Posted By Virteom
July 10, 2019
Category: Tips, Boosters
You may think of email marketing as a thing of the past with all of the other technologies we have now, but you would be wrong! Email is still one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies out there, and the reason that it has stood the test of time is because it works.
However, the reason that many busy business owners do not do email marketing is because they are too busy. That is where we come in!
Emails Are the Easiest Way to Keep Your Customers Coming Back
Virteom offers an effective, affordable, and convent way for you to boost your business with minimal effort and time on your side. With our Email Blast Booster, we send out emails to your client list and promote your new blog, any major announcements, or anything you want.
The important thing is staying in front of your customers. If they see you showing up in their email, they'll be thinking of you more often, which drives them to your business!
The Email Blast Booster Offers Measurable Data!
Another great thing about our Email Blast Booster is that we can measure the statistics. How many people read your emails, how many times they read it, if they went to your website because of the email, and a whole bunch of other extremely valuable measurable data that help you learn more about your customer and adapt to their needs and wants!
Virteom's All-In-One Marketing Booster!
Now the best part about our Email Blast Booster is that it is included in our
Posted By Virteom
May 22, 2019
Category: Marketing, Tips
Web design can be a scary thing for many business owners, especially if you don't know much about computers, the internet, computer science, any of that! Digital marketing can be a scary thing too. We all have our strong suits and web development, design, and digital marketing are our strong suits at Virteom!
We understand that it can be stressful and time-consuming to try to figure out your website by yourself. And, we know working with some marketing companies can be a bust, but Virteom gets the results you want! That is why we are offering a free consultation to our prospective clients!
Three Major Concerns of Working with Web Developers:
Case of the missing Web Developer?
It is not unheard of for many web developers to go MIA. Either they take too long to get back to you, or they don't ever get back to you.
At Virteom, we keep regular business hours and have a customer support desk that is monitored by our entire tech staff. We work when you do – so making changes to your website is easy.
If you need upgrades on your existing website and are unable to track down your developer, give Virteom a call.
Why Doesn't my website bring me Leads?
Maybe you thought you were going to get leads on your website and grow your business and it didn't happen.
Just because you have a brand-new website, doesn’t mean the leads are going to come pouring in. A website is a great place to start when kicking up your marketing ini
Posted By Virteom
May 01, 2019
Category: Marketing, Tips
Of course, design is an important part of a successful website but the fact of the matter is that the story you tell on that website is what matters the most! Your customers want to know why YOU are the business that is going to help THEM.
Over the last 20 years we have been building websites and what we have noticed is that everyone is more concerned with how their site looks rather than the value that it is providing. But, trying to keep up with a pretty website is a vicious cycle.
The Three-Year Death Cycle
If all you are worried about is a pretty website, you’re going to want to change it every couple of years to keep up with the times. But, every three years you go back in to re-beautify your site and yet it still doesn't bring in any leads. At Virteom, we refer to this as the Three-Year Death Cycle.
Amazon’s Website
Take a look at Amazon’s website. It is one of the most cluttered, no-frills websites around, but what it excels in is providing value to its customers. This is one of the reasons that Amazon has done so well over the last few years, they know how to give their customers what they want without going the extra mile to have a “pretty” website!
Pretty is Not Enough, But It Doesn’t Hurt
At Virteom, we can provide you with a website that adds value and good looks! In one of our recent blogs, we talk about Discovery, which is just one way Virteom helps you help your customers!
With all of our websit
Posted By Virteom
April 24, 2019
Category: Tips, Marketing
Hybrid Blogging is the focus of our Sonic Marketing Boost here at Virteom!
What is a Hybrid Blog?
Everyone knows what a blog is. It’s basically an article on a specific topic, maybe a picture or two thrown in for reference. But there is nothing really capitating about a traditional blog anymore. These days, we consume most of our information through video, whether it’s on the tv or the internet.
A hybrid blog is a combination of a short video and an article which recaptures the information from that video.
Why Hybrid Blogs?
Hybrid blogs are a revolutionary way to share information with your customers without the hassle of writing your own content. Not only do you get the ease of sharing what your business is about and what makes it unique, but these hybrid blogs can make your website rank higher on SEO platforms such as Google!
In addition, hybrid blogs are overall just more consumer friendly! Content that is accompanied by a video is much more digestible for viewers and more captivating. A two-minute video is going to keep your viewers on your site for at least those two minutes and then they’ll take a look at what is posted below the video as well! The longer someone is on your site, the better you rank on SEO!
