The Evolving Landscape of Web Design

Web design is a dynamic discipline influenced by changing user behaviors, technological advancements, and design innovations. A design that was groundbreaking a few years ago can appear antiquated today. This evolution isn’t about being trendy; it’s about meeting users’ expectations and leveraging the best practices of the digital realm.

Signs Your Website Is Yearning for a Refresh

1. The Curse of Outdated Design: Web design trends move fast. Styles like skeuomorphism have given way to flat design and then to minimalism. If your website still looks like it’s from the early 2010s, users might question the currentness of your business offerings.
2. The Mobile Experience Dilemma: Over 50% of global website traffic originates from mobile devices. If your website squashes content or makes navigation a chore on smaller screens, it’s time to rethink. Plus, Google’s mobile-first indexing approach means non-mobile-friendly sites take an SEO hit.
3. The Slowpoke Syndrome: In our fast-paced digital world, waiting is the enemy. Research shows that if a site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, over half of the visitors might leave. Slow loading times aren’t just frustrating; they’re business killers.
4. Analytics Are Ringing Alarm Bells: Do you dive into your website’s analytics and notice an increase in bounce rate or a dip in conversions? These might be indications that users need help finding your site useful, engaging, or trustworthy.
5. Stale Content: Imagine visiting a news site and finding headlines from a year ago. Outdated content can give visitors the impression of a dormant business. Regularly updating your website keeps it relevant and valuable to your audience.
6. Navigational Nightmares: A complex or unintuitive navigation structure can confuse users. Modern websites prioritize easy navigation, ensuring visitors can effortlessly find the information they seek.
7. Security Red Flags: Digital threats are on the rise. An outdated site becomes a potential playground for hackers, putting your business and customers at risk.
8. Your Brand Has Moved On, But Your Website Hasn’t: If your brand undergoes evolution or rebranding, your website should reflect these changes immediately. Consistency is critical in branding; a misaligned website can send mixed messages to your audience.

Why a Refresh is More Than Just a Facelift

1. Elevating User Experience (UX): An updated website can enhance user journeys, making interactions smoother and more intuitive, leading to a positive perception of your brand.
2. Surging in SEO Rankings: Modern, mobile-friendly, and fast-loading websites are music to search engine algorithms. An optimized site can significantly boost your visibility in search results.
3. Optimizing for Conversions: New design principles and technologies allow more effective CTAs, leading forms, and user engagement strategies.
4. Maintaining a Competitive Edge: Your competitors are continuously evolving. Regularly refreshing your website ensures you stay at the forefront of your industry’s digital landscape.

Preparing for Your Website Refresh

1. Budgeting for the Future: A website refresh is an investment in your brand’s digital future. It’s essential to weigh the long-term benefits of enhanced user engagement and potential sales against the upfront costs.
2. Evaluating Your Current Tech Infrastructure: Before initiating a refresh, a deep dive into the platforms, plugins, and third-party tools your site uses is crucial. This ensures compatibility and streamlining.
3. Refresh or Complete Overhaul? Sometimes, more than tweaks are needed. A complete redesign could be beneficial if your site has deep-rooted usability or performance issues.

In today’s digital landscape, a website is more than just a static online brochure. It’s a dynamic platform that communicates your brand’s value proposition, engages users, and drives business goals. Regularly assessing and updating your site ensures your business stays relevant, competitive, and aligned with evolving digital best practices.

Engage with Experts

Considering giving your website the refresh it deserves? Connect with our experienced team for a comprehensive evaluation and roadmap to elevate your online presence.

The post When Is it Time for a Website Refresh? appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

Three Tips to Increase Organic Traffic

There are laundry lists available of website improvement tips, but having so many options is overwhelming and could prevent you from making any changes to your website pages. These three tips are easy to implement and pay off in huge dividends.

Be Mobile-Friendly

More often than not, people visit websites via smartphones and tablets. So while most website design takes place on a computer, you must adapt your service pages to be a mobile-friendly website for easier viewing and navigation.

While building and editing your website, frequently check mobile device previews. In this preview, you should look for the following features to be easily visible and legible:

• All text throughout the page
• Navigation buttons
• Images and resolution
• Image size
• Call-to-Action buttons
• Submission fields

As technology and society continue transitioning towards mobile devices, it’s in your company’s best interest to adapt your business website.

Focus on SEO

An oft-overlooked aspect of a website is search engine optimization (SEO). While blog posts and text on a website is necessary, you must use web space and word choice wisely to help search engines find your website. If Google and Safari can find your website easily, they recommend your page to site visitors and improve your analytics.

SEO strategy is essential for business websites looking to improve their online presence. SEO focuses on word choice, sentence structure, images, headings, paragraphs, credibility, length of visit, click rate, website speed, page speed, and website users to determine the best websites to recommend to people. Using programs like Ahrefs and SurferSEO is an excellent start to selecting the best practices for SEO.

Use Call-to-Action (CTA)

You want to turn website visitors from potential customers to buying customers. You can accomplish this task in a couple of different ways:

• High-quality product
• Strong recommendations
• Video testimonials
• Call-to-Actions

Most websites focus on the first three pieces, but they often leave the latter out of the equation, yet it’s an essential design element. Since you can’t verbally speak to your customers on a mobile site, you need to encourage visitors through text and easy ordering.

