The Business Lab

40 Sample Text Messages Your Clients Will Be Happy To Receive

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Wed, 08 May 2024 23:42:56 GMT

When it comes to good customer service, communication is king and text messaging reigns supreme. For local businesses, leveraging the power of text messages can be the edge you need to stay competitive.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of using text messages for customer communication and provide you with 40 sample text messages to customers to help you get started. Get ready to leave your customers pleasantly surprised and eagerly engaged with SMS updates!

Why Text Messages Matter for Your Business

Before we dive into the creative world of text messaging, let’s take a moment to understand why text messages are really great options for local businesses. People get bombarded with ads and emails regularly. Here are some stats from The Small Business Blog to put things into perspective:

On average, a regular person deals with a whopping 121 new emails every day .
These emails include spam, social updates, and promotional newsletters.
In 2020, a cybersecurity company called Kaspersky Lab estimated that nearly half (47.3%) of all email traffic is spam .
Out of all the emails sent daily, more than 3.4 billion are fake and potentially harmful , like those used in email attacks or phishing schemes.

People are weary, if not downright exhausted, by emails—and that’s where text messages can come in handy. Text messages cut through the noise. They add a personal touch to an interaction that can’t be ignored quite as easily as other forms of communication.

Important Things to Consider Before You Send Text Messages

According to Business.com there is a bit of red tape you need to navigate in order to abide by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) . While text message marketing laws might seem intimidating and are fraught with legalese, they’re important to prevent consumers from being spammed.

Here are ways to meet these requirements and still promote your business effectively:

Get Clear Consent

When someone first joins your text list, you must provide them with all the necessary details:

Your business name
Why you’re texting
How often they’ll get messages
A statement about rates
Links to your privacy policy and terms
Instructions to opt-out

It might sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. Here’s an example:

Hello [Name], thanks for signing up for [Company]’s Winter Sale! Expect deals every week. Message and data rates may apply. Text HELP for terms, STOP to quit.

Pro Tip: Keep things short. Carriers limit the number of characters in each text message to only 160. What happens if your message is above 160? It will send the message split in two, with the first 160 characters in one and the remainder in another.

While sending multiple SMS messages is okay every once in a while, and some carriers can even merge these two messages together, these texts are often more expensive to transmit. Also remember, getting texted too often can bother customers and lead to them unsubscribing to your notifications, so be careful how often you ping them.

Use Keyword Shortcodes

A keyword shortcode is a word or phrase customers can text to a specific number to sign up for your texts. Make sure your disclaimer follows the CTIA guidelines and includes all the necessary details. When customers text the keyword, they’re giving their consent.

So, without further adieu, here are 40 sample text messages to help you better engage and communicate with your customers.

Welcome Messages

Welcoming a new customer is like rolling out the red carpet. It sets the tone for a great relationship. Here are five delightful welcome messages that will make your new customers feel right at home:

1. “Hey, [Customer Name]! Welcome to the [Company Name] community. Explore our range of [Products/Services] and enjoy exclusive offers just for you. Msg & data rates may apply. Msg frequency varies. Reply HELP for help; STOP to cancel. Visit [Website] to get started!”

2. “Hello there! Thank you for signing up for a [Company Name] membership. As a token of our appreciation, here’s a special discount: [Discount Amount] off your first purchase. Use code: WELCOME123 at checkout. Msg & data rates may apply. Msg frequency varies. Reply HELP for help; STOP to cancel.”

3. “Welcome, [Customer Name]! We can’t wait to see you at [Company Name] really soon. Have questions? Text HELP to reach us. Msg & data rates may apply. Msg frequency varies. Reply STOP to cancel.”

4. “Welcome [Customer Name], from all of us at [Company Name]. Your shopping journey with us begins now, and we’re here to assist in any way we can. Msg & data rates may apply. Msg frequency varies. Reply HELP for help; STOP to cancel.”

5. “Hey [Customer Name], you’ve officially joined the [Company Name] family. Ready to explore the best [Products/Services] around? Let’s make this experience exceptional! Msg & data rates may apply. Msg frequency varies. Reply HELP for help; STOP to cancel.”

Appointment Reminders

Missed appointments are a headache for both you and your customers. Ensure everyone stays on track with these helpful appointment reminders:

6. “Hi [Customer Name], don’t forget your appointment with [Company Name] tomorrow at [Time]. We’re looking forward to meeting you at [Location]. Need to reschedule? Reply ‘RESCHEDULE’.”

7. “Your appointment with [Company Name] is just around the corner on [Date] at [Time]. We’ll be ready to serve you at [Location]. See you soon!”

8. “Friendly reminder: Your appointment with [Company Name] is on [Date] at [Time]. Please arrive 10 minutes early, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [Phone Number].”

9. “As your appointment with [Company Name] approaches, we want to ensure everything runs smoothly. See you on [Date] at [Time] at [Location]. Text 1 to confirm your appointment, 2 to reschedule.”

10. “Mark your calendar, [Customer Name]! Your appointment with [Company Name] is set for [Date] at [Time] at [Location]. We’re committed to making this a great experience. Text 1 to confirm your appointment, 2 to reschedule.”

Following Up with New Leads

Turning leads into customers requires timely follow-up. Here are five engaging text messages that will keep your leads interested:

11. “Hi [Lead’s Name]. This is [Employee] from [Company Name]. I’d love to schedule a quick 10-minute chat to discuss your needs. Schedule it here: [link] “

12. “Hi, [Lead’s Name]. This is [Employee]. Thank you for your interest in [Company Name]. I’d love to connect over a quick call. Let’s find time to chat: [link]”

13. “Hey there, [Lead’s Name]! Thank you for your interest in [Products/Services]. Let’s schedule a meeting to discuss how we can meet your needs. Book here: [link]”

14. “Great things are on the horizon, [Lead’s Name]. Let’s schedule a chat about how [Company Name] can make your goals a reality. What’s your preferred time for a quick discussion?”

15. “We’ve got exciting solutions for you, [Lead’s Name]. When can we connect to talk about how [Company Name] can meet your unique needs?”

Promotional Text Messages

When you have exciting promotions to share, let the world know! These five promotional text messages will have your customers rushing to your door:

16. “[Customer Name], unlock amazing deals at [Company Name] today! Shop [Product/Service] and enjoy up to [Discount Percentage] off until [Date]. Visit us at [Location] or explore online at [Website Link]”

17. “The savings continue at [Company Name]’s [Season] Sale! Grab your favorite [Product] at a discount of [Discount Amount] until [End Date]. Hurry before it’s gone!”

18. “Don’t miss out on our exclusive offer, [Customer Name]! Get [Product/Service] with a [Discount Percentage] discount. Limited stock available, so shop now at [Website] or our store at [Location].”

19. “Here’s an offer you can’t resist, [Customer Name]! Discover [Product/Service] with a whopping [Discount Amount] off. Your dream deal awaits at [Company Name].”

20. “Ready for unbeatable savings, [Customer Name]? Grab your [Product/Service] with a massive [Discount Percentage] discount. Visit us today at [Location] or shop online at [Website].”

Ask for Feedback and Reviews

Customer feedback is more precious than gold. These five messages will encourage your happy customers to share their thoughts and maybe win a little something in return:

21. “Your opinion matters! We’d love to hear about your recent experience with [Company Name]. Share your thoughts, and you could win [Incentive/Giveaway]. Click here to review: [Review Link].”

22. “We’re constantly striving to improve. Share your feedback on your recent purchase from [Company Name], and receive your next [Product] on us! Click here to review: [Review Link].”

23. “Help us enhance your experience with [Company Name]. Share your feedback and be entered to win a [Prize/Gift]. Click here to review: [Review Link].”

24. “Your voice matters to us, [Customer Name]. Leave a review of your recent experience with [Company Name] and have a chance to win big. Click here to review: [Review Link].”

25. “Ready to have your say, [Customer Name]? Review your recent interaction with [Company Name] and seize the opportunity to win a [Prize/Gift]. Click here to review: [Review Link].”

Order Confirmation

Customers love to know that their orders are in good hands. Use these order confirmation messages to keep them excited:

26. “Congrats, [Customer Name]! Your order #[OrderNumber] is confirmed. We’re packing it up, and it will be on its way to you by [Expected Delivery Date]. Track your order at [Order Tracking URL].”

27. “Great news! Your order with [Company Name] has been successfully placed. Order #[OrderNumber] will be dispatched on [Expected Delivery Date]. Keep an eye out for shipping updates.”

28. “Thanks for shopping with [Company Name]. Your order #[OrderNumber] is confirmed. You can anticipate delivery on [Expected Delivery Date]. For order updates, visit [Order Tracking URL].”

29. “The moment you’ve been waiting for, [Customer Name]. Your order #[OrderNumber] with [Company Name] is confirmed. It’s on its way, and you can track it here: [Order Tracking URL].”

30. “Exciting times, [Customer Name]! Your order #[OrderNumber] is confirmed and will be sent to you by [Expected Delivery Date]. Keep an eye on your delivery status at [Order Tracking URL].”

Rewards for Repeat Customers

Loyal customers deserve a little extra love. Here are five messages to show your appreciation:

31. “Hello, loyal customer! As a token of our appreciation, we’re offering you [Discount Percentage] off your next purchase. Use code: [CODE] at checkout. Enjoy your savings!”

32. “You’re a valued member of the [Company Name] family, [Customer Name]! Your next purchase comes with a special reward—[Free Product] when you spend [Minimum Amount]. Redeem in-store or online!”

33. “It’s customers like you who make us smile, [Customer Name]. Get [Discount Amount] off your next order as a thank-you for your continued support. Use code: [CODE] at checkout.”

34. “Thank you [Customer Name], for being our customer for [Number of Years] amazing years! Enjoy [Discount Percentage] off your next purchase at [Company Name]. Use code: [CODE] and save!”

35. “Every purchase is a step toward fantastic rewards, [Customer Name]. Your next order with [Company Name] is [Discount Percentage] off. Use code: [CODE] and claim your savings!”

Payment Reminders

Gentle payment reminders ensure you get what’s due without being intrusive. Here are five tactful payment reminders to keep things on track:

36. “A friendly reminder, [Customer Name]. Your payment of [Amount] for invoice #[InvoiceNumber] is due on [Due Date]. Have questions? Reply HELP for assistance.”

37. “This is a courtesy reminder that your invoice #[InvoiceNumber] with a total of [Amount] is awaiting payment by [Due Date]. To settle, click here [Payment Link] or contact us at [Phone Number].”

38. “Your upcoming payment is on our radar, [Customer Name]. Please ensure payment of [Amount] for invoice #[InvoiceNumber] by [Due Date]. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.”

39. “It’s that time again, [Customer Name]. Your invoice #[InvoiceNumber] for [Amount] is due on [Due Date]. For quick and easy payment, click here [Payment Link] or call us at [Phone Number].”

40. “Keeping everything in order, [Customer Name]. Your payment of [Amount] for invoice #[InvoiceNumber] is expected by [Due Date]. To make the process easy, click here [Payment Link] or contact us at [Phone Number].”

Embrace the power of text messages and watch your customer communication game soar to new heights.

These 40 sample messages have you covered in various scenarios, but remember, thoughtful communication resonates with your customers more than a template, so experiment and find what works best for you.

How will you use these sample texts to delight your customers?

Launch Lab, Inc Announced as a 2023 Local Excellence Award Winner by UpCity

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Mon, 08 May 2023 15:10:09 GMT

We are thrilled to announce that the Launch Lab, Inc team has been recognized as one of the top B2B service providers of 2023 in Denver by UpCity!

For more than a decade, UpCity’s mission has been—and continues to be—to help businesses find B2B service providers they can trust. Each year, UpCity analyzes and scores more than 50,000 service providers based on their UpCity Recommendability Rating and acknowledges the top national and local providers with an UpCity Excellence Award. The results are in, and we won!

From managed marketing services to web development and social media management, the team at Launch Lab, Inc strives to build partnerships that help businesses thrive and exceed their expectations. Launch Lab, Inc focuses on functioning as not just a marketing provider, but as a team that is just as integrated as any in-house services, and they look to learn everything they can about each partner’s industry, business, and needs in order to deliver top-tier results.

