and here are some of the assumptions and claims they were making:

Once Halloween is here, Thanksgiving seems to be right around the corner followed by Christmas. If you’re a gift-giving professional, you know that you should start shopping for your loved ones in October (and that’s pushing it!). The same thought process should be applied to your holiday video marketing strategy.

To even begin trying to plan out a successful video marketing plan, you will obviously need one major component: the video.

Just starting here can be a challenge for most companies because they don’t know where to start. There are different parts to producing a video that take a bit of time, idea collaboration, and clarity, such as:

• Scripting
• Storyboarding
• Actual filming

Don’t forget all of the remaining pieces to the puzzle either, like editing, more collaboration, and final production.

How can we help relieve that holiday marketing headache?

As you can probably see, producing a high-quality, well-thought-out video takes time–especially if you’re trying to do it all yourself.

When you choose to work with a dynamic, all-inclusive video production company like ours, we take all that seasonal stress off your shoulders by creating your own unique video production plan mix.

Our creative team will take on your project with a specialized, creative approach and offer a variety of these video production services and capabilities:

• Creative planning & direction
• Filming
• Rental studio location
• Filming resources available (lighting, multiple cameras, even drones!)
• Editing and collaboration opportunities
• Final video production

And of course, our video services don’t just stop there. We have a team of forward-thinking marketers ready to push your new video in front of the right online audience.

What are you waiting for?

The holidays are approaching with the creepy persistence of Michael Myers–they’re not going anywhere. It’s not too late to escape that all-too-familiar marketing misery if you work with our Fresno video production team now. Feel free to contact us to discuss your next video project or fill out our quick contact form here!

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? If no one reads your blog, it doesn’t make a sound.

Should your web site have a blog? Technically, anyone can have a blog. But there are four key questions you need to ask yourself before you begin:

1. Do your customers need that type of communication?
   If your customers aren’t avid Internet users, then a blog may not be the best form of communication. An email, a direct mailer, or a phone call may be more effective in communicating the value of your products or services.
2. Will the information you provide be tangible, useful, and reliable?
   Blog content must be useful and engaging. It should provide users with information that helps them with their job, or it should be useful tips and tricks; e.g., how to change a tire, organizational tips, best practices, etc.
3. Can you devote the time to creating rich, engaging content?
   Blogs, like social media, require a lot of maintenance as well as time to create the content and respond to any comments. If you don’t have the time to properly run a blog, then this may not be the best marketing tool for you.
4. How will you measure the blog’s success?
   Is your goal to increase traffic to your web site, or is it to increase sales? Whatever your measure of success, it is important that you evaluate your goals for your blog before you get started.

If you’re still not sure if a blog will work for you, give us a call at (559) 324.9341 and we’ll talk about it.

We hope you found this article helpful. If you have any suggestions for future topics, please contact us by clicking the link below.

If someone says they can rank you on the first page of Google … buyer beware.

We wrote this article a while back and are still getting customers calling us trying to be sold SEO services.  So, we thought we would update this article as much of the information is still very useful.  Enjoy!

You are probably all too familiar with those wild-sounding claims from a plethora of “web experts” who claim they can get you highly ranked on the first page of Google. Moreover, they offer to perform this magic for only $50 per month and they guarantee the results no less; which is very compelling, indeed! The complicated and labor-intensive process by which they promise to deliver this incredible value of a service is termed “Search Engine Optimization” or “SEO.” We’ll have more about this sophisticated and ever-changing process as we answer some of these common questions below. Many people refer to this topic by using the terms, “Search Engine Optimization”, “SEO”, or the updated terms, “Search Engine Rank Placement”, or “SERP” for short.  So let’s answer and shed some more light on this topic of search engine rank placement.

Can you get my site ranked on the first page of Google?

This seems like a simple question to ask but there are many factors that need to be clarified before this can be answered “yes” or “no”.” We actually responded to the message from one of these companies and here are some of the assumptions and claims they were making:

“Yes, we can get you ranked on the first page of Google’s results.”

This sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, it was in fact too good to be true. The only way they finally told us they were going to get us on the first page of Google was to use a search phrase that had more than seven (7) words in the search (example: “Digital Attic Clovis California Web Development Company”. This was a sentence and not something anyone would have typed into Google. Plus they were using terms that had our name in the search.  If the person is searching our name then we should already be ranking. The problem is most companies need to be ranked for something short being typed into Google or try to be ranked in a search that is geographically based … like “Plumber in Sacramento.”

Here are a couple of follow up points to help try and see through this clutter.

We recently received another SEO email from a company trying to sell us web ranking services. As we received this email, it was fun for us to turn the tables on them. How do we introduce the following report and/or respond to it?

Look at their email address.

Most professional companies have an email address that has a website address within it.

The first thing we noticed that they were sending an email from a Gmail account. Most professional companies have an email address that has a website address within it. So, if they are sending the email from an email address with @gmail.com or @yahoo.com, then they are probably not a legitimate company. Many people do this because they have been blocked for email spam. If they don’t have an email with a company name at the end, like @digitalattic.com, then just delete them.

Look at their website.

If they have an email address with a company name in it, go to their website and see if they have a professional website. Why would you work with a company that doesn’t have a website? We have worked for years to get our website to rank and they should be doing the same.  Here is what we found when we went to their website:

Check their ranking.

Finally, and probably most importantly, make them prove their results for their own website. If they can’t get their own website on the first page, how will they ever get you there?  Ask them for specific examples and see if they can prove it.

Ask a professional

The interesting thing about this email for our team is that we knew the tool they used to analyze a website address that we own. So we turned the tables on them and ran the same report on their website address. Here is what we found:

So what does this report indicate? After we ran this report we sent the same sales message back to them to see if we could help. We probably won’t get a response, but it was fun to send.

Instead of just telling you how to filter through some of these SEO emails, we thought it would be good to give you a couple of quick tips to help you analyze your website and start the process of reviewing your SEO effectiveness.

Here are five (5) quick tips to know how to best to get started:

STEP 1: Analytics

Make sure that you have an analytics program like Google Analytics installed on your website. Programs like this allow you to see how much traffic you are receiving to your website as well as see the search terms people are typing in to find you. You can’t start figuring out what to change unless you analyze where you are starting. In future posts, we are going to put up some custom reports for Google Analytics that can help you quickly review how your website is performing.

STEP 2: Research your competitors

Most people have heard the saying, “Keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer.” Make sure you review your competitors’ sites on a regular basis to see what they are doing. You can review the design, navigation, the number of pages, type of pages they are displaying and what features they have that might be advantageous for your website. Make sure to put your consumer glasses on and try and review your competitors’ websites the way your customer might. Who looks more trustworthy? Who looks more professional? Who is answering the questions you want to know? Lastly, is your contact information on every page? It’s counter-productive when a motivated prospect who is ready to engage has to struggle to discover how to contact you.

STEP 3: Have a plan

Every business has to have a plan or goal for its website. Is your website there to drive sales, educate customers, answer questions, or just sit there? This is very important in determining the success of one’s site.

STEP 4: Have a strategy

Home Page: Take another look at your home page and make sure that it is a total summary of your website.  Think of your home page as a summary.  If you don’t mention things that are important to your website it will not rank as well. Don’t count on your subpages to get your ranked, mention it on your home page and link that content to the subpage that added more details about the topic.

Navigation: Make sure your website’s menu has a strategy.  We typically recommend that your menu follow your sales or educational process offline. Think about the process you take customers through and match that to your menu.  For example, if you are a restaurant and your menu link is at the end, that is probably a bad place for it.  If you are an artist, your portfolio should be close to the left of the menu as well.  This strategy has helped many of our clients gain success from even older website design.  The strategy of menu organization is key to a website’s success.

Finally, work with a professional

If your firm is not being found on the Internet, there are some quick and cost-effective ways to get results by relying on the expertise of a proven professional SEO company. Take a moment to call us and let us share with you how we may be able to help your business before it’s too late. If you are located in the Fresno area and need a Fresno SEO company to help you, please give us a call.

Not all apps will be approved and maintenance is required.

Many businesses are trying to find new ways to market their products and services and many have capitalized on the smartphone explosion. If you don’t have a smartphone, you are quickly becoming the minority. Before we discuss this topic, we need to clarify the difference between a mobile app (applications) and a mobile website.

