BizActions

In traditional (outbound) marketing, companies focus on finding customers. Inbound marketers flip outbound marketing on its head. Inbound marketing is the concept of integrating content, search and social media to help prospects find your company (instead of you finding them) through the sharing of information they consider valuable and choose to engage with.

Essentially, you want to consistently generate enough interest and engagement so that prospects choose to continuously access your content because they’ve come to know that whatever you publish has a high likelihood of being valuable to them.

Inbound marketing alone may be sufficient for a company to target, convert and retain clients if (and only if) the company is well known and well established within the industry. Victoria’s Secret has one of the largest Facebook followings, with over 17 million fans. Their brand is known worldwide because they have done a fair amount of outbound marketing over the years with their catalogs and commercials. Could they get away with eliminating their outbound marketing? Probably. But even Victoria’s Secret knows that to maximize their marketing investment, they should not stop utilizing traditional marketing methods, such as email marketing, e-newsletters, and direct mail marketing.

Companies that do not yet have a universally recognizable brand do not have the luxury of even considering using inbound marketing as their sole strategy. It takes exposure to the masses to develop a brand and corporate identity, educate potential prospects about the company, and begin building credibility and trust.

The most successful inbound marketing campaigns are comprised of three primary components: 

• Content – whitepapers, ebooks, podcasts, blogs, vlogs, infographics
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media

Content creation is the heart and soul of any marketing campaign, but inbound marketing cannot survive without it. It is the foundation and cornerstone of online strategies. Information attracts prospects to your company. How helpful, informative and relevant that information is will determine how effective it is.

SEO makes it easier for the right prospects to find you. By utilizing the right tools, keyword analysis and link-building, you maximize your visibility on organic searches for terms that match what you are communicating. Once traffic begins to flow to your site(s), your page ranking increases, and, in turn, so does your SEO. It’s kind of an inverted tornado – once the winds begin picking up, they increase and whirl until you’re at the pinnacle (page one on Google).

Social Media amplifies the impact of your content marketing efforts. Qualified leads turn to social media networks for honest, authentic reviews by existing clients and customers before making decisions. When your content is discussed in an open, public forum like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Tumblr, and other outlets, it not only helps increase your search engine reputation, but, perhaps even more importantly, your company’s overall reputation.

The goal of inbound marketing is to get qualified prospects to knock on your door, instead of you canvassing the neighborhood with a flashlight searching for leads. As with all other types of marketing, past and present, inbound marketing requires that you:

• Understand and penetrate your target markets
• Add value
• Build trust
• Consistently deliver valuable content that is relevant to your markets
• Build relationships
• Provide clear calls to action
• Solicit and promote feedback and discussion
• Track your success

Inbound marketing is an ongoing process and strategy with none of the expiration dates or campaign deadlines that exist in many outbound marketing strategies. Building trust, adding value and establishing relationships take time and consistency.

The simple fact is that outbound and inbound strategies (like email newsletters and social media) are not adversaries; they’re complementary tools that can be used to support and enhance each other. By weaving email marketing and social media together as part of your traditional mix, you can dramatically enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Why? It could be as simple as the quantity of touches. Blogs and other social media outlets have the opportunity to obtain much more traffic than your email newsletter list can grow. The content you post on your blog may be dense with the keywords that search users are using, which may not even be the same as the keywords that SEO experts identify or recommend for your firm. Your email newsletter can drive readers to your blog or website or Facebook page, but the content on those sites remains searchable in between e-newsletter launches.

A common thread between email newsletters and social media is relevant content. Each become more effective the more relevant they are. Just as readers won’t open or click on an email that isn’t of interest to them, they’ll pass right over a post on a social media site that misses the mark as well.

Outbound and inbound marketing should be integrated for maximum return on investment. Because content is the key to both outbound and inbound marketing, use that to your advantage.

• Use your email newsletter and your blog as “content laboratories” to determine what your prospects are interested in, what drives the most traffic, inspires the most comments, etc.

• Set up “preference centers” for your email newsletter and blog – let your prospects tell you what they want to see, read and receive.

• Identify the channels you want to focus on, but remain flexible enough to adapt the strategy based upon the metrics you reap and analyze.

• Mix and match your methodologies until you find the best recipe for growth and long term success.

• “Push” your prospects to your social sites and “pull” your prospects into your outbound strategies (using sign-up forms).

• Cultivate relationships for the long term, using both outbound and inbound strategies. Nurture with relevant content.

Remember that consumers are savvy and long to “connect” in our increasingly impersonal, electronic world. Be somewhat ironic and use electronic media to reach out and touch your prospects. Make those connections.

Build upon the data that you pull from these interactions and data points by delivering even more content in creative ways that fits the needs of your target market – ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, videos, cartoons – and share the content using all of the channels and methods at your disposal.

Your BizActions service can be used in many different ways. One of the services areas some members forget to promote is seminars. You can incorporate your own custom Sponsor Content articles in your email newsletter and effectively market to your entire database. This is a feature included in your service which is very cost-effective.

Another feature that can be used to promote your seminars is Email Radar. This method can be used a couple of different ways. You can send out a follow-up message to your entire database via Email Radar or you can have a more targeted approach. For example, you may be hosting a seminar that wouldn't appeal to your entire database. Using Email Radar, you can target the group that would be interested in several different ways. Some of those identifiers are by city, state, member type or by using one of our thirty dynamic fields.

Seminars are an effective way to position yourself along with your company as an expert. Obviously the more seminars you conduct, the more credibility you gain. Your BizActions service is a great way to promote your seminars. For more instruction on how BizActions can help to better promote your seminars, contact your dedicated Customer Service Representative.

