https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/How-To-Hire-An-Expert-poster-final-draft.png6281200Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2018-07-10 11:01:012021-08-02 14:57:40How To Hire An Expert (When You Aren't One) Seminar
Thanks to Dawn who wrote in asking “What does a client brief look like?”
Let us help you out.
What to do when hiring an agency
If you sub-contract your marketing to an agency or to freelancers, you want to be sure that you pay for and get good quality work.
A lot of the quality of output is due to high quality input. By that I mean, briefing documents. If you can explain clearly what you want, how you want it done and timeframes, you are far more likely to get high quality work back.
We use Upwork and People Per Hour to find freelancers and expert sub-contractors.
Ask the freelancer to write back
For briefing we always give a lot of detail and we also ask the freelancer to write back with answers to our questions.
We choose these carefully in order to show us that THEY have read the brief.
Please tell me what access permissions you need before you start the job
And we also ask them open questions whose answers tell us if they understand the scope, how they would approach the job and allow us to assess how good their English is.
Estimate how long the job will take
Tell me what problems you anticipate
Below is a template document which we use when we receive instructions to do some marketing for our clients. You can download it from the link.
Each sub-heading is self explanatory – as a client you should fill in each section as clearly as possible and then send it out to the agency or agencies you want to work with asking them to send you price quotations.
Alternatively, you write longhand what you want and the agency will fill in the gaps in the document. Then you should approve it before instructing the work.
Online fantasy sports are experiencing huge growth and are even rivaling online betting platforms. For those who don’t know, online fantasy sports platforms allow users to create fantasy sports teams and join competitions to potentially win cash prizes.
For example, users can create their own NBA basketball lineup packed full of stars such as LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving, and then enter a league against other players to see how their teams match up. As the real life result roll in, scores are calculated based on your team selection, and your league standing is based on this score.
Due to the huge boost in popularity of online fantasy sports, their marketing techniques have had to improve and diversify. Popular platforms such as DraftKings, FanDuel, and PlayOn have to compete with each other and try to bring in customers through clever marketing. DraftKings is currently on top, with bettingsites.me.uk reporting that 50.6% of all players currently use the app.
Social media are playing a huge role in fantasy sports marketing. Both FanDuel and DraftKings have a huge following on Twitter, for example (FanDuel – 212k followers, DraftKings – 244k followers), and use this network to post game highlights and interact with customers.
If you scroll through DraftKings’ Twitter feed, you can see it posting videos of MLB games and clips, uploading player profiles of top sporting personalities such as Cristiano Ronaldo, and even cheat sheets to help its user base improve their fantasy teams.
FanDuel alternatively regularly post WNBA highlights, show awesome MLB home runs, and also funny sports bloopers and memes. All of this gives content to its users and helps get them excited about the world of sport, as well as encourage interaction with their respective fantasy sports platforms.
Affiliate marketing is also hugely important for online fantasy sports platforms. Both DraftKings and FanDuel operate an affiliate program through which customers can gain commissions. In essence, a customer promotes the fantasy sports platform by using a special hyperlink. If someone clicks on this hyperlink and registers an account, the customer gains a small fee.
This is a clever form of marketing. The fantasy sports platform doesn’t really have to do anything and it benefits from increased exposure and more customers; all it has to give in return is a small percentage fee.
These are just two examples of fantasy sports marketing and there are many more. It is clear that marketing plays an important role in the promotion of fantasy sports and that it allows platforms such as DraftKings and FanDuel to gain a competitive edge in this ever increasing market.
The infographic below offers further insight into the world of fantasy sports:
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Connecting two compatible businesses with each other can be one of strongest networking tools for you and other businesses. By connecting the groups, not only are you solidifying your own network, but also helping the two businesses who may be able to benefit each other.
But often times this can be difficult over email.
In my networking group, we’re working hard to make it really EASY for members to introduce each other to new prospects and new clients.
I was asked by the group to help coach them in the best way to write an introduction that others could use. So let’s say you wanted to introduce my firm to another business. Here’s how you would do it.
Hi [their name],
I just wanted to connect you with Rebecca from Creative Agency Secrets. I know you were interested in increasing your business’s online presence, and I’m sure they’ll be able to help.
Creative Agency Secrets is an expert in marketing and promoting businesses using traditional and online methods. They work as the outsourced marketing team for busy businesses doing marketing that starts conversations and leads to sales.
I have seen their work for [name a client] and used them for my own business to write the copy on our website About Us page. And I’ve also recommended them several times and had great feedback especially about their careful attention to detail.
I will leave you two to connect – I’ve spoken to you both about each other and shared your emails and phone numbers below.
[both parties’ contact information]
Best,
[Your Name]
The 5 elements of an effective email introduction
Introduce: explain why you sent the email
Start: with their one-liner…. who are they and what do they do
Build: with an example of their work for someone you both know, preferably. If you can’t say you have worked personally with them, a mutual acquaintance is a positive reinforcer.
Memorability: Add an anecdote that describes your experience – if you can make it funny, cute or WOW that’s best but not strictly necessary.
End: Include all the information they need to continue a dialogue without you….
We plan on creating a shared document for everyone so they can cut/paste the text into emails for business referrals for new business development.
