What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files stored by your browser when you visit a website. They serve multiple purposes, including:

● Storing login information

● Saving preferences like language and font size

● Keeps track of shopping cart items

● Identifying users with a unique ID

● Tracking the pages you visit

Cookies can be temporary (expiring after a session) or persistent (stored until you delete them).

Why Are They Called Cookies?

The term “cookie” comes from “magic cookies,” a computing term referring to an exchange of information between two programs. Lou Montulli, a developer in the mid-90s, introduced the term “cookie” in the context of the internet. Like a fortune cookie, which contains a snippet of advice, internet cookies contain important information about your activity on a website.

First-Party vs. Third-Party Cookies

Websites you visit create First-party cookies, which can only be accessed by that site. These cookies improve user experience by remembering your preferences. For example, an e-commerce site might use cookies to keep track of your shopping cart items.

Third-party cookies are created by websites other than the one you’re currently visiting. They track your activity across multiple sites, gathering data about your browsing habits for advertising purposes. This “tracking” is how ad networks know to show you targeted ads. For instance, if you’ve been searching for flights, you might see ads for hotels and car rentals on other sites.

What’s Changing?

First-party cookies remain unaffected. However, most browsers are now blocking third-party cookies. Privacy-focused browsers like Firefox, Brave, and Safari have done this for years, and Google Chrome started blocking third-party cookies by default in 2024. Given Chrome’s dominance, this change is significant.

On January 4, 2024, Google began blocking third-party cookies by default for 1% of users, with plans to increase this to 100% by Q3 2024.

How Will This Affect Your Business?

While other browsers have weakened third-party cookies, Chrome’s upcoming phase-out marks a significant shift. Chrome will continue tracking users through different methods, with anonymized and categorized data sent to Google or other parties. Learn more about The Privacy Sandbox initiative.

Meta’s Pixel defaults to first-party cookies but still uses third-party cookies for cross-website tracking. Meta can still determine users’ interests with data from its own platforms, and its Conversions API helps fill tracking gaps.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is designed for a cookieless world. It relies only on first-party cookies and uses statistical modeling to fill tracking gaps.

Overall, the most significant impact will be targeting accuracy, not attribution. Publishers may feel a bigger impact than marketers since advertising networks rely heavily on third-party cookies. If you don’t run programmatic advertising, there’s less cause for concern.

Digital Marketers anticipated this gradual change for years, and platforms have adapted accordingly. More importantly, there’s no reason to panic. If you’ve been using third-party cookies for your marketing campaign, most seasoned digital marketers are prepared with marketing alternatives based on privacy concerns.

If you have questions about third-party cookies or digital marketing strategy, contact Power Marketing.

The post The End of Third-Party Cookies: What You Need to Know appeared first on Power-Marketing.

In the Summer of 1998, a South Korean technology company, Saehan Information Systems, launched the MP3 mobile player into the U.S. market. In the early 2000s, the popularity of the MP3 format exploded as more people began downloading the sharing music. Roughly two years later, Apple released the iPod. Similar to the potential battle between BARD and Chat GPT, Apple had significantly more resources to draw from. By 2006, iPod had 70% of the mobile player market. By 2012, MP3 players were less than 10% of the market. But that wasn’t the end of MP3 technology. MP3 files store music for widely used applications like Spotify and Apple. In addition, many Podcasts are distributed in MP3 format, and audiobooks use the technology. In short, MP3 technology found its place in the market.

Other than the first mover advantage, ChatGPT has some unique leverage. It’s trained on billions of words and data points to create human-like conversations based on the user’s input. These data points make it helpful in answering search questions, interacting with humans in products like chatbots, and analyzing and creating text for items for functions like emails (note: the functions of ChatGPT are vastly more complex and numerous, but in the initial stages the majority of users are focused on these aspects). Additionally, ChatGPT is highly flexible and adaptable. In other words, it keeps learning as more user input accumulates, allowing it to understand and improve over time. Also, keep in mind the version of ChatGPT is only a portion of the overall functionality developed by its creators, Open AI. Admittedly, the company has put “guard rails” to Chat GPT until the depth of its functions is more understood.

