Have you noticed the gold stars next to some Google ads? Or perhaps you’ve heard the term ‘seller ratings’ but have no idea what that means or how to get your business rated? Then we’re here to demystify the whole process for you. Read on to find out exactly what Google seller ratings are and how they can dramatically increase the performance of your online ads. We’ll also tell you how to get great Google seller ratings for your business.
Google seller ratings help online shoppers make informed purchasing decisions. The automated extension collates information from independent review sites to create an overall rating for your business. This is displayed in the form of gold stars beneath your Google ads, which provides an instant, visual snapshot of how customers rate your business on a scale of one to five.
Google seller ratings appear across all browsers and platforms and are free for businesses; you don’t pay if a customer clicks on your star rating. Let’s take a look at some examples of Google seller ratings from around the internet:
Travel
Retail
Why do you need Google seller ratings?
Great Google seller ratings can really boost your business, here’s how:
Ratings increase the performance of your ads. Google seller ratings increase the click-through rate (CTR) from adverts on average by 17%.
Positive reviews matter to consumers. This report shows that 92% of customers read online reviews and 88% of online shoppers take reviews into account when they’re making purchasing decisions.
High Google seller ratings encourage customers to trust your business; 68% of people questioned in the above survey said positive reviews made them trust a business more.
Star ratings are proven to be the most influential ratings factor, says the same report. They provide an eye-catching visual component to ads.
Seller ratings are useful if you don’t have a strong, well-established brand yet or work in an industry where many of your competitors don’t have reviews.
How exactly does Google create your seller rating?
Google aggregates independent customer reviews from these sources to produce seller ratings:
A list of 31 independent review sites such as Trust Pilot, PriceGrabber, ResellerRatings and Shopper Approved.
Google Trusted Stores, which is a certification program for online businesses. Customers can rate their shopping experiences through the program.
The results of Google shopping research.
StellaService, a third-party company that measures the quality of customer care for online businesses.
Google consumer surveys, which collect data about businesses and domains.
Google filters out reviews which it considers are suspicious or untrustworthy and may not show reviews for items or services unrelated to your Google ad. You can choose to disable the seller ratings function if you wish.
How do you get Google seller ratings?
To be eligible to receive seller ratings on your Google ads, your business has to meet the following criteria:
You must have at least 150 reviews from the last 12 months.
You must have an average star rating of 3.5 or higher.
In your AdWords account, you need to set your campaign type to: ‘Search Network with Display Select,’ ‘Search Network Only,’ or ‘Search and Display Networks.’
Seller ratings will only be displayed when searching from: google.com, google.co.nz, google.co.uk, google.nl, google.com.au, google.de, google.co.jp, google.fr, or google.com.br.
At least 10 reviews must be in the same language as the searcher’s Google interface. For example, if a searcher finds you through Google New Zealand then 10 reviews must be in English for seller ratings to show up. If they’re searching from France, 10 reviews must be in French.
In addition, make sure that all shopping and review sites you use list your correct business name and URL to allow Google to accurately aggregate your rating.
Which review websites should you use and how much do they cost?
The best way to get Google seller ratings is to join a review site that has the following features:
The site should allow you to monitor reviews and respond to negative feedback.
You should be able to email previous customers to request a review.
The site should verify your reviews by only allowing users to leave a review after they’re actually bought something from you.
The site should allow you to share your reviews on your social media channels.
Rating and review sites usually charge a monthly membership fee and you often have to submit an enquiry to get a tailored quote. Here are some prices and features for the most popular rating sites which Google uses to produce their seller ratings:
Trust Pilot verifies reviews by asking for proof of purchase such as receipts and order confirmations. You can easily contact past customers for reviews and use Hootsuite to share your reviews on social media. Trust Pilot allows you to submit one response to each review.
Shopper Approved has a ‘pay-as-you-grow’ pricing model with a free trial. You can easily collect and share reviews and it even allows reviewers to submit video testimonials. Shopper Approved alerts you to negative reviews and allows you to respond in private; the customer is later given a chance to update their review.
Reviews.co.uk shows which reviews are verified with invoices or order IDs and which aren’t. The site also allows you to reply to reviews and flag any that are suspicious. You can share reviews on social media and customers are able to attach review photos and ask you direct questions through a Q&A interface.
ResellerRatings is the biggest review site but it doesn’t have a transparent pricing system and has a few bad reviews itself. The site shows which reviews have been verified and which haven’t; you can respond to reviews and share them on social media.
Price: costs vary per month according to ResellerRating’s independent algorithm.
Yotpo displays both verified and unverified reviews, which you can respond to and share on social platforms. Customers can attach review photos and you can import existing customer reviews from other outlets.
Price: start from $400 per month.
Tips for gaining more seller reviews
So you’ve signed up to a ratings site, but how can you encourage customers to give you a great write-up? Here are some quick tips for gaining more seller reviews:
Ask previous clients to review you.
Provide an awesome service so customers feel compelled to leave positive feedback.
