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Web Design, Online Marketing, SEO, online, offline marketing, podcasting and branding are all discussed by NLI Media Group Director, Mark Lassoff. A great discussion on how to make your business marketing successful!

Total news: 18
Last news: June 2, 2008 22:17:10

The term ‘landing page’ is a common phrase among online marketing gurus, but what does it mean and how does one create an effective landing page? What is a Landing Page? Basically, a landing page is a specialized marketing page aimed at directing a user to perform a certain task. These pages are typically highly focused on [...] - [Read more]

How Much Revenue Did Your Web Site Generate Last Year? Learn how to make your company web site a profit center instead of a cost center! Generating search engine traffic is a critically important factor in online success- but it’s not the whole ball game. Mark Lassoff, of Austin based NLI Media Group covers: • Measure [...] - [Read more]

Fox 7 News Austin was nice enough to do a story on the NLI Media Challenge this morning.

Please view the story and encourage your friends to enter!

A common misconception is that considerable website traffic equates to online sales, but this is simply not true. Generating substantial traffic is a great start, but in order to be successful you must have an adequate conversion rate. A conversion rate is basically the percentage of site traffic that develops into an online sale of a service or product. Typically, the higher your conversion rate, the less traffic that will be required to meet your sales goals. Below are some helpful tips for improving your websites conversion rate.

Effective Calls to Action
Where you place your calls to action is very important. A call to action may be anything from a “buy now” button to an “instant quote” button. Basically, a call to action is the main purpose of your website. You want to direct your users to where you want them to go, and not simply let them wander around your site aimlessly. Typically, you want your call to action to be the first thing your prospective customers see.

A Well Organized Site Structure
Always insure that your website is well organized. Your site should be easy and intuitive to navigate. Also, your pertinent information should be prioritized and organized in an efficient logical manner. Your typical internet user has very little patience for an overly complicated or confusing website layout. Accommodate your inpatient visitors by making your website as clear and concise as possible.

Discover your USP
What is your websites unique selling proposition (USP)? Your unique selling proposition is what differentiates you from your competition. The internet is a very saturated market place, and competition is fierce. Your website needs to clearly state why your company is the best choice for your customer.

Online marketing may be extremely beneficial for your business and typically has a much greater return on investment than in comparison to traditional marketing avenues. However, your online marketing efforts must be conducted in an appropriate manner in order to be beneficial. Here are a few of the most common online marketing mistakes to watch [...] - [Read more]

Many businesses are under continuous pressure to find new and innovative ways to market their products or services. Online marketing allows for cheap, easy, and unobtrusive communication between potential patrons and your business. Online marketing may include, but is not limited to websites, email blasts, banner ads, opt-in emails, podcasting, and blogging.

Reduced Marketing Expense
In most cases, online marketing is substantially less expensive than its traditional offline counterpart. Due to the relatively low cost of online marketing, your return on investment is typically much greater than with traditional marketing channels.

Amplified Exposure
In comparison to most traditional marketing avenues, online marketing reaches a much wider audience and is accessible from practically every country around the globe. Your marketing efforts will also work 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year. Remember, the World Wide Web has no hours of business and will never be closed for holidays.

Improved Convenience
Online marketing allows you to engage your customers in their own environment. People tend to be less apprehensive and more apt to purchase a particular product or service in their own setting. An online presence also allows your customers or potential patrons to read about your company and/or products at their leisure and convenience.

Increased Flexibility
Online marketing allows you the ability to modify or change your product listings, service descriptions, and marketing copy instantly without the costs typically associated with reprinting or redeploying traditional marketing materials.

Better Customer Knowledge
Websites allow you the potential to learn a great deal about your customers and their purchasing habits. Website traffic tools may provide information concerning a customer’s geographical location, time spent shopping, and what it is that they are viewing. This data will better help you custom tailor your advertisements and improve your overall marketing strategy.

The NLI Media Challenge is your opportunity to turn your entrepreneurial dream in to reality. Check out our entry page and submit your business idea for a chance to win $20,000 in professional marketing services.

Most consumers don’t pay much attention to branding. They just simply adhere to the brand names that have become synonymous with their day to day lives, and thus many people greatly underestimate the power associated with an influential brand name. Have you ever purchased a product over another one of equal value, purely because it was from a more reputable company? If you’re purchasing habits are like mine, then the answer is yes.

What’s in a name?
Developing a unique and catchy brand name involves more than just merely picking a name out of a hat. A powerful brand name will evoke a positive set of emotions, and should inspire confidence in your particular product or service.

