Sell Your Brand as Well as Your Products and Services

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There’s an old adage that says, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. But teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Something similar can be said about your business. When you promote your company’s products and services, you can gain a customer for a day. But if you sell them on your brand, you can gain a customer for a lifetime.

Brand Immersion 

That’s the theory behind marketing based on brand immersion, an innovative new approach to creating successful, long-term relationships with clients and customers.

Rather than simply advertising a product or service your company can provide — and telling customers why it is superior to your competitors and can improve their lives, the primary objective of most advertising up until now — brand immersion promotes your company’s brand, including its values, its people, and all the esoteric elements that go into making up a powerful, compelling story that customers can believe in.

Giving People What They Want

When people go online to search for products or services, they are looking for something that they need right now. But brand immersion convinces them to buy into your company’s brand, its culture, and its meaning so that they get something even more valuable and useful.

You probably already buy into brand immersion without even realizing it. Most people are loyal to a certain type of car. Or go to the same store to buy their clothes, their groceries, or other life essentials. This lifelong loyalty usually isn’t something that happened by accident. It’s the result of a sophisticated, well-crafted strategy to promote more than just individual products or services but instead an entire culture, an entire brand.

Lytron Design can help craft a successful branding plan that can attract lifelong customers to your business. Contact us today to find out how to get started.

For Small Businesses, Image Is Everything

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Everybody is familiar with big companies like Disney, Ford, and IBM thanks to their highly effective and sophisticated branding strategies implemented over several decades. So is branding just for big businesses?

The answer is an unequivocal “No”. Effective branding is just as important for small businesses as it is for major multinational companies. Your business needs effective, sophisticated branding strategies just as much as the biggest players. In fact, branding is even more important for your small business so you can permanently become part of your industry’s landscape.

What Is Branding?

So what is branding? Essentially, it’s what the outside world thinks about when it thinks about your business. For example, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about The Walt Disney Company? The logo? The theme parks? The successful movies? Probably not. For most people, Disney creates a warm feeling of trust, tradition, and family.

That’s not by accident. Disney and other big companies have been building their brands for generations. And while your business may not be as established and as old as the biggest companies, you can still build your brand and influence established and prospective customers alike through things like:

  • Professionally crafted logos
  • Entertaining and effective ad campaigns
  • Carefully crafted public image
  • Quality products and services
  • And much, much more

In the end, your brand is whatever the outside world defines it. But you can influence that branding image with every decision you make for your business.

Benefits of Branding

Effective branding makes people think about your business differently. Even if you are a small business, your brand can project a bigger image. It can craft credibility in your business’s products, services, and values. It can make your business memorable so people choose you over your competitors. And most importantly, it can attract and retain lifelong customers.

Lytron Design specializes in crafting effective, sophisticated branding for small businesses. To learn more about how we can help your business become an essential player in your industry, contact us today at LytronDesign.com.

 

Adding Authoritative Links Can Boost Site Rankings

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Rankings Popular search engines like Google, Microsoft Edge, and Bing! gain popularity by providing users with high-quality results. When you search for information about any topic, you expect it to be accurate, timely, and on topic.

 

As a business owner in the digital age, it’s critically important that your website ranks high on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the keywords that best describe your business, products, or services.

 

So one of the best ways to instantly boost your rankings is by improving the credibility of your postings by including links to authoritative sources.

 

Improving Your Online Credibility

 

Search engines love authoritative sources. These include things like academic websites, scientific studies, and well-respected resources like encyclopedias and dictionaries.

 

When you post content related to your business, you can increase your site rankings by giving search engines what they want: Links to authoritative sources. Some of the best are:

  • Websites with the suffix “.edu” which means it is associated with an academic institution.
  • Websites with the suffix “.gov” which means it is associated with a government agency.
  • Research papers, scientific studies, and other expert resource materials.
  • Wikipedia, which has entries on practically every imaginable subject

 

You can easily find these by conducting a simple Google search. For example, if you are writing a blog and want to include statistics, research the information you need then include a link to the source material when posting it in your content.

 

Rankings – Creating a Link

 

Building a link is simple. Simply go to the page you want to cite then copy the web address. Then go to the place in your content that you want to link it to, move the cursor over the text, then use the link tool on your toolbar and paste the address into the box when it appears.

 

The text will then be underlined in your content. When people click on it they will automatically be taken to the source material you are citing, increasing the credibility of your content.

 

Plus, web browsers will see that your content is more reliable because it includes links to authoritative sites so it likely will increase your rankings, putting your website in front of more prospective customers or clients.

The Fast, Easy Way to Retool Your Online Business

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It’s important that customers believe your business is fresh, cutting edge, and always evolving into something more appealing. The easiest way to achieve this is often simply to update your company’s logo.

