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seo

8 reasons why SEO matters

SEO

Search Engine Optimization helps your business develop a focused, organic audience base, like no other. A concentrated SEO strategy designed to serve specific goals is a long term investment. And, even though SEO plays a pivotal role in the growth of revenue, most small businesses steer away from digital marketing, more importantly, search engine optimization. Business today, is heavily reliant on online visibility and sales, and businesses that don’t hop onto the digital wagon, stand to lose a lot.

Search Engine Optimization is one of the easiest and the most effective marketing hygiene practice recommended for small businesses. It has become a fundamental part of efficiently marketing your business. SEO helps businesses to create responsive, user-friendly, and robust websites that rank well on the search engine result pages (SERP), eventually leading to better conversion rates.

Not convinced yet? 

We have outlined the benefits of SEO that will help your businesses flourish and put your small business on the map.

SEO generates targeted traffic

SEO helps businesses refine and target specific audiences that are most willing to buy the products and services they are selling. Filtering out the weak leads who are just wasting your advertising money and time can be a smart business move. SEO helps in redirecting people who are looking for exactly what you are selling, to your website or e-commerce store. This ensures higher conversion, as the user’s search stops with you.

SEO finds you new customers

SEO uses a mix of keywords to increase your website’s rankings and visibility. Using the right set of keywords can help your website appear more often on the search results when users are searching for something relevant to your business. This definitely helps in generating a lot of traffic and finding you new customers, that weren’t aware of your brand before.

SEO is cost-effective

Paid marketing can be an expensive affair. On the contrary, investing in SEO can generate desired results, without hurting your marketing budgets.

Bigger companies have sufficient money to spend on pay per click digital campaigns, getting them massive visibility and audience. But as for small businesses, pay per clicks can be futile as you continue spending large sums of money, trying to generate leads that may or may not convert. SEO remains to be the only area for small businesses to compete big without quickly burning holes in their pockets.

SEO produces constant and long-lasting results

Investing in online paid ads will definitely reap good results for your business, but only for as long as you continue advertising and spending big bucks. Money spent on SEO is more effective as the effects of a job well done last longer, fetching you customers long after you have stopped investing in SEO.

SEO takes time to start generating results, as the goal of optimization is to eventually show up on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP) and stay up there for as long as you can.

SEO offers better conversion rates

Optimized search engine websites and stores load faster and offer a better user experience. If done correctly, they would also be optimized specifically for different gadgets, be it a laptop, a mobile, a tab, etc. This helps your website to reach your audience on any device they might choose to use.

Easy navigation and speed optimization are some of the major driving factors behind a customer’s purchasing decision and an optimized website, e-commerce store gives your business that edge.

SEO helps you to beat the competition

The bigger players in your sector too can be competed with. Optimization helps your website to rank well and increases traffic organically. A good optimization strategy might help your website climb up the rankings and on occasion, even surpass the bigger players. This unique opportunity helps your business garner a larger reach and brand awareness, which eventually leads to higher conversion rates.

SEO builds brand awareness

If your website or e-commerce store makes it to the top of the search engine result page (SERP), however small the business may be, it registers with the audiences. This helps the audiences recall your brand when they see it the next time or need something that you sell. Building brand awareness is one of the best ways to organically grow a loyal customer base.

SEO makes your website more responsive

Studies suggest that most users are willing to wait only for 3 seconds for a website to load. Anything beyond that results in a drastic drop amongst the users. Search engines assess user-friendly websites and reward’s optimized websites by ranking them higher. Improving your user experience can not only result in a higher ranking position but also generate positive feedback amongst your users.

The online market is constantly changing and businesses need to constantly revise their strategies and tools to compete in the game. While most other tools and processes can be intimidating to implement, SEO for the most part is really easy and cost-effective to implement. Hiring an agency to implement the best SEO practices for your business can be a long term marketing solution.

web development company

6 Web Development Trends to watch out for in 2020

Web Development

Website Development trends are ever-changing. What keeps things interesting for the sector essentially, is the speed of novel innovations and developments in technology. Staying informed can help your business stay ahead of the curve.

This makes trend spotting a salient task. So here’s a list of trends to watch out for in 2020. 

Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

Progressive Web Apps have effectively made web browsing user friendly and easy. PWAs are built from web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc., but retain the functionalities and the feel of the native app. What makes PWAs great is its ability to offer features like offline support, push notifications, etc., mimicking the features of a native app.

PWAs are made desirable by their low cost, responsiveness, and adaptability across screens and its loading speed.

They tackle almost everything a  consumer dislikes about websites and brings the sufferable website experience closer to seamless app experience.

