Five Ways to Ask for Referrals and Reviews

    By: Irangi Gamage  

Reviews are important for your business because, quite often, potential customers rely on them when making a purchase or using a service. One less 'star' compared to your competitor on a review site, or one horrible review left by a customer, is sometimes enough for a potential customer to consider not using your service.

What about those companies without any reviews? Are they reliable? Many customers could be as suspect of businesses with no reviews as they are with all positive ones.
Similarly, referrals are as important to any business. When a customer refers to one of their friends, it adds to the credibility and trustworthiness of your business.

Having online reviews about your company or asking your customers for referrals are two of the important components of online marketing today. You should not be afraid to ask your customers for reviews and referrals for your business. After all, customers are the ones who know you the best. They will be able to provide honest reviews and refer your company to the best people.
If you don’t know where to get started with asking for reviews and referrals, here are 5 ways you can ask your customers.

Be Direct

The first step you can take is to be direct and ask your customers for a review/referral. This could either be done in person/in-office or by sending an e-mail, or even prompting from your website and social media. Either way you communicate, be specific about what you want and make sure your tone is polite and not demanding.

An in-person example:  

I’m really glad you are satisfied with our work. It would be great if you could refer us to one or two people that would need our services/if you could leave a review for us. Would you like some business cards?

An e-mail example:


Mr. John,

Our business is always looking for referrals and this upcoming year, with our expansions, I wanted to ask if you knew anyone that would need our services, to please forward them this email or a link to our website.
Thank you for your time.
A similar template can be used for reviews. After this has been communicated to your client, make sure to follow up after you receive a response from them. It is important not to make the requests sound demanding, while keeping it short and precise.



Make the Process Easy

People are busy with their lives and are not be pleased if they have to do a long and complicated task for free. Since reviews or referrals are favors that you are asking of them, ensure to make this process is as easy as possible.
It is better to ask the customers for a review when they are at the peak of their satisfaction with your business. This could be during the final stages of a project, once they have received their services, or after they have bought products. This will help not to frustrate your customers and encourages more positive reviews.

Send customers the links to your review sites to make this process easier for them. If you are doing referrals, you can send them a prepared template that they can use to forward to their referrals. You can also simply ask them what you can do to help them and make this process easy and fast.

Create Incentives

Create incentives to encourage your customers to post reviews and send referrals but don’t pay them. Paying them may not look good for your business and your customers may not take to it well. However, you can set different smaller incentives. For example, a draw for movie tickets, or if you have a customer loyalty program, you can give extra points for referrals or reviews.

Give Out Business Cards



If you want reviews, your first step should be setting up accounts on relevant review websites, but most importantly ensure that your business is listed and verified on Google. These review sites can be advertised on your social media, so customers know where they can go to leave a review. It is also a good practice to give your business cards to customers after they are finished doing business with you. Your business cards can include your review sites as well, which can further encourage customers to write reviews for your business.

Thank Your Customers

After receiving referral contacts or reviews from your customers, you should always thank them immediately. The more personal your thank you is, the better it is. It should be something thoughtful and not expensive (as giving an expensive gift is equivalent to paying them) such as a thank you email, a call, or a handwritten thank you note.

Using these tips you can improve your business by getting more customers through referrals and good reviews. If you receive negative reviews, UpOnline’s 5 Ways to Publicly Respond to a Bad Review blog can help you respond to them in the best way possible.

Snapchat for Your Business

By: Irangi Gamage

Snapchat. If you are not familiar with this word, then you are missing out on one of the greatest ways to promote your business. Snapchat is a social media application that allows you to send live pictures and videos that last up to 10 seconds and disappear from the viewer’s account after. Unless, of course you do ‘stories’. Stories in Snapchat allow you to send live videos or pictures through the app, which are visible to everyone in your contact list for 24 hours. All the features, including capturing videos and pictures, and the use of filters are available within the app and anything from external sources can’t be uploaded.

As mentioned on the Snapchat website, “Over 100 million people use Snapchat every day to Snap with family, watch Stories from friends, see events from around the world, and explore expertly-curated content from top publishers. Snapchatters watch over 10 billion videos per day, which is more than a 350% increase in the last year alone. In short, Snapchat is about great storytelling - our stories, and yours.”

Why Use Snapchat?

In a recent Edison Research paper, Snapchat has grown more in 1 year than Twitter has in 4 years. Snapchat has a higher usage than Twitter and LinkedIn. While Twitter and LinkedIn have been around for awhile now, these statistics say a lot about the success of Snapchat.

Familiarizing yourself with Snapchat, one of the most used social media platforms today, could give you an upperhand in the modernized marketing world. Snapchat works well for businesses that want to launch new products, are holding live events, or have constant promotions.