Other Benefits of Hybrid Blogs:
Videos are better for mobile viewers. When someone is on their phone, they won’t want to read a 500-word blog, instead, they’ll opt to view the video
Time-saving. You spe
Posted By Virteom
April 11, 2019
Category: Tips, Marketing
Building a website can seem like the most stressful element of your business. However, it does not have to be! Virteom is a technology and marketing firm that specializes in developing websites and applications for all types of companies. Working with Virteom makes developing your site a piece of cake. We have a variety of different boosts and packages to really customize your experience, but we always start with a client discovery.
What is Discovery?
Our Discovery consists of an executive pre-brief, leadership cross analysis, persona development, and site map creation. These steps help us streamline your experience at Virteom and allows us to develop the product you want!
Executive Pre-Brief
The executive pre-brief is the first step of our process where we take all of the leaders in your company, and we individually have them fill out their answers to our discovery questionnaire.
Leadership Cross-Analysis
Once everyone has their responses in, we then do a cross-analysis of on each of the sections with the leaders. This step really allows everyone to be on the same page, and that is essential for developing an app or a webpage.
Buyer Persona
Then there is the buyer persona. You must define the buyer persona before developing anything for your business! If you do not know who you are selling to, how could you build a website without knowing who you are gearing your information towards, or pricing, or even the layout? About 98% of our cli
Posted By Virteom
September 13, 2018
Category: Tips
When you start your own business, the planning phase requires you to focus on many different things at one time.
One of the most important aspects of building your new business is having an effective marketing strategy and the branding of your business. Your branding is a key factor in helping your company get recognized so you can achieve success.
For the branding of your business to be successful, it must carry through all of your materials. The themes need to clearly run through your website, printed materials, and social media accounts. To accomplish this continuity and have your brand be recognized, the colors, logos, fonts and other important features need to be consistent throughout everything.
Why is Branding Important to Your Website?
In our technology-driven society, a business’ website is often the first exposure potential customers have to a business. It is also quite often the first place people go to learn about a company or to make purchases. So, it is crucial that the company behind the website is crystal clear. Otherwise, people will easily forget what site they are visiting.
It improves recognition of your company
Branding is essential in improving recognition of your company. Your brand should give the right impression of your company. Choosing a unique logo will go a long way if it is memorable as well as powerful.
It builds trust
Having consistent branding and a professional look will build your company's
Posted By Virteom
August 30, 2018
Category: Tips, Marketing
When you promote your business, it is imperative to set yourself apart from the competition. Developing an effective marketing strategy is vital to the success of your business, and doing something different will help increase interest in your company and improve the likelihood of conversions.
There are many different ways that you can promote your business, and it can be difficult to know where to start. Working with a skilled marketing partner can help you use all your outlets efficiently and direct you in different ways that will set you apart from your competition. One way to do this is with a term coined by Virteom — hybrid blogging.
What is Hybrid Blogging?
Blogs are essential for today’s businesses. If you think about it, majority of the pages you land on after Googling something is a blog. If you're a current Virteom customer, then you've probably heard CEO Dan Carbone talk about blogs and SEO in terms of frogs and lily pads. (You know, he gives you his whole spiel to think of your website visitors as frogs on a pond — if you have a ton of pages out there, or lily pads, and are constantly adding new ones, and your competitors are not - where is the frog most likely to land? Your website!)
For blogs to be useful, they need to be kept up to date and interesting. One way to keep a blog interesting and keep readers coming back for more is by incorporating videos into them. By combining blogs and videos, yo
Posted By Virteom
July 04, 2018
Category: Tips
For decades, Adobe Flash has been a cornerstone of the web, with the player plug-in doing everything from helping you watch videos to playing computer games. But Flash is on its way out as a technology. Adobe made the decision to phase out the software by the end of 2020. Some browsers are already making the transition, leaving Flash behind in favor of migration to open web technologies.
Why Adobe Flash Is No Longer Working
Hopefully you won’t notice much difference, as browsers try to seamlessly migrate without disrupting your user experience. However, there are some hiccups. For example, at Virteom, we have had to make alterations to some modules (or plug-ins) that we use in our content management system (CMS); they no longer work because Chrome and Firefox are no longer supporting Flash.
How Are Browsers Transitioning Away From Flash?
Browsers have always been the primary delivery mechanism for Flash-enabled content, but today, popular browsers are definitely migrating away from Flash. Over the last several years, Flash has declined in use. Just three years ago, the majority of Chrome users visited Flash-enabled sites daily, but today, fewer than 20 percent do.
