May 26, 2022

Business To Business Marketing 101: Intro To B2B

Business-to-business marketing is a whole other animal!

Marketers who come from other marketing disciplines often struggle when they try to market to business organizations. While it’s still marketing, reaching the right type of audience is a little different for this type of marketing. The tips, tricks, and best practices you may have learned in other roles likely won’t transfer over to business-to-business marketing.

Many marketers find themselves flustered and confused by their inability to drive meaningful results when marketing to businesses, despite having years of experience in marketing. It’s not because they’re bad at their jobs; it’s because you need to speak to organizations differently than you would individuals and that can be easier said than done.

Luckily, the experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design compiled their thoughts on what separates business-to-business marketing from other types of marketing.

Read On To Learn More About Business-to-Business Marketing!

Common Terms in B2B Marketing

Before we dive into how business-to-business marketing is different from other types of marketing, let’s review some common terms.

B2B: Business-to-Business marketing, or marketing for an organization whose primary clients are other organizations. Enterprise software, automation equipment, and IT tech are all examples of B2B products.
B2C: Business-to-consumer marketing, or marketing for a business whose main clients are individuals. Think about your average burger point, jewelry store, or ticket reseller.
The Buyer’s Journey: The journey every single customer will embark on when purchasing a new product or service. This broadly aligns with the sales cycle. There are multiple definitions, depending on who is defining the term, but generally, awareness, consideration, purchase, and delight are the four key stages of the buyer’s journey and sales cycle.
Content: Written pieces of work, often displayed on a company’s website. Well-written marketing content is a bedrock of any marketing strategy, but it’s extremely important for B2B organizations. B2B purchasing decision-makers often spend more time researching complex solutions, so well-written content is critical for B2B success.
Brand Awareness: Brand awareness is a measure of how many potential customers are aware of your brand’s top-level products, services, and messages. Without brand awareness, customers cannot even consider your product or service.
Creative Fatigue: The decreasing effectiveness of a piece of content or ad asset over time as potential customers see the content in question repeatedly.

B2B Marketing Tip 1: The Sales Cycles Are Longer

Many B2C marketing decisions require hardly any forethought.

If you’re looking for a new pair of shoes on Google, you could conceivably click a Google Ad and purchase a pair online without ever learning about the online provider of those shoes. Likewise, if you see an ad for a new sports drink on Youtube and decide to give that brand a go in the supermarket the next day, your time in the sales cycle was under 24 hours. You went from having no awareness of a brand to becoming a customer within 24 hours! This isn’t uncommon for B2C marketing.

B2B marketing doesn’t work like that. Purchasing a new accounting software, legal partner, or staffing agency takes time. B2B marketing purchases tend to be more intricate and worth a higher dollar amount, so decision-makers tend to spend more time researching and considering solutions to make sure they get it right. This presents several challenges to organizations attempting to sell to another organization.

Organizations Have More Opportunities To Grow Bored Or Uninterested When Considering Your Solution: Long sales cycles also allow for more time to grow bored or find another solution. You need to be constantly marketing in the meantime to make sure your prospects are engaged.

Sales Teams Can Waste Critical Time Attempting To Sell Poor Fit: Your sales team is your main evangelist for your brand. Every second of their time is valuable, so ensure they’re talking to the right people. Six months talking to a company that eventually pumps the brakes is a big time suck and a risk of the long B2B sales cycle.

Your Marketing Materials Might Grow Stale With Time: Your brand messaging and value proposition are going to be in front of your prospect for months, if not years. There’s only so long you can tell your prospect that your app will increase employee retention before that value proposition gets less exciting. The same is true with your case studies, ads, and web content. You’re going to need to mix your marketing materials up to keep your prospect interested over the course of months.

These are challenges, but they’re not insurmountable. B2B marketers just need to be cognizant of the sales cycle length for their product or service. The complexity and length of the sale cycle mean that quick, flashy ads and attention-grabbing specials won’t do the trick. Marketers will need to market differently.

B2B Marketing Tip 2: The Number Of Touchpoints Is Much Higher

It is highly unlikely a consumer needs to consult with another decision-maker before making a purchase in the B2C world. This isn’t true with certain high-dollar items, but generally, most consumers don’t need to talk to their partner or family to buy a new protein powder or shirt.

In contrast, business buying committees can be as large as fifteen or twenty in the B2B world. Consider a company looking to find a new staffing agency. HR will have a say in the process, of course, but it’s also likely that the hiring managers of the most impacted departments or teams will also be included.

Legal will naturally review terms and conditions as well and the business owner or C-Suite team will ultimately need to approve the decision. Finding how to reach those members of the buying committee is a perennial problem for business-to-business marketers.

B2B Marketing Tip 3: Marketing To An Organization Is Much More Consultative

B2C marketing is usually very transactional. Take the example of a local restaurant trying to get past customers to come in for a limited-time dinner special. Writing an email extolling the benefits of that dinner isn’t particularly time-consuming or difficult. You need to find a way to entice the customer to open the email, read the content, and come to the restaurant, but what you’re marketing is pretty straightforward. Who doesn’t love deals on food?

Now imagine writing that email, but to promote a law firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions between interstate companies. This service isn’t as simple as a new “Fish N Chips Dinner For $7.99.” Your prospect is going to research solutions extensively and will likely come with a lot of questions. They can’t decide to try your staffing agency on a whim as a restaurant-goer could in our B2C solution mentioned earlier. The selling process for B2B organizations is a lot less “pushy,” since the solution provided is so complex. Since the sales cycle is so long, sellers are likely to spend more time qualifying the leads they speak to, researching the potential client’s business, and educating the potential lead on their solutions.

A transactional sale to drive some revenue isn’t a good call for a B2B client. If you entice a past customer to try your new fish and chips special and they don’t care for the dinner after visiting, no real damage has been done. Closing a legal business services deal with misaligned expectations on billing and point of contact may cost the law firm countless unbilled hours.