CTA buttons should follow any text that describes a product or service the customer purchases. After each description, you want a CTA to bring online users to your store or contact page. Without a CTA close by, you give your potential customer a chance to change their mind and not purchase from your online store.

Use CTA buttons throughout your entire website to increase click rate and income.

Conclusion

In 2022, the internet will have plenty of advice, services, and goods. To stand out from the crowd, you need to offer something nobody else can do–improve your website’s digital performance. Start by ensuring your mobile website is user-friendly, utilize SEO to increase organic traffic, and populate your website with CTAs.

Accomplishing all these tasks can be overwhelming, but that’s why Made in Fort Worth exists. We strive to help businesses like yours improve web design, increase Google analytics, and dominate the digital marketplace with top-tier website content. Contact us today to start your new project for 2022 and watch your business take off.

The post How to Improve Your Website in 2022 appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

We are the best digital agency in Fort Worth. Our team is made up of experts who have built websites that have driven millions of dollars in sales and helped businesses grow exponentially. We’ve worked with some of the biggest brands in Texas, so we know what it takes to deliver results for your business!

You can trust us to build you an amazing website that will help drive traffic and increase conversions. With our services, you’ll be able to connect with potential customers on a deeper level than ever before through social media marketing, email campaigns, SEO optimization, video production and more! It doesn’t matter if your company is big or small – we work hard to make sure every client gets the attention they deserve!

A website is a powerful tool for any business. It can help you grow your revenue and improve customer loyalty, but only if it’s done right. At the end of the day, this all comes down to how well-designed your site is. If you want to make sure that everything from navigation on down will be as easy as possible for users, then contact us today about how we can get started helping your business succeed online! We have been designing websites in Fort Worth for over 10 years and our team has decades of experience creating effective digital marketing campaigns across industries. Contact us or give us a call at (817) 888-8799 so we can discuss what needs to happen next with your company – don’t wait!

The post Are you looking for a new website? appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

Today, we wanted to focus on something that we are very passionate about! Without further ado, our team is excited to share with you that Made in Fort Worth has been named as one of the best web development companies in Texas by no other than Clutch.

Clutch is an established platform in the heart of Washington, DC, committed to helping small, mid-market, and enterprise businesses identify and connect with the service providers they need to achieve their goals.

We are very grateful and honored to be included in Clutch’s list of top development companies in our own state. 

With our decade of experience in the industry, these awards help us solidify our position as one of the best development agency experts in the market. To Clutch and their team, we want to thank you for this amazing award.

Of course we wouldn’t forget about you, our clients and partners! This award wouldn’t be possible without your help and support. You have been essential to our success and to that, we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Are you interested in working with us? Send us an email or call our office! We are always looking for new challenges to tackle.

The post Clutch Crowns Made in Fort Worth as One of the Best Development Companies in Texas appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

You’re not alone.

Content marketing is all about using content to attract and retain visitors and eventually turn them into customers. And most people who use it know it’s effective.

There’s just one problem: content marketing can be seriously hard work.

According to Zazzle Media, 60% of companies struggle to produce content consistently, and 65% find it a challenge to produce engaging content. And not engaging your visitors means you’re losing money.

We get it.

If you’re running content marketing campaigns, day in, day out, it can be hard to consistently come up with new ideas and keep the momentum going.

That’s why we’ve written this article. From blogging and social media to video and visual marketing, we’ve got a great collection of B2C and B2B content marketing examples to inspire you.

These marketing examples from the business world will help you find new ways to get creative and create your own inspirational content marketing to win leads and sales.

Here’s a table of contents to help you jump to the content marketing examples you most want to see.

• Blogging Examples
• Social Media Marketing Examples
• Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples
• Visual Content Marketing Examples
• Video Marketing Examples
• Ebooks and Resources Examples
• Other Content Marketing Examples

Let’s get started …

Recommended Resource: Need to jumpstart your content marketing results? Get more traffic and conversions with our Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing in 2020.

Blogging Examples

When most people think of types of content marketing, they think of blogging as a starting point.

Blogging helps you get visitors’ attention with helpful information and provides content to flesh out your social media presence and fuel your SEO efforts, too. Here are a few examples of companies getting it right.

1. Buffer

Buffer’s one of our favorite content marketing examples, due to their three-pronged content marketing strategy.

The company used guest blogging to fuel their initial growth, writing a couple of times a day and publishing content on high visibility sites. That growth hacking strategy helped Buffer attract their first 100,000 users.

On Buffer’s own blog, the company concentrated initially on writing for the people who influenced their customers, producing high quality, and highly shareable, content.

Buffer now has four blogs, including the Transparency blog and Open blog, where they have shared business ups and downs over the years. And they share their best content via a regular email marketing strategy.

The results speak for themselves: Buffer is a highly recognized and trusted brand, with almost 400,000 users, and around a million followers across multiple social media sites.