But lurking in the background are other AI programs similar to or better than ChatGPT, most notably Google’s product, BARD. Despite ChatGPT’s strengths, there are some areas in which ChatGPT may not compete with BARD. For example, Google has access to enormous amounts of data from its products, such as its search product. This data gives Google a significant advantage in training its algorithms and improving their accuracy.

Another area where ChatGPT may struggle is in the development of Application Program interfaces (APIs) and custom applications. Google has a wide range of APIs, such as Google Maps, Google Translate, and Google Places, and custom applications like Google Documents, Google Slides, and Google Analytics, allowing businesses and organizations to integrate AI technology into their operations seamlessly and efficiently. While ChatGPT is highly flexible, it may need to be better suited to these kinds of APIs and custom applications to become the leading player in AI.

The first significant shots have been fired in the battle for AI. The following 12-18 months will be pivotal in the fight for market dominance. ChatGPT is a game-changing tool, but can it survive the onslaught of competition? It may end up leading the market, it may end up finding a niche, or it may become obsolete.

The post Will ChatGPT go the way of the MP3 player? appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic of discussion even before predictive text made it easier to write emails. As a society, we’ve been fascinated by the idea of machine learning. As a result, countless books, movies, and television shows have centered around AI.

ChatGPT, or Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is the most recent example of artificial intelligence that has made massive waves in the news. And soon, Google will publicly release their answer to ChatGPT called Bard. These chatbots go far above anything you’re used to interacting with on a retail website. These bots have been relatively rudimentary in the past, leaving them unable to answer anything beyond basic questions. ChatGPT caused quite a stir when users saw an incredibly advanced ability to respond to questions.

These tools are fun to mess around with, but at the same time, be very powerful. They can have massive implications for how we approach essential industries like customer service, healthcare, scientific research, and even search results. Let’s explore what these tools are and how they work.

Open AI: ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI. It is trained on a massive amount of text data and uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses.

The model can be used for various tasks such as text completion, conversation generation, language translation, and more. ChatGPT works by using a type of deep learning called Transformer-based architecture. Transformer is an open-sourced neural network that Google open-sourced in 2017.

The model is trained on an extensive collection of text data to learn patterns and relationships between words and phrases.

Users write text in a chatbox and give directions on how they would like the response formatted. ChatGPT then generates an answer based on available information. Internal rules restrict these responses to avoid offensive topics and materials.

The output is generated word by word, where each word is selected based on the training data and the context of the prompt. The model uses an attention mechanism to weigh the importance of different input parts and generate a more coherent output.

The results are awe-inspiring. Users can ask ChatGPT to expand on previous points, reword the responses, and even include sources.

Google: Bard Chatbot

Bard is Google’s answer to ChatGPT. It is a conversational AI service that their Language Model powers for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) language generation technology. LaMDA was designed to be versatile and can be fine-tuned for a variety of language generation tasks. It can also generate text in multiple modalities, such as text, images, and sound—making it a powerful tool for creating dialogue-based applications.

Bard was released on a limited scale to testers on February 6th, 2023. It is expected to be released to the general public within a month. It builds its responses from information gathered from the internet.

The initial release will be powered by a lightweight version of LaMDA to save on computing power. Bard’s responses will be assessed for quality through user feedback as well as internal testing.

Bard functions much like ChatGPT in that the user enters a prompt into a chat window, and the AI answers instantaneously.

It’s still unknown how Bard will measure up to ChatGPT, as it is in the very early stages of release. We expect a large amount of feedback to be used to improve the service over time, but we won’t honestly know its potential until Bard is made public.

What Does All This Mean?

The ways ChatGPT and Bard will be used aren’t fully known. They are still very new to the market, and users are in the early phases of learning how to maximize their potential.

However, we know that AI has the potential to bring about significant changes in many areas of society. For instance, healthcare services could be revolutionized by enabling earlier and more accurate diagnoses of illnesses. In addition, customer service can be improved with 24/7 support that provides much better answers to questions/problems. Efficiency can also be enhanced for many industries, including manufacturing, transportation, and finance.

However, not all of the implications of AI are considered to be positive. It has the potential to automate many tasks and jobs, which could lead to individuals being replaced in their positions. While these improvements will help maximize the returns of a business, they might not necessarily be suitable in all circumstances. The efficiency capabilities of AI could lead to the automation of many tasks and jobs, which could result in job displacement and economic restructuring.

