Strategic Guru, Inc.

The Best Marketing Pick Up Lines

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:55:33 +0000

Sales and Marketing is a lot like dating—you start with phone calls and email, progress to the first date, and eventually you hope to get engaged. Along the way, you must encourage your date to take the next step.

Your call to action throughout your dating relationship must be:

Need-based
Your prospect must first recognize they have a need before they are willing to complete a call to action.
Special
Sweeten the deal with incentives like discounts, free gifts, or entry into a competition.
Exclusive
Too many calls to action are confusing and overwhelming so stick to just one.
Action-oriented
Tell prospects what you want them to do, such as Call, Buy, Register, Subscribe or Donate.

When your call to action is compelling, who can say no?

Here are 3 brief posts that will help you develop the perfect pick up line!

Quick Tip: What Does the Customer Want?

Click here for the article

Focus your call to action on what your prospect wants, not on what you want to say.

Generate Warm Leads With Compelling Offers

Click here for the article

9 examples of offers that really get results.

Help Your Prospects Act On Your Calls To Action

Click here for the article

Are you making it easy for your prospects to take action?

Now it’s your turn!

Tell us what interests you, point us to some other great blogs, or just let us know what side your bread is buttered on.

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Strategic Guru Launches Website for Gateway Clubhouse

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:50:57 +0000

Strategic Guru, a Triangle-based marketing firm, announced today that it has launched the website for Gateway Clubhouse, a clubhouse for adults with brain injury in North Carolina. The website communicates the mission, goals and purpose of the only clubhouse for adults with brain injury of its kind in the area.

“With the launch of our site, we are able to communicate the importance of Gateway Clubhouse to the community,” said Roger McGee, President and Executive Director of Community Workforce Solutions, Inc., the nonprofit that administers the program. “There are many families in North Carolina who have been impacted by brain injuries. Our site lets us share the news about the opening of the first clubhouse for those with brain injury of its kind in North Carolina as well as give interested volunteers information on how they can support our mission.”

Built on a content management system (CMS), the new site gives Gateway Clubhouse program managers the power to refresh content frequently and provide improved web communications for clubhouse members. The site will allow the organization to add additional functionality as their program grows. The site was also optimized for search engines.

“We take great pride in working with clients to enhance their online presence,” said Carolyn Rhinebarger, Chief Brainstormer with Strategic Guru. “We are pleased to assist Community Workforce Solutions to launch this valuable new community resource.”

Useful Twitter Tools

Chelsea Junget — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:40:18 +0000

Lately, clients have been asking about how to grow and manage their Twitter following. Unless you are the celeb du jour, its unlikely folks will be seeking you out on Twitter, instead, your company will need to find them!

Here are some great tools to generate new followers, manage followers, and nurture relationships as part of a strategic marketing plan:

Find Twitter users by hashtag and follow them with a single click using BlastFollow. For this tool to be most useful, you’ll need to have an idea of what hashtags fall into your wheelhouse. The idea here is that folks that you follow will follow you back, especially if you are targeting users with an established interest in a topic. For instance, if you are a fitness coach and you follow users who have used the #exercise or #workout hashtag, you are likely to find fitness enthusiasts, your target audience.
Next, sign up for HootSuite. Or TweetDeck. These tools allow you to manage Twitter more efficiently. HootSuite is designed for teams, ideal if your company will have multiple contributors to your Twitter feed. It also allows you to segment those you follow, create searches, view @ replies and monitor conversations. You can also spread your message beyond Twitter to Facebook, LinkedIn and more.

twAitter allows you to schedule tweets. However, if you’re on deck with HootSuite, you can do that there, too.
TweetChat isolates conversations based on the hashtag. Again, using the fitness trainer example, TweetChat shows what folks who use the #exercise hashtag are talking about. Again, Hootsuite does this well through it’s search function.
TweetGrid is a search dashboard that updates in real time. Watch several different searches at once to monitor conversations.

What tools do you use?

Strategic Guru Launches Website for Winner of Worst Website Contest

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:54:53 +0000

Strategic Guru, a Triangle-based strategic marketing agency, announced today that it has launched a redesigned website for Amy Elk, an Atlanta-based voice actress. The refreshed site showcases Amy’s daily audio blog and samples of her work in an easy-to-navigate layout.