The best introductions are when you’ve spoken personally to both parties. NOTE not emailed, spoken….
https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Email.png17381920Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2018-06-27 09:35:132020-09-08 15:22:55How To Introduce A Business By Email
Anyone should know that to establish a good online brand presence, you need a good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy. Keywords are a main part of that strategy – they’re more than just using the right tags to find relevant blog posts – they help boost your business’ search results so your website gets more traffic.
Last year, we helped Living Goodness develop an SEO strategy that saw them appear on the front page! And to top off the cake, it was also the first time that Living Goodness ranked higher than a competitor.
Seventh place! Not too shabby.
In this blog article, I’ll show you three key skills that we utilised for their SEO strategy, and show you how you can put them to work on your own business.
For example, Living Goodness were ranking for “fermented foods nz” (though they appeared on the second page of search results). They wanted to rank higher for this search term, and also wished to show up for “sauerkraut nz”.
Which we achieved, by the way.
We went on to conduct our own research to find relevant keywords that would complement these. A handy tool that we turned to is called Answer the Public.
This allowed us to see what users were also searching for alongside the terms “fermented foods nz” and “sauerkraut nz”. We picked up key phrases and words such as “probiotics”, “raw”, “organic” and “kimchi” alongside many more. This also gave us a good starting point for blog article ideas.
2. Incorporate these keywords into existing content
Now that we had a lovely list of keywords, we needed to disperse them around different landing pages in a natural manner. For SEO purposes, there were key points that needed keyword boosting:
Landing page headings
Links
First paragraphs of content
These were just a few places where we implemented keywords into the existing content in a manner that was natural and flowed. Being a business that sells fermented foods, this wasn’t a problem. We also made sure we used a mix of these keywords because no one likes repetition (especially not Google!).
3. Help out your visitors with handy internal linking
Keywords aren’t the only way to boost SEO. There are many things that affect search engine rankings, and relevance is a big contender. If people aren’t spending long enough on your website and are bouncing away quickly (tip: check the bounce rate in Google Analytics), it may very well mean they’re not finding what they are looking for on your website.
Internal links are a great way to boost SEO and retain website traffic. If you aren’t linking to your products whenever you mention them, it’s a huge opportunity wasted. You also want to encourage a longer customer journey by suggesting other pages that are relevant.
For Living Goodness, we added links to their stockists page and social media handles on the recipes pages. This call-to-action prompted visitors to seek the closest stockist after reading a delicious recipe – “Are you running low on delicious sauerkraut or kimchi? Check out your local stockist here.” The social media links also encouraged visitors to share any of the recipes they’d followed. Being a foodie Instagram account, any photos using a Living Goodness product was free user-generated content, and of course, we were going to make the most of it!
Three simple tips that you can do yourself
As you can see, these tips are all very simple, easy and free to do. Hopefully, you’re able to apply them to your website straight away.
All these were tasks that we did as part of our SEO Starter Pack. It’s a comprehensive analysis of a website with actions to improve SEO and a recommended guide for next steps.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/answerthepublic.png577816Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2018-06-21 17:22:582020-01-24 01:45:013 Takeaway Tips: Building an SEO strategy for Living Goodness
Has Google been sending you emails recently? If you are the webmaster for your domain, you will be getting messages from Google Search Console as they find new errors on your website.
Search Console email text alert
The newly helpful Search Console Reports are good to get. This is all part of a rollout of improved reporting. Now you can take control of your own website SEO and won’t have to rely on bespoke or paid developer tools which you don’t want to buy.
What does Google’s email say?
Typically the standard email you receive is not written in plain English – this is tech-speak. Let us help you decode it.
New Index coverage issue detected for site https://www.yourdomain.com
The Google is trying to be helpful. So click through from the link supplied and see what the Search Console summary error page says. There are quite a few possible variations – but here are some of the possible issues [Read the Google Support page]
Error
Warning
Excluded
Valid
Helpfully Google offers suggestions on how to research the issue you can test if the Robots.txt file is blocking, you can fetch the page as if you are Google [superb trick this], View the page as a search result and lastly, re-submit to the Google database.
Don’t worry – this isn’t terminal
If you have received this message you can research some how-to guides, blast through the Support guide or call us and we will help you fix it. Remember Creative Agency Secrets will teach you how to do these fixes yourself, or we can do them for you.
I just checked the error from one client and found a lot of other broken links – use a broken link checker tool to find your priority pages. It’s worth getting these sorted out – you know “nanny knows best.
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Designing a landing page is no easy task. There are many moving parts to consider, including copywriting, design, social media, and CTA placement. And with so many decisions to make (both big and small), it’s no wonder that mistakes can easily occur. In many cases, business owners fail to take the proper precautions to ensure their landing page is up to par, both in terms of design and functionality. Sometimes, they even let simple mistakes slide.
However, because humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish, you need to be able to capture their interest almost instantaneously. Within just a few seconds, a potential customer will move on to the next best thing because of an error you may have thought was trivial. Here are five mistakes you don’t want to make with product landing pages:
Choosing The Wrong Platform
There are many platforms available, and choosing the right one is crucial. WordPress is touted as one of the best lead-generating landing page platforms because it’s simple to set up, and creative freedom is nearly endless. You can choose from thousands of free and premium themes, and even install plugins like Elementor to build your product landing page with drag-and-drop functionality.