However, ChatGPT and Bard are used; they represent a massive step forward in technological capabilities.

The post Understanding ChatGPT and Bard: The Future of AI Chatbots appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Has Your Website Received Regular Maintenance?

These questions can be somewhat misleading. There is no set timeline to determine whether a website needs to be replaced or updated. A better question is, “Has your website received regular maintenance since you built it?” Websites require monthly maintenance. If you built a WordPress website three years ago with plugins, security, and core themes continually updated and monitored, your website might not need a significant overhaul or a rebuild. You may be able to redesign at a portion of the cost of a rebuild.

If you have a website built more than three years ago and haven’t received updates, you will want to have a thorough site audit to see which elements function correctly and which components need to be replaced or rebuilt. Most likely, you will need a complete rebuild. Going back to Power Marketing’s automobile analogy, if you purchased a car three years ago and did no maintenance, it wouldn’t work. But, if you did all the regularly scheduled maintenance during that same period, the car should be running fine and might need minor work.

So, in a nutshell, incurring the cost of ongoing maintenance will be more expensive in the short term, but in the long run, this may save you from a rebuild every three years.

Power Marketing’s Approach

At Power Marketing, we advise clients to rebuild or perform significant website design updates every three years. Three years may seem like a short time. But, users’ habits change over time. For example, website visitors from mobile devices have increased almost 10% in the last three years. So, a homebuilder may want to consider changing their design to be more mobile-friendly than the 2018 design.

If you don’t have an agency you are working with, a rebuild will probably be the best option. Websites built by Power Marketing are updated quarterly for function, and clients with retainers will have design adjustments included in their agreement. In this concept, known as Growth-Driven Design, an agency evaluates the website each month to ascertain the elements that will be most effective for improving user experience (UX) or increasing organic traffic.

Some Free Tools

In most cases, a digital marketing agency will have access to multiple software packages to make informed decisions about traffic to your website, your website’s “health,” and elements needed to upgrade your website. With digital marketing agencies, paid subscriptions give them access to complex software versions. However, some of these software programs have free versions to review your website highly. Keep in mind these applications are just a snapshot of your website. But these snapshots will give you an idea of your website’s functionality.

Google Page Speed Insights

Google Page Speed Insights measures a single web page’s download time and mobile experience. This measurement doesn’t include your entire website. Most people select their home page to analyze since it is usually the most visited page. Google adjusted its SEO algorithm in June of 2021 to emphasize website download times and mobile experience to determine your website’s value. These results are an estimate and will vary. But, the information will give you a picture of your website’s performance. Plus, Google created the program. It’s interesting to peek “behind the curtain” of the largest search engine in the world.

UberSuggest: Site Audit

UberSuggest is a software developed by SEO Guru Neil Patel. UberSuggest focuses on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) research. But, the program has some free features you can access on a limited basis. The Site Audit section of Ubersuggest is designed for SEO research but can also give you a read on your website’s “health .” This research may require a seven-day free trial for the information, but it is worth it.

Hubspot’s Website Grader

Website Grader is Hubspot’s official website testing tool. Hubspot is one of the leaders in marketing automation by integrating all elements of digital marketing with sales and CRM systems (see link). Website Grader will provide you with a scorecard of your website’s general setup and mirrors some of the same information from UberSuggest and Google Page Speed Insights. But it gives more details about mobile functionality and provides easy-to-understand advice on fixing the issues.

Free Website Audits

Some digital marketing agencies provide a free site audit. Of course, if you ask a marketing agency to look at your website, you are opening yourself up to a sales pitch. But, usually, these audits are more thorough and can provide more insight into the stability of your website. Also, agencies can give you an initial estimate for the website work.

Deciding to build a new website or redesign your existing website is a big decision and can be expensive. Using these tools can help you make a more informed decision. If you want a free website audit, contact us at Power Marketing. Call us at 615.257.0057 or fill out our contact form.

The post How Do I Know When It’s Time for a New Website? appeared first on Power-Marketing.