This recognition has been driven in large part by our 5.0-star review rating on UpCity. Here are a few of the glowing reviews we’ve received from our incredible customers:

“Great people, great services! Ridiculously knowledgeable yet down to earth. Efficient, affordable, reliable and everyone works together well. Good vibes through and through.” —Amy Mattison

“They have put my mind at ease every step of the way. This is my first business launch and they have guided me every step of the way and taken out all of the guesswork! I will recommend them to everyone I know!” —Deanna Duy, Founder of Spirit Haven

“Amazing team. They are a blast to work with and so helpful with suggestions and ideas. We have given them a lot to work with and have always performed beyond expectations.” —Paul Peters, Owner

Without our loyal and trusting clients, Launch Lab, Inc would have never received this honor, and we are grateful for their ongoing support. Launch Lab, Inc is excited to continue partnering with current and future clients to build relationships, partnerships, and results that help small business owners achieve their goals.

About the UpCity Recommendability Rating

The UpCity Recommendability Rating was developed to determine a service provider’s credibility and trustworthiness. This rating helps give UpCity the confidence to recommend a service provider to the more than two million businesses that visit our marketplace, which is powered by over 35,000 verified reviews. Read more about the UpCity Excellence Award here.

Phases of the Marketing Lifecycle

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 19:00:01 GMT

By understanding the marketing lifecycle, businesses can anticipate customer needs, create effective strategies for each stage of the cycle, and maximize potential profits.

Knowing the marketing lifecycle and understanding why it is important is essential for any business. The marketing lifecycle is the stages that a product or service goes through from when it’s first introduced to the market until it becomes obsolete. Each stage of the cycle affects how you position and market your product or service, as well as how customers interact with and view it. By being aware of each stage in the lifecycle, you can capitalize on opportunities to maximize your profits and better understand customer needs at every phase.

The four key stages of the marketing lifecycle are introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. During each of these stages, different strategies should be employed to ensure optimal success. For instance, during the introduction stage, you will want to focus on building awareness for your product or service and generating interest from potential customers. This could include launching campaigns, advertising online, sending out press releases, and so on. During the growth stage, you should build upon successful strategies while continuing to increase customer engagement. You may also consider expanding into new markets or introducing a new product line at this time.

The maturity stage is when your product or service has reached its peak and sales are beginning to level off. At this point, it’s important to find ways of differentiating yourself from competitors by offering something unique that sets you apart. Investing in research and development and creating a strong brand identity is essential during this phase. Lastly, the decline stage indicates that your product or service is no longer in demand and it’s time to end the cycle. During this stage, you should focus on reducing costs and transitioning customers to other products or services as needed.

By understanding the marketing lifecycle, businesses can anticipate customer needs, create effective strategies for each stage of the cycle, and maximize potential profits. By paying attention to this process, companies can ensure their products remain relevant over time and consistently stand out from competitors.

Reasons Why SEO's Important for Your Business

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 19:00:01 GMT

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of any digital marketing strategy.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of any digital marketing strategy. It helps to make sure your website is visible in search engine results, which can lead to more website visitors and potential customers. SEO involves optimizing the content of your website, as well as its technical aspects, such as page speed and structure. It also includes off-page activities, such as link building, to help increase your website's visibility in the eyes of search engines. By understanding the basics of SEO, you can ensure that your website is properly optimized and attract more customers.

Optimizing your content for SEO is an important part of making sure that your website can be found by users. This means ensuring that the content of your webpages includes the keywords that people are likely to use when searching for your business’s products or services. It also involves writing content in a way that is easy to understand and engaging for visitors. Additionally, content should be optimized for the various search engines so that your website can rank higher on those sites.

It is also important to optimize the technical aspects of your website for SEO purposes. This includes things like making sure that webpages load quickly and correctly, optimizing image files for faster loading, and making sure that the website’s structure is easy to navigate. These technical aspects of SEO help improve the user experience, which can also result in higher search engine rankings.

Finally, good SEO practices also involve off-page activities, such as link building. This involves creating links to your website from other sites that have related content or are popular in the industry. Link building helps to increase your website’s visibility, which can help improve its search engine rankings.

By understanding the basics of SEO, you can ensure that your website is properly optimized and attract more customers. With a combination of content optimization, technical optimization, and link building, you can create an SEO strategy that will help you reach your goals. With these techniques, you can make sure that your website is visible in search engine results and get more visitors and potential customers.

By investing in SEO, you can create a powerful digital marketing strategy that will help your business grow. With the right SEO practices, you can increase your website’s visibility and reach a larger audience. This can help to bring in more customers and potential leads, leading to more business. Investing in SEO can be a great way to increase your website’s visibility and make sure that you reach your goals.

By understanding the basics of SEO and implementing them correctly, you can ensure that your website is properly optimized and attract more customers.

Why Your Business Needs Reputation Management

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 19:00:07 GMT

Reputation management is an important tool for businesses and individuals alike. By monitoring your digital presence, you can actively work to protect and enhance the image of yourself or your business.

Reputation management is an important tool for businesses and individuals alike. By monitoring your digital presence, you can actively work to protect and enhance the image of yourself or your business. In today’s always-on, digitally connected world, it’s important to stay on top of what people are saying about you online to ensure that your reputation remains intact. With the right tools, you can effectively manage how others perceive you and be sure that the information they find is accurate and up-to-date.

Reputation management helps you to understand what people are saying about you on social media, in search engine results, or anywhere else online. By monitoring these conversations, you can ensure that any rumors or unfavorable opinions are quickly addressed and that your brand’s message is accurately represented. Additionally, you can use reputation management to identify opportunities to build a positive image by responding to favorable reviews or publicizing content that reflects positively on your business.

At its core, reputation management is about taking control of how you are perceived in the digital world. By investing in an effective strategy, you can ensure that people view you favorably and trust your brand. By monitoring your online presence and responding quickly to any negative feedback or rumors, you can protect and enhance your reputation – ensuring that it remains strong for years to come!

Ultimately, reputation management is about taking control of how you are seen online and making sure that the information people find is positive and up-to-date. With a little effort and dedication, you can ensure that your business or personal brand remains secure and that others view you favorably! By monitoring conversations on social media platforms, responding quickly to negative feedback, and publicizing content that reflects positively on your brand, you can ensure that your reputation remains intact and build a solid foundation for years to come.

The importance of reputation management cannot be overstated – it’s essential for anyone who wants to maintain a positive image online! With the right tools and a strategic approach, you can take control of how others perceive you and ensure that the information they find is accurate and up-to-date. By investing in a reputation management strategy, you can protect and enhance your brand, building a strong presence for years to come!

Remember – your online reputation matters. Make sure you’re taking steps to actively manage it and ensure that your brand is accurately represented. With a little effort, you can ensure that people view you favorably and trust your business or personal image!

Social Media Marketing & Why It's Important For you

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 18:38:59 GMT

Social media marketing is an important tool for businesses and organizations looking to reach new customers, engage with their existing audience, or build their brand.

Social media marketing is an important tool for businesses and organizations looking to reach new customers, engage with their existing audience, or build their brand. By creating content that resonates with your target market, you can increase engagement and drive conversions. Social media also allows you to generate leads, track website traffic and analytics, and measure ROI - making it an invaluable part of any modern digital strategy.

However, social media marketing isn't a “set it and forget it” kind of thing. It requires dedicated time and effort from the business or organization in order to yield effective results. This means developing a content plan, engaging with followers on various platforms, optimizing posts for search visibility, running campaigns aimed at specific goals - all while keeping an eye on the latest industry trends and changes in technology.

For all of these reasons, businesses and organizations must invest in social media marketing if they want to stay competitive. With the right strategy and team in place, social media can be leveraged as one of your most powerful digital tools for driving growth and success.

Social media marketing is a cost-effective way to reach an increasingly large audience, which makes it a valuable asset for businesses both big and small. Not only does it allow you to connect with potential customers that may have been otherwise out of reach, but it also provides invaluable insights into what your target market wants - giving you the opportunity to design products or services around their needs. And with the ability to track and measure the success of your efforts, you can ensure that your social media investments are paying off.

So if you're looking to build a successful digital presence, don't forget to add social media marketing to your mix. It might just be the key to unlocking a whole new level of growth for your business or organization.

For more insights into how you can leverage social media marketing for success, get in touch with us today! We can help create a tailored strategy that works for you - no matter what stage of the game you’re at. With our support, you can take advantage of the power of social media and unlock new opportunities for success.

All You Need to Know: Impressions, Leads, & Engagement

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 18:15:02 GMT

Leads, impressions and engagement are your friends… in the digital marketing world.

Leads, Impressions and Engagement are key metrics for measuring the success of digital campaigns. Leads refer to qualified contacts that have expressed interest in a product or service. Impressions are an indication of how often a particular advertisement has been seen by users. Engagement is when a user interacts with an ad by clicking or taking some other action. These metrics are important because they help marketers measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and make necessary adjustments to optimize them for maximum ROI. By understanding how these metrics work, digital marketers can ensure that their campaigns are reaching the right audiences and achieving desired results. So why wait? Start measuring your success today!

And remember: leads, impressions and engagement are your friends… in the digital marketing world.

Google Analytics for Beginners

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 16:45:00 GMT

Have no clue where to begin with Google Analytics? Start here!

If you are a beginner using Google Analytics, it’s important to understand the basic terminology and navigation of the platform. The first thing you will want to do is set up your account. This can be done by visiting analytics.google.com and clicking on ‘Sign Up’. You will then need to fill in some basic information about your website. Once you’ve completed this step, you will be able to access the dashboard and start exploring the features that Google Analytics has to offer.

Once you have set up your account, it is time to start digging into the data that is available for analysis. The most important thing for beginners to understand is the different types of reports that are available. Google Analytics offers five main categories of reports: Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, Conversions and Real-Time. Within each report category, you can find detailed information such as the sources of traffic to your website or the number of users who have completed a purchase. This data can be used to help make data-driven decisions about how to adjust and optimize your website.

It’s also possible to create custom reports to measure specific metrics that are relevant to your website. This can be useful for tracking individual campaigns or viewing historical data in order to identify trends. By digging into the data and understanding what it is telling you, you can gain valuable insights into how your website is performing and make informed decisions on how to improve it.

Google Analytics can be a powerful tool for tracking and analyzing the performance of your website, but it also requires some knowledge to get the most out of it. Understanding the basic terminology and navigation is essential before diving into the data. With just a little bit of effort and knowledge, you can become an analytics pro in no time.

Getting Over Your Social Media Content Block

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 17:00:01 GMT

Feeling stuck & don't know what to post? Follow these steps to feel inspired again.

Coming up with new and exciting ideas for posts can be challenging, especially if you want to stand out from the rest of the competition. But fear not! Here are a few tips to help get those creative juices flowing:

1) Brainstorm - Take some time to jot down any ideas that come to mind, even if they seem silly or off the wall. This can spark your creativity and in turn, inspire bigger and better ideas.

2) Research - Read other industry blogs, watch online videos, or follow influencers on social media. There's nothing wrong with taking inspiration from others! Just make sure you're giving credit where it's due and take their thoughts in a different direction.

3) Get out of your comfort zone - Challenge yourself to think outside the box. Try something new and unexpected – it's easier to come up with creative ideas when you don't have any preconceived notions or expectations.

4) Rely on data - Analyze your current content strategy, review what topics generate the most engagement, and use that feedback to create posts that are sure to get noticed.

By following these four simple tips, you'll be well on your way to creating unique and impactful content that will leave a lasting impression with your readers! Good luck!

Automating the Social Media Process

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 15:00:01 GMT

Streamline the process and free up time for more creative tasks!

Automating the social media process can be a daunting task for businesses. Many organizations are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content they need to produce, manage, and optimize to succeed on their chosen platforms. Fortunately, automation can help streamline the process and free up time for more creative tasks. Automation tools can be used to schedule content, manage interactions, and even measure performance. By taking advantage of these tools, businesses can save time, increase efficiency, and improve their overall social media presence. With the right mix of automation and savvy strategizing, your business can maximize its potential on social media. So don’t let automating the process overwhelm you—take advantage of the tools that are out there to make managing your social media accounts a breeze.

