Why, you ask? Let’s dive a little deeper.

First and foremost, understand that your bounce rate does not generate any income. Sure, there are instances where the two are connected, but more often than not, your bounce rate has little to no affect on revenue-creating results (conversions) or an increase in sales for your business.

Does your website contain a blog? If so, that is probably contributing to an increased bounce rate. Contrary to popular marketing belief, a blog almost always increases your bounce rate primarily because the nature of blog readers is to read and then leave. They have no intention of lingering or taking action once they have finished reading what they came for. The important number to look for in terms of your blog is the number of visitors. Even if they only remain on your site to read the most recent blog, odds are they will come back to your blog page time and time again. With that in mind, blogs are a great location to place inbound links.

So, is there any value in looking at your bounce rate? Sure. Bounce rates can help diagnose more specific problems. For example, if one page is underperforming in conversions, a bounce rate can help figure out what exactly is going on. Just remember that bounce rate is a signal and a diagnosis tool, not an end-all-be-all number to stress over.

Looking to gain more insight into your web analytics? Our team is at the ready! Contact us to get started today.

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However, this time period can also be viewed as an opportunity to get creative with different sales tactics, product/service offerings and building a stronger presence within your community. Fear and irrational decision-making never helped anyone – especially when it comes to your business. Instead, focus on what you can control, which is working to keep your business running in the highest capacity possible while keeping the safety of yourself and others as a top priority. We’ve compiled a list of ways to keep your business running strong right now so that uncertainty can be traded with productivity, community outreach and positivity.

1. Be Empathetic and Transparent
   • Empathy is critical and your brand’s voice is being scrutinized now more than ever. People will take note of the ways you present your company during this time. From donating to nonprofits to contributing to healthcare workers to simply expressing thoughts and concern on social media, all of these actions help to create a positive reputation for your company as well as build respected relationships with other businesses in your community.
2. Connect with Clients on a Virtual Level
   • Technology is a wonderful thing and can be used for any business, even those that are exclusively service based. Take a note from doctors, many of whom are conducting virtual assessments via video consultations and phone calls. You may also consider refreshing your social media accounts and increasing contactless engagement with new or former clients through video calls, webinars or virtual conferences. It might just take a little thinking outside of the box!
3. Consider Print Materials
   • Sure, we’re all shifting more into the digital realm, but that’s what makes print pieces stand out! Dimensional print pieces, such as brochures or mailer cards, still function as a means of message delivery while also giving the customer an interactive and memorable experience.
4. Consider E-Commerce
   • Maybe you’ve had an online shop for years and are wanting to expand it or maybe you’re looking into the e-commerce marketplace for the first time. Whatever the case, it is important to think of online sales as a chance to build out an additional revenue stream in a way that meets your customers where they’re at right now.
5. Plan for the Future
   • It may still seem out of reach, but COVID-19 will end at some point. With many businesses experiencing a little more down time, right now is the perfect time to carve out a piece of your day and dedicate it to evolving your business or marketing plan and revaluating your budget. Use this time to think about how to grow and pivot your business during the next month or year. It’s important to note that even in a post-COVID world, consumer behavior will shift, and you may see an increasing in digital or remote communication and commerce.
6. Communicate
   • Last, but probably the most vital, COMMUNICATE! Consistent and engaging communication is fundamental, especially during a time where face-to-face interactions are limited. Whether it’s updating your staff on a regular basis or speaking with clients on what changes your company is implementing to adapt to the times, communication is a key component to the longevity of any business.

Try incorporating some of these tactics and see how much they help your business maintain a sense of “normalcy” during these very abnormal circumstances. Remember, we’re all rooting for each other right now and Vista14 is here to help you during this difficult time. Whether to bounce around ideas or potential opportunities, our team is on standby to help anyway we can! Schedule your free consultation here.

The post 6 Marketing Tactics to Implement During COVID-19 appeared first on Vista14.

