Today I had a raft of emails from which I wanted to unsubscribe. It happens. But the experience was so variable between the different service providers that it’s worthy of a blog post.
Box.com
Box came up first – I don’t use the service and so why are they writing to me.
Box dumb unsubscribe
Hit unsubscribe.
They use Eloqua for email distribution and I have to type in my address in order to unsubscribe.
Not good. You know my address, therefore you should have it pre-populated.
New Breed Marketing
New Breed Marketing came up next – an event in a country where I don’t
Email Preferences check box
live – I won’t go and I don’t want more invites to events that I can’t attend.
Hit unsubscribe.
They use Hubspot for email distribution and I find that I can update my email ‘preferences’ and select to only get their blog posts by email. Perfect!
Check your own set-up by subscribing to your mail list (I always do this for our clients) and see what your unsubscribe experience is like. Don’t want to annoy customers.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/email-preferences.png474391Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2014-08-18 09:01:532020-05-27 16:54:39Email unsubscribe best practice
With more people opting for anonymous website browsing it is becoming increasingly harder to see how users find your site – in particular, which keywords they searched with.
Inside your Google Analytics you can see which search terms prospects are using to find your website by going to Acquisition -> Keywords -> Organic in the left sidebar menu.
With the rise of anonymous browsing, Google Analytics can no longer provide useful and therefore accurate keyword search data. You’ll more than likely see the majority of your keyword searches is “(Not provided)”.
This situation is getting worse month by month as we track the analytics for our website.
By following these steps, we can show you a workaround which will remove the dreaded “Not Provided” data and give you greater insight into how visitors are finding your site. Best of all, this workaround will also show you what keyword searches you are appearing in but not getting traffic from.
The Workaround For Keyword Searches
Although not a perfect replacement, Creative Agency Secrets has found a work-around which can give you a good indication of what search words and phrases your website is showing up for and which are drawing visitors.
It involves Google Webmaster Tools – You have to set this up for your website if you haven’t already.
Set up and Verify yourself and your website in Webmaster Tools – generally the easiest way is to do this with your analytics account. If this fails, Google helpfully provide short how-to’s on the other methods of verification.
Remember your site must be using the asynchronous tracking code.
Select the Google Analytics radio button (which can be found under the “Alternate methods” tab) and click Verify.
Now navigate to Search Traffic in the sidebar menu and select Search Queries.
Scroll down below the graph you will see a list of Queries used and the Impressions. The main benefit of this data is you can see the Average Position your site has in search listings for each one (far right column).
We are going to show you how to send this data to your Google Analytics account but it’s worth noting that there is more accuracy in this screen as Google Analytics rounds the numbers.
Link Google Analytics To Webmaster Tools
Now re-open Google Analytics and browse to your website dashboard.
In the side menu go to Acquisition -> Search Engine Optimization -> Queries. You will get a message advising you to enable Webmaster Tools (see screenshot below).
Click the button to Set up Webmaster Tools Data sharing at the top of the page.
Leave all the settings it displays as default although you can change the fields if some are incorrect e.g. Industry Category. At the bottom of the page the sub-heading Webmaster Tools Settings click the Edit hyperlink.
This will bring up a list of site(s) and associated Analytics web properties. Choose your site on the left radio button and Save.
Click OK to Add association in the next window.
View The Data
You’ll be directed to the Admin screen. Click Reporting in the top menu to return to GA and again go to Acquisition -> Search Engine Optimization -> Queries.
You should now see a summary graph and below it the list of keyword queries , impressions, clicks and average position of your website.
For everyday use, we find the Google Analytics summary data is fine. But for non-rounded data, go into the Google Webmaster Tools display to get the full picture.
Note that data is normally 2 days behind on these searches compared to other metrics in Google Analytics.
Matt O’Neill is the Managing Director of ModComms – a company that produces The Pitch Pack, he sent us this neat video pack which business to business marketers
ModComs pitch pack video
can use to open new leads.
How does PitchPack work?
The pack is a bit like a card brochure – you open it that triggers a magnetic switch which opens the power – a logo displays for a second while it warms up and then the first video plays
A typical pack has 4 videos – they come with volume controls and the larger packs have more videos on them. Al the components are built in – from batteries, speakers to CPU.
They are encoded to Xvid format– the reason to use a specific codec is that it is lower file size with max picture quality. A standard has 256 mg memory of which 170 is usable the rest is operating system. so it gives about 17 minutes of video playback.