And don’t forget—social media automation is about more than just saving time and resources. It’s also about understanding how to use the technology strategically to reach your goals. By leveraging data and insights, you can create content that is tailored to your target audience and focused on achieving key objectives. From using automation tools to generate leads to targeting new markets, automation can help you make the most of your social media campaigns. So don’t be afraid to give it a try—you may find that automating the process gives you more time and energy to focus on getting meaningful results from your social media endeavors.

Good luck! And happy automating!

What is Reach and How it Helps Your Business

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 17:00:00 GMT

Tap into a bigger market & get access to real-time insights about your target audience and their interests.

Reach is a powerful tool that can help you grow your business. It enables you to connect with potential customers, build relationships and expand your customer base in ways other marketing strategies simply can’t. Reach gives you the ability to reach more people faster and more efficiently than ever before – all while keeping your budget low.

With reach, not only will you be able to tap into a bigger market but you'll also have access to real-time insights about your target audience and their interests; this allows for targeted promotional campaigns that are tailored to meet the needs of individual customers or groups. You’ll also be able to track progress and results, giving you valuable data to refine future campaigns for maximum success.

Reach is an efficient and cost-effective way to get your products and services out there - allowing you to maximize your efforts, grow your business, and reach new customers in no time. So don't wait: start taking advantage of the power of reach today!

Why You Should Choose Managed Marketing

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:04:14 GMT

Save time, increase efficiency, and improve your overall social media presence.

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from managed marketing services. Managed marketing offers a variety of advantages to businesses that can help them improve their bottom line and reach their goals.

First, managed marketing professionals provide expertise that businesses may not have in-house. These experts understand the ins and outs of the ever-changing digital landscape and can guide businesses through it, helping them make informed decisions about their marketing strategies. They also bring a creative approach, which can help ignite new ideas and campaigns to keep customers engaged.

Second, managed marketing services are cost effective and provide access to resources that would otherwise be too expensive or time consuming for business owners to invest in on their own. By outsourcing your marketing efforts with a managed marketing provider, businesses can save time, money and energy that would otherwise be devoted to marketing tasks.

Finally, managed marketing services provide access to analytics and data-driven insights. This helps businesses better understand their customers and optimize campaigns for maximum ROI. With this information in hand, businesses can make more informed decisions about where to invest their resources and how to reach their target audience more effectively.

Clearly, the advantages of managed marketing are numerous. When businesses partner with a reputable managed marketing provider, they get access to expertise and resources tailored specifically for their business needs. What’s more, these services ensure that their marketing efforts remain cost effective while yielding measurable results. Put simply, managed marketing has the power to transform businesses. So if your business is looking to take its marketing efforts to the next level, don’t hesitate to invest in managed marketing services. It could be exactly what you need to get ahead of the competition and reach your goals.

3 Questions to Ask

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 16:39:21 GMT

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Posting on Social Media

It can be tempting to put anything and everything out there on social media, but it’s important to think twice before you post. Here are a couple more questions to ask yourself:

- Could this potentially make someone feel uncomfortable or insulted?

- Is this something I wouldn't mind being made public?

- Is this information true and accurate?

Take the time to consider these questions before you hit “post." In the end, a few extra moments of thoughtfulness will go a long way in helping you maintain your reputation online! The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

Why You Should Post More Reels & Videos

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 17:31:13 GMT

What still posts aren't doing for your social media. Focus on videos & reels.

Reels and videos have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their engagement potential. Social media users are more likely to watch a video than read lengthy text posts, as the latter requires a greater amount of effort for comprehension. Reels and videos also allow for creativity - users can add music, effects, or captions that make them more fun and engaging than in-feed posts. Moreover, these types of posts tend to remain at the top of a user’s feed for a longer period of time, thus increasing engagement even further. A study by the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University found that engagement with reels and videos was nearly twice as high compared to engagement with regular posts. This proves that reels and videos can be a powerful tool for engagement on social media platforms.

Reels and videos are an effective way to gain engagement on social media due to their high engagement potential, creative elements, and long-term presence in users’ feeds. They are an invaluable resource for any business or user looking to increase engagement on their social media platforms.

In conclusion, reels and videos are an excellent way to capture users’ attention on social media. They require less effort for comprehension, can be made more entertaining by adding music and effects, and typically remain at the top of feeds longer. As a result, engagement with these types of posts is significantly higher than engagement with in-feed posts - a fact that cannot be overlooked by marketing professionals.

Marketing Trends

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 20:07:03 GMT

Marketing Trends to Keep vs. Toss in 2023

When it comes to marketing trends, there will always be some that are worth keeping and others that need to be left behind. The important thing is knowing which ones to focus on.

For example, personalized marketing has been gaining traction for the past few years. Brands can use customer data to create marketing messages that are tailored to individual customers, and this has been shown to improve customer engagement.

At the same time, marketing tactics such as buying followers on social media should be left behind. Not only is it unethical, but it also doesn't benefit the company in any way. It can actually hurt their reputation if they are caught.

Overall, marketing trends can help a company reach its goals, but it is important to be selective about which ones they focus on. Sticking with personalization and avoiding tactics such as buying followers will help brands stay on top of the marketing game.

At the same time, marketing trends that are too gimmicky and don't offer real value should be left in the past. This includes marketing strategies like "buzz marketing" or overly intrusive pop-ups on websites. These tactics may draw attention from some people, but they won't build long-term customer relationships or drive sales for your business.

Ultimately, marketing trends should always be evaluated based on their ability to make a real impact in terms of increasing engagement and driving sales for your business. If it's not doing either of those things, then it's likely best to leave it behind and focus on more successful marketing trends instead.

The key takeaway is this: stay aware of marketing trends and figure out which ones to focus on and which ones to avoid. Doing so can help you create marketing strategies that are effective, engaging, and successful.

Marketing Tips & Tricks

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 16:53:28 GMT

Tips & Tricks for Small Business Success

Marketing isn't just for the big guys. Small businesses can also benefit from effective marketing tactics, even on a tight budget. Here are some simple yet powerful tips to help boost your small business success:

1. Invest in SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) can help increase traffic to your website – and more traffic often means more sales! Make sure to include relevant keywords in all of your website's content and use analytics tools like Google Analytics to get an up-to-date picture of what’s working and what needs improvement.

2. Use social media wisely. Social media is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach potential customers, so make sure you’re utilizing it correctly. Make sure your accounts are up-to-date and regularly post relevant content that will engage your followers.

3. Take advantage of email marketing. Don’t underestimate the power of email marketing! It can be a great way to stay top of mind with customers and keep them coming back for more. Use an email service provider like MailChimp to track your campaigns and monitor their success.

4. Try out content marketing. Content is king these days, so make sure you’re leveraging it for your small business. Create helpful blog posts, informative videos and even podcasts — all which you can easily share on social media channels or through email newsletters.

5. Utilize referral programs. Referral programs can be a great way to get the word out about your business. Offer incentives or discounts to customers who refer your new business and watch your customer base grow!

By taking advantage of the tips above, you can increase the visibility and success of your small business in no time. While marketing may seem daunting at first, hopefully these tricks have shown that it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated – just creative! Good luck!

A.I is changing the Landscape of Content Creation

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 21:24:08 GMT

AI is making great strides in content creation, providing users with more accurate, personalized, and engaging content. From automated copywriting to AI-generated music and artwork, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the way we create and interact with content.

Thanks to the advancements of AI, content creators are now able to create more dynamic pieces of work in shorter timeframes than ever before. For example, natural language processing (NLP) can be used to generate copy for digital marketing campaigns based on a user’s search intent. This technology allows writers to craft tailored messages that are more likely to engage an audience and convert them into customers.

AI has also improved video production by taking care of mundane tasks such as color grading or adding special effects. Additionally, AI-based platforms like IBM’s Watson can automatically write scripts for videos or help filmmakers develop ideas based on data analysis.

Artificial Intelligence has also brought us closer to creating fully personalized experiences for each user as it constantly gathers data about each individual based on their behavior, interests and searches. By leveraging machine learning algorithms companies are able to deliver much more tailored content that better responds to user needs and preferences.

Finally, AI is being used in a variety of creative fields such as audio engineering, photography or animation. Automated tools can generate everything from soundtracks tailored for a specific mood or genre to realistic 3D models from photographs taken through our phones in just seconds!

Though there are still challenges that need solving before we can truly take advantage of these improvements — like teaching AI ethics — the potential for AI-generated content is astonishingly huge!

This post was 100% created by AI using AI an AI Chat program. (See Below)

Launch Lab, Inc Has Been Named a 2022 Best of Colorado Award Winner by UpCity!

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 17:44:31 GMT

Launch Lab, Inc Has Been Named a 2022 Best of Colorado Award Winner by UpCity!

The UpCity “Best of” Awards have returned after a successful inaugural year in 2021. To commemorate the top 50 B2B providers in each U.S. state and Canadian province, the UpCity “Best of” Award highlights the tremendous work being done by our partners and more in their local area.

Awards are given based on the UpCity Recommendability Rating , which was developed to determine a B2B service provider’s credibility and trustworthiness, giving UpCity the confidence to recommend them to potential buyers seeking their services.

We are proud to reveal that Launch Lab, Inc has been recognized as a Best of Colorado Award winner by UpCity!

UpCity is a B2B online marketplace that connects businesses to trustworthy service providers.

With 70,000+ listed providers—from digital marketing agencies, consulting firms, development specialists, and many more—over 1.5 million businesses have used UpCity to find exceptional partners for their needs.

UpCity’s proprietary algorithm pulls from digital data points like reviews (both on UpCity and other third-party review sites), rankings in relevant search results, domain authority, website speed, and user experience to connect businesses with high-quality service providers like us.

Dan Olson, CEO of UpCity, had this to say about Launch Lab, Inc:

“Launch Lab has a special way of listening to their clients. Their full-service solutions paired with a ‘choose your own adventure’ approach to obtaining the results desired is truly unique. We couldn’t be happier for Launch Lab and wish them continued success.”

- Dan Olson, CEO, UpCity

This honor has been possible, in part by our 5-star review rating on UpCity. Here is one of our favorite pieces of feedback we’ve received from our excellent clients:

“We have worked with Launch Lab for nearly two years now. They are always responsive to any needs or requests we have, they are easy to work with and our website has been spectacular. We constantly receive complimentary comments from donors and buyers. Launch Lab even made it easy for us to make our own site updates. We couldn't be happier with their services and have sent them multiple referrals.” -Kim Rogers

“I made my last website over six years ago and it was time for a new one. Launch Labs helped us get new new website up and running and we have seen a fairly dramatic uptick in the number of appointments. Online appointments have exploded because we didn’t have that before. The website looks great. Jeannie is awesome, very friendly and helpful. Brice Has created something that we’ve only begun to tap into but is already helping us immensely. I Recommend Launch Labs without reservation.” -Peter Pryor

Thank you to UpCity for naming us a 2022 Best of Award winner. To be recognized by our clients, for our dedication to our work, means so much to us. Additionally, to be recognized by UpCity is such an honor. Thank you, all!

How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Small Business

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 22:09:47 GMT

Social media can be a powerful tool for small businesses. When used correctly, social media can help you attract new customers, build brand awareness, and connect with your target audience. But what's the best way to use social media for your business? And should you outsource your social media marketing? Here are some things to consider.

The Benefits of Social Media for Small Businesses

There are a number of benefits that come from using social media for your small business. First, social media can help you attract new customers. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are great for reaching out to potential customers who may not be aware of your business otherwise.

Second, social media can help you build brand awareness. Consistently posting interesting and relevant content will keep your business top-of-mind for potential customers. And as more people become aware of your brand, you'll start to see an increase in word-of-mouth marketing.

Finally, social media is a great way to connect with your target audience. By engaging with them on platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn, you can create a community of loyal customers who will support and promote your business. Plus, you'll be able to get valuable feedback that can help you improve your products or services.

Outsourcing Your Social Media Marketing

Now that we've gone over some of the benefits of using social media for your small business, you might be wondering if you should outsource your social media marketing. After all, managing multiple social media accounts can be time-consuming and difficult to keep up with. However, there are a few things to consider before making a decision.

First, consider the cost of outsourcing vs doing it yourself. If you have the resources to hire someone internally or contract with an agency, it might be worth the investment—especially if you don't have the time or expertise to handle social media yourself.