Some examples of popular and successful PWAs are Twitter, Forbes, Starbucks, Uber, Pinterest. These companies have experienced a decrease in users drop out.

You don’t have to be a massive business, to implement PWA, they work equally well for smaller businesses.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Just like the general consensus around optimization, Google algorithm supports optimized pages with quick loading speed. This makes Accelerated Mobile Pages a must-have solution for all web pages.

AMPs is an open-source project, developed to improve the speed and readability of content pages on mobile. Accelerated Mobile Pages essentially display only the content and static images, omitting other complex elements. The loading speed accentuates user experience, reducing the bounce rate caused by unresponsiveness. AMPs also rate better on search as Google rewards reduced bounce rate and increased onsite activity.

AMPs are a boon for content-heavy website design, blogs, articles, etc. If your website is information-heavy, this could be an essential function to consider.

Voice Search Optimization

Web Development trends are seeing a fast-paced shift towards voice-controlled applications. Aren’t we all acquainted with Alexa, Siri, or Google Home? However, this trend can be traced beyond Siri and Alexa, as more than half of all smartphones and IoT are capable of hearing voices and executing commands.

In no time, they shall be capable of recognizing the voices of different people and provide customized AI-based experience for individuals.

According to a Quoracreative study, Voice-based shopping is expected to amount to $ 40 billion by 2022.

Voice Search Optimization is easy, thus quickly changing behavioral patterns of the consumers, leaving developers perplexed about optimizing voice applications for their digital products.  

API-first development

Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows two or more applications to interact with each other efficiently. A primary example of a well functioning API would be Facebook and Messenger. Most of the delivery apps also use API to seamlessly integrate Google Maps with their interface.

The API-first development is more efficient than the traditional approach as the traditional approach is heavier on the cost and more time consuming. The introduction of multiple wearables and their integration with other traditional devices calls for a greater need for API-first development.

Motion UI

Motion UI is a library for creating quick eye-catching CSS animations and transitions. The seamless modern designs are good at capturing the user’s attention. Its flexibility makes it ideal for website design and development. Its compatibility with the JAVAScript framework makes it widely acceptable. Motion UI could help your web development if you are looking for easy, clean animations.

Cyber Security

Date security is one of the biggest priority and challenge for most mid to large-sized businesses. 

According to Global Market Insights Inc., the cybersecurity industry is expected to generate over $300 Billion in business, by 2024.

Technological advancement in AI has changed the face of cybersecurity. Malicious activities have become easier to detect with AI-based security systems. Companies are training AI to detect unusual behavioral patterns, by analyzing patterns within the network. This helps AI to react to any suspicious activity promptly.

As per the founders, 80% of telecom companies rely on AI for cybersecurity.

Blockchain database security decentralizes the data, making it difficult for hackers to locate it. Institutions like NASA protect their data by using Blockchain technology. If your business model accumulates user data, this could be an ideal solution for your company.

Which of these trends are best suited for your business?

Stay sharp and sustain yourself against the competition by analyzing these important, fast-paced, and exciting trends in time.

digital marketing service

How Artificial Intelligence Can Revolutionize the Digital Marketing Landscape?

Web Development

Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly a technological breakthrough of the 2010s, and it doesn’t look like the excitement is going to fade off in the upcoming years. The technology is not just promising for better business results, but it also uplifts the human experience as a whole. Starting from Healthcare, Retail & Ecommerce, Food, and Real Estate to the Manufacturing, AI’s role and significance is unprecedented in terms of industrial applications. 

While digital IQ, smart homes, AI-powered business process and hybrid workforce are a few of the key AI applications trending these days, using AI and machine learning in marketing has gained a lot of traction recently. Today, digital marketing is not limited to social media marketing or traditional digital marketing services or tools. In fact, majority of the digital marketing automation platforms today are leveraging from AI and machine learning algorithms to bring more intelligence analyzing data and automate the manual processes. Marketing and sales give more priority to AI and ML than any other department in the enterprise.

Do you know?

  • Netflix has managed to save approx. $1 billion in 2017 with the help of machine learning to enable personalized recommendation.
  • 61% of marketers believe that artificial intelligence is the most important aspect of their data strategy.
  • In survey conducted by Statista, AI was the second most effective digital marketing technique to the marketers worldwide.
  • According IDC, approximately $5.9 billion will be invested by the retailers in AI-based marketing and customer service offerings to enhance buyer’s experience.

And many more interesting statistics available that proves how AI can help marketers to understand sales cycle effectively and consumer behavior to get better sales results. Want to know how AI is benefiting the digital marketers to boost their digital marketing services or social media marketing strategy? Let’s explore how artificial intelligence can help digital marketers to craft their digital marketing plan and what are the possible applications of the technology in digital marketing.