Request feedback at the right stage of the customer journey; send shoppers an email straight after the transaction has been completed or even add a survey form to the confirmation page. Test the placement of your review requests to see what works best.
Make it easy for customers to leave feedback, don’t ask them to log-in or navigate through multiple pages. Instead, make sure all they have to do is simply select a star rating and leave space for any comments they want to add. Ensure that your review request system works on all browsers and across all platforms, especially mobiles.
Monitor your reviews and respond to negative feedback. This will allow you to resolve problems and show potential customers that you care about the service you deliver and want to rectify issues.
Bear in mind that once you have over 150 reviews, you may have to wait a few weeks for this information to be indexed by Google before your star seller ratings start showing on your ads.
So now we’ve demystified Google seller ratings for you it’s time to go out there and boost your business by collecting your own golden stars.
It’s not enough to just serve great food these days, every restaurant needs an engaging website to be noticed. Customers like to check out menus, read reviews and have the option of booking a table online before they visit. Luckily, you don’t need to be a design pro to create beautiful, user-friendly restaurant web designs, as there are plenty of great WordPress themes that will do the job for you. We’ve put together a list of the top 10 options.
Top 10 WordPress Themes for Restaurants
Sage
Not sure how you want your website to look? Then Sage is a great option for you as there are over 40 demo sites to choose from covering everything from Seafood, Vegan and Thai to Bakery, Brewery or Tea House designs. Once you’ve selected a demo you can use the theme options panel to easily customize the design to suit your restaurant.
This is the ideal theme for street vendors, food truck owners or small food businesses. Food Truck incorporates simple page and menu builders and is easy to tweak, including nearly 90 custom shortcodes, 10 widgets and over 600 Google Fonts. However, this theme’s key selling point is its truck locator map, which allows customers to find you easily.
Resca is one of the top restaurant website themes and looks great on all devices. Choose from one of the demo sites and make it your own by selecting from hundreds of colors, skins, fonts and icon options. Resca’s star attraction is its events calendar which will keep your customers in the know.
Tavern is one of the most popular WordPress themes for pubs and restaurants. It includes well-known plug-ins like Revolution Slider, Essential Grid and Visual Composer, all of which allow you to create any site layout. You can drag and drop pre-built features to customize your design and improve the user experience with a reservation/booking system and online shop.
If you’re in the fine dining sector or run a high-end eatery such as an Italian Bistro, then Luigi is the classy restaurant theme for you. The theme boasts a Hero Block feature which allows for full-width images and customizable titles, text and fancy call-to-actions. Luigi also has an online table reservation system, event organizer and GoodReviews plug-in so customers can let everyone know how great your food is.
Top Luigi Features
GoodReviews plug-in to display customer reviews and ratings
LaCuisine is a clean, ultra-responsive theme suitable for any type of eatery. Start with one of their stylish demo sites and edit to suit your style with the hundreds of fonts, colors and layout options. LaCuisine’s key features include sharp, retina-ready graphics and an engaging menu builder which allows diners to click on dishes and leave a review or pre-order them.
Top LaCuisine Features
Engaging menu builder which enables diners to leave reviews
This is an extremely visual theme that offers unlimited color, layout and sidebar options. Nuvo will help you create a site full of Parallex full-screen images and video backgrounds; you can also choose from a huge range of animations and typography. Nuvo is easy to personalize and works well for restaurants, cafes and bistros, however, the theme does looks better on larger devices.
Dalton is a multi-purpose, corporate theme that works well for restaurants as well as other types of businesses. It has six unique homepage designs to start with and over 55 customizable page builder elements, as well as stunning Parallex and retina-ready visuals. This theme uses the Slider Revolution plug-in for smooth scrolling, perfect for websites with lots of images.
Top Dalton Features
Image-friendly
Integrated with WooCommerce to create online shops
Piquant offers a simple, bold design and six homepage styles. There are customizable menus, clever call-to-action buttons and awesome image galleries. The stand-out feature of Piquant is its blog function which has six different post templates, so if you’re serious about engaging with your customers and updating them on new dishes and events, this is a great theme to choose.
Top Piquant Features
Blog function with post templates
Reservation and booking system
Compatible with WooCommerce to sell products online
Rosa is great for restaurants, cafes and bakeries and is a popular bar website theme. If you want to focus on high-end images Rosa is a great choice as you can create stunning galleries, Parallex visual effects and video. The theme also has handy booking and e-commerce capabilities.
Investing in a top restaurant theme for your website is one of the smartest moves you can make. Rather than battling with web coding, save time and hassle by choosing a ready-made theme and simply modify it to reflect your restaurant’s unique personality. Don’t forget to make use of your theme’s special features to improve user experience, including table booking, e-store, and online review plug-ins. Build a stunning menu and pack your site full of enticing food images and your restaurant will be buzzing in no time!
Should you add the Amazon Payments Button to your store?
