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November 28, 2017

Adding Video to Your Website Can Bolster Search.

Not only can this be a cost-effective use of good creative work, but it can also help increase traffic to your site. By embedding the video directly to your site – such as on a landing page – you can increase search, keep visitors on your site longer, and increase repeat visits.

In fact, studies show that practically nothing beats the SEO benefits of landing page video right on your domain:

Search results found via a video have a 41% higher click-through rate than text alone and 30% higher than still images
According to a recent comScore study, “Visitors who view a video stay on average two minutes longer and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors.”
Bingo! Combine high dwell time (staying on the page) with low bounce rates (see below), and you’ll have an enviable SERP — and an increased conversion rate.

That’s because videos tend to make your pages sticky. In other words, they help people pay attention to your site longer. They also tend to remember more about your product after watching.

The average online attention span is less than eight seconds. When visitors click onto your site and then lose interest and click away without moving to another page, you get a high bounce rate.

And that hurts your site’s SERP ranking.

Simply put, a compelling video on your web or blog site is a great way to make people stay. With that in mind, here are some best practices for adding video to your website from the team at FocalPoint:

Don’t let your video host monopolize your traffic. Embed video directly to your site. We can show you how.
Entice your readers into clicking the video with an engaging preview. Just give them a taste of what is coming up.
Use accurate video titles. Don’t deceive your potential viewer.
Add text where appropriate to highlight key points
Where to place the video is also critical. You want to imbed your video “above the fold,” meaning the imaginary line where users have to scroll to see additional content.

Keep it short and sweet

In a world where even thoughtful articles get skimmed, videos can be a terrific way to communicate effectively. So, besides being enjoyable to watch, informative, and relatable, they should also be short and to the point. You might also consider adding closed captioning for those who watch videos with their sound off.

So yes, quality video marketing will improve the way you approach SEO to your website. That alone is worth more than all the search engine hacks, tips, and secrets you can dig up.

November 20, 2017

Creating a compelling video

Videos have super powers.

If done right, they can engage, entertain and educate an audience like nothing else can. That’s because using visuals, spoken voice, music and good editing, videos can break through to your audience intellectually and emotionally.

Videos forge a connection and built rapport.

Or – not.

It’s just as easy to miss your mark, losing an audience by packing in too much information, boring them with nothing new, or coming across as out of touch.

Finding the right mix of intellect, humor and emotional appeal is a delicate balance. The magic is difficult to explain, but — you absolutely know it when you see it. And when a video hits the right mark, making you laugh or want to watch it again, your impulse is to share it.

And that’s when you know you’re onto something – when a video gets shared. That’s the goal.

So, how to create a video with super powers?

It starts with clear vision, a great central idea, and excellent writing.

Then the magic really happens in production. All the elements come together; music, sound and narration, timed perfectly with effective visuals.

In a world where even thoughtful articles are skimmed rather than read thoroughly, videos should be concise and on point. And off-beat, funny, irreverent …or charming. Humor can be very effective and memorable.

What’s especially great about video today is that technology is making video more accessible than ever. You don’t need a six-figure budget to create a great video.

How to make your video affordable:

Talk with us, for starters. We do our video work in house.

Use simpler video formats. Videos don’t have to be movies with actors and special effects.

Animation is compelling and can be very simple.

Include video with other marketing services such as websites, landing pages and enhanced listings. Use it or versions of it in lots of places. That can help keep costs down, too.

Yes, Virginia, videos really do have super powers. So by all means, consider a video as a part of your marketing strategy. Consumers like video, use video, share video, and remember video. And that means video brings marketing power to your site’s SEO.

September 25, 2017

“Can you help us pull together a website?”

At FocalPoint, the answer is, “Sure, we’d love to be your go-to company on your website project. But let’s talk about this before we get started.”

If this is our first work with a new client, we initiate a lot of conversations before we touch the cursor. We like to think of this as “Website Design and Development 101.” It really is a prerequisite before we begin work.

Why? Because the best place to begin is to really consider why you want a website in the first place.

Is this to replace or update an existing site? Why replace it? What was right and what wasn’t about the existing site?
What is your single most important message and why?
What does the site need to do?
Answer questions about what you do or be a resource to provide info or tools to existing customers?

We want to be sure that your website is more than a place to talk about who you are and what you do. If that’s all your website does, it won’t drive traffic. It will probably just sit there as a line on your business card.

For a website to do what it’s supposed to do, it has to:

Is your website responsive?
Draw you in
Provide you with needed information right off the bat. In three minutes, a potential customer should know who you are, what you do, and why your company matters
Be strategically engineered to drive readership
Built around intuitive navigation (i.e., making your key points easily understood and getting eyes further into the site to provide more information)
Set a strategically considered tone with color, visuals and copy.

Once we begin communication with new clients around the strategic design of their website, we often uncover previously undiscussed topics, for instance:

What really sets you apart from your competition?
How does what you do matter?
Does your logo accurately reflect a sense of what you are/what you do?
Does your tag line provide memorable new information about your company, or just sit there because you’ve used it for ten years and never thought much about it?

Even after the site work is begun, we’re really just getting started. Because once that website is up, you’ll need to manage it to keep if working for your business, adding fresh content from time to time.

