Finding ways to attract and encourage people to keep coming back to your site is no easy feat. If you are looking for ways to generate a stream of targeted traffic that converts, we recommend that you incorporate visual content into your digital marketing campaign.

Visual content is one of the most powerful online marketing tools. They are easy to consume and understand. On top of that, they also increase engagement, brand awareness and earn more new business.

Here are 3 types of visual content that will increase your conversion rate:

Infographics

We live in an era where an average person has an attention span of about 8 seconds. People want to get the information they want fast. Otherwise, they’ll move on swiftly to the next site. Infographics can help you reach your audience and grab their attention, mostly because you make things easier for them.

People love infographics. They are filled with valuable information, but are presented in a user-friendly layout. It requires less time to read, absorb and get the gist of information.

Images

Every day, the average consumer is exposed to a large volume of advertising messages. As such, it can be easy for your content to get lost in the jungle. Providing your text content with an appealing image can help you cut through the noise.

Photos are a great way to showcase your products and services. Take some photos of behind the scenes of your brand. Take some snaps shots of your team members, as well as the process that goes into creating your product. You may also include some photos of happy customers who have recently purchased your products or availed your services.

Videos

Studies suggest that posts with videos attract 300% more inbound links than text-only posts. But in order to set yourself apart in the digital era, you need to make sure that your video is of the highest caliber.

A great video serves as an extra clout for your campaign. It is useful for presenting common problems and then showing people how your products can solve that problem. Also, it is imperative that the videos are congruent with the overall style and ethos of your brand.

3 Types of Visual Content That Will Increase Your Conversion Rate

Take a look at the people around you and you’ll notice that majority of them are using their smartphones. According to a study that was conducted by Deloitte, most Americans would check their phones within 5 minutes of waking up and continue to do so throughout the day. In fact, a huge percentage of Americans check their phones 46 times per day.

If your website isn’t mobile optimized, it will look cluttered and unreadable on a 5-inch screen. With our fast evolving digital landscape, websites that aren’t mobile friendly are becoming defunct.

Here are 4 reasons why your business must have a mobile friendly website:

Mobile users make frequent purchases

Ask a business owner what they’re business goals are, and we bet majority of them would say “increased sales”. According to studies, mobile users buy more and spend more as compared to their desktop counterparts.

While tablet usage is comparatively lower than smart phone use, tablet users are said to be the biggest spenders. In fact, they spend 50% more per purchase than smartphone users. Take advantage of this by making sure that your website is mobile optimized. Otherwise, you’ll be missing out on revenue-generating opportunities for your business.

Over half of the web traffic is mobile

As mentioned above, the number one goal of business owners is to increase sales. Next on their list would probably be more traffic to their website. If your goal is to drive traffic to your site, you need to be thinking mobile.

As of 2014, over half of all web traffic is via mobile. In fact, studies suggest that mobile media consumption as of this year was 21% higher than that of desktop.

Improve user experience

People are more likely to return to your website or purchase your products if you offer a satisfying mobile experience. Since mobile users are always on the go, they have limited time to wait. They want to get what they need fast. If you can’t give it to them, they’ll leave and move on to your competition.

You might be offering the most unique, valuable and useful products on the market, but people aren’t going to purchase if your site’s mobile experience is poor or non-existent.

Everyone is on mobile

More and more people are spending more time on their mobile devices. After all, it’s more convenient. It allows us to check our emails, log in to our social media accounts, check the news or research something even when we’re on the go.

4 Reasons Why You Must Have a Mobile Friendly Website

SEO Mistakes to AvoidSo you have finally decided to incorporate SEO into your online marketing strategy. That’s great! You chose a keyword and started using it into your content. You have uploaded those contents one after the other, and now you’re hoping that your website will land at the very top of Google’s rankings.

If you want to increase your website traffic, it is important to have search engine optimization in mind when creating contents for your website. That plan starts by avoiding the mistakes most website owners make.

In this blog post, we’ll give you a roundup of the most common SEO mistakes people make. Most of these mistakes cause huge, deal-breaking, rank-destroying disasters.

Copying content

Google wants high quality, original content. If you think you can trick Google by stealing some pieces of content from your competitors, think again. Copying content is not only illegal; Google will punish you for it. In fact, it will push your site so far down no one is going to ever read your content.

Writing original, compelling content takes time and effort. But if you want your website to stand the test of time, then you need to work hard for it.

Bad content

Poor content will not only weaken your ranking, it won’t simply make an impact to your readers. For your content to flourish, we advise that you choose topics that are of interest to your target audience. Do your research and write articles that are informative, relevant and unique. Supply your audience with a steady stream of high-quality content and watch as your rankings improve over time.

Not using the right keywords

Some people use generic keywords such as health, weight loss, baking or love. These types of keywords are too broad. While they can help you reach a wide range of audience, chances are it’s the wrong type of traffic.