Smart B2B sellers know this and are constantly stepping into the role of trusted advisor when meeting with prospects. They aren’t trying to sing the praises of new deals and preferred pricing; they’re educating prospects on problems in their industry, asking clarifying questions, and determining if their solution is a good fit for the client’s unique needs.

Likewise, B2B marketing should focus on answering questions, demonstrating expertise in a subject, and summarizing technically-complex processes for the layperson. Now, this is all good advice for B2C marketing as well! You’ll just find yourself doing more consultative marketing for B2B organizations than praise-singing.

B2B Marketing Tip 4: B2B Marketing Relies Mostly On Data, Not Emotion

B2C marketing is often driven by the feelings of the customer. After all, who really needs a $1,000 watch, locally-sourced top-tier wine, or a big, greasy hamburger? If consumers were 100% rational creatures, no one would ever purchase any of the aforementioned items. That’s totally fine; we all need a splurge purchase now and again!

But it’s worth highlighting because the tactics that might work for a B2C organization likely won’t work for a B2B organization. Limited time releases, preferred pricing, and funny ads alone won’t convince an executive team that your law firm or IT software is the best solution for their problems. You’ll need to demonstrate via data why you’re uniquely suited to be their partner.

This does not, however, mean that your marketing materials need to be drab, soulless, and uninspiring. On the contrary, you need to showcase a professional and polished brand message when marketing to organizations. Your branding is critically important; it will just be focused on different channels than if you were a B2C marketer.

Begin Your B2B Marketing Journey With JSL

B2B marketing is a wise tactic for any business, but it needs to be done right. There are multiple ways a poorly implemented B2B marketing strategy could destroy your progress as a brand.

Turn to a trusted B2B marketing agency for your B2B needs. We’re proud Forbes council members for a reason!

Ready To Begin Your B2B Journey? Call Today!

April 07, 2022

5 Tips To Drive Loyal Repeat Business

Business-to-business marketing is a whole other animal!

Luckily, the experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design compiled their thoughts on what separates business-to-business marketing from other types of marketing.

Read On To Learn More About Business-to-Business Marketing!

Common Terms in B2B Marketing

Before we dive into how business-to-business marketing is different from other types of marketing, let’s review some common terms.

B2B: Business-to-Business marketing, or marketing for an organization whose primary clients are other organizations. Enterprise software, automation equipment, and IT tech are all examples of B2B products.
B2C: Business-to-consumer marketing, or marketing for a business whose main clients are individuals. Think about your average burger point, jewelry store, or ticket reseller.
The Buyer’s Journey: The journey every single customer will embark on when purchasing a new product or service. This broadly aligns with the sales cycle. There are multiple definitions, depending on who is defining the term, but generally, awareness, consideration, purchase, and delight are the four key stages of the buyer’s journey and sales cycle.
Content: Written pieces of work, often displayed on a company’s website. Well-written marketing content is a bedrock of any marketing strategy, but it’s extremely important for B2B organizations. B2B purchasing decision-makers often spend more time researching complex solutions, so well-written content is critical for B2B success.
Brand Awareness: Brand awareness is a measure of how many potential customers are aware of your brand’s top-level products, services, and messages. Without brand awareness, customers cannot even consider your product or service.
Creative Fatigue: The decreasing effectiveness of a piece of content or ad asset over time as potential customers see the content in question repeatedly.

B2B Marketing Tip 1: The Sales Cycles Are Longer

Many B2C marketing decisions require hardly any forethought.

Organizations Have More Opportunities To Grow Bored Or Uninterested When Considering Your Solution: Long sales cycles also allow for more time to grow bored or find another solution. You need to be constantly marketing in the meantime to make sure your prospects are engaged.

Sales Teams Can Waste Critical Time Attempting To Sell Poor Fit: Your sales team is your main evangelist for your brand. Every second of their time is valuable, so ensure they’re talking to the right people. Six months talking to a company that eventually pumps the brakes is a big time suck and a risk of the long B2B sales cycle.

Your Marketing Materials Might Grow Stale With Time: Your brand messaging and value proposition are going to be in front of your prospect for months, if not years. There’s only so long you can tell your prospect that your app will increase employee retention before that value proposition gets less exciting. The same is true with your case studies, ads, and web content. You’re going to need to mix your marketing materials up to keep your prospect interested over the course of months.

B2B Marketing Tip 2: The Number Of Touchpoints Is Much Higher

B2B Marketing Tip 3: Marketing To An Organization Is Much More Consultative

B2B Marketing Tip 4: B2B Marketing Relies Mostly On Data, Not Emotion

Begin Your B2B Marketing Journey With JSL

B2B marketing is a wise tactic for any business, but it needs to be done right. There are multiple ways a poorly implemented B2B marketing strategy could destroy your progress as a brand.

Turn to a trusted B2B marketing agency for your B2B needs. We’re proud Forbes council members for a reason!

Ready To Begin Your B2B Journey? Call Today!

March 24, 2022

How To Build A Marketing Funnel For Revenue Generation

Business-to-business marketing is a whole other animal!

Luckily, the experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design compiled their thoughts on what separates business-to-business marketing from other types of marketing.

Read On To Learn More About Business-to-Business Marketing!

Common Terms in B2B Marketing

Before we dive into how business-to-business marketing is different from other types of marketing, let’s review some common terms.

B2B: Business-to-Business marketing, or marketing for an organization whose primary clients are other organizations. Enterprise software, automation equipment, and IT tech are all examples of B2B products.
B2C: Business-to-consumer marketing, or marketing for a business whose main clients are individuals. Think about your average burger point, jewelry store, or ticket reseller.
The Buyer’s Journey: The journey every single customer will embark on when purchasing a new product or service. This broadly aligns with the sales cycle. There are multiple definitions, depending on who is defining the term, but generally, awareness, consideration, purchase, and delight are the four key stages of the buyer’s journey and sales cycle.
Content: Written pieces of work, often displayed on a company’s website. Well-written marketing content is a bedrock of any marketing strategy, but it’s extremely important for B2B organizations. B2B purchasing decision-makers often spend more time researching complex solutions, so well-written content is critical for B2B success.
Brand Awareness: Brand awareness is a measure of how many potential customers are aware of your brand’s top-level products, services, and messages. Without brand awareness, customers cannot even consider your product or service.
Creative Fatigue: The decreasing effectiveness of a piece of content or ad asset over time as potential customers see the content in question repeatedly.