2. Hubspot

When you think of examples of content marketing done right, Hubspot’s always on the list. In addition to creating a free tool as a growth hacking strategy, Hubspot has used content marketing by:

• Writing in-depth blog posts about the issues their visitors care about
• Adding content upgrades such as ebooks to their blog posts
• Creating an educational and content sharing hub, Inbound.org(which gets 321,000 visitors each month) and provides a great opportunity to promote its certification and partnership programs
• Creating videos for Facebook and using LinkedIn to send traffic to those videos

It must be working because Hubspot is a multi-million dollar company.

3. Rip Curl

Rip Curl bills itself as the “ultimate surfing company”. One of the ways it shows that dedication is via an online publication known as The Search.

The Search chronicles surfers’ search for the best waves and the ultimate surfing lifestyle and features great photography, and stories told by surfers for surfers.

With more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers and a whopping 2 million-plus Facebook followers, this is a great example of matching content to your target audience to grow your business and make it profitable.

Related Content: 12 Steps to Get Your First 100 YouTube Subscribers

As we mentioned in our guide to social media and SEO, social shares can help indirectly with search ranking, which in turn helps with lead generation. So it’s no surprise that many companies have focused social media content to wow their audiences.

4. GE

When you’re looking for inspiring B2B content marketing examples, GE is a great place to start. We’re not talking about washer-dryers and vacuum cleaners, but about the company’s other business: wind turbines, jet engines, locomotives and so on.

GE’s long been known for taking what some might see as a dull business, and bringing it to life, and this Instagram content marketing campaign is a perfect example.

GE combined the campaign with influencer marketing, getting six Instagram influencers and several superfans to do the #GEInstaWalk. That meant touring their manufacturing facilities and taking, uploading and hashtagging pictures. The results were spectacular:

• 8 million views of GE’s Instagram account
• 3 million reaches per tour
• 3,000 new followers

And it was done without any paid advertising.

Related Content: How to Make Money on Instagram (Without 10K Followers)

5. Glossier

We featured Glossier in our roundup of abandoned cart email examples. This time around, the company’s in the spotlight for using user-generated content to boost its brand on Instagram.

This is genius, because it cuts down on the work of content creation, and makes its audience feels good about being featured, which results in even more reach and engagement. Here’s a recent example where Glossier has reposted a complimentary tweet from a fan on its Instagram account:

Glossier also showcases its latest Instagram content on its homepage, as another way to attract its customers. With more than 1 million Instagram followers, the company must be doing something right.

6. Intrepid Travel

Intrepid Travel’s all about small groups, big adventures, and traveling responsibly. It supports that with a content hub called The Journal.

In The Journal, you’ll find stories from real travelers sharing their experiences, which helps the company connect more with their core audience.

But another facet of Intrepid’s content marketing strategy is posting aspirational travel images from travelers on Facebook, interspersing that with its own content.

That’s given the company nearly half a million Facebook followers, and strong communities on other social media sites.

7. Superdrug

Our next content marketing example uses both publishing placements and social media to get the audience’s attention.

Superdrug wanted to raise awareness around body image issues. To do this, the company asked 18 graphic designers around the world to edit a photo of a model in Photoshop to bring it in line with their own country’s beauty norms.

The company published the results on Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, resulting in:

• International news coverage, and placements with major publications like the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Business Insider
• Celebrity endorsements of the campaign, like the one from Sofia Vergara below
• 3 million views of the original study
• Around 1 million social shares

Plus the company got more than 1,000,000 page views to their site within a five-day period.

Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples

Next, we’ve got a couple of content marketing examples that don’t rely on social media promotion.

8. John Deere

Anyone who’s read up on content marketing has probably heard of The Furrow, which is generally reckoned to be one of the first examples of content marketing.

First published by John Deere in 1895, this publication aimed to help the company’s customers with the issues they faced, and show the company’s expertise at the same time.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The amazing thing is that more than 120 years later, the publication’s still going, and is now also available online.

9. AARP

Here’s another content marketing example that underlines the importance of knowing your audience and delivering the content they want.

The AARP The Magazine has won awards for the quality of its content, design, and photography, but there’s nothing mysterious about their success. They listen to their readers, who reach them by email, letter, and social media, and use that information to determine the topics that will resonate with them most.

It’s America’s biggest consumer magazine, going to 22 million households. In addition, more than half of its 37 million readers have read three of the last four issues.

Visual Content Marketing Examples

Images are the lifeblood of social media. Stone Temple Consulting shows that tweets with images have a 65% better chance of being retweeted.

And Jeff Bullas found that including images in a blog post results in 94% more views. These next content marketing examples show how companies are using visual content marketing to increase visibility for their brand.

10. Zomato

Zomato is a restaurant finder mobile app available for 24 countries. The company uses humor liberally in its marketing strategy. In particular, it creates and shares images referencing popular culture, as this recent example spoofing an Oscar-nominated film shows.

They are simple, creative, and entertaining, proving that a minimalist approach can do the trick. It must be working, because the company’s got 1.3 million followers on Twitter, and the same on Facebook, and the app’s been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

11. Shutterstock

Shutterstock’s in the business of images, and it’s used its expertise to make a resource that everyone can use: a creative trends report. This capitalizes on the fact that people love reliable data, and this type of resource gets widely shared.

