July 25, 2016

How to Create the Perfect Landing Page

A landing page is often times the first thing a potential customer or reader will see when coming to your website, so it’s super important that you make them really stand out.

That said, landing pages can be a bit tricky to create. But, by following the general guidelines listed below, you’ll be well on your way to creating the perfect landing page that really grabs the attention of your readers.

Let’s get started!

1. The Landing Page Branding Should Match the Ad Copy

Most of the time, people are coming to your landing page because they were directed there after clicking on an advertisement, like a Google Ad or Facebook Ad. To ensure that your message isn’t lost, the branding of your ad needs to match the branding of the landing page – this way, potential customers will be more likely to put two and two together. For example, if you use a certain image or catch phrase in your ad, make sure that you use the same image and catch phrase on the landing page where the ad directs.

2. Compelling Headline

Headlines are always important in any content creation, and landing pages are no different. 8 out of 10 people won’t make it past the headline of any article, so it’s your job to create a headline so compelling that they’ll have to keep reading. Try focusing on the problem your product or service will solve and really cultivate a sense of curiosity.

3. Descriptive Subhead

Maybe equally as important as the headline, the subhead will give your readers just a little bit more information on what’s to come in the following article. This is your chance to reinforce the reason why they came to your landing page in the first place and really compel them to keep on reading through to the end of the page.

4. Emotionally-Charged Images

Our brains process images 60,000 times faster than text, so it just makes sense to include as many relevant images as possible within your landing page. Focus on images that invoke a sense of happiness and target the emotions that will cause potential customers to want to learn more. Make sure you images are also large and high resolution, as this causes them to look much more professional.

5. What is the Value?

What’s in it for your customer? What do they get out of your product or service? Whatever that may be; be sure to highlight the values and benefits that your business can offer your customers. Give them a reason to want to learn more about your product or service.

6. Solve a Problem for Your Readers

Going along with instilling value, think about what problem your product or service solves for your customers. Maybe it saves them valuable time in completing a task or maybe it helps them to stay better organized. Whatever the problem, you need to convince your potential customers that your business has the ability to alleviate the pain associated with that problem.

7. Offer a Guarantee

Sometimes trying new things can be scary, especially if you aren’t sure how the end result will turn out. Reassure your potential customers by offering some sort of guarantee for your product or service. Maybe that means offering a money back guarantee – whatever it may be, make sure that you clearly highlight it on your landing page.

8. Include Glowing Testimonials

Nothing is more convincing to potential customers than a positive, glowing review from people who’ve already done business with your company. Collect as many positive testimonies from past and present clients that you can, and include them on your landing page for a bit of social proof that what you’re doing truly does work.

9. Don’t Forget Contact Options

Always include a way for readers to contact you directly from the landing page. This not only helps to increase the response rate but also instills a sense of trust from readers, as they become convinced that you are ready to answer their questions. Some options here would be a “contact” button directing readers to your own contact page, a “call now” button for mobile or even an embedded contact form directly on the landing page.

10. Focus on the Content Above the Fold

This is content development 101 – the important information needs to occur above the fold (or what you see when clicking over to a website without scrolling down at all). The information that appears above the fold will work to connive readers to keep reading the rest of the words on the page, so make sure that your most compelling information is placed there.

11. Get Rid of Distractions

When a potential customer visits your landing page, you don’t want them to be distracted by a newsletter sign up, a link to your blog or any real outside links for that matter. You want them to be able to focus on the content of the page so that they keep reading through to your call to action at the end. Set your landing page up in a way that minimizes distractions by including fewer links and sidebars.

12. The Landing Page Call to Action

Perhaps most important of all – the call to action, your final chance to convince readers that they need to become customers. The number one rule here is to be as specific as possible. Make it abundantly clear as to what it is you are asking your readers to do. And keep it short and simple. The body text of the page should have already warmed your readers up to the idea, so you don’t have to go overboard with the text in your call to action. Just make a quick, specific ask to close out the landing page.

Landing pages aren’t difficult once you get the hang of it and practice a little bit. And with these tips under your belt, you’ll be well on your way to landing page success!

Need some help creating the perfect landing page or your product or service? Fill out the contact form below, and we will be in touch with you ASAP to start bringing your project together!

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July 18, 2016

What is SEO and Why is it Important?

What is SEO?

You may have heard the term “SEO” before, but what exactly does it mean? And why is it so important?