Instead, browsers are using the much faster and efficient open web technologies. These open technologies are also more secure for a safer online shopping or financial transaction experience, and they’re also better suited for both desktop and mobile applications.
The Plan for Flash
Tremendous in
Posted By Virteom
July 04, 2018
Category: Tips
It’s no secret that blogging, or content marketing as it’s also called, is a great way to grow your business and authority. The challenge is coming up with fresh blog ideas on a consistent basis.
There are a lot of great resources and tools to help you come up with blog content ideas, but you can also use the list below to start crafting great content for your business blog.
Frequently Asked Questions
Your blog allows you to speak directly to your customers. It iis the perfect platform to help educate your customers. Take an inventory of the questions you get asked the most from your customers. Take the top five questions and create a blog post for each of them that goes into depth on the answer.
This approach not only is targeted to the needs of your customer, but it’s also a way to provide value and add credibility to your brand. It shows you listen and you care about your customer’s needs.
Case Studies
Find a few customers who have had great success with your product or service and interview them about their results. This type of article takes a strategic approach to marketing your business without sounding too “salesy”.
People love reading success stories, especially if they are considering buying from you. Your existing happy customers are the perfect people to profile in your blog.
How-to Trainings
Most people are searching the web to figure out how to do something. This is a good opportunity for you create a post or two arou
Posted By Virteom
May 29, 2018
Category: Tips
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a term is that is used a lot in our online business world. But what does it really mean? There is a heavy emphasis on using SEO to improve our search engine rankings and increase our website traffic, but there is an element to SEO that is often overlooked -- the emotional element.
Emotions are what really motivates a customer to click, read or purchase. This is where many SEO strategies miss the mark. Most SEO strategies are technical in nature; pick the keywords, place the keyword a certain number of times within the content, etc.
What really motivates a customer to take an action, such as reading an article or clicking a buy button, is the emotion behind the words they are reading. This is where the magic happens.
Businesses who recognize this are at a huge advantage.
The truth is, SEO should not be looked at only from a technical aspect of keywords and meta tags.
Emotional SEO is creating content that helps your customer answer a question, solve a problem or learn more. It evokes a true emotion.
Our CEO Dan Carbone says:
"SEO is an emotional play. It's not just technical or about having a pretty or perfect website -- it's all about what type of value you're providing."
That emotional response is what motivates humans to act. Whether that is making a purchase, entering an email address, or watching a training video, emotions are the key to action. That is the beauty of co
Posted By Virteom
April 05, 2018
Category: Tips, Marketing
A television show, movie, video game — they all hold our interest. And, while most of us love a good quality program, even the less-than-stellar options keep our attention at times. Incorporating video marketing into your marketing strategy capitalizes on this draw.
Why Video Marketing is Important to You
Videos hold human attention longer than our usual eight second, similar-to-a-goldfish span. Elevating us to new heights, video marketing interactively engages your audience, raises brand awareness and prompts lead generation. EyeView Digital suggests that landing page videos boost conversions by 80 percent.
Increased time spent on your branded page, the trust raised with your audience and capitalizing on our human preference for having material fed to us (rather than reading it) gives video a leg up. But there’s more. Check out this HighQ infographic for the stats on why video must be an integral part of your marketing strategy this year.
How Video Marketing Fits Your Strategy
Incorporating a video into each stage of the buyer journey gets you started without being overwhelmed. In an iMPACT blog, Carina Duffy suggests educating consumers at the awareness stage, explaining at the consideration stage and showing or demonstrating at the decision stage — all with video.
Connecting video content to your buyer personas benefits the consumer and fits your brand. For instance, use the common questions your site visitors ask to create educational (but fun) v
Posted By Virteom
February 06, 2018
Category: Tips, Advertising
Online advertising meets consumers where they hang. It's effective and its success continues to grow with the explosion of technology and SaaS platforms. There are hundreds of strategies to online advertising and many places you can post ads. So where do you start?
Your Online Advertising Options
There are many places to advertise online but for our purposes here, we are going to break it down into two ad types: Passive and Active Advertising. Think about these from the customer perspective; are they finding your ads in passing or are they searching for the answer?
Active Advertising
Active advertising means that the user you reach is actively looking for a solution to a problem. These are typically Search Ads but can also be found on sites like Yelp or Angie’s List. Have you noticed the results labeled “Ad” at the top?
Search engine ads come up when you search for something on Google (or any search engine) and are based on PPC (Pay per click). Something to keep in mind here is that the cost of advertising on search engines varies depending on your competitors in the industry. These ads are good for products and services that solve urgent needs. For example, if you are a roofer, your customer will be seeking you out when their roof endures damage.