Solutions
In this day and age, when finding good customer service is almost impossible, we pride ourselves on our friendly and knowledgeable dedicated Customer Support Representatives (CSRs). Our support team will help you get your email newsletter creation underway and customized just the way you want it. The flexible design options in our system allow you to match your newsletter to the colors, graphics, logos, photographs and branding of your website or blog. If you don’t have a website or blog, we can help you develop a new brand for you to build upon. One of our CSRs will assist you in getting your contacts turned into members, aid you in analyzing your initial launches, help you along the way toward effective email management and provide ongoing tips on how to maximize your e-marketing presence. Our goal is to consistently exceed your expectations with world class service and product offerings so that you will remain a BizActions Sponsor (client) for the rest of your career. If you have any questions or would like to know more, please contact BizActions at 866.240.8477, visit our website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We have all the tools you need to expand your e-marketing reach.

With tax season 2012 in the rearview mirror and spring in full bloom, you may be looking for an additional stream of revenue. That could be a new niche – such as the rapidly growing area of alternative energy – or it might be a more closely targeted audience for an existing niche– like “financial planning for professional women in the southwestern United States.”  The better you define your target, the more affordable your marketing efforts will be and the more likely you will be to attract new clients. After all, most people find a special appeal in getting necessary services from an advisor that is focused on the needs and desires of a narrow group that includes them.

How can you position yourself or your firm as the go-to experts for your new niche or narrow audience?  A CPA email newsletter reaches out to your clients and prospects with professionally written, timely email newsletter articles, packed with news taxpayers can use. Depending on which accountant newsletter provider you choose, you may have certain very attractive options, such as:

• The ability to supplement (or even replace) the articles that are written for you with material you write yourself.



• Online survey software tools that allow you to poll your readers for opinions. These opinions can help your further target your newsletter content so that you know you’re giving readers what they want.



• Technology that reveals in detail which articles are being opened by your email newsletter recipients. That lets you see where the true interest lies and what information and services your clients and prospects are looking for. Having that insight could lead to new niches or help you target your audience even more precisely.



• A business email newsletter that reaches out to all of your firm’s clients, and/or one that speaks directly to a group you wish to cater to. This could be a financial planning newsletter, with the added ability to add your own content that narrows the focus still further. To continue with the previous example, you might offer clients a financial planning newsletter, then use the features provided to reach out specifically to female executives who reside in the southwestern United States.

On its own, a well-written, professionally presented business email newsletter offers you flexible and affordable marketing. But by helping you narrow your focus it also opens door for other ways to market, such as speaking engagements and personal networking. Once you have identified your most coveted audience and have in place the expertise to serve that client-base, reaching out with an effective affordable marketing tool like a business email newsletter can turn the world into your oyster.

We all know that new marketing strategies attract marketers like moths to a flame. For some reason, marketers assume “out with the old and in with the new” is the only way to improve results. The discussion about outbound marketing versus inbound marketing often leads to more efforts and budgetary resources being allocated to inbound marketing efforts.

Inbound marketing strategies are on the rise. The return on investment for outbound marketing depends on your goals and objectives, percentage of budget allocated to the outbound strategies, and how integrated ALL of your marketing techniques are in your overall marketing plan.

Even Hubspot, who coined the term “inbound marketing” and is credited with initiating the concept, uses outbound marketing to enhance engagement with inbound leads.

Outbound marketing, while typically more expensive, often produces faster results than inbound marketing does. It is also easier to scientifically measure the ROI on outbound methods and adjust your strategy accordingly. Most businesses still depend upon outbound marketing to bring in consistent profits. The advent of inbound marketing has not affected our dependence on outbound marketing.

Why? Most consumers are accustomed to outbound marketing (except perhaps our newest generation, who were born with iPhones in hand). Outbound marketing is familiar. It’s expected. It can even be surprising when done in a modern, creative way (think Super Bowl commercials). Email marketing is one of the few outbound strategies that has continued to evolve with technology. There’s no better (and more cost-effective) way to send targeted, personalized messages based on the recipient’s interests and demographics. Email lists have the MOST relevance potential, plus the added component of offering educational and informative content that would simply be too lengthy to include in an ad or commercial or postcard, or even a brochure. 

Email databases can be segmented and broken down not only by demographics and interests, but also by behavior. If a subscriber interacts with your message, purchases a product or service, forwards or replies to your email, or exhibits any other kind of engagement with the communication, that activity can be tracked and classified. Does that sound like an antiquated, out of date marketing methodology to you? Think about it this way: What email newsletters do you subscribe to? Chances are, there are a couple of newsletters that you actually look forward to receiving in your inbox and that you would truly miss if they suddenly stopped showing up. This type of engagement with your favorite email newsletters happens because of targeted marketing, effective list segmentation and messaging with relevance, followed by responsiveness to the reader (you).

Imagine what would happen if you combined the effectiveness of outbound marketing strategies like email marketing with the reach and visibility of inbound marketing… would it, could it, possibly transform your marketing?

There is nothing wrong with spending money on tried and true marketing strategies when they provide verifiably positive results. But if there is a chance that making a change, reconstructing or remodeling your efforts would produce even better results, you would be foolish not to try it. Consider the impact a more balanced mix of contemporary outbound and fresh inbound marketing strategies could have on your bottom line. 

How would you balance inbound and outbound marketing strategies? Share your comments here.

In our previous posts in the SEO Tips and Strategies for Success series, we reviewed keyword research, development and implementation, meta data, naming your domain, quality content, utilizing incoming and outgoing links, and using footers and calls to action to help drive the right traffic to your door. Here are some final thoughts on SEO to wrap up this blog series.

Final SEO Food For Thought

Reaching that coveted Page 1 rank on Google won’t happen overnight. You can't simply publish a new microsite, sit back, and expect to welcome a horde of new qualified visitors to knock on your virtual door. If you want your microsite to be successful, you must promote your site. Both search engine optimization (SEO) and paid advertising on search engines can help drive visitors to your microsite. More visitors ultimately lead to more prospects.

To increase visitors to your site, first you have to think like the robots (spiders) that search engines use to find and catalog web pages. Describe your products and services using words that your prospects would likely use in a search and incorporate your keywords strategically throughout your site, from behind the scenes in the source code (using meta data) to the page content to the call to action to the image file names to the footer.