It’s also important to keep your brand name simple, because potential customers may have trouble remembering an overly complicated brand name. You also want your brand name to be unique. A distinctive brand name is what separates you from your competition. If your brand name is too similar to one of your competitors, people may confuse the two, leading to a decrease in sales/revenue.

Brand Exposure
Always communicate your brand identity to your target audience. Everything you say and do, from the way you answer the phone, to the way you format your emails should reflect your branding image. Utilize your color scheme and logo on all printed materials from letterheads to invoices. Your website should also reflect your companies branding image. It’s always important to constantly look for new ways to incorporate your company’s logo and color scheme. The more your potential customers are bombarded with your companies branding the more apt they are to continue their patronage.

Developing Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is an important aspect of any companies marketing efforts. Typically, your potential customers will have a choice of products or services within your industry segment, and a successful company will entice customers to re-buy a particular product or reuse a specific service.

Many companies develop brand loyalty by offering incentives such as coupons and frequent customers discounts. Also, another common technique utilized by many online companies is to gather information concerning their customers purchasing habits, to better tailor advertisements and future promotional endeavors.

Mark Lassoff and the NLI Media Group were featured in the national online publication, Web Video Universe. Web Video Universe is part of Internet.com, the leading online publication on internet development and marketing.

Usability plays a very important role on the web. A website with poor usability will more often than not encounter a high bounce rate. A bounce rate is a common term for the amount of people who reach a site, but leave shortly after their arrival. A high bounce rate is just one of the [...] - [Read more]

I assume you have heard the term SEO before, but if you haven’t, SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization. SEO is essentially a collection of methods aimed at positioning your site among the top sites in today’s popular search engines. The major benefits of SEO are increased site traffic, brand awareness, and sales. Other additional benefits of SEO are increased site usability and accessibility.

The enormous benefits of SEO services have made the art of optimizing websites increasingly competitive. This article will provide effective methods of increasing your websites visibility in today’s popular search engines.

The Keys to the Kingdom
Determining what keyword sets to focus your SEO efforts on is of the upmost importance. Poor keyword focus can make even the best SEO strategy perform disappointingly. There are several tools available on the internet that will allow you to conduct keyword set analysis and to determine what keywords will work best for your application.

Content is King
Search engines love content rich sites, because this allows them to easily categorize your web pages. Your content should focus on your designated keyword sets and be relative and informative. Avoid using excessive amounts of graphics and flash, because search engines are unable to index these types of content.

Keep it Fresh
New content is not only appealing to your audience, but will provide tremendous benefits for your sites overall visibility. A good way to include new and relevant content is by implementing a blog. A blog provides a great medium for introducing fresh content, and will increase your sites search engine rankings by creating quality back links. A blog is also a good way to position you or your company as an authority in a specific field or industry.

If your site contains a significant amount of cataloged items or requires constant updating, you may want to consider using a content management system (CMS). A CMS is simply, a user friendly application used to dynamically create, remove, or modify web based content. An effective CMS will allow a non-technical user to publish and modify content quickly and easily. A good content management system will most likely reduce operating costs and increase profit potential by reducing the amount of 3rd party web development or other technical assistance needed when updating your site.

Streamline Your Publishing Process
By reducing the amount of technical knowledge required to publish content, a CMS allows a variety of people to implement new material, which reduces the time to actually publish the content. A CMS will also dramatically increase the efficiency of your publication process by alleviating the need to incorporate your IT department or web developer when updating or adding new information.

Keep Your Content Up to Date
With the implementation of a content management system your website will become truly dynamic and will accommodate fresh content. Fresh and relevant content is vital to your websites success. A CMS also allows you to maintain or update your site from anywhere in the world via a web based interface.

Maintain Consistency
A good CMS will create a common and consistent informational architecture and appearance. Consistency is maintained, because the design of the site is not altered by the implementation of additional content. Inconsistent informational architecture and appearance are common problems for many sites on the web.

Drawbacks
Occasionally, content management systems are not always the best choice for your website. For large ecommerce companies, a CMS will reduce your cost considerably, but this comes at a price. CMS generated sites typically are not as visible to search engines as there html/CSS counterparts, and are limited in various aspects of design. It can also be difficult to integrate new web applications without expensive re-development.