• Create More Content
• Use Targeted Keywords
• Add Backlinks
• Optimize Your Onsite SEO

These elements are the cornerstone of a successful SEO strategy. But SEO is more than keywords and content. Your website must operate safely and efficiently before the search engines give you a noticeable boost. In other words, Google doesn’t want to send their coveted customers to websites with a poor user experience or, worse, a website that may expose the user’s information.

So when evaluating SEO providers, any effective strategy should address these elements:

Optimizing Your Website for Mobile – Google’s Core Web Vitals update in June emphasized mobile design and page download speeds in relation to SEO value. A website well-designed for mobile increases SEO value. More than 50% of traffic comes from mobile devices for most homebuilders. So, your website should be on a mobile-responsive platform. Do not start an SEO strategy until you have a mobile-responsive website.

Monitoring Page Performance – Even if you have a mobile-responsive website, you must monitor the individual pages. If the design of your website is challenging to navigate, users will abandon your website. The analytics and reporting for SEO are vast and intricate.

An SEO firm should examine, review, explain, and make adjustments to these elements regularly:

• Average Page Views Per Session
• Exit Rates
• Average Time on Page
• Sessions Duration
• Bounce Rates

Reviewing and Upgrading Website Speeds – As mentioned earlier, Google’s Core Web Vitals update emphasized a website’s page download times in relation to SEO value. When considering an SEO strategy, make sure it includes steps to speed up your website:

• Optimizing Images for Fast Download Times
• Removing Captcha from Contact Forms (if warranted) 
• Upgrading or Replacing Plugins
• Potentially Adding a Content Delivery Network
• Removing the Live Chat (if you aren’t using it)

Monitoring Website Security—This seems obvious. Security should be a priority for any website in this age of cyberattacks, phishing emails, and malware. But sometimes, websites don’t tend to minor issues that could damage security.

An SSL certificate is the first step in preparing your website for SEO. The SSL certificate encrypts information on your website so potential threats cannot read information transmitted between you and your potential customers.

Substandard website hosting can cause security issues and hurt your SEO value. Your website should be hosted on a private or dedicated server. Websites hosted on a shared server are more vulnerable to attack and affect your website’s SEO value.

Removing Toxic Links – According to SEO Watch, Google processes around 400,000 “unnatural link” monthly penalties. Toxic links are backlinks to your website from questionable sources. These links can be from spam websites, low-domain authority websites, or paid link-building networks. Identifying and removing toxic links is a simple process involving a monthly audit. This graph from SEMrush gives an example of a toxic link report:

If you are penalized by Google, they may dramatically drop the ranking of targeted keywords or unlist your website entirely from search. Fixing these issues after you’ve been penalized can take weeks to months to clear up.

Maintaining the Website—If you are familiar with Power Marketing’s blogs, you know we love to compare websites to cars. Websites, like cars, need ongoing maintenance. Otherwise, performance suffers or can even lead to a complete shutdown. So, your SEO team should review your website monthly or quarterly to check for broken links and outdated code.

When you go to a web page and get an error message, that is most likely a broken link. Broken links occur for multiple reasons. Some of the most common reasons are updates to the website having disconnected pages, an external link to a source no longer available, or a website page with a typo in the URL. Whatever the case, finding and fixing these issues is a simple process. More importantly, when Google crawls a website with broken links, it decreases the SEO value since Google doesn’t want to send users to pages that don’t work.

Website code refers to the commands developers write that create the website functions. So, code is the nerve center. Every year, techniques and criteria for building websites change dramatically. These changes help advance the website’s speed, design, and function. By updating old code, you make the website function more efficiently, and in return, you increase your SEO value. Updating code is probably best reviewed quarterly or annually. But a code review should be standard if you start an SEO program and have a website that is over two years old.

If you are searching online for help with SEO, remember that many companies do not handle essential SEO functions like improving web speeds, reviewing security, repairing broken links, and cleaning up outdated code. So, make sure an SEO strategy incorporates these elements.

If you would like a free toxic backlink scan and a free SEO & local SEO audit, contact Power Marketing.

The post Is Your SEO Working? appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Audience Overview Recap

This data shows you an in-depth view of users. For example, the data indicates if the visitors are new or returning, page engagement, session duration, demographics, primary interests, type of device used to view your website, visitor’s location, and browser type.

