Phoenix Arizona — PrimeView, top web development and digital marketing firm providing healthcare web design in Arizona, was tasked with doing a website redesign for one of their star clients, Dr. Fredda Branyon.

A doctor of naturopathic medicine, Fredda Branyon has been in the medical profession for 38 years. She has dedicated her life to educating people about the power of hope and the benefits of complementary medicine. Dr. Fredda is the founder and Administrative Director of New Hope Unlimited, a medical referral business that offers patients access to various treatment options provided by licensed physicians from around the world. 

Dr. Fredda wished to have her blog site, freddabranyon.com, redesigned to a magazine-style with a modern look, as the look of the old website was outdated. Her site features blog posts on everything from alternative medicine to why they banned the mulberry tree in Arizona. The intended impact was higher engagement to educate readers about medical alternatives.  

Site redesign by a trusted partner

PrimeView created and manages Fredda’s personal website, freddabranyon.com and the New Hope Unlimited website. As a trusted web design and digital marketing provider in Phoenix, AZ, they were the natural choice for the website refresh. The PrimeView team treated Dr. Fredda’s site to a complete makeover. While still keeping her branding intact, it was given a simpler, cleaner, and more open look. With no distractions, it keeps the focus on the articles. 

An essential element of a healthcare website is the information architecture, the organization of information the site provides. The PrimeView development team designed the navigation so viewers can easily find the topics in which they have an interest.

Visit freddabranyon.com today, check out the new look and sign up to get the latest blog posts. You can also download a very enlightening FREE eBook, It’s All About the Money -The Truth About Orthodox Cancer Treatments. 

“Fredda Branyon has been a client and partner of ours for almost a decade. The results she has shared with us to help people searching for an alternative way to treat and fight cancer is inspiring. Using our online expertise to help spread her message of hope is one of the most worthwhile things we do.” says Peter Liefer II, President, and CEO of PrimeView.

Get help with your blog site

If you love the work accomplished on Dr. Fredda’s website, don’t hesitate to contact PrimeView. We can update your corporate website, business blog or personal blog to improve engagement and bring in new readers and clients.

Our Phoenix, Arizona web design team can provide solutions to whatever your web design or digital marketing needs are. Call us at 480 970 4688.

There is a lot to know actually about how to use it effectively. If you have a business and are looking for ways to expand your reach, then this is it. In this article you can learn many of the best practices to help you become an Instagram master!

1. Branding with Instagram

1.1 How to get followers on Instagram and compete with others in your industry.

1.2 Optimize your Instagram profile

1.3 Share Instagram Stories to Facebook

1.4 Use Instagram Features

2. Get an Instagram Business Profile

2.1 Run Stories ads

2.2 Have a definite objective

2.3 Use recommended ad dimensions

3. Incorporate UGC & EGC

3.1 User-generated content 

3.2 Run Instagram contests

3.3 Employee Advocacy

4. Use Hashtags

4.1 Create Behind the Scenes Videos

4.2 Categorized Stories highlights.

4.3 Use Instagram Stories Templates

5. How one small business grew substantially using Instagram

6. Some tips to increase engagement

Introduction

In 2004 Facebook came on the scene and was just something you added to your marketing strategy, maybe. In just a few years “Social Media Marketing” became a thing and just as important as any other marketing strategy.

Competing with a long list of other social media apps and sites, in 2010 Facebook offered a new obsession, Instagram, which quickly gained millions of users. It wasn’t the best social medium for business, more for people who wanted to show personal pictures such as their vacation, food or their pets.

Then on August 2, 2016, Facebook introduced “Instagram Stories” and became a more effective social media platform for business. With the addition of Stories ads, now there are over 2m monthly advertisers on Instagram. But you don’t have to pay for ads to make it useful for your brand, you can use it to get followers on Instagram just posting for free.

Instagram Stories allow you to capture and post related images AND VIDEO content in a slideshow format that appears in your followers’ feeds. With the addition of text, drawings, and emoticons, images, and video clips, there are a lot of creative possibilities to promote your brand.

Similar to Snapchat, stories only last 24 hours from the time of posting. Still, there’s plenty of creative freedom that your business can take advantage of to get your message out. Followers can also view Skippable Ads in between your stories.

One advantage of Instagram Stories is you can show more content in one place without creating a lot of individual posts on your Instagram page.

Get your story told!

If you are not promoting your business with Instagram Stories, you should. Using stories to connect with your audience is an easy decision when you look at these Instagram statistics.

● 1 Billion+ Instagram accounts are active every single month worldwide
● 500 Million+ accounts worldwide are active every day
● 80 Percent of accounts follow a business on Instagram
● 500 Million+ accounts use Instagram Stories every day
● Only Facebook and YouTube have more people logging in

Source: https://business.instagram.com/

The Purple Circle

If you update one of your Stories, Instagram puts it the beginning of your feed with a purple circle around your profile photo. Followers will then know you’ve recently updated your Story. You can save your Stories as “Highlights” to your homepage as static content. These Stories stay as content that doesn’t disappear on your Instagram page.

Now that you have a better idea of what the story is on Instagram Stories, here are best practices to make your Stories come to life and encourage engagement.

Best Practices of Instagram Stories for Business

Branding with Instagram

To get followers on Instagram and compete with others in your industry, create content that is high-quality, visually pleasing, and valuable. Viewers will see content as ‘valuable’ if it is:

● Educational
● Entertaining
● Interesting
● Motivational

Optimize your Instagram profile

• Use a high-quality profile picture that represents your brand.
• Use your bio to precisely describe what your business does, how you serve clients and why you are expert in what you do. This will determine if someone will turn into a follower.
• Use your business name, not your personal name if possible. One that is consistent on all the platforms you use and accurately represents your brand.
• Add relevant Instagram hashtags to target your audience to help people understand what you do and what you offer so they will want to engage with your content.
• Instagram only allows one link in your bio, so maximize its use by sending traffic to your website or landing page.
• Instagram is a mobile platform so make sure you have a landing page optimized for mobile     
• To boost engagement, create a branded hashtag for your business
• Add a call-to-action to encourage followers to subscribe, to shop on your feed or to visit your website or landing page

Share Instagram Stories to Facebook

Facebook owns Instagram so you can post Instagram Stories to Facebook Stories. Just create your Instagram Story, click the send to button, and then tap the sharing options button at the top of the screen. You can turn on Facebook Story sharing for all posts or just the current one. This practice will increase your reach by a good deal.