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is essentially a combination of different factors, methods and strategies that – when put together and used properly – help the pages on your website rank highly in the search engines (like Google and Bing), namely for keywords that are related to your website’s topic/theme/subject matter.

The relevancy of the keywords is important. For instance – your site could rank highly all day for terms related to cleaning products, but if what you are really selling is kitchen appliances, those high rankings aren’t really going to help much. You need to rank frequently for keywords that are highly relevant to your website’s topic.

And when your website ranks highly for those relevant keywords, people are more likely to find your website when they’re searching for that topic/keyword on the Internet.

For example, say you have an online store that sells cakes. You build a website, stock your kitchen, and you’re ready to open your doors to the Internet. BUT how do people find you online?

You could run ads, tells your friends, promote your business on social media, yes, but how do you get people to find you just because they were searching the Internet for “online cake shops”?

That’s where SEO comes in. When done properly, your website will pull up in the search engine results for the specific keywords that relate to your industry – in this case, think keywords like “chocolate cake to buy” or “online bakeries” or “cake delivery” or “cake shops online” – you get the idea.

So, that’s great and all, but how exactly do you go about making your website rank for those keywords? How does your site pull up highly in search results, ultimately bringing you more potential customers?

Let me answer those questions with another – have you heard of search engine spiders/crawlers? If not that’s ok. It’s pretty simple. Basically, search engines like Google and Bing send out little “spiders” to crawl/look through all the content on your website. The spiders note the site layout, keyword usage, links, content and a whole slew of other factors that contribute to your site’s overall ranking. Taking these things into account, the spiders then send the information back to the search engines, where it is indexed, run through complex algorithms and finally arranged and ranked on the search result page that you see when you search for a specific term on Google. The order in which these results are displayed is related to the relevancy that Google sees between the query (term typed into the search box) and the page listed.

There are a lot of things (ranking factors) that contribute to the order in which separate pages are displayed on a search result page, including:

Content on the page.

Is it unique? Does it add value to the Internet? Is it useful to readers? Does it tactfully contain the necessary and relevant keywords? All those factors play a part. Googles wants to give its users the very best results, and if you’re content is amazing, you’ve already got a head start.

On page optimization.

These are little factors that make a big difference in the overall ranking of your page. Is the keyword you’re targeting listed in the title of your page? The heading? Several strategic places throughout the text/body of the page? In image alt tags? Are there internal links pointing to the page? Away from the page? All of these things matter. (I’ll go into more detail about these factors in a later post.)

Site structure and URL structure.

Google looks at the overall structure of your site, taking note of which pages are linking to each other, and the significance of those links. No matter what, all of your pages should be linking to the other pages on your site that are related to them in some way – for example, if you offer a variety of services and have an individual page for each one, all of those individual pages should link back to your general service page, which in turn should link back to your home page. No pages should be left out – otherwise the Google spiders can’t find them when they crawl your site. Think of it like a web. The spiders need to have a path to follow when they crawl your site – if the links aren’t there, the spiders can’t find your content! Even if it’s awesome. So site structure is important.

URL structure is also important. Your URL’s need to be clear and easy to understand – for example, the URL for your chocolate cake page could be http://your-site/services/cakes/chocolate-cake. Search engines can easily determine what your page is about and where it fits within the hierarchical structure of your site (under services > cake).

If you want a page to rank for a particular keyword, it helps to use that keyword in the URL, first for search engines, but also, this will help people choose that keyword as anchor text when linking to your site.

What is anchor text? Anchor text is simply the word that appears in the text that contains a link. (For example: Here is a great article about content marketing <– content marketing is the anchor text that is linking to the page on my site about content marketing.)

In the case of the cakes, if you want a certain page to rank for “best chocolate cake” then it would be helpful for people to link to your page using the term “best chocolate cake” as the anchor text. (For example: I have tried a lot of chocolate cakes in my lifetime, but the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had was from a little online bakery based out of Dallas <– the words “best chocolate cake” on their site would link to your page about chocolate cake.)

Whatever the keyword that you are trying to rank for, it’s best if those linking to your page use that particular term in the anchor text of the link. It shows people and Google alike what the link will be about once they click it/crawl it.

Outside links.