Second, think about the kind of content you want to post. If you're looking to post high-quality, branded content regularly, it might be worth outsourcing so that you can focus on other aspects of running your business.

On the other hand, if you're comfortable posting lower-quality content on a less frequent basis, you might be able to handle social media yourself without too much trouble. Lastly, consider the goals you want to achieve with social media. If you're hoping to use social media as a sales channel or generate leads, it's probably worth outsourcing so that you can get the most out of it. However, if you're using social media primarily for branding or customer engagement purposes, doing it yourself might suffice.

Conclusion: Overall, there are a lot of factors to consider when deciding whether or not to outsource your small business's social media marketing. While there are some definite advantages to outsourcing—namely increased reach and higher-quality content—it also comes at a cost. So think carefully about what's best for your business before making a decision one way or another.

The Benefits of Managed Marketing Services

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 16:42:59 GMT

Is Outsourcing Some or All of Your Marketing Right for You?

Marketing is essential for any business that wants to thrive in today's digital world. But with so many different marketing channels and strategies to choose from, it can be tough to know where to start—or how to keep up with the ever-changing landscape. That's where managed marketing services come in. By outsourcing your marketing to an experienced team of professionals, you can free up your time to focus on running your business while knowing that your marketing is in good hands. Here are just a few of the benefits of managed marketing services:

1. You'll Benefit from Experienced Professionals

When you outsource your marketing to a managed service provider, you'll have access to a team of experienced professionals who are up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices. This means that you can be confident that your marketing is in good hands and that you're getting the best possible return on investment.

2. You'll Save Time and Money

Managed marketing services are often more cost-effective than hiring an in-house team, since you won't have to worry about things like benefits, training, or office space. And because your managed service provider will handle all aspects of your marketing, you'll be able to free up your time to focus on other aspects of running your business.

3. You'll Get Objective Insights and Measurements

It can be difficult to take an objective look at your own company's marketing campaigns and strategies. But when you outsource your marketing, you'll get access to impartial insights and measurements that can help you fine-tune your approach and ensure that your campaigns are as effective as possible.

4. Already Have a Great Team in Place?

Perfect! There's nothing better than the hybrid team approach to marketing. You gain the best of both worlds. Your current team brings to the table a depth of knowledge about your company, clients, and services that is unparalleled. When partnered with a managed marketing team you can boost your team's output, expertise, depth of knowledge, and strategic capabilities, without hitting your bottom line with all that comes with adding additional members to the team.

Conclusion:

There's no question that marketing is essential for any business that wants to succeed in today's digital world. But with so many different channels and strategies to choose from, it can be tough to know where to start—or how to keep up with the ever-changing landscape. That's where managed marketing services come in. By outsourcing your marketing to an experienced team of professionals, you can free up your time to focus on running your business while knowing that your marketing is in good hands. So if you're considering outsourcing your marketing, keep these benefits in mind—you might just find that it's the best decision you ever make for your business.

Get More Info on Partnering with a Managed Marketing Team

Instagram Pin to Profile

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 23:13:08 GMT

What is it – Why is it Important?

Pinning to your profile in Instagram is when you select up to three posts or Reels from your Instagram account that you want to highlight and "Pin" to the top of your page. When a user pins one or more posts to the top of their profile, these posts will remain there even if they share new posts in the future.

Instagram now allows each user to pin up to three posts to their top of their profile in the photo- and video-sharing application. Users can pin regular posts (image and video posts), as well as Reels.

The ability to pin a specific post to your profile is a welcome feature for users who want to highlight their favorite posts that may have been buried somewhere farther down in their photo grid. The feature could also be useful for creators who post frequently but want to highlight a specific post. Currently, users have the option to pin Stories to their profile, but this new feature expands this ability to posts.

Although you could previously highlight a post in a Story and then pin that story to your profile, this new feature makes that process a lot easier and more straightforward. It’s worth noting that the new feature works similarly to Twitter’s “Pin to your profile” feature and TikTok’s “Pinned videos” option, both of which let you pin content to the top of your profile.

There are unlimited reasons to pin items to your profile - You could highlight popular posts that you want visitors to see first, you could use the top three slots to highlight your top services/products as a business, you can even use them as a design element to highlight the current theme of your grid.

How to Do it – (Mobile App IOS Shown)

Step 1: Tap the three dots in the top-right corner of the post or Reel you want to pin.

Step 2: Tap “Pin to your profile.”

How Many Can I Pin?

You can pin up to three posts or reels. If you already have three posts pinned to the top of your profile and you attempt to pin another post, a “Pin limit reached” window will appear. This window will tell you that you’ve already reached your limit and that “[p]inning this post will replace your oldest pinned post.” If you want to replace your oldest pinned post, tap the “Confirm” button on the “Pin limit reached” window.

Why Finally Add the New Feature

This has been a common feature in many other platforms for quite a while, so why the sudden "Instachange" of heart on adding this feature?

“Your profile is your space, so we’re looking for more ways to give you control over that experience,” said Instagram head Adam Mosseri in a video posted to his social channels about the new feature.

Why Your Business Should Want More Reviews

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 18:39:54 GMT

Better to know your weaknesses and fix them than hide from them

The importance of responding to customers online could not be more prevalent as reviews continue to grow more than ever before. Aside from the fact that reviews from customers help others decide whether they should visit a business or not, reviews are now more prevalent on search results pages—meaning a lot of eyes can see what is being said about your company online.

The influence that reviews have on shoppers is staggering: more than 88% of online shoppers incorporate reviews into their purchase decisions (Webrepublic, 2015). Businesses are told to get more reviews on review websites to keep attracting new customers. With so many review websites out there, where does a business even begin? Your business may be afraid to manage customer reviews on review sites as you may not want to end up in one of these situations:

receive zero reviews
receive zero recent online reviews
receive negative online reviews
or, your business simply has unmanaged online reviews across multiple review websites

Unfortunately, your business is missing out. This lack of free online word of mouth is actually hurting your business through inaction, because reputation drives conversion.

1) Business reviews and social posts help shape your company’s online reputation

In fact, one of the worst things your business can do is ignore your online reviews and social posts. As easy as it is to make a mistake when handling your business’s online reputation, it can also be easy to recover if done properly (and with apology). While damage will inevitably happen, your business can take steps to mitigate the degree of damage that can occur. The biggest mistake of all your company can make is not participating in helping to shape the conversation about your company online.

2) Business reviews provide valuable feedback for your business

While it can be easy for your business to take negative comments to heart, it is important to recognize that reviews are constructive feedback. All in all, reviews are valuable feedback! They help your company gauge their performance and see how you can improve. There is always room for improvement and a lot can be learned even from positive business reviews. Through reviews, your business can see which products or services you should be boasting, which needs work, and even discover which employees rock at customer service.

3) Your business reviews can now appear in search results

Search engines have caught on to the popularity of reviews and are now displaying them more prominently. So, if someone searches for your business, there is a chance that reviews from review websites could be displayed on the search engine results pages. In Google’s markup—the annotated content that appears in search—of a company or product, business reviews and ratings can now be included in search results. In other words, when a user performs a search on Google, Google will find and possibly display review summaries from online business reviews and consumer ratings. Below is an example of how business reviews now showing up in search results.

How can businesses get more reviews?

There are a variety of methods your business can employ to ask for more business reviews, including emailing consumers manually, using surveys, asking consumers to leave reviews with codes and review sites on their receipts, or utilizing review generation software to automate the business review process.

Three important review website management tips:

Remember to add or claim listings on the top review sites

It’s a good idea to add or claim a listing or business profile on the most popular review sites (unless your business doesn’t fit with the niche), correct your business’s listing information and start getting more business reviews!

Your business should keep asking customers for reviews

Asking the average customer for a review can be hard work. Granted, it is often easiest to get reviews from consumers that are either really happy or really unhappy with the level of service they were provided. Your business should always remember to ask as customers are busy creatures and will not remember unless they are asked or reminded to leave feedback.

Customers are more open to leaving reviews on review sites

Why not just ask for business reviews or testimonials on your business’s website? Well, asking consumers to leave a review on your business’s website seems a lot more screened and inauthentic than simply asking consumers to leave reviews on a trusted review site. Since the review site is a third party, it feels more open for customers to leave an honest, unbiased review.

Business reviews are here to stay

In conclusion, there’s no getting away from business reviews. The good news is that there are methods to get more business reviews as well as effectively managing reviews from customers. Also, businesses needn’t fear negative online reviews, as there are ways to negate the effect of negative reviews.

Google's Core Web Vitals: We’ve Got Your Back

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 22:16:38 GMT

Core Web Vitals: We’ve Got Your Back

Starting mid-June, Google implemented Core Web Vitals, their new metrics for measuring website performance. Sites that score well on Core Web Vitals will have an edge over other sites, enjoying improved SEO while giving visitors an outstanding experience. https://web.dev/learn-web-vitals/

Here at Launch Lab, Inc we began preparing been preparing for Core Web Vitals months in advance of last Junes launch by Google, working behind the scenes so that our clients’ sites were ready to roll – and making it so that our clients didn’t have to do a thing. We want to share with you some of the improvements we made, talk about how they positively affect the sites we build for our clients, and announce that anyone who builds their website using our Do It Yourself drag and drop website builder platform that is launching next month will have a website that is automatically packed with all of the Core Web Vitals optimizations right out of the gate. (More on that to come)

First, A Short Core Web Vitals Glossary

Announced in May 2020, Core Web Vitals is Google’s latest evolution of experience and performance metrics, raising the bar of how websites should perform. These metrics are based on live site activities, rather than Google bots. You can read more about them here.

Web vitals are divided into the following 3 metrics:

CLS: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a metric that quantifies how often users experience unexpected shifts in site layout. These shifts are annoying and can harm the user experience. For example, if a user goes to click on a button and the position of that button moves because the layout moves, visitors will end up clicking on nothing.

LCP: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a metric for how long it takes for the largest image or text block visible within the viewport to display, relative to when the page first started loading.

FID: First Input Delay (FID) is a metric that helps measure a visitor’s first impression of a site's interactivity and responsiveness. For example, it measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page (i.e., clicks on a link or taps on a button) to the time when the browser begins responding to that interaction.

We’ve been preparing, so your sites are ready to perform

To make sure that your sites are ready for Google’s new metrics, and to make sure your customers continue to have a great experience, Launch Lab had a dedicated team in place to constantly improve the infrastructure that will improve your Core Web Value metrics. Here are the highlights:

CLS Improvements

Problem: Photo gallery layout shifting

Photo galleries can vary in height due to the wide range of the number of images that can be added, and the possible sizes of each image. Also, Photo Gallery widgets load dynamically, based on their settings.

Solution: Set min-height

Launch Lab sets the min-height CSS property of the Photo Gallery, to reserve space on the page for loading the Photo Gallery. This prevents content below the gallery from being pushed down as the images load, something which would cause the layout to shift.

------

Problem: Image layout shifting

Image loading is the biggest cause of layout shifting on the web, because browsers have no way of knowing the dimensions/size of an image before it's fully downloaded. So, once an image is actually downloaded, browsers load and shift all content around it.

Solution: Add image width & height

Our platform now automatically identifies the width and height of an image, and sets these attributes on the image HTML tag, allowing browsers to reserve the right amount of space while the image downloads. Note: Setting height and width does not make an image non-responsive. Instead, browsers use the image’s width/height attributes for calculating its aspect ratio so images automatically take up the correct space.

------

Problem: Loading above-the-fold fonts

Nearly every website today includes some form of custom fonts, usually from Google’s huge Font Library. Fonts are often big and heavy, and browsers usually first load a system font, such Arial, Georgia, Sans, etc. Once the custom font is done loading, the browser adds the custom font, something which causes the font to jump on the website, and has a negative impact on the visitor’s experience.

Solution: Embed fonts

Our System now automatically detects which custom fonts are used in above-the-fold content on each page, downloads that font, and embeds it directly into the HTML of the page (up to a max size of 50kb). This means browsers don’t need to go and fetch the custom font, and can display it immediately.

LCP Improvements

Problem: Background slider image loading

Background image sliders can be big and heavy to load, especially when there are multiple images that take up the same space on a web page. Previously, it was common practice to load all background images of a background image slider at the same time.