Mobile apps need to be downloaded and installed on your smartphone device. Many of these apps are downloaded from Google Play if you are on an Android operating smartphone or through iTunes if you are using an Apple smartphone device.

Mobile Apps

Mobile apps are often effective for businesses that have tools, utilities, and information that would be conducive to being used in a mobile environment. For example, we have a client who has customers who work in the irrigation industry, and customers wanted something they could use in the field to help them decide the best equipment for their specific application challenges. Our team built a mobile app that has to be downloaded and installed on their device which allows their users to put in specific field data. The app then automatically calculates the best equipment for their specific application.

Many people think that because of the number of downloads and revenue being made from mobile apps that they, too, can capture some of that revenue. For most business applications, this is not typically the primary place to gain market share or revenue generation. Many business applications are downloaded for free to provide a tool or utility that better helps your business serve the mobile customer. On the other hand, if you have a fun, entertaining or helpful app that is in demand and that customers would pay to have, then a custom-designed mobile app might be a good fit for you. We are a great “sounding board” if you have an idea for a mobile app that could go viral.

Mobile Websites

Mobile websites are found via a browser on your smartphone. If you use Google to search from your smartphone then you are probably using a mobile web browser to find information on the Internet via your phone. This is not an installed application but rather a way to access the Internet. This is typically the place most businesses are under utilizing their potential exposure to their customers. Some businesses have almost as many visitors visiting their websites via a smartphone as they do via computer browser. We recommend looking at your analytics to see how much traffic is coming from a mobile device. If the number is more than five to ten percent, then we recommend making sure those customers have an optimal experience by considering how a website looks on a three-inch smartphone screen.

Summary

The bottom line is that we recommend a mobile marketing strategy for most of our business clients because of the ever-increasing amount of people searching for products and services through their phones. If you want to explore whether a mobile marketing strategy is right for your business, please contact us and we would be glad to answer questions you may have about this exploding marketplace.

Come on! You have to! Everybody’s doing it. … Right?

Peer pressure can be a powerful thing, even in the business world. With so much being talked, blogged, and reported about social media, it can be hard to determine if your business should jump into the social media pool. Here are a few things to consider before going off the deep end:

The Purpose of Social Media

Well, the name pretty much says it all. It’s a communications vehicle through which people engage and share information. This is an important concept as the oldest and most effective form of advertising is word of mouth – which platforms like Facebook and Twitter replicate through the Internet.

What is the nature of your business?

Ask yourself, “Does the nature of my services/products require me to actively engage with my customers on a regular basis?” Better yet, “Do my clients WANT to engage with me on a regular basis?” If you’re a CPA and mainly see the bulk of your clients once a year during tax season, you probably don’t NEED social media to keep your business thriving.

Can I invest the time and resources?

Social media is centered on relationship building

Social media is centered on relationship building, and it requires a regular commitment to make it worth both your and your customers’ time. You need to be able to respond to questions and comments in a reasonable amount of time. If you don’t have time to login and engage, it has the same impact as ignoring a customer who walks into your office to ask a question.

Can I handle criticism?

People can get really nasty on the Internet, justified or not, as they feel like they can hide behind a cloak of anonymity. However, you have to always keep a cool head and respond like a professional because once you click send, your comment is out there for the whole world to see; and there’s no taking it back.

Most Importantly

Most importantly consider how you obtain most of your clients and referrals. First put your money and energy first into the vehicles that are producing qualified customers for you, then decide if you want to get your feet wet in social media. But when you set up that Pinterest or Twitter account, make sure to have a game plan and have realistic expectations on what you hope to accomplish through your social media activities.

A logo is more than a design, it is the future face of your business.

A lot of people think that “brand identity” is just a logo or a product name, or both; but a brand is much more than either. Brand identity is what people think, feel, and remember about your business. When it comes to brand identity, the ultimate goal is to become the most respected, trusted and recognized resource or provider of the type of product or service that your company offers.

Let’s look at some familiar brands. When people need to look something up online, they simply “Google” it. Google has been so successful at establishing a brand identity that its name has become a verb and synonymous with the service that the company offers. Also, when a person sneezes, more often than not they may request a “Kleenex,” instead of a tissue. Other companies that enjoy this level of successful branding include Band-Aid and Q-Tip.