Use Instagram Features

Creative touches such as unique captions and overlays make Stories different from traditional posts. You can use a variety of Apps for Instagram to make your photos pop such as Boomerang, Hype Type, Over and Adobe Spark that all have features specifically made for Stories. Take advantage of Instagram features like Questions Sticker and Polls, and share the results of the polls to make your Stories interactive.

Live Video – You can do live videos on Instagram just like on Facebook. Followers receive a push notification letting them know you’re going live. They can comment on or like your Live Video stream in real-time. after your video ends, it is gone and doesn’t save to your account.

Get an Instagram Business Profile

If you want to have your personal profile recognized as businesses, you can get a free Instagram Business profile that has additional features. You will need to have an Instagram personal profile first, but you will get additional features such as:

● Ad targeting
● A contact button
● Additional contact info: website, email, address, phone number
● Instagram Analytics
● Promoted Posts (Like Facebook “boosted” posts)
● Call-to-action buttons
● And more

Instagram analytics is a very useful extra feature that provides data that shows who your followers are when they’re online and more. Performance metrics on specific posts and stories provide insights into how your audience is engaging with your posts. Over 15 million companies are using Instagram Business, don’t be left behind your competition.

Run Stories ads

Using visual ads is vital, and it helps to be running a promotion that will interest your customers. In addition, you want to test multiple advertisements and advertising formats, including Instagram story video ads, Instagram story image ads, and Instagram story carousel ads. You can even incorporate Instant Experiences.

Go through Facebook Ads Manager and there you can create a new campaign and choose the Story placement.

To make sure you have a good ad promotion and are using great creative content that will convert:

Have a definite objective

Think about what you want to achieve with your ad campaign. Choose from these Stories ads objectives:

• Reach
• Brand Awareness
• Traffic
• Engagement
• App Installs
• Video Views
• Lead Generation
• Conversions

Use recommended ad dimensions

The same ad dimensions won’t work with all platforms. IG recommended ad sizes will make your feed ads and Stories ads have the most visibility.

Incorporate UGC & EGC

User-generated content (UGC) and employee-generated content (EGC) are great ways to build relationships with your audience with little work.

User-generated content

User-Generated Content is any content that has been created and added to your profile by followers that promotes your brand. It can be pictures, videos, tweets, blog posts, testimonials or other content
People love creating and sharing free content for brands, so it is cost-effective — you don’t have to spend money producing or promoting. Moreover, content posted by a customer is trusted more than content produced by the brand itself. Try adding UGC to your ad campaigns to give it extra credibility.

Run Instagram contests

One of the best ways to get a lot of user-generated content is to run Instagram contests because they rely solely on UGC. Instagram contests inspire followers to create the best content they can make about your brand or product to win a prize. Just make sure to monitor and moderate entries to keep control of your brand image and keep inappropriate pictures posted on your hashtag.

Employee Advocacy

Employee-generated content (EGC) such as videos, images or blogs, promoting your brand values, differentiators and benefits of your business are content that can build a deep relationship with your audience. Showcasing your employee’s content is motivational for them and gives your company a chance to stop talking about itself and demonstrate the content its experts are producing.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags you include in the caption of a specific Instagram post or in a comment are clickable and increase engagement expose your content to many more viewers. Users can click through directly from your photos to see other posts that use that hashtag. Also, make sure you create a branded hashtag for Instagram User Generated Content and encourage followers to post with that hashtag. hashtags than without using them.

Create Behind the Scenes Videos

Audiences like to know what happens behind the scenes in your company. Even if your business is successful, showing behind-the-scenes videos helps create a personal relationship with viewers. You can go live or post an IGTV video to gain instant attraction.

Categorized Stories highlights

Categorizing stories with headers make it easier for viewers to look through different events, products, and services of a business. Highlights are the perfect example of balancing all your resources into a single page. Highlights are just like a dashboard that comprises all the vital glimpses of your business from where viewers can select as per their requirements.

Use Instagram Stories Templates

Instagram Stories templates are pre-made layouts with graphics, text or animations you can edit to fit your stories. By using the same (or similar) templates for your Stories, you can create cohesive, branded stories that align with your business. They are a great starting point for creating your own stories posts and it makes it easier to work as a team on your Instagram account.

How one small business grew substantially using Instagram

HYDRO FLASK

This insulated water bottle company created ads in Instagram Stories and realized a whopping 80% increase in revenue!

Hydro Flask says their double-wall, vacuum-insulated, stainless steel water bottle keeps liquids “Colder. Hotter. Longer.”

How did they get their message out on IG so effectively?

To increase awareness and sell more of their products, this small business worked with a performance marketing agency to run ads on Instagram Stories. The Hydro Flask team followed best practices and created branded, engaging vertical videos promoting upcoming sales, new insulated water bottle colors, and a limited-edition Collection.

To reach the right audience they showed the video ads to lookalike audiences based on their most valuable customers. To increase the audience size more, they also added other interest-based audiences that aligned with the Hydro Flask brand and its ideal customers.
From November 2018 to February 2019, Hydro Flask realized the following compared to the previous 4-month period:

· 12,000 purchases
· 80% increase in revenue
· 16X return on ad spend

Impressive don’t you think? Let this and other success stories inspire you to add Instagram Stories to your social media marketing campaign. Read many others like this on Instagram Business Success Stories.

Some tips to increase engagement

When posting your Instagram stories do these things:
● Plan a cohesive story ahead of time
● Choose the best time to post
● Add a link to your website
● Add a poll sticker
● Crowdsource opinions from customers
● Give viewers a unique offer
● Go behind the scenes
● Include focused hashtags
● Make an impact in the first 4-5 seconds
● Shoot your story vertically
● Turn one long video into multiple stories
● Use calls to action
● Use Geo-tagging to specify your audience
● Share time-sensitive deals and specials

Let’s hear your story!