Do others find your site useful? The more sites that link to your page the better, as long as those links come from quality sources. It doesn’t pay to link spammy pages to your own, just to create links. Google will find out, and you will be in trouble. Seriously, don’t do it. But, if you can get links from quality sources, perhaps in the case of online bakeries, from sites that love your chocolate cake and want to tell the world how awesome it is, then link away! Trustworthy links tell Google that others find your page useful or important, and if some people find it useful, others might as well, causing Google to rank you page higher in search results.

While this is in no way a complete list of the factors that affect page ranking, it’s at least a good place to start. There’s a great pie graph about the ranking factors that influence search engine algorithms on Moz.com – I would recommend checking it out! This will show you the weight that is given to each factor, and how much each affects your site’s ranking ability.

Well that’s SEO in a nutshell. I’ll be delving into the different factors in greater detail over the coming weeks so that it all becomes a little easier to understand, but in the meantime, here are a few great resources that have helped me learn SEO:

moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo

moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-seo/

I hope this helps! Do you have questions? Be sure to leave them in the comments below!

July 11, 2016

4 Ways to Manage Your Time Efficiently

Whether you are just starting out as a brand new business or are maintaining an existing one, time management can be difficult. With distractions constantly vying for your time, how do you manage your time efficiently? For me, time management is still a work in progress – some days I feel like my efforts are spot on, while other days I definitely find myself struggling to stay afloat.

But when you have a lot of things to accomplish, time management is critical to success. And while I may struggle in this area at times, I have definitely made some improvements as well. So, here are 4 things I have learned about managing time efficiently:

Schedule everything.

Seriously – everything. We all have the same 24 hours in the day, and it’s up to us to use those hours to the best of our advantage. People who choose to use their time well tend to accomplish more things and generally become more successful. The thing I have found that works best for me is to actually write everything that needs to be accomplished during the course of the week/month down in a planner. If I don’t write it down (either in my literal planner or on my iPhone) I will never do it.

To accomplish this, I try my best to sit down every Sunday evening and come up with a list of the things that need to be accomplished that coming week. Then I figure out when I will be able to do those things. Even if it’s just researching, reading or exercising, I try to schedule it in so I don’t end up wasting time later.

Stop making excuses.

Once you have everything scheduled, make a pact with yourself that you will not deviate from the schedule. Of course emergencies may come up, but being disciplined and sticking to the schedule you have created is very important. You have to stop making excuses for why you can’t adhere to your schedule if you hope to accomplish what you’ve set out to do.

Honestly, this is something that I am still working through. It’s one thing to see the task written on a piece of paper (a good first step) but a completely different thing to actually do it. I need to focus on telling myself that I’m going to do it, and then…DO it.

Set goals for yourself.

Do you have a favorite pastime or hobby? Maybe you really like to go shopping or see movies or go out to fancy restaurants – whatever it is that you enjoy, use it to incentivize yourself. For example, when all of your tasks are completed for the week, enjoy a night off (because taking breaks are important, too!) and go shopping, see a movie, whatever it is that you want to do. But don’t allow yourself to indulge until you’ve completed your tasks. This works well for me.

Additionally, I like to have long term goals, or things that I would like to accomplish within a month or 6 months or a year. If and when those goals are met, I can reward myself with something I’ve really been wanting. It doesn’t have to be something luxurious or expensive – just something that motivates you to move forward even when you really don’t feel like doing the work.

Cut out the distractions.

When you’re sitting down to write out your schedule, consider the things you might need to temporarily cut out in order to succeed. For example, you’re not going to get a lot of work done if watching TV is a main priority. If something is distracting you from reaching your goal, get rid of it! Long-term success is definitely worth the temporary sacrifice. Don’t be afraid to give something up in order to move forward. I bring up TV because this is something I have had to cut back on. I still watch TV, but only after I’ve finished everything I need to do for the day. It helps!

Like I said, time management is a work in progress – something I am constantly trying to improve on – because the more efficiently I can manage my time, the more likely I will be to succeed! What about you? Do you have any tips for managing time well?

This article originally appeared here, at TheStoryist.com – a sister company to JSL Marketing.

July 04, 2016

7 Reasons Why Your Business Needs to Invest in Copywriting Today

Copywriting. You’ve probably heard of it before, but you might be asking yourself, what exactly is it and does my business really need it?

Well, I’m going to answer both of those questions for you today. But first, let me give you an illustration.

Let’s say you are a new small business owner, and you’re just getting ready to open your first storefront location. And for the sake of this example, let’s say your business is going to be a specialty food store – you know, one of those fancy little shops with the fine wine and amazing cheese. Those are my favorite.