“My new site is a real step-up from what I had previously,” said Amy Elk. “My web presence is now polished, professional and gives me the power to update content daily. I am especially excited about the search engine optimization. Doing a Google search for ‘voice actress Atlanta’ puts me in the top 4!”

“As an agency dedicated to strategic marketing, we take great pride in working with clients to enhance their web presence,” said Carolyn Rhinebarger, Chief Brainstormer with Strategic Guru. “We are pleased to have been able to assist Amy to improve her website as she grows her voice acting career.”

Amy Elk won the agency’s Worst Website Ever contest after receiving the most votes among four finalists. Her site received 16,543 votes, about 57% of the total votes cast. She was awarded a prize package including web design, copy editing and search engine optimization.

Strategic Guru’s second annual Worst Website Ever contest sought to find the business or organization website most in need of a redesign. The contest was covered in local news media and written up by Entrepreneur.com. 45 Contests, an eBook, mentioned the contest as an example of an inventive ways to use contests for business publicity.

7 Steps to Better Search Engine Results

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:30:15 +0000

7 Steps to Better Search Engine Results

Search engine optimization (SEO) has long been cloaked in mystery—part technology, part human behavior and part art. Complicating the task is the fact that search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, becoming more and more sophisticated.

Common mistakes in SEO are:

Targeting the wrong keywords
Using the same meta text for every page on your website
Use of SEO tactics frowned upon by search engines
Not updating SEO on an ongoing basis

Successful SEO is an ongoing effort and includes onsite and offsite optimization, link building, branding, and establishing reach in the global or local marketplace.

Get 7 quick SEO tips to do right now to ensure that your website content is easy for search engines to interpret accurately to deliver relevant search results

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Better Email Marketing Through Reputation Management

Chelsea Junget — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:50:37 +0000

To improve the results of your email marketing, it’s important to do everything you can to ensure your company’s reputation is intact. A study by ReturnPath, an email deliverability company, found that 83% of delivery failures are caused by problems with sender reputation.

Here are a few tips to help improve your reputation as a good email citizen:

Set subscriber expectations for the content of the emails and the frequency at which they may expect to be contacted.
Send a welcome message as soon as possible. Express your thanks for subscribing and again reiterate what they can expect to receive and how frequently.
Authenticate your messages through SPF, Sender ID and DK/DKIM.
Use consistent from addresses. Once a recipient has white listed your address, you don’t want to compromise deliverability by changing it.
Use relevant subject lines. You will not build trust by deceiving recipients with bait and switch subject lines.
Use a legitimate physical address in your email to remain CAN-SPAM compliant.
Swiftly honor any unsubscribe requests. You must honor these requests within 10 days; a good email service provider will automate this for you.

Remember, message relevancy builds customer and prospect trust, which in turn delivers greater ROI. You can achieve near-perfect deliverability, but if your message is not relevant to the recipient, engagement will likely be low and not result in conversion.

What does your company do to ensure your reputation is not impacted?

*Image courtesy Flickr user DioMakr

Strategic Guru Adds Ben Mackie to Team

admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:56:37 +0000

Strategic Guru, a Triangle-based marketing agency, has announced the hiring of Ben Mackie as graphic designer and web developer. He will be responsible for developing and executing creative work, including branding, collateral, websites and direct marketing campaigns.

A Hickory native, Mackie has worked in design, print production and web development in the Triangle for the past 5 years. His experience includes collegiate, pharmaceutical and B2B marketing. Mackie is an Appalachian State graduate and holds a certificate in web development from N.C. State.

“I am excited to join the team at Strategic Guru,” said Mackie. “I look forward to taking a leadership position and delivering compelling, award-winning design for our clients and the firm.”

“Ben is an ideal fit for our team,” said Carolyn Rhinebarger, Chief Brainstormer. “His range of experience, technical skills and positive attitude will be an asset to our clients and our firm.”