Finish watching, close it like a book and that switches it off.
In the spine there’s a little USB port you can charge the battery and uploading the videos.
If a client wants to use it the production process is firstly to design the outer pack – card wrap – using a standard Adobe Illustrator template. The videos have to be produced and then you have all the assets. These are sent digitally to China. The factory sends back a prototype in digital print (not litho). Sometimes there are small amends, it is signed off for manufacture and production.
One thing is critical is quality assurance with Chinese factories -we include two rounds of this – locally it’s checked in Shenzen and then it’s sent out and we check a few samples too. Then we dispatch – sometimes it’s a bulk delivery, other times we do the fulfilment individually.
As part of the marketing it’s important that the telesales follow up to fix the meetings.
What types of Business use PitchPack?
It’s any B2B organisation providing a higher value product or service. Tech companies like it, hotels, consultancies, engineering groups and some internal comms – high level changes across global senior teams.
Integration wit the sales funnel – the clients using account based marketing principles. Some use it for the ‘door opener’ – grab attention of a senior decision maker. It’s critical to have a structured follow up process. Or use it as a leave-behind or a send-after to answer questions. Salesman can film themselves on a mobile phone giving the answers and then include other videos too. Those companies that are a bit more sophisticated and using lead scoring, for example, the score triggers sending a pack.
Personalisation – we are used to it with paper mail, but when you show the recipient that there’s an introduction just addressed to them – it’s flattering. Anecdotally we hear it is very powerful.
Results – using a campaign with a global software company – we did a small run of 250 packs of which 240 were distributed. They got 23 meetings with decision makers and they’ve got 4 deals with an average value of GBP250k each. That campaign cost 5k on the packs themselves, 7k producing one video and re-used another couple of videos. Total campaign cost 16k.
Why should our readers try the service?
Video is growing – mobile traffic about 50-70% of mobile traffic is video now. Cisco predicts that 1/5 of the world’s population will access video online by 2016.
As a medium, video creates feelings of trust and so when brands use real people or show people doing real things curiosity is triggered. When making video for marketing purposes don’t put everything in. Leave them wanting more.
Confidence in the brand is built and sometimes amusement. If you can make video for business funny you will have next to no competition because there’s so little out there.
With that popularity it’s a blessing and a curse – the competition will only get more furious.
Marshall Mcluan said the medium is the message in 60s and these packs are both – it allows people to explore video in their own time in their own way wherever they happen to be.
This is an easy differentiation tool – stand out from the crowd. I remember in 2005 there were personalised USB sticks but now these are ubiquitous. This type of marketing tactic is now at its 2005 moment but in 3-5 years it’ll be old hat.
If you are producing video for the pack, the content can be re-used across other media – home page, landing pages, powerpoint, email-able files. The results are pretty tangible – looking at it in pure numbers.
Are you a tradesman – plumber, electrician, carpenter, builder – and want to do some marketing to get more customers? We had a meeting today with a new client and talked about marketing.
There are lots of choices in marketing, but for a tradesman’s business, there are actually only 3 marketing tools they need
Business cards
A website
A mailing list (email or postal)
Let’s run through these and how to use them
Tradesman’s business cards
Cheap to design and print, these are your number 1 marketing tool when you first start. They should have accurate information about how to contact you printed in large type with a recognisable business name.
How tradesmen use business cards
Hand two to every customer. One to keep and one to give to a friend.
Keep them in your wallet, in the car glove box and hand them out liberally especially if you go to a social function or belong to a networking group or business meeting group.
A tradesman’s business website
When you’ve enough cash, buy a website. A simple 5 page site is all you need to start off.
How tradesmen use a website
It needs to have
a header that says your company name and phone number,
a home page that describes your business and the geographic area in which you work,
a page with your full contact details,
a page to describe your specialist skill,
a page of customer testimonials,
a page about you and your team.
A tradesman’s mailing list
Once you’ve been working for a while, you will send out invoices to get clients paying you. This is your chance to start to grow a mailing list. This is useful because your past clients may refer you to future clients, and sending out mailshots or newsletters serves as a reminder to people about your services, and how to contact you.
How a tradesman uses a mailing list
Keep a record of every customer name, business name, address, telephone and email when you raise an invoice. If you use an accounting software programme, it’ll save these details for you.
When you get a phone call or email enquiry for a new job, save the contact details. Check on the phone that you have spelled their name correctly – this is particularly important for email addresses because one wrong letter and the message won’t arrive.