Below are a few tips and instructions on how to create and implement a successful virtual event:

• Strategize and Plan: Treat the virtual event the same way you would a physical event and plan accordingly. Define your theme, messages, guests and timeframe. But because the event is not an in-person one, thought will have to be given to how you interact with attendees. Strategize how, and with what technology, to best translate your ideas and event outline into an engaging virtual event.
• Get the Word Out: Promoting a virtual event takes a different level of communication than a live event because it requires keeping your audience engaged the entire time leading up to the show. A few ways to do this include a promo video, speaker announcements, agenda teasers, user-friendly registration, commercials, etc. Creating a thorough editorial calendar prior to the event is monumental in making sure enough communication is being put out.
• Post-Event Content: Your virtual event has the opportunity to provide you with numerous valuable content to use post-event. Plan ahead to gather this information, such as presentations, FAQs, quotes from speakers, event analytics and more to use in your marketing plan going forward.
• Continue to Be a Valued Source of Content: This is your chance to use content marketing around your virtual event to build an online presence and community. With more branded content at your fingertips, a continuous stream of post-event interaction can be crafted for your audience. Offering an event recap in the form of an email or blog post, making event presentations available on-demand, sharing audience testimonials, or repackaging content into other usable formats are all ways to keep engagement high.

Virtual events are having a big moment right now, but we believe they will always have a place in a successful content marketing plan. Interested in hosting one? Vista14 can help you with all of your digital marketing needs, including virtual events!

The post Virtual Events Marketing appeared first on Vista14.

It’s no surprise that, with the rise of smartphones and tablets, building custom mobile apps is the smartest financial move a business can make. In 2018, there were over 200 billion app downloads and that number is projected to reach 258 billion by 2022. A mobile app is actually fairly easy to build. But before we get ahead of ourselves, why should your business consider creating an app in the first place?

Benefits of Having a Mobile App:

• Increase the value of your business
  • In a world where everyone we see is glued to their phone, being mobile-friendly is a must and a mobile app is the easiest way to do so. The average customer spends over three hours on their mobile devices each day, 87% of which is spent in apps. They don’t want to have to switch devices in order to access your business’s content. In fact, they won’t.
• Increase customer engagement
  • Mobile apps allow you to interact with customers in real time and guide them through each step of the sales cycle, resulting in more sales and more profit. Offering a mobile app gives the customer the opportunity to interact with you anytime they are on their mobile device. This provides you with more options to enhance customer service and build on that relationship. Many businesses offer exclusive discounts to app users, provide free product or service information, offer instant customer support chat and more.
• Increase brand recognition
  • Arguably, the space your brand will be seen the most is mobile. In addition, 74% of millennials admit that they open a mobile app when bored, making brand awareness even more prevalent. Whether they open the app every day or not, simply seeing your branded logo on their smartphone screen keeps you fresh in their minds. This increase in customer communication makes it easier to begin a sales conversation, thus making your sales cycle shorter.
• Increase market dominance
  • If you want to be position as the leading solution in your target market, you have to increase your competitive value. A mobile app accomplishes this because it provides more value to the customer by being more accessible and it helps to capture a larger share of your market as customer acquisition increases.
• Increase customer insights
  • Utilizing customer feedback and data is the holy grail of business management. The amount of demographic and psychographic data that a mobile app collects helps you get into the minds and hearts of your customers to determine what influences their purchasing decisions.

If you’re relying solely on your website to fulfill your business goals, you may be missing out on key factor to propel your business to its highest potential. Even if you feel restrained by your budget or creativity, an app can be within your reach. If you are interested in working with Vista 14 to create a mobile app for your business, please contact us here.

The post Are You Still Relying on Your Website to Fulfill Your Business Goals? appeared first on Vista14.

Voice search is growing at a rapid pace and it’s changing the way people search for and interact with brands, SEO strategies and the overall customer experience. There are already over 45 million voice-assisted devices being used in the United States, like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. This growth in popularity means one thing for businesses – jump on the voice strategy train or fall behind your competitors.

Just like smartphones in the hand of every person you pass on the sidewalk, voice technology isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it is only going to improve year after year.