Are you looking for a proven way to increase your online business sales? Then adding Amazon Payments Button will do just that by providing your customers with a fast payment method they know and trust. Read on to discover more about how Amazon Payments can boost your online sales, how you can add buttons to your store and what fees you’ll have to pay for this service.
What is Amazon Login and Pay?
Amazon Login and Pay, also known as Amazon Payments, is a tool that allows customers to pay for products online through their Amazon account. If a customer clicks an Amazon Payments Button on your online store, they’ll pay for your product through their Amazon account. Since Amazon already has the customer’s credit card and address details saved, the checkout process is incredibly quick and easy.
Why should you use Amazon Payments Buttons?
Here are the top reasons you should add an Amazon Payments Button to your online store:
Customers trust Amazon because it’s a reputable brand that millions of people use. Shoppers can be reluctant to input their credit card details into an unknown site so if they see an option to pay through a company they trust, like Amazon, they’re much more likely to buy your product. Top fashion retailer AllSaints saw 24% of their customers choose to pay via Amazon within two weeks of launching the Amazon Payment service on their website.
It’s cheap. Amazon charges just 2.9% – 3.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.
Amazon Payments can increase your average order value. For example, AllSaints saw a 15% higher average order value after installing Amazon Payments Buttons.
It’s fast and easy. Since Amazon already has the customer’s credit card and address details saved, there’s no need to input them again. This speeds up the buying process and makes it much more likely that the sale will be completed. AllSaints found that their checkout time was reduced by 70 seconds when they installed Amazon Login and Pay, which helped increase their checkout conversion rate by 34%.
Free fraud protection. Amazon has sophisticated fraud-detection tools which you get free access to when you add Amazon Payments to your store.
You keep your customer’s data. When you use Amazon buttons on your store, you retain complete control of your customer’s details and manage the shipping process yourself.
There are no hidden costs. You won’t be charged any fees for setting up or canceling your Amazon Login and Pay account.
How do you add the Amazon Payments Button to your store?
Now you’ve seen the benefits of adding Amazon Payments Buttons, here’s how to install them and start increasing sales on your online store. For businesses in the United States, you will need the following:
A US address and phone number.
A US bank account.
A credit card connected to a US address.
A business ID, EIN or Personal Security Number.
Once you have proof of all this, sign-up to Amazon Payments here, by selecting the ‘For Merchants’ option. You’ll be given your own Seller ID account and access to the Seller Central site, which is where you’ll integrate your buttons with your website and manage all your sales and payments. Input your credit card details and set up a checking account on Seller Central.
Next, integrate your Amazon Buttons. This is an easy process on most e-commerce sites and stores such as FoxyCart, LemonStand, WooCommerce, 3DCart, Volusion, Shopify, or Magento. You can see the full list of Amazon’s e-commerce partners and integrations here. If you use a different e-commerce store, you can create your own custom code to integrate the buttons or buy a plug-in. As an example, Yahoo! charges $400 for their Amazon Payments integration plug-in.
When customers buy one of your products through the Amazon Payments Button, make sure you ship the item as quickly as possible and then capture payment for the order. Minus fees, you will then receive your earnings according to Amazon’s payment process, which is detailed below.
How much does Amazon charge you to use their payment process?
Here’s a breakdown of the fees Amazon charges for its payment buttons:
Either a Domestic Processing Fee of 2.9% per transaction for products shipped and sold in the USA.
Or a Cross-Border ProcessingFee of 3.9% per transaction if the order is going to a country other than the USA.
Every order, regardless of where it’s shipped, is charged a $0.30 Authorization Fee.
There’s also a Disputed Chargeback Fee of $20 which is non-refundable, as is the Authorization Fee. However, if a refund takes place you will receive your Domestic or Cross-Border Processing Fee back.
Amazon’s reserve policy
Amazon keeps a certain amount of your earnings for a short period to cover things like refunds, guarantees and customer complaints. This balance is called a ‘reserve’ and the exact amount of it will depend on how long you’ve been an Amazon merchant for and what kind of service you provide your customers with. Here are the specific reserve prices:
When you first start selling with Amazon Payments you go through a 14-day observation period whereby all of your transactions are kept in reserve before they’re released.
After that, you move into Tier 1. In this stage, Amazon holds either the entire transaction amount or the amount of all your unresolved payment disputes, whichever is higher, for seven days.
After six months, once you’ve made 100 transactions through Amazon Payments, you can apply to upgrade to Tier 2. This means just 3% of your daily processed payments (based on the last 28-days average) is kept in reserve.
If your Order Defect Rate, which measures how many customer complaints and chargebacks you receive, stays below 1%, you’re eligible to have the 3% reserve fee removed.
So, should you add Amazon Payments Buttons to your store? The answer is a resounding yes. Leveraging Amazon’s trustworthy brand power is a proven way to increase online sales. In addition, you won’t be charged extortionate transaction fees for using Amazon Payments Buttons. Get started to boost your business today.