How AI can reshape the digital marketing?

With the detailed insights and predicting capabilities, digital marketers and organizations are leveraging from AI to boost up their marketing efforts. It is not just about reducing the costs but utilizing the technology can greatly help in optimizing marketing efforts and improve the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. Apart from this, AI can also help digital marketers in the following ways:

  • Enable marketers to understand their target audience better. AI and machine learning algorithms can help marketers to predict user patterns, consumer behavior, and aid personalization to their marketing campaign. 
  • Bring an excellent user experience. Artificial Intelligence has the capability to analyze consumer behavior and predict they expect and need.
  • Boost up productivity. Marketing automation is the key advantage of AI. It helps you automate all the manual tasks, which in the end help saving time and resources carrying out the repetitive process.
  • Impactful marketing. With AI, you don’t have to worry about what is going to happen in the future since it brings an edge to predict the possible events and outcomes. This helps you design a more effective and meaningful marketing strategy.
  • Better ROI and outcomes. AI enables marketers to understand consumer behavior more effectively and helps in content creation and curation. This helps the businesses to reach the right audience with more personalized content and offers.

Such benefits have encouraged many digital marketing professionals and organizations to go for AI. In a survey from Salesforce, it is found that 51% of marketers have already started using AI by applying it in a variety of ways. Let’s explore what are the different ways AI and ML are revolutionizing the digital marketing landscape.

Content Creation and Curation

Yes, it is very much possible with the help of AI. Of course, it does have certain limitations, but there are a number of areas in which AI-based content creation can be of great help. Moreover, it can also curate the contents. With the help of tools like Wordsmith, Articoolo, and Quill, many popular organizations are creating content that can help them in lead generation for their own website. Associated Press, Forbes, Washington Post, BBC, CBS, The New York Times, and Reuters have already started implementing such AI-based content creation and curation techniques.

Email Marketing 

Personalization is the key parameter to achieve desired success in email marketing and AI can help personalize email marketing campaigns based on consumer behavior and preferences. With the help of machine learning, it is possible to analyze the consumer data and identify the best ways to connect with them.

Real-time Customer Support

With the help of AI-based chatbots, companies can greatly reduce the time to respond to customer queries and concerns. Today, human-like interactions are possible by using machine learning, deep learning, and neural language in a chatbot. This way the companies can provide real-time support and better user experience while improving brand loyalty.

Automated Ads

When it comes to digital advertisements, AI has changed the way it was carried out earlier. By combining machine learning and predictive analytics, digital marketing professionals can automatically optimize paid ads with AI, customize their advertisements based on consumer preferences and behavior captured. Moreover, it is possible for marketers to optimize ads based on the brand and business agenda.

Mixed Reality Integration

Another interesting application of the AI is mixed reality integration. With the help of augmented reality tools, it is possible for marketers to provide a more personalized experience to potential customers and drive more value.

Apart from the above-mentioned use-cases, digital marketers are often utilizing AI in semantic search, dynamic pricing, PPC ad campaign, predicting consumer behavior, design a website, and more.

Final Note

There is no denying that artificial intelligence is an incredible technology that can do wonder in digital marketing services. Using AI and machine learning in marketing can help marketers and businesses achieve better results and improved customer experience. Still, confused about how AI can help in digital marketing and social media marketing strategy? Get in touch with our digital marketing USA experts to know how we can reshape your digital marketing strategy using Artificial Intelligence.

Social Media Marketing

Can Social Media help your Business Grow?

Social Media Marketing

As per Statistica, the number of active monthly social media users worldwide is projected to reach 3.02 Billion by 2021. That is one-third of the world’s population, accessible from your screens.

With a drastically growing population on various social media platforms, brands need to maintain a strong digital presence. The digital presence today, is not limited to corroborating your existence and legitimacy as a business, but if used effectively, it can result in exponential business growth.

So here are some tips to help your business, reap the benefits of good social media marketing.

1) Engage with the Trends

Businesses are often rigid with their content and very scared to experiment. But the latest successful social media strategies teach us about the importance of engaging with the trends and significant, applicable current affairs. 

Content like this makes the consumer believe that the business is engaging in a meaningful conversation with them and not just trying to sell them products. Such content receives a lot of engagement organically and has the potential to get viral, giving your brand massive exposure at minimal to no cost.

2) Start selling online

Creating an online marketplace for prospective customers to easily browse through your products, services, and easily place an order with your company can be a game-changer in your business expansion plan. If you are a small business that does not want to invest in your own e-commerce website, consider selling your products, services on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, Amazon, Etsy, etc.

