Most people enjoy the sound of a phone ringing, especially in business (unless it’s the car warranty people, of course!). For entrepreneurs and small business owners, the sound of a phone ringing is a very good thing indeed. It means people are interested in your business and called to find more information, or perhaps to even place an order.
Inbound calls have always been important to small-to-medium businesses, but never more so than in 2021. Pre-pandemic, 60% of customers preferred to call small businesses on the phone, according to a report cited by Small Business Trends.
During COVID, an analysis of 100 million phone calls revealed that customers called in even greater numbers, as a way of circumventing the need for in-person interactions.
The goal of a website marketing strategy is to drive website traffic, and motivate people to call you, but how do you measure success?
Which phone calls are coming from which keywords?
Which phone calls are coming from which banner ads?
Which phone calls are coming from Facebook? Instagram? Email?
How can you tell which segment of your online marketing strategy is pulling its weight in generating calls, and which might need a little work?
>> Enter CALL TRACKING.
That’s where a call tracking can prove to be an invaluable tool. Call tracking provides verifiable results that reveal which of your campaigns are driving those crucial phone call conversions. Instead of guessing which strategies provide the best return, call tracking provides exact performance data.
Call tracking automatically assigns phone tracking numbers to various components of your online marketing, such as Google Ads, Google My Business listings, Facebook Ads, Yelp, Email newsletters, etc. These calls are then forwarded to your business, and you are provided with data you need to track their sources.
Benefits of call tracking include:
Verifiable ROI: Most businesses don’t really know which components of their marketing strategy are doing the most work. This allows you to prove whether you are receiving a good return on your marketing investment.
Better Customer Journey: Sometimes one call is all it takes to make a sale, but it usually requires several steps to complete the buying journey. You want to make sure the customer has the information and motivation needed to proceed to the next step. If calls don’t come in from a marketing source, you need to re-examine it to determine what needs to change.
Drive More Traffic: Once you know what is working, you can invest additional dollars and effort into that channel to increase your traffic even more.
Which Call Tracking Tool Is Right For Your Business?
Call tracking is especially important for businesses that want to get to know their customers on a more personal basis. One tool I recommend is the highly-rated CallRail. The co-founder of CallRail was an entrepreneur, too, so he knew what would be needed in an intuitive call tracking platform uniquely suited to meet small business needs. Check out some of their case studies to see how other small businesses used the power of call tracking to their advantage.
CallRail Call Tracking software reveals the sources behind your calls, and provides access to each lead’s name, number, and location. After a free trial period, the call tracking suite starts at $45 a month, depending on the volume of phone numbers you need, the number of minutes your calls take, and other factors. Included in the basic plan are 10 local numbers, 500 local minutes, and 100 local messages. Basic features include:
Attribution matches incoming phone calls and texts to your marketing channels and tactics. This helps you measure the success of advertising campaigns while fine-tuning marketing strategies and spending.
Consolidate communications: With CallRail, you can talk, text, and track in one place. Advanced features like pulling up insights on a screen when a call begins give your callers a more personalized customer service experience.
Summary emails provide a breakdown of lead activity for companies within your account. You choose the data presented in your email, including total calls, total minutes, and statistics on new callers, keywords, and sources driving calls to your business. Here’s an example of a Summary Email:
Available for Apple and Android devices, the CallRail mobile app puts your call analytics in the palm of your hand, providing a real-time view of your inbound, outbound, and missed calls. You’ll also be able to listen to call recordings and communicate with customers via text message.
If you add on The Conversation Intelligence plan for $50 a month, you can transcribe the phone calls and have them sent as a text message.
The keywords associated with calls can be used to gain insights into the language your customers use to talk about you, develop hyper-targeted ad campaigns, and include in blogs, ads, and other marketing materials to speak to your audience in terms they understand.
If you are trying to grow your business online by maximizing your web presence, driving traffic to your website, and presenting your website content in a way that more people will use your services or buy your products – tracking your phone calls is an essential ingredient for success.
Are you thinking about designing a new logo for your product or service?
Designing a new logo can be costly and time consuming.
The traditional process for designing a logo goes something like this:
Day 1: Hire a logo designer for $500.
Day 2 to Day 5: Review logo designs.
Day 10: Designer stops submitting designs or goes on vacation.
Day 15: You are unhappy and ask for a refund.
Day 30: Designer says no refunds are allowed. You have a mental breakdown.
Day 45: You settle for an average logo.
This is…well shall we say, not ideal!
What happens when your logo designer disappears mid project?
What if the logo designer decides to increase their pricing because you are being too picky?