Some long-established businesses have used the same logo for years — or even decades. The logos for companies like IBM, Ford, and McDonald’s are instantly identifiable and familiar. So it’s highly unlikely these will ever be changed.

Long-Term vs Short-Term

But smaller web-based companies have more freedom when it comes to updating their logo. A new, streamlined design for your business’s logo can communicate visually to your customers that you are making positive changes and improving for the future.

Keep in mind that your logo is not your company name. Changing the name of your business can confuse customers, disconnecting your brand from existing customers, and driving away new customers actively searching for you under your old name.

Your logo, however, is simply the visual, stylized representation of your business. By updating or redesigning it, you can reconnect with existing customers and compel new ones to check out your website, products, or services.

Expressing Your Values

Small business owners aren’t married to the logo they adopted when they first launched their operations. In many cases, a company’s first logo is more like a first draft of what they wanted to be. As time goes on and companies evolve, their logos should as well.

A redesigned log is a great way to express to old and new customers alike that you are making positive changes to your image, your business, and your products or services. It instantly expresses fresh ideas and innovative thinking even if you do nothing else to your business.

An updated and stylized logo redesign is a fast, affordable, and effective way to positively change your business’s public image.

Long-Tail Keywords Bring Localized Results

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keywordsThe more specific you get with the keywords you put in your online content, the more focused your customers.

 

Google and other popular search engines use keywords placed in certain places of your content to identify and understand what you have posted. These places include the headline/title, the subtitles/paragraph headlines, the first 100 words of your content, and the last 100 words.

 

Your post also will be rewarded its length, whether or not it includes relevant photos or graphics, and the number of times your keywords appear. Too many is bad. Not enough is also bad. But just the right amount can give you a higher ranking on the  Search Engine Results Page for your specific keywords.

 

Long-Tail vs Short-Tail

 

One key concept in Search Engine Optimization has to do with how specific your keywords are. As the name implies, short-tail keywords are short, to the point, and don’t include a lot of description. For example, “car repair shops” is a short-tail keyword the owner of an auto garage might use to attract online customers.

 

Long-tail keywords are longer, more descriptive, and specific. They can include specific details such as location, specialties, and other pertinent information that can narrow down the search for customers. For example, that same garage owner might post “foreign car repair in St. Louis” if he wanted to attract a certain type of customer (“foreign car” owners in need of repair) in a specific geographic area (“St. Louis”).

 

Target Specific Customers

 

Long-tail keywords are helpful in attracting a narrower field of customers. Web users who type in car repair shops are likely to get millions, if not billions, or responses from garages all over the world servicing every type of vehicle. But “foreign car repair in St. Louis” will narrow down the results to a specific type of garage within a limited geographic area.

 

Identify the long-tail keywords that best describe your business and place in the appropriate places within your content and you can instantly get more results from prospective customers looking for exactly what your business offers.

Breakthrough Web Design Trends for Fall

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Web DesignSummer is already in full swing but many businesses already are getting ready for fall — especially when it comes to their web design. This year, as more consumers make online searches their primary way of seeking out the products and services they want, having a cutting edge website is more important than ever.

 

Web design is constantly changing. But here are some trends that could help your website stand out from your competitors.

 

3D Illustrations

 

Remember 3D movies? The kind where you had to wear special glasses in the theater to see the picture properly? Today, revolutionary changes in web design allow some illustrations on websites to appear in three dimensions with the naked eye.

 

These vibrant, artistic illustrations practically jump off the screen to capture the viewer’s attention. They promote a more interactive experience that delight and compel visitors to return to your page again and again.

 

Screen-Dominating Text

 

Web page designers have discovered that really big words are effective at capturing the attention of web viewers. No, not words with lots of letters that are hard to pronounce and difficult to understand, but physically big words that dominate the screen.

 

Huge fragmented messages on web pages instantly grab the eye’s attention and force viewers to focus on the message being displayed. The communicate urgency and immediacy while engaging the viewer’s imagination.

 

Non-Traditional Cursors

 

The popularity of video games has led web page designers to replace the traditional on-screen cursor with innovative alternatives. Now the cursor on your web page can be your company’s logo, a mascot, or anything else the delights and entertains visitors while encouraging them to spend more time there.

 

Designers can also play around with the function of the cursor. Instead of just pointing and clicking, now cursors can click and hold to add new elements, such as to get a .gif file to load or to play a brief video or animation.

 

The more interactive and entertaining your website is for visitors, the more likely they are to find it, spend time on it, and interact with your business.

Optimize Your Website for Mobile Viewing

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Website When you go online to look for products or services do you sit down in front of a computer? Or do you simply whip out your smartphone? Odds are you do both — but are more likely to use your phone 66% of the time, according to a report from the Pew Research Center.