Here are some tips that will help you get started with Snapchat.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a creative way you can grab and hold someone’s attention. Like other social media, many Snapchat users tend to check their Snapchat at the most random times. This could be while they are waiting for a bus, while having their lunch, or maybe even while sitting through a boring lecture.

The restrain of 10 seconds per video on snapchat makes it challenging to organize your content wisely. Fortunately, you can string together a few videos and Snapchat will play them one after another as a story. Customers can skip through your videos or stop your story at any time if they are not interested. So the key is to make your material as creative and interesting as possible.



Production and Creativity

You only have a couple of seconds to grab your customer’s attention. Even if you have a number of snap videos tied together, your customers will not go through all your content if your story doesn’t appeal to them within the first few seconds. Therefore, it is extremely important to consider the production and quality of your video, and the creativity of your content. Titles, colours, filters, and transitions can all help your video. Since Snapchat is more of a casual social media platform, remember to keep the content light and easy going to tap into the age range of Snapchat users between 12 and 34 (Entrepreneur).

Snippets

If you have upcoming events or product launches, Snapchat can be an additional promotional tool. Teasing your customers until the official launch of your product will keep the customers on edge, wanting to hear more. The small snippets will create a buzz amongst customers, which will increase the interest for your product or event.

Incentives



According to Business Insider, about 58% of college students have stated they were more likely to buy from a company if they received coupons through snapchat.

Using incentives such as coupons and hosting contests on Snapchat is a great way to encourage your customers to buy from you. It is not only a great opportunity for you to retain your customers, it also creates an outlet to gain new customers.

Behind the Scenes

Customers are not usually aware of the actions that are ongoing behind the scenes. Capturing some of these moments to show your customers, gives your business a chance to show off its personality. Especially if these behind the scenes show your business’s work ethic and a fun and responsible work culture. This helps in building a stronger brand image in your customers minds. It also allows your customers to get a VIP feel, if such content is only available through Snapchat to the customers that follow you, it could make it feel more exclusive and increase customer loyalty.

Additional Benefits

Through this real-time marketing, Snapchat helps you improve and strengthen your business’s brand image. The features and benefits of Snapchat are not limited to the ones mentioned above.

Snapchat allows you to do Snap ads, for a fee, create your own Snapchat sponsored lenses (filters), and Snapchat geofilters. So, if your business is targeted towards the age of Snapchat users, this small investment could bring you greater benefits.

Given that Snapchat is one of the most popular social media apps at the moment, taking advantage of it could benefit your business. When Snapping, make sure to have fun while maintaining the professionalism of your business. Always think from a customer’s perspective to see if you would enjoy the content you are showing them.

UpOnline’s blog focuses on the latest industry and insights on how to maximize your marketing efforts. Articles we post on our blog cover social media tools and news, many that relate to Snapchat. Give us a follow on Twitter for bi-weekly Snapchat tips.

5 Tips to Help You Write a Great Subject Line

By: Irangi Gamage

How often have you received emails that you immediately deleted? The subject line is your reader’s first impression and has the ability to persuade them to open the email. Consider the following tips to help you write a great subject line.

When deciding on a subject line, it is important to know your audience and the tone you want to convey. This will aid you in coming up with a great subject line that is as specific as possible, which in turn will increase both open and click through rates.

Having a great title for your content is crucial. However, when the content is being sent via email, a great subject line might be even more important than the title.

1. Personalization

A more personalized subject line could encourage the reader to open the email since they are being addressed directly. Including the addressee's name on the subject line for certain types of communications can work well as part of your strategy. Even having a simple “you” will make the email more personal.

Some examples:

• John, look what we found for you!
• Your personal promotion code ends this Saturday!

2. Short and Simple

It’s usually a good idea to keep your subject line as concise as possible.

Let the reader know what the article or communication is about. Create some curiosity, while keeping it brief. A subject line should typically be no more than 50 characters. These 50 characters should be simple, descriptive, and straightforward. This will avoid the frustration faced by readers who come across emails with long non-descriptive subject lines (Wordstream).

Short and simple subject lines:

• (Company name): Our next steps
• Monthly News and Events
• Your order has been received (which sounds a lot better than: 'order number 5379580138470238 has been received and is being processed’)

3. Clever and Clear

Sometimes when trying to be clever, the message loses clarity. A case study by AWeber Communications in 2011 found that a clear subject line gets 541% more clicks than a clever one. This is because not all clever lines are relevant to everyone, and the meaning is lost on some readers.

Clever subject lines:

• Don’t open this email
• It’s finally here!

A great subject line needs to be something that would give the reader a clear understanding of the contents of the email. At times, being as simple as possible will lead to positive results (Aabaco Small Business).