If you need help with social media marketing with Instagram or Facebook, at PrimeView we have a whole team ready to serve you! Let us help you create your Instagram stories and spread the word about your brand. We can certainly help you achieve your goals.

Contact us today or fill out a request for proposal and we will get back to you ASAP.

So you’re doing paid search marketing—that’s very well and good. At a time when the competition for views and interaction with potential and existing customers is at its all-time high, getting a boost where it matters most is the clear way to go. Truth be told, your efforts on pay-per-click (PPC) is often only as good as your landing page. Without the latter, you may be spending on clicks that will never bring conversion or any solid return for your company or brand.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a standalone page—meaning it can be separate from your website—that users “land on” once they click on your ads. Its main purpose is to gather your potential customers’ information or entice them to perform a specific action that’s beneficial to you. Here are some specific reasons they are crucial to your paid search campaign:

1. It helps convert potential into paying customers. When users click on an ad offering a 50% discount on shoes, they do so because they want to obtain the perk you are giving away. They want something from you. If your ad led them to your website, users would most likely end up confused at all the extra details. By using a landing page, you can focus their attention on how they can convert into actual customers. Do you want them to leave you their email address? Do you want them to click on something? The call-to-action on your landing page will say so clearly, so your potential customers know exactly what to do.

2. It helps you gather leads. You can incorporate into your landing page specific information fields that would allow you to capture details about users, whether it’s their name, telephone number, or email address, among other pertinent details.

You can use these details to interact with them through targeted emails, newsletters, and promotions, to name a few. What makes landing pages better than many lead-generation strategies, such as cold calling, is that users’ actions are entirely voluntary.

They wanted something you offered so they gave you their details wholeheartedly. They were not surprised or tricked into doing so. If they do not convert immediately, then you can nurture them so they become actual customers later on.

3. It delivers the information your customers need. Imagine yourself clicking on an ad that promises huge discounts in three easy steps, only to find yourself in a page detailing the company’s history, their advantages over their competition, and a list of all their products. Such an experience would definitely leave you feeling frustrated and a little betrayed. This is how your potential customers would feel if you led to your site once they click on your ad. A landing page will allow you to filter out unnecessary information so that users see only those they need. This way, they are not overwhelmed and are instead focused on what you want them to do.

4. It lets you get to know your market better. Paid search and landing pages can also be used as tools for market research. Testing is one of the most crucial steps in any online marketing effort and by creating variations in the content of both your ads and your landing page, you can ascertain how users respond to specific messages, offers, and even elements of your campaign.

By gauging their response or how well they receive your landing page, you can obtain answers for questions relevant to your business. Do users want more discounts? Do they want other products to go on sale, too? Compared to more proactive methods of research, such as surveys and questionnaires, testing through your landing page gathers organic data because your respondents go to you not to answer your questions, but because they need something from you. What you get is a raw insight into your market’s behavior and tendencies.

5. It lets you determine if your efforts are working. In the world of online marketing, there is no such thing as a single solution for all problems. It is for this reason that you need to test if your methods are working or if you need to tweak them further. By gauging how users behave in your landing pages, you will know if your entire campaign is working as intended.

Are you generating enough traffic? Are you converting enough people? You will also know which parts of the page or which ad copy is generating engagement. Does “Buy Now!” work better than “Purchase Now!” in getting clicks? Does short content work better than long ones? With the right tools connected to your landing page, you can obtain a lot of insights into how effective your campaign is.

6. It allows a better understanding of the funnel. When you have a full grasp of your market’s journey, you can take steps to optimize their experience. By creating different variations of your PPC ads and their corresponding landing page, you can gauge where your customers are in the sales funnel.

You can fashion your landing pages’ content to address your users’ needs, whether they are searching for products or validating their options. By studying how they behave in your landing pages, you’d have a better idea of how you can make their journey easier and more productive for you.

7. It can be used to boost other online endeavors. All factors considered, landing pages can become indispensable tools in any online marketing effort. Whatever insights you learn can be applied to ensure that your next campaigns are more attuned to the needs and nature of your market.

Needless to say, this doesn’t mean you’ll discover everything you need the first time, but as you go through your own journey as a marketer, you will gain an even clearer understanding of your market through your landing pages, among others.

Your landing page is a great way to ensure that users are being converted into actual customers through your PPC ads, but it can be a lot more than that. Used properly, it can be a vital tool in creating winning online marketing campaigns that benefit not just you and your brand, but also your prospective and existing customers.

Need help creating landing pages?

If you could do one thing to drastically improve your lead generation efforts, it would be to use landing pages on your website. Make the task easier for you. Get a free quote by calling us at 480-970-4688 or by filling out our online form.

The year of the video!

Every year since 2005 when Steve Jobs proclaimed it the year of the video with Final Cut Pro, every year digital marketers say, “This is the year of the video.”

More than a decade later it’s still the year of the video. Probably, not even Steve Jobs imagined just how much impact on the digital world video has.

Video is a way to communicate in a personal way with many people in visually. Use video as part of your marketing strategy, your competitors are likely doing so.

Years ago, producing videos was something only expensive productions companies could do. Today, even your smartphone can make decent videos on a small business budget.

Going viral

People always ask, how can I make a viral video. Not every video will go viral. Some videos will go viral for no other reason than they catch a funny moment, like a cat falling off a TV or kids coming on the set of a BBC interview.

Spontaneous moments that capture the fancy of millions of people are a great thing. However, to succeed with video marketing you need to have a strategy in place and communication tools that help drive users to your video. Some people can get lucky but in reality, it takes practice.

Is video really for me?

People will say, “I created a video and only 4 people watched it. I’m wondering if video is really for me.” Just creating a video thinking somebody is just going to come across it without promoting it doesn’t work.

There are many ways to promote your video on social media and with paid advertising. PPC ads can quickly grow an audience. Then as your audience grows, you can watch clicks on your video grow organically.

Here is the thing about “going viral” though – If you reach the hundred people you want to reach through the video, you really don’t care if 23,944,424 people are watching. The more niche your business is, the more value you’ll have with reaching a smaller audience.

If 100 people in out of thousands watch your video – you’re doing well. The video need not be a viral sensation to bring new customers. Just follow the ten steps presented later here and you can have some good results.