Ten (10) sections within the Audience Overview give analysts a general idea about the users themselves. These data sets help website and SEO developers understand the user’s origins, primary device and operating system (OS), and search preferences or insights.

Demographics

This section covers two (2) segments: Age and Gender. This type of data helps strategists recommend and develop page content targeting the demographic consuming it most frequently. For instance, a website featuring a clothing line targeting females ages 18-24 would want to tailor their content to appeal to users within that specific demographic to increase visitors within that age range.

Interests

The best way to understand this segmentation is to give a real-world scenario. For example, if most of your audience likes more movies and entertainment and less weather and business, consider creating content that references the interests and trends that appeal to your audience. Doing this will increase engagement and encourage return visits.

Geo

This data handles language and location. Using the country codes, analysts can know whether the content reaches the correct audience. Geolocation data is crucial for websites with a global audience to deliver content in the proper language format. Websites focusing primarily on a specific country or language can segment reports to show only these statistics.

Behavior

• New vs. Returning – Records new and returning visits to a site, including sessions, bounce rates, pages per session, session duration (time on site), and any eCommerce stats (if any paid campaigns are connected).
• Frequency & Recency – Records count of sessions, days since the last session, sessions (numeric), and page views.
• Engagement – Records session duration in varying sequential steps (1-10, 11-30, 31-60, etc.), page depth, sessions, and pageviews.
• Session Quality – This eCommerce segment uses ranged scoring to determine the user’s proximity to conversion. For an in-depth explanation of Session Quality, click here.
• Conversion Probability (Beta) – This is also an eCommerce segment that scores a user’s behavior to calculate the probability of conversion and attaches a value based on sessions, page views, etc. For an in-depth explanation of  Conversion Probability, click here.

Technology

This segment collects data on a website visitor’s browser, operating system, screen resolution, screen colors, and records sessions, pageviews, bounce rates, and more. As a result, web developers and SEO experts gain valuable information that can be used in desktop, tablet, and responsive mobile design to enhance user experience.

Mobile

This segment deals specifically with devices: Desktop, tablet, and mobile. As in the case of technology, developers and content strategists use this data to determine and measure whether sites provide a good user experience. Mobile info records sessions, pageviews, bounce rates, and other dimensions.

Cross-Device

The best way to define Cross-Device is to think of a user having more than one type of device – desktop, tablet, and mobile – and starting their buyer’s journey on one device and returning to a website to complete a purchase on another. For example, it is not uncommon for a website visitor to start browsing on a desktop, find a product or service of interest, close the session, and return later to revisit the product or service and purchase it on a mobile device. This segment helps analysts understand how devices are used and which are preferred or more commonly used in conversion.

Custom

As of October 14, 2020, this segmentation has been deprecated and is no longer part of their reporting. Learn more about deprecated property types by clicking here.

Benchmarking

• Channels – A company can choose from over 1600 industry categories and then compare data from other companies who share their data.
• Location – Takes that same industry vertical and compares by location.
• Devices – Using the same industry vertical, makes comparisons based on desktop, tablet, and mobile.

User Flow

Allows analysts to set any desired dimension, such as an advertising keyword, and follow the user flow through their site visit. A lot of valuable information is gained by analyzing which pages users prefer and engage with and other pages that can be improved or eliminated. It isn’t just the good numbers to pay attention to; it’s also underperforming pages that should be looked at to enhance the overall user experience.

Summary

The foundational principle in collecting these types of metrics is to deliver the best user experience possible. It is also important to remember that Google rewards websites that continuously improve the user experience and produce quality content. Self-reflection is both a pain point and a learning experience. Meeting your users’ needs will result in quality users, qualified leads, and concrete conversions.

If you want a free evaluation to determine whether your website needs improvement or to ensure you can get vital website data, call us at 615.257.0057 or use our contact form.

The post Understanding Google Analytics: Audience Overview & User Metrics appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Here are some simple fixes you can make that won’t break the bank:

Optimize Your Images – Selling a new construction home is a visual experience. Potential buyers want to see pictures of previous projects, exteriors, interiors, and the images of the community. Simply put, the more images you have, the longer it will take to load the page. Pictures are composed of pixels. Pixels are tiny dots or squares with portions of the image on them. Like a jigsaw puzzle. The better the resolution or bigger the image, the more pixels and the slower the download times. But, images can be optimized to speed up your website without losing quality. What does optimizing mean? Simply put, optimizing images is the process of compressing image files to the smallest point without losing quality.