Well, it’s that time of year again, a time to look back and assess the strengths and weaknesses of your website and set goals for next year. With the ever increasing rise of internet popularity, 2008 will be as important as ever. Get to Know your Customer It’s time to learn more about who is visiting your [...] - [Read more]

Basically, ecommerce can be defined as the buying and selling of products or services online. Ecommerce has many advantages over traditional “brick and mortar” companies. Consumers can quickly and efficiently browse through hundreds of products or services without ever leaving the comfort of their home, or compare prices and products with the click of a [...] - [Read more]

What is “Opt-In”?
Simply, the term “opt-in” refers to emails that have been requested by the client receiving them. Opt-in emails are typically newsletters that target a specific audience and provide information about current sales, services, or promotions. Unlike the often annoying and dreaded spam emails, opt-in emails are only sent to individuals who request them.

Why use Opt-In Marketing?
Using email newsletters is an effective, efficient, and inexpensive way of communicating your latest marketing materials to your potential customers. Email newsletters are also useful for obtaining valuable information about your prospective patrons. Whether you’re selling a product or service, opt-in marketing will be a valuable aspect of your online marketing strategy.

Tips for Better Opt-In Marketing

1. Remember to always focus on the relationship between you and your subscribers. Every email you send should remind your potential clients about who you are, what you do, and why they should be interested in your particular message.
2. Only contact potential clients about products or services that they’re likely to be interested in. Newsletters containing irrelevant information will persuade current newsletter subscribers to possible delete or ignore your emails.
3. The design and content of your emails should reflect your companies branding image. If your marketing materials relate to each other, each individual piece of marketing collateral works harder for you, by projecting a clear, well defined, and professional image of your company.
4. It’s also a good idea to always include a clear “unsubscribe” option in every email. Your prospective customer’s ability to decline your newsletter is one of the main factors that will differentiate your email from spam.
5. Last, but certainly not least, don’t abuse the system, because you will regret it in the long run. If you place someone on your emailing list without their permission, you run the risk of criminal prosecution and you may also tarnish your company’s reputation.

According to an Edison Media Research report podcasting has risen 18% in popularity during the last year alone. Public awareness of podcasting has risen even more, soaring from 22% in 2006, to an astonishing 37% in 2007. What is a podcast? Many of you have heard the term podcast before, but may have no idea what it [...] - [Read more]

Whether you’re new to the art of web design or you’re a seasoned veteran, choosing an appropriate and aesthetically appealing color scheme can be difficult. This article will briefly describe some of the basic principles associated with color choices on the web.

The Basics
Due to the endless amount of different computer configurations, it’s often difficult to determine exactly how various colors will be rendered on a particular computer. In the mid 90s, computers could typically interpret 256 basic colors derived from the primary colors red, green, and blue. From those 256 basic colors, 216 of them could be interpreted by most web browsers. The 216 usable web colors were collectively known as the web safe palette.

Due to the creation of more advanced video graphic technologies, most users will now have a color setting of 16, 24, or 32 bit. Most web designers will tell you that the web safe color palette is no longer applicable due to these advances in graphics technology, and for the most part they are correct. It’s estimated that only 9 percent of online users still use a 256 color (8 bit) setting.

What does all this mean? Well, if you anticipate that a majority of your users will be using older computers and a 8 bit color setting, then by all means stick to the web safe color palette, but for most design applications this is not necessary, but it won’t hurt. A good way to alleviate color rendering issues is to limit the amount of colors you utilize in your design, because it will reduce the chances that a specific color is rendered poorly. Also, it’s a general rule of thumb to avoid using more than 3-5 colors within a website design.

Which Colors do I choose?
Your color choices should compliment your site and coordinate well with your content. The colors you chose should not only be visually appealing, but include good contrast and convey a desired emotion to your audience. It’s important to recognize the cultural connotations we associate with specific colors. Different colors invoke different emotions, and you should be conscious of these sometimes subtle connotations. For example, I would not want an ecommerce web site aimed at selling baby clothes in a black and red color scheme, because these colors simply do not invoke the appropriate emotions.

Color Theory: The Beauty of Harmony
Many of you have probably heard the term color theory. Color theory is not a new concept, but an ancient idea that has been pondered upon for centuries. Some of the first writings on record about color theory come from Leonardo da Vinci’s personal notebooks. Color theory is basically a set of principles used to create harmonious color combinations. A harmonious color combination is any grouping of colors that is pleasing to the eye. A harmonious color arrangement will appear neither chaotic nor subdued, but create a sense of balance.

One of the most common tools for determining an aesthetically appealing color combination is the color wheel. The color wheel is a circular organization of the color spectrum that will show a variety of relationships between colors. According to color theory, harmonious color combinations utilize colors opposite one another, any three colors that are equally spaced in relation to one another, or any two sets of opposing colors that form a rectangle on the color wheel. The color wheel is a very helpful tool when choosing a color combination and can be found in a variety of places all over the web.