Then you have to promote your site. Link to it from your primary website, blog, and social media platforms. Utilize the hundreds of articles and resources to your advantage and fill up your social media feeds for months at a time. Every page on your microsite is important to the site’s overall search engine optimization, and not only because each page is a valuable asset. Your users could land on many pages within your site. Search engines could rank any page. Pages won’t be ranked if they’re not seen (visited).

If you don’t want to wait a few months for SEO benefits to kick in, consider advertising on search engines to speed up the results. The pay-per-click (PPC) approach could potentially increase traffic to your microsite within a week, depending on your product or service and the keywords/description you pay to promote.

Google AdWords lets you create different pay-per-click (PPC) ads and track the results of each individually so that you can make adjustments as needed. While Google still leads the world in search users, giving you maximum exposure for your PPC ads, placing PPC ads on Yahoo and MSN will extend your reach and may cost less than Google. The cost for PPC ads spans a wide range, from a few cents to several dollars per click, depending on how much a certain keyword is in demand among advertisers. You can set a daily or monthly maximum charge to ensure that you stay within your budget.

Both SEO and PPC advertising play a role in website promotion. SEO, using a few select keywords, pays off over a longer term. PPC ads cost more but work quickly and can be tailored to target any number of specific market niches.

SEO can get very technical at times. Even SEO experts can become overwhelmed by racing to keep up with the ever-changing SEO landscape, from new and updated algorithms to keyword strategies to discovering products that aid the process or monitor the results. The key is to continuously focus on the basics. A lot of little changes will, with time, produce a bigger change: boosting your site’s visibility in the SERPs. Search engine optimization takes patience: just remember that properly planned SEO techniques on your site will feed into its popularity over time and increase your pipeline of prospects to grow your business. 

Did you like our SEO Tips and Strategies blog series?

Download the full SEO Tips and Strategies whitepaper.

About BizActions
Relationships are the key to business success. As the leader in business-to-business messaging, we have the experience to help you accomplish your goals. We know what clients respond to and pride ourselves on being at the leading edge of technology and client communications. BizActions is the ONLY e-marketing system that includes original, professionally-written, industry-specific content in such areas as accounting (U.S., Canada, Australia), law, financial services, human resources, estate planning, banking, employee benefits and more.  Discover how our dynamic, effective and flexible suite of synergistic solutions can help generate opportunities for your firm so that you may remain top of mind and build your business one impression at a time.

Where is your marketing strategy taking your business?
Shift into high gear with the premier e-marketing, email newsletter and communications provider. For over 10 years, BizActions has been helping accounting firms and other professional service providers grow their revenues. BizActions’ fully integrated suite of e-marketing solutions were designed to work seamlessly and synergistically to drive more traffic to your website, and ultimately, directly to you. Ask us about our E-Newsletter, Client Relationship and Integrated Online Marketing Solutions. 

Ready to see exactly how BizActions can help you build your business one impression at a time? Schedule a strategic meeting where we will demonstrate your expected return on marketing investment by implementing the BizActions suite of dynamic and integrated e-marketing solutions.

Do you need to track signups for a seminar or other event and would like to have integration with your e-newsletter database?  With BizActions Event Registration you can build a registration form that is housed on BizActions servers or hosted on your website.  If turned on, this add-on feature allows the ability to market events through your BizActions email newsletter and through your BizActions Email Radar.  Then you can track signups within your database of members based on a specific marker for each event that populates into a special database field.  An automatic confirmation message is sent to those signing up for the event and to the internal team member handling the signups.  Finally you can then create groups of those who have, or have not signed up for a particular event to send follow up messages.

Here are some additional benefits and database features associated with Event Registration:

• Outlook calendar reminder option built in for those signing up for the event.


• Field named Event Markers captures a specific event marker for each event a member signs up for.  Multiple event markers will be input into the field separated by a comma.


• Search for signups based on the event marker field, and create email radar groups based on the event marker field.


• Existing member records will update with any newly added information based on the fields captured on the form.


• HTML Code is provided to house the signup form on your own website.


• If the form is posted on your website, anyone who signs up that is not already a member will automatically be added to the database as a prospect.

Note that event registration is an add-on feature to the BizActions platform and the cost is $750.00 per year for an annual subscription.  The price may vary depending on other add-ons that are already a part of your subscription. Please contact your dedicated Customer Support Representative or Sales Representative with any questions about this great feature and to get started!

Solutions

In this day and age, when finding good customer service is almost impossible, we pride ourselves on our friendly and knowledgeable dedicated Customer Support Representatives (CSRs). Our support team will help you get your email newsletter creation underway and customized just the way you want it. The flexible design options in our system allow you to match your newsletter to the colors, graphics, logos, photographs and branding of your website or blog. If you don’t have a website or blog, we can help you develop a new brand for you to build upon. One of our CSRs will assist you in getting your contacts turned into members, aid you in analyzing your initial launches, help you along the way toward effective email management and provide ongoing tips on how to maximize your e-marketing presence. Our goal is to consistently exceed your expectations with world class service and product offerings so that you will remain a BizActions Sponsor (client) for the rest of your career. If you have any questions or would like to know more, please contact BizActions at 866.240.8477, visit our website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We have all the tools you need to expand your e-marketing reach.

In our previous “SEO tips and strategies for success” post, we reviewed how to increase traffic to your site through incoming and outgoing links. Today’s post focuses on the oft-forgotten footer and the frequently buried call to action (CTA). Both of these elements can have a profound effect on your visibility and prospect engagement.

Footer

The footer section of your microsite repeats at the bottom of every page. You can add images, embellishments, links and keywords in the same manner as when adding other content, except that you cannot use the H1 tag in the footer. You can change the color of the text, add bold, italics or underlines, incorporate links to your primary website, and include an image (perhaps your logo or a photo).

One thing that might be helpful to include in the footer, as it may not be included in too many other areas of your site, are the locations you serve (particularly if you have more than one location or serve a large geographic area). You may wish to include a list of the cities or states where you do business or where someone might search for you.