Your video doesn’t have to be an expensive slick production with all kinds of fancy effects. It is the content that counts. It’s difficult to create a video that goes viral, but doable if that is your goal, as shown in the following example/case study.

$100 Viral Video

Maybe you’ve seen the Blendtec “Will it Blend?” series of videos where things you would never put into a blender such as an iPhone are smashed to smithereens.

These viral videos started when the Marketing Director saw the R&D team blending up wooden boards to test product toughness. He had an idea to shoot a video of the operation and post it online.

With only a $100 in supplies, they made a video in the company break and blended up various non-food items – crazy things like marbles and a garden rake. Within five days of posting their videos on YouTube and on their own website, they had SIX MILLION YouTube views.

The take away here is to think of video as storytelling. Unlike viral videos that are often coincidental and just by chance, in the Blendtec case, it is a clear-cut strategy to say – how can we draw attention to the product, without talking just about the product?

Video length

If you listen to music, most songs are 3 minutes long and you can apply that as well to video. Anything more than that, if you look at that the trends in the graphs, after 3 minutes people fall off.

You want to have your 3 acts in 3 minutes when you tell a story with video. You can always go much longer, but it needs to be engaging to the audience.

One strategy is to design a campaign that is a series of short videos that if played in full would be 30 or 40 minutes long. Record ten or twelve 3-minute videos at the same time and then release one every week.

Video SEO

Google puts videos into the organic search results. If you have a video, you have a better chance of getting on the front page of the search results for your keywords because of your video content far more than just text. Another reason video is an important marketing tool.

10 steps to creating and promoting your video

Step 1: What is your story?

Number one – you will tell your story. For example:

• Why are you the best in the area you serve?
• What is your story about customer experience?
• What do customers think of you?
• What is your company culture?
• Who works for you what do they do?
• What kind of awards have you won?

You need to have a clear idea of what your story is and what are the theme and the purpose of your video. Making a video just for the sake of making a video is not a good reason. Take your story and connect it with the business objective.

What is the objective or your video? Are you looking to create an awareness of your business and promote it? Maybe you are trying to get more reviews or improve SEO for increased web traffic, leads, and sales. You could be looking for new employees.

All of these are possible reasons for the video, but the number one reason you’re creating videos is to tell YOUR STORY – and everything here is tied to the number one objective of all marketing – you want to grow your business.

SEO/content value and increasing traffic

If one of your motives for making a video is SEO content and keywords, you can add keywords when you upload your video and that will drive your SEO.

Step 2: Who are you trying to reach?

Step two – determine exactly who your audience is.

Do you want to reach business owners? Are you targeting a certain age group? Most businesses don’t have just one audience. Is there a segment of the population you wish to reach but have not done so successfully? Maybe a video aimed towards them will help.

Often people are searching for answers on how to do or fix something. Create a video to reach people who need content for education. Show them a “how to video” that shows what you are doing for your specialty.

Step 3: Plan your production

Plan your shoot and then – shoot your plan!

There was a time when all the new video social networks had started that just shooting a real-time video interviewing people while walking was enough, that’s OK for a live video shoot.

However, when you’re going to tell a story, be prepared and think – what are the themes and stories that match your objective. Be clear about the purpose of the video and the intended audience.

Gather a team in your company and brainstorm on what the video story will be. You could create 3 versions and vote on which one is best. Look at other videos that have been very successful and learn from them.

Use a script to know exactly what it is you are going to say so you can deliver your message in a clean and concise manner. Decide whether you can produce in-house or if will you need a pro, and set a budget.

You can make videos nowadays easily on your Smartphone with video editing apps. Use the resources you have within your company and you can produce a video at very low costs. Remember – it doesn’t have to be really fancy – it is the content that counts mainly.

Step 4: Upload your video to YouTube and Facebook

The most important step is number 4. You can’t just shoot the video, leave it on your phone for months and months, and decide one day to upload it. You need to take action and tell the world your story.

YouTube and Facebook are two of the biggest and have tremendous viewership. People still watch TV, but they watch considerably more TV and video on YouTube, Netflix, and other Internet sources, especially teens and young adults. You need to upload your video to both YouTube and Facebook.

If you don’t have a Facebook page, which is different from a profile page, you need to create one. Every business should have a Facebook business page. Just go to “Create Page” on Facebook and select:

• Local Business or Place
• Company, Organization or Institution
• Brand or Product

Tips for increasing your video’s online visibility

To increase traffic to your website, put in information that gets people to go to your website in the description areas when you post a video on YouTube or Facebook, even if they’re watching the video in the in the YouTube or Facebook ecosystem itself.

YouTube

When posting your video to YouTube and filling out descriptions and titles, think about the people who are looking for your story. Your title shouldn’t be something like – video taken May 9, 2017. It should be something like:

How to Lite a Fireplace – When to Replace Your Roof – Best Way to Remodel Your Kitchen.

Be direct with your title. Add your brand name and relevant tags about the subject of the video. These are the things that Google and other search engines are going to look at.

Here are some more tips to get your video delivering results:

• Add the URL to your website in the description, best if it is in the first 6 words. This way people don’t have to scroll down and search for it.
• Search for similar videos on YouTube and add a comment letting them know about YOUR video.
• Engage and respond to people who comment (positive and negative) about your video. The number of comments helps increase the video’s visibility.
• Post short videos or teasers on Instagram, which will let you syndicate to other sites.
• Embed the videos on your website. This works as a backlink to YouTube.

Facebook

• Upload the video to your company Facebook page.
• Post from personal pages to increase reach (employees can help a lot)

Step 5: Click once and share all over

Your website should not be your whole web presence. Your web presence should work in symphony with social media, maps, and other local listings to give you a large web footprint. You will want to share your videos on as many social networks as possible.

If you have a Yelp channel or Google My Business or some of the other hundreds of directories, it can be very time-consuming logging into every single one and your social media to add videos. Then, if you need to update anything you have to go back and do it all again.

There are many publishing tools that allow you to just click once and your video goes across your entire web presence. Then signals come back so you can monitor your video’s web presence and see things such as how many views it has, how long it’s being watched and more.

Whether it’s a video or a photo, make sure that you have Metadata turned on, if you’re taking a video with your phone make sure geographical location is turned on. These are all signals that tell Google and other search engines this is really a local business.