3) Integration and Cross-platform Marketing

Driving traffic from one social media profile/ page to another is a good way to grow your base organically. Link all your profiles to your website, emails, and other social media profiles. Try creating content that drives your followers from one platform, to interact with you on another platform.

Use the right keywords and hashtags to optimize your brand page and reach out to your clients and immediate circle to interact with your brand, when you start. Some word of mouth can give your brand an initial organic push that it needs.

4) Create content that drives engagement

One of the easiest ways to create and maintain a responsive base is by running engagement posts such as contests or polls. Contests can nudge participation from the followers if there is some gratification in the form of a discount, gift offered for the winner. Contests are a good opportunity to create user-generated content as well. The participants can be encouraged to provide reviews, feedback, pictures of them using the product, etc.

Another good way of ensuring a passerby follows you, is by offering some discount coupons or other offers.

5) Paid Marketing

Organic reach and engagement have drastically declined, as the new algorithms heavily support and promote paid engagements. All major social media platforms offer paid ad spaces. These platforms also allow one to carefully curate a target audience to reap maximum value for their money.

Audiences can be targeted based on general factors such as gender, age, geography, demography, etc. to more advanced factors such as preferences, hobbies, profession, institution, etc. A general or a bad target audience often results in generating less and bad leads. Every badly targeted campaign is a missed opportunity and wasted money. Do keep in mind that the more layers you add to your target audience, the more expensive the ad space. Thus it is important to strike a balance between a too generic vs a too targeted audience.

6) The importance of retargeting campaigns

Most brands concentrate on lead generation campaigns, once enough brand awareness is created. As fruitful as these campaigns might be, a large number of leads drop out and do not convert into customers. Consumer behavior studies suggest that most people are not ready to make a purchase when visiting your website for the first time. They might add things to their Wishlist/ Cart and leave the website, without making a purchase. This is where lead nurturing can be a good solution for regaining old cold leads and converting them into customers.

Retargeting involves tracking cookies that save a user’s activity on distinct web pages. If a lead clicks on your website through a Facebook ad, visits the product page, and then leaves, applications like Facebook Pixel can track this behavior. Facebook will then display targeted ads to that specific customer. The ads will likely be centered on the product of interest to the customer. This overtime nurturing can give them that extra nudge they need to finally make a purchase. 

7) Analyze, Learn and Apply

Invest in tools that help with tracking and analyzing your consumer behavior, providing valuable insights for your business. Most social media platforms do provide analytics at no additional cost. 

These insights can help you understand what kind of content your audience is and is not responding well to helping you to modify future content accordingly.

Social media plans cannot be uniform across companies and industries. No one solution fits all. However, more often than not, the application of these few tips has shown promising results in the past. 

Web development service

Is your website as smart as your business?

Web Development

The advent of Artificial Intelligence is commonly understood as a rather recent phenomenon. Contrary to the notion, AI has been around for the better part of the past century. However, the meteoric rise of developments in the sector, make it worth our while to understand the current accolades of AI and its future. The terms artificial intelligence imply artificially simulated intelligence. AI refers to intelligence exhibited by machines that are programmed to mimic human action, reasoning, problem-solving, rational thought, and other characteristics of human intelligence. Our society is experiencing a paradigm shift as AI continually grows, capturing a higher market share. Humanity has undertaken an exciting journey into the unknown, awaiting unique challenges, that shall bait us into rethinking not only our business models, but our social models as well.

The global artificial intelligence market is expected to grow up to almost $60 billion, by 2025.
(Source: Accenture)

Just like every industry across trades, AI has found itself applicable in the world of Web Designing. With the world swiftly transitioning towards digital, it has become more imperative than ever, for businesses to create a strong digital footprint, giving them authenticity and helping them drive their business efficiently. Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) challenges the traditional methods of web designing, eliminating the need for excessive cost, time, and labor. The advent of AI Web Designing is a rather recent phenomenon. One of the first consequential events in this sector was the launch of Grid. Far from perfect, Grid served as a gateway to innovation in the sector. Soon followed by the leaders of the industry like Adobe, Firedrop, Wix, Squarespace, Bookmark, B12, Tailor Brands.

Enhancing User Experience with Artificial Intelligence

Contrary to ancient wisdom, web designing has shifted focus from aesthetics to user experience. This shift has paved the path for concepts like AI-powered bots, conversational user interfaces, etc. AI essentially learns from computing and analyzing large sets of data, deriving solutions for otherwise complex tasks. In regards to website design, AI has the ability to scan the web and source content from existing websites, social media profiles, mentions. It can also learn what makes similar websites successful. And based on your goals for your website, it can create a basic draft in just a few minutes. Most websites and applications today are dependent on AI algorithms, partially if not completely, to increase performance. One of the widest spread AI functionality used by most websites and apps is chatbots. The integration of AI-based chatbots on websites has seen multifold growth in the past 5 years. The growth in the popularity of chatbots has paved the way for sophistication with the new chatbots applying natural language processor (NLP) systems to indulge in more meaningful conversations with the users. 