You’re likely to run into some of these common problems when you take the traditional route with logo design.
Being stuck with a single logo designer will limit your options.
…what if there was a different way to design your logo, whereby you received submissions from 100’s of logo designers?
Enter Crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing involves obtaining work, information, or opinions from a large group of people who submit their data via the Internet, social media, and smartphone apps, into a contest, which typically has a small prize.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying to avoid all graphic design agencies. There are pros and cons to working with an established graphic design agency.
For example, if you’re a fortune 500 company, and time is more valuable than money, it might make more sense to have a graphic design agency take a full scope approach.
However, if you’re on a shoe string budget like most people, the crowdsourcing route, in my opinion, is the better option to consider.
Whether you’re an established businesses or a startup, you need your logo to stand out. From the website to the product packaging, you need a jaw-dropping, communicative, intelligent logo design.
Your logo should match your preferences, business and style, grab your customer’s attention with color and design, and make your business memorable. A eye-catching logo will help you stand out from the competition.
Image matters. And having a professionally designed logo is the first step in web branding.
Below are several logos which are a result of a crowdsourcing contest.
Three of the best crowdsourcing websites, when it comes to logo design, include 99designs.com, designhill.com, and designcrowd.com.
Each of these sites offers you the ability to launch a design contest in which designers compete for the prize of winning your contest, which is typically $299.
But it gets better.
These sites also offer a 100% money back guarantee.
So, let’s say you are not happy at the end of the 7 day logo contest. Simply request a full refund. No questions asked.
Crowdsourcing your logo design is a great way to design a logo.
Which crowdsourcing site offers you the best deal though? How about the best designs? Let’s deep dive into these three companies to learn which produces the best choice for you.
99designs, now a Vista Print company, was the original kid on the block. They were the first really popular crowdsourcing site for logos. Logo contests can launched for $400. The designers at 99designs were the best ones you can find online when the site first launched. However, soon after they launched, clones started popping up and woo-ing designers away from 99designs with better pricing splits. I honestly saw a noticeable decline in the quality of the logo submissions over the years with 99designs. However, 99designs still has a great pool of designers, and if you know who to work with, which designers to invite to your contest, you’ll be fine. At 99designs you can get a logo design whether you hold a contest, or you hire outright.
DesignHill offers contests and for-hire options, too. Spend $130 to $500 to get yourself a beautiful looking logo. The high-end of the range includes the graphics intensive, “wow” types of logos you might expect from a corporation while the low-end will get you lower quality designs. Between that, you find a sweet spot of design and affordability. To hold a contest, you need to already have a design idea and know the colors you want. The site takes you through a multi-screen quiz that helps you build your site request. You do not set the cost of your contest yourself.
DesignCrowd only offers contests. You set the price as long as it meets the minimum prize. Costs for a logo contest range from $100 to $500. DesignCrowd seems to have pulled many of the best designers over from 99designs. I found myself working with many of the same designers. The quality of the logo you end up with will also depend on how smart you are at managing the designers, directing them and communicating your needs clearly. Since everything’s a contest, you cannot hire any of the designers outright.
Overall most affordable
A massive community of 640,000 designers
Most streamlined request briefings to complete
Commonalities of the Three Sites
Besides logos, each site offers websites, branding items, product packaging design, and other marketing collateral. You can hold a contest for each, but if you need all the products as a startup would, there’s no option for a contest for a full package. You would need to run a contest for each item.
Since you would probably want all branding to match, you would need to start with the basics — your logo.
The logo is the most important part of the entire web branding process. Re-branding is always very costly, so make sure you get the logo done first, then you can move on to the rest of branding tasks, such as a website graphics, social media graphics, email graphics, letterhead and more.
Why not hire an Agency instead?
When you need a design quickly, but you also need something affordable, you find out that hiring a graphic design agency probably isn’t within range. You also might have a tough time conveying to a professional designer what you want. If graphic design were your specialty, you could just make it all yourself. That’s where contest sites come in handy.
You could hire a freelancer, but that’s probably even riskier. They let you see finished work from prior projects. You cannot see the designer’s vision for your company. You also have to interview and choose one freelancer which can mean wasted time. You might choose someone who just does not work out because they may not understand the vision you have for your website or logo or product packaging.
Why Hold a Contest?
With a contest, you get to see the options in front of you and choose which design best meets your needs. The winner of the contest gets paid by you the prize money and in return, you obtain full rights to the design. It becomes a work-for-hire and you own the copyright.