Clear subject lines:

• Please review us on Google
• 3 new products we are giving away!
• Grow your client list faster

4. Timing and Urgency

If your timing is right, then you have done half of your marketing right. Readers usually only read about things they are in need of at that moment.

Perfectly timed subject lines:

• Uh oh! Your subscription just ended
• Where to drink beer right now (sent at 6:30 pm on a Friday evening)

Creating a sense of urgency is extremely important, as this will encourage readers to read the contents when they receive the email. If there’s an offer time period or a limited supply, this will create a sense of urgency with customers (Hubspot).

Creating a sense of urgency:

• Save 50% if you purchase by tonight
• Buy one and get one free: limited supply

5. Words to Omit

There are certain words that should be avoided when writing a subject line, as certain words might place your email directly in the spam folder.

Omit words similar to these:

- Reminder	- Help	- Earn $	- Buy	- Cash	- Urgent	- Free
- Claim	- Clearance	- Prescriptions	- Biz	- Income	- Millions	- Collect

UpOnline Examples

Here are some great subject lines we have used in our UpOnline newsletters in the past:

• Are your patients satisfied?
• What are your business goals for 2016?
• Looking to increase practice reviews and referrals?
• We want to hear from you!

Take these into consideration when writing a subject line for your emails to increase the appeal of your emails to your clients. It is also extremely important that the content within the email is relevant and is consistent with the subject line. Finally, having a call to action in the email is equally important as this will encourage customers to take action right away!

For example: You can subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date with everything you need to know about improving your business’s marketing.

What You Need to Know About Google's Penguin 4.0 Update

    By: Mahnoor Awan

On September 23, 2016, Google announced Penguin’s 7th and final update, calling it Penguin 4.0. Penguin is a filter that captures websites who use black hat webspam practices to boost their ranking on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Black hat webspam practices are aggressive SEO tactics that include techniques like keyword stuffing, invisible text, and paid links, among others. Once the Penguin filter catches it, Google then penalizes those sites by lowering their rankings.

With this new update, Penguin is now part of Google’s core algorithm, along with 200 other unique signals or clues it relies on to rank websites on SERPs.

Penguin 4.0’s two major changes:

Real-time Changes

Previously, if sites were blacklisted by Penguin, they remained penalized even if site owners corrected issues and the sites were recrawled and reindexed, until Google resynchronized its Penguin data with the other algorithms, at intervals.

With this update, now as soon as the robots crawl, they will see if a web page is using link schemes or keyword stuffing, or if they have good quality content and good user experience, and ranking results will be updated in realtime.

This is also why Google no longer feels the need to announce Penguin updates.



How often does Google's Robot Spiders crawl web content to update SERPs?

According to Google Webmaster blog, the robots crawl based on an algorithm - so it’s computers controlling, not humans. This algorithm that takes robots to websites, is based on many variables like number of visitors, PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as number of parameters in a URL.



More Granular

Through this update, the robots will now monitor the content within the websites, and individual webpages. If it finds an issue with a certain page, the SERPs will adjust ranks based on offending pages, and not the whole site.

So, for example, given Webpages A and B within the same site. If page A has good quality content and page B has keyword stuffing, when the robots crawl the website, page A won’t be affected in the ranks but page B will be blacklisted. If corrective measures are taken for page B, the next time robots crawl the website, page B will be removed from the blacklist.

How Does this update affects your SEO practices?

This update shouldn’t really affect your SEO practices as such. However, if through some error, one of your web pages are deemed as using black hat practices, it won’t necessarily affect your whole website. Further, even after you correct those mistakes, you won’t remain penalized until the next Penguin synchronization event. Instead, as soon as you make those changes, and the robot spiders crawl your page, the change will be seen immediately.

The best practices to follow here would be:

• Constantly audit your links by checking for broken links
• Perform clean-up where necessary
• Create quality website content, focusing on brand building and great user experience

To learn more about building a brand, click here to read our blog.

Need help in creating quality web content? Contact UpOnline to learn more about our Custom Website Design services.

5 Ways to Publicly Respond to a Bad Online Review

By: Mahnoor Awan

In this digital age, an online review can spread like wildfire. According to 2015 survey findings by a UK based search company, 92% of consumers read online reviews and 40% of them base their opinions by reading the first few reviews. This means, if a bad review is up in the top three, it could have a negative impact on your company. One way to combat a negative review is to respond to it.

The way you respond to a bad review will directly affect your business’ reputation. So, it’s important that your message is informative rather than reactionary.

Do you remember Amy’s Baking Company who appeared on Kitchen Nightmares? Instead of responding to bad reviews with a level head, they ended up arguing and threatening customers online.

Well, don’t worry, they’re closed now! Just so you don’t end up like them, we have put together a few guiding points for you to consider before you respond to your customers’ negative comments.