Then, there are other platforms designed to help you launch simple product landing pages, like LeadPages (which offers WordPress integration), Unbounce, and Instapage. These may offer a quicker set-up but are typically very limited in terms of design.
Think about your site goals before you choose a platform. For example, if you want to be able to incorporate certain features, like immersive photo galleries, you will need a platform that supports it. Or, if you think you’ll be using an independent designer or developer in the future, go with a platform that allows you to scale in that direction. Budget is another thing to keep in mind. If you’re just starting out or still growing your customer base, you might want to start with a cheaper option, like WordPress, which you can get for as low as $10 per month. Other lead-capturing landing pages cost anywhere from $30 to $200 per month, and even as high as $2,400 for platforms like HubSpot.
Stock Photography
Believe it or not, in most cases, people don’t like to see stock photography on product landing pages. It might be okay for your blog posts, but it requires special consideration for your landing page. A study conducted by MDG Advertising found that 67% of online shoppers consider quality images to be an integral part of their decision-making when it comes to purchases. The more vivid and authentic a photo is, the more likely they were to perceive ownership.
For software, beautiful screenshots are the way to go, and it would be fine to juxtapose humans with your software imagery. Sometimes, stock photography is the easiest way to mesh the two, but you might also want to add a high-res photo of someone actually using the software to add that extra touch of authenticity.
If you do use humans in your photography (whether stock photos or you your own), bear in mind that studies have shown that site visitors tend to look in the direction of the eyes that belong to the person in the photo. Therefore, you’d ideally want to have the person looking in the direction of your text.
No Clear CTA
Before you start working on your landing page, ask yourself, “What’s my main goal here?” One of the biggest mistakes people make with landing pages is cluttering it with too many options for the visitor. For example, it can be overwhelming to visit a landing page that wants you to read articles, sign up for a newsletter, purchase your newest product, watch a video, AND request a quote.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have multiple points-of-purchase or ways to appeal to your potential customers. Instead, you should have a core goal that stands out above the rest, rather than blends in. Think about the singular action you want your visitor to take: this is called the call-to-action (CTA). Your call to action should be decently-sized, stand out, and be placed in the right area to attract the most attention. Use split testing software to help you choose between different types of CTA. This will help you choose the option that converts best.
Too Much Copy
Having too much copy on your landing page can be fatal. As previously mentioned, most people don’t have a very long attention span, and every small decision about your copy–from size to typography to color and word count–plays an important role. Too many words create information overload and dilutes the message you’re trying to get across.
Keep your sentences and paragraphs short and concise. Try to avoid using one of the pages to dominate the text. It’s best not to align left or right when you’re working on landing pages. Instead, you want to spread bite-sized bits of copy across the page evenly. You want your copy to be as scannable as possible, and clunky paragraphs make it very difficult to achieve this. For optimal results, try breaking up the text by using well-designed icons, mini-paragraphs, bullet points, color-coordinated sub-sections.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Landing-page-Daniel-Bailey.jpg500750Sudip Mutthttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgSudip Mutt2018-06-12 15:44:522022-12-19 13:51:15Four Major Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make With Product Landing Pages
Sage publishes an annual survey of accountants attitudes – what’s interesting is that it is global and the summary report details some good findings about the profession.It’s called The Practice of Now 2018
As a marketer who works with professional services businesses, my reading highlights some big numbers in the research about artificial intelligence, fear of competition, lack of optimism and increasingly demanding clients.The implications for marketing, I will cover at the end of this article.
10 take-outs from the Practice of Now 2018 report
Clients are changing faster than accountants. – 42% of clients expect accountants to provide business advice.This shows how frontline accountancy is in the mind of the client and how banks and business mentors have failed to take up the slack here, which is an opportunity for growth.
Revenues rise as cloud accounting allows firms to be more productive.56% of firms saw a revenue rise.If your firm didn’t see this fee income growth – start to review your working practices.
Practice Management in the cloud is at 53% adoption – clearly we are into the mainstream majority now.
But confidence is lower – 40% feel less confident about the prospects for their practice.Clearly Xero’s goal of putting accountants out of business is realistic and beginning to come true.
Competition within the industry is more visible – are you buying up a practice from a retiring competitor?Clients will go to an accountant who serves their needs – even to another city or country.This is both a threat and and opportunity for new business development.
Artificial Intelligence is helping free up administrative tasks and it’s more than just automation. Moving from data entry, email and diary management to higher value services is a no-brainer… but how to set it up is the challenge as these skills aren’t in-house and they may not be in the IT services organisations who work with accountants either.
Most accountants are doing some workflow automation – 49% want to do more of it.So the benefits are noticed (see 2 above).
The language of accountancy is changing – “Tell me how much money I have” and “How much am I owed?” is SO refreshing compared to “debtors, creditors and accruals”.From a marketing point of view, these messages are very powerful and simple – but does your firm use this language?
Advisory services are wanted by 42% of clients – but if you don’t market & position the firm to capture this revenue, clients will go elsewhere.
The BIGGIE – 67% of accountants say that cloud technologies make client collaboration easier. Phew, glad that worked out because it jolly well ought to be this way.
Should I worry about artificial intelligence?