 

Consumers prefer phones over computers because of convenience, location, and speed. Most people don’t have access to their home computer when they are at work, in their cars, or walking around the streets. But when they want to look for that new book they heard about or find a plumber online, they usually aren’t willing to wait until they get home to do it.

 

Smartphones provide instant access to the Internet from practically anywhere — which is why your website needs to be mobile optimized.

 

Faster, Better, Stronger

 

Mobile websites are different than your primary website. If you spent a lot of time and money developing your website for your business so that customers can find your business online, that’s great. But if they click on that website on their phones and it isn’t optimized for mobile phones and tablets, it’s probably going to be slow to load, too crowded to easily read, and not responsive enough for visitors.

 

That means a lot of visitors — if not most prospective customers — are going to click off and visit the mobile-optimized website of your competitors rather than stick around and try to navigate your old-fashioned, slow, and cumbersome website.

 

Website – Built for Speed

 

With 66% of consumers using their smartphones to shop for products and services, you can’t afford to ignore mobile optimization for your website. That’s like shutting the door to 2 out of every 3 customers looking for your business.

 

Mobile optimization improves the way the majority of customers interact with your business online. So if you don’t yet have it, what’s stopping you?

Factors that Influence Your Google Ranking

Factors that Influence Your Google Ranking

By now, just about every business owner knows the importance of having a high Google ranking. It’s actually quite simple: If your website appears on the front page of Google for the keywords that best describe your business, you can expect a ton of traffic from customers looking online.

 

And if it’s at the Number One spot, you have a good chance of capturing the market completely.

 

People now use the Internet — especially via their mobile devices — as the primary method of looking for the products and services they want. Need proof? When was the last time you saw a Yellow Pages, let alone used one?

 

Google Algorithm

 

So getting at the top of Google rankings is critical for your business. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done because every other business owner wants the same thing.

 

One way is to simply buy your way in. If you have the budget for it, Google will be happy to sell you an ad that will appear above all the other listings when people type in your best keywords. But these can be costly. Plus, many users scroll past these paid results to find the best organic results — the ones the actual Google algorithm determined the best match for what they are seeking.

 

Search engine optimization – Number One Spot

 

So how can you achieve that top spot? There lots of traditional search engine optimization: Placing your keywords in most strategic places, keeping your content brief and to the point, including appealing photos and graphics, and others.

 

But the downside is that Google is continually changing the formula it uses to rank results. That’s because when the online search business first started getting popular, savvy business owners successfully figured out how to “hack” the algorithm. So now Google’s engineers have developed a highly complex, top-secret, and continually changing formula for giving users high-quality results.

 

These days, it’s practically impossible to hack Google. But a professional online marketing business like Lytron Design can significantly improve your rankings and boost your profile on Google so that it’s easier for customers to find you.

Links Can Make or Break Your Online Business!

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Is motivation enough to run a successful internet business? It’s a good beginning, but it’s just the first step among many. Lytron Design is running on a tank filled with motivation. On our way to the top of the heap, motivation is part of every job we do while fueling our drive in Florida. Our Florida Search Engine Marketing Services are doing all the things they can to help our customers keep their lofty position on the search engine marketing ladder.

 

Florida Search Engine Marketing Services takes a look at the overall picture.

 

What does search engine marketing does? Does it improve your Google ranking? Not directly, but it has a huge influencing factor if done properly. Our Florida Search Engine Marketing Services are aware of this and this is the reason why we at Florida Search Engine Marketing Services always find ways to tip the balance in your favor.

 

Florida Search Engine Marketing experts have come up with a system in order to make this condition a continuous process, the most significant of which is by promoting your website’s visibility on the internet.

 

Business in the physical world has applied the same technique to attract customer traffic and increase buyer response. Customer recall is highest when the company and the products have wide and constant market visibility. Florida Search Engine Marketing Services knows that in business familiarity breeds trust, not the other way around.

 

So how can Florida Search Engine Marketing Services apply what the actual world is doing in the digital world to sell their products and make money?

 

Virtual billboards: Our Florida Search Engine Marketing experts call them links; in the real world billboards dot the landscape to attract buyer attention, this is what creating links is all about.

 

The more popular and interesting the billboards the more they draw attention to your products; the same thing works with links. Link popularity and quality will get your websites the same effect. The link should, first of all, have high relevance to yours. Florida Search Engine Marketing experts measure the page link popularity by the number of connections that it has with other website pages.

 

We at Florida Search Engine Marketing Services would like to remind you that you can’t just ride on the popularity of your links. In order for your website to be popular it must have a lot of links itself; this is where the involvement of Florida Search Engine Marketing Services comes in. Your website is going to be left out if on the scale of 1 to 10 your website only has a score of 3 and the others are on the median and higher scales.