Did you know that Americans spend an average of $8.4 billion on Halloween each year? That’s right, Halloween has become the second most popular US holiday after Christmas. So get into the holiday spirit to boost your business and show customers that you love All Hallows’ Eve as much as they do. Check out these 17 scarily good website marketing ideas for Halloween.
Spook up your online store – place some Halloween-inspired icons such as monsters, bats and skulls around your store. Switch to a spookier text font and alter the names of your products to give them a Halloween theme, think: Creepy Cake Decorations for a baking store or Zombie Survival Gear for an outdoor clothing range.
Run a Halloween contest – set up a contest on your social media channels asking people to send in photos of their Halloween costumes, decorations, parties and food. Give a prize for the winning entries and share photos of your own employees taking part.
Dress up your logo – make some temporary design changes to your logo. You could add some Halloween motifs like a witch’s hat or a pair of glowing eyes. Easier still, you could change the colour of your logo to black and orange for the holiday period.
Create a Halloween hash tag – think up a clever hash tag campaign that combines Halloween and your brand to circulate on social media. One extremely successful example of this is the #oreohorrorstories campaign.
Hold a pumpkin hunt – place pumpkin icons around your website, particularly on key landing pages, and challenge your customers to hunt for them. Offer a discount or special gift for anyone who finds all of the pumpkins and hand out clues on your social media channels. You can take this a step further by getting other businesses to join in and spread the hunt to their websites.
Have a Halloween flash sale – promote a time-limited flash sale of your products and services for the holiday period. Create an eye-catching poster to publicize the sale and share it with your social media followers and email subscribers.
Make a scary YouTube video – make a short video that ties your business in with Halloween. It could be a zombie invasion in your office or a scary prank involving your employees. Ford’s spooky Halloween car wash prank for instance has been viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube!
Send a Halloween newsletter – schedule a newsletter to wish your customers a Happy Halloween. Share some Halloween tips with them or list details about festive events in your local area. You can also offer readers a gift as a Halloween treat.
Create some creepy GIFS – design some Halloween-themed GIFS to use on your website, social media channels and newsletters.
Produce a Halloween infographic – this doesn’t have to be directly related to your business as long as it includes your brand logo and a link to your website. Try something like: Scariest Halloween movies, Most popular Halloween candy or Classic costumes for Halloween. Make sure the infographic looks spooky and is highly shareable.
Organize a virtual trick-or-treat – link up with other businesses to offer treats for people to collect. Create a graphic to advertise what each business is offering and send it out to your mailing list and social media followers. Ask each business taking part to do the same.
Sponsor or host a Halloween event – do some festive advertising. Choose a local Halloween event like a costume parade or haunted house to sponsor or create some goody bags with your logo on to be given out at local events. You can even host your own spooky event and invite customers.
Change your favicon – alter the icon that appears next to your URL in the address bar of your browser. Give it a Halloween twist such as a flash of orange or add a Halloween motif.
Write a Halloween-themed blog post – create a fun Halloween post for your blog. Get creative and share holiday tips related to your business. If you run a home décor website, this could mean a top 10 list of Halloween decorations or if you have a food-related business you could write a post about spooky cake design ideas.
Run a social media poll – engage people by running a poll or vote on your social media channels. You could get your office staff to dress up in Halloween costumes or bring in spooky treats, take photos of them and ask your audience to decide who wins.
Give away Halloween treats – offer your customers an extra treat when they buy something from your site or sign up to your service over Halloween. This could be anything from a free product to a discount or gift card.
Produce some Halloween-themed products – make some special, limited-edition products for Halloween. Create an orange and black version of a popular product, for example, or add some Halloween emblems.
Do you have any more scarily good website marketing ideas for Halloween? Share them in the comment section below!
How Mother’s Day Rates Against Other Holidays (According to Sales, SEO, and Strategy)
According to the National Retail Federation, Mother’s Day is the third largest retail holiday. On average, people spend over 20 million dollars every single year, and not all on candy or flowers. If we equate this per person, it would average out to over $150 each.
Mother’s Day appeals to a wide range of people (grandmas, moms, and daughters), and marketing messages tend to be more effective as a result. That said, it’s important to work smarter, not harder. Keywords are often overused (such as “Best Mother’s Day Gift”), so it’s important to be creative with your editorializing efforts – vary those keywords! Smart marketers and SEO strategists use the fact that many marketers are lazily using saturated keywords, to boost engagement levels by using niche, under-used keywords.
On average, about 30% of the population looks up retailer information for products. Most of the time, this demographic is generally younger people between the ages of 18 and 24. This means that it’s essential to use mobile to get millennial visitors. Totals associated with demographics continue to change, however. In 2015, 40% of adults aged 18-35 used their phone to research different products online.
You might think that viewers of your site love coupons, but this often isn’t the case. Statistics suggest that free shipping was the most important thing to buyers. Price cuts and coupons averaged less than 45% of total respondents, compared to 57% preferring free shipping.
85% of all adults between the ages of 18 and 44 have a smartphone and 1 in 4 buy all their gifts online. A tiny percentage of shoppers actually buy gifts a month or more before the holiday arrives (for example, in April or March).