B2B Marketing Tip 1: The Sales Cycles Are Longer

Many B2C marketing decisions require hardly any forethought.

Organizations Have More Opportunities To Grow Bored Or Uninterested When Considering Your Solution: Long sales cycles also allow for more time to grow bored or find another solution. You need to be constantly marketing in the meantime to make sure your prospects are engaged.

Sales Teams Can Waste Critical Time Attempting To Sell Poor Fit: Your sales team is your main evangelist for your brand. Every second of their time is valuable, so ensure they’re talking to the right people. Six months talking to a company that eventually pumps the brakes is a big time suck and a risk of the long B2B sales cycle.

Your Marketing Materials Might Grow Stale With Time: Your brand messaging and value proposition are going to be in front of your prospect for months, if not years. There’s only so long you can tell your prospect that your app will increase employee retention before that value proposition gets less exciting. The same is true with your case studies, ads, and web content. You’re going to need to mix your marketing materials up to keep your prospect interested over the course of months.

B2B Marketing Tip 2: The Number Of Touchpoints Is Much Higher

B2B Marketing Tip 3: Marketing To An Organization Is Much More Consultative

B2B Marketing Tip 4: B2B Marketing Relies Mostly On Data, Not Emotion

Begin Your B2B Marketing Journey With JSL

B2B marketing is a wise tactic for any business, but it needs to be done right. There are multiple ways a poorly implemented B2B marketing strategy could destroy your progress as a brand.

Turn to a trusted B2B marketing agency for your B2B needs. We’re proud Forbes council members for a reason!

Ready To Begin Your B2B Journey? Call Today!

March 17, 2022

How To Use Testimonials In Marketing

Business-to-business marketing is a whole other animal!

Luckily, the experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design compiled their thoughts on what separates business-to-business marketing from other types of marketing.

Read On To Learn More About Business-to-Business Marketing!

Common Terms in B2B Marketing

Before we dive into how business-to-business marketing is different from other types of marketing, let’s review some common terms.

B2B: Business-to-Business marketing, or marketing for an organization whose primary clients are other organizations. Enterprise software, automation equipment, and IT tech are all examples of B2B products.
B2C: Business-to-consumer marketing, or marketing for a business whose main clients are individuals. Think about your average burger point, jewelry store, or ticket reseller.
The Buyer’s Journey: The journey every single customer will embark on when purchasing a new product or service. This broadly aligns with the sales cycle. There are multiple definitions, depending on who is defining the term, but generally, awareness, consideration, purchase, and delight are the four key stages of the buyer’s journey and sales cycle.
Content: Written pieces of work, often displayed on a company’s website. Well-written marketing content is a bedrock of any marketing strategy, but it’s extremely important for B2B organizations. B2B purchasing decision-makers often spend more time researching complex solutions, so well-written content is critical for B2B success.
Brand Awareness: Brand awareness is a measure of how many potential customers are aware of your brand’s top-level products, services, and messages. Without brand awareness, customers cannot even consider your product or service.
Creative Fatigue: The decreasing effectiveness of a piece of content or ad asset over time as potential customers see the content in question repeatedly.

B2B Marketing Tip 1: The Sales Cycles Are Longer

Many B2C marketing decisions require hardly any forethought.

Organizations Have More Opportunities To Grow Bored Or Uninterested When Considering Your Solution: Long sales cycles also allow for more time to grow bored or find another solution. You need to be constantly marketing in the meantime to make sure your prospects are engaged.

Sales Teams Can Waste Critical Time Attempting To Sell Poor Fit: Your sales team is your main evangelist for your brand. Every second of their time is valuable, so ensure they’re talking to the right people. Six months talking to a company that eventually pumps the brakes is a big time suck and a risk of the long B2B sales cycle.

Your Marketing Materials Might Grow Stale With Time: Your brand messaging and value proposition are going to be in front of your prospect for months, if not years. There’s only so long you can tell your prospect that your app will increase employee retention before that value proposition gets less exciting. The same is true with your case studies, ads, and web content. You’re going to need to mix your marketing materials up to keep your prospect interested over the course of months.

B2B Marketing Tip 2: The Number Of Touchpoints Is Much Higher

B2B Marketing Tip 3: Marketing To An Organization Is Much More Consultative

B2B Marketing Tip 4: B2B Marketing Relies Mostly On Data, Not Emotion

Begin Your B2B Marketing Journey With JSL

B2B marketing is a wise tactic for any business, but it needs to be done right. There are multiple ways a poorly implemented B2B marketing strategy could destroy your progress as a brand.

Turn to a trusted B2B marketing agency for your B2B needs. We’re proud Forbes council members for a reason!

Ready To Begin Your B2B Journey? Call Today!

December 30, 2021

Our Marketing Predictions For 2022

As 2021 draws to a close, we looked to 2022 and talked through our predictions for marketing in the next calendar year. It’s always tough to make predictions, but we still always do our best to offer a glimpse into the future. 2021 was an interesting year in the marketing world and we expect to see the same in 2022! Without any further ado, we proudly present our 2022 marketing predictions!

Marketing Prediction 1: Brands Need To Teach, Not Sell

Everyone hates receiving a sales pitch. They’re slick, polished, and often misleading, at least in the mind of the consumer. Consequently, any sort of “Salesy” language or rhetoric often causes consumers to immediately toon out. To combat this, the best marketers have pivoted to instructing and educating their potential customers as a goal of their brand messaging. The difference is subtle in theory but highly effective in practice. Think through the following examples.

Selling Example: “Buy 10 Widgets & Get the 11th Free!”
Educating Example: “According to this 2021 study, investing in widgets can reduce your overhead costs by 20% in the long run.”

See the difference? Salespeople understand the difference, but too often, brands get caught in the trap of self-promoting, rather than opening helpful and informative dialogues with their clients. This market trend has been growing for years, but we’re expecting to see it continue through 2022.