According to Gartner’s report, 85% of customer interactions by 2020 will be handled by AI chatbots, and a total of 2.3 billion hours of business and consumers will be saved through chatbots, by 2023. 

AI tools help in providing customized content to the user, by analyzing their consumption patterns. These tools help the businesses to better cater to visitors with personalized ads, blogs, offers, etc to drive up the conversion rate. UX is quickly moving towards a more mobile-friendly environment, making the application of voice search optimization through AI more appealing.

User Interface and Artificial Design Intelligence

Are we there yet?

AI helps in analyzing the visitor’s usage patterns, thus providing them with a UI subtly tweaked for them. These seemingly minor changes enhance user satisfaction on a macro level. As of today, human creativity and design triumphs over ADI, but with rapid growth in strides, this can change soon. 

AI today is capable of enhancing the website and its search capabilities, meanwhile also helping you manage and organize your inventory, and improving your customer outreach with personalized user experience. These are especially desirable qualities for businesses with e-commerce. Optimizing everyday conversations and queries with AI-powered algorithms and reaching out to your target customer base can be an element that makes your business successful. Since most website owners require new designs to supplement their product launches or upcoming events, an AI working in the background works as a perfect solution to stay updated and remain competitive in the market.

Giants like LinkedIn, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix are heavily dependent on AI for their digital operations. LinkedIn uses an advanced AI algorithm to complement its seamless navigation. Their recent algorithm has made job seeking and profile optimization easier and more accurate.

80% of Netflix streaming is a result of algorithm-based recommendations.

Recent political instances have made us more conscious about our digital privacy, and often, AI constantly analyzing our digital behavior can seem like a violation. Despite the growth of our digital consumption, we still crave human interaction. And however sophisticated the AI response management systems maybe, it’ll be a while until they completely replace the humans, by humanizing themselves.

The only way through singularization is to learn and adapt. AI is advancing at an unprecedented rate and shall continue to do so. We have to redesign our businesses and social structures to coexist and benefit from Artificial Intelligence. AI shall eventually replace the long labor chain involved in website development and maintenance, but as of now, we are not there yet.

8 productivity tools while working remotely

8 Online Tools You Can Use To Be More Productive While Working Remotely

Business Advice

The recent and sudden decision for many employers to direct their employees to work exclusively from home, along with the COVID-19 social distancing guidelines that are preventing in-person gatherings and meetings, have created some challenges for many employees and small business owners.  Here is a list of some online tools that may help businesses stay better connected to employees and clients and keep workflow moving.

  1. Communication tools such as Slack—This is an easy to download team chat app that helps team members stay connected, check in, brainstorm and can even act as the company’s virtual water cooler.  
  2. Video Conferencing and Audio tool such as Zoom—for one on one, group meetings and conference calls, Zoom is easy to download and install, very user friendly, and can be used for screen sharing presentations and audio only calls.  Meeting information and invitations is easily distributed.  
  3. Customer Support Collaboration tool such as Groove—Groove is a support ticket and project tracking app that allows team members to support clients, assign resources and update the status from anywhere.
  4. Business Productivity tools such as Trello and Asana—these project management boards allow team members to be assigned tasks and easily update the project status, moving it along in the project timeline in a very visually meaningful interface.  Remote work environments can create opportunities where important tasks slip through the cracks. These types of tools help mitigate this while keeping employees clearly directed and productive and supervised efficiently.
  5. Content Sharing and Document Management such as Google Drive—With the amount and variety of documents involved in running a business, (think emails, blog posts, policies and procedures, technical documentation, customer notices and marketing materials, presentations and reports) it makes sense to have a reliable, available and easy to access repository for your workers.  The days of scrolling through endless emails searching for attachments is over when all docs are filed, managed, updated from one location that can be accessed from anywhere.
  6. Custom Web apps specific to your industry such as Compass Wave—Many small business owners may need to do onsite estimating or assessment in order to win new business but are at a standstill with social distancing and shelter-in-place guidelines.  Automating those estimating tasks remotely can allow a small business to continue to reach for new bids and fill their work funnel for when business resumes as normal. An example is Compass Wave software created specifically for the residential cleaning services industry.  As a custom web app, Compass Wave collects input data via the business website and issues an automated accurate estimate. Web developers can create similar web-based tools for other industries to save time and in-person interface when either or both of those are not available.
  7. Digital Marketing, Social Media and Website Improvements such as Mail Chimp, Facebook, and automating Contact Pages or implementing a Blog—Many businesses have had to reprioritize projects and workflow because the changes that the COVID-19 presents, but using this time to reassess tools and your company website (a job that can be done without in person interaction) could be a perfect use of this redirected time.  Many customers and consumers are spending more time engaged online so why not ensure your online presence is at its optimum.
  8. Cloud based accounting software such as Quickbooks—Cash flow, payroll, bills and purchases still need to be made even though workers are not in the office.  Quickbooks is an accounting software package geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses that has a cloud-based version to accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and take care of payroll functions.