Anyways. So you’re sitting there in your little shop going over the logistics of opening day, and you’ve decided a few things. First, you need to do some advertising. Maybe you should create a banner with some wording that draws people in. And perhaps some flyers to pass out to the community. Oh, and how about some gift certificates to give out to the first 100 customers? Wait, you should probably have some sort of letter or pamphlet written up to promote that gift certificate deal, otherwise no one is going to know about it. Speaking of pamphlets, you’re going to want to create some sort of mailer or in-store guide with all your coupons and deals for the week. All the other stores are doing that sort of thing, so you best get on it. Wow that’s actually a lot of material to create.

And that’s just some of the items you’ll need for your storefront. It can be tough to rely solely on foot traffic to keep your business profitable, so you’re going to need a web presence as well. Which means you will to need to build a website, and that website needs to have content. You know, bios, an “about” section, pages about your products. You might even consider selling your products online, in which case you’re going to need an online store with enticing product descriptions that make potential customers want to buy without being able to physically touch or see the product, which takes some skill. Oh, and you’re going to need to a blog. Maybe you can write about different cooking techniques, or what to do with all that fancy wine and cheese. Definitely write about things that will educate your customers on the products you sell. You could talk about food pairings and how to host the perfect cocktail party. So many ideas! So many things to write about! So much value to be created!

See all those words in bold above? The areas that mention content creation, marketing or writing? Those are all things that a copywriter can do for you.

Essentially, a copywriter is someone who creates valuable written material to be used for promotional purposes, and they do it in a way that entices your audience, creating a desire to come back for more. Anything that has to be written within your business – including newsletters, emails, pamphlets, flyers, web content, blogs and white papers – a copywriter can create. And you should definitely hire one to do those things for you. I know, I know, you may be thinking, yeah but I could just do all those things on my own! Why do I need to hire someone to do it for me? Why indeed.

Well, you could do it yourself, but if you’re not a writer, and you have a million other things to do in order to get your business going, do you really want to spend the time and effort to write ‘copy? And risk having it be sub-par? I’m not sure it would be worth the risk. In fact, attempting to write your own copy may in fact lose you money in the long run. I’m telling you, those words are way more important than you think, and I’m about to tell you why.

While there are many benefits to hiring a skilled copywriter, here are just 7 reasons why your business needs to invest in copywriting:

You have great ideas but no time to write about them. Or, you have the time but you can’t articulate what you want to say.

Maybe you’ve got great content ideas swirling around inside your head. Going back to the specialty food shop, maybe you’ve got a list of content ideas for blog posts about exotic foods, fine wines, cooking techniques and more, but you simply don’t have the time to write them out. Or maybe you have the time, but you just don’t have the skill. There’s no shame in that. We all have our own talents. Why don’t you stick to what you’re good at, and let someone who’s skillset includes wordsmithing take a stab at creating some amazing content for your website and/or blog. I promise you won’t be disappointed. You’ll probably feel relieved to have all those ideas out of your head, and the daunting task of writing them out cohesively off of your plate. It will let you move on to bigger and better things. Like growing your business.

Good copy will communicate with your audience in a way that they will be able to understand and relate to.

It’s one thing to write well, but can you effectively communicate with your audience in a way that they will understand? For example, you could talk about your specialty food shop, laying out the facts in a matter-of-fact (but boring) way, but will this really reach the heart of your readers? Will it make them want to keep reading? Will it turn them into loyal customers?

Your tone and writing style need to be exciting, engaging and really reach out to your readers, meeting them where they’re at. The words you write are a reflection of your brand, and you want your brand to be unique. Which means no boring, cookie-cutter writing that could have been written about anything, anywhere. It needs to be uniquely you, and a copywriter can do that for you. Which leads me to my next point.

All promotional materials, web content, newsletters – everything that involves words – need to jive with your brand.

A good copywriter will be able to take a brand and run with it, weaving your unique tone into all content across all platforms. This is essential to gaining and maintaining loyal customers because, whether they realize it or not, they are judging your business based on the words you use to describe what you do. They are subconsciously deciding if your brand is a good fit for them, based on the personality your portray through your content, so it’s a good idea to make those words count.

The concept of creating content that is consistent with your brand is more important than most people realize. Often times your content, whether it be in an advertisement or online, is the first point of contact you have with a potential customer. If they see something that is dull and sends inconsistent messages, they’re going to label your brand as lackluster and boring, and they are going to move on.