Step 6: Create ad campaigns

When you spend a lot of time and effort creating a video, make sure that you get as much of your audience as quickly as possible. Especially if there’s a call to action. The way to do this is advertise on YouTube, Facebook, and the Google Display Network.

Create a Google ad campaign

TrueView video ads

Google’s TrueView Ads are a great way to promote your video. Everyone by now who watches YouTube is familiar with the advertisements that appear before many videos start and the “skip” button that appears to go straight to the video.

With TrueView video ads you’ll pay only when users engage (watch for 30+ seconds)

You can laser target your videos to any audience you choose in the Google Network using keywords, demographics, affinity groups, shopping behavior, remarketing list and more.

Step 7: Connect with community and industry influencers

Connecting with the community of others in your industry is a good way to promote your video. Show people in your community the video, get their feedback and ask them to share it on social, blog posts, and emails. Share it on the Facebook pages of industry influencers.

• Work with your community
• Let them know you’re working on something big
• Remind them when your video goes live
• Engage influencers via social media

Step 8: Create a specific email marketing campaign

Emails are one more way to get people to watch your video and reinforce your brand’s story and one of the most effective tools for generating sales. Another advantage is that unlike using paid advertising to boost your video views – emails are free!

Social media is a very busy and noisy environment with many messages coming across. Emails are a more personal one-on-one conversation that if done right can be more effective than social media.

Don’t just tell them about your video, embed it in the email by using the embed function from your video host. Marketers who use video in email campaigns see increased click-through rates, increased time spent reading the email, and increased sharing and forwarding.

• Send a special update to your email list
• Include a link to the video in your next newsletter
• Share the video with your employees internally
• Have your team add a link to the video in their email signatures

Step 9: Prepare for any crisis or controversy

Did you see the 2017 Super Bowl ad from 84 – Lumber? Here is a perfect example of why you should have a plan to deal with negative feedback or controversy on a video you are ready to launch. Have a focus group, discuss possible concerns, and prepare responses.

• Accept that you can’t please everybody
• Consider all possible negative feedback ahead of time
• Prepare various responses to possible concerns, then tailor the reply to the platform (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, email etc…)

Step 10: Post-release promotion

Finally, when you release your video, create a press release and send it out saying – Hey, everyone, watch our story. To make it more interesting you could interview the CEO of your company or perhaps a customer that was in the video and include your video in the Press Release.

• Send press releases
• Create a post and share the results
• Send a thank you email to everyone who worked on the project
• Submit your video to industry award contests

Video Ads

PPC Video

If you’re running a pay per click campaign with Google Ads, advertising with video works the same way – it is showing a video as the ad. With the pre-roll (an ad that appears before of a video), you won’t have to pay if no one clicks it.

You need something short, it could be 5 seconds or 15 seconds long. Don’t put up an entire video that would run 15 minutes. The probability a viewer will click and watch the whole thing goes down quickly

With video ads, just think about what you’re trying to say and deliver the message in the first 5 seconds.

If you have a dental practice, for example, a person uses the search term on Google or YouTube “bleeding gums treatment,” you could have a pre-roll video show up that talks about the common causes of bleeding gums.

That’s a chance to get in front of somebody interested in what you do. There are also ads that appear in the video as pop-ups and in search results.

How much does video advertising cost?

Just like pay per click, you have control over a daily budget. You may work with an account manager that manages this for you, so the cost is between you and the business that handles your account.

If you want to do it yourself and you understand AdWords a little, again, the one thing you need to remember is you only pay when someone engages your ad. If they skip BEFORE 30 seconds or the end, you don’t pay.

Say you’ve got a longer video that was 2 to 3 minutes long and they watch beyond the 5-second pre-roll and they go to 24 seconds, you’re still not paying YouTube for that advertising. For this reason, it’s good to get your message in as soon as possible.

Targeting

Whether you’re doing a campaign on YouTube or Facebook, just like Ad Words, with video advertising you target who you want to see the ad.

There’s a variety of targeting options that can help you reach the right customers for your business. Age, gender, location, interests and other subcategories allow you to say – I want my video in front of these people. Tailor your ad to the exact crowd you want to target.

Reach out and touch someone!

When you make a video to reach out to a potential client, you want to make it something that’s personal. Something they can easily understand and feel like you’re talking directly to them. Human to human – this is the mantra you need to attract customers.

You will want to talk about who you are, what you can do for clients and how they can contact you. 3 simple things that you can put into your video.

Built-in Analytics

What’s great about YouTube is the analytics built in so you can see the ad performance. You can make adjustments throughout it live and run multiple ads for A-B testing. You can also tell how long somebody’s engaged and watching.

Say you have a 5-minute video of an overview of how you do a project or job. If it’s 5 minutes long and you’re losing people at 3 minutes, what’s going on that people stop viewing? This information is powerful for knowing what is working and what’s not.

With analytics you can also see:

• How many views are paid for?
• Where your ads getting viewed
• How many clicks the ads getting

Analytics helps you see if your advertising’s working if you need to tweak anything or are if you in front of the right audience. These are all things you can change up.

Final thoughts

If you are communicating via video, you want to build trust with the viewer. You are showing your story about your business one on one. You are showing what you do and how you do it.

Make sure that your logo, contact information – phone number, email, your website all get into the video. Even if it’s a short video, people will be watching to the end if they are engaged.

PrimeView offers video distribution and video optimization as one of its many content marketing services.  Contact us and learn more about how we can help your Video Marketing efforts!

User-generated content caught people by surprise. This is why some call it a phenomenon of the digital age. By definition, it’s when the users are the ones who provide the content of a page. It consists of reviews, comments and chat forums among others. It has become a category in SEO because user-generated content has been, believe or not, more trusted by other people than regular content.

It’s easy to waste time thinking about SEO tactics that will benefit your company — but that’s where we come in. In this article, we will cover some of the most important aspects you should include in your SEO checklist. Let’s get started!