Last year’s infographic attracted thousands of social shares, and attracted more than 6 billion site visits, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

This year, Shutterstock has made the resource interactive, including not just images, but video and music. So far, it’s been shared more than 10,000 times.

12. Rolex

Just because you’re an iconic brand, it doesn’t mean you can’t totally rock content marketing.

Rolex proves this by conveying the quality and timelessness of its brand through excellent photography which radiates quality.

And the fans love it: Rolex has more than 7 million Instagram followers and around 6.6 million on Facebook.

Video Marketing Examples

Video marketing drives brand awareness, leads, and sales, so it’s no surprise that so many of our content marketing examples include videos.

13. Blendtec

Let’s start with Blendtec, whose viral videos prove there’s no such thing as a boring industry – if you can tap into what hooks your audience.

Blenders might not sound that interesting, but they become a heck of a lot more so when you put weird stuff in them.

The Will It Blend video series put the company on the map and resulted in a 700% increase in sales in a three-year period.

Today, Blendtec’s YouTube channel has more than 885,000 subscribers, and the campaign’s still going strong, with videos regularly attracting hundreds of thousands of views.

14. Hootsuite

When you’re launching your content marketing strategy, it never hurts to tap into popular culture – and one of the most popular shows in recent years has been Game of Thrones.

Hootsuite used this as a jumping-off point to tell a relatable story about their brand via a video titled A Game of Social Thrones.

This video has now had more than 1 million views and is their most successful branded content.

15. Zendesk

Here’s one of the coolest content marketing examples from the business world, where Zendesk jumped on something that could have gone against them and showed their brand values and personality at the same time.

Whenever you offer a product or service, there’s someone searching for an alternative. When Zendesk realized people were searching for Zendesk alternatives, they basically hijacked the keyword phrase, creating a mini-site and video optimized around it.

The result? A page one spot for that keyword phrase, and a heck of a lot of goodwill!

16. Old Spice

For a brand that’s been around since 1937, Old Spice is doing great at staying in touch with its market.

It wasn’t always this way.

Nine years ago, the brand was losing ground to its competitors, when someone had a cool idea: jettison the old world image in favor of something – or someone – new, young and hot.

It worked. In a series of videos and ads delivering humor and in some cases never mentioning the brand, Old Spice changed its image to become relevant for a new generation.

The original ad has had more than 55 million views, and Old Spice is still using this approach with a new series of promotions, targeting teenage boys and their mothers.

17. JetBlue

JetBlue’s one of the world’s leading airlines, and it’s never been afraid to get creative with content marketing. In particular, it’s used video to inspire its audience and to show off its brand values and personality.

Recent examples include the Reach Across the Aisle campaign, which encourage people to find out what united them, a series on flying with infants, and the quirky Flight Etiquette video series.

Video views on YouTube range from tens of thousands to millions, while the perception of the brand remains overwhelmingly positive.

Ebooks and Resources Examples

As we saw earlier with Hubspot, ebooks and resources are a great way to raise awareness of your brand. Here are a couple more examples of this type of content marketing.

18. LinkedIn

If you want to know how to use LinkedIn effectively, nobody’s going to be more expert than LinkedIn itself. That’s why the company’s ebook on its own approach to marketing with LinkedIn is such a winner.

The landing page whets customers’ appetites with a series of tips and stats, and most LinkedIn users will want to opt-in immediately.

LinkedIn has continued to use this strategy by producing more marketing guides, so it’s a sure bet it’s working for them.

Not sure if LinkedIn is for your business? Check out how (and why) you should create a LinkedIn business page.

19. Simply Business

One of the best B2B content marketing examples is from Simply Business, a UK insurance firm that’s known for producing a series of useful tips and guides.

It’s yet another example showing that so-called “boring sectors” can still wow their audience. Their customer education guides have attracted thousands of links and shares, as well as raising their profile.

Other Content Marketing Examples

Finally, here are some content marketing examples from the business world that are a little bit different.

20. Coca-Cola

Coke used personalization to get everybody talking about their brand. They kicked off their Share a Coke campaign in Australia by putting the 150 most common names on bottles. Then they encouraged people to share a Coke with people with those names.

That campaign went viral, resulting in sales of 250 million bottles and cans across the summer, or equivalent to just over 10 for every person in Australia. Unsurprisingly the campaign soon rolled out to other locations. You can now customize your own bottle, as we did here.

21. Grant Thornton

Data analytics is another area that could be seen as dry, but when Grant Thornton ran their Access Granted campaign, it was anything but.

The company took people behind the scenes at the Tony Awards, showing exclusive content on YouTube and Twitter. That resulted in 3.7 million Twitter impressions, increased Facebook reach, and beating their goals for YouTube goals by 115%.

22. Charmin

This content marketing example from Charmin is perfect for its customers. The brand’s always had a sense of humor in its TV ads, and that’s carried through to the Sit or Squat app.