Adding a Content Delivery Network (CDN) – CDNs are multiple servers set up to respond to requests for information from your website based on geolocations. In other words, CDNs can send data to your website from a server closer to your location. So, if you are in Nashville and requesting information from New York, your information will be sent from a server closer to Nashville. This video from Cloudflare provides some further explanation of CDNs:

RECOMMENDED READING: What is a CDN? How Do CDNs Work?

Removing Live Chat – Live Chat is a fantastic tool for capturing potential customers while they are thinking about your services. It accelerates conversions of visitors from prospects to leads by almost 15%. 75% of people prefer Live Chat over other channels. Unfortunately, Live Chat can slow down your website. In some cases, the decreased download times can be dramatic. Live Chat functions on a website by adding a plugin or widget. A plugin or widget is additional software that adds capabilities or enhances existing features. But, these plugins/widgets contain complex code. In most cases, the code will slow down your website.

So, if you have Live Chat on your website and aren’t using it, remove it. If you pull in leads, you must weigh the pros and cons of removing the feature.

Optimizing Video – Video is the easiest way to consume information on a website. Potential customers spend more time on your website, and video increases your chances of turning a prospect into a lead. But similar to images, video files are large. Videos are the largest files on a website.

If you have videos on your website, there are options. You can compress, sometimes called optimizing, the video. Also, you can move the videos to YouTube or other video services so the videos don’t “live” on your website and visitors click on a linked video. Or you can move your videos to a CDN.

Choose The Right Hosting Partner (Bonus) – Proper hosting is crucial for a fast and reliable website. It ensures maximum speed, performance, and protection against outages and security threats. With quality web hosting, you can provide an enhanced user experience, boost your online presence, and take advantage of web opportunities. Invest in the right host and maintenance for smooth and efficient website operation.

Website download speeds are becoming more critical for SEO and the user experience each year. By making these straightforward adjustments, you will improve your chances of having more visitors to your website and converting them to leads. Any digital marketing agency should be able to perform these upgrades; if you want to learn more about speeding up your website or receive a free website audit, contact Power Marketing.

The post 4 Simple Ways to Speed Up Your Website appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Creating a professional online presence can be a lot of work, but the rewards are worth it. Follow along to learn how to make social media one of your most valuable assets!

Choosing the Right Platforms

It all begins with choosing the right platform. Thankfully, there’s plenty of consistent data for builders and contractors regarding this. 

If learning how to choose the right social media platforms sounds interesting, our Facebook and Instagram Growth Guide would be an excellent read. 

However, if you prefer to skip to the end, we’ll happily tell you that there’s no doubt in our minds that you need to have an active Facebook business page and Instagram professional account. The ideal customer demographic for most builders and contractors uses these platforms daily, so you should utilize them to your advantage. 

Quality Photo Content

As a builder in the construction industry, you work hard for a living and are proud of the projects that you complete. The photos you take for social media posts should convey these characteristics to the viewers. Bright, crisp images will instill trust in your audience and show them you care about showing people your finished products. 

The good news is that even amateur photographers can create great social media posts. Bear these questions in mind when shooting a photo: 

1. Is there good lighting, or is the subject of your picture too dim to capture properly?
2. Is it clear what the picture is of?
3. Is the picture in focus?
4. Is there debris, garbage, or other unsightly things within view?
5. If people are in the photo, do they look comfortable and natural? Are they acting appropriately?

Asking yourself those questions will help you develop an eye for a good photo when it’s in front of you. And since many photos can look underwhelming initially, you can download a free editor app like Snapseed to get each one just right. The preset filters will likely work for your needs, but playing around with the settings and creating your own filters can be a lot of fun. 

Building Trust

Because you’re working on your customer’s most significant asset, where they spend their life, a trusting relationship between you and the client is the key to successfully finishing. A well-run social media presence can aid in establishing this trust with people you’ve not yet met.

One of the most impactful ways to do this is to post positive client reviews on social media. This helps your followers see that people with similar stories to theirs have been delighted by your company’s work. 

