The Wax Blog

customer reviewsCultivating a steady stream of positive customer reviews is a surefire way to set your business apart from competitors. Many companies even gain an edge by incentivizing their customers to leave a positive review after service or orders have been completed. According to SearchEngineland.com, 72 percent of consumers trust online reviews, and most of those people believe positive reviews enough to make online purchase decisions based off that brief snippet of information. Here are some other things to keep in mind as you consider how to take advantage of positive customer reviews.

Benefits of positive reviews

Because customers have demonstrated trust in online reviews, they have a measurable impact on converting potential leads into sales. In fact, Unbounce.com reports that some surveys have shown that customer reviews boosted online conversions by as much 35 percent. “Nothing breeds trust quite the way an unfiltered customer review stream does, but that doesn’t mean you should just add a template review form to your site,” Unbounce.com’s Pratik Dholakiya advises. Companies still need to have more control than just opening an online forum for people to post whatever they’d like. Angie’s List and Yelp still top the list for trusted Internet sites for customer reviews. These types of sites require some attention to drive customers to your business.

Book CoverAs someone who has become adjusted to digital marketing, having grown up with the web, it feels out of place when I begin to look around my physical settings and engage with marketing efforts since so few of them seem to reach me on the same level as I’d expect online. As someone who has applied digital marketing strategies for various projects, it was easy to become wrapped up in the methods frequently used by others. It was equally easy to dismiss traditional marketing methods (namely… print) compared to what was possible online (thanks to flexibility, features, and tracking) until I began to realize that much of what is done in the physical space actually applies to much of what happens online (in a complimentary way). I think of it similar to how we say “don’t judge a book by its cover." We are quick to dismiss traditional marketing methods if we have been conditioned to the online method because of cost and efficiency. What can traditional advertising teach us about online advertising?

Long tail keywordsBy Tyler Weber, Marketing & Communications Director, Digital Solutions, Inc How often do you find yourself conducting a web search? To give you a little perspective, in 2013 over 100 billion searches were conducted on Google every month! And that number is expected to be even higher during 2014. The Internet is a vast sea of information and search engines were created to help us navigate the waters to find the destination that will satisfy our initial goal. Human beings are utilizing search engines to find information more than ever before, and the usage is only increasing. We use the Internet to do a variety of things, from shopping, to socializing, to keeping up on current events. We use the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to find information.

[caption id="attachment_5797" align="alignright" width="200"]Download (Image Courtesy of Shutterstock)[/caption] By Nick Rojas The World Wide Web has granted the ability to create and distribute content at a rate never before achieved in human history. In 2008, The University of California, San Diego published a report that showed American households consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008. A zettabyte, almost defying comprehension, is one billion trillion bytes, that’s a one with 21 zeros added. This data shows that the average American consumes 34 gigabytes of content and is exposed to 100,000 words in a single day. Some estimates place the number of social media users in 2014 as high as 1.82 billion people. As the number of eyes on social media pages has grown, so has the demand for content to fill those pages. Search Engine Optimization is a field currently exploding in an effort to meet this demand. But is there such thing as too much? Too much content for readers to possibly consume? Well, industry influencer Mark Schaefer believes so.

With the advent of massive social media advertising, internet banner ads, and direct email marketing, many companies have abandoned tried and true marketing methods to go digital and boost their firms online presence. But going exclusively into a cyber-marketing strategy can be a big mistake. We can't neglect the amazing speed, versatility, and customization of digital marketing. But what's often overlooked is the ability to use these tools jointly with the traditional marketing strategies to build power for both components. As you develop your advertising and publicity campaign, consider some of the ways that the old dog can do new tricks.