Adopting a voice strategy isn’t just a marketing tactic to adopt in order stay on trend but rather it is an opportunity to create a unique, personal and memorable customer experience with your brand. For example, when done appropriately, a voice strategy advertisement comes off as much more natural and seamless than that of a television or social media ad. It also lends way to create a more user-friendly customer experience because voice search interactions provide instant results.

Another reason it is important to incorporate voice search strategies into your digital marketing plan is because it drives changes in SEO best practices. Consumers interact differently with vocal search queries versus text-based ones. Why is this so? For one, voice queries tend to be a little longer which allows your brand to incorporate more keyword phrases into the messaging. Once again, voice searches provide instant gratification. Instead of having to search through an entire search engine result page, consumers are provided with one, clearly stated answer. This opens a whole new door of competition as businesses fight to be the top result.

Though the evidence to support this is not conclusive, one thing that seems clear is that businesses that utilize voice strategy will be found easier by customers. If you haven’t adopted a voice strategy yet, do not fear! Because the whole idea is fairly new, there are still opportunities to get a head start against your competition. On the other hand, if your competitors are already implementing a voice strategy into their marketing tactics and you aren’t, chances are those voice assistants are sending your prospects directly to your competition. Even more reason to look into adopting a voice search strategy!

One of the first things your business can do to get started is create Google actions or Alexa skills. There are currently over 2,000 actions for Google Assistant and 30,000 skills for Alexa that allow voice assistants to react to user commands and queries. Use the opportunity to really get creative with these, like Tide or Domino’s Pizza. With a simple question to a device, customers can receive advice on removing stains from Tide or order pizza from Domino’s without ever picking up the phone.

As it continues to grow, voice technology will become increasingly important for businesses and their digital marketing plans. Interested in getting started? Vista 14 can help you with all your digital marketing needs, including voice search strategy!

Simon. (2019, November 15). Why your Brand Should Have a Voice Search Strategy. Retrieved January 23, 2020, from https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-us/blog/voice-search-why-your-brand-needs-a-voice-strategy

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The goal of most trade show marketers is to increase the audience they have influence over. But how do you generate a larger audience at your booth? Well, that answer depends on a few factors, such as who will be in attendance, why they might be there and what they hope to take away from the trade show. From there, you simply must narrow down what method will be most successful in your circumstances:

15 Ways to Draw More People to Your Trade Show Booth:

1. Video
   • Utilize videos to showcase your product or service is a beneficial way to engage with your audience. That being said, it is important to use high-quality videos and present them in a way that your audience can see and hear without any trouble.
2. Relaxing/Lounge Area
   • Trade shows typically require that attendees stand on their feet all day. Provide a comfortable lounge area and some refreshments and you’re sure to draw a crowd – even if just for the amenities!
3. Celebrities
   • This one speaks for itself but having a celebrity at your trade show booth will bring the people in. Keep in mind that this tactic will require a larger budget.
4. Special Announcements
   • Making a grand, dramatic announcement is a great way to bring more people to your booth, especially if you did a good job with pre-show marketing. Be prepared to answer any and all questions after the announcement is made.
5. Demos
   • Live demos are a great way to showcase the benefits of your products in a live and entertaining way.
6. Food and Drinks
   • Just like with the lounge area mentioned above, providing food and/or drinks will initially draw more people to your booth. Once you have them there, take the opportunity to engage with them and speak about your product.
7. Comment Wall
   • Place a physical wall on your booth and allow attendees to write comments and messages on it. By encouraging people to utilize the board, you can use the opportunity to talk about your product while they write.
8. Pre-Show Outreach
   • Much of your time prior to a trade show or event should be spent promoting it through email, social media, websites and any other assets your company utilizes. Letting attendees know you will be there beforehand ensures that they seek you out once at the trade show.
9. Phone Charging Station
   • If you have a seating area already set up, it’s easy to add in a charging station, which is sure to attract a crowd. Take the time they use to charge their phones to mingle, pass out brochures or showcase demos about your product.
10. Free WIFI Access
    • On that same note, offering free wife (if not already being offered at the trade show location) will also encourage attendees to come and stay at your booth. Use the time that people are near to network.
11. Giveaways
    • Everyone loves winning prizes! Whether you use raffles or create a game out of it, it is important to make sure the prize is relevant to your audience and the theme of the trade show.
12. Entertainment
    • Just like with celebrities, having a form of entertainment at your booth will catch the eyes of the attendees and continuously draw them in. From magicians to comedians to musicians and more, the only limitation lies in your budget.
13. Competitions
    • Holding a competition will not only attract those with a competitive drive, but also those attendees just looking to be entertained! Have the audience be the judge to provide a lot of fun and engagement at your booth.
14. Interactive Content
    • Touch screens, tablets, monitors and more are a perfect way to engage with attendees on their own terms. Your booth can offer a variety of interactions such as demos, videos, surveys or quizzes. This is a great way to generate leads, especially if you require they enter an email before interacting with content.
15. Visual Appeal
    • No one is going to stop by your booth if it doesn’t look good. All of your graphics should be consistent with your branding, eye-catching, easy to see and visually appealing. The same goes for your staff. Make sure all staff members look and act in a professional manner.