1. Is your website secured by an updated SSL certificate?

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the backbone of our secure internet. If a URL begins with HTTPS, you can assume that the site is safer than most. SSL protects personal and sensitive information as it travels across the world’s computer networks. It provides critical security, privacy, and data integrity for both your website and your users’ personal information. Additionally:

SSL provides authentication

– A proper and updated SSL certificate provides authentication, meaning you can be certain of sending information to the right server and not an imposter whose goal is to steal your data.

SSL provides trust

– Visual cues are part of a web browser’s key features, which include lock icons or green bars that enable visitors to know that their connection is secured. This nifty feature gives your website trust by increasing the likelihood of a visitor buying from your online marketplace.

Take note that a reliable SSL provider should also give you a trust seal that generates more trust in your customers.

SSL is required for PCI Compliance – For your website to accept credit card information, you must pass certain audits that indicate your compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. One of the major requirements is the proper use of an SSL Certificate.

There are many consequences to neglecting your users’ data integrity and confidentiality. PrimeView offers an annually renewable SSL Certificate for your site, including a one-time setup fee and configuration.

2. Is your website RESPONSIVE?

Responsive web design allows a website’s layout to adapt to varying screen sizes. For years, Google has recommended using responsive web design to support different devices, but the search engine took this recommendation a step further when they began adding a “mobile-friendly” label to websites that obliged. By recognizing sites that are mobile-friendly, Google is also penalizing those that are not, making responsive web design a significant factor in SEO.

All websites, regardless of their goals and target audience, will highly benefit from a design that works great across diverse devices and screen sizes. Being the leading web design agency in Phoenix, PrimeView ensures that responsive web design is a key feature on all website projects.

3. Do you create pages with AMP HTML?

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a huge stride towards Google’s goal of a better, faster mobile internet. According to Search Engine Watch, “Accelerated Mobile Pages is a stripped-down version of the mobile web, which runs on a reinvented version of the language used to create web pages: HTML.”

This new version of HTML, officially known as AMP HTML, removes the majority of unnecessary elements that cause web pages to load much slower on mobile devices, like JavaScript and third-party scripts.

According to Google, a page created with AMP HTML can load 15 to 85% faster compared to the non-AMP version. Additionally, since the launch of Google’s Mobilegeddon algorithm in 2015, mobile-friendliness has continued to play a leading role in search rankings, with websites that pass Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test appearing high up in search engine page results.

4. Do you take advantage of the power of SCHEMA MARKUP?

Schema markup is a semantic vocabulary that you can manually put in your website. It significantly helps search engines return more informative results for users.

To get a better idea of what schema is, let’s take a look at this example: Let’s say the word “John Doe” appears in one of your articles. The search engine sees this, and produces a results page entry with “John Doe.” However, if you include the right schema markup around the name “John Doe,” you’ve just told that search engine that “John Doe” is the author of the article and not just a couple of random words. The search engine then provides results that display more accurate information for users searching for “John Doe.”

Schema tells search engines like Google and Yahoo what your data means, not just what it says — boosting your search engine effectiveness and visibility.

5. Is your site performance up to SPEED?

In correlation with the mobile-first index, Google announced that site speed would be an essential ranking factor in 2018. Page speed is critical to user experience, evidently since slower websites can experience a drastic increase in bounce rates. Slow-loading pages have also been shown to affect conversions negatively. For search engines, speed performance is a sign of an excellent site that pleases customers, and therefore, often rewarded with a higher ranking.

When it comes to site speed, there’s no time for beating around the bush. You must work on making your site as fast and accessible as possible — or suffer the consequences of high bounce rates and low conversions.

A Word of Advice

Keep in mind that a good SEO checklist is the key to maintaining or elevating your organic presence in the vast world of cyberspace. A thorough list should serve as your guide to the essentials of a fully optimized website.

Are you in need of professional SEO services?

In the SEO industry, your work is never done. Your website is never too responsive, never too fast, and there’s always a new update that must be kept up with. A shift in search engine optimization practices is evergreen, and failing to adapt hurts your business in many ways. Make sure that you have a clear path towards online success by seeking PrimeView’s professional help. As the leading provider of web design and SEO services in Phoenix, our goal is to cross off every task in your SEO checklist. Call us today at 480-970-4688.

On August 1, 2018, Google rolled out a major update. They classified it as a core broad algorithm update with no intent to target a specific vertical however, the search community saw that affected sites are in the health and medical industry thus calling it the Medic Update.

What is a “Core Broad Algorithm Update”?

Here’s what Google has to say about the broad core algorithm update:

“Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year….”

Yes, this is a very vague explanation but that’s how Google operates when it comes to their search algorithm. The key takeaways from this statement about broad core algorithm updates are:

• Not focused on specific improvements
• Designed to improve results

Then what exactly is the Medic Update about?

Let’s start by looking at what Google has said about this update:

Google has confirmed that an update was rolled out on August 1, 2018, referencing a statement they released on March 2018:

“As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded….”

“…There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.”

Google’s Danny Sullivan, has also said that this update is global.

On the 26th of July, 1990, former US President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Its top priority was to avoid discrimination due to a person’s disability. Like its predecessor, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which focused on race, color, sex, national origin, and religion, ADA made unjust treatment of people with disabilities illegal and punishable by law. Today, it’s had a significant impact on American society. Public buildings, transportation, schools and even jobs are required to follow the ADA Guidelines and Checklists. People with disabilities now have the opportunity to be on equal footing with the average individuals. Additionally, with the advent of the Internet, ADA has been extended to the World Wide Web.

In recent years, more and more websites have sprouted, and most of them were created with little to no thought about people who have disabilities. Take note that progressively, website owners and developers are being brought into court due to non-compliance. It is crucial to go over the ADA Compliance very carefully to avoid lengthy and expensive legal battles.

Thinking of ways to make a website adaptable to a person with a disability can be difficult, especially if you have no experience or no interactions with such a person. However, guidelines can be acquired online or by calling the United States’ Department of Justice and Civil Rights Division. There is also the Assistive Technology used by people with disability. These tools make their lives more comfortable and easier. With the progress of this technology, all they need to do is tweak the website around with the help of these devices and ensure that the contents are compatible with these helpful tools.

ADA Compliance Checklist for Websites

The following are some things to consider before going public with an upcoming website. At the end of this article, you’ll find it could be easy to get a check mark on the ADA compliance test.