Solution: Optimize background image slider loading

Our Sites prioritize loading the first image in the Image Slider, and then lazy loads the other images, improving how quickly the first image loads.

------

Problem: CSS loading priorities

Browsers have to make many decisions about what type of content and resources to load and when. Our Launch Sites automatically generate all of the required styles needed to load above-the-fold content, so we already know which resources do not need to load first.

Solution: CSS loading priority hints

Our Websites are designed to give browsers hints about which resources they should prioritize when downloading page content. This helps browsers focus on the required content and resources, for faster page loading.

CLS and LCP Improvements

Problem: Widget image

Many widgets, especially those built using the Widget Builder, feature images. Previously, these images were not sized to the correct screen size and did not automatically have width/height dimensions added to them.

Solution: Optimize widget images

Many widgets including ones built by us feature images. A picture is worth a thousand words and we all know that most consumers are not reading the words so the value of a good image is beyond measure. Previously, these images were not sized to the correct screen size and did not automatically have width/height dimensions added to them.

We’ve got your back

Launch Lab has always placed a huge importance on site performance, and we continue to do so today, so your sites meet the highest industry standards and provide a great user experience. If your current website is not taking into account Googles Core Web Vitals you should talk to your website developer right away or talk with someone the Launch Lab team who understands the importance of these major changes.

We’ll keep you updated on further platform improvements as we make them and want to make sure you know that we’ve got your back when it comes to performance. We’re taking care of behind-the-scenes considerations so you can focus on what you do best!

How to Perform a Local SEO Audit for Your Business in 12 Steps

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 00:00:02 GMT

How to Perform a Local SEO Audit for Your Business in 12 Steps

Businesses on page 2 of the SERP might as well not exist.

It sounds harsh but it’s simply the reality that we all need to accept.

You know the drill—you want pizza so you get on your phone and do a search. Google presents its top 3 local options in the “Snack Pack” and 10 other organic results. You pick one make a call or pop in the pizza joint.

If you’re the local pizza joint, you want and need to appear on the first page for those target keywords. So how do you get them there?

You’ll need to do a local SEO audit to find out. Here’s how to get it done.

Step 1: Audit Keywords

What keywords are you targeting? Step one of your audit should be to determine what you’re currently ranking for and identify any opportunities you might be missing.

For example, if you’re ranking well for ‘Philadelphia Bankruptcy Attorney’ but are nowhere to be found for ‘Philadelphia Bankruptcy Lawyer’, you’ve identified an area to improve.

Start by making a list of services, products, or a page you’d like to drive traffic to. Once you do this you’ll be able to use tools like Keyword Finder to quickly put together a list of high volume local target keywords.

With this list in hand, you can proceed through the rest of your local SEO audit and determine how well these keywords are optimized every step of the way.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Step 2: Audit Your Competition’s Local SEO

Your local SEO audit should include a snooping session to determine your competitor’s SEO status and tactics early on. If you’re located in a highly competitive area where the other top businesses are doing everything right, you need to document what you’re up against.

You don’t need to do a full diagnostic on each competitor, but take a look at the following, and compare that data against yours:

GMB ranking for top keywords
Organic rankings for top keywords
Review quantity and quality
Number of links
Site Speed
Social Stats

In most cases, you should be able to take a look through these items and develop a hypothesis on why your competitor is successful in local SERPs.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Bu iltWith

Step 3: Audit Google My Business Listing

The 2017 edition of Moz’ Local Search Ranking Factors Survey ranks Google My Business (GMB) as the biggest driver of local SEO success. If you want to appear in Google’s ‘snack pack’, your GMB listing should be robust, and well-optimized with your core target keywords.

Here are some things to look for:

Do you have a GMB listing? If so, is it claimed and verified?
Is all business information present and correct?
Do you have multiple reviews and a high cumulative rating? Are you responding to reviews?
Do you have appropriate business categories listed?
Do you have images of the business?
Have you created any GMB posts?
Are you participating in the Questions & Answers section?

These are the core elements that make up a strong GMB listing.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Manager access to your GMB listing
Yoast Local SEO Plugin

Step 4: Audit Reviews for Quality and Quantity

Reviews pack a ton of clout in both the local ranking and reputation building arenas. Search engines regard them as an authentic measure of a local business’s popularity and viability. Potential customers trust reviews as an accurate gauge for that business’s quality level.

Getting an abundance of positive, glowing and wordy reviews across multiple review platforms like GMB, Facebook, Yelp, and vertical-specific sites like Houzz, Tripadvisor, and Healthgrades helps you win on many levels.

Local SEO Guide notes that Google does pick up on the keywords people use in their reviews:

“At a high level, having a keyword you are trying to rank for, and a mention of a city you are working to rank in, in reviews has a high correlation with high ranking Google My Business results.”

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Get and manage reviews with Customer Voice (contact us for more info)
KiyOh

Step 5: Audit Links for Quality and Quantity

Links remain the bread and butter of Google’s ranking algorithm.

Darren Shaw of WhiteSpark notes that,

“Google is still leaning heavily on links as a primary measure of a business’ authority and prominence, and the local search practitioners that invest time and resources to secure quality links for their clients are reaping the ranking rewards.”

A diverse array of quality links is crucial for any local business’s link portfolio. This means that you’ll need to evaluate your links, looking for links with:

Local content
Industry or vertical topic clusters
High domain authority

Link quality will win over quantity, and quality + quantity will help you dominate the search rankings in your market. On the flip side, if you see a high volume of spammy, off-topic links, you’ll want to make a note of it as a red flag that may be damaging your ability to rank well for your target keywords.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Step 6: Audit Schema-Markup for Local

Schema markup is code that goes on a website to help the search engines return more informative results for users. Schema tells the search engines what your data means, not just what it says.

This is a key way to tell search engines exactly what a given website is about, which will help them serve it up on SERPs for the correct search queries.

One way to check to ensure that your site is using schema markup is to enter your URL in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool You’ll be able to check to see if all the correct info about your business has been included.

To add Schema markup, if it’s a WordPress website, then “All In One Schema Rich Snippets” is a great plugin. For other websites, this is a good tool to create the code.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Step 7: Audit Local SEO Citations

How frequently is your business mentioned online? Auditing your citations will determine how many online mentions exist of the name, address, and phone number for your business.

It’s important to look into both your structured and unstructured citations. For structured citations, you’ll audit your business listings across the web, looking at social platforms and directories like Yelp, Yellowpages, Facebook, Superpages, and MapQuest. You’ll also need to check to see if their correct business info is listed on the main data aggregators: Axiom, Neustar/Localeze, Factual, and Infogroup.

Next, you’ll need to check your unstructured citations. An unstructured citation can be found on random websites, blogs, event listings, job posting sites, government records or social media mentions. These are unstructured because they could be as simple as a company mention. Usually, these citations don’t include a business’s NAP data.

Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder is a great free tool to find and analyze both your structured and unstructured citations.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Step 8: Audit SEO on Main Pages

An audit of the main website pages is probably the most important piece of your entire audit. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming if you have the proper tools though. Screaming Frog is one of many excellent tools that’ll deliver a comprehensive look at your on-page SEO.

With your list of target keywords in hand, you’ll want to run through each page on your spreadsheet looking at the keywords on each page. Specifically, you’ll be looking at:

Page title
Title tags
Sub-headings
Word count
Meta description

Even with just this information, you’ll be well-equipped to analyze how well your pages are optimized for local SEO. Plus, you’ll be able to determine improvements and content gaps that might be missing.

Once you’ve evaluated and recorded the weaknesses in your local SEO, you can make use of a host of top-tier SEO plugins to help you do your work.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Screaming Frog

Step 9: Audit Image SEO

There are two main components two image optimization for local SEO: keyword usage and how it affects page load speed. You can use ScreamingFrog’s free SEO tool to evaluate both.

Auditing image keyword optimization boils down to evaluating each image’s filename and alt text. Since Google can’t yet tell what visual content an image contains yet, site crawlers rely on things like the filename and alt text to determine what’s being displayed. These are places you should optimize with relevant target keywords.

You can get some big improvements in page load speed when images are optimized to reduce their file size without significantly impacting their visual quality. Using ScreamingFrog, you can take an inventory of all the images on your site and highlight the images that are slowing things down. (There are also image size optimization plugins that resize images automatically going forward.)

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Screaming Frog

Step 10: Check Website Speed

Having a site that loads rapidly is crucial in today’s online business environment.

Edwin Toonen of Yoast notes that,

“Google’s latest research shows that the chance of a bounce increases 32% when the page load time goes from 1s to 3s. 1s to 5s increases the chance to 90% and if your site takes up to 10s to load, the chance of a bounce increases to 123%. That’s incredible. For search engines, better results and performance is a sign of a healthy site that pleases customers and therefore should be rewarded with a higher ranking.”

Google PageSpeed Insights Tool performs a near-instant audit of a given URL for both mobile and desktop searches. This will give you a quick way to tell if improvements are needed, and a list of actions to take to improve your website speed.

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Step 11: Audit Site Engagement

What visitors do when they discover your business online affects your rankings. In fact, David Mihm argues that,

“Engagement is simply a much more accurate signal of the quality of local businesses than the traditional ranking factors of links, directory citations, and even reviews.”

Metrics like organic search click-through rate (CTR), dwell time, bounce rate, and conversion rate are all ranking factors. You can simply use Google Analytics to examine your engagement metrics and compare them to industry benchmarks .

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Step 12: Audit Social Engagement

The truth is that we’re not sure to what extent social signals are baked into Google’s ranking algorithm. However, there’s no doubt that a strong social media presence can significantly boost local SEO efforts.

According to Ron Dod of Search Engine Journal , the bigger and more engaged your audience is, the more they’ll boost rankings:

“The bigger your brand is and the more consumers trust you, the more likely you are to receive a larger share of clicks in Google. Social media can be a great and efficient way to help you build your brand and get in front of people who wouldn’t have otherwise found you.”

Therefore, evaluating your social platforms is an essential part of your local SEO audit:

Number of people that like your Facebook page + Facebook shares
Number of Twitter followers + tweets mentioning your brand name
Number of LinkedIn company followers and Linkedin Shares

Helpful Local SEO Tools:

Track dark social (contact us for more info)
Find all social media profiles
Find your most shared content

Final Thoughts

Performing a comprehensive local SEO audit using the 12 steps I’ve outlined is going to dredge up issues. Finding and fixing any SEO optimization issues you discover along the way is also crucial, as is recording your progress to ensure you’re not missing any vital pieces to the local SEO puzzle.

A good way to get started is to use a DIY service like MarketGoo , which automatically scans a website and generates a step-by-step SEO plan to help you increase your website traffic and rankings.

Once you’re ready to really dig in and see some major ranking changes contact our SEO team and we can put together a custom plan for your business. Our custom SEO packages are reasonably priced and a key way to power up your local presence.

Want to skip all this work and let the experts handle your local SEO? Contact us today!

What is the Difference Between Digital and Content Marketing?

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 04:57:04 GMT

What is the Difference Between Digital and Content Marketing?

Did you know that using content to build your business is just as important as using digital marketing strategies? Businesses use digital and content marketing to share news, products, and stories to promote their brand and engage with their audience. But you may be asking yourself, “what is the difference between content marketing and digital marketing?”

Continue reading to learn the different components of content marketing and digital marketing to help you decide which marketing strategy is right for your business.

What is Digital Marketing?

The goal of digital marketing is to utilize a variety of digital technology and online marketing strategies to create brand awareness and name recognition for brands. It uses tactics such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), or running ads on social media to increase conversions.

Digital marketing can include:

● Blogging

● Guest Blogging

● Email Marketing

● Video Marketing

● Influencer Marketing

● Search Engine Optimization

● Search Engine Marketing

● Social Media Marketing

● Social Media Advertising

● Other Forms of Online Advertising

● Infographic Creation & Promotion

● And More!

What is Content Marketing?

Defined as the technique of designing, creating, and distributing valuable and consistent content tailored to an audience, content marketing is used to get the consumers’ attention. It fits under the digital marketing umbrella but is different in that it refers to creating specific content to reach a particular audience. Content can be anything from writing a blog to creating videos, or even Spotify playlists.

What is the Difference and Which is Better?

The easy answer is that content marketing focuses on engagement whereas digital marketing is focused on sales. Likely, you are already using both strategies as part of your marketing plan, as content lives under the digital marketing umbrella we mentioned previously.

