Plan of action to drive traffic to your website


Ever wondered what it takes to get frequent visitors on your website? Just launching a website is not sufficient to boost your website traffic and attract leads. Your efforts should go beyond adding tags and keywords.


Here are a few things to get you started -
Search engine optimization is important to a business as 90% of all online traffic is achieved through the various search engines. Therefore, the key to success is to know how well you can properly market your company through search engine optimization. Make sure your website is search engine optimized with the necessary meta tags, meta descriptions, title tags, and relevant keywords.

2. Submit articles and press releases
Write articles and press releases and submit to various sites online. The content should be fresh and relevant. Focus more on educating rather than selling. But make sure to mention your company contact information at the end of each post.

Develop online presence by actively participating on major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc.Keep people engaged with relevant materials and offers. Join groups and become an active participant. Actively participate in conversations and keep it subtle. Try not to push your business on the people responding to you.

4. Blogging
Write and post blogs about your business on a regular basis. Frequency of the post can range from 3 to 5 times a week. Make sure the content of your blog is fresh and not repetitive. Include information which will help your audience. Check for visitor comments and encourage them to share your blog.

5. Marketing forum
Join your business related forums where you can converse with other people involved in the forum. Encourage people to post comments and participate. Create a healthy conversation.

6. Updating your website
Constantly update your website content with fresh and relevant content. Visitors coming to you site doesn’t want to read the same thing over and again. Motivate them to come visit your websites regularly and pass on information you think will add value to them.  Also, new content is more attractive to search engines.

7. Links
Submit your website URL on relevant directories. Also try to backlink pages of your website from other sites. This will improve the credibility of your website and also help in bringing in traffic.

Make sure to add information about your company and the link to your website on all the accounts created on social media, blogs and forums. Make it customary to add links to relevant pages on your website.

From Lead Tracking to creating sophisticated Marketing Materials to Social Media Exposure to better Search Engine Rankings, Newplans takes care of all your marketing needs in just 5 simple steps. With ready-to-use templates you can create Property Websites and  Listing Websites with Virtual Tours, Interactive Presentations, Flyers, E-mails Campaigns, e-Book or Videos and share them on major social networking sites. Not just that, marketing materials generated using Newplans is automatically optimized for search engines so that your marketing material get good web exposure and better search engine rankings.
For more information visit us at www.newplans.com or call us at 412-567-0010 x 217. 




Time for some Video Marketing


Nearly six months into the year..so how are your marketing efforts coming along? Are you happy with the results or are you like others  looking for NEXT big marketing tool that can speed up your sales process and help you retain clients?
Real estate market thrives on referrals and relationships. You are not only selling properties, you are selling your brand, your expertise and your personality. Marketing today is more about being innovative and compelling; about retaining clients and to keeping prospects engaged. So how can you connect with your clients, prospects and also your colleagues in a unique and engaging way? The answer lies in ‘videos’.

Why is video integration a must have? 

1.      Increase effectiveness – videos allows you to engage your prospects thereby shortening your sales cycle

2.      Stand out – differentiate yourself form your competitors by integrating video technology in your marketing communication.

3.      Build trust and relationship – videos are personal and interactive. So having your face and voice in your marketing material will add an element of trust that lacks in other marketing materials.

4.      Build brand awareness – including a video in your marketing materials will leave an everlasting impression on your prospects leading to more brand awareness.

Where can you use videos?

1.      Listing presentation – where you can add a personal touch by adding a video with your message about the listing.
2.      Personal website – where a video about yourself, your expertise and experience will build more interest about your services among your prospects.
3.      E-mail – where a video can give more interesting and valuable information to your prospects

By integrating videos in your marketing materials, you will see a significant growth in your relationship with clients and prospects, prompting them to come back to you. 

For more information visit http://www.newplans.com or e-mail at support@newplans.com

When Social Media Goes Bad

How to minimize the damage and bounce back when your Brand is ‘Not Liked’ on Social Media.


Social Media is great. It puts businesses in direct contact with millions of prospects and customers, worldwide. It strengthens the brand presence on the web and helps in viral marketing. The good word about a business can spread real fast on Social Media Networks. But, what happens when there’s a bad word? It can spread even faster. In this issue we put forth some tips that you can use to contain the damage when your brand is getting beat up on the web.


Analyze: There are times when the business really makes a mistakes and times when there’s a misunderstanding or mistake on the part of the customer. Analyze the situation and understand in which category it falls. If the business is at fault, make amends; make them publicly on the same medium that the irate customer used. However, if the situation falls in the latter category, speak up for your brand and make your stance clear. That way you present your side of the story to others.


Don’t Whine: So someone gave you a bad review. Be calm and collected. Don’t whine in response. Whining and mud-slinging at the reviewer will present your brand as rather immature and even give the impression that you did really mess up.


Timely Response: Respond to negative comments promptly. Ideally, the response time is less than an hour because of the viral nature of Social Media Networks.


Respond Right: While timely response is essential, a wrong response written in a hurry can be catastrophic. Refer to step one—analyze, know the facts and then respond. Be clear and on-to the point.