Presentation

The website’s design itself can be a very difficult obstacle to maneuver. Make sure that the website layout is not too complex; have the options for adjustments. Let website readers or visitors have the option to adjust the size or color of certain parts such as text, font, and even images. The requirement by the ADA is a resizable ability of up to 200% from the original size.

Text

Favor bigger fonts for titles, headings, menus, and banners. The font size is relevant for those who have vision impairments such as blurry visions. The Bigger size will enable them to read better and with less strain.

The color is also important. Design text that is easy to spot. The text should not be consumed with the background color rendering it difficult to read. Moreover, the text that is underlined must be removed. This gives the impression that the text is a link to another page or website.

Audio and Video

For audios, videos, and images, the best way to make them compliant is through captioning. Add texts to images. Detailed descriptions are also required, these will be useful information for those who cannot see. These descriptions will be read with the help of text reader software. Video transcripts are also a good way to provide other options, especially for deaf or blind people.

Assistive Technology

Today, people with disabilities get help from sources that are available to them. Technology has made it possible to utilize the same tools to be used on the internet. We have the text-to-speech devices, closed captioning, text magnifiers, screen-reading software or optical character recognition and more. Bear in mind that most websites can utilize these tools to cater to those with disabilities. Here are some changes or enhancements that can be done:

• Provide HTML format

This format is easy to interpret for those who are using text-to-speech or similar applications. Avoid PDFs; these documents cannot be read or recognized by optical character recognition devices. For people who are not able to use the computer mouse, a specialized keyboard can be used instead. Make sure the website can support keyboard navigation.

Skip navigation is also now available. This allows users to skip links or headings to directly go to the main content of the page without going through the whole website.

• Support

The above list already covers most of the checklist requirements. However, as most websites and other publicly accessible engines, a website needs to provide support. Support for the disabled is also a requirement. Here’s how:

Provide access to feedback

Take feedback from people with disability into consideration. They might contribute suggestions that could significantly improve your website.

Web developers must be ready to apply tweaks and changes whenever a requirement is not met.

Try hiring or asking people with disabilities to try the website from time to time. This ensures that the ADA conditions are being met or are still working.

Provide support by phone, email or letter. Just like feedback, questions might arise. This provides good customer support and not only is the website being compliant; this might entice more people to visit too.

Listed are just the basic things a web developer and a website owner need to contemplate about before going online. Or, if the said website is already live, follow the above steps as quickly as possible.

Web Accessibility

Web Accessibility is a program that was developed for people with disabilities. This initiative takes into consideration what most disabled people need to access websites just like how average people access them. This means the website is user-friendly both for those who are disabled and those who are not.

Most of the time, it could be very difficult to identify if a website is ADA Compliant, but rest assured, there is a simple solution to this. Most accessibility problems can be detected by a tool that is free to use and is available online like WAVE.

WAVE (wave.webaim.org) is free of charge. How does it work? Just go to the website and evaluate the accessibility. With a little study and effort, you’ll be able to use this tool to isolate errors and adjust as needed. In any case, a live person is still the best option to detect what is missing. As mentioned earlier, asking someone with experience or has a disability would be the perfect solution.

Web developers are most likely tempted to avoid this compliance checklist. However, bear in mind that people with disabilities are also human like us. They have the right to have equal access to what regular people enjoy, and websites are one of those. And one more thing to take note of, if you are a developer or website owner who is willing to risk lawsuits so that they can skip or avoid making the lives of several million people easier? Think about it.

Want to know what it takes to make your website ADA compliant? PrimeView has extensive experience in creating ADA compliant websites, Contact us today.

For further reading:

ADA Compliance and Your Website

Americans with Disabilities Act – WCAG Checklist

ADA Compliant Websites and The Law

Setting up and maintaining the online presence of a brick-and-mortar business has become incredibly simple thanks to modern technology. Still, it might come off as a challenge especially if you are running to stay on top of every interaction on your social media, blog, pay per click advertising, and even an online store. With numerous things to monitor, one of the most basic and critical aspects of Internet marketing is often neglected: your company’s online local listings.

You Risk Losing Potential Customers

According to a recent survey, inaccurate local business information can harm the trust of customers. Around 73 percent of the respondents stated that they expect less from a brand with incorrect online information. Meanwhile, 67 percent say that they completely lose trust in the business if they get lost walking or driving to their location just because of a wrong given address.

Businesses that fail to ensure the accuracy of search engine location data will not only miss out on potential customers but can jeopardize their relationship with existing clients as well. Even when directories like Yellow Pages and Yelp provide the incorrect information, nearly a third of consumers say they would still blame the brand.

How To Clean Up Your Bad Internet Listings

It is not enough to Google your business occasionally. When you poke around at various mapping websites, social media platforms, search engines, and online business directories, you’ll be surprised to uncover that not all of them reflect your correct business info. You may find missing details, old phone numbers, and addresses, or bad links. What’s worse is that they can even get your business name mistaken.

Once you start to correct these, you will learn how much work it requires and how long it should take. Almost every site will require you to verify your ownership of the business. You can do this via snail mail or a quick phone call. Meanwhile, you have to be mindful of sites that allow just anyone to edit listings as they can put erroneous content that may hurt your business. Consider these tips to clean up those bad listings once and for all:

Select The Proper Categories

One way to secure your spot is to select the right category. The categories might differ from one website to another, but try to be consistent with your choice. A golden rule is to not overreach to categories you don’t specialize in because this will only confuse your viewers and it can even lead to more incorrect entries.

Be Consistent

After establishing the right name, phone numbers, and address of your business, you have to stick with them. Make sure they are formatted and spelled exactly the same for all pages on the web.

Be meticulous when it comes to every entry and make corrections even on the tiniest details, such as word spacing and capitalization. It’s important to note that most of the time, it won’t be a human reading that listing, but rather a search engine bot. Any inconsistency can be seen as completely two different businesses.

Document Your Listings

Your business could end up on literally thousands of places online. While it’s virtually impossible to repair every single one of them, having a record of listings you fixed can help you from making any unnecessary work.

Have a spreadsheet for all the updated entries and include a link to the site. If your business happens to add a new service or move to a new location, you’ll know which sites to edit with a simple click of a mouse. Also, do not forget to take note of directories that feature reviews and ratings so you can go back and check them often.