Marketing Prediction 2: Retargeting Will Grow as a Viable Tactic

Sequential messaging is a great way to ensure your brand stays top of mind, but it hasn’t always been easy to execute. Now, with the advent of the digital age, it’s easier than ever to sequentially message.

There are several ways to do this in 2022 and we’re predicting to see more and more brands utilize these next year. This is not a comprehensive list but you could use any of the following to reach customers who are aware of your brand.

PPC Retargeting:
Followup Email Blasts
Display Sequential Messaging
Discounts & Offers Only For Your Social Media Followers

Marketing Prediction 3: Socially-Conscious Brands Will Separate Themselves

2020 was a breakthrough year in socially-conscious brand messaging and this has continued into 2021. Professing socially-conscious messaging used to be taboo, but more and more brands are seeing the benefits of taking a stand for a certain cause.

However, while it’s a trending topic, proceed with caution.

An important caveat here is to be sincere in the causes you support. Coming across as hollow or insincere will drive away your customers, no matter what type of cause you’re trumpeting. To be perceived as more authentic, try to limit your espousal of hot-button topics at times when every competitor is doing the same. This just comes across as opportunistic and phony and that’s the last thing you want. Instead, stay tried and true in your advocacy of the cause you support. Your customers will see that you’re not trying to merely cash in on momentum and buzz and your expression of support will be that much more authentic in the eyes of your customers.

Marketing Prediction 4: TikTok Will Become A Desirable Option For Many Brands

It’s not just for the kids anymore! TikTok exploded onto the marketing scene and many brands viewed it as something foreign and strange. Maybe it was a good move if your primary audience was under 24, but TikTok was not a staple social media account for most brands going into 2018.

Now, TikTok has a billion monthly users as we kick off 2022 and more and more brands are beginning to see the use of such a powerful and well-known short-form video content platform. We’re seeing more and more brands come around to the idea of TikTok and consider it as a real possibility. As always, however, there are some important caveats.

Make A Custom TikTok Strategy. Don’t just copy and paste what you’re doing on Facebook over to TikTok. You’ll actually need to look into what works best for you on the platform and plan accordingly. Our team is, of course, always here to help if needed.
Don’t Just Follow The Latest Trends. While posting relevant trends and dances isn’t always a bad call, tailor your content to your industry as much as possible. Few people will follow an autobody shop just for dances. Do whatever you can to tie your content to your industry, even if most of your content is entertaining.
Be Consistent. TikTok is probably a new frontier for your business, so you probably don’t have a tried-and-true way to use short-form video. Since it’s a new platform for many brands, too many change how they use the platform weekly to try and maximize their effectiveness. The result is that their TikTok content never seems focused, intentional or entertaining to their audience and they just end up spinning their wheels for nothing. To combat this, do your research upfront to ensure you’re rolling out the right strategy from the beginning.

Take Your 2022 Marketing To The Moon

Thank you for following along in 2021!

It was a big year for us at JSL Marketing & Web Design and we hope you enjoyed reading along with us as we explored the year’s big topics in web design, branding, and digital marketing.

We hope you have a great New Year and we look forward to seeing you in 2022!

December 16, 2021

4 Unexpected Things We Learned About Business In 2021

2021 was certainly an interesting year for business and we learned a lot! As the year comes to a close, we wish you all a happy and restful holiday season with your family and friends. It’s also the perfect time of year to look back and muse over everything that happened this year, the good, the bad, and the weird. 2021 was certainly eventful and we prepared the following list of things we learned about business in 2021 to help guide your marketing strategy.

Business Learning #1: Creative Marketing Campaigns Will Always Be Relevant

A lot has changed in marketing over the last decade. Marketing has seen a lot of changes over the years, whether it’s the mediums, the pricing, or the agency structure, and 2021 was no different in that regard.

However, creativity will never go out of style. Whether it was the Chipotle Boorito promotion or Wendy’s teaming up with Rick & Morty, 2021 was filled with unique marketing approaches. Inventive advertising will always be a bedrock of any marketing strategy and 2021 did not disappoint.

Don’t think that you need to reinvent the wheel the way some of the world’s biggest brands did in 2021, but remember that staying fresh and timely in your marketing campaigns helps your business stay relevant all year long. We’d recommend considering adjusting your marketing strategy as you move in 2022. If you haven’t adjusted anything in your marketing within the last year, your customers are likely a little fatigued by your messaging or have possibly even forgotten about you. If it’s been a bit, then a new year is a great time to revamp, refresh, and revitalize your strategy. A good marketing strategy will be…

Relevant to your Audience.
Memorable
Distinctive
Tailored To The Marketing Medium

There are, of course, many variables that go into revamping your marketing strategy, and the list above is merely a thought starter. Still, think back on your favorite ad campaigns from 2021 and compare them to the list above. Odds are, all of your favorite ads from 2021 meet the criteria listed above!

Business Learning #2: Automation Will Continue

Automation is nothing new in the history of business, whether it’s in the form of steam-powered mills or auto chatbots. However, advancements in tech, compounded by worker shortages and high inflation, will keep the trend of automation thriving in the near future. By some estimates, 25% of the workforce is highly vulnerable to automation.

Marketing and customer service are no exceptions. Businesses are always looking for ways to cover more ground with fewer resources and a great way to enable your marketing team is to automate away some of the repetitive and tedious tasks that take up the majority of their day. The main examples in the marketing space are….

Chatbots
Outsourced Customer Support & Virtual Receptionists
Touchless Email Campaigns
Auto Social Media Replies

If you have questions, contact our marketing team for more information!

Business Learning #3: New Products and Services Will Always Emerge

Have you been following developments in the metaverse and NFTs? We could spend a lot of time catching you up on the history of these developments, but both are an important reminder. The world and especially the tech world, will always evolve and change in unexpected and frankly, odd ways. Businesses that can see through the haze and confusion of a new product or tech are in a good position to capitalize in the near future.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to invest in every new fad. (The metaverse is probably a long way away from being pertinent to your business.)