1. Don’t be Defensive

   If you read a bad review for your company, naturally you will be upset or even angry. Your first response could possibly be to justify the situation and state all the reasons why the upset customer is wrong. This may lead to an online argument, and could eventually turn ugly, in turn making your company look bad for potential customers.
   
   So, the very first thing you can do is to cool down and be calm, instead of responding immediately with the first thing that comes to your head. (Especially with the way the Twitter community doesn’t waste a minute to call a company out for their bad behavior, it is really important to stay calm and collected.)
   
   Don’t be defensive, but tackle the situation with a level-headed attitude and an open mind because this could be an opportunity for your company to better itself. This leads to our next point.



2. Take Negative Comments Seriously

   Another important thing that you shouldn’t be doing is ignoring a bad review. It is already unfortunate enough that someone had a bad experience with your company. Most of the customers are not out there to ruin the reputation of your company. They genuinely want to express their concerns or opinions about their experience.
   
   Investigate the situation the customer is talking about. Give merit to your customer’s experience. This could actually be an opportunity for the company to treat it as a learning experience. The negative comment could actually shed light to a particular problem in an area of your company that you may not be aware of, and because of that comment, now you can make some changes.
   
   
Here is an example of a customer experiencing a technical issue with Zipcar and how they responded:


3. Be Polite and Professional

   When responding to the customer, make sure your tone is polite and professional. It is important to be emotionally intelligent and not take the comments personally.
   
   Respond in such a way that makes you look in control and not shaken by what people have to say (even if you are and you feel like screaming and crying!). Start with thanking them for taking out the time to provide you with valuable feedback for the product/service they received. State the company’s broad goals and objectives, and how you will take the customer’s feedback into consideration, to try and improve to avoid such situations in the future.
   
   Here is an example of how a restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana, responded to a customer’s review by stating the company’s mission statement, while also sincerely apologizing.
   

4. Empathize

   When a customer writes a bad review, quite often they just want to express all the hardships they had to go through, when they were actually expecting something completely different. Instead of just stating facts of what went wrong with the situation, try to understand the customer’s point of view.
   
   Empathize with them or their situation, responding with phrases like, “that would make me really upset too” or “I would be frustrated too.” And definitely apologize. Be sincere with your apologies. Sometimes all a customer needs is understanding and apology and it will make them happy.

5. Offer An Incentive

In the end of your response, if possible, offer a recourse action or incentive that the company could offer to the dissatisfied customer. It could include a refund, a discount, or coupon for future purchases. Here is an example of how Jet Blue Airways responded to a customer’s negative review with a free upgrade.



@kricketchirps We hope you decide to fly with us again. We'd like to upgrade you to Even More Space seats as a gesture of good will... 1/2

— JetBlue Airways (@JetBlue) October 20, 2016

All in all, receiving a bad review isn’t the end of the world. A bad review won’t make or break your business but it’s important to respond and show that you are paying attention to the customer’s wants and needs.

However, before responding to a review, make sure you know the guidelines for the online review site. Quite often, if the review does not meet the proper guidelines, like for instance it has profane language, they delete it themselves.

If you feel like the review is not written by a customer themselves, or is defamatory, you can contact the online review site to get it removed. Keep in mind that this does take time.

Interested in how you can create and manage reviews for your business? We can help. Contact Uponline about our Reputation Management Services.

Best Question Types to Ask on a Survey

We have all been asked to participate in a survey at one time or another, whether it was when you went to a restaurant, visited a website, or bought a product. When asked to participate in a survey, initial reactions vary depending on a number of factors, we’re often always in a rush, someone had a rough day, or you’re just enjoying some free time with your friends and don’t want to be disturbed. But when asked properly and weigh the balances of time and feedback, successfully completing a survey gives useful insight into the mind of the customer. White it usually only takes a couple of minutes to fill out a survey, hours of thought have gone into perfecting the questions included in it.

Most information collected through a survey is extremely important to a business as surveys are used to collect data on customer wants and needs.

Surveys help answer the questions businesses have by encouraging discussion and feedback with customers. This in turn allows businesses stay competitive by adapting to the ever changing customer tastes and lifestyles. (SnapSurvey)

Surveys are usually not composed of just one type of question. Usually, a survey will have multiple types of questions and answers. Whether you’re planning your own survey or just want to understand the thinking behind most survey questions, the 4 types of questions that are most effective and commonly used in surveys are explained below.

1. Open-Ended Questions

If you have ever filled out a survey after dining at a restaurant, you are probably familiar with questions like "What did you enjoy the most about our restaurant?". You have likely come across questions such as “What products would you like to see on our website?” when you are shopping online. Then there are the general question we ask each other like “Why did you decide to buy X?” that would lead to a more in-depth conversation that offers to pull more information from the respondent.