Passive advertising
Passive Advertising means that the user finds your solution while doing something else. The first thing you think of here is social media. How many times do you see
Posted By Virteom
February 01, 2018
Category: Content, Tips
Content is king, but what does that mean for you? How will it keep your business moving forward when content writing requires so much time? How will that bring leads in? You’re want to write the best content because you want your customers to find you first, find you fast, and find what they need.
Creating valuable content that finds its way to your audience requires you to stay true to your purpose, the customer. Of course, efficiency makes it happen week after week — drawing in consumer and search engine traffic through frequency and follow through. But successful web content come from the value within it.
Use these seven tips to get your content done right and get ready to see the leads roll in.
1. Know Your Purpose and Plan
An editorial calendar lays out content topics ahead of schedule. This tool saves valuable time and defeats creator’s block. Knowing your purpose for each piece of content and how it fits into your goals keeps you on track. Try grouping similar topics together for content that fills the calendar and helps writing flow.
When your all of your content is connected to each other, it has a better chance of connecting with your readers.
2. Interact With Customers
Understanding your customers enables you to create content they want. Initiate conversations via social media. Conduct surveys, and listen to customer conversations, questions and pain points. Use these common themes to fuel content creation. Doing so
Posted By Virteom
January 09, 2018
Category: Tips, Marketing
Sometimes, the most valuable things cannot be measured. Gone are the days of a brand’s marketing strategy being only about the metrics and products or services. Marketing can be an impossible game to play as it’s based on assumptions. As our CEO Dan Carbone once put it, “It’s really just guessing and testing”. However, the secret to success here can be simplified; Think Like Your Customer.
Many businesses know that this is easier said than done, but once you have it down, everything falls into place. Many companies put a lot of resources into finding out their target market, the ideal customer. Some companies, don’t put a focus on determining their buyer personas at all. Whether you have or have not pinpointed who your true audience is, understand that knowing who they are and how they behave is half of the battle. You have to put resources & diligent effort into understanding who the people are that you will truly help with your business.
Once you know who your buyers are, the rest flows naturally, but how do you predict what your customer will search for? What is their primary motivation for clicking the “Buy” button? Why are they looking for your product in the first place? Determining how your customer thinks sounds difficult, but doesn’t have to be. These are the types of questions you need to ask, questions that lead you to learn your buyers’ behavior.
If you are able to learn about your buyers’ be
Posted By Virteom
December 21, 2017
Category: Tips
Delaying the launch, or renewing, of a website is a guaranteed way to miss out on customers for any business.
While many people who are running businesses are perfectionists and don't want to launch anything that would be considered incomplete; when it comes to putting out an updated website, or launching one for the first time, the sooner it goes online the better.
Your website is a member of your sales team...except it is working for you 24/7. With this constant availability
Delaying the launch of your website can be costly. Check out these three reasons you shouldn't delay launching your new website:
customers need to find your business
Businesses derive so much business from their online presence these days that it can be crippling to have a poor online presence. Being searchable on the web makes it easier and faster for people to find your business, much like how the Yellow Pages used to be the go-to method for finding the business a customer needs, now they turn to Google and Bing.
to keep up with competition
Not all business minded people are technologically savvy, especially when it comes to website development. Being able to put the business name and products online as soon as possible will help the business stay competitive so that technological impairment needs to be overcome.
When competitor’s businesses are already pulling in customers from their websites, that means everyone else is falling behind. Trying to have someone
Posted By Virteom
December 19, 2017
Category: Advertising, Tips, Marketing
Google AdWords is THE online advertising platform to get your product out there in front of millions of viewers and help you edge out the competition online. Whether you've already started dabbling in AdWords or are new to the AdWords game, you want to make sure it's going to provide value and be worth your time.
To determine the value of AdWords for your business, you have to do some research into the keywords and competitiveness of your industry. To help you prepare for your preliminary research, let's break it down:
Here's how it works: Google displays ads in a text format and posts the content you create within the Google network through search results. This gets your information to users all over the internet and more specifically, users who have searched for your keywords that you targeted.
You bid for keywords against other competitors, so there are industries with more expensive keywords and some that are cheaper. If you don’t see an immediate impact on your conversions (the ad clicks that turn into leads for your company) you feel like you’re wasting your money buying the ads in the first place.
While it may seem that AdWords just doesn't work for you, it’s also important to understand that AdWords isn’t a hands-off system. There are many ways to invest your time and better the value of your AdWord campaigns and it all starts with diligence. It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Diligence is th
Posted By Virteom
December 14, 2017
Category: Tips
Many companies make the mistake of creating the perfect website for their business, just to let it sit there unattended for years. As long as it’s out there and not showing an error page, they’re satisfied. But that attitude could be costing you customers.
