Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

Online Marketing Advice for Small Businesses [Slide Deck]

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

online marketing advice for small businessesAs regular readers know by now, we’ve been interviewing marketers on their experiences with online marketing for small businesses. One of my favorite questions to hear the answer to was a question asking what advice they thought small businesses needed to know before going about improving their online presence.

This question probably received the most varied responses, partly due to how much advice each marketer interviewed provided. These marketers truly want to help others. They didn’t throw us a single sentence about optimizing for search, or how social media is important. These professionals often gave us multiple paragraphs full of detailed and helpful advice.

The advice ranged from what they thought should be at the center of an online marketing strategy, to what sort of content drives conversions, to the importance of qualities such as uniqueness and extreme dedication.

About Small Business Spotlight: Since we love small businesses and online marketing (so much so that we have a new product just for them), we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention. So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

(more…)

Online Marketing Misconceptions from Small Businesses [Slide Deck]

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

online marketing misconceptions from small businessesAs regular readers know by now, we’ve been interviewing marketers on their experiences with online marketing for small businesses. When asked if they had any misconceptions starting out, this is what they said.

Notice a common theme is search engine optimization, an online marketing tactic of growing importance with each year. Learn from the rookie mistakes of these smart marketers and follow in their successful footsteps.

It’s not enough to have a website, or even to have a beautiful, well designed website. It takes time and effort to be seen by search engine users. Additionally, you need to use a combination of several online marketing methods to truly spread the word about your product or service.

“If you build it, they will come,” does not apply to websites anymore. (Tweet this!)

About Small Business Spotlight: Since we love small businesses and online marketing (so much so that we have a new product just for them), we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention. So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

(more…)

The 12 Best Small Business Spotlight Quotes [Slide Deck]

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

small business marketing spotlightsWhy should you care about content marketing? Lexion Capital Management, Console & Hollawell, and CBG Benefits have seen results.

How can email marketing increase sales without even offering a coupon? StorkGifts explains how it works for them.

Why is it so important to have a robust presence on search engines through PPC and SEO? Go Get Funding and MyBinding.com explain it perfectly.

For the past few months, eZanga.com has been interviewing small business marketers about their experiences with online marketing. Twelve quotes in particular stood out to us, and we wanted to collect them all in one place to make it easy to learn from these excellent marketers.

About Small Business Spotlight: Since we love small businesses and online marketing (so much so that we have a new product just for them), we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention. So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

(more…)

Small Business Spotlight: Go Get Funding

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

small business spotlight go get fundingThis week’s Small Business Spotlight is a special one: it marks the tenth week of the series! To celebrate, after today we’ll be taking a few weeks to wrap-up all the knowledge that these businesses have shared with us over the past few months. Stay tuned for a few summaries of the previous Small Business Spotlights.

As for this week, we’re talking to Go Get Funding, a website for personal online fundraising. People can create pages on the site to fund-raise for causes like paying medical bills, flying a talented kid out to meet his idol who he imitates perfectly, funding a youth leadership program, and raising gas money for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles party van. The company’s motto is “spread awesomeness,” and they seem to be good at it. Take a look at this infographic to check out everything the site makes possible.

Online marketing is especially important to Go Get Funding because the more visibility it gets, the more visibility the fundraising projects on the site get. They really are about the user. They talk to the users and share fundraising tips and advice through Facebook and Twitter. They also showcase successful fundraisers on their blog.

So, let’s learn more about what they do to help others raise money:

(more…)

The Ingredients to Tasty Search Engine Optimization [Infographic]

Monday, April 22nd, 2013

ingredients of an seo strategySearch engine optimization is a process that needs to be handled with care, much like grilling up a large, tasty, succulent burger. (Tweet this)

You will reap the benefits of SEO if you take the time to gather all the right ingredients, let it marinate, and cook it to perfection. On the flip side, SEO can be overdone and cooked completely wrong.

But most important to this analogy is the fact that different things work for everyone. Some people might find a burger with just a slice of cheese and some ketchup to  be the most mouth-watering, while for other people, cheese does nothing.

In SEO, it’s important to find a mix of what strategies work best for your site. Maybe you don’t have a lot of links back to your site, but a ton of reviews and social signals.

In SEO cooking, it’s important to know what ingredients bring out the burger’s taste best. Don’t try to drown it in ketchup if the burger seems to taste better with just a little ketchup and a whole lot of pickles. Also, don’t be afraid to test out other ingredients, toppings, and condiments, even if they’re not found in traditional recipes.