These types of questions are open-ended questions and allow the participant to elaborate on their answer. They are typically used when a fixed set of answers can not commonly include all the acceptable alternatives. Open ended questions are best when used at the beginning, as surveys are most effective starting from general questions that would lead up to more specific ones.

Asking open-ended questions will increase the time it takes to complete the survey, so keep in mind that while you may be able to capture more detail, you are creating a more taxing experience for the respondent and might reduce the number of surveys completed. Likewise, it can be extremely difficult to analyze the data collected from open-ended questions since the answers will vary immensely.

2. Multiple-Choice Questions

A multiple-choice question has fixed-alternatives for the participant to choose from. Some examples of these types of questions are:

Why Uber Is Successful

Uber has quickly become one of the most recognizable and controversial brands in the world. Originating in 2009, the San Francisco ride sharing service connects riders and drivers with its easy to use app, making it simple to grab a ride without the indignity of trying to find a cab in the middle of the night. Catering to the tech savvy crowd, it quickly gained early adopters who spread the word of a new and better way to travel through online blogs and publications. News outlets soon caught wind. Gone was the era of overpriced cabs, replaced by it was a sleek black sedan, discreetly greeting the designated traveler at the side of the curb.

Uber is impressive not because it hasn’t experienced any missteps during its nearly seven year reign as the go to ride sharing service (it has been accused of surge prices during crisis situations, and drivers have been charged for sexually attacking female passengers, cities have banned the service, criticizing it for being “illegal” not to mention its many contentious battles with the taxi industry.) Uber is impressive because of the way it managed to challenge the status quo and still come out on top despite an increasingly crowded and competitive space. Don’t want to grab an Uber? How about a Lyft instead? BTW Google wants in on the whole ride-sharing thing too. A huge amount of Uber’s capital goes directly to setting up a local presence in many cities and arming a fleet (mind the pun) of lawyers to do battle with one municipality at a time. They have managed to set themselves apart from the pack, cultivating a brand that is deemed cool, giving its drivers decent cash flow so they can ‘pursue their dreams’ and providing riders with a superior ride sharing experience.

Below are just a few ways Uber has been successful in growing and expanding its business

1. Identifying a need and providing a stellar experience

Great businesses are able to identify a customer need and form an agile solution. Uber was able to recognize how customers felt cabs were over-priced, and not only that, didn’t do a good job of creating a solid customer service. With Uber, integrated with Google Maps, a rider was able to see, in real-time, how many Uber drivers were nearby, how long they would take to get to the rider’s destination, and even chose what type of vehicle they wanted for a far more reasonable price. This app allowed riders to customize their transportation experience and was incredibly efficient for those in a hurry. And to make things even better and really provide that ‘wow’ factor that encourages repeat business, Uber also implemented a review system that made riders and drivers accountable for creating a solid transportation experience. Hate having to fiddle around for change at the end of a ride? No problem. Uber’s default payment method is online payment after you link your credit card information to their app.

Interning at Uponline

It's hard to believe that summer went by so quickly! It has been a great few months for us in the office since we also had the pleasure of having interns on board. Aside from getting them to fetch our coffee and take care of all our dry cleaning, (just kidding), they did a great job of helping out around the office while learning the ins and outs of what happens on a day to day basis in an agency environment.

We sat down with one of our interns, Kuruparan, to get his take on his experience interning at Uponline.

Q: What was your experience like working at UpOnline? Be honest.

A: I really enjoyed my experience at UpOnline! I definitely felt like I've developed a good understanding of digital marketing, especially as it related to the healthcare sector. I also learned about the difference between good and bad website design when it comes to creating a site that engages with visitors, how SEO works, to learning about the fundamentals of email marketing so it worked on every browser and email client under the sun. And the importance of testing emails!

Q: That's great! We definitely threw a lot of projects your way. What was your favourite thing to work on this summer?

A: Probably working on developing mobile and responsive sites. I really enjoyed doing that. There were a lot of tips I've learned, coding wise, in understanding how sites would render on different screen sizes which was really interesting.

Q: You've also had the chance to contribute a couple of articles for the blog as well. What topic did you enjoy researching the most about?

How Airbnb Became Successful?

    By: Mahnoor Awan

AirBnb is an online platform that allows you to rent, or rent out, unique accommodations from around the world. Whether you’re looking for a spare room or an entire home, cottage, mansion, villa, castle, island (I know right?) to get away, you can find truly extraordinary accommodations.

The concept of such a service originated in 2007, when founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia couldn’t afford to meet rent for their San Francisco loft, and decided to rent the extra space. Their first three guests were attendees of a sold out design trade show, and their first attempt at turning their extra space into a bed and breakfast involved air mattresses and Pop Tarts for breakfast.