It is also recommended that you include a brief description of your company that might not otherwise be relevant to the body content of the page, and therefore not included in the Intro Text. Because you might want to include a paragraph or two of content, plus a listing of locations, you may want the footer text to be smaller than the rest of the content on the page so it doesn’t take up too much visible space, but is still legible. Just be careful not to adjust your font size smaller than 8px or to create “invisible” text by making it the same color as the background. Both practices will hurt your site’s search rankings and reputation.

Call To Action

SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present. Your BizActions Online Resource Library or Online Tax Guide includes a special section for your call to action that appears at the top right of each page within the microsite. If you’re creating your own microsite or updating an existing one, don’t forget the all-important call to action (CTA).

The best calls to action are:

• Proportional to other visual elements
• Larger than less critical CTAs
• Prominent and easily found
• Above the fold - at or near the top of a webpage, email or e-newsletter
• Customized to fit the type of CTA or communication method
• Separated from other elements with whitespace
• In a contrasting color to make them stand out
• Dual-purpose, offering secondary actions in addition to the primary action
• Successful in conveying a sense of urgency

Calls to action play a significant role in motivating prospects to click, as does the quality of the content. Click activity will not only help your SEO (clicks demonstrate engagement in your content, which is the most justifiable metric a search engine can use to determine relevance and value), but are also your best overall metric to determine the effectiveness of your site and its content.

Stay tuned to this blog for more online marketing strategies and tips for success. Don’t want to wait for future blog posts? Download the full SEO Tips and Strategies whitepaper.

Your online marketing tools can serve a purpose beyond marketing. A number of our Estate Planning Attorneys also utilize their email newsletter database to remind both their clients and themselves when an impending consultation has been scheduled. Their objective is to meet with clients about once a year in order to go over life changes or changes in the law that may directly impact their clients’ wills, trusts and/or estate tax implications. A major factor in the success of these firms is their ability to engage with their clients in a way that leads to repeat visits from their existing client base.

Prior to putting the automated reminder system into place, the process of regularly following up with their entire client base had been time consuming and had also left room for missed meetings. In order to resolve this dilemma, administrative staff members simply noted anticipated dates of upcoming meetings in one of the BizActions platform data fields, prepared an email radar message to be sent out automatically one month prior to the meeting date reminding clients that their “estate planning check-up” was due, and then put a practice into place to search the database for all scheduled meetings at the beginning of each month. This process created an easy way for our Estate Planning Attorneys and their staff to automate meeting reminders for both themselves and their clients. When the tools available through the BizActions platform are fully utilized, it can become a major factor in improving work flow management and increasing repeat business.

Estate Planning Attorneys and Accountants can utilize their legal and accounting email newsletter campaigns for imparting time sensitive, meaningful and educational information that can both impact their clients’ professional lives as well as their personal lives. Additionally, utilizing email radar announcements and reminders gives a sense of comfort to their clients in knowing that their lawyer and accountant have their interest and requirements in mind and under control.

Solutions
BizActions is the premier Estate Planning Email Newsletter service for law firms and accounting firms seeking to keep in touch regularly with high net worth individuals. It's the easiest way to keep your brand and name foremost in your clients’ minds when they are in need of services or advice. BizActions is designed for use by lawyers, accountants and other professionals engaged in practices that include estate planning, wills, probate, investments, and general family planning issues. Through consistent, frequent delivery of professional estate planning articles, you can use a customized electronic newsletter or targeted email messaging to showcase your firm's specialized practice areas. Timely articles on a variety of subjects will interest, inform and inspire your clients, as well as keep them up to date when laws change. Please contact us at 866.240.8477, visit our website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Every business needs an accountant. However, this business necessity is reflected by an abundance of CPA firms whether one lives in a small town in Wyoming or Newark, New Jersey. The constant competition presents challenges to finding new clients and requires a fair amount of marketing. Although the Internet has facilitated marketing in many ways, you still need to provide content that will attract clients, hold their attention, and keep them coming back for more. Even if you happen to be a fantastic writer and marketing genius, you would still need to allocate a fair percentage of your time to creating and publishing content. Fortunately, you don't have to spend most of your time working as an erstwhile marketer to provide clients with droves of quality content.

The first step to take is hiring newsletter content providers to do such marketing for you. Just as you are an expert in your field of work, so are they when it comes to writing articles that attract clients and provide them with useful information. The second step is making sure that the marketing company specializes in your industry and offers an easy, hands-off tool like the Timely Opportunities Widget. Updated twice a week with interesting, helpful, business-related articles that are presented with your company name and branding materials as the headliner, this widget makes for easy, effective, hands-off marketing.

To learn more about  how CPA client newsletters, business newsletter content, and the Timely Opportunities Widget can help in building your business, contact BizActions today.

Businesses from every industry need to keep up on the news. It lets companies know about the direction of regional and national politics, laws and regulations that could affect them, and all sorts of information that can play roles in decisions ranging from regional marketing to major restructuring within the company. News items are of vital importance for every business and why administrators of most companies read certain publications and papers on a daily basis. They also visit websites to obtain information and are more likely to keep visiting sites that provide updated, newsworthy items.

This is one of the reasons why an email newsletter campaign can be an effective way to build a business. However, other steps should also be taken to provide potential customers with easily accessible, helpful information. One of the best ways to accomplish this is with a news widget. As long as it gets regularly updated with fresh, helpful, and interesting news items that are related to business, people will appreciate such information by signing up for a newsletter or at least coming back to the website for more. The items featured on the news widget will also be that much more valuable when they are researched and crafted by a newsletter content service provider.

Learn more about the benefits of the Timely Opportunities Widget by contacting BizActions today.

Email newsletter articles are an excellent marketing tool. The recipe is simple yet effective. Customers sign up for the newsletter in search of helpful information. A newsletter content service crafts newsletters that will appeal and provide helpful information to people from a wide range of sectors. Customers are pleased and impressed with the content and associate the firm that sent them the newsletter with expertise, good customer service, and people who provide solutions. The end result is more clients for the firm that sent out the newsletter. It's a great strategy that works but why stop there? Even email campaigns can be strengthened with other marketing tools.