One of the most important things to consider when creating a brand identity is your target audience. They are the ones who formulate an opinion of your brand, so you’ll need to consider how your name, logo, color scheme, and related aspects are perceived by them. Start with your customers. They bought your product or service for a reason. Now is the time to ask them what they thought, how you could have done better, and what other items/services they need. You never know when a customer might have hired you to perform a task and had no idea of the other beneficial services or products you offer. Since your product or service has already made a loyal believer in your company, it should be easier to cross-sell them to your other offerings.

As the old adage goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” By enemies, we mean competitors; see what they are doing and learn from their practices. Is their brand strategy successful? Is their brand memorable? Once you’ve done your research, make sure your brand has a clear differentiator that will keep you top of mind.

Finally, and arguably most importantly, protect your brand! All the brands mentioned above were first trade-marked (™), and then eventually became registered marks (®). The registered mark is the most valuable status of finally arriving in the marketplace (not unlike a patented invention) and offers the ultimate protection from competitors. Logos, product/service names, and even slogans can and should go through this formal process if there is value in distinguishing and protecting the brand.

We hope you found this article helpful. If you have any suggestions for future topics, please click the link below to contact us.

Can you answer the question of how your website is doing? If not, read this.

If you can’t answer these four questions, be afraid … be VERY afraid:

1. How many people are visiting your web site on a daily or monthly basis?
2. How many mobile customers are visiting your web site?
3. What is the percentage of new versus returning visitors?
4. What is the average number of pages visitors are viewing?

We often speak to customers who want a new web site, and during the discovery meetings, we ask for the reason behind this decision. Can you guess what the typical response is? Almost 90 percent of the time the response is because the site looks outdated or not professional enough.

Although this might be part of the reasoning to build a new web site, we like to justify this through including some analytical data as to the effectiveness of the existing web site. Let’s walk through this together by using the same line of questioning above.

How many people are visiting your web site on a daily or monthly basis?

If your traffic is extremely low it might be a better choice to try to drive traffic to the web site first, before redesigning the web site. Having visitor traffic statistics will inform web developers how your existing web site is used; and by using analytics, we have greater insights into making a better web site for your customers.

One of the other analytical pieces of information we use to review traffic is the bounce rate. What is a bounce rate? Think of the bounce rate as a window shopping customer. They walked by your store, took a quick peek, and then kept walking. They didn’t walk into your store or give much thought to browsing your aisles. A bounce is a customer who came to your web site home page and then left. Typically this is a potential customer who didn’t see the value of going deeper into your web site. This is important data for web designers to assess how your home page is currently performing.

How many mobile customers are visiting your web site?

We use this data to evaluate if your web site needs a mobile or responsive design for customers who are on the go. If your mobile traffic is approaching 10 percent of total traffic to your site, we highly recommend making sure the mobile experience is addressed when building your web site.

What is the percentage of new versus returning visitors?

If your web site has a very low return rate, it typically means that you are not giving customers a reason to come back to visit. There are very few exceptions for being satisfied with a low return rate. Most businesses can provide a reason for customers to come back to their web sites. Some options include providing ongoing support through interactive forms, posting downloadable documents/forms, or creating customer portals through the web site. Also, examine your competitors’ techniques for gaining repeat visits to their web sites. Give this a lot of thought because it can be the difference between keeping a customer and your competitor gaining a new client.

What is the average number of pages visitors are viewing?

Providing an engaging customer experience on your web site typically means customers will visit three or more pages of your web site. We all spend more time with the people and businesses we like. Give your customers what they are looking for quickly, and try to gain pageview depth. This is one of the reasons we provide articles like this for free to anyone who wants to read them. As you spend time on our web site, you get to know us better which will hopefully result in us working together.

Most of these questions can be answered in a couple of seconds if you have the data in your hands. If you are a current client of ours and would like us to automate analytics reports to your email, give us a call and we can schedule these to be delivered weekly or monthly for you. Better yet, let’s help you gain insights on how to increase traffic, achieve deeper pageviews, gain repeat customers, and get better conversion rates. Give us a call at (559) 324-9341 to schedule an appointment.