Joe Gebbia, Co-Founder

Brian Chesky, Co-Founder

Nathan Blecharczyk, Co-Founder

In 2008, their friend Nathan Blecharczyk, a Harvard graduate, joined the team and they launched their initial website as airbedandbreakfast.com and since then, a simple idea they had in their apartment one day, began to take root and grow into the business it is today.

So, in an industry dominated by big hotel chains, how did three guys from San Francisco made it to the top?

5 eNewsletter Mistakes And How to Fix Them

E-Newsletters are a great way to keep in touch with your client base. They can be used to provide updates about your company, promote services, offer discounts, and run contests, and of course to send out invitations to events and seminars. Your contact list is invaluable when it comes to online marketing and you want to make sure those contacts are engaged with your content and that you are able to track when leads are being converted. As a primer or a review, we wanted to list some common mistakes and how to fix them.
Mistake #1: Using a generic subject line

The subject line is the first thing someone sees when they spot your email in their inbox so you want to make a good first impression in order to maximize your open rate. In the age of spam and information overload, you need to differentiate yourself and show that opening your email is worth it. And you want to do it in 50 characters or less (you don’t want your call-to-action to be cut off.)
The most obvious mistake people make with subject lines is they keep them obvious and staid. Tailor your subject line to the content and make it interesting.
Fix: Write short, attention grabbing subject lines that are tailored to the biggest draw in your newsletter that will get your viewer to open it. If someone has subscribed to your newsletter and hasn't opened last month's newsletter with a subject like: "Your Store - July Newsletter", what are the chances that a similarly worded August newsletter is going to convince them otherwise? Use your subject to highlight a specific event or deal that's happening, example "20% off select phones all July @ Walmart". Scarcity tactics that reference end dates can increase click rates, as in “Last four days to take advantage of....”, as well as subject lines with lists and numbers.
Mistake #2: Lack of images/images only
Don't send a giant block of text and expect it to be read. Reading on screen is different from print. Screen readers tend to skim, look at the page in an F shape (source), flick past large blocks of text and focus on headers and images. With a few effectively used images, you can give your viewer a much more enjoyable experience. Think of them as similar to paragraph or section breaks.
However, don't go overboard and simply use a large image with a few links embedded in them, or image maps/hotspots, because you don't want to design and test your layout. Image only emails are difficult to read on phones and don't have any text to be searched through. Email Clients like Gmail give enormous storage space, expecting users to save their emails and search through them. You want your newsletter to be in those search results. Other mail services may filter out image-only eblasts.
Fix: Use images to space out and section your texts to create an enjoyable flow, where the viewer isn’t overwhelmed, and tempted to skip past, too much text. Try pairing headers tags with images and including illustrations or diagrams/charts.

5 Ways Pokémon Go Can Help Your Dental Practice

By: Mahnoor Awan

When a new product makes waves in the market, it’s really hard to miss its impact. Pokémon Go, an augmented reality or ‘Real World Gaming’ app released in July 2016, is definitely one of them. Offered in more than 30 countries within the first month, the game is definitely making its mark.
If you don’t already know, the main focus of the game involves players having to get out and roam the streets, landmarks, and specialized locales, to find and capture Pokémon.
With players in multiple age ranges, many reliving nostalgia from playing Pokémon when they themselves were kids, alongside a new, younger crowd, a lot of businesses are looking to tap into this market to grow their business.

What you need to know about Pokémon Go

Pokémon was first launched on Game Boy in the 1990’s, followed by a cartoon TV show and trading card game, along with numerous other tie-ins. Capitalizing on the nostalgic essence of this popular franchise of the 90’s, Niantic Inc. took it a step further and turned into an augmented reality game, which can now be downloaded as an app on most smartphones. To play this game, players have to walk around their neighborhood, or the entire city, especially to popular areas like malls, parks, and monuments, to search and catch Pokémon, train them, and battle with other teams.
If you want to know what all these terms mean, you can check Niantic’s Pokémon Glossary. And if you still have no idea what I’m talking about and have more questions about the game, you can find answers here.

Here’s how you can use Pokémon Go to your advantage:

Share on social media

PokéStops are landmarks where players can gather items such as Poké Balls, potions, and Eggs, among other things.
Gyms are landmarks where players can battle their Pokémons with rival teams or even train their own Pokémons.
If your office is a PokéStop or gym, or there’s one near your dental practice, this is the perfect opportunity to take a picture through your Pokémon Go app and post on your social media. It will attract patients to visit your location more often, and help in generating potential interactions with your practice.