One such tool is a news widget that is updated with fresh content twice a week. Located on a firm's website, when prospective clients click on the widget (a small "box" designed for the website in question), a page opens with an interesting and helpful article. It deals with recent news that is important for every business and has a header that features the firm's name and brand. Even better, when newsletter content providers are tasked with writing the articles, the widget gets automatically updated twice per week.

To learn more about the benefits of the Timely Opportunities Widget, contact BizActions today.

When I talk with other marketing directors about their e-communications, e-newsletters, blogs, social media, etc., I am frequently asked a variation of the ROI question, "How do I know if I am getting my money's worth?" Marketing directors and partners want to make sure they are getting value for the resources expended to communicate with their clients and prospects. I usually ask, "What did you expect to get?" It surprises me how often the answer to that question is, "I'm not sure." If you don't have a well thought out plan with documented expectations, it will always be hard to measure success or to make improvements. 

What Can be Expected?

Some CPA firms that send out e-newsletters simply want to provide information to their clients and prospects. They want to keep the firm name prominent in the mind of prospects so that when they meet them at a networking function or call on them, the prospect knows who they are. Other firms are looking for their e-communication to provide qualified leads to get new prospects into their sales funnel. Still others are looking to expand wallet share with existing clients. ROI measurement will be different in each case.

If your goal is to simply use your e-newsletter to get your name in front of prospects and provide information to clients, information on open and click rates is probably your best measure of success. Most e-newsletter platforms will provide information on how many newsletters were sent, how many were opened and how many articles were read. The key to knowing if you are getting value is to set expectations about what those numbers should be. If you are meeting or exceeding your expectations, great. If you are falling short, you will need to determine if the content is not engaging the reader or if you need to improve the quality of prospects you are sending to. In any case, having the information will allow you to adjust your communications to meet your goals.

If your goal is to generate leads, the process is a bit more complex. Here, you will need to have a communications strategy designed to engage the prospect over time. You will also need to be able to measure the level of engagement of prospects and have a plan in place to harvest the data and follow-up. The BizActions system builds a profile of what individual prospects read which can be used to determine level and areas of interest. Valuable information when you are calling on a prospect. Again, in order to determine if you are getting value from your efforts, you need to set expectations and measure. Set targets for the number of prospects you think should be reading your e-newsletter. Establish a process to harvest leads from those readers and to follow-up to determine their interest in engaging your firm. This could include a drip campaign to help move prospects through the sales process. If so, you should make sure your newsletter platform supports this. If you are not meeting your goals, adjust your communications plan.

In order to increase wallet share with current clients, you will want to determine, with your partners, what services you want to promote. Develop a series of communications designed to introduce the services and help clients identify how the service would benefit them. As with new prospects, you will need to build this interest over time and have a plan in place to harvest leads and follow-up. Again, set targets for the number of leads and sales you expect to generate and adjust your plans if you are not meeting the targets.

Setting Targets is Key

The BizActions electronic newsletter system provides a great deal of data along with the ability to target segments of your client and prospect databases. But without targets you have nothing to measure against. Determine what you expect for opens and clicks. Set goals for how many clients or prospects you want to read a specific series of messages or articles. Be flexible and adjust your communications as needed to achieve the targets. By doing this, you will be able to decide if your efforts are providing value. Better yet, if you are successful, you will be able to show how your program is contributing to firm growth.

Solutions

BizActions has solutions to drive your e-marketing success. Within our complete communications platform and integrated into our powerful CPA email newsletters, we provide business development, lead generation and branding solutions for CPA firms. Communication is the key to relationships. Relationships are the key to business success. As the leader in business-to-business messaging, we have the experience to help you accomplish your goals. We know what clients respond to and pride ourselves on being at the leading edge of technology and client communications. BizActions is the ONLY e-marketing system that includes original, professionally-written, industry-specific content in such areas as accounting (U.S., Canada, Australia), law, financial services, human resources, estate planning, banking, employee benefits and much more. Discover how our dynamic, effective and flexible suite of synergistic solutions like our Online Resource Library can help you. Our Online Resource Library is a custom-branded stand-alone website that houses hundreds of resources for your clients - all while increasing your firm’s SEO. Our e-marketing solutions can help generate opportunities for your firm so that you may remain top of mind and build your business one impression at a time. Learn more by visiting our website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

In our previous post in our series about SEO success, we discussed how quality content is absolutely critical to search engine optimization and the lead generation opportunities that a highly ranked microsite can obtain. In this post, we will review how to increase traffic to your site through links both to and from your site.

Outgoing Links

You will want to include outgoing links in your microsite. Add links to specific pages or content on your site (or other important sites, including your blog, social media platforms, industry or other relevant websites). Include links that route to websites that compliment your site, offering the visitor more information on a pertinent topic (such as tax forms on IRS.gov). Relevant outgoing links also boost your search engine ranking, particularly if the site you link to returns the favor and links back to your microsite. A handful of quality links to relevant sites will likely improve your search engine ranking and increase your traffic of qualified visitors.  

Incoming Links

There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than integrating links from your primary website to your microsite – it is one of the easiest and most effective ways to boost traffic to individual pages. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting it linked from another quality (reputable) site. Good link popularity (the total number of websites that link to your site) can dramatically increase your microsite’s traffic. Well-placed links are an excellent source of consistent, targeted traffic and may even generate a better search ranking as most search engines factor link popularity into their relevancy algorithms. 

Do not be tempted to submit your microsite’s domain to multiple “FFA” (free for all) link farms, however. Link farms are groups of sites specifically set up to create cross-links between sites or pages, with the sole intention of artificially inflating link popularity. All of the major search engines consider such links as spam; associating with link farms will hurt your site’s reputation and trash your search rankings. Improve the link popularity of your microsite by adding links from relevant, valuable websites, such as your own primary site, your blog site, and perhaps a few of your clients’ sites; consider including your microsite’s URL in your online listings for industry associations or local organizations (such as the Chamber of Commerce, online Yellow Pages, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, etc.). This will have a much greater effect on your link popularity and your search engine rankings than simply adding your site’s links to link farms. 