If, as a small business or remote employee, you need help implementing or creating the right tools, reach out to a digital agency that specializes in helping individuals and businesses leverage the power of the web for maintaining and growing their business, even during these challenging circumstances. The more we all can work together to keep businesses, especially small businesses, healthy, and thriving the better our economy will be able to bounce back when this crisis is over.  

Eco York celebrates 10 years in business

Our Top Achievements 2019

press release

As we look back at 2019, we would like to extend our appreciation for you helping make our 10th year in business such a success! It’s because of you that we’ve achieved so much in 2019.

Each year we all reflect on our previous year’s goals and set new ones for the upcoming year. It’s never too late to take a look at your business and set new goals for the new year.

Some area’s of your business that you should include in your goals include:

  • What are your Goals for your company website? How do you plan to get more traffic? Is your design in need of an update? All of these are questions that can help you in 2019.
  • How were your overall sales numbers in 2019? Set yourself some achievable goals for different area’s of your business and set milestones along the way to help you achieve those goals.
  • Do you have any charitable events you plan to attend in 2020? Think about what you can do not only for your business, but the community around you as well. Each year it’s great to continue to grow your business financially, but it’s important to think about culturally how you can grow your business as well.

We wanted to take a quick moment and reflect on some of our achievements in 2019.

Some Photos from 2019

  • Compasswave Online estimates made easy
    Compasswave Online estimates made easy
  • Eco York
    Eco York
  • Compasswave
    Compasswave
  • eco york rain jackets
    Eco York Rain Jackets
  • Pre eco york presentation
    Pre eco york presentation
  • Cleaning 4 reason fundraiser
    Cleaning 4 reason fundraiser
  • Eco York visiting lewis deleware
    Eco York visiting lewis deleware
  • Backpack donations
    Backpack donations
  • Pre-ephrata chapter
    Pre-ephrata chapter
  • Our Top Achievements 2019
    Our Top Achievements 2019

Eco York achieved a lot of our goals in 2019, and without you those goals never would have came to fruition. We want to Thank Each and Every One Of You!

What have we been up to in 2019?

We achieved a lot in 2019 and we plan to do even more in 2020!

We’ve already set a few goals for 2020 and plan to continue to add to the list. If you’ve made it this far and have used our services, go ahead and give us a Google Review. As of today we’ve received 19 Google reviews for our services over the past 10 years!

What are some of your goals for 2020 and how do you plan to achieve them? Visit our Facebook Page and tell us!

Your partner in Developing Solutions that Save Time and Money,

Mark Lane

President Eco York, LLC

Online Marketing Services

Understanding Content Marketing and Why Your Company Needs It

Business Advice

You may have heard the term content marketing and wondered exactly what that term means. In the digital marketing landscape of websites, blogs, social media, videos, ebooks, and search optimization, the digital content you publish on an ongoing basis plays an important role in sharing your message, strengthening your brand, helping potential customers find you on the web, and most importantly turn prospect leads into customers. The following post offers five key points about content marketing and why your company needs it.

Establishes Industry Expertise and Brand Authority

Your company’s website is an important tool to share information about your business, your services and your industry. It’s an opportunity to be a lead generator, a sales tool, a customer service engagement, and an educational vehicle all at once. It’s a tricky balancing act, however, to offer the correct amount of information on your site. Too little information and the visitor is apt to navigate off and continue their search elsewhere. Too much information and your visitor may be overwhelmed with trying to navigate the dense pages to find what they are looking for. The perfect amount of content will allow you to present your firm as an expert in your field and offer your visitors exactly what they need.

 

Content such as web pages, videos, white papers, ebooks, and blog posts allow you to educate on specific topics and keep your website up to date and relevant. These types of content help to establish you as an industry expert which ultimately strengthens your brand. Whether you have an in-house team to create and publish dynamic content and continually update it on your page, post it on your social media or communicate to your lead base, or you have chosen to contract with an outsourced marketing agency specifically knowledgeable about content marketing, you will quickly learn that content is a key comment to your marketing strategy.