Think about some of your favorite brands. You want to know one reason why you love them so much? It’s not because of their amazing prices or their speedy customer service, although those things are important too. You love them because of their personality – their tone of voice, the things they represent and the stories they tell. Whole Foods is a good example of this. Everything they print uses consistent branding, and that branding is interesting. It’s fun and quirky, original and unique. They tell an awesome story and they incorporate their values into everything they do. But that branding didn’t just fall from the sky – surely they had a very good copywriter on hand to help them write their copy. It definitely wasn’t taken lightly.

A good copywriter will create actionable copy.

Well-written copy will elicit a certain response from readers, whether that be to buy, share, keep reading, sign up for your email newsletter. Whatever. The point is that the copy is actionable, and that is what you want.

A good copywriter will create copy that is actionable. They will be able to generate a response from your readers and customers without sounding sleezy or salesy. Regardless of what response you want to receive, each piece of content is created to elicit an actionable response. If it’s not creating a response, it’s wasting space. And it’s not representing your brand well. You want people to be actively engaging in whatever it is you are putting out there, and the only way to do this is by creating actionable content, or content with a purpose. That can be hard to do. But a copywriter can help.

Well-written copy can increase your sales.

Going along with creating actionable content, well-written copy can help increase your sales dramatically by catering to the emotional side of potential buyers. Think about the difference between the bland and boring “here’s a cool product, click the buy now button” pitch and the enticing “here’s why you need this product and how it will make your life better” pitch. The second will most definitely work better in any scenario. But creating that perfect product pitch takes skill. It’s worth investing in some copywriting in this area for obvious reasons – more sales equal more money for you. It presents an excellent return on your investment.

You need SEO friendly content including keywords, headlines, blog posts, web pages and everything in between.

SEO (search engine optimization) is totally a buzzword right now, and it hasn’t always received the best reputation. But really it’s just optimizing your content so that it appears in search engines and ranks highly for certain target keywords. There’s nothing shady about it. You need SEO friendly content using highly targeted keywords on your blog post, front-page copy, headlines and everything in between. And it can’t be spammy – it has to be quality, useful content. It’s pretty much an art form, really.

It can be difficult to get SEO on your site just right, but a copywriter can do this for you. And over time, this will help you rank higher for keywords that will help your business grow in leaps and bounds within the online community.

Finally, a copywriter can offer you a much-needed outside perspective on your company.

Sometimes you get so wrapped up in your business that it becomes difficult to see exactly what you are doing right and wrong. You might think something sounds exciting and enticing when really it’s quite bland. No offense of anything, it can just be difficult to separate yourself from your work at times and really take an objective look at it.

A good copywriter will be able to do this for you. They will offer you an outsider’s perspective on your brand, and develop copy that works from that outsider’s perspective. They’ll explain things in a way that would make sense to the average consumer, not someone who it well versed in your business, such as yourself. Something that makes sense to you might not make sense to a customer, and it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes. Don’t worry, that is one of the many things a copywriter is there for.

In Conclusion…

There are many reasons why your business should invest in copywriting, but here are 7 ways a good copywriter can enhance, help and add value to your business:

A copywriter can help turn your great ideas into awesome, valuable content. Maybe you have great ideas but no time to write about them. Or, you have the time but you can’t articulate what you want to say. Either way, a copywriter can help.
Good copy will communicate with your audience in a way that they will be able to understand and relate to, and a copywriter can do just that!
He or she will help to create a voice for your unique brand. All promotional materials, web content, newsletters – everything that involves words – need to jive with your brand. Let a copywriter help you with this.
A good copywriter will create actionable copy. You want your content to elicit a certain response, otherwise it’s just wasting space.
Well-written copy can increase your sales. This is a no-brainer. Copywriting can help increase your sales.
A copywriter will create SEO friendly content for you website. You need SEO friendly content including keywords, headlines, blog posts, web pages and everything in between.
Finally, a copywriter can offer you a much-needed outside perspective on your company. They will make sure things make sense to someone – like a customer – who might not understand your business as well as you do.

So, there you have it. 7 reasons why your business should invest in copywriting today. If you’re still on the fence, we’d love to answer any of your questions in the comments below. Or, if you’re thinking this copywriting thing might just be for you, contact us today to set up a free consultation! We can talk about all your copywriting needs and figure out what will work best for your business. We can’t wait to help you get started growing your brand today!