Be a Person: Personal touch is an important element of social Media Marketing. Bring it into your interaction when responding to negative comments. Respond as a person, not as a company. This brings in the element of accountability to your words.


Too many times one bad review can spur an epidemic of bad remarks with many people joining-in on the conversation with a “Me too!” The aim should be to arrest such unpleasant developments before it begins to erode the brand value online.

For more information visit http://www.newplans.com/ or e-mail at support@newplans.com

5 Ways To Building Better Customer Relationship

Having good client relations is important for your brand value and for revenue. Here are a few simple steps that you can take to improve them.

Personalize: Gather all information about your customers and develop a personalized communication approach towards them. Make sure the messages you send are relevant and add value to your customers.

Stay in touch: Cross selling and up-selling is great, but it is even better to stay in touch with your customers for no reason at all. You can do so by sending them greetings for during holidays and other special days like birthdays. It sends the message across that you really care about them, and that they are not just another name on your marketing database.

Accommodate: All businesses have policies, and they are needed to keep the business functioning smoothly. However, sometimes it helps to walk that extra mile and bend the policy a little bit to for the benefit of its customers. Suppose you have a return policy of 10 days, but your regular customer walks in on the 12th day with a request for a replacement, try to accommodate them. A little step can go a long way in such cases. Not only will you retain the customer, but you will be more likely to be recommended over your competitors.

Pricing: Take a second look at your pricing policies from time-to-time. How do you fare among your competitors? Has a customer ever complained about your pricing? If yes, reconsider what you are charging. There may be times when you cannot always compete on price—then play the quality card. Ensure what you are providing is worth every cent that the customer’s paying.

Feedback: Maintaining customer relationship demands that you listen to your customers. Send feedback forms to your customers. Have your salespersons call them up to check if they are experiencing any difficulty using your product or have a customer care executive place a call to check their satisfaction level with your service. Once you get the feedback, make sure you put it to use. Maintain transparency between your marketing, sales and customer service functions so that the gap between customer expectations and product/service delivery is tightly closed.

For more information visit www.newplans.com or e-mail at support@newplans.com

6 Tips for Better E-Mail Marketing

E-mail is a low-cost and fairly uncomplicated medium to connect with prospects. Here’s how to ensure you get maximum advantage from it.

Start on the right note: When a prospect signs up for your e-mails, send them an effective welcome message. This should be crisp, up-to-the point and convey clearly what the reader can expect in future, from your e-mails.

Go easy on images: Images do make e-mails look more interesting, however not all e-mail clients display images. Sometimes, e-mails with too many images are filtered as spam. Hence it’s advisable to have a good mix of rich content and some images to your e-mail.

Give valuable information: Prospects sign up for e-mails hoping to gain some value. If your e-mails are always about your business or products, the prospects eventually lose interest. Make sure that the e-mails are adding value to the readers by offering useful information. That way, if you occasionally send e-mails about a new product launch or upgrade, readers would be interested in knowing more.

Know when to send: One thing you need to make note of, as an e-mail marketer is that your recipients are not always into their inbox. Depending on who you are targeting, your prospects may be checking their e-mails twice a week. Tweak your e-mail marketing strategy to suit recipient behavior. An e-mail everyday can be frustrating if someone’s checking their mails on weekends.

Optimize for mobile devices: Android phones and tablets are changing e-mail marketing as well. With executives mostly checking their e-mails from their smart phones there’s a need for e-mail marketers to ensure that the e-mails are optimized for mobile devices as well.

Analysis: It is essential to know the results of your e-mail marketing efforts. Even if it is just a monthly newsletter, you should know exactly how many recipients were targeted, how many received the e-mail, what is the bounce, unsubscribe and click-thru rate and so on. Such details will help you understand how the recipients perceive your e-mails.

For more information visit www.newplans.com or e-mail us at support@newplans.com 

5 Tips for Effective Marketing Collateral Creation


Prospects draw up an image of the company based on its Marketing Hence it’s important that the company’s Marketing Collateral is created such that it sends the right message to the recipients. Here are 5 steps towards creating effective Marketing Collateral.

Know the target
Understand the audience well and then structure the marketing collateral to suit their taste. For example, the CFO of an organization is the chief target; it makes sense to include statistics and numbers as to how the product can help the company cut costs. On the other hand, if it is someone in the administrative department, then the collateral should emphasize on how it can help them save time.

Look from the target’s perspective
Many companies make the mistake of talking about themselves in their Marketing Collaterals. Marketing collaterals should contain information about the company’s offerings, but it should emphasize on how these offerings will be of use to the target.

Why you?
Marketing Collaterals should bring out the company’s unique selling points. Why should the targets choose your company over others? Give them a compelling reason to do so.

Personalize
Personalized communication always yields better response than mass communication. Customize your Marketing Collaterals to suit your target’s tastes and perspective.

Keep it Simple
Marketing Collaterals must be concise and clear. Cramping too much information into marketing collaterals only makes it tiring for the recipients. Keep the content lucid and easy to understand.

For more information visit www.newplans.com or e-mail us at support@newplans.com