So yes, we can help you build and design that new website. But with us, the site will be much more than new.

It will provide the right information to your audience at the right time. It will drive the right kind of traffic to your business.

It will also provide your potential client with a reason to contact you to learn more.

This is how we think at FocalPoint.

We position our clients strategically to succeed.

December 5, 2016

3 Things to Help Engage Your Creativity

Most of us are stress junkies. Especially if we run a company or own a business. It goes along with a fast-paced life.

Stress gives us a rush and makes us temporarily more alert, which in turn, helps us achieve a high productivity level. But this stressed state of mind is not only temporary, but also very left-brained.READ MORE

November 11, 2016

Go for it! Trust your Idea.

Whether you are a brilliant entrepreneur, businessperson, author, architect, brain surgeon, or technical advisor, it doesn’t matter how brilliant and gifted you are if your work doesn’t get written, coded, built, created, or used in some fashion.

If you have a brilliant idea, but it remains an idea, what’s holding you back?

Stop daydreaming, planning, and procrastinating. Stop worrying about perfection, funding or selling your idea.

Push it forward without hesitation. Talk to trusted advisors. Find out what it would cost to build and market. Take the plunge! It’s the only way to find out if your idea has traction.

And along those lines, talk to us. We have quite a few success stories on how to get the word out about new concepts and products – locally, nationally, and internationally.

October 1, 2016

4 QUESTIONS EVERY BUSINESS SHOULD BE ASKING THIS TIME OF YEAR

Well, Fall is officially upon us and Winter is fast approaching. You know what this means – the holidays are quickly approaching as is the end of the year. Yep, I said it; 2016 is coming to a close and 2017 will be here before we know it. It seems like October is that magical month when businesses take a long hard look at what they’ve accomplished throughout the year, what they can wrap up in the last few months and begin planning for the new year. So today I wanted to follow that up by sharing with you some of the questions that every business should be considering this year as it relates to a marketing strategy.

What Are Our Big Wins So Far This Year?

Think about the first 9 months. What are the 3-4 big wins that stand out to you? Maybe it’s a big deal that you closed or a social media marketing campaign that was very well received. What did you accomplish that helped you or your business move closer to where you want to be? Whatever it was, take a moment to think about why it was successful. All too often, we get caught up in the day-to-day stuff and forget to take a step back to evaluate things. And I’ve got news for you, if you don’t get this done in October there’s no way it’s happening in November or December. We all know how crazy that time of the year can get, so take the time to search for those golden nuggets NOW and learn from them.

Where Did We Come Up Short?

No doubt, there will be some areas over your overall marketing plan or business strategy where you’ve fallen a bit short. It’s much easier and more beneficial to identify those things now rather than at the end of the year. Let me cover that again, think about and begin dealing with your shortcomings NOW rather than at the end of the year. Sometimes we get too caught up in moving forward forward forward, that we forget to look back at things we might be able to easily fix now. Maybe earlier in the year you were working on a website redesign and rushed things a bit when it came to the content development convincing yourself you’d come back to it later in the year. Well, now’s that time. Or perhaps you were thinking about getting some commercial photography work done for your new product line to update your online catalog, but just didn’t get around to it. It’s important to identify these things now, and I will tell you why on my next point.

How Will You Make the Most of the Next 3 Months?

After taking a step back to look at your big wins and places where you fell short, think about how these things fit in with what’s left of your 2016 marketing plan. What can you learn from these successes and setbacks so far to make the most of where you’re going next? Your answers to these questions my change the plan moving forward. Perhaps your original marketing budget didn’t have enough built in for social media marketing or hadn’t taken into consideration the benefits you might get from producing an online video to follow up with the one you rolled out in quarter 2 that was so successful. While it’s always important to stay on budget, where you allocate that budget needs to always be open for review and discussion especially this late into the year. And I’ll tell you one thing – doing things the same way you have always done them in the past is a recipe for getting left in the dust of your competition. In other words, just because you spent X on a TV commercial or radio ad last year around the holidays and included that same budget this year doesn’t mean it’s in your best interest.

What’s The Plan for 2017?

Now that you’ve taken some time to look at the first 3/4 of the year and make sure you’re on the right track for the last quarter, it’s time to turn your attention to next year. The good news is that by answering the first 3 questions, it will make building out your 2017 marketing strategy much easier. Start by visualizing where you want your business to be at the beginning of the new year. Let’s say the New Year starts off with a bang and everything is going great – what does that picture look like for your company? Now, ask yourself that same thing about the end of the year next year. Next it’s time to work backwards – what do you need to do to connect the dots from the most successful year beginning to the most successful year end? Identify the mini-goals that need to be achieved along the way so you have nice, bite-sized chunks to tackle one at a time. If you’re in the right business, answering these questions is sure to get you excited for new year. After all, there’s no reason why it can’t be your best yet.

Answer These Questions NOW

I am going to wrap things up by echoing what I said earlier. NOW is the time to answer these questions. I say this for 3 simple reasons:

1. It’s not too late to get back on track even if 2016 isn’t finishing the way you had hoped.

2. It’s never too early to start planning for the new year.

3. End of year/holiday craziness will soon ensue.