This app aims to help people find clean bathrooms when they need them, so it’s also pretty practical. So far, the app’s been downloaded more than 100,000 times, and nobody’s going to forget the brand.

23. Burberry

Burberry’s most outstanding content marketing campaign was Burberry Kisses, blending mobile technology with the human wish to connect with others.

Via an app, users could press their lips to the screen and send a digital kiss to anyone. The campaign also allowed people to use Google Street View and Google Maps to see the journey those digital kisses took.

24. Buzzstream

Buzzstream combined a number of content types (research-heavy guest content, evergreen blog content, and gated content) to attempt to position itself as a thought leader within its industry.

The nine-month content campaign was hugely successful, resulting in a record-breaking number of new signups.

25. Lush

Lush combines a range of content marketing techniques to reach its audience, which is why it’s hard to put it in just one category of content marketing examples.

From its quirky product names to its well known ethical values, the brand already resonates with its core audience.

But it doesn’t stop there. Its videos go behind the scenes of the making of its products, while on social media, Lush encourages users to share and hashtag photos of its products in use – or at least about to be used. Instagram is one of its key platforms, with the main Lush account attracting 4 million followers.

With these content marketing examples, you’re all set to wow your visitors with fresh, new ideas. Next, use these copywriting templates to get started, or see how you can improve your content marketing ROI.

But there’s one final thing to remember. There’s no point building an audience if they don’t convert.

That’s where OptinMonster comes in.

How OptinMonster Can Help Your Content Convert

You can use OptinMonster’s marketing software to:

And that’s just the start. Check out OptinMonster’s other features and see how it could help you get more from content marketing.

Recommended Resource: Need to jumpstart your content marketing results? Get more traffic and conversions with our Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing in 2018.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more in-depth tips and guides.

The post 25 Clever Content Marketing Examples with Amazing Results appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

It’s a new decade and with it comes content marketing trends that will change content creation for businesses.

Plus, content marketing isn’t the only thing that’s changing — people are always changing. The needs of your audience are constantly evolving and you need to keep up with what they want so that you can continue to create and distribute effective and engaging content.

Related: 3 Content Marketing Strategies to Skyrocket Your Revenue

Check out these five content marketing trends you need to know for 2020. 

1. Video and live-streaming

Video and live-streaming have become huge recently thanks to popular platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch — and it’s only going to get bigger in 2020. In fact, according to HubSpot, 54 percent of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support. So, if you want your content marketing to connect and engage your audience in 2020, you need to start incorporating more videos.

You’re not just limited to YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. Video does extremely well on a number of different platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even on your own website. One of the easiest ways to try out the live-streaming trend is with Facebook Live and Instagram Live; your business can hold a live Q&A for instance, to interact in real-time with your audience. 

2. Optimizing content for voice search

With smartphones and AI-powered assistants like Alexa and Siri in our lives, the use of voice search is skyrocketing. Canalys reports that the global market for voice search devices grew 187 percent in Q2 of 2018, with shipments reaching 16.8 million units. This means more and more people are searching online using their voice, instead of typing in a query. And the text we type into Google search is different than how we would speak to a digital assistant; instead of typing “weather las vegas”, we would ask “What’s the weather in Las Vegas today?”

Because of this, you need to optimize your content for voice search. Content marketers need to focus on anticipating the questions their audience would ask in a conversational manner and create content based on those conversational questions and longtail keywords. 

3. AR-powered visuals

Users love augmented reality (AR) filters and lenses offered up by platforms like Snapchat; users can give themselves a puppy dog nose, tongue, and ears or place a pretty flower crown on top of their head — all via augmented reality. And there are a ton more AR filters and lenses users can play around with to create fun visual content.

And did you know that Snapchat gives you the ability to create your own filters and lenses? This means that you can create branded filters and lenses to promote your business to social media users. Taco Bell launched its own branded lens on Snapchat, and it was viewed 224 million times, making it the top campaign in the app’s history. Expect more AR-powered visuals like this in 2020. 

Related: How to Maximize Your Startup’s Content Marketing Budget

4. Conversational marketing

More and more businesses are realizing that the fastest way to move buyers through their marketing funnels is with one-on-one conversations. That’s why conversational marketing will be a notable trend in 2020. When you can have one-on-one, personal conversations with your audience, you not only create a more human buying experience, but you can learn a lot about your audience, which will help you create more relevant content and marketing messages in the future.

Conversational marketing comes in many forms including email marketing, live customer support, customer success programs, Facebook Messenger marketing, chatbots and more. And with advances in artificial intelligence, chatbots are only going to get better at having life-like conversations with users.

So, if you want to keep up with the competition and learn more about your target customers faster, you need to step up your conversational marketing game in 2020. 

5. Dynamic content delivery. 

By now you probably have heard plenty about the importance of personalization. Today, consumers expect to receive emails and offers personalized to their specific needs. In fact, according to statistics from Instapage, 54 percent of shoppers anticipate a personalized discount within a day of sharing their information with a retailer.

But in 2020, consumers want next-level personalization. Enter dynamic content. Dynamic content, also known as adaptive content, refers to web content that changes based on the user’s demographics, behaviors, preferences, and interests. For instance, the content on a webpage can change based on the weather of the location the user is in, like in the example below. 