To improve your chances of landing on the top three spots, consider using more specific keywords. As an added bonus, this will help you attract prospective customers who might be interested in buying your products.

Keyword stuffing

This is a common mistake newcomers often make. While it is important to incorporate the keywords into your content, make sure you don’t overdo it. Otherwise, it’s going to sound spammy. You want the article to sound natural and not forced.

 

content  creationContent is the new method of advertising. Over the years, business owners and marketers have realized the importance of utilizing content in their marketing strategy. Because of this, most companies have made a commitment to push content out there to keep feeding the masses with information. Audiences today, however, have wised up. That said, the importance of quality content cannot be stressed enough.

Forget about the dry press release and the hard sell. Rather, provide your audience with good content that they can to share with others.

Here are 3 reasons why high quality content still matters

Helps improve your ranking on search engines

Every user is searching for content in some form or another. Some businesses, however, think that the more content they have, the better their chances are of appearing in Google or other search engines. What they fail to realize is that quality is one of the key ingredients of a successful content marketing.

Google’s primary goal is to provide users the best results possible. Search engines are getting better at sniffing out bad content. Google, for instance, constantly update their algorithms to ensure that top-ranking sites contain high quality and relevant information. Just having something on your site is not necessarily good.

First impressions matter

In this digital age, people first visit your website and read through your content to decide whether you’re a credible business. It is often the first interaction a prospective customer has with your brand. Hence, it is important to take time to make your website as appealing as possible.

If your site is full of bad writing and grammatical errors, users are likely to migrate away from your site. Remember, contents that aren’t well written convey incompetence and laziness. These are two things you certainly don’t want associated with your business.

Attention is getting harder to grab

With professional services firms now churning out more content than ever, there is far more marketplace noise to cut through in order to capture the attention of your target audience. Companies that provide high quality content are those that are succeeding in reaching their audiences and converting their visitors into paying customers.

Flat design vector illustration concept of computer and connected mobile devices with links of transmission information on various data storages and cloud computing service. Isolated on stylish colored background.

So you set up a blog. You were so thrilled at the prospect of sharing your expertise with an eager audience. You started creating valuable content assets and created a few downloadable pieces. You have done everything experts said you should, and yet you’re conversion rate isn’t increasing.

Here are 3 things that might be affecting your content conversion rates.

You’re attracting the wrong type of traffic

If you’re successfully driving people to your blog or website, but your conversions aren’t increasing, you’re probably targeting the wrong people.

Some people assume that an increase in traffic means an increase in conversion rate, but that’s not always the case. While visits, email sign ups and exposures are all great to see, they are not going to make much of a difference to your bottom line. You want conversions. In order to turn traffic into conversion, you need to attract the right kind of traffic.

Your calls to action suck

If conversion is the goal of your content marketing, then you need to create a compelling call-to-action. Most blog posts, however, do not have a call-to-action. Even if your messaging is consistent and you’ve hit the right audience, visitors won’t advance further into their buyer’s journey without a clear call-to-action.

Telling your readers where to click, what they can get in exchange of their email address and how to take advantage of your offer can noticeably increase your conversion rates.

You think SEO is not important

There are lots of great content out there. But the problem is that these contents do not reach their desired audience. Why? It’s because they have taken SEO for granted.

SEO is a vital part of content marketing. This will help your content rank in search engines; thus, bringing it closer to your intended users. All you need is a little bit of keyword search and a few minutes to put proper title tags, meta descriptions, tags etc.

BIMSYoutube_2.23Today, Youtube is considered as the second largest search engine in the world. In fact, millions of viewers are turning to Youtube everyday to learn more about products and services, find answers to their questions and find solutions to their problems.

Here are a few reasons why it’s time for your business to start embracing Youtube as part of your marketing strategy.

Build trust

Online video marketing provides businesses an opportunity to build trust. Your videos will demonstrate what you can do and what you know. By uploading videos that feature your expertise in your field, it provides you an opportunity to build authority and recognition.

Online video also allows you to project a better and more personal profile to your clients. This gives customers a sense of intimacy; thus, making it easier to build rapport and trust.

SEO benefits

By utilizing Youtube as part of your marketing strategy, you are also increasing your search engine optimization. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing consider video as important as text-only pages. Marketing on Youtube will help your videos appear more frequently in Google’s search results.

Generate sales

Youtube allows customers to see your products in action before buying them. This is particularly beneficial for those who sell online. Reember, nothing will market your product better than an actual video demonstration.

Youtube can help your business attract customers from different parts of the world. The more people watch your videos, the more business you can generate.

More content in less time

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a minute of video is worth millions. Every second of video is equivalent to reading an article with at least 15,000 words.