Speaking With Authority

Authority is parallel with trust. Ideally, your clients will see you as an authority in your industry. 

The best social media strategies include regularly posting valuable, educational content that teaches your followers things they need to know to see their project successfully finished.

Your followers might be asking questions like the following:

1. How long does planning, designing, and building my dream log home take?
2. Which HVAC system will be the best choice for my needs and budget?
3. I want a ranch-style home with a finished basement. What type of lot should I be looking for?
4. How close to my property line can you build my dream addition? 
5. What maintenance should I do around my house to prepare it for the cold winter months?

The answers to these questions may be obvious, but they won’t be to your ideal client. By giving them the answers to the questions they’re already asking or thinking, you’re proving to them that you are an authority they can trust to solve their problem. 

Answering the Tough Questions

As you’re building a strong social media presence, you will inevitably face tough questions and comments from customers like these:

• How much does it cost to buy your product or service?
• Mary from such-and-such says that you never called back after she left a voicemail.
• Why aren’t you available immediately?
• How come my order isn’t ready yet?

Having phrases like these on your business page sucks — but they’re opportunities in disguise. Learn to reframe them that way, and you’ll turn even the worst comments into a chance for redemption.

When faced with tough questions or comments, there are two ways to make the best of the situation:

1. Respond with a comment along the lines of, “We’re so sorry about ‘XYZ.’ Sending you a message right now.” Then, send them a message to learn more about the situation or provide the answer to the question.
2. Respond with a comment answering the question/tough statement. “The prices of our packages are all different and change based upon customer preferences. Would you like to be connected with our Customer Success Team to discuss the packages and options available?”

Whichever you pick, the key is always to do something! People will notice how you respond to tough questions and comments. You never know when a potential customer is watching — perhaps not even the person who made the original tough comment!

Actively Engaging

Much more goes into effective social media growth than simply putting a post up and forgetting about it. The real beauty of social media is engaging with your followers!

Someone should regularly monitor your page’s comments and messages to ensure you’re engaging promptly with users who take the time to engage with you. However, this doesn’t mean you must pay someone to sit and play on Facebook all day. It could be as simple as asking your spouse to watch for notifications or checking your accounts on your lunch break.

Active engagement shows that you care, which matters a lot to someone considering giving you a large portion of their life’s savings.

Consistently Posting

You must consistently attract and convert new clients through social media successfully. 

When you set aside time to post every week and are willing to do that week after week, you’ll begin to reap the benefits of a strong social media presence. That said, Facebook knows it can be challenging and time-consuming to post daily, so they created a free tool to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you called the Facebook Creator Studio.

In the Creator Studio, you can schedule your posts ahead of time to be posted on the day and time that you specify. You can even push content from Facebook to Instagram with only a few clicks, allowing you to do double the amount of posting at once.

The best Facebook and Instagram growth strategies include posting every day. We suggest using the Creator Studio and scheduling Sunday through Saturday on Facebook. Then, use the “Crosspost to Instagram” button and schedule those identical posts in the reverse daily order on Instagram. 

If you cannot create enough time or content for daily posts, then you can schedule Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on Facebook and crosspost those same posts to Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday on Instagram. It’s less than ideal, but it’s certainly better than nothing.

Your social media presence will most likely be small at first. But staying consistent with it will produce exciting results down the road. Giving up will only erase all the effort you’ve previously put into it. 

Putting All the Pieces Together

You’ve decided that you should be active on Facebook and Instagram. You know the basics of taking good photos and editing them to perfection. You understand the opportunity to build trust with your audience and create authority for your brand. You’re willing to answer the tough questions, actively engage with your followers, and post consistently.

Now, it’s your turn to combine this and make it work for your business!

To learn more about Power Marketing’s Social Media services, click here!

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1. Have an Accessible Point Person – Communication is critical to a successful project, and an open communication line is essential. To achieve this, you need a point person who is accessible and readily available to make decisions when required. Typically, business owners are not the best fit for this role as they are consumed with other tasks such as P&Ls and managing contractors. The ideal candidates for this role are executive assistants or marketing coordinators, who have access to the decision-makers and are available to communicate regularly.