As for which style of marketing may work best for your business, it depends on what your end goal is. If your goal is to increase sales and promote brand recognition—digital marketing may be right for you. But if you’re looking to engage visitors and promote conversions (signing up to a mailing list or downloading a brochure), then content marketing is your bread and butter.

If you want to create a successful overall marketing strategy, you should consider hiring a digital marketing agency like Launch Lab to lay the groundwork for you. Get in touch with us today to discuss your ideas or get started with our do it yourself all-in-one small business software - Business Launch Kit .

5 Reputation Management Tips for Local Businesses

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 01:18:56 GMT

5 Reputation Management Tips for Local Businesses

Reputation management is a must in today’s digital marketing landscape. When done right, it can enhance a local business’s online presence, increase customer retention, and attract new clients.

What is reputation management?

The reputation of a business is both what they say about themselves and what others say about them. Managing reputation is nothing new; what’s new is how the internet and social media have changed the way businesses are being defined and how fast their reputations spread.

What is presence management and how does it help local businesses?

Presence management is making sure that customers can find the right information about a business online. Correct and consistent listings across directories, review sites and social networks is crucial.

Why is online review monitoring important?

With over 33 million local reviews on Yelp alone, it’s clear that customers are sharing their opinions online. Seventy-two percent of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal referrals, so whether it’s a testimonial, a detailed article on someone’s blog, or an offhand comment on Twitter, people are now chatting 24/7—and local business owners need to be paying attention.

Digital Marketing Trends on the Rise in 2021

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 01:29:17 GMT

Unpredictable... Let's Call It Like It Was. "2020 Was a Dumpster Fire of a Year!"

2020 was unpredictable, making many predictions for the year obsolete and others were forced to adapt to the rapidly evolving marketing landscape. A tough year is behind us, now it’s time to look into the coming months.

E-commerce sales went up as people spent more time on social media and video conferencing became the new “face-to-face” form of meeting. This led to a major shift in the way brands connected with their customers.

As we face 2021 with our head held high, here are some digital marketing trends we found that will help your business not just survive, but thrive!

Artificial Intelligence

A few years ago, Gartner analysts predicted that by 2020 AI technologies would be in almost every new software product and service. Businesses adopting AI in 2021 will be able to cut staffing costs and accelerate growth to get an edge over their competitors. Soon, AI will be the force behind many of the services we use. Currently, 2 out of 3 consumers are already using AI without knowing they are interacting with chatbots.

Personalization

To stand out in 2021, you need to personalize your marketing. Research shows that 63% of consumers are annoyed with being bombarded by generic advertising messages and want something that truly speaks to them on a personal level. In addition, 78.6% of consumers say they will only engage with a brand offering promotions that are directly related to how they have previously interacted with the brand. This can include sending offers via email, mobile or social media. Brands like Starbucks use a gamified mobile app that draws on purchase history and location to personalize drink rewards.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

These are websites that work as mobile apps by offering the functionality of a native mobile app. This includes fast load times, push notifications, working offline, utilizing device hardware, etc—without being limited to one platform.

The number of smartphone users is predicted to rise to 7.1 billion by 2021 . With total page views on mobile increasing year-over-year, it’s more important than ever to integrate a mobile-friendly website into your digital strategy.

Are You Ready for 2021?

For any business interested in digital marketing, adapting to change is part of the job. You must look ahead and embrace new technologies, tools, and strategies to gain an edge over your competitors. Launch Lab developed a Business Launch Kit to give local businesses the tools they need to grow. Want a more tailored approach to propel your business forward in 2021? Contact one of our digital marketing specialists today!

What are Listings and Why Do They Matter

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 22:22:12 GMT

The most important "Nap" you'll ever take!

Listings are an online summary of essential information for your business that serve as a powerful tool to help customers find you online and in real life. Here’s what you need to know:

NAP+W

No, we didn’t fall asleep on the keyboard. NAP+W is the acronym that explains all the information that should be included in business listings.

N ame
A ddress
P hone number
+
W ebsite

These four pieces of information are the business listings starter-pack. They provide the basic information potential customers need to have in order to research, contact and locate your business.

Want to score some major bonus points? Include information like hours of operation in business listings— it’s what consumers are most interested in!

Will my listings work?

The effectiveness of a business listing depends on the information’s presence and accuracy. Listings are available through a variety of sources, including search engines, online directories and maps, or social sites. When it comes to listings presence, more is definitely better. Availability on as many sources as possible will create multiple avenues for consumers to find your business. But (and this is a big but), presence only pays off if the listings are accurate. Listings are accurate if the information is correct and consistent across all potential sources. Seems easy enough, right?

Why are listings important?

Listings with good presence and accuracy will undoubtedly pay off for your business. Here’s how:

No more hide and seek

Just as the brightly lit bat signal guides everyone’s favorite caped crusader (that’s right Superman, we said it!), accurate and readily available listings will help guide consumers right to your business’s door steps.

They even have similar shapes. Coincidence? We think not…

If a business’s listing is incorrect or missing, the majority of consumers will feel less confident about the brand , likely leading them to choose a competitor’s product or service. The availability of accurate listings ensures customers are actually able to find brick and mortar locations while they’re open for business. This means money in the business owner’s pocket and, just as importantly, it means the business can be reviewed.

“In my humble opinion…”

An ample review pipeline is an essential tool for developing a business’ online reputation and fostering brand loyalty. Reviews allow customers to communicate their experience with a business to potential buyers, but if consumers can’t find a business listed online, their opinion of it won’t be well-informed. Accurate listings create the opportunity for transparency between businesses and consumers in the form of reviews, and the availability of this information will help increase a business’s visibility.

All aboard the search engine

Consistent, accurate listings and the generation of reviews will directly benefit a business’s visibility by boosting its ranking in local search engine results. Search engine optimization is a complex tool, so why not take advantage of it by simply ensuring your business is listed accurately! Increased visibility means more customers, and what business owner doesn’t want that?

Now what?

This listings low-down provides a basic definition and describes the benefits of business listings. Create listings on sites worth lots of points to improve your listings score. We’ve ranked them by importance using a lot of key factors—how many sites reference them, traffic, demographics and more.

Top 5 Benefits of Using Google My Business

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 04:45:09 GMT

Google My Business Is Posed to Replace Your

Website & Social Media... Are You Ready?

How to #Hashtag

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 05:41:06 GMT

How hashtags can help you reach the out-crowd and engage the in-crowd

The facts are in: if you are not using hashtags, you are missing out! With a tweet with hashtags being 33% more likely to get retweeted , these handy hashtags can make the difference between #GameOver and #Trending when it comes to social media success. Hashtags are more than just a fad, they are a means of organizing information and standing out from the crowd. Hashtags are also a way to engage with millennials where they shine brightest – through social media savvy. With millennials beginning to outnumber previous generations, speaking their language has become increasingly important. Do not miss out on this opportunity to #GetSocial!

Hashtag basics

The hashtag (#) turns any word, or group of words, into a link that can be searched. When writing a hashtag, leave your grammar at the door – no punctuation, no spaces! The best way to keep your message clear is to capitalize each word #LikeThis, otherwise known as using CamelCase. Got it? Let’s move on!

There are two ways businesses can use hashtags to their advantage.

To reach the out-crowd by joining a conversation that is already in progress.
To engage the in-crowd by starting a new conversation.

Reaching the out-crowd

As a business, using hashtags to reach potential new customers is a no-brainer. How do you do this effectively? By joining a conversation that is already in progress! Start thinking about what words people would search when looking for a business like yours. If you don’t know where to start, remember the old saying, “Keep your friends close, and your competitors closer”! Follow businesses who are doing similar work to you on all your favorite social media websites – especially those who have a great following. What hashtags are they using, and how many? Keep in mind that less is more both in scope (as hashtags that are more niche have a more engaged following) and in presentation (as too many hashtags looks inauthentic ).

For example, this, “Take a bite out of our best burger today! #BurgerLover #Foodie #CheatMeal” is better than this, “Take a bite out of our best burger today! #WhatsForDinner #Foodie #EatClean #CommonTable #OnMyTable #TasteMade #ForkYea #OnTheTable #FoodStyling #BeautifulCuisines #HeresMyFood #TheArtOfSlowLiving #FreshFoods #CheatMeal #BurgerLover #Foodstagram #BurgerLife”.

So, K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Social-Media-User! Using hashtags by joining a pre-existing conversation takes your business and puts it in front of someone who would have never found you otherwise. That’s something you can feel #Blessed about!

Engaging the in-crowd

The second way that you can use hashtags to build your business is by starting a conversation with the followers that you already have by creating an original hashtag. Brands from Calvin Klein (#MyCalvins) to Charmin toilet paper (#TweetFromTheSeat) have managed to create original hashtags that engage their audience in a way that builds their social media momentum . Original hashtags can be used for promotions, contests, events, or general brand awareness. Just be sure that when you are creating an original hashtag that it is clear, simple, unique, and catchy. No one will want to join your conversation if it’s confusing or boring.

Imagine if Coca-Cola’s classic #ShareACoke hashtag was #TakeACocaColaAndGiveItToSomeoneElse – not very fun or memorable! Original hashtags give your followers something to talk about and a way to interact with your business on a personal level.

Not all social media sites are created equal

Using hashtags is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Each platform will have its unspoken rules of how many hashtags are acceptable. Where Instagram shows posts with an average of nine hashtags performing the best, Facebook posts get the greatest engagement with only one hashtag . Each social media site is unique in its function and audience, so take the time to explore the sites you want to use for your business before posting.

Are you #Trending yet?

These tips and tricks for how to use hashtags as a business are about more than getting ahead in a technological age. Hashtags, above all, are about building community. By putting a simple pound sign in front of a word, you are taking that message and immediately sharing it with someone who cares about what you do and how you do it. This tool is a revolutionary way to make your words matter and allow them to connect with not only a new customer, but a new spokesperson for your business. From #MotivationalMonday to #FlashbackFriday, use your new hashtagging skills to make both the in-crowd and the out-crowd your new #BFFL.

Tips for Providing The Perfect Customer Experience

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 23:57:31 GMT

Are You Ready to Do What it Takes For Your Customers?

Amazing customer service may seem like a lot of extra work on a short-term basis, but it does improve your brand image and goodwill, which means a lot in the long run. No matter how big or small your business is, you must focus on making your customers happy. There are many ways to do this—with the strength of your product, with free incentives that you can offer or with amazing customer service experiences.

With all the competition out there, succeeding with your business nowadays is a matter of wills. Are you willing to provide the best possible value? Are you willing to offer your customers the perfect customer experience? If you are, then it’s time to get started at improving the customer service experience your company provides. Here are a few important tips to help your company provide your customers the perfect customer service experience.

Know your products and services inside and out

No matter the business or industry you’re in, knowing your offerings (products or services) inside and out is absolutely necessary. Customer service is, after all, all about helping your customers succeed with your products or services. Therefore, your customer service should focus on offering the proper suggestions, tips and solutions to ensure that success. Each and every employee (not just customer service) should know the ins and outs of what you’re selling. Helping your employees succeed by providing the proper training (regardless of their job description) is the first step in helping your customers succeed.

Be more accessible

If you want your customer service department to strive for success, here’s what you should know—customer service must be readily accessible to all of your customers. One easy way of accomplishing this is setting up more communication channels in which customer can connect with a customer service member when they have a question or issue. The minimum that you can do is to provide a phone number, an e-mail address and a mailing address. If your business can afford it, and really need it, develop an online support desk that can be instantly reached 24/7. This communication channel is usually required when the company reaches a big number of requests and website visitors.

Speed up your response times

Customers love quick answers. According to a recent report performed by Frost, 41% of customers suggest that their biggest frustration regarding customer service is when they’re put on hold. They want to be respected, and your company must give your best to solve everyone’s issues quickly.

Focus on the customer, not on the sale

Customer service is all about the customer’s feelings and experience. You must focus on their well-being and you must avoid thinking about combining customer service with sales or other aspects of your business. If you want to leverage your customer service system in order to make more sales, I’m sorry to disappoint you: it’s not that effective! The selling side of your business is totally different and you should focus on it separately. Continually work at ways that you can improve the customer experience to keep your customers satisfied and coming back for more.