 

Entices Return Visitors

When you create, curate and publish meaningful and relevant content on an ongoing basis, you continue to engage with your audience past a one-stop visit. By inviting your visitors to subscribe to your blog, like your social media page, or sign up for your opt-in email newsletter, you are creating the opportunity to continue the conversation and fortify that lead-to-sale conversion process. It is important to keep in mind that in order to retain their attention, you must be offering quality content to your subscribers and loyal audience. Content should intentionally serve the purpose to educate, inspire, persuade, promote and engage.

 

Optimizes Organic Search

When someone opens a browser and types words or phrases into a Google search bar to find your business or services, immediately a list of results pop up. What many people don’t stop to think about is how Google knows that you belong in those results and in which place to show your business name and website in the results. There is a complex, complicated, intuitive and mind-boggling series of criteria and algorithms that Google search uses to determine such things. When you are publishing and providing useful and meaningful content to your target audience, and not simply junking up the web with repetitive, salesy and spam-like self-promoting material, Google recognizes and rewards your intentional focus on dynamic quality content with higher-raking search results.

These algorithms and search criteria are constantly changing, and so should your content to some degree. What and when and how you publish your content matters. Keeping information current, informative and relevant is key. SEO refers to search engine optimization and is a marketing service offered by digital marketing experts to help you get the best ranking search placement which will ultimately result in more views, leads and conversions.

 

Offers Something to Share

Our digital platforms provide more than ever before the ability for information to be quickly easily and affordably shared, making digital marketing one of the most impactful components to your marketing strategy. When you provide desirable content, it is more likely to be shared, creating even a wider audience. Social Media marketing is a prime example of how things (memes, videos, inspirational stories, news and current event coverage, etc) can be spread virally in a very short time. Improving brand recognition and associating your brand with quality content are the favorable results of publishing content that can be easily shared.


In addition, if you create expert content, other websites (looking to curate and offer good content themselves) may wish to link to it. This idea of back-linking further spreads the visibility of your content and your brand and plays an important role in the criteria used by search engines for your ranking in the results. Again, your outsourced digital marketing agency can help to facilitate and promote these backlink opportunities,

Converts Prospects to Leads

In addition to educating and sharing and building your brand authority, the bottom line of marketing is ultimately to increase your business through the conversion of visitors to leads, leads into customers, and hopefully finding yourself with a growing number of loyal, repeat customers. One of the best reasons to focus on content marketing is because of the proven success record and high ROI in the digital space. In short, if you know what you are doing and do it well, It works!

Social Media Marketing

Why Outsourcing Social Media Marketing makes sense for your Small Business

Social Media

Your Core Business Strength

Chances are, you got into your line of work and started a business based on a specific skill set, area of expertise or a passion for services or goods you offer.  This core strength is the foundation for your business. For the owner of a cleaning service, this includes the love of physical cleaning and serving others.

For a realtor, the idea of helping people find their dream home or getting started in real estate investment is energizing.  For a construction company, years of experience building and remodeling homes has earned you a reputation of reliability and excellence.

The reason others desire your services or products is because they rely on your passion, skill and expertise to provide something they cannot do or do not have time to do themselves.  Your core business strength offers value to others. Your core business strength is the backbone to your business.

There’s More to Running Your Business

But to stay afloat, stay compliant and actually grow your business, there are some other tasks, besides your core area of expertise, that you will need to implement.  Things like accounting and finance functions, technology and IT management, and, of course, building and implementing a marketing plan are all things to consider. As you consider these business functions, you will need to consider which ones make the most sense to outsource to a knowledgeable third party and which ones to keep in-house and do yourself.  Trying to do it ALL yourself will likely lead to the diluting of your core business strength and take too much time away from your revenue-earning business focus.  

Are you a Marketing Expert?  Are you a Social Media Marketing Expert?

It doesn’t require an expert to know that marketing your business is critical for growth.  Potential clients must know about you and what you offer, trust you and your brand, and know how to engage with you. Putting together strategic marketing objectives and a defined budget is essential.  

Knowing the media mix you will use, the core message, and the allotted budget for each activity will help you execute a successful marketing plan. A general rule of thumb, according to the US Small Business Administration, is to spend 5-8% of gross sales revenue on marketing. You will want to spend marketing money wisely to get the most bang for your buck.  In today’s digital landscape, the internet and more specifically social media provides a powerful, cost-effective electronic platform that helps to reach a wide audience for the purpose of making a brand impression, building your brand’s trust reputation, entertaining and interacting with your audience, educating prospects about your business and industry, and ultimately influencing a decision to purchase. 