Most people buy their gifts in the time frame between one week and 48 hours before the holiday (totaling about 50%). Americans spend most, but Canadians, French, and Europeans also spend over $40 per person.
The online marketing space is getting more and more crowded everyday. But with the right strategy in search advertising, you’ll be able to corner a portion of your market that your competition might not have tapped into yet. With the right online marketing strategy, you would be able to pull in more visits and see improved revenue.
For more information on getting more customers with a cutting edge online marketing strategy, contact Search Engine Pros today.
Pay-Per-Click or PPC is one of the most effective online advertising and marketing strategies to drive customers to your business. Among the providers of PPC advertising, Google’s AdWords is the most widely used platform. If used properly, PPC could bring in a significant number of highly targeted leads that convert into paying customers.
What is Pay-Per-Click?
Essentially, pay-per-click or PPC, is a way of buying traffic or visits to a website. One of the most popular forms of PPC is search advertising provided by Google AdWords in which the advertiser pays a fee whenever an ad is clicked.
In search advertising, PPC ads appear above the organic search results. The ads appear on relevant search results. So if a PPC ad is for “baby clothing”, for example, it would show in search results for the same or related keywords.
A PPC ad copy includes a short title, a description, and a link to a landing page. Some PPC ads may also have extensions. These are especially useful features that make your ad more relevant to the searcher.
According to Search Engine Watch, businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Adwords. This is likely due to the fact that more and more people are using mobile devices, and mobile search now accounts for 52 percent of paid search clicks.
Organic Search vs. Pay-Per-Click
Optimizing your business for organic search is key to long-term success online. But trying to dominate a keyword in a competitive industry isn’t exactly a walk in the park, and it could take a few months to see significant results. But with PPC, you have a better chance of getting more clicks by leapfrogging ahead of the competition attempting to rank high in organic search.
Organic SEO campaigns take time. They require the help of a savvy digital marketing agency in order optimize your site so that you’ll start showing up in the organic listings. PPC is a quicker way to get awareness online. Think of organic SEO campaigns as a marathon, and a PPC campaign like a sprint. With PPC you need to pay every time someone clicks your ad. Google asks each advertiser to set a maximum cost per click they are willing to spend on each keyword (for each click).
If you have the budget and you need to get in front of as many customers as fast as possible, PPC can do that for you. Organic SEO, on the other hand, sets you up for long-term success online.
Now, let’s get right down to business. If you’re looking to explore PPC, the following are the five must-haves of a successful pay per click campaign:
The right set of keywords
Like organic SEO, PPC requires that you research and select a certain set of keywords. Keywords are the primary key to driving success to your PPC campaign. Be sure to use the proper set of keywords that exactly describe your business. Avoid using keywords with a high competition (high numbers of other advertisers targeting the same keyword). You need to use those with high search volume, but with low competition. Such keywords usually cost low.
The best free tool to use for your keyword research is Google’s very own AdWords Keyword Planner. It provides you with insights on keywords, competition, cost, and location targeting.
Ask us today about how we can help you dig deeper for keywords using our proprietary keyword software.
Emphasis on clicks
When running a PPC ad, you should focus mainly on the number of clicks (your CTR or click through rate), not on the number of impressions (the number of times your ad appears). This is because your PPC campaign’s costs are based on the number of times your ads have been clicked. Which is why you need to be sure that your ads have the most relevant or targeted keywords for maximum clicks and conversion. It is crucial to keep your ad on the first page with a strong bid, because 62% of search engine users click on a search result within the first results page (28% click on 2nd or 3rd page).
Intelligence: keeping an eye on the competition
If the competition seems to be outperforming your PPC ads, there’s probably a good reason. The best way to find out what they might be doing right is to use keyword software that ‘spys’ on them (this is totally legal, ethical and part of a comprehensive PPC strategy). Study your competition’s ad copy and make a shortlist of the highest peforming ads.
Ad Extensions
PPC ad extensions are excellent tools that compel customers to click on an ad. Extensions provide more information that potential customers may be looking for, such as your business’ phone number, customer rating, links to your webpages, and mailing address.
Below are some of the ad extensions in Google AdWords:
Sitelink Extensions – It displays additional links in your standard text ad
Call Extensions – It lets you add a phone number in your standard text ad
Callout Extensions – It shows additional descriptive text in your standard text ad
Location Extensions – It allows you to display location information in your standard text ads
Review Extensions – A review extension that displays an accurate, current, credible, non-duplicative third-party review of your business. Like the rest of your ad text, your review extensions must comply with all AdWords policies.
Use these extensions to give more reason for customers to click on your ads. They are great tools to increase your click-through rate and improve your conversion.
Performance tracking
Unfortunately, this is one area that many advertisers tend to take for granted. Performance tracking is essential for understanding how well your PPC ads and campaign are working. By taking a look at the performance of your ads, you would be able to make the necessary adjustments for improved performance. You’ll discover which set of keywords are driving more traffic and resulting in conversions, as well as which are performing poorly and should be eliminated.