Clear communication

Keep communication simple and ask straightforward questions when communicating with your customers. The truth is that we all communicate differently, so be prepared for communicating with your customers in different ways to ensure that they will understand whatever information you are trying to relay to them. If corresponding by email or online, grammar and spelling must be perfect or your credibility as a professional company will slowly vanish.

Over-deliver whenever possible

Over-delivering can help create loyal customers. On average, loyal customers can be worth 10x more than their first purchase. If someone gets treated right, they’ll often come back. They’ll perceive your company as a trustworthy authority or provider; therefore, over delivering from time to time helps your company’s reputation to grow positively. Find a way to reward your customers with a customer service issue for being patient. It could be anything. Nothing costly or hard to obtain. Ideally, this small attention should also deliver some value.

Find and fix your mistakes

Mistakes are a part of any business, after all we are all human. Nevertheless, do your best to make things right with your customers. When we’re talking about mistakes, we’re talking about a customer that hasn’t been treated right. Your business can make it right by offering them solutions, returns or future guarantees. Pay attention: if you’re not fixing your mistakes in time, your company’s reputation will suffer. People will start talking, reviewing, and sooner than later you’ll realize that your sales are dropping.

Test, fail, test again and ultimately optimize

Before reaching success in a customer service program, every business goes through a trial-and-error process. The marketplace and the customers within any industry tend to become more complicated as an industry ages or becomes more fragmented. If you try out a new product, service, or customer service initiative, don’t be afraid to fail. Know that “failure” isn’t failure, it is merely feedback—it lets you know what not to do so you can start focusing on things that might work. After you find something that works, begin the scaling process. Optimize everything until you find the balance that you’re looking for.

Conclusion

Businesses are always looking for new ways to make a name for themselves and an excellent customer service experience is one of those ways in which a business can afford to get a great reputation in. Competition is almost always growing in any industry and new strategies and actions must be implemented to keep up with the constant flux. Providing the perfect customer experience is just one way for your business to stand out from the crowd, win customers over and keep them coming back. It’s never too early or to late to create a customer service program that turns your customers into repeat customers, or ambassadors of your brand.

Top 10 Critical Google Ranking Factors To Consider

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 15:15:28 GMT

Not All Ranking Factors Are Created Equal.

Not all Google ranking factors are equal. While some are absolutely necessary to implement, others, though valuable, can be considered a lower priority in the broad landscape of search engine optimization.

Top 10 Critical Google Ranking Factors To Consider

Did you know that there are more than 200 Google ranking factors that go into determining which websites land at the top of SERPs (that’s ‘search engine results pages’ to you who are new to the SEO world)? If you really want to get into all 200 Google ranking factors, you can do so; however, familiarizing yourself with all of the factors that are taken into account by the search giant’s algorithm is much less important than identifying which ones are the most important for search success.

SEO requirements continue to change and evolve over time. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to rank your website on Google. If you want your website’s search engine results page ranking to go from mediocre to the top of the list, you’ll want to go through this updated list of ranking factors to consider through 2020 and beyond.

Google prefers search engine and end user optimized sites meaning that your content is so good that it both ranks highly on Google and offers a great experience to users. The more optimized a website is, the more leads it can generate, sales it can complete, and traffic it can attract on a consistent basis. Without SEO, searchers will not be able to find your website, let alone explore it. So now that we have some background out of the way…

Here are the top ten most important Google ranking factors of 2020:

Backlinks

Schema

A Secure Website

Website Speed

Keyword-Optimized Content

User Experience

Social Signals

Image Optimization

Consistent Business Listings (NAP)

Domain Age

Let's Break It Down

BACKLINKS

Backlinks are easily one of the most important and evergreen Google ranking factors of all time. The relationship between backlinks and organic traffic makes it more than worth the time and effort to incorporate them into your SEO strategy. The relevance and domain authority of a page can increase exponentially when it is linked to from a trusted URL.

Links from the most relevant and similar-minded pages, blogs and websites hold great value in the SEO world. Similarly, backlinks from strong or well-established websites have the additional benefit of driving organic traffic directly to your website as well.

Just think about it — would a link from Forbes.com or The New York Times result in some decent traffic to a web page? You bet it would! These are incredibly high ranking domains that carry a lot of value on the SEO front and readers would see your site as a trustworthy source. It’s fairly obvious why Google finds backlinks to be such an effective search ranking factor.

SCHEMA (STRUCTURED DATA)

Schema markup enables robots (like Google’s) to crawl your website more easily and understand the content on the page in a language that makes sense to them. Schema does this by giving a structured way for robots/crawlers to define the types of information present on the page.

Schema markup is extremely important for sites pushing out items that require super structured schema markup like Job Boards, Apartment Listings, Blog Content, Real Estate Listing, and quite a few other ultra-structured content types.

A SECURE WEBSITE

Google wants to surface websites that match the needs of the searcher and offer a secure experience. In 2014, Google announced that HTTPS encryption was included as a ranking factor in its algorithm and the search giant has only doubled-down since then.

Fast forward to 2020 and coming across a website without an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is like watching a movie and seeing everyone talking on flip phones. Unlike a flip phone sighting which instantly dates a movie, an unsecure website will turn off almost all web goers on top of down rank your site with Google and other search engines.

WEBSITE SPEED

PageSpeed is another evergreen ranking factor in the world of SEO. The aim of Google in measuring this is to improve the overall user experience.

In July 2018, Google announced an algorithm update that focused on how quickly website pages load, particularly on mobile devices. This made clear that if the website does not load quickly, it could lose ground to competing sites.

Google had good reason for this update as the majority of people today use their mobile devices while on-the-go for literally everything. If your site fails to load at an acceptable speed, users will simply head over to a competitor’s site to find the information they are looking for.

In fact, according to one statistic, “users spend 70% more time, and have 60% more page views, on websites that load quickly.”

If you are dedicated to increasing your site’s speed, the best option is to use the Google Search Console to diagnose any issues. There is also an entire section dedicated to tips and techniques you can use to improve your site’s performance, including pagespeed.

KEYWORD-OPTIMIZED CONTENT

Why is original optimized content such an important factor for search ranking? Well, in short, your website can have the best layout and design in the world, but if it doesn’t have good content that users are looking for, it’s not worth much to searchers or Google.

Google crawlers rely on keywords to understand what a website has to offer. Short tail keywords (search terms of one to two words) and long tail keywords (search terms of three or more words) are what searchers use when looking for information to answer a question or meet some other need. Targeted keywords and phrases increase a site’s ranking by providing the search engine with a good indicator of what the page is about.

This is not to say you that any form of keyword packing is good and acceptable — it isn’t. For example, you should avoid using any expired or duplicate content. For rankings to be as close to the top as possible, fresh and compelling content works best. This means you will have to invest some time (and maybe some money) into content research and crafting unique and engaging pieces that people will find useful and Google will love.

USER EXPERIENCE

What exactly factors into Google’s ranking algorithm can be a bit of a controversy. For example, here are some of the top signals claimed by SEOs that Google looks for when crawling web pages to measure user experience.

Click-through rate (CTR) — CTR is the number of people (in percentile) who click to open your site after it appears on a Google search results page.

Bounce rate — The bounce rate is the number of people who click through to your website but exit immediately from the page either because they didn’t find what they were looking for or the page was too confusing for them.

Dwell time — This is the time your visitors spend browsing or taking a specific action on your website. Whether they are simply navigating through your website or just reading your blog posts, all of it is considered to be dwell time.

Additionally, we know that Google will soon start to include page experience as a Google ranking factor sometime in 2021. More info on Googles "Core Web Vital metrics" coming soon!

SOCIAL SIGNALS

Having a significant presence on social media channels is another way to rank higher on Google search results. A study of 23 million shares determined that there is a definitive link between social media activity and Google rankings.

While Google does not count backlinks from social media pages in its ranking algorithm, it is still a very important ranking factor to consider.

Why is this?

A social media presence on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or a combination of these makes it easy to share compelling content among target audiences and amplify your chances of driving heavy organic traffic. The overall surge of traffic to a specific site URL can help increase its SEO juice.

IMAGE OPTIMIZATION

A picture is truly worth a thousand words. Optimized visual content is a very important factor that leads to higher search rankings on Google. Images and videos send signals denoting relevancy through their description, caption, and title.

How would you optimize an image or video? If you’re building a site from scratch you will need to ensure images are in the right file format and save for the web, which is typically at a lower resolution quality. Also, you should compress videos so the file size is small but the quality is still high. Use alt text on images and short titles of videos.

CONSISTENT BUSINESS LISTINGS (NAP)

Business listings are also referred to as relevant citations. Search engines rank websites that they believe have expertise, are authoritative and trustworthy (an acronym known as EAT describes this). The more established and successful your brand appears online, the more visibility your website is likely to receive. Thus, having a business listing of some kind with a consistent NAP (name, address, phone number) is an important factor for Google rankings.

Businesses of all sizes struggle to grasp the importance of this search ranking factor. At Launch Lab we consider it a fundemental must for any business and that is why our Business Listing Connect selfservice software is included free as part of our Business Launch Kit | Express business software. ( also free)

DOMAIN AGE

This final factor we will consider here is not something that you can control but it plays a great role in improving your site’s Google rank. Domain age in general is the age of your website, how long your website has been in existence.

Even though Google has been rather ambiguous about this specific factor, some people suggest that your domain’s age plays a crucial role in ranking your website. It also plays a role in requesting backlinks as well.

BOTTOM LINE

Now that you know the most important Google ranking factors of 2020, it is a good idea to think about which areas your website is doing well in and where there is room for improvement and optimization.

One thing to keep in mind, a complete overhaul of your search ranking will not happen overnight. Improving search results rankings takes time and consistency. There are billions of websites online and competition can be stiff. Focusing on the most critical Google ranking factors is key to moving a website higher in SERPs.

5 Reasons You Need Instagram for Your Business

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 19:41:15 GMT

Why Instagram is Important to Your Business

Instagram has entered the territory of “must” rather than “nice-to-have” when it comes to social marketing for businesses. There are a few key reasons why every business should have an Instagram account, and why you’re going to be pretty left out if you don’t get on this social platform.

1. Skyrocket Your Engagement

The data shows that Instagram is the #1 platform for getting post engagement.

That means that if you want to establish a relationship with your client base (which you do), then you’re going to need that post engagement that only Instagram can provide.

But let’s back it up for a second…

It’s an interesting time to be involved in social media marketing… Facebook is facing major allegations, and as a result—people are doing crazy things like starting movements to delete their Facebook accounts… (For my sake, and the sake of your distant relatives, please do not delete your facebook). As much as internet trolls might have you think that it’s the social media Armageddon, I assure you that life will go on.

It might be looking a little overcast in the internet landscape, but before we pack our bags —there’s still some hope. Facebook’s more charismatic and adopted little brother (Instagram) still has users entranced with its purity and boasts a pristine opportunity for brands who are ready to stir up the marketing pot.

Now, Instagram is the #1 platform for post engagement because its focus on visual content creates a very unique space for brands to interact with others—and if you’re a skeptic, the numbers don’t lie. According to a study conducted by Forrester, Facebook and Twitter organic post engagement levels are currently less than 0.1%. In comparison, the millennial-centric Instagram boasts regular engagement at 4% for brands. (That’s 40x better btw).

2. Grow Your Following with Ease

80 percent of Instagram accounts already follow a business on Instagram, and 65% of top-performing posts feature products. The translation here is obvious, Instagrammers want to see branded content, and they want to connect with brands.

Add the engagement levels for brands (4%) that we just saw and we have the optimal landscape for growing your branded following on this platform.

3. Generate Leads

Instagram is a tool for lead generation.

We know that social media strongly influences purchase decisions, even if that is at the subconscious level of the consumer decision-making process.

With Instagram, 60% of users have first heard of a product or service through the platform, and over 120 million Instagram users visited a website, got directions, or called/emailed/direct messaged a business as a result of their engagement with the platform ( sproutsocial ). That means that 120 million Instagrammers have been lead to a business through the platform.

You can easily use Instagram to generate new business and sales with strategic content and links in your bio, as well as reach new targeted and engaged audiences through paid ad campaigns through the Facebook ad platform.