 

Links Can Make or Break Your Online Business! –  Links are very important to your website’s success and Florida Search Engine Marketing Services is here to help achieve it for you.

 

Anyone can build links but experts like Florida Search Engine Marketing Services can do it better and with great results. Florida Search Engine Marketing Services can help you along these lines with spectacular results. We’re here in Florida just for that purpose- to help you attain self-sufficiency.

 

Florida Search Engine Marketing Services believes in link building.

7 Things to Do During Coronavirus Downtime

7 Things to Do During Coronavirus Downtime

If your business is shut down fully or partially as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay busy. Use the downtime productively by taking steps to prepare your business for potential growth after the national emergency is over.

 

If you are a small business owner, you can’t afford to stay home during the crisis even if your doors are temporarily closed. There are still plenty of things you can do to keep in touch with customers, reorganize or restructure your business, or even prepare a complete overhaul of your branding and marketing.

 

7 Things to Do During Coronavirus Downtime – Here are 7 things to keep you productively busy until the crisis has past and business can return to normal.

 

  1. Conduct a Deep Cleaning of Your Business

 

Lots of business owners plan someday to give their store, warehouse, or office a complete top to bottom cleaning. Well, that someday has arrived.

 

Take advantage of having no customers, no employees, and no people in your business to give it the deep cleaning you have always dreamed of doing. You now have plenty of time (and no excuses) to roll up your sleeves and get to work scrubbing, organizing, and preparing your business for its eventual reopening.

 

Online businesses may not have physical spaces to clean, but owners can still clean out files, reorganize customer lists, and even scroll through all of their old smartphone contacts to find new leads and opportunities.

 

  1. Stop Doing Normal Marketing

 

If you haven’t done it already, now is the time to stop your routine marketing. You can’t effectively promote sales or look for new prospects if your doors are shuttered. Pause your scheduled Tweets and Facebook posts. They could be confusing or even offensive to readers dealing with life and death issues.

 

Instead, pivot to crisis-era marketing. For example, if you are in a travel-related industry you can focus on helping people reschedule their plans or get refunds for cancellations of bookings. Look for ways to connect with customers in meaningful, helpful ways. Let people know what you are doing to help.

 

Because you have more downtime, now is also the time to focus on developing those marketing or branding projects that you have filed away for later.

 

  1. Revisit and Rework Existing Content

 

Go back and make all the content you have out there already work harder for you. For example, if you have been posting blogs about your business and industry, go back and rewrite them so that they have better SEO optimization.

 

Change keywords in all of your postings so they attract more Google hits and position those better keywords so they are more attractive to search engines.

 

You can also recycle old Tweets and Facebook posts by giving them updated art or a quick rewrite. File them away for future use after the crisis is over.

 

  1. Redo Your Marketing Materials

 

If you have brochures, catalogues, or other materials related to your products or services, now might be a good time to take a fresh look at them – especially if you haven’t updated them in years. This includes both physical and digital marketing materials.

 

For example, revisit your business description on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Update your LinkedIn bio. Refresh the fact sheet you normally pass out at conventions or trade shows. Use your downtime to make your old marketing materials new and fresh again.

 

  1. 7 Things to Do During Coronavirus Downtime – Revamp Your Website

 

For any business, keeping your website up and running is literally money in the bank. So, doing anything disruptive like routine maintenance or scheduled updates can be costly during peak business times. But not right now.

 

Take advantage of this time by doing all the scheduled updates, maintenance, and rewrites to your website that you have planned for the next year. It could even be a great time to rethink your business website altogether so that when customers return in the future, they find a refreshed, reworked, and completely redone website for your business.

 

  1. 7 Things to Do During Coronavirus Downtime – Organize Your Resources

 

Use the time you have now to do all the time-consuming, boring tasks you (hopefully) won’t have time for late. This includes things like going through all the photos in your phone or on your laptop and organizing them into categories. Or adding descriptive tags to all your blog posts so they can be easily accessed by category.

 

  1.  Rebrand Your Business

 

For some businesses, a shutdown that lasts weeks or even months can be the end of the line. For others, it can be a time of rebirth and renewal.

 

Make use of this unexpected opportunity to completely rebrand your business. Develop new approaches for attracting customers. Enlist the help of seasoned experts to position your business for success once the crisis is over. Draw up new strategies for growing your customer base, market share, and even product offerings.

 

The worst thing you can do for your business during this global health crisis is to do nothing. Use the time productively to support your business, inform your customers, and restructure your brand so that your business can emerge healthier, stronger, and better.