The online marketing space is getting more and more crowded everyday. But with the right strategy in search advertising, you’ll be able to corner a portion of your market that your competition might not have tapped into yet. With the right PPC strategy, you would be able to pull in more visits and see improved revenue.
You’ve sent out the email invites, put a link on your web site and even made a post on your company blog. That’s plenty of promotion for your upcoming event, right? Not anymore! Lately, I hear more and more event planners becoming increasingly frustrated with event marketing in the web 2.0 landscape. Given the current economy, even savvy event planners are struggling to find sponsors and speakers. Below I will illuminate some best practices for event marketing with a particular focus on Internet marketing and online promotion.
Online promotion is a key aspect to planning an event nowadays. Without online promotion, no-one will know about your event and you will have no registrants, no attendees. This guide will cover event promotion, and provide insights on how to promote events online.
That said, here are some good starting questions to reflect upon:
Who is your target audience (including sponsors)?
Which online channels are they present on?
What is their concern that is being addressed by your event?
Below are the steps to follow in order to expand awareness for your event.
STEP 1: Keyword Research: Find 10 keywords to target. Try to find low competition, high search count keywords utilizing keyword research tools. Ask a web professional to develop a keyword research report for you.
STEP 2: Article Writing: Write 10 articles about your event (1 article around 1 niche keyword) 500 words each and use “Theme” Words.
STEP 3: Tags: Develop 10 Titles and 10 Descriptions for each page, and optimize each page for the search engines. Title can be 65 words or less, but more is okay. Try to include your important keywords in the beginning of the title. Write your event description with your target keywords in mind – not more than 250 characters. Write at least 3 tag keywords for each article. Now that you have a set of Titles, descriptions, keywords, you have a data set to use for social bookmarking submissions, directory submissions and link campaigns.
STEP 4: Event Directories: Go to the event directory web sites below, and register your event. This is a general list widely accepts most events. However, it’s also a good idea to do a Google Search in your town, and find local event directories online for your area. Submitting your event to various event directories doesn’t cost you any $. It only brings new delegates and helps you improve your Search Engine rankings.
Eventful – http://eventful.com Eventful will allow you to search, create, promote and track online events in your local area. Search by location or category to make it easy to find the events you want to attend. You can also keep track of your favorite events by added them to your calendar. Eventful will also all you to create a profile, group, and friends list to stay in touch with family, friends, colleagues or industry leaders. I love this service because they send an email every week to people in your area with the events that are about to happen.
Night Out – https://nightout.com NIGHTOUT has emerged as one of the most innovative and specialized event ticketing platforms on the web today, used by thousands of top event producers, promoters, and venues. This platform can give your event a good deal of exposure.
Meetup – http://www.meetup.com Meetup is probably the most mainstream event website on the web currently. Meetups niche is allowing people to create local groups and “meetup” at local establishments in the area. Their goal is to create an environment that is easy for industry people and groups to meet, interact, discuss, and share topics that matter to them. Create your own MeetUp group or join other groups. Sometimes, if your event is really interesting, administrators of other groups will be happy to pass the word to their members.
CitySearch – http://citysearch.com This local search engine is here to stay. It’s getting very popular and can make your event visible to thousands of people.
Eventbrite – http://EventBrite.com Eventbrite is another popular event site known for their easy to use online ticketing tools. Listing your event here is a smart idea because they have a large presence on the web and come up frequently when people search for local events.
STEP 5: Social Networking: Go to the social networking web sites below, and start generating a buzz around your event. Social Networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn offer numerous opportunities to promote any event. You can create & leverage a community (e.g. Facebook Page or LinkedIn Group) to promote an event or a conference. The status messages at these sites (particularly Facebook) can really create a powerful personal buzz & engagement in the target community. Lastly, the core team can use their own network (by sending event invites; e.g. on LinkedIn) to spread the word about the event. *remember to use your target keyword phrases when commenting and using your social network. (use your target keyword phrases!)
LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com Let all your contacts know about your event. In addition to that, you can join dozens of business networking groups based out of your city and post your event to their discussion boards.
Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com Use Facebook to find groups and people in your area, and invite them to your event. You can also use Facebook Ads and deliver them to people in a certain location.
STEP 6: Setup Event Blogs: Goto the following sites and setup free blogs. Every Friday, make a 300-500 word post about your upcoming event (use your target keyword phrases!) The blog is a very important part of a successful online marketing strategy. Not necessarily the traditionally-defined blog, but the ‘blog’ that has emerged from within the context of Web 2.0 as it exists today. Whether it’s a pre-event, during the event or post event, you can highly leverage both Blogging & Microblogging (e.g. Twitter). It’s a great idea to launch your event blog (may be even before your conference website) while you are launching the website/microsite for your event. In addition, you can leverage other relevant blogs (create blog badges like Proto did) to promote your events. Live conference blogging is a great tool to create valuable content for event promotion in addition to enriching the experience of the delegates. As a central platform, blog also helps you promote other social media channels & content (e.g. photos, videos, presentations, twitter).