If you’re not sure what A.I. could do for your business, start asking questions now.Because we all understand automation in things like bank feeds, this is a very small part of the working practice move towards higher functionality for humans and lower functions for machines (or software robots).
The easiest way to understand the potential for AI in accountancy is this extract from the report
“Candidates for automation already include assigning incoming bank statement entries with the correct nominal codes—via training the machine becomes able to predict what codes should be used—but in the near future the power of AI to learn means it will become involved with operations like analytics and report creation. For example, software will be able to predict a client’s cash flow based on the company’s previous behaviour. Based on self-generated data, AI will be able to make predictions and decisions. This isn’t limited to client data. By examining things like seasonality data, AI can help with practice management. AI and automation aren’t just desirable because they make life easier. Research has suggested that the tedium of repetitive tasks can lead to a high staff turnover, introducing additional costs for a practice such as recruitment and training. Automating these processes makes complete business sense.”
It goes on to say
“AI can flag the anomalies, saving time and resources, making the accountant more productive.”
Your strategic marketing pathway
And as a marketer, if I am advising a modern accountancy practice this is what they should be doing for strategic marketing.
Firstly get your brand positioning updated to reflect modern working.Think Nena and Kim Wilde – “Anyplace, anywhere, anytime” and you’ll be on the right track.
How that branding plays out into your collateral, positioning, services and online profile should be straightforward.The key is to get the strategy right first and the rollout should be clear.You will need new keywords for SEO, your client communications will become driven by client preference and choice and your language will simplify and align with clients’ choices of words.
Other than that, it’s marketing business as (un)usual for a modern accountancy practice.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2018-05-31 16:56:132022-12-19 13:51:15The (b)leading edge of Accountancy marketing
Nowadays, countless guides on the internet try to persuade you how easy it is to build a successful website from scratch.
While it’s true that anyone can get a decent-looking site live with the right tools, it’s still not easy for the online community to separate good web designers.
Remember, an experienced web developer knows to have a user-oriented approach when designing websites.
It’s not just about fancy visual effects, animations, and so on — it’s about creating an experience that compels users to take a specific action.
In this post, we’ll drill down into the tools which are the bedrock fundamentals for creating a high-converting website and how to utilise them yourself. (Image Source)
Let’s get started.
1. Start with the Right Platform
When it comes to developing websites, first you must choose a platform that can help you attain your goals.
Content management systems, e-commerce platforms, DIY site builders — each type of software has something unique to offer. And when commissioning a web developer, you can’t take this decision for granted. It’s important you know and understand the differences and positives & negatives of each option.
Here is a brief explanation of each tool and their strengths:
Content Management Systems:
A flexible platform designed to help you edit, manage, and publish online content.
WordPress plugins
CMS also give developers complete control over the website’s appearance — typically providing pre-made themes to work with.
WordPress is, by a clear mile, the most popular CMS ever. On top of the easy-to-use interface and countless themes to choose from, it also includes a massive plugin library for expandability and functionality – from newsletter subscription forms s to SEO.
E-Commerce Platforms
Shopify ecommerce
If your main goal is to sell product, you need to check out e-commerce platforms that consolidate everything you’ll need in one place.
For example, Shopify is becoming the go-to e-commerce platform that has all-in-one service including web hosting, online store themes, and integrations with services — from payment gateways to social sharing buttons. It also supports drop shipping apps like Oberlo and BigBuy, which enables shops to launch with a low overhead – but they do charge monthly fees.
Squarespace templates
DIY Site Builder Tools
It’s sometimes difficult to understand the difference between a content management system and a DIY site builder. The fact that both also support e-commerce functionalities don’t help, either.
What you need to remember is that site builders like Squarespace and Wix have limited customisability and capabilities, especially if you want modifications in your website’s source code. They do, however, make up for it with the wide selection of themes that hit the spot between pleasant appearance and user-friendliness.
2. Optimise Your Website’s Performance
Going back to being user-oriented, your website’s loading speed is one of the user experience factors that can single-handedly kill your search, traffic and conversions.
According to Google, 53% of users abandon a mobile website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. This number is reduced to only 40% for desktop sites, but you’ll still be missing out on a huge visitor stream.
This begs the question, how can you make your website load as fast as possible?
The answer, of course, varies. What you can do is to run an analysis through Google PageSpeed Insights to identify the exact issues that affect your website’s loading speed.
PageSpeed Insights work by providing optimisation suggestions that are specifically tailored to your website’s needs. It is a highly effective tool if you want to optimise your website’s loading times and maximise conversions by retaining more traffic.
To give you an idea of what to expect, below are some of the typical suggestions for your website’s loading speed:
Use Lossless Image Compression If you have a lot of visual content on your site, use a lossless compression tool like Compressor.io or Smush to reduce their size without compromising quality.
Consider a Content Delivery Network A surefire way to see significant performance gains on your website is to use a Content Delivery Network or CDN. Basically, it’s a network of servers that are strategically distributed across multiple locations to keep loading times consistent for all users — regardless of where they are in the world.
Minimise Your Code A handy tool like MinifyCode.com can further increase your website’s performance by removing excess characters, such as white spaces, line breaks, and comments, from codes. This can result in noticeable improvements, especially if you offer a lot of dynamic content and interactive elements on your website.