Image Source

With personalization, you’re able to deliver content to users that is relevant and interesting to them. But with dynamic content, you can also provide them with the exact content that will encourage them to take the next step in the buying process. 

Related: Content Marketing Is An Art — and a Science

Keep an eye on these trends in 2020

Now that you’re aware of these important content marketing trends for 2020, you can start coming up with a plan for how to implement them into your own content marketing strategy. Start planning for these trends ahead of time, and you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. 

The post 5 Content Marketing Trends You Need to Know for 2020 appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

At Marketo, our definition of inbound marketing is “the process of helping potential customers find your company—often before they are even looking to make a purchase—and then turning that early awareness into brand preference, and ultimately, into leads and revenue.” 

Gone are the days that a marketer only relied on outbound techniques like trade shows, cold calling, and advertisements to get leads. Today’s buyer is in control. According to Forrester, buyers seek out three pieces of content about a vendor for every one piece sent by a marketer, and for every one piece sent by sales.  Because of buyer self-education, your job as a marketer is to be heard through the noise and come up with new ways for leads to find you. To be a marketer in today’s world, you need a solid grasp of inbound in order to truly amplify your lead generation impact.

How do you do that? You need to create interest by offering a relevant mix of informative and entertaining content that builds a meaningful relationship with your audience. And you have to make sure that you are distributing your content through all the right channels – where your buyer spends time. This section goes into a bit more detail on some of the common tactics for inbound lead generation.

Content and SEO

Your content is the foundation of your inbound marketing efforts. According to Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action”. Think of content as the fuel to all of your marketing campaigns from email to social. Create content that is impactful to your audience and drives sharing. Through creating high quality content, you can begin to gain your buyer’s trust and start breaking through the noise.

Because search engines equate high-quality content with a high-quality website, creating content with value is very important. Conduct a content audit to see how many of your assets fall into the thought leadership vs. promotional category. That means making sure that your thought leadership content has substance to it. Lots of companies are jumping on the content bandwagon, so do it right: focus on quality over quantity, and on providing useful – not promotional – information.

Once you have a good mix of high-value content, including visual content, start promoting it on social channels. The more engagement you get, the more Google considers your content to be of high value, which in turn boosts your SEO rankings. Search engines look for natural links, so the more informative your content is, the more likely people will link to it naturally.

Website

Your website is where the magic happens. This is the place where your audience needs to convert. Whether it is encouraging prospective buyers to sign up for your newsletter or fill out a form for a demo, the key is to optimize your website for converting browsers into actual leads.  Pay attention to forms, Calls-to-Action (CTA), layout, design, and content.

Blog

Your blog is a fantastic place to create trust with your buyers. Readers can stumble upon your blog from all over the web, so you want to make sure it is search-engine optimized. Remember that someone reading the blog may not want to immediately sign up for a demo, so highlight the Calls-to-Action that ask your reader to subscribe to the blog or to follow you on social channels. A well laid out blog will keep your readers interested, coming back for more, and hopefully curious enough to start looking at the rest of your site. Keep your readership up and position your blog as a gateway to conversion.

Social Media

The increasing popularity of social channels has directly attributed to information abundance. Through social networks, buyers have been able to research and learn about products and services through influencers and peers.  Additionally, a profound shift has taken place within social media channels. Although social is still important for branding and generating buzz, lead generation is becoming more and more important. By tapping into all the social media channels, from Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn and Google+, you can be where your customers are and create that trust.

Outbound Marketing

While inbound marketing is getting a lot of buzz, a well-rounded marketing mix should include both inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Inbound works for broad lead generation activities, but outbound is good to amplify your inbound efforts, and target specific opportunities. So what exactly is outbound marketing? It’s using outbound channels to introduce your message and content to your prospects, typically through rented attention, rather than making your content and messages availableon your own properties.

In many cases, outbound techniques can get someone to think about you even if they haven’t thought about you yet, since many of the methods you use should have more of a “wow” factor to make your company stand out. Outbound communication is often highly targeted, with a call-to-action that is very obvious. As a result, good outbound marketing can push someone through the funnel at a faster rate, assuming they are closer to being ready to buy.  Inbound alone often does not drive someone to buy. Outbound gives them that extra nudge they need to drive a lead down the funnel.

Combining outbound and inbound can multiply the number of views you generate, dramatically increase sharing, and ultimately increase the number of potential customers who see your content. While your mix may differ from ours, we find that the following outbound tactics work best.

Email Marketing

Email is a cornerstone and key component of every marketing campaign. Whether you are hosting an event, sending out a new piece of content, promoting a new service offering, or staying in touch with customers, email should be one of your main forms of communication. According to MarketingSherpa, the most used lead generation tactic is email marketing, with 81% of respondents citing it as the most effective channel. By putting your content in front of prospects, you can find people who might not be looking for you.