It is recommended that your links go “deep” into your microsite to help boost its reputation. Rather than only linking to the home page of your microsite, consider linking to different pages within the microsite from different areas of your main website (or other sites where links are published). Having multiple links to various sections of your microsite indicates to a search engine that you have worthwhile content worthy of sharing. If you only link to the home page, search engines interpret your microsite as being shallow with limited value (or else there would be more links to interior pages of the site) or that your links were generated through an automated process. 

When you create your links to your microsite, give your links titles. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this practice into how they determine relevancy for a page. Try to incorporate your keywords and keyword phrases into your links as well. For example, if your keyword is “CPA email newsletters,” the link from your main website should say something like, “We also have solutions for accounting firms, including CPA email newsletters” rather than “click here”. If you have specific locations, include the location in your link text (“We also have solutions for Delray Beach accounting firms, including CPA email newsletters”) to help you get found in local searches. 

As with all other SEO approaches, be sure your links are appropriate and be careful not to cross the line into excessive linking from one site – not only do you not want to annoy your visitors, but you also don’t want search engines to think you’re stuffing your site with backlinks. 

In addition to placing links to your microsite on your main website, blog and association/organization listings, you should also be sharing links through your social media platforms, email radars and newsletters, and in your Outlook e-signature. Distributing links to fresh content on your site across your social networking platforms will help your site gain visitors, which will help raise its reputation, which will help raise its ranking. Whether your links (post) is displayed on your company's Facebook (or Twitter or LinkedIn) account, or recommended (“liked” or “+1”), re-tweeted, and re-distributed by someone else, this strategy exponentially multiplies the number of places where visitors will view your links, which exponentially multiplies your visibility and opportunity to reach prospects. 

Remember to link to different pages from your social media platforms. Send links to specific articles or your call to action page. With hundreds of articles and resources on your microsite, you have a nearly unlimited supply of social media content to share… which means that you have unlimited opportunities to reach your target markets.

Stay tuned for a few more posts in our series of tips and strategies for SEO success on microsites. Don’t want to wait for future blog posts? Download the full SEO Tips and Strategies whitepaper.

There is a basic equation for customer service that can be applied to any business. Do a good job, treat customers like the most important people in the room, and always be honest with them and they will reward you with repeat business and invaluable word-of-mouth recommendations. However, even if your firm is going to provide the best customer service in town, that doesn't matter much until you have enough clients ready to sing your praises. Email newsletter articles are an effective means of warming up prospects for conversion into clients, but they still have to find your website in a turbulent sea of competition. Your email newsletter can be employed to drive traffic back to your website.

Once at your website, it's good to provide valuable information that keep prospects coming back for more. An excellent marketing tool that can act like a lighthouse in a storm of competition, while also providing good customer service to future clients, is a regularly updated news widget. New articles every week that provide important information about the latest, business-related news help to increase the SEO rankings of a website and thus bring more potential clients to your virtual front door. Once they arrive, they experience good customer service every time they click on the widget in the form of free, helpful information. They will also have the opportunity to sign up for your newsletter and will be more likely to do just that in response to the information that you provide.

To learn more about the marketing potential of email newsletter articles and the Timely Opportunities Widget, contact BizActions today.

Marketing is a lot like spring gardening to grow new opportunities for your firm.  Updating your marketing goals and plan is as important to your business as feeding the soil in your garden.

Here are three tips to make your 2012 marketing plan blossom:

1.  Planting the seeds

Rethink  your marketing message with a focus on addressing problems you help solve. Too often marketing is inward facing, promoting a firm's services, industry expertise or great client service. While all important, these are secondary at the initial stage of a prospect's search.  Marketing is a year-round effort because it is impossible to know when prospective clients you do not know may be starting their search for solutions.  During the course of any year, decision makers may not even consider the problems you can help solve a high priority.  Your marketing should spotlight those problems, over and over, to bring them to the top of their list.  

This can be accomplished with outward facing communications, implemented with tools such as a B2B email campaign.  Your email newsletters articles should focus less on services your offer, and more on problems you see your clients face that you help solve.  Fortunately, outsource newsletters are available to help you save time with this process all year.

2.  Water and Sun

Take a look at your website from the prospective client's perspective.  Many prospects will begin their search by talking with people they know, and then doing their homework on the internet.  If you were looking for a firm to help you solve a problem, would your website indicate your firm is a good place to look for help?  Can your prospects even find your website if they don't know your name?  

Your website should be a beacon that pulls them in with effective search engine optimization (SEO).  Once on the site, their problems should be addressed with useful information.  Many sites go into too much detail about their services and firm, and don't address any specific problems prospects face.  The content on your site should effectively illustrate your firm has the experience to help them address their specific needs, and encourage them to identify themselves and reach out to learn more.  Calls-to-action, from the simple free consultation or white paper on a specific problem or situation, to a more detailed analysis, are compelling reasons for a qualified prospect to reach out to learn more and can be a great source of new opportunities for you.

3.  Bloom and Harvest

Mine the data.  If new business is part of your 2012 marketing plan, now is the time to put your team together.  Determine who will be the point person or people to respond to prospect's inquiries.  Identify each of their roles and specifics on how they will manage the new opportunities.  Planning this in advance will insure no time is wasted when the opportunities begin to come in, and will impress the buyers with your efficiency.

Obviously this blog post is just the beginning.  Spring is the beginning of the new, and it is a great time to renew your marketing plan.