4. Stay On Top of “Instagram Reviews”

A little-known fact is that when an Instagram user posts something on Instagram and uses a location tag, this tag isn’t owned or regulated by the business that owns the physical location. All location tags on Instagram, or “Instagram Geotags”,” are tied to a separate public account that Instagram will store posts under.

For businesses, this is a blessing and a curse.

Best Case Scenario:

Say you own a local restaurant and you have numerous dedicated and consistent customers who love to post at your restaurant and have nothing but glowing words to accompany beautiful pictures of your space. When others look at your location on Instagram, this is what they see, and they are that much more likely to convert and become loyal customers as well.

Worst Case Scenario:

You own the same local restaurant, but one dissatisfied customer took it upon themselves to post a picture of your front door exclaiming their disgust with the service that they received. This post has lingered on the web and likely dissuaded other customers from posting to the location, and has resulted in the loss of unknown amounts of revenue through prospects who steered away from your business as a result.

Although you have no control over the things that users might be saying about your brand (much like standard reviews), you can still help mitigate some possible damages by having a branded Instagram account and monitoring the posts on your location. Much like negative reviews left on other review platforms, by responding to negative Instagram posts, you are much more likely to prevent harm to your reputation.

5. Don’t Get Left Behind

As of 2019, nearly all of businesses in the United States are already using Instagram in some fashion. The release of Instagram business profiles and the ability to to run ads/analytics with ease have been large factors in driving the Instagram growth movement. Mix this all together with the abiolity to sell instantly online through instagram now and it becomes more critical than ever that you have a strong showing of your brand on instagram. If any of this is news to you then you are probably shying far away from TikTok as a viable platform. This is another train you want to get on now before your looking at it on the horizon.

A Brief Introduction to Digital Advertising Metrics

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Sun, 26 Jul 2020 05:04:13 GMT

Whether You Are Managing It Yourself or Partnering With Professional's You Still Need To Understand Your Numbers

C hoosing the right digital advertising metrics to track and measure is crucial to your campaign’s success. If you aren’t tracking advertising efforts correctly, you’ll never know what’s working and what channels to focus your advertising dollars on.

Determining your core ROI goals means you’ll be able to measure data that tells the story of how your target audience interacted with your ads.

Here are a few of the key metrics to track that will help you measure success and determine ROI:

CPA – Cost Per Acquisition

How much does it cost you to acquire a new lead on any given channel?

Knowing the cost to acquire a client for your business is the basis of your marketing budget, so it’s crucial data to add to your ROI analysis. Combined with other ad data, this will determine whether your business will make a profit.

Ideally, you’ll want to get a sense for which mix of ad channels (Search, Facebook, Display) work best for your business. Then you’ll be able to better optimize your ad budget going forward.

Here’s the formula for CPA:

CPA is a simple but valuable formula. Knowing how much it costs to acquire a new lead is key to understanding your ad ROI.

However, we still don’t know the actual value of your client’s customers. The next thing we’ll discuss is LTV, which is essential for further ROI analysis.

LTV – Lifetime Value

Do you know the lifetime value of your customers? You should!

Why? Because this will give you a number that represents an approximation of the revenue a new customer brings in, with all associated costs factored in.

If you know your LTV, you’ll be able to compare it directly to the cost of acquiring a new client through your digital ad campaign.

Here’s the formula you can use to determine your LTV.

C R – Campaign Revenue

Now that we understand how to calculate and analyze the lifetime value of your customers, we’ll be able to track the revenue generated by your digital advertising campaign. As you can see below, you just need to multiply your campaign’s conversions by LTV and closing ratio (50% would be .5).

Why include closing ratio? Obviously, every new lead you generate isn’t going to become a customer, so you’ll need to factor in how often you are able to close new leads to estimate campaign revenue correctly.

ROAS – Return on Advertising Spend

ROAS is an illuminating metric to use for ad campaigns, and a lot of marketers use it interchangeably with ROI itself. However, there are significant differences between the two. What is the difference between ROI and ROAS?

Tim Mayer, CMO of Trueffect explains:

“ROI measures the profit generated by ads relative to the cost of those ads. It’s a business-centric metric that is most effective at measuring how ads contribute to an organization’s bottom line. In contrast, ROAS measures gross revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. It is an advertiser-centric metric that gauges the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns.”

So advertising ROAS is much more focused on the results from specific campaigns, while ROI incorporates the bigger picture relative to the business. This means that it’s much easier for you to be tracking and analyzing advertising efforts with ROAS! You know the cost and you can calculate the revenue.

Setting your own benchmarks and campaign goals based on past performance is the best way to proceed with your advertising efforts.

6 Reasons You Local Business Listings Need to Be Accurate

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 02:28:08 GMT

Small Changes Can Lead to Huge Impact.

As a business, how likely is it that potential customers will come through your door?
The whole point of an online presence is to entice customers into your store, your leasing office or your showroom so you can convert them to paying customers rather than just browsers online.

Further, nothing is more frustrating as a customer than finding out that you have been given the wrong information about where a business is located. As a customer, how likely are you to give this company your business? Not very. In fact, according to Placeable , 73% of consumers stated that they lose trust in a brand when the online listing shows incorrect information.

1. Missing hours of operation information can be a dealbreaker

There are many things that people look for in listings, whether they are looking at that search engine on a PC or on a mobile device. The top piece of information that most people look for is the hours of operation, since their search is likely for a business that they frequent quite often.

In fact, i n a study conducted by local data aggregator Localeze , hours of operation were noted as the most helpful feature in selecting a business during local search. 76% of respondent reporting that they expect this information when searching and 61% believe that it is a feature that helps them to select a business.

Even if people are new to a business, it doesn’t give people a good impression if the business hours are not listed and they don’t know that it’s only open from 11 a.m-6p.m. Tuesday-Saturday .Imagine that potential customer who is ready to spend their money in store, but shows up on Monday at 7 p.m. only to find it closed. That customer is likely going to do another search on a mobile phone to find a different store and spend their money there.

2. You can’t spell NAP data (and score a citation) without an A(ddress)

While most people would assume that the number one reason people do a search online is for the address or location of a business, the address is actually behind hours of operation as the second most desired information. But, of course, the whole point of being in business is to make money doing what you love or selling what you love. And that happens by attracting foot traffic and increasing customer base.

It bears repeating that if a business address is incorrect on listing sites such as Google or Bing, then customers will not be crossing the threshold. A simple thing such as the wrong number on a street address, or even the wrong town, can mean that a customer cannot find you. The US Postal Service relies on a complex system of checks to verify and standardize addresses, and many of the search engines will default to the USPS for correct mailing addresses.

What this means for the average new business owner is that unless a business is in an established location, getting the correct address on their listing means that both the address from City Hall and the information on USPS must be consistent. If USPS doesn’t recognize that address, then a business owner must contact them to verify their new address and get that information updated on USPS’s online database.

3. Local searchers are mobile creatures

According to Localeze, mobile-phone-based searches drive in-store purchases with more than 75% of searches ending in a purchase—if a business has their listing details correct. Now if half of the people searching for a business listing on a local search engine, such as Google Local/Maps, can’t find the store’s business listing details, then the business is going to lose 100% of their business.

For ease of use for potential customers, some of those details need to be as readily available as possible in a mobile-friendly manner. This can be accomplished with a responsive website that supports cellphone and tablet-specific versions.New Paragraph

4. Updated, accurate websites still serve as a first impression

At the same time, more than 60% of searches on PC platforms such as website portals, Internet Yellow Page directories and local sites have a similar chance of ending in a purchase. While mobile searches are becoming more of a standard in where a customer searches, a business owner should not discount the power of a fulsome, consistent and accurate listing that is reflective of the business website.

Any listing should be linked to the business’s website and feature the exact same information, but more of it. While a website should be enough to entice a customer to visit or buy, if those inconsistencies exist, then trust issues may arise in a business’s practices before a customer ever crosses their threshold.

5. Local searchers mix it up across multiple devices, situations and times

People who search for listings are doing it in many more ways than when the Internet first coalesced into existence about two decades ago. In that time, we went from working on desktops to laptops to PDAs to Blackberries to Apples to tablets—and in each iteration, the methods of search have changed.

However, that has slowed over the last five years or so as web developers realize that they need to be smarter. Rather than designing three different sites for three different platforms, they have created websites that are scalable to the search device. And that has been helped along by the proliferation of types of devices in use everyday.

According to Pew Research Center , In 2015, smartphone ownership in America was at 68%, with tablet and computer ownership at 45%. Statista says that almost half of American adults use their smartphones the most to search for local information online, the other half being split between computers (40%) and tablets (11%). According to Localeze , like the types of devices used, what we are searching for varies by the time of day and device. Entertainment is searched for during work hours on computers, restaurants during evening using phones and health/fitness evening using tablets.

The most important part of those mobile searches is accuracy. If someone cannot find your business in a local search or find inaccurate results whilst out and about, then your business has lost the chance for that browser to become a customer. So having those listings correct in all of the device formats is a must as we, and our technology, continue to evolve in the way we interact with local businesses.

6. Local search results are trusted sources of information

Last but certainly not least is the fact that local search results are considered the most trustworthy. In a study by Neustar, it was determined that these searches, such as “used games Raleigh”, are what people do the most since they put that trust in local business more than big box, big website stores.

Think about it, would you rather find a local store where you can get that latest purse in town right now? Or you can wait a week for delivery, which is four days past the event that you want it for! Local searches lend themselves to instant gratification and that interaction between browser and salesperson will convert that browser from someone who might get just the minimum to a loyal customer who feels like a million having spent a little more, but getting what they consider to be gold!

Those interactions are what lead people to local searches and the absolute necessity of getting your listings correct. Trust leads to loyalty, which leads to more business, which leads to happy customers and business owners.

And it all starts with that correct listing in that customer’s local search.

Do You Know If Your Business Listings Are Hurting Your Business?

Use Our Free Listing Heath Report Checker Below and Know For Sure.

Need Help Syncing Your Business Listings?

Try Listing Connect | Express

Creating the Perfect Social Post

brice@businesslaunchkit.com (Brice Wheeler) — Sat, 25 Jul 2020 22:34:29 GMT

It's easier than you think but harder than you realize.

What makes for good social posting, anyway? In order to craft the perfect social post, we need to take a look at why people follow businesses in the first place.

Interest in services and promotions: People love sales! Don’t get TOO excited though. Over posting this information is also one of the leading reasons people unfollow a business.
Updates and information: People are interested in what your business is up to! Have new products? Moving locations? Getting an office dog? Post it!
Communication: Social media is for connecting. People want to talk to you, and they want to review your products and services. Make sure you’re responding to them: it shows you care about your customers.
Entertainment: Are you not entertained? People use social media to get a break from their humdrum day. Post content that will put a smile on their faces or give them something to think about. Hint: it doesn’t always have to be related to your business.

So now that we’ve got a good idea of what people want to see, how do we make the magic happen? When I write social posts, I use three main guidelines to direct me.

The 3 Golden Rules of Local Social Media Marketing

Does it provide value? People engage with content that is relevant to them. Consider whether the post is solving a problem, starting a conversation or educating. People love to share information that is new and exciting. In order to provide the best value to your followers and customers, the vast majority (up to 80%) of your content should be useful or engaging information. In fact, posts promoting the business should only account for 10%-20% of the content.

Is it emotionally engaging? People love stories, and they share content they connect with. Don’t be afraid to show the more personal side of your business. Really, who hasn’t teared up during a Coke ad or giggled at the Budweiser Clydesdales? Brands that go the extra mile to create an emotional connection with their customers stick in their memories longer. Why not post a cat video? Everyone loves a cat video.

Is it visually stimulating? 1200 pixels are worth 1000 words. We’re talking high quality photos, videos and infographics here! Posts that include visuals get way more (almost 650% more) engagement than those without. Keep in mind that not all visuals are created equal. The best ones are the ones that you take yourself, because they’re local, personal and relevant. If you don’t have the capacity to take photos, reposting from other websites and profiles is a great way to keep your page relevant. Quality stock photos are also great resources, just make sure to pay attention to copyright!

Creating content for social media is essential—you need to be present where your customers are, and they’re on social. While it is free to partake, creating an effective social media strategy and sticking to it takes diligence and determination.