When you do a job quote, save the contact details.
Every month collate all these lists into one place (preferably electronic). Save the file with an obvious name e.g. August 2014 Mailing List. Then send out a short message to the whole list using specialist email sending software like MailChimp/AWeber/FeedBlitz. DO NOT USE your email program. Ask me why not if you don’t know.
Put the date in your diary to send the newsletter every month for 1 year.
Stick to the schedule.
Send that mailing.
Even if it is short and has one photo of a job you’ve done (before and after photos are great), or a customer testimonial – it all adds up. Over time you will get to having a big list.
Say you do 10 jobs a month and meet 5 new people each month who take a card. Within 5 years you’ll have over 900 names on your list. If you do 20 jobs a month and meet 10 new people – you get to 900 names in half the time!
That is it.
There are additional marketing techniques that you can add on top of the basic 3 such as outbound mail campaigns, using recommended trades services (Builders Crack, Rated People), creating website landing pages for Yellow Pages and other directory listings, customer satisfaction surveys, freebie giveaways or seasonal special offers.
But don’t do these until you have the basic 3 covered and working well.
For tradesman marketing services, call Creative Agency Secrets – outsourced marketing for busy business owners.
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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 Caroe2014-08-07 16:22:542020-01-24 01:44:55Top tips for marketing Tradesmen
We were shocked to hear that a professional NZ accounting magazine is stopping its print edition and going digital only has combined with its Australian counterpart. The Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia (ICAA) and the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants are joining forces and as a result will be moving their regular publication “Charter Magazine” to digital onlya new brand known as the “Acuity” magazine.
Additions by Andy Mclean, Publisher of Acuity magazine:
1) Contrary to what your article says, we are continuing to publish our member magazine in print.
2) Our new trans-Tasman magazine is not called Charter – it is called Acuity.
I think where you have got confused is that – having joined forces with NZICA – we have decided to stop producing Charter magazine and replace it with a brand new trans-Tasman magazine named Acuity. But there is no intention to stop printing magazines for our members. Hard copy magazines are still very popular with our members.
Just to clarify – Charter magazine had existed in print, online and as a tablet app for the past two years. Acuity will also exist in print, online and as a tablet app. There is no change in channels for our member magazine; it’s business as usual.
So what does this mean for accounting in the Australasian region? What does it say about future practices and success factors? We believe it says that accounting could benefit from going digital in a broad manner. Digital gives easier access to articles because they can be read on handheld devices as well as being found through online search. We’re hoping that, by making an accounting magazine available primarily online, it will help accounting firms visit the online space more and get familiar with it so to start using it in their own firm’s marketing. The move to digital for print magazines opens up other questions.
Is your newsletter digital?
If you’re thinking of moving your newsletter to digital, you’ll want to answer these questions first:
Will the newsletter/ magazine be readable from a mobile device (in terms of both the file being sent and the amount of content on such small screens)?
Does it fall in line with your firm’s practices and customers?
Do subscribers get email notifications when a new edition is published?
If you have a printed newsletter and want to move it to digital, answer the questions above or even get in touch with us to help you out.
Read RSS on Kindle
If you’re looking at building a blog for the website of your accounting firm, you’ll be pleased to hear that Amazon Kindle now allows Kindle editions of blog posts as well! They build directly from RSS feeds, so you’ve got another way to keep your blog readers up to date. The digital space is certainly moving in directions that accommodate marketing which are ready for any and all accounting firms to use and enhance their reach to prospects. Let us know how you feel about the change to digital for Charter Magazine, and what your Accounting firm is doing to become digitally enabled.
Need accountancy marketing help?
Creative Agency Secrets are experts in accountancy firm marketing. We can tutor you and teach you what to do if you want to do the marketing yourself. Or we can do the firm’s marketing for you.
Learn more and join our free Accountants Marketing Newsletter
Many content marketers rely on Google Alerts as a way of getting ideas for content, seeing what your competitors are doing online and for those vain enough – seeing what others are publishing online about you.
Google has recently “beautified” their Alert service – there’s no telling just yet whether they’ve changed anything behind the scenes.
The Old Google Alerts
Old Google Alerts
Above is a picture of what Google Alerts used to look like – functional, but not the simplistic approach Google is taking.
The New Google Alerts
The first thing you’ll see when you check out Google Alerts is the friendly and more stylised design, however the big changes come with Google’s suggestions.