3. KISS (keeping it simple)
Remember, web pages are instruments that help users achieve a specific goal. By being aligned with what the audience wants to do, web developers can accurately determine which page elements should be included or removed.
Do you need a prominent call to action? Are you sure banner ads aren’t pulling traffic away from your site?
Accomplished marketers like Neil Patel understand this fully, which is why you can observe the KISS principle at play in their websites.
(Image Source: Neil Patel)
It’s not rocket science: the fewer distractions presented to your audience, the faster they’ll buy into your value propositions. Apart from branding elements and navigation menus, try to avoid adding anything that contributes little to the user’s journey towards your desired action or goal. That’s why landing pages often have menus removed.
4. Keep Fine-Tuning
Even veteran web developers find it hard to unlock the maximum conversion
Google Analytics traffic Funnel
potential of any given site instantly — let alone do it on their first try.
Heat Mapping Tools
Your best bet is to launch your website, boot up some performance monitoring software, and let the numbers show you the way forward for refinements.
The usual route is to integrate Google Analytics to start monitoring key performance metrics, such as web traffic, bounce rate, session duration, and e-commerce transactions. It can also help you identify your best content as well as pinpoint the “drop-off” points where you lose most of your audience.
If you want, you can also slice through the number-crunching and visually monitor how most users interact with your site. You can do this with the help of a heat mapping tool, like Crazy Egg, Sumo or Hotjar.
Conclusion
Conversion rate optimisation is a learning experience that requires your direct involvement and regular updates.
The tips above should be more than enough to put you on a more profitable pathway.
Care to share a couple more tips on how to develop conversion-ready websites? Feel free to leave a comment below!
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/9.png7521776Sudip Mutthttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgSudip Mutt2018-05-18 10:00:062022-12-19 11:57:42Quick and Easy Guide to Designing a High-Converting Website
How To Hire An Expert (When You Aren’t One) Seminar
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamNo related posts.
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What Does A Client Brief Look Like?
/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Marketing ideas, Sales /by Rebecca CaroeThanks to Dawn who wrote in asking “What does a client brief look like?”
Let us help you out.
What to do when hiring an agency
If you sub-contract your marketing to an agency or to freelancers, you want to be sure that you pay for and get good quality work.
A lot of the quality of output is due to high quality input. By that I mean, briefing documents. If you can explain clearly what you want, how you want it done and timeframes, you are far more likely to get high quality work back.
We use Upwork and People Per Hour to find freelancers and expert sub-contractors.
Ask the freelancer to write back
For briefing we always give a lot of detail and we also ask the freelancer to write back with answers to our questions.
We choose these carefully in order to show us that THEY have read the brief.
And we also ask them open questions whose answers tell us if they understand the scope, how they would approach the job and allow us to assess how good their English is.
Below is a template document which we use when we receive instructions to do some marketing for our clients. You can download it from the link.
Each sub-heading is self explanatory – as a client you should fill in each section as clearly as possible and then send it out to the agency or agencies you want to work with asking them to send you price quotations.
Alternatively, you write longhand what you want and the agency will fill in the gaps in the document. Then you should approve it before instructing the work.
DOWNLOAD Master Client Planning Brief Template
The Top 5 most popular articles of all time
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How Online Fantasy Sports Companies Market Their Platforms?
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip MuttOnline fantasy sports are experiencing huge growth and are even rivaling online betting platforms. For those who don’t know, online fantasy sports platforms allow users to create fantasy sports teams and join competitions to potentially win cash prizes.
For example, users can create their own NBA basketball lineup packed full of stars such as LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving, and then enter a league against other players to see how their teams match up. As the real life result roll in, scores are calculated based on your team selection, and your league standing is based on this score.
Due to the huge boost in popularity of online fantasy sports, their marketing techniques have had to improve and diversify. Popular platforms such as DraftKings, FanDuel, and PlayOn have to compete with each other and try to bring in customers through clever marketing. DraftKings is currently on top, with bettingsites.me.uk reporting that 50.6% of all players currently use the app.
Social media are playing a huge role in fantasy sports marketing. Both FanDuel and DraftKings have a huge following on Twitter, for example (FanDuel – 212k followers, DraftKings – 244k followers), and use this network to post game highlights and interact with customers.
If you scroll through DraftKings’ Twitter feed, you can see it posting videos of MLB games and clips, uploading player profiles of top sporting personalities such as Cristiano Ronaldo, and even cheat sheets to help its user base improve their fantasy teams.
FanDuel alternatively regularly post WNBA highlights, show awesome MLB home runs, and also funny sports bloopers and memes. All of this gives content to its users and helps get them excited about the world of sport, as well as encourage interaction with their respective fantasy sports platforms.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Affiliate marketing is also hugely important for online fantasy sports platforms. Both DraftKings and FanDuel operate an affiliate program through which customers can gain commissions. In essence, a customer promotes the fantasy sports platform by using a special hyperlink. If someone clicks on this hyperlink and registers an account, the customer gains a small fee.
This is a clever form of marketing. The fantasy sports platform doesn’t really have to do anything and it benefits from increased exposure and more customers; all it has to give in return is a small percentage fee.
These are just two examples of fantasy sports marketing and there are many more. It is clear that marketing plays an important role in the promotion of fantasy sports and that it allows platforms such as DraftKings and FanDuel to gain a competitive edge in this ever increasing market.