People love videos because it provides them a lot of information in so little time. Long articles provide a significant amount of information. However, some people are not interested in reading them because it will take a lot of time. Who would want to read a long, boring article, when you can just press the play button and get the same amount of information in a minute or two?

It’s where your customers want to find you

Youtube is the 3rd most viewed website in the world, next to Google and Facebook. In fact, over 3 billion Youtube videos are being watched every single day. Plus, millions of people subscribe to different channels each day. With this statistic, it is safe to say that people wants it. Not delivering on this desire means somebody else will.

 

BIMS_2.1

One of the best ways to make sure that your blog posts keep getting traffic is to make them search engine friendly. Writing for SEO is no longer as easy as it used to be. Before, people could just throw a bunch of words together, incorporate the keywords into the article and expect an increase in web traffic. It doesn’t matter if the article makes sense or not. But that’s not how it works anymore.

How do you create content that ranks well in search engines? Here are a few tips for writing effective SEO-friendly content.

Write for your audience

Since your goal is to boost traffic, you first have to please your audience. There is no point in writing a keyword-rich article if it doesn’t make sense to your readers. The article should offer value to the readers. Make it interesting for them to want to read the entire article. Remember, you are creating content for people, not the search engine algorithm that finds them.

Use keywords

One of the best ways to improve your ranking is to include popular keywords into your content. You need to use them in the title, first and last sentence, and within the body of the article.

It’s not enough to just use the keywords. It is important that you incorporate them as seamlessly as possible into the article, making sure that the sentences still make sense. Also, be sure not to overuse the keywords. If you do, Google may think that you’re overstuffing, which can result in search engine penalties. On average, the article should have a keyword density of 1-4%.

Optimize your image

People are attracted to visuals. That said, we recommend adding pictures, infographics and slide shows to spice up your content.

A lot of people make the mistake of uploading images with file names such as image01.jpg. You have to remember that Google can’t read images. It is through text that Google recognizes them. To get your page to show up in search images, be sure to name the image properly.

 

BIMS_4.21.15

If you are to ask any website owner to choose a section of their site that is hardest to create, you’ll probably get the same answer over and over again – the landing page.

Have you been putting it off because you’re worried it will suck? Creating a landing page doesn’t have to be a difficult process. We’ll make it easier for you by citing some of the most common landing page mistakes. Be sure to avoid these mistakes as these could be killing your conversions.

Not explaining clearly what to do

A landing page is simple, straightforward and designed for a single focused objective. It should guide your visitors toward your intended conversion goal. If your goal is to direct visitors to a particular page and urge them to sign up for a free trial, then that page should be about trying to get them to leave their email address.

But most of the time, landing page asks users to do a lot of things. Confused about what to do, visitors leave without doing anything. A landing page that does not communicate its purpose is a poor landing page.

Ignoring basic aesthetics

It turns out that some of the most common mistakes are design related. Trying to capture the attention of people, some seem to lose their minds on the appearance of their page. Garish colors, cheesy stock photos and crazy fonts do not directly influence conversion rates. Rather, they could hurt your brand’s reputation and credibility.

Blowing the headline

The headline on your landing page is what tells your visitors what your landing page is about. This is your chance to overcome the attention filter most of us have developed due to information overload and ads that offer nothing but empty promises.

If you want your visitors to keep reading, you need to add a benefit to the headline. Show them how you can help and how you can address their needs.

 

BIMS Social_3.12.15

If you are using social media to build an engaged community of fans and customers, generate leads and raise awareness of your products and services, it is imperative that you post on social media on a daily basis. However, you also want to connect with your audience without driving them away. The key is to strike the perfect balance between informative and annoying.

Your social media efforts can take you places. This is especially true if you know when to share and when to listen. We’ve got some great tips for you to inspire you in your efforts.

Twitter

Twitter is a fast-moving social network. Due to its fast-paced nature, you’ll need to update it more often.

We generally advise business owners to maintain a consistent presence in Twitter. While being active on Twitter is advisable, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience. So, keep your posts spaced throughout the day.

With Twitter, it seems the more the merrier. You can tweet as much as 14 to 20 times a day. Just make sure that they’re full of great info.

Facebook

With over 1 billion users throughout the world, Facebook is the place to be. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to post twice a day, 7 days a week.

You don’t want to post too frequently as people easily get frustrated with too many posts. Make each post count by sharing fun pictures and posts that your followers will be interested in. Remember, the more your followers comment, share or like on your posts, the more likely are they to see them.

Pinterest

Like Facebook, Pinterest has a feed that almost everyone can see. With the high volume of content being shared on Pinterest, you’ll want to create new boards on a regular basis if you want your pins to get found. Feel free to post 5-10 times a day.

Pinterest is all about visuals. So we suggest that you use beautiful, quality images.