WordPresshttp://www.wordpress.com Starting a wordpress blog about your event is both free and easy. There are thousands of templates out there for word press blogs. Managing the content for an event is extremely easy with WordPress.
HubPageshttp://www.hubpages.com Hubpages is another social network site that allows you to create a content online for free.
Blogger.comhttp://www.blogger.com This is one of the oldest free blog sites where you can post anything about anything. Start a free blog about your event, and post consistent updates 2-3 months prior to your event.
STEP 7: Social Bookmarking: Open up the document you made in Step 2 (10 titles, 10 descriptions, 3 tags each) Setup your free social bookmarking accounts. Every Friday, make a social bookmark using your target keyword phrases. Social networking websites are one of the best ways to promote to people. YouTube.com, Twitter.com, Facebook.com, Gather.com amongst hundreds of other sites are easy ways to generate a lot of buzz quickly. Plus, promoting your event via this outlet is generally free or low cost, so not only will you be able to publicize your event swiftly, but cheaply as well.
Here are the Top Bookmarking Sites
Top 15 Most Popular Social Bookmarking Websites | April 2016
Here are the top 15 Most Popular Social Bookmarking Sites which is a continually updated average of each website’s Alexa Global Traffic Rank, and U.S. Traffic Rank from both Compete and Quantcast.“*#*” Denotes an estimate for sites with limited data.
STEP 8: Video Marketing: Create a 30 second-60 second promo video about your event. This can be done easily in Microsoft Powerpoint, or by using Windows Movie Maker. Or you can go get a generic video from a stock video site and then load it in Windows Movie Maker to add a small intro and outro about your event. Video’s are a tremendous boost to search engine rankings, and will contribute to more trust and credibility at your web site. Video Tags, Video Title, and Video Descriptions can all be utilized to maximize your online marketing efforts. One of the benefits of internet advertising as opposed to traditional, physical advertising is the level of interactivity that can be reached at a relatively low cost. Technologies such as Flash have allowed marketing managers to include robust, high-quality audio and video in their advertisements without forcing consumers to suffer through long downloads or install third-party software.
Youtubehttp://www.youtube.com Put a Youtube video on your website about your event, and watch your ranking skyrocket. Another idea is to use Pay Per Click to drive traffic to your video page, which increases your Youtube Views, and your ranks on Youtube Search Engine.
Vimeohttp://www.vimeo.com Vimeo is a high quality HD video site that has been gaining popularity rapidly, especially in the film world.
Google Videoshttp://video.google.com Videos are excellent for helping boost organic rankings for your event pages. Upload your event related snippets to a free Google Videos Account and watch your traffic levels!
STEP 9: Online Press Releases: Online PR enables you to directly reach out to global audience but also help you increase your Search Engine rankings. Writing press releases and distributing them to television and radio stations, websites, specialized magazines, and newspapers is a great way to get your event promoted to a larger audience. Depending on whether or not your event is more localized or on a national or international level will determine which media to contact, but regardless of who it is it is a great way to have people read about your event. In addition to sending out press releases to the media, it is also a good idea to invite journalists to the event so that they can report on it and your event can receive publicity afterward.
STEP 10: CRAIGSLIST: Create a few posts on Craiglist and give away tickets with a coupon code. This is a particularly effective tactic because it drives groups of people to the event website, and expands awareness for the event via word of mouth.
STEP 11: Listing in Community Newspapers and Websites In addition to writing press releases and contacting media for publicity, simply listing your event in the “Community Events” section of local newspapers and on community websites is an effective way to reach your audience. Many people tend to read the “Events” section to quickly see what is going on and so this strategy works very well. Don’t be afraid to contact local newspapers and other publications to inform them about your event. In most cases, they will find this information useful and relevant, and they’ll be happy to share it with their readers. Journalists love writing about current events in the community.
STEP 12: Mailers: Sending event invites with postcard mailers is still a viable means of spreading the word about your event. However, more than the message, it’s the database of the recipients, which determines the success or failure of your email campaign. While signing up for media partners (who promise to send your event mailer to their database), don’t just be enticed by the volume of their database – relevancy of their member base is much more important. Sending your mailer to the wrong audience can be a huge waste of time and money. Consider an urgency angle with your advertising, for example, consider these two headlines: ‘MY EVENT’ or ‘7 Days to MYEVENT- Join Now!’ (can you guess which ROI is better?)
STEP 13: Leveraging Content (Photos, Presentations, and Videos etc): Even today, most of the events don’t last beyond the day on which they happen. As such, there is an amazing opportunity to leverage the event content (in the form of session takeaways (an important reason for live blogging), photos, presentations, videos) to promote the event & the organizer’s brand – this can significantly contribute to the next year’s conference or other conferences by the same organizer. So, please plan to capture and use the wealth of content which gets created during the event. For e.g. Social Media Channels – Speaker Presentations, Event Photo Galleries, Session Videos have driven thousands of views for various events.