Display Ads

Display ads are typically highly targeted to different demographic or behavioral actions. You can select where you want the ads to be seen by choosing an online publication that you feel is a place where your leads spend time, or you can also leverage re-targeter ads that can cookie a lead that views your site. With re-targeter ads, once a person gets cookied, your ads appear on other sites that he or she visits afterwards. Through online ads you can reach more of your target audience, educate potential prospects, and drive leads. Display ads also serve a purpose at every stage in the funnel—building brand and audience at Top of Funnel, educating and helping evaluation at Mid-Funnel, and increasing conversions at Bottom of Funnel.  

Pay-per-Click Ads

With Pay-per-Click (PPC ) ads you pay for each click on your ad which is displayed on a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing, or on a website. For PPC on search engines, your ads show up as sponsored results on the top and side of the organic search terms. PPC ads are a terrific way to draw attention to your latest content or service offerings. They are also highly targeted so they can generate very high quality leads.  Advertisers bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target markets and your ads will display when a keyword query matches your chosen keyword list.

Content Syndication

Because prospective buyers won’t always end up at your website as they start their purchase journey, it’s important that you establish a presence where they may show up. A great way to deliver high-value content to the correct prospects is through content syndication – a content sharing strategy that can be used to promote your whitepapers, articles, news releases, etc. on other websites for greater reach and engagement. Through content syndication, your content appears on third-party sites and newsletters. And because most content syndicators deliver leads directly to your inbox, it’s a great way to keep leads coming in the door.

Direct Mail

You may think direct mail is a thing of the past. But it’s still effective for targeted communications. Consider a content asset developed for high-level executives. Executives don’t usually browse the web for information. And it can be hard to get through to them via email. That means they may not come across the content you’ve developed with them in mind. This is where direct mail can prove powerful. You could send a direct mail piece to this audience to make them aware of your new, targeted content asset.  Direct mail also gives you a chance to grab the attention of a hot prospect by being creative and interesting with your message and presentation.

Events

Whether you are hosting a small private function, a large-scale international tradeshow, or an executive-level webinar, event marketing needs to be an integral part of the lead generation mix. After all, events are a critical component of an outbound marketing strategy. Essentially, events offer you the chance to define your brand, clarify the solutions you provide, and establish personal connections with participants. And while they provide you with an invaluable opportunity to engage with prospects and customers, events also give attendees the chance to interact with each other. As every marketer knows, there is no better advertising than the direct words of a satisfied customer. Events also provide a venue to deliver speeches and content that convey your company’s thought leadership and raise your perception in the eyes of buyers.  Compared to other marketing tactics, events are more likely to quickly turn a prospect into a strong lead. As a lively, interactive, educational forum, events position your business as a trusted leader in a field of many.

Sales Development Reps

Sales Development reps (SDRs), also often called Inside Sales or Lead Qualification reps, are focused on one thing: reviewing, contacting, and qualifying marketing-generated leads and delivering them to Sales Account Executives. Simply put, SDR teams pass the baton from Marketing to Sales. Why do it this way? Because you want to make sure every single lead Marketing passes to your Sales team is as qualified as possible. Your SDRs should take the time to help each and every lead, offer them value, make a positive impression, create future demand, and become a trusted advisor. This step is critical in the lead generation process because you don’t want to treat your leads as blank faces to be simply questioned, qualified, and harvested.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

The self-directed buyer’s shields are up, and they are ignoring your messages. Developing a relationship to cut through the noise is critical.  Not all leads that go to sales are ready to buy, so you have to make sure that you have in place a solid lead nurturing strategy to continue to build awareness and affinity for your brand while your prospect is self-educating. Through paying attention to your MOFU efforts through tactics such as lead nurturing, you can continue to have a relevant conversation with prospects long after your lead generation efforts.

Lead nurturing also increases lead to opportunity conversion rate, drives more revenue, and shortens the sales cycle. It is about finding the right buyers at the right time. Lead generation brings buyers into the funnel, but lead nurturing and scoring sends them to sales so that your sales team can close the deal at the right time. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa’s Lead Generation benchmark report, companies who leverage lead nurturing see a 45% lift in lead generation over those companies who do not use lead nurturing.

The post Lead Generation A Complete Guide appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

• Why We Wrote this Guide? Online marketing moves at the speed of light. To keep up, you need a strong foundation with the judgment to think critically, act independently, and be relentlessly creative. That’s why we wrote this guide — to empower you with the mental building blocks to stay ahead in an aggressive industry.There are plenty of guides to marketing. From textbooks to online video tutorials, you can really take your pick. But, we felt that there was something missing — a guide that really starts at the beginning to equip already-intelligent professionals with a healthy balance of strategic and tactical advice. The Beginner’s Guide to Online Marketing closes that gap.
• Who This Guide Is for? We wrote this guide for an audience of first-time marketers, experienced entrepreneurs and small business owners, entry to mid-level candidates, and marketing managers in need of resources to train their direct reports. Most of all, we want you to walk away from this guide feeling confident about your marketing strategy.
• How Much of this Guide Should You Read? This guide is designed for you to read cover-to-cover. Each new guide builds upon the previous one. A core idea that we want to reinforce is that marketing should be evaluated holistically. What you need to do is this in terms of growth frameworks and systems as opposed to campaigns. Reading this guide from start to finish will help you connect the many moving parts of marketing to your big-picture goal, which is ROI.