Solutions

When it comes to planning your marketing strategy, does it feel like there are too many choices? Email, newsletters, direct mail, social media, SEO, blogging, content management, branding... the list goes on and on. How do you sort through all the options and come up with a solution that is not only affordable and easy to use, but that will also help boost your bottom line? It's easier than you think - BizActions has all the tools you need to implement and maintain a consistent marketing and communication dialogue with your clients, prospects and referrals - all in one convenient package. Now is an exciting time to be a part of the marketing landscape! If you would like to find out how BizActions can help you launch or enhance an email newsletter campaign, please contact us at 866.240.8477, visit our website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. BizActions has all the tools you need to publish your own email newsletter or B2B email campaign.

Effective financial services marketing requires a certain set of strategies and tools. To build a finance-related business, you need to attract prospective clients and convince them that your firm is going to provide solutions for all of their finance needs. One excellent marketing tool for accomplishing this is an online resource library. This second web site is engineered to provide visitors with an array of updated articles and tools that keep them coming back for more. The following are a few of the ways in which it helps build your business:

• Get more leads: An online resource library showcases articles and useful information that touches on a wide variety of topics. This in turn attracts a wide range of prospects that become leads through call to action tools.
• Showcases expertise: The various updated, professionally written articles demonstrate that your firm can advise and provide solutions for much more than taxes. Visitors to the online resource library will find that most of the content provides helpful advice and positions your firm as the experts to consult.
• Bring more people to your virtual front door: This happens as a result of the quality SEO design incorporated into the online resource library.

To learn more about the benefits of an online resource library and how to carry out an effective email newsletter campaign, contact BizActions today. 

When you're looking at the reports for your email newsletter "Open" refers to the number of readers who have looked at your newsletter in their inbox, regardless of whether or not they clicked to read a full article. Open rates can be a good overview of how well your newsletter is being received in general, and they can also provide you with a deliverability indicator. A sudden drop in open rates may mean that your content may need some troubleshooting.

Although you should always be seeking to improve open rates, the best way to truly get a sense of what is peaking the interest of your subscribers is by monitoring your content click activity. This will indicate what subscribers are actually reading, and will help you determine what the most effective content is for your professional communications. There are several simple ways that you can boost your open rates and get subscribers clicking on your content.

Here eight tips to encourage readers
to open your newsletter
& read your content:

1. Use a fresh subject line each launch and make sure your subject line speaks about what is included in your content



2. Send your newsletter on a regular basis; BizActions suggests every two weeks



3. Use banners and images that compliment your content and services



4. Update your banners (at the very least quarterly) to give readers fresh visual appeal



5. Stick with basic fonts - Fancy fonts and colors are pretty, but can present rendering and deliverability issues



6. Use changing typography such as bold and italics to guide the reader's eye to key points



7. Publish a few well-written articles; don't overload your readers with too many choices



8. Include human interest articles such as firm news, promotions, weddings, and births

There are many other ways to help boost the appeal of your campaigns. Please contact your dedicated Customer Support Representative if you have any questions about boosting subscriber engagement, increasing open rates or tracking click activity. We are here to help!

Solutions

BizActions removes the largest hurdle to the deployment of a business newsletter - the time associated with developing useful and interesting content, issue after issue. BizActions’ B2B newsletters give you access to over 5,000 professionally written, original-content articles in over 50 categories of standard content for both Business-to-Business (B2B) and  Business-to-Consumer (B2C) professional service providers, along with over 50 categories of premium Niche Content and hundreds of free banners for distribution to your prospects and clients. Each business newsletter can contain up to six articles from our inventory or your own creation. Use our recommended pre-built business newsletter content categories designed specifically for key vertical industry segment, or choose up to any eight Standard Categories from our huge library of business articles that you feel are most appropriate for distribution in your email newsletter.  You can even add premium categories of niche content for select members in your database to further refine your business newsletter content.  The key is providing readers with content that will appeal to them and BizActions makes it easy. Contact us today at 866.240.8477, visit our website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

CPA firms and other professional service providers require a certain type of marketing. Unlike businesses that sell products such as shoes, energy drinks, or computers, professional service providers have to demonstrate a great deal of knowledge about their products and services. They have to do a lot more to win the trust of prospective clients because they aren't providing a simple product or tool that can be put to use shortly after purchasing it. CPAs offer far more valuable and sensitive services that can affect the finances of their clients. Of course clients are going to be a lot more careful about who they work with when it comes to their taxes, investments and earnings compared to buying a pair of running shoes or even a car.

They have to feel absolutely convinced that the CPA in question has the right type of skills and knowledge needed to keep on track and in the most favorable position concerning tax liability. For this reason, expertise is a key factor for attracting and keeping clients. The more expertise you show, the better clients feel about working with you. This expertise doesn't have to be limited to tax planning either. That of course should be demonstrated, but they will feel even more comfortable about choosing you to help manage their tax liability and finances if you can show that your firm is knowledgeable about many topics. One of the easiest ways of demonstrating this is with an online resource library. Use one in conjunction with a B2B email campaign to impress clients from every industry.

To learn more about the benefits of an online resource library and CPA client newsletters, contact BizActions today.

In our previous post, we reviewed how to maximize your microsite’s domain name by utilizing keywords strategically. As our series on SEO tips and strategies for microsites continues, we will review the most essential ingredient: quality content. Content is absolutely critical to search engine optimization and the lead generation opportunities that a highly ranked microsite can obtain.

Microsite Content

The content of your website or microsite has the largest effect on your searchability and visibility. Quality matters! It is essential to have valuable content that visitors will want to read and that prompt them to respond (preferably through your call to action). 

On the BizActions Online Resource Library and Online Tax Guide microsites, you have the opportunity to add your own verbiage to each web page above the accounting, tax and financial articles and resources that are included with the packages. This “intro text” gives you another opportunity to advertise your firm’s products and services, but more importantly, it gives you the opportunity to incorporate your keywords into each page’s content. The keywords that you include in the copy help to increase your SEO because they are built into the page which is what search engines scan for relevance, legitimacy, keyword frequency and other factors. By including intro text, you not only promote and introduce your company, you also help to boost your keywords and enhance your visibility for them.