However, it does mean that you should consider looking into new products, mediums, and marketing strategies for 2022. Maybe it’s time to get on TikTok. Maybe you need to create a Customer Loyalty Rewards club to help drive repeat business. Regardless, take the buzz about the metaverse and NFTs as proof that new opportunities exist for your business. (Even if they don’t involve digital monkeys!)

Business Learning #4: Salary Isn’t The Only Part Of Staff Retention

If you’re a small business owner, you know how hard keeping and retaining top talent is during the Great Resignation. Competitive salaries are, of course, a linchpin of any employee-retention program. But quite a few employees also point to other factors in choosing whether to stay or go with their current employer.

The following cultural options may be decisive in keeping your best people if you can’t offer the salaries that the scions of corporate America can. (And honestly, work-life balance options may even be more important to some employees than salary.) You might not be the biggest player in your industry, but you can treat your people right with some additional offerings that others aren’t offering.

Early Dismal Summer Fridays
Flexible WFH Arrangements
Extended Holiday PTO
Regular Team Building Events & Company Outings

The right company culture and flexibility really help show how much you care for your employees and give you an edge with competitors fighting their way through the Great Resignation by merely raising wages to entice and retain employees. (Although that certainly helps!)

Of course, brand collateral is a huge piece of this retention and team building for any small business. If you’re interested in providing your staff a reminder of what your brand stands for, talk to our team about your needs in any of the following!

T-shirts
Coffee Mugs
Office Accessories
& More!

Happy Holidays From JSL Marketing & Web Design

It was, as always, an interesting year and we are so grateful to have shared it with you. We all learned a lot about ourselves and the business world in 2021 and are so thankful for those opportunities.

We hope you had a great year reading with us and get the chance to rest and relax with family and friends while 2021 wanes. Your support means the world to us and we hope you are able to reflect on these business trends in the first weeks of 2022. Rest up, celebrate, and we look forward to being your partner in 2022.

Happy Holidays from all of us at JSL Marketing & Web Design!

November 11, 2021

3 Strategies To Supercharge Your Market Research

There are a lot of challenging aspects of marketing in the digital age, but few are as challenging as market research.

Did you shiver slightly at just the mention of market research?

You’re not alone! Market research is a difficult area for most small businesses, but it’s a great opportunity as well. Understanding the concerns, context, and cares of your potential clients is a massive opportunity for any business and it’s one you’ve probably not fully tapped into.

Public domain data, of course, is a great broad-stroke method of analyzing macro trends in your market and industry. However, sometimes you need more tailored market research in your business strategy to properly understand your audience.

Our market research experts here at JSL have compiled the following methods to help you navigate the challenges of market research.

Surveys For Market Research

Surveys are a great way to get direct feedback from your customers! We particularly like this option, as surveys let you get a wide swath of data from a variety of clients and potential clients and then aggregate the answers to get useful data.

Everything from consumer behavior, brand recall, customer attitudes, and buying propensity can be analyzed through the lens of survey data. There’s a number of different mediums you can pair with a survey, whether on your website, via email, via physical mail, or via on-site forms.

There are, however, some best practices to consider when turning to surveying to inform your market research.

Don’t design long surveys. This will vary from industry to industry and business to business, but generally, we’d start with three to five questions.
Don’t use absolutes. Asking the respondent if they always buy coffee on their commute might skew results. After all, how many of us always or never do an action?
Don’t ask leading questions. Your survey questions should be written in a way that does not encourage your respondents to respond a certain way. Remember, honesty is key!
Take your results with a grain of salt. If you follow political polling, you’re probably not a stranger to the issues that come with any sort of surveying. Anyone survey shouldn’t be taken as gospel truth. Remember, if you’re sending a survey out via email, your results could be skewed by those who actually open the email and opt-in. However, if you send out surveys via multiple mediums and receive similar results across all channels, your results are probably directionally useful for your market research.

Focus Groups For Market Research

Focus groups are another potentially fruitful option for market research. Getting a group of customers in one location to review a logo design or potential users to test a product is a great way to get feedback. However, it is probably the most hazardous market research option. Conducting a killer focus group is not easy and it’s why many firms specialize solely in designing and executing market research via focus groups. There’s a litany of methodological best practices to consider and the ever-present threat of certain biases. One particularly vocal participant could impact the results of your focus group or a careless moderator could unknowingly change the attitudes of the group.

That doesn’t mean you should eschew focus groups altogether. We would recommend turning to focus groups for certain tasks, like reviewing a product or a logo. It’s hard to get useful feedback in these instances via survey, so a focus group is a great option to get the information you’re looking for!

Make sure every participant weighs in. The opinions of the most extroverted participants could skew your results, so be sure that everyone present offers their feedback.
Facilitate conversation. You should come with a setlist of ten questions, but the goal isn’t just to conduct a live survey. Your participants might offer suggestions or ask questions that aren’t on your docket but are still useful. Moderate the conversation, but don’t regiment it to the point of micromanagement.
Use the focus group as an opportunity to learn. The point of this focus group isn’t to affirm your hunches. It’s to uncover new information. Imagine a focus group to review a pending branding change where the questions are designed to get positive feedback. In this hypothetical situation, the focus group moderator may not realize that several of the participants can’t discern what industry your business is in from the proposed logo at first glance. That’s a huge problem! Go in open-minded and let the conversation flow instead of trying to guide participants to the desired conclusion.

Interviews For Market Research

Using interviews for market research has its risks, but it can be a great option! Interviews with specific customers might not give you great quantitative data, but it is a great chance to put yourself in the shoes of a potential client and understand their perspectives and concerns a bit better. At the end of the day, that’s one of the most important aspects of market research! Face-to-face time with clients and potential clients lets you screen out participants that might not accurately reflect your customer base and gauge the emotions and nonverbal communication of your interviewee, insight you would not get from surveys. This also comes without the risks of a focus group we discussed prior.

Like any form of market research, interviews need to be conducted properly and pose some risks.