Want More Traffic?

Get help with improving your traffic, leads, and revenue.

1. Be Laser Focused on Your Customers

Your customers, prospects, and partners are the lifeblood of your business. You need to build your marketing strategy around them. Step 1 of marketing is understanding what your customers want, which can be challenging when you’re dealing with such a diverse audience. This guide will walk you through (1) the process of building personal connections at scale and (2) crafting customer value propositions that funnel back to ROI for your company. Get Started

2. Build Your Marketing Framework

Mediocre marketers think in terms of campaigns. Great marketers think in terms of growth frameworks. Learn how to position your marketing strategy into a sustainable, ROI-positive revenue engine for your brand. Gone are the days of shallow branding. Leverage metrics to build a solid revenue stream. Get Started

3. Develop Your Brand’s Story

When people spend money, they’re thinking with both their rational and emotional brains. The most effective marketing frameworks appeal to both. Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools that your company can wield to build customer connections. This guide will walk you through the mechanics of cultivating your company’s story. Get Started

4. Get ‘Em to Your Site: Foundations of Traffic Acquisition

You can have the most amazing web storefront, blog, or product in the world, but if you’re not getting traffic, your business’s growth strategy will fall flat. This post will walk you through some of the most common free and paid traffic acquisition frameworks for bringing visitors to your website. Get Started

5. Get the Plumbing Right: Foundations of Conversion Optimization

Traffic acquisition is only half the marketing equation. You need to invest the time in building a strategy for driving sales. Conversion optimization is the practice of (1) converting first-time visitors into customers and (2) converting first-time customers into repeat buyers. This post will teach you how. Get Started

6. Build Audience Connections with Content Marketing

Content marketing is more than just blogging. When executed correctly, content including articles, guides (like this one), webinars, and videos can be powerful growth drivers for your business. Focus on building trust and producing amazing quality. And most of all, make sure that you’re capturing the right metrics. Create content to generate ROI. Measure the right results. This guide will teach you how. Get Started

7. Find Customers with Paid Channel Advertising

Paid channel marketing is something you’ve probably come across in some form or another. Other names for this topic include Search Engine Marketing (SEM), online advertising, or pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Very often, marketers use these terms interchangeably to describe the same concept — traffic purchased through online ads. Marketers frequently shy away from this technique because it costs money. This perspective will put you at a significant disadvantage. It’s not uncommon for companies to run PPC campaigns with uncapped budgets. Why? Because you should be generating an ROI anyway. This post walks through the basics of how. Get Started

8. Amplify 1:1 Connections with Email Marketing

Email marketing has a bad rap. Why? Because in the majority of cases, it’s spammy. When executed correctly, email marketing can be incredibly powerful. The trick is to prioritize the human-to-human connection above the sale. Balance automation with a personal touch. This post will teach you how. Get Started

9. Drive Incremental Sales Through Affiliate Marketing

It’s hard to believe that the Internet is now multiple decades old. Affiliate marketing has been around since the earliest days of online marketing. It’s a great solution for businesses that are risk-averse or don’t have the budget to spend on upfront marketing costs. Use affiliate marketing to build a new revenue stream for your ecommerce or B2B business. Get Started

10. Get Found with SEO

Search engines are a powerful channel for connecting with new audiences. Companies like Google and Bing look to connect their customers with the best user experience possible. Step one of a strong SEO strategy is to make sure that your website content and products are the best that they can be. Step 2 is to communicate that user experience information to search engines so that you rank in the right place. SEO is competitive and has a reputation of being a black art. Here’s how to get started the right way. Get Started

11. Get the Word Out with PR

You’ve launched an amazing product or service. Now what? Now, you need to get the word out. When done well, good PR can be much more effective and less expensive than advertising. Regardless of whether you want to hire a fancy agency or awesome consultant, make sure that you know what you’re doing and what types of ROI to expect. Relationships are the heart and soul of PR. This guide will teach you how to ignore the noise and focus on substantive, measurable results. Get Started

12. Launch Your Social Strategy

Your social media strategy is more than just a Facebook profile or Twitter feed. When executed correctly, social media is a powerful customer engagement engine and web traffic driver. It’s easy to get sucked into the hype and create profiles on every single social site. This is the wrong approach. What you should do instead is to focus on a few key channels where your brand is most likely to reach key customers and prospects. This post will teach you how to make that judgment call. Get Started

13. A Quick Note on Mobile

Most businesses aren’t optimized for the mobile web, and that’s a problem. We operate in a cross-platform world. Smartphones and tablets are taking over. If you’re not optimizing your site for mobile visitors, you are likely losing money. Learn how to craft a data-driven mobile approach. This guide will help you learn the ropes. Get Started

Want More Traffic?

Get help with improving your traffic, leads, and revenue.

The post The Beginners Guide to Online Marketing appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

The post We now offer digital marketing packages for small churches in Fort Worth appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.

Check out some of our recent work

Our Portfolio

The post Top Web Design & Development Company appeared first on THE Fort Worth Web Design Company & Creative Agency.