1. Multimedia is shareable. What makes people share content? It’s interesting. What can add interest? Topping the list are infographics, videos, and audio. These kinds of multimedia make plain text more interesting, thus more shareable.
2. Multimedia gives readers options. Not everyone wants to read, not everyone wants to watch, and not everyone wants to listen. By mixing in multimedia, you give readers the option of choosing their own way.
3. An audio blog is great for people on the go. A podcast, also known as an audio blog, is an effective way to communicate content. By adding a podcast to an already stellar, keyword-friendly blog, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to show and tell.
4. Videos are highly engaging. If YouTube’s popularity teaches you one thing, it should be that people love to watch videos. Funny videos, educational videos, cute animal videos…anything. Online, video is the medium that bridges visual content and the real world. Be authentic and be yourself, and you’ll be making great videos in no time.
5. Sound Adds Clarity. When you’re reading, it’s easy to skim. For many online marketers, combating the “skimmer” is a huge problem. How can you ensure you’re getting the point across as intended if people are just jumping your text? While readers can skip words, listeners can’t turn their ears off for a few seconds and skip sound. Whenever you want to add a little emphasis and clarity to your message, let sound guide you.
6. Voice is appealing. Words can only take you so far. The human voice, whether recorded by yourself or a professional voiceover talent, is immensely appealing. Add voice, and your blog is instantly more personal and personable. Voice reaches people on a level that writing does not.
7. Videos and audio help convey your brand and personality. Just like voice conveys personality more easily than text, audio and video are an easy way to carry your brand’s unique personality through your content.
8. It’s good for SEO. A video or podcast alone does not make a good blog post. The key is adding a keyword-rich description or transcript that will give you a good SEO boost. Sound and video files, when embedded on your website, will encourage visitors to spend more time on that particular page.

Website Audio, the greater category to which audio for blogs belongs, can increase website stickiness, improve content retention, and has even been shown to improve sales. When you start using audio on your website, you can record the content yourself, but for clarity and to ensure the appropriate tone, you can consider enlisting the help of a professional audio marketing company.

But before we get into how to generate traffic to your offer you should make sure that your landing page has a very clean and simple design with a singular message and call to action.  You want to give your landing page visitors only two choices:  fill out the form or leave.  Maybe, a distant third choice would be a link to additional information about the company, etc.  But you basically want to make the landing page airtight, without any leaks or holes.

NECESSARY COMPONENTS

 Any successful landing page should have the following components :

DRIVING TRAFFIC

The only way to drive measurable traffic to your landing page is via a pay per click (PPC) campaign where you bid on relevant keyword terms in an effort to come up in the search results.  Most PPC campaigns drive leads to a specially-created landing page instead of the main company website.  The reason is two-fold:  you can measure your conversions down to the exact cost per lead and even cost per sale.   And by creating a dedicated landing page with a singular message and a specific call to action you get the visitor to focus on your offer without other distractions on the page.

CONVERSIONS & MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS

Granted, you can conduct PPC campaigns on other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing, and in some cases the PPC costs are actually lower, but for huge traffic and great tools for measuring the effectiveness of your campaign, Google and Google Analytics can’t be beat.

Using Google Analytics, you will paste tracking and conversion codes on the landing page itself and the more important thank you page.

The only way for the conversion code on the thank you page to be triggered and counted as a “conversion” is if someone reaches that page after they fill out the data capture form.  Remember, the only way to reach that  thank you page is via a successful email inbox confirmation. 

So if it cost you $1 per click for a particular keyword phrase and 100 people click on your link after conducting a search and arrive at your landing page, if 20 of them fill out the form, confirm their requests by clicking a confirmation link in their email inboxes and arrive at the thank you page with the confirmation code, that would be a 20% conversion rate.  The cost for each lead would be figured by taking the $100 in clicks and divide by 20 conversions for a total cost of $5 per lead.  Tracking how many leads you can close and turn into sales is the ultimate goal, so if 2 out of the 20 leads converted to a sale it would have cost you $50 per sale.  So depending on how much your product or service costs you would need to evaluate whether the campaign is successful enough to continue. 

WHO SHOULD USE LANDING PAGES

As you can see from the above example, PPC advertising can get expensive, not to mention the costs of creating the landing page itself, which can use video, audio or just persuasive sales copy.  So because your clicks can add up fast, we would not recommend using a landing page driven by PPC for a $10 item.  Or even a $50 item.  Again, part of the science of successful landing page campaigns is to conduct your homework in advance so you know what your most-effective keywords are and how much they cost.  Estimating a less than 1% click-through rate (click here for PPC campaign averages) but a healthy conversion rate of just under 7%, spending $50 to sell a $1,000 item is something that most people would do all day long. 