Take the time to vet your participants prior. Interviews can be time-intensive, so make sure you have screened out participants that don’t represent your customer base.
Don’t depend on one single interview. When you opt for interviews for market research, you are knowingly going with quantity over quality. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but make sure that you aren’t taking one or two interviews as gospel.
Don’t ask leading questions. Again, you want a complete stream of honesty from your participants. Don’t lead them to the answers you expect them to give.

Supercharge Your Market Research With JSL

If you have any questions about how to refine your market research, the experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design are here to help! We also can offer…

Search Engine Optimization

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Email Marketing

Graphic Design

& More!

Fill out the contact form below to get in contact with your market research experts today!

September 09, 2021

How Do I Get More Web Sales? 7 Quick Tips For More Web Checkouts!

“How do I get more web sales?” If you’re a small business owner, it’s critically important to get an answer! Your website’s eCommerce functionality is a huge piece of your business success. Small errors or decreases on your web store can cost you quite a bit of money, so it’s imperative you get this right!

That’s where the web sales experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design enter the picture! Ecommerce isn’t easy, but we compiled this list of three quick suggestions to improve your website sales!

Call Us Now At 855.869.4764 For More Information On Ecommerce!

The Basics Of Web Sales

AT JSL Marketing & Web Design, we like to think of web design and digital marketing like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If you’re trying to get more sales, begin with what will have the most impact first before we move on to the higher-level improvements.

Below is a list of the eCommerce basics. These are the “must-haves” to check before you broaden your web design approach.

Check Your Product Pages Load Speed
Ensure That The Checkout Page is Reachable From Other Pages Of the Site
See If Your Website Will Physically Let You Complete The Checkout Process
Test Every Link & Button On Your Products Pages
See If Your Product Pages Load On Mobile Correctly

Ok, have you confirmed the basic functionality of your website is fine? Good! It’s important to note that these suggestions aren’t cure-alls. If your website was made in 2010, there’s a real chance that the fixes above won’t do much to move the needle. If you have bigger fish to fry, then these improvements won’t help. However, if your site is functioning well and you’re still seeing problems with web sales, then it’s time to move to the higher-level suggestions below.

7 Tips For More Web Sales

1. Use Incredible Product Photography To Boost Engagement

The right imagery on a checkout page or product store is a great way to incentivize the sale. Amazing product shots not only showcase your wares, but they also drive revenue! Product pages with product shots perform much better than those without photos! If you want to see more web sales, you don’t need to grab a computer. You need to grab a camera and invest in quality product shots!

2. Augment Your Sales With Pay Per Click Advertising

If you’re not using Google Ads and Facebook Ads to drive users to your eCommerce store, then you’re likely missing out on a likely source of revenue. A lot of businesses are skeptical to use paid advertising since they see it as a high-cost way of getting business. After all, why wouldn’t you just rely on your organic SEO since you don’t need to pay for those users? Well, while organic SEO is a great way to grow your business, it has its limitations. If your competitors are putting a dedicated budget into Pay-Per-Click advertising, then your customers may actually be enticed away from purchasing from your when they search on Google. You also can target specific areas, keywords, and audiences with pay-per-click advertising in a way that you just can’t with organic SEO. This is a great option if you realize a certain product or service is lacking and needs some help! Talk to our pay-per-click advertising experts for some more tailored recommendations!

3. Incorporate Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are a great way to make your webpage more enticing, but it’s not just your homepage that could benefit from some testimonials! Putting a few well-placed 5-star reviews next to a product shot of the product in question demonstrates that others have been satisfied by the product in question! Consumers see over 2,000 ads per day and have grown accustomed to advertisers attempting to “sell” them at all times. Use customer reviews and testimonials next to the product in question to showcase that your product is the real deal and worth purchasing!

4. Find Your Perfect Lookalike Audience

One of the best ways to drive web sales has nothing to do with your website! Consider evaluating your current marketing efforts and determining who your perfect customer is and finding a lookalike audience for that customer! There are several ways to do this. You could do everything from retargeting past consumers with email blasts to designing buyer personas to creating lookalike audiences on Facebook ads. Regardless of how you go about it, consider what you need to tweak to get the right audience on your eCommerce pages!

5. Jumpstart Your Email Marketing With Email Address Capture

As mentioned previously, email marketing is a great way to reach existing customers and drive more web sales. However, what do you do if you just don’t have much in email addresses? You probably need to reexamine your website and if you’re making it easy and convenient for users to leave an email address! Your eStore itself is one great option, but offering a free digital download in exchange for a name and email address is a good option too! By collecting these email addresses, you’re building a list of potential customers you can return to cross-sell, upsell, and inform about new releases and products.

Call JSL For A Free Web Sales Consultation

Now that you understand what you can do to jumpstart your web sales, it’s time to get a free web sales consultation from our web design and eCommerce experts! Our web design experts are here to deep dive into your site and determine what works and what doesn’t for you!

Is your site securely hosted?
Is your site properly branded?
Does your site load properly?
How well do your landing pages index on Google and other search engine results pages?

If you have areas to improve on, consult with our web design experts for recommendations! When you choose JSL Marketing & Web Design, you’re getting …

A Dedicated Account Team
World-Class Customer Service
An Award-Winning Web Design Agency

Ready to Get Started? Fill Out The Contact Form Below!

July 22, 2021

How Do I Use Video In Marketing?

“How do I use video in marketing?”

It’s a valid question! Video is fast becoming a must-have in the digital marketing space! One of the reasons why video is so useful for digital marketers is because videos can tie in anywhere, whether it’s in social media, email campaigns, or on a web page!

However, it’s not just as simple as putting a generic video wherever you want on your website or social media. You need a beautifully planned, edited, and shot video, paired with a comprehensive digital marketing strategy and well-planned promotion strategy! That’s the best way to get your video in front of the right audience!

Read on to learn more about how to use video marketing to reach your perfect audience!

Video Marketing Term Cheat Sheet

Video marketing and video production can be tricky subjects at times. To simplify the process for you, we compiled this list of common video marketing terms for your reference!