The infographic below offers further insight into the world of fantasy sports:
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How To Introduce A Business By Email
/2 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Email, Lead Generation, Sales /by Rebecca CaroeConnecting two compatible businesses with each other can be one of strongest networking tools for you and other businesses. By connecting the groups, not only are you solidifying your own network, but also helping the two businesses who may be able to benefit each other.
But often times this can be difficult over email.
In my networking group, we’re working hard to make it really EASY for members to introduce each other to new prospects and new clients.
I was asked by the group to help coach them in the best way to write an introduction that others could use. So let’s say you wanted to introduce my firm to another business. Here’s how you would do it.
The 5 elements of an effective email introduction
The best introductions are when you’ve spoken personally to both parties. NOTE not emailed, spoken….
The Top 5 most popular articles of all time
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3 Takeaway Tips: Building an SEO strategy for Living Goodness
/0 Comments/in Case Studies, Marketing, SEO, Strategy /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamAnyone should know that to establish a good online brand presence, you need a good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy. Keywords are a main part of that strategy – they’re more than just using the right tags to find relevant blog posts – they help boost your business’ search results so your website gets more traffic.
Last year, we helped Living Goodness develop an SEO strategy that saw them appear on the front page! And to top off the cake, it was also the first time that Living Goodness ranked higher than a competitor.
Seventh place! Not too shabby.
In this blog article, I’ll show you three key skills that we utilised for their SEO strategy, and show you how you can put them to work on your own business.
1. Identify which keywords you need
The keywords that you choose for your SEO strategy should fall into three categories:
For example, Living Goodness were ranking for “fermented foods nz” (though they appeared on the second page of search results). They wanted to rank higher for this search term, and also wished to show up for “sauerkraut nz”.
Which we achieved, by the way.
We went on to conduct our own research to find relevant keywords that would complement these. A handy tool that we turned to is called Answer the Public.
This allowed us to see what users were also searching for alongside the terms “fermented foods nz” and “sauerkraut nz”. We picked up key phrases and words such as “probiotics”, “raw”, “organic” and “kimchi” alongside many more. This also gave us a good starting point for blog article ideas.
2. Incorporate these keywords into existing content
Now that we had a lovely list of keywords, we needed to disperse them around different landing pages in a natural manner. For SEO purposes, there were key points that needed keyword boosting:
These were just a few places where we implemented keywords into the existing content in a manner that was natural and flowed. Being a business that sells fermented foods, this wasn’t a problem. We also made sure we used a mix of these keywords because no one likes repetition (especially not Google!).
3. Help out your visitors with handy internal linking
Keywords aren’t the only way to boost SEO. There are many things that affect search engine rankings, and relevance is a big contender. If people aren’t spending long enough on your website and are bouncing away quickly (tip: check the bounce rate in Google Analytics), it may very well mean they’re not finding what they are looking for on your website.
Internal links are a great way to boost SEO and retain website traffic. If you aren’t linking to your products whenever you mention them, it’s a huge opportunity wasted. You also want to encourage a longer customer journey by suggesting other pages that are relevant.
For Living Goodness, we added links to their stockists page and social media handles on the recipes pages. This call-to-action prompted visitors to seek the closest stockist after reading a delicious recipe – “Are you running low on delicious sauerkraut or kimchi? Check out your local stockist here.” The social media links also encouraged visitors to share any of the recipes they’d followed. Being a foodie Instagram account, any photos using a Living Goodness product was free user-generated content, and of course, we were going to make the most of it!
Three simple tips that you can do yourself
As you can see, these tips are all very simple, easy and free to do. Hopefully, you’re able to apply them to your website straight away.
All these were tasks that we did as part of our SEO Starter Pack. It’s a comprehensive analysis of a website with actions to improve SEO and a recommended guide for next steps.
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Search Console and broken website links
/0 Comments/in SEO /by Rebecca CaroeHas Google been sending you emails recently? If you are the webmaster for your domain, you will be getting messages from Google Search Console as they find new errors on your website.
Search Console email text alert
The newly helpful Search Console Reports are good to get. This is all part of a rollout of improved reporting. Now you can take control of your own website SEO and won’t have to rely on bespoke or paid developer tools which you don’t want to buy.
What does Google’s email say?
Typically the standard email you receive is not written in plain English – this is tech-speak. Let us help you decode it.
The Google is trying to be helpful. So click through from the link supplied and see what the Search Console summary error page says. There are quite a few possible variations – but here are some of the possible issues [Read the Google Support page]
Helpfully Google offers suggestions on how to research the issue you can test if the Robots.txt file is blocking, you can fetch the page as if you are Google [superb trick this], View the page as a search result and lastly, re-submit to the Google database.
Don’t worry – this isn’t terminal
If you have received this message you can research some how-to guides, blast through the Support guide or call us and we will help you fix it. Remember Creative Agency Secrets will teach you how to do these fixes yourself, or we can do them for you.
I just checked the error from one client and found a lot of other broken links – use a broken link checker tool to find your priority pages. It’s worth getting these sorted out – you know “nanny knows best.