Venonat next to a landmark

If you or your staff plays Pokémon Go, there are chances of Pokémon appearing in your office. You can use this opportunity to take screenshots of your Pokémon and advertise on your social media about your Poké-friendly dental office. Uponline can help you with regularly updating your social media platforms, to make the best of the latest trends that could help promote your dental practice.

5 Ways to Improve Patient Communication

Oren Baum, Founder: I recently attended a core course with one of our great continuing education association partners, covering the topics of patient engagement, social media, and interaction. I spoke with some clients who were also attendees and realized that they were taking different things from the seminar than each other and different than what the speakers may have intended.

We thought to put together some top-down information on what forms of interaction could most benefit a dental office, and how they work together to increase referrals, decrease recall times, and increase business.

As a dental practitioner, it's important that your patients feel that they are in a comfortable and safe environment, free to discuss whatever is on their mind. Not only does that provide richer details about their medical (and relevant patient) history but it also allows you and your staff to foster close relationships. By keeping the lines of communication open, you build trust and earn lifelong patients. When you think about the current workflow of your office, from scheduling patients to after care follow up, is there any part of the patient experience that is missing or can be improved?

If you haven't had the time to sit down and think about how to connect better with patients, here are five methods to get you started:

Develop strong rapport

No matter how busy your day is don’t forgo pleasantries. Calling your patient’s by name and demonstrating that you remember their likes/dislikes, and past conversations is key to developing a strong rapport. Instead of asking yes or no questions, ask open ended questions that will encourage patients to provide you with more detailed information. Make sure to listen and to not interrupt.

How To Improve Your Adwords Campaign

Whether or not your website is getting a high level of traffic through Organic SEO, Google AdWords is a quick way to further increase brand awareness, target new locations and expand your marketing reach. Setting up an effective ad campaign can be tricky and can cost you a lot if done improperly. let’s go over the basics and learn how to define your goals, build landing pages, select good keywords and more.
1. Define your goals/budget.

Get in the habit of producing SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-bound. Your campaign success should be defined in specific, measurable terms. Avoid vague goals like "increasing brand recognition", and instead focus on something concrete like "increase sales by 10% with $2,000 budget during a specific timeframe".  Don’t shy away from using keywords that aren’t searched as often as more popular keywords. More often than not if you are using a super specific keyword that also specifies a location (e.g. teeth whitening in aurora) the search frequency may be lower, but the conversion rate will be higher since those are typing in a specific keyword are farther along the sales funnel [ related blog post: Most Valuable Keywords ]

Don't get too caught up on getting quick results as keywords have varying levels of popularity and search frequency, which affects the time it takes for actionable data to accumulate. For example, with niche keywords (see Tip 3) you will want to set a longer goal time-frame.

You can gain insights on keyword projections by using the Keyword Planner Tool, which provides historical statistics, ad group ideas and more.

One of the most important steps in setting up a campaign is defining your budget. If you're new to AdWords, you may want to try running a series of brief campaigns with different budgets to find which works best for you. Make sure you spend enough that you have a significant population to draw your conclusions from and run the campaigns long enough to eliminate variables like day of the week, weather, etc.

How To Turn Your Company Into A Killer Brand Name

By: Mahnoor Awan

What’s a brand?

A brand is not only related to the product or service you’re selling, neither is it your website, nor the name or the logo of your company. A brand is so much more than that. It’s (almost) intangible – it’s the feeling or experience generated when people hear your company’s name.

Why is it important to create a brand?

Creating a brand instills a confidence in users that your company is recognized and reliable. Especially if your company is online based, it is important because you can no longer do that on a one-to-one level, as you’re not personally there to convince your customers.

In 2016 so far, the online markets’ user penetration in e-commerce has been 38.5% alone, and is expected to rise to 49.72% by 2020. Considering how the world services are moving online, consumers prefer going for brands they know of, as they feel comfortable giving them their personal information like, email address and credit card information. Based on a study by Nielsen, 60% of global consumers with Internet access prefer to buy new products from a familiar company.

Now that we know why having a brand is so important, the real question is:

HOW TO BRAND YOUR COMPANY?

Whether you’re an already established company or a startup, here are a few, easy, and cost-efficient ways to brand your company.

CHARACTERIZE YOUR BRAND

The first, and probably the most important thing is to define your brand. Here a few questions to get you started:

• Why are you in business?
• What does your brand offer?
• How does your company relate to the needs/wants of customers?
• What are your company’s goals and objectives?
• What kind of ideas or visions it supports?

Answering these questions will help you narrow down the messaging you want to relay to your customers. It will help you differentiate your company from your competitors, to define the characteristics of your brand and, give it a personality that is relatable to customers. It will help you create the image/story of your brand that you want to portray – an image or narrative that goes beyond the functionality of a product/service and evokes emotions instead.