Video Completion Rate: A metric that measures the number of people who reach the end of your video. This will vary tremendously with the environment in question. For instance, a YouTube ad campaign might only see a 60% completion rate whereas a connected TV campaign might see a 95% completion rate.
Reach: The measure of the total number of people who received your message. This isn’t exclusively tied to video and can be used for any marketing medium.
The Buyer’s Journey: This is also sometimes referred to as “the Marketing Funnel.” This conceptual device illustrates how users go from learning about a product or service to purchasing that service! The beauty of video marketing is that it can work in any of the following stages of the buyer’s journey.
- Awareness: The prospect first learns about your product or service.
- Consideration: The prospect is considering purchasing the product or service!
- Conversion: Congratulations! You’ve made a sale!
- Loyalty: The prospect is now a loyal brand advocate for your product or service!

Organic Vs Paid: Organic is a measure of those who come to your content through Google and other search engines versus a paid ad. For video marketing, paid advertising would most likely be via a social media platform like Facebook or YouTube.
Aspect Ratio: the width and height of your camera in a ratio format. Typically, the most common aspect ratios are 4:3 and 16:9.
Depth of Field: a measure of focus within a particular shot. The narrower the depth of field, the more in focus the subject of a shot will be.

Call The Video Production & Marketing Gurus At JSL Marketing At 855.944.1201

Video Marketing Types

There are a variety of different types of videos you could produce for your marketing efforts! Don’t take this list as an exhaustive one! There are endless possibilities for videos you could produce. Depending on your industry, business, goal, and location, certain videos could be more effective than others. The following are merely suggestions to get the gears turning in your mind! Talk to our video marketing specialists about your specific use case!

Customer Testimonials: Customer testimonials are one of the most effective videos you could ever produce! Testimonials also are universal, regardless of your industry or business needs. After all, what business owner wouldn’t want to display their legions of elated customers? If users haven’t purchased from you before, they’re skeptical about your claims about a superior product or exceptional service. Prove that you’re the real deal with the words of existing customers. Written testimonials are useful, but some people need to see real footage of your past customers singing your praises. Demonstrating the reality of the testimonial via video helps make the review tangible for viewers!
Product Videos: Like testimonials, product videos make the product in question “real.” Anyone can claim that their product functions seamlessly. However, capturing the product in question on camera creates a shareable testament to its effectiveness!
Announcement Videos: Are you opening a new location or launching a new product? Put that information in an announcement! A big announcement deserves a big stage and a well-shot, produced, and edited video is a great place to get some views.
Brand Introduction Videos: Users love brands with stories and it’s often easier to tell stories through video. Consider a brand introduction video! It’s a great way to quickly introduce yourself, talk about your brand, and make a value proposition to your perfect potential customer!

Ways To Use Video In Marketing

Social Media: Social media is a no-brainer for video. The medium is incredibly visual, so video ties in seamlessly into social media feeds, stories, and posts. Whether it’s a customer testimonial video shared on Facebook, a new product video embedded in an email to your Frequent Purchaser list, or a TikTok shot from your company holiday party, video on social media is a great way to get engagement from your target audience!
Email Marketing: Getting engagement via email marketing can be tricky if you don’t have the right visuals within the body of the email in question. Videos are a proven way to increase click-through rates from emails to your website! Just be sure that you optimize the video so that it loads well from email. If the video isn’t properly optimized, it may not load properly on the email in question.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to drive traffic to a webpage, but it can’t improve the web page in question. Google uses the landing page experience of users to rate ads. The result is that the best Google ad in the world can’t drive results if the landing page that ad directs users to is bland and dull. Embedding a well-branded and captivating video onto that landing page is an amazing way to keep users engaged with the landing page.
SEO Marketing: The time users spend on a webpage is a ranking factor for Google, so the right type of video marketing can actually improve your Google ranking! If your videos are high quality and engaging, users will watch until the end. If the videos are over 30 seconds, you’ve kept the user on the page and improved your website in the eyes of Google!

Call The Video Experts At JSL Marketing & Web Design

Video marketing is tough. Turn to your trusted video marketing experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design! We can help you plan, shoot, edit, and promote the right type of videos for your unique marketing strategy!

We are your…

Storytellers
Graphic Designers
Consultants
Creatives
Producers

Marketing is all about telling stories and video is a great way to tell your brand’s story to your potential customer!

Our video production process looks a little like this.

Development: What’s your “why?” Why does it matter to your potential customers? We’ll work with you to answer that question and plan the scripts, storyboards, and visuals that will make the video pop!
Streamlining & Pre-Production: In this step, we go over the budgets, location, talent, and equipment needed to make this a successful shoot! It’s the best way to ensure a successful shoot and it always just makes the process easy and stress-free for everyone. After all, you’re shooting a video. There’s no reason it can’t be a little fun!
Production: Lights, Camera, Action! It’s time to shoot! We know that being in front of the camera isn’t for everyone. Don’t worry – we’ll make this shoot as fun and painless as possible! If we’ve done everything correctly in Steps 1 and 2, Step 3 should be the shortest part of the process!
Post-Production: No video shoot is perfectly executed. There are always aftereffects and corrections and our team is here to implement those for you! The timeline here will really depend on the length and complexity of the video, but generally, this is the longest stage of the process.

Call The Video Production & Marketing Gurus At JSL Marketing At 855.944.1201 Or Fill Out The Form Below!

July 08, 2021

How Do I Get More Site Visitors?

“How do I get more site visitors?”

It’s a question as old as time, or at least as old as the Digital Age! If you’re a small business owner, you know you need to be on the Internet! However, the fact that you have a website doesn’t mean that you’re going to be satisfied with the site traffic that the site receives. At some point, you’re going to ask yourself, “How do I get more website traffic?”

It’s a valid question, and the digital marketing experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design are here to answer it! In this blog, we’ll run you through some standard digital marketing and search engine marketing terms and a few possible strategies to get more people to visit your website!

Read on to learn more!

Common Search Engine Marketing Terms

Digital marketing can get pretty jargony at times. To help you out, we compiled a list of common digital marketing terms. Read on to become an internet marketing guru!