Our creative team can help you put together an on-brand customer experience for your next event – anywhere in the world!

The post Draw More People to Your Trade Show Booth – and Get Them Engaged! appeared first on Vista14.

In addition to inspiring a more focused creative effort, our data driven process enables the continued monitoring that a campaign needs to remain successful.  One of our most effective tools for evaluating success is our proprietary Committed Visitor Index (CVI). Keeping the customer journey as a focal point, our CVI breaks away from static metrics like bounce rate by breaking down where customers go on your site, how long they stay there and whether or not they take the actions that you want them to take. Where bounce rate lacks nuance and fails to account for context, CVI helps you to better focus on address the visitors who are actually engaging with your business.

One of the most significant tools in both measuring and increasing your CVI are strategically crafted landing pages. Across different industries, a quality landing page is a key difference maker in improving conversion rates. While the performance of standard issue landing pages varies drastically across industries, the top 10% of successful landing pages consistently perform three to five times better than average regardless of industry or focus. We tirelessly monitor these success stories and craft our landing pages to ensure that our clients are among them. With an optimized web site and the appropriate measurement tactics in place, we then position strategic consumer touch points across different channels to direct prospects to specific landing pages through a clear and effective call-to-action. Using these touch points, we can then evaluate media channel effectiveness in real time and make adjustments accordingly.

In an increasingly digital world, gauging when, how and even why your customers engage with your brand is essential to success. With this information in hand, both your media and creative strategies become a more dynamic product that can be meaningfully adjusted to compliment areas of strength and to convert challenges into opportunities for growth. With our tools and our team, there’s practically nothing that can stand in the way of you and your brand in 2020.

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Video is one of humanity’s most engaging communication tools. It can memorialize a story, capture an emotion and transcend the spoken word – frame by frame. So, it’s a rather obvious fit for any company looking to boost their visibility and engage even more with their desired audience. In in fact, a recent report showed that usingthe word “Video” in an email subject line boosts open rates 20% and click-through rates 40% . So, we wanted to share some simple, inexpensive ways to incorporate video into your marketing strategy.

Video is the most consumed content online. There’s no magical, mystical or supernatural reason behind why audiences respond so well to video. People simply enjoy having multiple senses engaged at once, and the emotional responses these senses provoke. It’s the exact reason why film and television have endured as art forms. It’s also why 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with best ROI(Syndacast Report). Humans are visual creatures.

So, naturally, it makes sense that marketing can and does benefit from video – just think of the “I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials” cliché. Or how you probably still remember commercial jingles and catchphrases from your childhood. Just think about a recent commercial you’ve seen and if it stood out to you or not.

Grab an Idea and Get Started

If you’re looking to expand your marketing repertoire into video, don’t try to make viral happen – unless you enjoy coming off as a desperate brand that’s trying too hard. Be authentic but be creative.

All of your time, energy and resources should go toward crafting an original, compelling final product. Try to keep your video between 30 and 90 seconds – the optimal viewing for shareworthy content. Viewers can figure out pretty quickly what is – and is not – designed to pull numbers rather than pique curiosity. Cynicism and calculation yield very little in terms of establishing your brand as one worth engaging. In the long run, you should place your investment in the qualitative rather than the quantitative.