2. Prepare The Sales Team – The primary goal of digital marketing is to increase revenue. Therefore, it is crucial to have your sales team prepared to convert the leads generated by digital marketing into sales. If you use a CRM, set up a rotation for your salespeople. Assign leads to your sales manager to distribute them among the sales team. Ensure that your team responds to leads within ten minutes of receiving them. Waiting longer reduces the chances of converting a lead into a qualified sale. Responding within five minutes increases your chances 21 times compared to waiting for 30 minutes. Remember, a potential customer’s interest in your product is highest when they submit a contact form. Waiting to respond could mean losing the customer to a competitor.

3. Set KPIs and Be Realistic – Setting expectations is vital to any successful business relationship, and digital marketing is no exception. Digital marketing involves several integrated strategies, including SEO, local SEO, PPC, email campaigns, display ads, and bounce rates. Therefore, setting realistic KPIs based on your business’s goals and objectives is essential. One of the benefits of digital marketing is the availability of metrics to evaluate performance. However, it is crucial to understand what a good ROI is and what is not. Some business owners expect instant results, but short-term solutions are not always practical. A comprehensive digital marketing program will involve multiple elements such as content development, onsite SEO, social media marketing, email campaigns, and lead nurturing, all working together to drive your target audience to your website. Be sure to ask questions like:

• How long will it take to gain traction on SEO?
• What is a good number of qualified leads per month once we have SEO traction?
• What is a reasonable cost per lead if we decide to use Google Ads/PPC?
• What is a reasonable social media marketing cost?
• What type of nurturing campaigns can you create to connect with potential customers who have shown interest in our product?

Remember, there is a direct correlation between the success of your campaign and your budget. Setting unrealistic expectations for your digital marketing campaign can lead to frustration and disappointment. Working with your agency to develop realistic KPIs based on your budget and goals will ensure you achieve the desired results.

Hiring a digital marketing agency saves time and money and helps you focus on your business. By setting up the initial framework correctly and having the three elements mentioned above in place, you can avoid headaches down the road.

Contact Power Marketing today to discuss your digital marketing plan for 2022 and take your home builder brand to the next level.

CALL US FOR A FREE CONSULTATION

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As you may or may not know, Google continuously updates its algorithm. There are roughly 1,000 updates per year. That’s close to three a day and is a lot to keep up with for agencies, let alone small businesses.

Most updates are minor and have little to no ripple effect. But a few times a year, broader updates significantly impact the search engine results page. This update will bring page experience into the ranking signals. It will combine Core Web Vitals and previous UX-related signals.

Core Web Vitals are speed, responsiveness, and visual stability metrics. Get ready to add more three-letter acronyms to your vocabulary. Here’s what Google has established these Core Web Vitals as:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) or loading: This means how long it takes a page’s primary or main piece of content to load from the user’s point of view. The measurements here are under 2.5 seconds for a good evaluation, and anything over 4 seconds ranked poorly.

First Input Delay (FID) or interactivity: This metric is the time it takes for a user to actually interact with your page. When someone clicks on something on your website, how fast can the browser process the request and load it. The ideal measurement is under 100 milliseconds (ms); anything over 300 ms is considered poor.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) or visual stability: This considers stability, or how a page acts as it loads. Have you ever gone to click something on your phone, and the website shifted or moved unexpectedly? The main reason for this issue is that images are not optimized and create disjointed downloads. The ideal measurement is under 100 milliseconds (ms), and anything over 300 ms ranked poorly.

Or this is how Google states it:

Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger – how annoying!).

By announcing a change to the algorithm far in advance, people can have a three-month head start. It is better to fix things before they become issues. As a result, there will be a shift in the search results for all industries. Now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity, or you’ll potentially face the uncertainty of putting your website at a significant disadvantage.

There are some great free tools and resources available to help evaluate websites. Google has a great page speed insights tool that will scan and evaluate individual pages, or you can use another free tool from Experte that will check your entire website up to 500 pages. Knowing where your website stands helps you evaluate your situation and develop an action plan.

Power Marketing can analyze your website and provide a report on where your current websites stand. If your website isn’t fully prepared, our team is happy to help provide a strategy to help you successfully navigate this update.

Reach out for a free site audit and evaluation today.

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