Add Relevant Content Where Needed

Take advantage of sites that let you add a description for your business. This is your chance to make your brand shine. Use keywords and words that accurately reflect the nature of your business.

You don’t have to overdo it – just try to be concise and clear. If there’s a spot for a video or photo, by all means, upload your best one. The added content will help attract customers to check out your business.

Go Big, Then Go Local

Before correcting local listings, check for the biggest sites first where most of the traffic comes. Start with Google Maps, Google+, and Facebook. Next, hit major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Fix inconsistencies as they come up.

Your next visit has to do with online magazines, local newspapers, and events in which your business sponsored or participated. Look up news that could possibly mention your brand and leave no stone unturned. Remember that one bad address spread onto many other websites.

Don’t Shell Out Cash

So you want to correct your listing, but the site admin wants you to pay for access to your information – don’t believe it. You should never have to shell out money for this matter. People will not trust websites with inaccurate information, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to let the business correct their listing. Be patient in looking for the link to verify your ownership and don’t fall victim to the gimmick that they would only let you update your info for a price.

Check Reviews and Ratings

As you sift through your several online listings, you may stumble upon sites with reviews and ratings of your business. If you see a dissatisfied customer, follow up in a courteous and professional manner.

One bad review can impair your brand and prevent people from further checking your products and services. Actually trying to address the issue and showing concern for your customer’s feelings and experience, on the other hand, can do wonders for your business’s name.

Appreciate what potential clients have to go through to look for your business. From their initiative to search you online to driving to your location, it will be a huge disappointment for them to be directed to the wrong place.

If you need help with spotting incorrect listings and connecting with your customers online, PrimeView can provide you with a very effective strategy and solution. We can manage your brand’s reputation and tailor the best experience for your clients. Talk to us at 480-970-4688 and we will be delighted to assist you!

What Is Customer Loyalty?

Beyond Philosophy, a consultancy and training company defines Customer Loyalty as “the result of consistently positive emotional experience, physical attribute-based satisfaction and perceived value of an experience, which includes the product or services.” In simpler terms, customer loyalty is a measure of how likely a consumer will do repeat business with a brand.

Repeat buyers or consumers are your most valuable customers. Even though they do not make big purchases in one go, it is likely that over time, their recurring investments will exceed your income from big one-time buyers. In fact, repeat customers spend up to 67 percent more than new or one-time customers.

How to Earn Customer Loyalty

Even though only 13 percent of retailers described themselves as “digital-first,” 51 percent of Americans prefer to shop online, and 96 percent of them have made an online purchase in their life. Furthermore, with hundreds and thousands of competitors online, getting people to visit your site, click on a link, and more importantly, become repeat customers, is more challenging than ever.

To overcome this, let us discuss the six things you can do to earn customer loyalty–and get them to keep coming back for more.

1. Share and practice your company values

Do you ever wonder what makes customers choose one brand over the other? Here’s a clue: Commitment, honesty, efficiency, and reliability—and no, these are not just adjectives—these are values that will help customers choose you over your competitors. Often, customers not only buy products, but they invest in what your company stands for. In fact, 64 percent of consumers cite shared values as the main reason they remained loyal to a business.

Also, having values is not enough; you must practice what you preach, too. Build a business culture focused on a set of shared values, which may or may not include the aforementioned, as well as other great company values such as integrity, consistency, and dependability (among others). These core values should reflect your products and services, your employees, and every decision your business makes.

2. Provide quality products and services

In line with practicing your values, if you say your product or service is superior compared to your competitor’s—you need to walk the talk. Many new and established businesses fail to live up to their promises. In hindsight, having a well-established reputation for quality and reliability can cultivate repeat business.

As an example, if you are an e-commerce site that promises to deliver orders within 24 hours, you need to live up to your end of the bargain. Remember that consumers prefer businesses they can rely on. Thus, give them that, and they will compensate you with support and loyalty.

3. Reward customer loyalty

An excellent way to secure loyalty is to reward it. Offering complementary goods, discounts, and exclusive purchasing opportunities to regular customers is a form of “nourishment,” showing that you value and appreciate them. As a result, these customers may reward you by making more purchases in the future. You can also reward shoppers and clients with a points system or by giving them discount codes and coupons to entice them to come back.

Depending on the nature of your business, you can customize the type of freebies and rewards you offer.

4. Talk to your customers

Making time to communicate with your customers is crucial to the long-term success of your business. With that said, you must never ignore queries and qualms in your social media pages. When a prospect or long-time customer reaches out to you on social media, retaining that customer may rely on your eagerness to listen and respond.  

Your customers will be much more willing to stick around when they know you are responsive to even the simplest concerns.

5. Encourage customer feedback

Are your customers satisfied with your service? What did they like (or dislike) about your products? Is there something you can do to improve your business? — These are questions best answered by people who have tried and tested your business.

Since over 88 percent of online shoppers incorporate reviews into their buying decisions, you need to make sure that your products and services receive excellent reviews. How? By asking for feedback! You can use a myriad of platforms to gather responses, including an online survey or questionnaire.

As an example, many e-commerce sites reward customers who leave reviews with store credits and discounts, which further encourages them to provide their feedback.

6. Make your customers feel special

Making your customers feel special, exclusive, and valued is essential to fostering loyalty. For instance, if your customer will be experiencing a delay in deliveries due to inclement weather, you can inform them through email instead of making them wait for a package that will not arrive for another 2 or 3 days.

Another way to make your consumers feel valued is through small surprises, including discount coupons on their birthday. Surprising your customers keeps your business top of mind, and reinforces your values.

Happy Customers Equals Great Business

Earning repeat, loyal customers should be a top priority for any business, including yours. As long as you focus on your customers and meet their needs with superb service, they will reward you time after time.

Need Help Securing Your Customers’ Loyalty?

If you are struggling to obtain the loyal customers your business desires, PrimeView can help plan and execute surefire ways to win customer loyalty. We know people want the best deals, but we also understand that they appreciate value. Together, we can build your brand for all to see it as the trustworthy and reliable business it is. Dial 480-970-4688 today to get a free quote.