The suggestions are based off who you’ve added in your circles in Google+, again this emphasises the importance Google is placing on G+. The better you utilise Google+ the better the suggestions Google will offer.
Google have also added a “Me On The Web” section – something we recommend all of our clients to do. It is always intriguing to see what others are posting about you online (if anything).
*Remember if you’re using a unique (individual) Google account to add your company or your client’s companies – Google isn’t quite clever enough to auto-suggest them at this stage.
New Google Alerts
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2014-07-28 10:45:162014-07-28 10:49:07Google Alerts Has Been Updated
If you’re responsible for a website, you’ll know the importance of how it looks on mobile devices. While exact percentages of website visitors using mobile devices can be determined, this number can vary greatly month to month.
You might look at your website analytics and see you have only a few visitors viewing your site on a mobile device and decide that optimising your site for mobile devices is not worth the effort. But when one does view your website, what are they greeted with?
Remember, your website is often your first impression.
Remember, mobile devices being used for web browsing is rapidly growing
As there are many devices available, all with different screen sizes, how are you meant to test your website on all of them without purchasing a variety of devices or relying on friends and co-workers owning them?
How Can I See What My Site Looks Like On A Range Of Devices?
Fortunately there’s a simple solution. It’s called MobileTest.me. MobileTest Me acts as a browser based mobile emulator. It basically allows you to see how your website looks on a range of devices from your computer.
To view the site from another device or to change the screen orientation simply use the “Options” and “Devices” tabs in the top left of the screen.
What Can I Do If I Don’t Like What I See?
If your site isn’t responsive or doesn’t look as nice you you’d hoped there are a number of options available.
Obviously, the easiest solution is to get someone to fix it – however that can get expensive and time consuming.
If you’re on a popular platform such as WordPress you can always purchase a new theme which is responsive. The issue with this solution is that it can often be surprisingly time consuming and there is the potential for a large delay while you copy the content across to make it look consistent with the new theme.
A good short term solution is installing a free plugin such as WPTouch. WPTouch makes a mobile version of your site and only appears when viewed on a mobile device. Best of all, it is available free and only takes a minute to install (though you may want to spend time customising the colours to match your site and the icons for each menu item).
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/wptouch.png527439Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2014-07-14 16:40:192019-08-13 15:15:03What Does My Website Look Like On A Mobile Device?
I’d like to keep track of projects, editing, and version control as simply as possible. I see a zillion tools and possibilities, just want something simple and reliable.
Writing team [image credit dunlapschools.edublogs.org]
Focus on having one place for your editorial work schedule. We use teamwork.com for our project planning – but other solutions include Trello and Basecamp. Set in place working processes that force users back to the project management app for all their work. E.G. we use Teamwork as the agenda for our update meetings – it is immediately obvious if someone isn’t using it or it isn’t up to date with their status. Name and Shame works as a motivator.
Secondly, the editorial calendar (which can be a spreadsheet of monthly activities) sets out what needs to be done in advance so you can plan.
Thirdly use cloud services so there’s only one version of any document you are writing. We use Google Docs and from the fall you’ll also be able to do the same on Apple with their Yosemite update. One document, multiple users.
Fourthly, if you want to be picky – as I am, have a file naming convention on your documents. We use date followed by client name and detail of the document. Note using a YYMMDD date format means all documents sort into reverse date order easily (the US date format does not work).
How is that for starters? Get in touch if you want a 20 minute update on what you’ve chosen and I can try to spot any issues or working practices you may need to reinforce.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Writing-team.png236559Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2014-07-01 10:00:002014-07-14 16:15:33How to manage a writing team
Have you noticed that you’re not achieving the Facebook reach you used to get?
Have no fear, it’s not just you. Facebook constantly tweak their EdgeRank algorithm that determines what people see on their news feed. You are now seeing more promoted content as well as content that Facebook decides is more personalised to you.
Here is a handy tip to getting your posts on Facebook to reach the people who want to see the content you share.
Encourage your followers to receive notifications so they don’t miss out on the fantastic posts that you regularly make. By requesting to see notifications they are telling Facebook’s news feed algorithm that you have content that they want to see. This will make sure that your posts stop getting lost in the news feed and get the reach they deserve.
A simple way to do this is by creating a cover photo that encourages your followers to take the steps to get notifications.
Here is one we prepared earlier.
We created a photo, quite simple to do with any photo editor (we used powerpoint). Then added some simple directions for our followers to take so they can easily see our posts on their news feeds.