To make sure your SEO strategy is done just right, let’s go over all of the essential ingredients with this infographic:

(more…)

Small Business Spotlight: MyBinding.com

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

small business spotlight logoHey everyone! We’re back at it with another Small Business Spotlight day. Today we’re here to shed some light on a small online retailer that rocks some online marketing techniques. MyBinding.com, located out of Hillsboro, Oregon, is one of the industry leaders in distributing binding and laminating equipment.

Although the mood may be frequently dampened by the weather in the Oregon office, the sixty-some employees have a very fun working environment. MyBinding enjoys their fair share of office pranks, lunch-ins and parties, much like us here at eZanga. This family-owned company believes that an enjoyable work atmosphere provides for better customer service. They believe that their product is so much more than wire, coil or a $200 binding machine; it’s their means for building and maintaining strong relationships.

MyBinding.com has an excellent online marketing strategy that leaves no ground uncovered. They’ve dabbled in paid search, SEO, comparison shopping engines, video marketing, article marketing, blogging, social media, and online marketplaces. Their content marketing is what interests us the most. MyBinding manages to discuss office supplies without boring readers. Did you know there are seven different ways to fold a letter? They also stand out with their video marketing strategy; they record product demonstrations, reviews, tutorials, and more.

By adjusting to customer needs and marketing themselves well, they have experienced substantial growth within the last 30 years of their establishment. Check out our interview with MyBinding.com to find out more how this small business has prospered.

(more…)

Small Business Spotlight: CastCoverZ!

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

small business marketing spotlightIt’s that time of week again: Small Business Spotlight day! This week we are talking to CastCoverZ! Breaking a bone can be a huge pain (get it?), and orthopedic accessories are never fun. Metal crutches can be cold and you can’t carry anything with your hands on their handles. The texture of casts can ruin other fabrics it comes in contact with and the cast can’t get wet.  Not to mention the lack of style all this equipment comes with.

Luckily, CastCoverz! knows how to add some fun as well as solve some of your biggest challenges while casted, booted, splinted, braced or bandaged. As a pretty injury-prone person who has tried to make orthopedic gear more comfortable, I can attest that there is a definite need for these accessories. I wish I’d known about CastCoverZ! sooner!

The basis of CastCoverz! online marketing strategy is that they are all about the customers. They encourage customer communication through social media and without customer stories, they truly believe that they would be nothing. Their blog features timely posts like notable athlete and celebrity injuries, as well as helpful information on orthopedic topics like knee pain and sports injuries. On their social profiles, they’re all about their customers. They post pictures of their customers using the products and tweet about care packages they send out.

Read on to find out more about what else works for them:

(more…)

Small Business Spotlight: Hirease

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

small business marketing spotlightWe’re back with another Small Business Spotlight this week, and we have another HR-related company talking to us today. It looks like even though difficulty with social media seems to be a trend, we also see a lot of trends off success with online marketing between the two HR companies we’ve talked to so far. This week, we’re spotlighting Hirease.

The first thing that stood out to me when looking at Hirease’s website was the great content on their blog. As we’ve said before, a business blog is essential to any content marketing strategy. They have great posts based on current events, such as having fun at work on April Fool’s Day and improving employee morale with a March Madness bracket.

So, without further ado, here’s a little more information about Hirease:

(more…)

Small Business Spotlight: StorkGifts

Thursday, March 14th, 2013

StorkGifts.com logoHello, everyone! Today we’re continuing our Small Business Spotlight series by talking to Melissa Chelist, of StorkGifts. We also want to remind you that your small business could be here! We want to give the best small business marketers their spot to shine. If you think your business deserves a spotlight, fill out this form and we will contact you as soon as we can!

Tell us about your business and overall marketing strategy.

StorkGifts is an online retailer of personalized baby and personalized children’s gifts. We offer over 75 different items that can be customized with the customer’s choice of color, design and personalization. We have three main target customer groups. We offer upscale, high quality gifts, so we are searching for boutique shoppers.

(more…)

Small Business Spotlight: Console & Hollawell

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

console and hollawellWelcome to our new weekly series, Small Business Spotlight. Here at eZanga, we are committed to small business. We are one, and we want to support others, whether it’s through helping them advertise or any other way we can.

Since we obviously love small businesses and online marketing, we decided that small businesses who rock at online marketing deserve more attention.

So for the next few months, once a week we’re going to feature a Q&A with a small business that has a great online presence. It may be social media or PPC, but all of these small businesses are doing at least one thing right!

This week, we’re talking to Rick Console, of Console & Hollawell. This one is going to be especially interesting, since the legal industry is a highly regulated one. Read on to to see how Console & Hollawell manages to innovate and succeed in spite of the regulations.

(more…)