So, if this platform is so affordable, accessible and appears relatively easy to use, why would a small business owner spend additional marketing budget to outsource this task to a third party? The truth is in order to really leverage the advantages that social media offers, it DOES require expertise to know how, how much, when, what, and what not to to post. The dynamic nature of electronic media means that the rules of engagement are constantly changing and to stay ahead of the competition you’ll need to stay ahead of the curve. 

Hiring an in-house social media marketing expert would cost $45-70K in annual salary so for many small businesses this option for acquiring needed expertise is not affordable. This is why outsourcing your social media marketing makes sense for small businesses.  

An Extension of Your Business

So what should you be looking for in an outsourced social media expert?  There are many packages and providers available and its important for you to understand exactly what you will be getting for the money. Large online agencies that offer cookie-cutter generic posting packages, often times at a high cost, will not help you stand out and will not help you establish your unique brand presence online. 

The best outsourced solution is going to be a specialized social media marketing service provider that acts as if they are an extension of your business. An initial consultation meeting with you to understand your core strengths, your core business philosophy and objectives, your target market and your message will ensure that your business and your brand is represented online the way you would want it.  Establishing clear expectations of the number and type of posts, the posting schedule, and the best social media channels for your business is also important.

An example of a great outsourced option is the Social Serenity package that Eco York offers. The starter package includes three different posts to three channels each week. All posts aim to educate, entertain, influence, interact and persuade your online audience of customers and prospects. 

Each post, which includes a high-quality image or video, is custom-curated and posted on your behalf, as if the outsourced marketing specialist is an extended part of your staff. Your social media marketing gets handled without you having to take the time out of your field, away from your core business strength and revenue-generating opportunities, to research, curate, write, format, schedule, post, or track these activities. It all gets handled seamlessly like clockwork so to provide the consistency, frequency, and effective engaging content that is required to take full advantage of this digital marketing platform.

Measuring Return on Investment

Building your brand reputation online does not happen overnight.  Acquiring followers and engaging audiences online does not happen overnight. Building your brand reputation and brand trust happens over time so you must be prepared to invest for several months before judging whether or not a service is providing the return on investment you desire.   One of the keys to successful online and social media marketing is consistency and perseverance.

This is where many small businesses who attempt to handle their social media marketing themselves fail. They start out with great intentions but when other business needs become prioritized, their time and focus on regular and impactful social media postings get pushed to the bottom o the list. 

Or they run out of things to say. Or they perceive their amateur efforts as unsuccessful because they did not have appropriate expertise or expectations of how to navigate the dynamic nuances of each media channel on an ongoing basis. When the right outsourced third party social media marketing services provider is acting on your behalf, you can trust that the consistency you need to continually build your brand, engage and grow your audience, and ultimately convert prospects to clients through your online marketing, specifically social media marketing, is working and providing a great return on your investment. 

You can rely on the passion, skill and core-business strength of your social media marketing expert to provide a needed service that you do not have knowledge or time to do yourself. This is why outsourcing Social Media Marketing makes sense for your small business.

Your partner in Developing Solutions that Save Time and Money,

Mark Lane

President Eco York, LLC

Our Top Achievements 2018

Our Top Achievements 2018

press release

As we look back at 2018, we would like to extend our appreciation for you helping make our 9th year in business such a success! It’s because of you that we’ve achieved so much in 2018.

Each year we all reflect on our previous year’s goals and set new ones for the upcoming year. It’s never too late to take a look at your business and set new goals for the new year.

Some area’s of your business that you should include in your goals include:

  • What are your Goals for your company website? How do you plan to get more traffic? Is your design in need of an update? All of these are questions that can help you in 2019.
  • How were your overall sales numbers in 2018? Set yourself some achievable goals for different area’s of your business and set milestones along the way to help you achieve those goals.
  • Do you have any charitable events you plan to attend in 2019? Think about what you can do not only for your business, but the community around you as well. Each year it’s great to continue to grow your business financially, but it’s important to think about culturally how you can grow your business as well.

We wanted to take a quick moment and reflect on some of our achievements in 2018.

Some Photos from 2018

  • York PA Souther school pickups
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  • Small Business expo - Web design york pa
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  • Web Development Meeting - John Wright
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  • MDA Lockup 2018 York PA
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Our Top Achievements from 2018:

Eco York achieved a lot of our goals in 2018, and without you those goals never would have came to fruition. We want to Thank Each and Every One Of You!

What have we been up to in 2018?

We achieved a lot in 2018 and we plan to do even more in 2019!

We’ve already set a few goals for 2019 and plan to continue to add to the list. If you’ve made it this far and have used our services, go ahead and give us a Google Review.

What are some of your goals for 2019 and how do you plan to achieve them? Visit our Facebook Page and tell us!

Your partner in Developing Websites that Save Time and Money,

Mark Lane

President Eco York, LLC

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