8 Business Blogging Must-Dos for Success

Chelsea Junget — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:16:02 +0000

Blogging is a smart marketing tactic . Research suggests that businesses that blog generate more leads than those that don’t. But it can be time consuming to craft an interesting post that hits all the “blogging dos” at the same time.

This list, adapted from DailyBlogTips.com, is a useful resource to keep your business blog on-track:

Don’t skimp on details. Sure, long posts can be overwhelming to write and sometimes to read, but it’s more likely that you will earn backlinks with complete and informative content. And remember, although you might be an expert in the topic, its unlikely your readers will be so make sure jargon is kept to a minimum.
Use keywords. Just as you optimized your website with keywords, each blog post should also use keywords in the headline, title, description and body of your post.
Craft a catchy title. People are generally drawn in by lists of dos and don’ts, best-of lists and the like. But don’t be gimmicky – if the title of the post does not match the content, you will lose reader trust.
Interlink related posts. Encourage your reader to continue to learn more on the topic and stay on your blog or website for as long as possible.
Give appropriate credit to sources. Just like in school, it is bad form to pass off other content as your own.
Give your post visual appeal. Select an image or video which relates to your topic or supports your message. It’s easy to find Creative Commons blog images with a quick search on Flickr.
Re-read what you wrote. Obvious, eh? Review for clarity, organization, flow and word choice. Try to keep a common tone throughout posts.
Share the news. If you are on Twitter, make sure your followers see a notification about your most recent post. You can also set up your blog to feed through to your Facebook page as well.

Readers, what can you add to this list?

Image credit: Flickr user Foxtongue

Quick Glossary of SEO Terms and Phrases

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:22:28 +0000

Hits are counted every time a visitor loads a page on your site. A visitor can make several hits in a single visit.

Keyword Density refers to the number of times a keyword or phrase appears in relation to the total word count.

Keyword Stuffing is when keywords or phrases have been arbitrarily stuck in content, in meta tags, and anywhere else in an effort to rank higher for certain terms.

Meta Title is a unique title for each page of your website using 65 characters or less. Like the title of a book, it indicates what will be found on the page and is displayed in the browser title bar. Search engines look at the title bar, among other things, to determine what the page is all about.

Meta Description is a brief explanation of what your website or website page is about and is displayed by search engines in the list of search results. The allowable display of meta description text I limited to 156 characters or less.

Meta Keywords are words or short phrases that a user searches for in a search engine. They help search engines categorize the content on your website pages.

Pagerank is Google’s rating of the importance of a web page on a scale from 0 to 10, with a higher value indicating a more popular page. It’s based on the quantity and quality of inbound links to a site.

Search Ranking is a phrase meaning where your site lands in the list of results when users search for specific keywords you’re targeting on your site.

Sitemap is an XML outline of your site indexed by Google to help it find all the pages of content available.

7 Steps to Better Search Engine Results

admin — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:39:52 +0000

Add content often. This can be in the form of blog posts, news updates, or just adding new pages to existing sections. Search engines rank sites with frequently refreshed content higher than static sites.
Check your keyword density of newly added content. The rule of thumb for keyword density is 5-20%, depending on your topic. Most well-written content will already abide by this rule, but double check your text.
Title your new content using keywords and phrases. Both meta text titles and headers on your site are opportunities to embed keywords and phrases. Deeper pages within your site give you the chance to embed secondary keywords or phrases. Just make sure to adequately describe the content on the page.
Create links to your site wherever you can.Search for business or industry directories and add your company to them with a link to your site. And be sure a link to your site is used in press releases, articles, white papers, case studies—any content that may be published on the internet.
Use keywords and phrases as anchor text for links. Whether linking to other pages within your own site or linking to your site from other sites, avoid the use of “click here” and use keywords and phrases as your anchor text.
Optimize images on your site. Create alt tags with your keywords and phrases in them. Search engines evaluate the frequency of keywords and phrases on your site so the more times they appear—in text, titles, descriptions and alt tags—the more the site is considered to be a match to the keyword or phrase.
Treat your description meta text like an ad. The description is what appears in Google’s search results and helps the user decide which of the 10 results to click on. You have just 156 characters to make your site leap off the page and about 8 seconds to persuade the user to click.