If you don’t have a BizActions Online Resource Library or Online Tax Guide, you likely gave a lot of thought about your website’s content either before or during development of your site’s keyword strategy. The keywords used in the intro text or in the body content of your page should match the meta keywords you added to the site’s source code. Be strategic in your keyword usage. In general, keywords that appear at or near the top of the page (keyword prominence) will achieve more relevancy. Avoid repeating keywords more than three or four times per page, or risk having your site penalized in the ranked search results. Excessive use of keywords in the body content of a page is often referred to as “keyword spamming” or “keyword stuffing” and search engines calculate the keyword frequency (how many times a keyword appears on a page) and keyword proximity (how close a keyword appears to the top of a page) in their ranking algorithms. Up to three repetitions of your most important keywords is recommended per page, depending on the length of your copy.

In terms of keyword repetition, you may have heard the term “keyword density,” which is an outdated expression that was used before ranking algorithms made relevancy the most important factor. It described the percentage of content that was keyword related in comparison to all of the content on the page. In the 1990s, this was one of the key strategies for enhanced SEO. Today, the rule of thumb for keyword density is that your content should flow naturally, as if you were speaking or writing traditional marketing copy. If you read your copy out loud and it sounds like you are repeating certain words too frequently, you probably are. Remember that several of your keywords will be different for each page and that your keywords must reflect the content on the page, including any content that follows the intro text that you add.

Within your microsite’s content, you have the ability to add images, text embellishments and links using HTML code. Following the SEO mantra of “keywords, keywords, keywords”, remember to utilize your keywords when naming your images and include an ALT description and caption to each image to maximize search results. Search engine algorithms also check image names and ALT descriptions for relevancy.

Images

When naming your images, use your keywords while describing the image in the file name. For example, let’s say we add an image to the email newsletter page of our online marketing microsite. We might name the image we’re placing on that page “Very-Best-CPA-Email-Newsletter-Sample-Image.jpg” or “Very-Best-CPA-Email-Newsletter-Sample-Image-Delray-Beach-FL.jpg”. There is no limitation on the length of an image name. Make the words associated with your images as descriptive as possible.

After you have optimized your keywords in your image’s file name, be sure to include an image ALT tag as well. ALT tags that include your most important keywords may help boost your keyword frequency and help you achieve better rankings, although the impact that ALT tags have in terms of search engine optimization is relatively low. Search engines have devalued the importance of ALT tags in their algorithms, but they still count. Even if your website is content rich, the ALT tags allow you to reinforce what is the most important (your keywords) within the content.

Embellishments

Be bold! Use the <b> </b> (or <strong> </strong>) tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is enough. The bold attribute gives additional importance to your keywords when search engines scan your content, not to mention that it draws the reader’s attention when they visit your page.

Include a page header. The title tag and page header (using the H1 tag) are two of the most important places to include keywords. At the top of each page, in the intro text section, you may want to include heading tags <H1></H1> to give your page a bold heading. Other than the aesthetic value of giving your page a headline, search engines place emphasis on text that is included in a heading tag, so this provides you with another excellent opportunity to focus on your keywords to help boost your SEO. Using our previous example, the heading (using the <H1> </H1> tags) for the online marketing solutions page of the microsite might be:

E-Marketing Solutions Tailored to the Needs of Accounting Firms

The HTML code for the above heading would be: 

<H1><FONT color=#006600>E-Marketing Solutions Tailored to the Needs of Accounting Firms</H1></FONT>

You can change the color of your heading by using the HEX color code from your site’s color scheme, as shown in the example above.

WARNING: Do not use the <H1></H1> tags more than once per page, and always use it at the top of the page.

You may also wish to write in other heading codes for your site, so that you can use <H2>, <H3> or <H4> tags. Each of these sub-headings should be slightly smaller or less emphasized than the H1 tag, and will have some effect on search engine results, but they won’t carry as much weight as the H1 tag.

Stay tuned to this blog for upcoming posts in the series that will discuss footers, calls to action and more strategies for online marketing success.

Don’t want to wait for future blog posts?

Download the full SEO Tips and Strategies whitepaper.

BizActions maintains the pulse of e-marketing. Within our complete communications platform and integrated into our powerful CPA email newsletters, we provide business development, lead generation and branding solutions for CPA firms. Communication is the key to relationships. Relationships are the key to business success. As the leader in business-to-business messaging, we have the experience to help you accomplish your goals. We know what clients respond to and pride ourselves on being at the leading edge of technology and client communications. BizActions is the ONLY e-marketing system that includes original, professionally-written, industry-specific content in such areas as accounting (U.S., Canada, Australia), law, financial services, human resources, estate planning, banking, employee benefits and much more. Discover how our dynamic, effective and flexible suite of synergistic solutions like our Online Resource Library can help you. Our Online Resource Library is a custom-branded stand-alone website that houses hundreds of resources for your clients - all while increasing your firm’s SEO. Our e-marketing solutions can help generate opportunities for your firm so that you may remain top of mind and build your business one impression at a time. Learn more by visiting website, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

People use the Internet for a number of reasons but online activities usually fall into one of three categories. These are entertainment, communication, and information. All three of these categories can be employed for marketing purposes but "information" is perhaps the most important because this entails any marketing, advertising, articles, and web pages that provide facts about a company and its products. Articles that deal with news related to business or associated with a company also fall into this category and are an excellent means of marketing because they provide clients with free, useful information. However, the value of such a marketing strategy is correlated with the frequency in which new articles are presented to the public.

People don't want to visit a website and see the same old information every time. If they are provided with new and fresh content on a regular basis, they are going to visit more often and are more likely to recommend the site to friends and colleagues. One easy way of providing prospects and existing clients with fresh, useful content is a widget that is updated with new, pertinent articles twice a week. When those articles are also presented on a page headlined with the company name and brand, they are also automatically exposed to branding materials. A widget like this uses fresh content to attract visitors and build clientele while also helping with branding every time anyone clicks on it.

To learn more about how the Timely Opportunities Widget, Email Newsletter Articles , and CPA Client Newsletters can help with branding and build your business, contact BizActions today.