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Four Major Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make With Product Landing Pages
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip MuttProduct landing page mistakes to avoid
Designing a landing page is no easy task. There are many moving parts to consider, including copywriting, design, social media, and CTA placement. And with so many decisions to make (both big and small), it’s no wonder that mistakes can easily occur. In many cases, business owners fail to take the proper precautions to ensure their landing page is up to par, both in terms of design and functionality. Sometimes, they even let simple mistakes slide.
However, because humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish, you need to be able to capture their interest almost instantaneously. Within just a few seconds, a potential customer will move on to the next best thing because of an error you may have thought was trivial. Here are five mistakes you don’t want to make with product landing pages:
Choosing The Wrong Platform
There are many platforms available, and choosing the right one is crucial. WordPress is touted as one of the best lead-generating landing page platforms because it’s simple to set up, and creative freedom is nearly endless. You can choose from thousands of free and premium themes, and even install plugins like Elementor to build your product landing page with drag-and-drop functionality.
Then, there are other platforms designed to help you launch simple product landing pages, like LeadPages (which offers WordPress integration), Unbounce, and Instapage. These may offer a quicker set-up but are typically very limited in terms of design.
Think about your site goals before you choose a platform. For example, if you want to be able to incorporate certain features, like immersive photo galleries, you will need a platform that supports it. Or, if you think you’ll be using an independent designer or developer in the future, go with a platform that allows you to scale in that direction. Budget is another thing to keep in mind. If you’re just starting out or still growing your customer base, you might want to start with a cheaper option, like WordPress, which you can get for as low as $10 per month. Other lead-capturing landing pages cost anywhere from $30 to $200 per month, and even as high as $2,400 for platforms like HubSpot.
Stock Photography
Believe it or not, in most cases, people don’t like to see stock photography on product landing pages. It might be okay for your blog posts, but it requires special consideration for your landing page. A study conducted by MDG Advertising found that 67% of online shoppers consider quality images to be an integral part of their decision-making when it comes to purchases. The more vivid and authentic a photo is, the more likely they were to perceive ownership.
For software, beautiful screenshots are the way to go, and it would be fine to juxtapose humans with your software imagery. Sometimes, stock photography is the easiest way to mesh the two, but you might also want to add a high-res photo of someone actually using the software to add that extra touch of authenticity.
If you do use humans in your photography (whether stock photos or you your own), bear in mind that studies have shown that site visitors tend to look in the direction of the eyes that belong to the person in the photo. Therefore, you’d ideally want to have the person looking in the direction of your text.
No Clear CTA
Before you start working on your landing page, ask yourself, “What’s my main goal here?” One of the biggest mistakes people make with landing pages is cluttering it with too many options for the visitor. For example, it can be overwhelming to visit a landing page that wants you to read articles, sign up for a newsletter, purchase your newest product, watch a video, AND request a quote.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have multiple points-of-purchase or ways to appeal to your potential customers. Instead, you should have a core goal that stands out above the rest, rather than blends in. Think about the singular action you want your visitor to take: this is called the call-to-action (CTA). Your call to action should be decently-sized, stand out, and be placed in the right area to attract the most attention. Use split testing software to help you choose between different types of CTA. This will help you choose the option that converts best.
Too Much Copy
Having too much copy on your landing page can be fatal. As previously mentioned, most people don’t have a very long attention span, and every small decision about your copy–from size to typography to color and word count–plays an important role. Too many words create information overload and dilutes the message you’re trying to get across.
Keep your sentences and paragraphs short and concise. Try to avoid using one of the pages to dominate the text. It’s best not to align left or right when you’re working on landing pages. Instead, you want to spread bite-sized bits of copy across the page evenly. You want your copy to be as scannable as possible, and clunky paragraphs make it very difficult to achieve this. For optimal results, try breaking up the text by using well-designed icons, mini-paragraphs, bullet points, color-coordinated sub-sections.
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The (b)leading edge of Accountancy marketing
/0 Comments/in B2B, Marketing, Marketing ideas, SEO /by Rebecca CaroeSage publishes an annual survey of accountants attitudes – what’s interesting is that it is global and the summary report details some good findings about the profession. It’s called The Practice of Now 2018
As a marketer who works with professional services businesses, my reading highlights some big numbers in the research about artificial intelligence, fear of competition, lack of optimism and increasingly demanding clients. The implications for marketing, I will cover at the end of this article.
10 take-outs from the Practice of Now 2018 report
Should I worry about artificial intelligence?
If you’re not sure what A.I. could do for your business, start asking questions now. Because we all understand automation in things like bank feeds, this is a very small part of the working practice move towards higher functionality for humans and lower functions for machines (or software robots).
The easiest way to understand the potential for AI in accountancy is this extract from the report
It goes on to say
Your strategic marketing pathway
And as a marketer, if I am advising a modern accountancy practice this is what they should be doing for strategic marketing.
Firstly get your brand positioning updated to reflect modern working. Think Nena and Kim Wilde – “Anyplace, anywhere, anytime” and you’ll be on the right track.
How that branding plays out into your collateral, positioning, services and online profile should be straightforward. The key is to get the strategy right first and the rollout should be clear. You will need new keywords for SEO, your client communications will become driven by client preference and choice and your language will simplify and align with clients’ choices of words.
Other than that, it’s marketing business as (un)usual for a modern accountancy practice.