Luckily, creating videos these days is a far easier undertaking than it was even five years ago. Even tight budgets have plenty of free tools available to help them get started:

• Most smartphones and tablets these days have native video apps, or more professional-looking options for $10 or less. While not the first feature-length film shot entirely on an iPhone, Tangerinereceived critical praise at Sundance. There’s no reason you can’t record your own commercial.
• Both TikTok and Instagramuse native apps to create and upload super short films (photos, too, in the latter’s case).
• YouTubeand Vimeoallow you to upload, edit and track the metrics of your videos.
• Animotofunctions as a sort of digital media collage or slideshow with video, text and photos.

Friendly reminder: If you plan to embed your video on your website or in an ad, be kind and don’t autoplay. Disrupting your intended audience only serves to turn them off of your brand.

Once again, the simplest solution is the best solution. Video should be an experience that conjures up an emotion (or cluster of emotions), then asks the audience to channel those feelings somewhere. Take the opportunity to create a memorable moment with your brand.

Need some help? We are always here to kick around ideas. Give us a shout.

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It should come as no surprise that selling to someone who has already purchased from you is easier than selling to someone new.  It has been drilled into our marketing psyche that loyalty and retention drive revenue and referrals – not to mention really happy people in corner offices. Gartner even put out a stat that I am sure most executives are having tattooed on the inside palm of every VP of Sales or Marketing – 80% of your future revenue will come from just 20% of your customers.

A healthy bottom line is a key metric at the heart of growing any sustainable business. And while there is much talk that it’s about 50% easier to sell to existing customers than to brand new prospects, Marketing and Sales tend to focus on the HUNTING versus the FARMING. Why? Because in most cases, there is little alignment of assets, processes and manpower dedicated to reducing churn. In other cases, it is discounted merely because of the notion that unlike lead generation or customer acquisition, retention efforts take comparatively longer before producing results.

But wait, shouldn’t resources be applied to where you get the biggest return? Yes, they should! But it is up to the mighty members of the marketing field to help our fellow sales teams and executives recognize the value of doing just that. And here is how…

Think Loyalty First

If unhappy customers do not want to do business with your company again, then it stands to reason your onboarding of new clients and operations play a vital role in retention. As Marketers, we are trained to look “out”, not “in”.  But in doing so, we miss specific information that will help offset “unmet expectations” throughout the lifecycle of a customer inside our own organizations. Mapping your Customer Journey is a common practice – with most attention focused on the collateral, communications and experience that drives the conversion of a prospect to a customer – not the post-sale loyalty.

So look deeper. What does a “new customer” need to experience in the first 90 seconds or 90 days with your business to re-affirm their purchase decision, confirm their pronouncement of trust and demonstrate to others (influencers, stakeholders or subordinates) that they made the right choice? Understanding what the customer needs to see or hear from you post-sale to remain loyal to their purchasing decision is paramount to a brand’s marketing and sales messaging throughout their Customer Journey. The strategy is to outline the assets and collateral you must create to align those expectations.

Develop Nurturing that Achieves Alignment

Great marketers must become proficient in operations in order to best understand the Voice of the Customer. Recently the Harvard Management Update reported that 80% of companies surveyed by Bain and Co. said that they offer superior customer service, but only 8% of their customers agreed with them. “Can you hear me now?” Don’t be fooled by the “false positives” of singular data points including likes of Facebook or customer satisfaction surveys. Those often give a false sense of hope – and margin growth just doesn’t spring forth from the well of eternal optimism. At least that’s what my CFO friend tells me.

If your customers are leaving, find out the reasons. For every customer complaint, there are more people who likely have not complained. Take these pain points and then map back to how your messaging, collateral or sales department might have set that “unmet expectation”. Create a wall of sticky notes listing the “Why They Buy” and “Why They Leave” and invite your interdepartmental team members to share in the discussion. How must your marketing, sales and operations better function together to deliver on the Brand Promises you are making along the Customer Journey? Then, and only then, can your Nurturing Program be an effective tool in fighting churn. Just slapping in an automated marketing email system that elegantly ties to your CRM and ERP platform will not solve this problem.