Bottom line:  The beauty of landing pages is that they can be tested and tweaked and constantly adjusted.  Creating A/B split tests is another way to hone their effectiveness.  Following the PPC budgets is completely transparent and you’ll only pay when someone looks for, finds and clicks on your ad so you know it’s a warm lead.  And if the conversion costs make sense relative to the price of your product, like it says on the back of your shampoo bottle — rinse and repeat!

Gene R. Sower is the president of SamsonMedia.net, a New Jersey-based professional internet marketing company based in Montclair.

The fun and useful app will allow users to customize designs of their own dog or play with different designs included with the app.  Groomers will also be able to use the app as a tool to show customers different styles of grooming styles and selections that might be appropriate for their dog.

Click HERE to view the custom Facebook page

Well, maybe we’re exaggerating just a bit.

But if you do want to get found by more people who are looking for your products or services, we can help.

Here’s how…

FREE REPORT

Sign up for our 3-part series that explains how to find the best phrases that people are using to search for what you offer.   The key to growing your business online  is to identify phrases that enough people are actually typing into Google and then learning how to associate your website with those search term results —- in essence, how to be the answer to the question!

For example, if someone is searching for a way to transfer their home movies to DVD and you offer film to DVD transfer services, you would want your website to come up on page one of Google for the search term “DVD transfer services.”  Sounds simple enough, right?  Well, the concept is simple but how you get there has a few twists and turns.  This 3-part series will be your roadmap to reveal the best ways to find the keywords that matter to YOU and how to use them to your advantage.

SIGN UP HERE

The new WordPress content management site includes a blog feature that displays special events and promotions directly on the home page, a multi-page gallery of high-quality fashion photography and an animated home page photo slider to personalize the site with images of the stylists and activity at the shop.

By adding relevant keywords to the SEO plugin built in to the site, Laboratory Hair Studios has the added advantage of coming up on page one of Google for a variety of high-value keywords such as “Hair Stylist Morristown, NJ”, “hair salon morristown nj” and other important search terms.

When doctor-owned medical facility, Meadows Surgery Center in Rutherford, NJ, needed a new website, New Jersey website design firm SamsonMedia.net built them a new site on the flexible Joomla content management system platform.

The new site features all original photography and a searchable doctor directory by name and/or speciality.

There is also a doctor “Spotlight” on the home page that will allow them to feature different doctors who all share in the practice.

View the new site at:  www.meadowssurgery.com

This is a part-time position that involves approximately 10 – 20 hours per week.  While this is a work from home freelance job, you will be required to meet at least once a week, usually Mondays, on site, in our Lincoln Park, New Jersey offices.  DEPENDABILITY to meet deadlines and stay in touch on a daily basis are of CRITICAL IMPORTANCE.

This is an extremely flexible position that will allow you to learn the ins and outs of Internet marketing with a wide variety of tasks and projects.

PRIMARY SKILLS REQUIRED: Experience with WordPress.   You must know how to post all types of content within various WordPress websites.  If you do not know what WordPress is or have not worked with WordPress please do NOT apply for this position.  Note:  You will not be required to design WordPress sites—  just post and update content on existing sites, including videos, photos, text, PDFs, etc.  Ability to crop images and use FTP required.  Ability to install WordPress templates on a server a BIG PLUS.

You must also know your way around Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin and know how to use Hootsuite to manage multiple social media accounts.  Ability to use PhotoShop or other graphic programs to create page designs and edit graphics is key.  We make custom Facebook pages for businesses so any ability to create and install custom welcome pages and welcome tabs also a huge plus.  See our Facebook portfolio HERE.

SECONDARY SKILLS:  Huge pluses are experience creating and sending email newsletters using iContact, Aweber, Topica or Constant Contact, in that order.  Ability to do basic copy editing, image cropping, downloading, resizing, etc, also a plus!

Candidate must own their own laptop computer with wireless access and bring to Monday meetings, preferably Windows (MACS ok) and know their way around Google and the Internet in general.  Knowledge of Excel spreadsheets very helpful as is ability to write copy.

This is a GREAT opportunity to apply your basic social media and blogging skills and take them to the next level in a professional environment working for a wide variety of clients that include travel, pets, medical, legal, food, retailers and more.

HOURLY RATE:  This freelance project will be pay the hourly rate of $12-$15 for the first 3 months based on experience going to $15 – $18 an hour after 3 months based on performance and mutual interest, etc. You will be paid weekly.  Estimated hours vary from an average of 10 – 12 per week to as many as 20 – 30 depending on work flow.  You can work anytime you want as long as work gets completed by assigned deadlines but you will be expected to be accessable via email or phone for follow-up questions and collaborations during normal, weekly business hours.