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Quick and Easy Guide to Designing a High-Converting Website
/18 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip Mutt(Image Source) Pixabay with permission
Nowadays, countless guides on the internet try to persuade you how easy it is to build a successful website from scratch.
While it’s true that anyone can get a decent-looking site live with the right tools, it’s still not easy for the online community to separate good web designers.
Remember, an experienced web developer knows to have a user-oriented approach when designing websites.
It’s not just about fancy visual effects, animations, and so on — it’s about creating an experience that compels users to take a specific action.
In this post, we’ll drill down into the tools which are the bedrock fundamentals for creating a high-converting website and how to utilise them yourself. (Image Source)
Let’s get started.
1. Start with the Right Platform
When it comes to developing websites, first you must choose a platform that can help you attain your goals.
Content management systems, e-commerce platforms, DIY site builders — each type of software has something unique to offer. And when commissioning a web developer, you can’t take this decision for granted. It’s important you know and understand the differences and positives & negatives of each option.
Here is a brief explanation of each tool and their strengths:
Content Management Systems:
A flexible platform designed to help you edit, manage, and publish online content.
WordPress plugins
CMS also give developers complete control over the website’s appearance — typically providing pre-made themes to work with.
WordPress is, by a clear mile, the most popular CMS ever. On top of the easy-to-use interface and countless themes to choose from, it also includes a massive plugin library for expandability and functionality – from newsletter subscription forms s to SEO.
E-Commerce Platforms
Shopify ecommerce
If your main goal is to sell product, you need to check out e-commerce platforms that consolidate everything you’ll need in one place.
For example, Shopify is becoming the go-to e-commerce platform that has all-in-one service including web hosting, online store themes, and integrations with services — from payment gateways to social sharing buttons. It also supports drop shipping apps like Oberlo and BigBuy, which enables shops to launch with a low overhead – but they do charge monthly fees.
Squarespace templates
DIY Site Builder Tools
It’s sometimes difficult to understand the difference between a content management system and a DIY site builder. The fact that both also support e-commerce functionalities don’t help, either.
What you need to remember is that site builders like Squarespace and Wix have limited customisability and capabilities, especially if you want modifications in your website’s source code. They do, however, make up for it with the wide selection of themes that hit the spot between pleasant appearance and user-friendliness.
2. Optimise Your Website’s Performance
Going back to being user-oriented, your website’s loading speed is one of the user experience factors that can single-handedly kill your search, traffic and conversions.
According to Google, 53% of users abandon a mobile website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. This number is reduced to only 40% for desktop sites, but you’ll still be missing out on a huge visitor stream.
This begs the question, how can you make your website load as fast as possible?
The answer, of course, varies. What you can do is to run an analysis through Google PageSpeed Insights to identify the exact issues that affect your website’s loading speed.
PageSpeed Insights work by providing optimisation suggestions that are specifically tailored to your website’s needs. It is a highly effective tool if you want to optimise your website’s loading times and maximise conversions by retaining more traffic.
To give you an idea of what to expect, below are some of the typical suggestions for your website’s loading speed:
If you have a lot of visual content on your site, use a lossless compression tool like Compressor.io or Smush to reduce their size without compromising quality.
A surefire way to see significant performance gains on your website is to use a Content Delivery Network or CDN. Basically, it’s a network of servers that are strategically distributed across multiple locations to keep loading times consistent for all users — regardless of where they are in the world.
A handy tool like MinifyCode.com can further increase your website’s performance by removing excess characters, such as white spaces, line breaks, and comments, from codes. This can result in noticeable improvements, especially if you offer a lot of dynamic content and interactive elements on your website.
3. KISS (keeping it simple)
Remember, web pages are instruments that help users achieve a specific goal. By being aligned with what the audience wants to do, web developers can accurately determine which page elements should be included or removed.
Do you need a prominent call to action? Are you sure banner ads aren’t pulling traffic away from your site?
Accomplished marketers like Neil Patel understand this fully, which is why you can observe the KISS principle at play in their websites.
(Image Source: Neil Patel)
It’s not rocket science: the fewer distractions presented to your audience, the faster they’ll buy into your value propositions. Apart from branding elements and navigation menus, try to avoid adding anything that contributes little to the user’s journey towards your desired action or goal. That’s why landing pages often have menus removed.
4. Keep Fine-Tuning
Even veteran web developers find it hard to unlock the maximum conversion
Google Analytics traffic Funnel
potential of any given site instantly — let alone do it on their first try.
Heat Mapping Tools
Your best bet is to launch your website, boot up some performance monitoring software, and let the numbers show you the way forward for refinements.
The usual route is to integrate Google Analytics to start monitoring key performance metrics, such as web traffic, bounce rate, session duration, and e-commerce transactions. It can also help you identify your best content as well as pinpoint the “drop-off” points where you lose most of your audience.
If you want, you can also slice through the number-crunching and visually monitor how most users interact with your site. You can do this with the help of a heat mapping tool, like Crazy Egg, Sumo or Hotjar.
Conclusion
Conversion rate optimisation is a learning experience that requires your direct involvement and regular updates.
The tips above should be more than enough to put you on a more profitable pathway.
Care to share a couple more tips on how to develop conversion-ready websites? Feel free to leave a comment below!
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