Recognize Advocacy as the Key to Profitability

We are all a fan of something – a team, a player, a beer. Being a “fan” means more than just cheering, it means evangelizing others. This comes in many forms, but the result is always the same – someone else telling the story besides you. As marketers, we don’t just want to build customer base, we want that customer base to share their (great) brand experiences with others – to recommend or refer their friends and colleagues to us. We call this “word of mouth” marketing. But stop for just a moment and THINK. That is an “Acquisition” statement – meaning those customers get tagged with a lower Cost of Acquisition because they were referred and not “earned”. What if we put “Word of Mouth” marketing in the retention and advocacy bucket? Would that not change our approach to tracking “Loyalty and Nurturing” such that we could demonstrate the value of spending on existing customers to produce these referrals over time?

Tracking “Cost of Referral Acquisition” is a new methodology that will result in your advocacy efforts creating a new conversation with Sales and Executives. If it costs 5 times more to acquire a new customer than keep existing clients (Forester Research), then it stands to reason more effort and dollars should be appropriated to driving greater “Share of Wallet” within existing clients or helping sales get deeper and wider with larger, disparate organizational structures. Did we not just demonstrate this will have a more effective ROI? (NOTE: In this case I did mean Return on Immediate – because ALL sales have a component of time.)

Budgeting for Retention Marketing

As you are formulating your spreadsheets, strategies and objectives for 2020, consider this: Understanding your customer “failure rate” will lead to greater promise of retention returns. Look for new ways to hear the voice of your customer, understand their pain points (both within their business and yours) and communicate in new ways to clearly set expectations throughout their journey with your brand. Anyone can put a line item in a budget that says, “Nurturing Program”, “Automated Marketing Platform” or “Net Promoter Score Survey”. But a great marketer looks at the best way to personalize and streamline the touchpoints along the path of the “Prospect to Customer to Advocate” journey.

It’s time to go beyond just Acquisition and Activation. Only by truly understanding the resources that should be applied to your existing customer base can you be part of the “bottom line” equation. Failure to act now only delays the future of your brand’s reputation, effectiveness and value.

The post The Customer Journey Of Nurturing appeared first on Vista14.

A good company culture can make or break a business. It is a pretty blanketed statement that not everyone loves going into the office every single day. Some days are better than others and some days are downright exhausting and overwhelming. That being said, the company culture can play a major role in whether or not you tolerate the bad days for the good. Knowing and aligning with your company’s core values, vision and mission statement can be a motivating force to push through some of the tougher assignments. Unfortunately, many companies fail to see how they can contribute to a more positive company culture. For example:

Most companies never define it.The leadership assumes the qualities and core values that drive them personally, must also drive everyone else in the office. Company culture should go beyond the “copy and paste” of mission-vision-values statements post-up on a website. Why do you exist?  Everyone believes in “integrity”, but how you define the execution of that simple word makes a difference. If your culture is not articulated, it cannot exist.

Most employees use a different vernacular.Part of culture is using the same language – consistent repetition of not only “why” we do what we do, but “how” we accomplish it together. What are the key phrases, quotes, colloquialisms or “slang” that outsiders may not understand, but your employees recognize in an instant as the defining “phraseology” of your company?

Most companies do not describe distinction.Characterize your company’s market relevance from the perspective of the customer. This will not only distinguish the culture from the competitors, it also provides a unique perspective that empowers employees to identify with other people external to the organization that may be a fit for your culture.

Most companies don’t plan for the distant horizon.Clearly distinguish the borders of the business, then challenge the employees to break through them. The culture of the business is evolutionary, so it must begin with a small number of cultural core components that will influence a large number of behaviors over a long period of time. As a company grows, so will the culture.

Most companies mistake extras for ethos.Yoga bonding and bring your dog to work day don’t make a company culture. These are perks that make the company a fun place to work. While these activities may “connect” your company to family, societal or even business issues, they do not distinguish the core value that drives the business.

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