Traffic: Digital marketing parlance for visitors to a particular site.
SERPs: Search engine results pages. The results pages of a search engine like Google or Bing. The highest results on SERPs usually receive most of the clicks and traffic from any particular search term.
Organic: Organic traffic refers to visitors to a website who found that site via searching on a search engine versus those who navigate to the site via another channel. (i.e., social media, another website, etc.) If your site isn’t getting a lot of organic traffic, it’s likely the site is hard to find on search engines results pages.
Bounce Rate: A measure of how many people who visited your site left that site without visiting another page. A high bounce rate means the site isn’t very useful to visitors or isn’t aesthetically appealing. Anything above a 70% bounce rate is poor. A bounce rate below 40% is an exceptional rate!
Google Analytics: Google’s proprietary analytics tool, which is commonly used to measure the number of visitors, location of visitors, and behavior of visitors while on a particular question.

Call JSL Marketing At 855.458.2873 For More Site Visitors!

How To Get More Website Traffic

Now that you know all about search engine marketing terms, it’s time to discuss the strategies you can use to drive more traffic to your site! Please note that these strategies are suggestions. For a complete recommendation tailored to your specific situation, talk to our web traffic experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design!

Pay-Per-Click Advertising For More Site Visitors:

Pay-per-click advertising on search engines like Google or Bing is the lighter fluid of marketing. This strategy will get you some heat, and it will get you results quickly! By paying to display an ad above organic search results for specific keywords, you’re drastically increasing the odds of seeing a serious increase in clicks and site visitors practically overnight!

We’d recommend Google Ad or Bing Ad campaigns for businesses who want to see more website visitors immediately or have a particular target audience they need to reach. These ad platforms also allow you to control the geo, audience, and budget in question so that you’re always getting exactly what you need from your ad campaigns!

Although pay-per-click advertising is a great way to drive more qualified web traffic, it’s not always the best strategy for every small business. It’s mainly not a great route for those brands without the resources to put up an ad spend. If cost is a concern, you might be better served to invest in….

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For More Website Visitors

This is the slow-burn route to getting more website traffic. However, it is the most cost-effective marketing strategy in the long run. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing a piece of content or website to be in line with the best practices of Google and other search engines. Ideally, these optimizations make it easier for the search engines to read the page in question and thus display the page higher on search engine results pages. Since this tactic can improve your standing on search engine results pages for numerous search times simultaneously, it’s the most long-lasting and cost-effective marketing strategy available to you!

A good SEO agency will be able to help you …

Write Compelling, Keyword-Rich Content
Optimize Meta Descriptions & Tags
Revise Site Layout & Design
Acquire Backlinks From Reputable Websites
Securely Encrypt & Protect Your Website
Redesign User Interfaces For A Better User Experience
And More!

Link-Building For More Website Traffic

If you have the opportunity, link building is a great way to drive more traffic! The right link to your website from the right site is a surefire way to drive more traffic! An easy way to do this is a blog series with another website or company in your field of expertise. By guest blogging, each company can link back to the other website and cross-promote on each other’s site! Think of links as paths from site to site. The more links you have from other sites, the more paths exist for users to find you from another site!

Better Promotion For More Website Traffic

This strategy works in the same vein as pay-per-click advertising but often is more cost-effective. Utilize the more cost-efficient marketing methods of social media and email marketing to promote your website! This is a great, low-cost way to reach your target audience and maybe even get some social shares and forwards as well for greater reach!

Be careful not to overdo it, however. Constantly spamming your social media followers and customer email list will get old and may actually drive customers to tune you out. However, the occasional blast promoting new blog content or Facebook post announcing a new deal is perfectly in bounds! Share your content on these types of platforms to drive traffic to your website!

Call JSL Marketing At 855.458.2873 For More Site Visitors!

How To Improve the Traffic You Have

The strategies mentioned above will drive more traffic to your site, but they need to be paired with other digital marketing elements for best results. You can create the perfect stream of traffic to your website with a flawlessly executed strategy, but it won’t mean a thing if the site is subpar. You need great web design to maximize your site’s impression on your site visitors. Implement these strategies to help!

Graphic Design: One of the quickest ways to impact a site visitor is through beautiful web design. Compelling graphic design will keep users on your site longer, which will improve your site’s ranking on Google and other search engines and also makes your site look professional. No one wants to put their trust in a lawyer, doctor, or hardware store with a boring and uninspiring website. You may have great word of mouth, but a poorly designed site just makes your website look unprofessional and outdated.
Calls To Action: Like graphic design, clear calls to action maximize the traffic you do receive. Remember, the goal of your search engine marketing isn’t just to get views on a website. It’s to get those website visitors to call your business, purchase from your online store, or sign up for your promotions! Clear calls to action make it easy for users to see what they should do once on your site!
Well-Written Content: Web writing is quite different from other forms of writing. Compelling website content needs to be concise, convincing, and search engine optimized, but it also needs to keep users reading. Remember, most users will leave any webpage they visit without finishing the content in question. The better the quality of your website content, the better the quality of your traffic! Great content also keeps users on your site longer since they can’t get enough of your blogs or web pages! This, in turn, increases your site’s SEO standing since time on site is a Google ranking factor!

Increase Your Traffic With JSL Marketing & Web Design

The top SEO agency in Dallas is ready to help you get more website traffic now! We’re an award-winning, industry-acclaimed SEO and web design agency with the beaming clients to back it up! There are no cheap tricks or smoke-and-mirrors when you partner with JSL Marketing & Web Design to increase your website visitors! Our custom-tailored digital marketing strategies work!

“We also appreciated JSL because they didn’t oversell — they simply offered us what we needed to redesign our website.” – Justin B.

“James and Sarah did a great job creating our company a new website. It was a quick and easy process, and we couldn’t be happier with our end product. I highly recommend JSL.” – Carter H.

Let’s talk shop. Our digital marketing experts can sit down with you to learn the ins and outs of your brand. From there, they can recommend a specific web traffic strategy to help you get the type of site visitors you want!

Call JSL Marketing At 855.458.2873 Or Fill Out The Form Below To Get More Site Visitors!