We’ve noticed that every three years customers come to us looking to refresh their website's visuals and content. It's like their websites have an expiration date and go through a death cycle. Sounds ominous, but bear with us - it’s a real thing. If you don’t keep up with the latest web trends, keep fresh content and stay compliant with the latest search engine trends you’re likely to fall off the face of the web.
So, what attributes to the three year website death cycle?
1. Your Website Becomes Out of Date
Internet trends move quickly, and in just three years your business website can go from impressive to “meh” for a couple of reasons:
your website Design is Out Of Date:
Web design is constantly changing, and what may have been trending when you created your site three years ago could be considered obsolete at this point. If you want your company to seem like it’s still on top of the latest marketing trends, you need to be on top of your game design-wise as well. Customers will be able to spot if it’s been a few years since you last updated your website.
Your website Content is Out of Date:
If you haven’t updated your content at
Posted By Virteom
December 05, 2017
Category: Tips, Marketing
Software as a service (SaaS) is something that you need to utilize for your business. Moving into 2018, SaaS is a growing industry that business owners all over the world are taking advantage of. You can grow your company, automate operations, increase your marketing efforts long-term with shorter-term input, and keep financing costs low with vendors.
Today, we’ll look at the 7 things you need to know about SaaS. As a business owner, understanding software as a service can bring you to prosperity and profit. But first, let’s tackle what SaaS means today and how to use it profitably.
What is SaaS?
It's a type of product -- think of it as software delivery -- where all you need is the internet and place to browse to take advantage. This is not something new, but does stand to take over what used to be extensive hardware, heavy internal investment, hosting, IT, and more. All of those things (& more) will be taken care of by your SaaS vendor, the expert on the software because they do more than just use it, they build it.
SaaS allows you to grow your set of tools that allow your business improve without you fronting the time or resources internally. With SaaS, you typically own a license (or a number of them) and permissions are given to access the product. You can use these platforms among departments, subcontractors, remote workers, and executives because locale isn’t a limitation with the cloud and real-time updating.
What Does It Take to Adopt
Posted By Virteom
November 30, 2017
Category: Tips
Anyone from a web guru to a casual Internet user can tell you that images for your website are a big deal. But images can do more than just look pretty - they can actually drive more traffic to your website. And you don’t need professional photography skills to bring that attention to your site. All you need are a few tricks to optimize your images.
While adding a picture to your website is a breeze, it takes a little more work to get the full optimization from your image. When you’re ready to upload your picture, keep these tips in mind:
1. Name Your Images
When you go to upload your image, it’s label will default to whatever name your camera or the stock website gave the file. While it may seem tedious, take a moment to rename your file with descriptive words in order to help your webpage rank higher on search engines.
Bots crawling through pages pick up on image file names just like they would text, and they will be more likely to pick up a filename like your-product-here.jpeg over a hodge podge of letters, dashes and numbers. To get the most from your keywords, use Google analytics to find the most search phrasing for the terms you plan to use.
Virteom Tip: When naming your images refrain from using spaces or special characters. It is best practice use dashes (-), underscores (_) or camelCase in place of spaces when naming photos.
2. Remember the Alt Tags
Alt Tags are the text alternative for images when a browser can’t render them, and can
Posted By Virteom
November 02, 2017
Category: Tips
With social media being all the rage, the temptation to think that a Facebook page is all your small business needs is common. After all, with limited staffing it proves difficult to stay current with these applications. Why add the work and cost of a website to the mix?
The truth is that a social media presence is not enough to market your company. Yes, social media proves a hefty tool in your marketing strategy. However, you need a web presence to capitalize on and boost your social media / Facebook presence.
Let’s take a closer look.
Rent vs. Own
Ultimately, with social media, you do not own the space. This fact means that changes to the platform are made without your approval or even your liking. These changes may impact your business negatively and unfortunately, you have no say.
A website on the other hand is owned and controlled by you. If an aspect of your site is not seeing good returns, you change it or have your web development team fix it. If your consumers express trouble with parts of your website, it can be changed. If your audience calls for a different look, interface or format, it can be fixed.
With a website, you’re in the driver’s seat. You control exactly what your customers see – instead of getting lost in the mix of Facebook timelines and Twitter feeds. Let’s face it – it’s easy for your content to get lost in the stampede. A dedicated website allows you to talk about all things ‘you’ and targ