Contests make sense for obtaining a logo design for less money. You could spend up to $10,000 hiring a professional graphic design agency, so $299 makes for a pretty good deal. You don’t need a business loan for that. You can just put it on your credit card.
A logo design is essential for a company’s branding because it is a visual representation of your company’s values and features. A good logo can improve a company’s brand awareness and exposure.
There’s another advantage to these design contests that many people overlook. Free marketing. You can promote the contest on your social media. You probably already have a Twitter or Facebook Page. Those free social media accounts can help you land your first customers plus posting about the contest for the design of your logo, website, product packaging, etc. can get you followers and vital re-tweets.
All of those graphic designers who like and re-tweet your posts about the contest have families and friends and clients who are not in competition to design for you, but they might want your service or product. You get free advertising by posting a poll and asking people to vote on 3 options for your logo design.
Starting your ‘logo contest’ is easy.
Input a few simple details (company name, sector, preferred colors etc.), post your brief and, and presto, you’ll soon have hundreds of hungry young designers from around the world submitting their proposals, of which you get to choose one. All for as little as $299. The best part is there is a 100% money back guarantee with no strings attached.
Before you start your logo contest, consider these points below.
Here are a few tips to consider:
Logo Design Tip #1: Identity: Before you pick a logo (or hire a designer), you must consider the message your logo will send to consumers. In order to design a logo that will resonate with your target market, you must determine your company’s identity and the elements that separate you from your competitors. Think of a few keywords that describe your business and its values then make sure your logo captures these concepts.
Logo Design Tip #2: Color: Humans are wired to respond to colors. When used appropriately, color can have a significant emotional impact on consumer behavior. It’s an important element in logo design that you need to take into consideration once you know what emotion you want your logo to elicit. Various social media sites use blue in their logo design to portray calmness, popularity, and security.
Check out this color emotions infographic.
Logo Design Tip #3: Font: Just like colors, different fonts stimulate different emotions too. It is obvious to avoid Comic Sans in a professional logo (or in any design), but picking the right font is still a difficult task. Make sure your font choice aligns with your company’s identity. Usually, serif fonts (e.g. Times New Roman) seem traditional and san serif fonts (e.g. Arial) look modern. If you already have a symbol designed for your logo, you should consider using a simple font that won’t take the attention away from the design. Try to keep your logo nice and simple by using no more than two fonts. Coca Cola’s swirly red font looks vibrant and refreshing.
Here is a great tool that will help you visualize your logo text:
Logo Design Tip #4: Adaptability: A logo should be so versatile that it can look great across multiple mediums. Some designs look great on the company website but loses its detail when printed on stationary. Avoid using overly complex designs and stick with vector graphics instead of pixels. Starbucks’ logo redesign allows viewers to see the twin-tailed mermaid clearly even when it’s minimized.
Logo Design Tip #5: Professional Design: Your logo represents your company so the design should reflect your organization’s purpose. Unfortunately, even an experienced designer with the good intention of creating a logo for your business can still fail to take a step back to evaluate their design objectively. You may have a great design but ultimately what matters is what consumers associate your logo with. Make sure your logo design is appealing and appropriate before you decide to use it on various mediums.
Lastly, below are a couple logo design videos you may find entertaining and educational.
What are your thoughts on crowdsourcing a logo? Have you had success with other platforms? Please share in the comments below.
Schema markup and Structured data are an SEO tool that can help improve the click through rate of your website on the search engine results page (SERP).
While schema and structured data are not required they are highly recommended by all major search engines to help them pull the best data from your website in a way that makes it easy for users to view on a results page.
Schema and structured data improve the look of your websites listing on Google increasing potential traffic and showcasing the products, services, or information offered on your website. This will potentially decrease user bounce rate and increase your organic traffic revenue generation.
Schema gives you more control over how your website shows up on Google and the information users see when they search for your product or service offering.
Having accurate schema markup will improve your website’s local search ranking and help Google prioritize your website above competitors that have not invested in this untapped SEO tactic.
This guide to Understanding Schema Markup For SEO will outline:
The difference between Schema markup and structured data
How Schema and structured data affect a sites SEO
Types of Schema markup and structured data available
How to implement Schema and structured data on different web platforms
Below we will start by clarifying what schema and structured data are, how they are implemented on common web development sites, and what they can do to improve the search ranks of your site.
What Is Schema Markup
Schema markup is a code that you put on your website to help a search engine pull the right information from your website. Schema creates better descriptions, accurate company information, and enhances the users experience on the search engine leading to higher quality traffic for your website.