STEP 14: Sponsors The relationship with your sponsors is incredibly important when organizing a good event. While you help your sponsors by promoting them to your event attendees, they can also assist in promoting your event. This can be done on their website, in store by displaying fliers and posters, and even through their newsletters and mailings. Sponsorship is a two way street and can be very effective in promoting your event to people that would be interested in attending.
STEP 15: Word of Mouth Simply put, talk about your event with others. Information spreads rapidly through people talking with each other. Individuals are more likely to attend an event if their friend is going and speaks highly of it. It is important to make your event sound interesting and unique when talking about it with others so that they will in turn pass the information along and get more people to want to come to the competition. “Word of mouth” marketing, i.e. the water cooler effect, is very poweful and is often ignored during event planning. If an influential person at a company or in a group likes something, they will tell their friends. So, create ways to influence the influencer. Reach employees while they are at work with special offers for entertainment events looking to move distressed inventory or special VIP packages. One common influencer strategy is to host a group of our most influential customers and treat them to the event for free during the early stages of the event and an off night where the tickets would have gone dead anyway. By turning what would have been a lost opportunity (a seat that would not sell) into a marketing tool, you have the opportunity to influence many influencers who then share their experience with employees at their corporation or group, thereby generating word of mouth publicity.
STEP 16: Email Signature: Update your email signature to include a blurb and a link to the event (especially effective for the sales and marketing folks)
STEP 17: Email Auto Responses: You’re going to be out of the office this week, but still need a few more registrants. How about adding a link to your email auto response? Something to the tune of “I am currently out of the office and will return Friday 5/4. I hope you can join us on May 8 for our upcoming Webinar titled “How to Create a Successful Email Campaign.” Register Today!”
STEP 18: Vanity URLs: If the URL for your event registration is long and confusing, create a short “vanity” URL that will redirect people. Make it something you can easily write down if you want to jot it on a business card, flyer, napkin, etc.. Traditional media (including a pen and paper!) can still work in your favor even if it’s an online event
STEP 19: RSS Feeds: You’ve added a post to your blog about the upcoming webinar or event, but consider adding an extra push just to the RSS feed as the event gets closer.
STEP 20: Instant Messenger: Love it or hate it, instant messengers exist in the workplace. Make yours work for you by adding a short promo in your “status” message.
STEP 21: Find People with Lists: I can guarantee that there are at least 100 people in your area that have email lists of other people in your area. Offer them an incentive –sometimes it’s not even necessary, and ask them to let people know about your event through a blog post, a short announcement in their newsletters or a simple email. Offer them a small incentive, like a free ticket perhaps.
STEP 22: Do a Google Search: If you live in New York, search on Google for “New York Events”. There are hundreds of niche-websites that revolve around events in local area; they can give your event great exposure. Try these as well:
STEP 23: Event Posters: Get signs or banners up at the venue space. Posters should match all direct mail on online media
STEP 24: Print up invite cards, or ticket: A hard copy on paper works the best. “You are invited” or “VIP Invite” Email invites can supplement your efforts.
STEP 25: Sponsor Mini Events: One cost-effective way to raise awareness about your event is to simply go on-site to organizations and companies and create a fun afternoon focused on the events you promote. Raffle off tickets to the events to generate awareness amongst hundreds or thousands of potential consumers.
STEP 26: Event Evangelism: When talking about your event to potential buyers, talk about the experience they’re going to have as opposed to standard promotional talk. Many times you will need to completely re-write copy given to to you from the event because you want it to talk to the customer in a way that helps them understand the experience. Customise the copy to talk to the target audience-get inside the conversation in their head. For example, if your event promotes a Broadway star who isn’t in the mainstream media, you might consider shifting your focus to place more attention on the storyline if the crowd isn’t theater savvy. You should remember that interest and attendance is really driven by demand. Don’t get wrapped up with thinking the event is “great” and then not understanding why no-one is coming to it. Another really good approach if it is an event that is going on over many weeks or more or one that may be yearly is to survey the audience and understand clearly what folks like and what they don’t. Have the objective to really understand the demographics of the people who respond positively and negatively so you can constantly tweak marketing to focus on the people who are most likely to show up. Most events have a budget and large or small, a focused approach using data and analysis will help maximize the marketing dollars spent. The above is mostly for longer running events, but there are ways to adapt the above to a one-day or shorter event. To do that, you want to generate word-of-mouth selling around the anticipation of the event or the “buzz” of the event. This is a tougher as you are relying on the event topic or presenter to hold the event. Bottom line you should try to spend the time really creating the value proposition and focusing intently on your target audience.
It is important to remember that while these all are very effective ways to promote your events, it is usually necessary to mix these tactics to reach your target audience. Also, be sure your event software has promotion tools like email marketing to previous attendees. I hope this guide to event marketing online has helped you develop a better understanding of event marketing and promotion.
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