To apply for this assignment please email resume and cover letter to:  gene@samsonmedia.net

New Jersey website designers

The custom Facebook page offers new visitors to opportunity to “like” the page to be kept abreast of sales and special offers.

The custom Facebook page also includes an integrated sign-up box for Pets Pets Pets’ iContact email marketing account as well as a listing of store hours, phone number and a link to the main website.

The gist is that Social Media Marketing (SMM) combined with email marketing gives the sometimes-hard-to-quantify SMM a tangible metric to measure success (or failure).

In response to the question, “If you used social media together with email marketing to get better results this last year, how much better were your results?”

21% reported “significantly better” and 33% “somewhat better.”

But the stat that I liked the best was that 29% were not combining the two at all, meaning there’s lots of room for growth!

Also interesting and a validation of what SamsonMedia.net been doing for over a year now, is combining email sign-ups with custom Facebook pages which a full 80% of respondents replied was the best one-two punch in their social media marketing efforts.

Our own experiments in this area bear this out, especially when combined with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on Facebook.

We found that driving traffic via PPC to a custom landing page on Facebook not only increased our “likes” to the page (another form of opt-in marketing) but nearly doubled our daily rate of email sign-ups.

What are you finding when you’ve combined SMM with email marketing? Please share your results in the comments box below or on our Facebook page HERE.

“What You Need To Know About (SEO) Search Engine Optimization“ is a clearly written, 16-page guide book that will allow you to have an informed and STRATEGIC conversation with whoever is building or managing your website so you can intelligently direct the process to make sure your website is attracting TARGETED leads for your business based on your products and services. And if you do have some basic web publishing skills like knowing how to update pages, by all means, feel free to give it a go! With this guide book, now you’ll have a road map to show you the way!

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY NOW

Completely updated for 2011!

The site also includes patient information forms that can be filled out and submitted online to minimize office waits and improve data flow within the office.

When I called Gene at Samson Media at the suggestion of a colleague, I was skeptical. We had “lived” with our old website believing that having the sleak fresh look of other websites and manipulating the content ourselves was just a pipe dream. Gene lifted the fog and told us that our ideas could easily become a reality. Several weeks later, we had what we had been dreaming about and more. Thanks to Gene and Samson Media, our new company motto is, “It’s a whole new world out there.”

Annette Baron, PA, MBA
President
Eagle Research, Inc.

“Utilizing Samson Media’s unique approach was an eye opening experience. After Gene explained why we needed to modify our website, it started to make sense. After a few short weeks of exchanging ideas, this new approach was ready to be tested. Well, I am now a believer, within one month of our initial conversation; we saw significant results, kudos to Samson Media.”

Larry W Abraham, CFO
Royal Coachman Worldwide

“Just wanted to let you know that your website design for my company has given me the opportunity to present my products and services in such a professional manner that I just closed a deal for $24,000 dollars with a large marketing company. Without your design and optimization of my website, I would of never had the opportunity of the company ever knowing I even existed. Thanks again for your great work.”

Ralph Trujillo -CEO
Speedpro Imaging-Westwood NJ

“I’m completely in love with my new site! Thank you so very much for all your professional help. Gene Sower of Samson Media was simply a gift from heaven. Gene is extremely knowledgeable, professional and friendly. His expertise made my decisions quite easy.”

Francesca Petromilli, Owner
Francesca’s Nail Emporium

“Samson Media was able to keyword optimize our home page for the terms we wanted and get us listed on the first page of Google in about a month. We were pleasantly surprised how our website was able to come from relative obscurity, as far as the search engines were concerned, and obtain a top three and a top nine ranking for a very reasonable one-time fee.”

Barry Berman
President
NexPet Retailer Co-op

For a limited time* we are offering to create a custom Facebook page AND a 30-second video montage set to music that you can use on Facebook, your website, even LinkedIn, to market your business!  

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

Video is the best way to showcase your products, highlight your location, build trust and show people what makes you unique!  Using a combination of Facebook and video marketing is a powerful combination that you can use to bolster your current marketuing efforts.  Each of these services, priced separately, is valued at over $500 apiece but for a limited time only we’re offering both these services at substantial discounts.  Read on…

Here’s What You Get

Facebook

CLICK HERE TO VIEW FACEBOOK  SAMPLES

Video

Bonus

If you don’t have one, we will set up a free YouTube Channel for you and upload the video to both YouTube and your Facebook page.  Once uploaded to YouTube you can embed the video in a wide range of other websites, etc.

Sample Videos



Regular Price for video & custom Facebook page:  $1,000

Summer special:  $500

*expires June 30th, 2011