Schema is an open sourced code that anyone can use. To get a better understanding of how it works you can visit schema.org.
What Is Structured Data
Structured data is a way to organize data in a standard form that Google and other search partners can easily pull from. Thinking of structured data like a database each item or description on your website will have its own structured data. Company information can be structured along with products and services.
Structured data is how Google sets up shopping ads or understands which products are in stock on websites. There are many types of rich snippets and markup options for your site.
How Do Schema & Structured Data Affect SEO?
Schema markup and structured data tell Google what important information should be pulled from the website. This improves search listings with accurate and well-thought-out descriptions and information. Structured data also helps Google know what rich snippets are available on a website.
A rich snippet can be anything from a question box in position zero, book review, or FAQ. It is information pulled directly onto the search page to improve the users experience. A rich snippet increases the size of a site’s listing and allows for more information on the results page increasing the likelihood of a click through to the site.
Structured data is not a ranking factor for Google, but it does affect a site’s overall rankings.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
Schema markup will have an impact on your CTR. A higher CTR, will increase your rankings by signaling to Google that your site is a good result for that search.
Structured data can help you with CTR because rich results catch the eye of the searcher and provide an outline on the information they will find on site potentially lowering the bounce rate and improving on site traffic quality.
Schema Markup Types Supported by Google
Structured data is available for almost any type of product or service and a full list of available markup can be found on schema.org.
There are also many types of rich snippets that Google has developed. You can find a full list of available rich snippets in the Google Developer.
Common snippets include:
Position zero
Breadcrumbs
Reviews
FAQ
Ratings
Events
Products
Local business information
Recipes
Site links
Product Markup
Product based markup is required when running paid shopping ads on Google. Paid shopping ads are a form of PPC ads on Google Ads that list items for purchase directly on Google. Using Shopping Ads can give a product company an edge over the competition as the product shows without the need for a user to click into the website. Schema works hand in hand with the merchant center to list products seamlessly.
How To Add Schema Markup On Your Website (The Right Way)
Implementing Schema on a web platform like WordPress and other eCommerce sites has become easier with WordPress schema plugins. If you are looking to implement Schema on a custom site it is best to hire a web developer to help implement the proper HTML code in your specific system.
Here’s how you can implement structured data correctly on your website, on different platforms:
How to add schema markup on WordPress
To add Schema Markup to your WordPress blog, check out the structured data & schema markup plugins in the WP repository. Most SEO plugins like YOAST and SEO PRESS also add basic structured data functionality to most websites including description and title tags.
How to add schema markup in Magento & eCommerce
Most eCommerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify, and Square Space will come with structured data already integrated.
If there’s no Product section, it means your implementation is missing. There are always plugins and extensions so do a Google search and find what suits your platform.
Always fix the warnings and misinformation, they won’t stand in the way of your rich snippets displaying, but it’s always best to have accurate data.
Local SEO structured data
If you have a local business, structured data can really help your local SEO. You can mark up your NAP (name, address, phone) so that search engines can better understand that information.
This plugin for WordPress supports structured data for Local Businesses.
Schema markup on your website does not guarantee that Google will implement a rich snippet on the SERP. The schema is only there to help tell Google what you want. If the information you shared is useful to the search Google will include your schema.
The best thing for you to do is test your rich snippet to guarantee it is working with the Rich Snippet Validator.
Voice search is the future of how we will interact with our devices.
If you want your business to show up in voice search, you need accurate Schema markup and structured data programmed into your site.
Voice search is a natural way to ask for information and get results. It’s hands-free, eyes-free, and all about you. You can use it anywhere – in your car, at home or on the go – as long as you have an internet connection. And it’s not just for Google Search anymore! Now Siri on iOS 11 lets you access Apple Music with just your voice.
Schema markup will provide more information about your website and it’s content in order to make it easier for voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa to understand what you’re offering.
The goal is to make it as easy as possible for Google to understand the kind of content you want to show up when people search for specific things like “restaurants near me” or “movies starring Tom Hanks.”
Structured data and Schema should be your first priority when it comes to site wide SEO, it is an important step in improving the long term quality of your website traffic.
Like any other SEO tactic, Schema should be part of a larger strategy that focuses on the entire optimization of your website.
Rich snippets and markup provide Google and other search information an easy way to improve a search result page and improve the user’s experience while on the search engine. The more information you give to a search engine in an easy-to-understand way the more likely they are to prioritize your site.
Improving the quality of your website traffic can help increase inbound revenue generation. Schema markup and structured data is one of the best ways to improve the quality of your organic traffic coming from Google.