5 Tips on How to Create a Great e-Newsletter

By: Mahnoor Awan

You’re sitting in a boardroom meeting and your boss tells you to come up with another marketing channel to promote your brand. An email newsletter! That’s what you all agree upon, in order to stay in close contact with your customers, to offer contests and promotions, and of course, to serve as a reminder of your brand. Without a doubt, an e-Newsletter does have many benefits:

• Cost-efficient to share and distribute
• A less costly way to promote events and special offers
• Easy to distribute educational content
• Helps to maintain relationships with your customers
• Provides results that can be tracked straightaway

It all sounds easy and simple. But, creating an email newsletter is a great marketing tool ONLY if done right.

For optimal results, here are 5 basic things you should be doing before you send out your e-Newsletter.

1. Create content your customers want

So, we all know you’re creating a newsletter to promote your brand and all that you have to offer. But if all you do is talk about your brand, not many people will want to open your newsletter on a regular basis. And chances are, your unsubscribers will start growing quickly.

Your newsletters should be more about what your customers would like to read, rather than what you’re trying to sell.

In this case, the 80-20 rule comes in handy. Your content should be 80% educational and 20% promotional. Put your reader first. Create customer-focused content that will interest your readers. You could include topics like:

• Problems in your industry and their solutions
• Tips and quick facts
• Technology developments within your industry
• Industry trends
• Upcoming events
• Advice from industry experts

2. Insert multimedia

Remember that old, over-used saying, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’? Well, there’s a reason it’s still used today. Images, videos, or any kind of visuals are a great way to grab your reader’s attention, if, they’re interesting and eye-catching. However, even multimedia has to be done right. Make sure the images and videos you use are web friendly and have alt text in case they can’t be displayed. Videos can’t be embedded directly in eBlasts, but you can put in a link to your video from a still frame, embedded as an image. Just don’t make your entire newsletter an image as many spam filters will flag it, and your email will most likely not pass through to your customers’ inbox.

How To Increase Survey Response Rates Through Incentives

So you are planning to conduct a survey, the one you need to gain valuable market data and insight into your customers. You’ve structured it so it’s easy to complete, crafted the subject line to increase the email’s open rate, tested your copy out to anyone who would read it…but you are still unsure if anyone will respond.

Consumers are solicited every day to participate in surveys so how do you ensure that you set yourself apart from your competitors? Try adding an incentive.

What kind of incentive should you give?

Research has shown that cash is your best option, however cash is difficult to distribute. Coupons and gift cards are an easier alternative.

Evidently, your incentive is going to be determined and limited by your budget but you should also keep your survey demographic in mind when thinking about what kind of incentive to use in order to appeal to the largest amount of respondents possible. Universities often offer gift cards for their textbook stores because that appeals to students on a budget. However, try not to be too specific, which might not appeal to a wide enough audience (e.g. a coupon for garden hoses isn't going to appeal to everyone. Unless you happen to be surveying gardeners!)

How Long Should A Survey Be?

By: Mahnoor Awan

Thinking about launching a survey and wondering how long it should be? If it’s too long there is the fear that people might not be interested in finishing it. If it’s too short then it might compromise the data you’re trying to collect. The question about the perfect survey length has been debatable for a long time. While gathering data that serves the purpose of research and improvement is great, it’s only valuable if:

• Your sample represents the entire population
• The responses are legitimate
• The responders are able to fully understand the questions

When creating a survey there are a number of factors that will determine it’s length such as:

• Your audience base
• Goals of your survey
• The resources you have to act on the data collected

First off, the length of your survey differs with the audience base. Is it a general audience, a panel (a group of people hired by a company to fill surveys in return for some monetary value), or an internal group like employees? For example, the general public, without any incentive wouldn’t want to spend more than 10 minutes of their time on answering questions. The panel on the other hand is getting paid to fill the surveys. And for internal groups like employees, it is often made mandatory.

Most Valuable Keywords

Keywords help customers find your product whether they are part of your website's natural SEO or if they are being used within a paid ad. But all keywords are not created equal. And if your strategy is to use keywords to contribute to your bottom line, you want your keywords to be able to target the right audience and, more importantly, to separate the Browsers from the Buyers.

How to separate Browsers from Buyers

When we look at a typical buying cycle, a customer usually goes through a series of steps, or a journey if you will, of becoming aware of a product before making a purchase.

Typical Customer Journey:

1. Customer becomes aware of product
2. Seeks information
3. Compares to other products
4. Makes purchasing decision
5. Completes transaction
6. Evaluates product after buying and determines its value by keeping or discarding/returning product.

Let’s say that you own a clothing store and someone enters your shop, slowly sifts through all the products displayed on the racks but walks out without making a purchase. Right after you have another customer who walks in with a specific request for something pink and pleated or asks about a particular item in the store. Which customer would you say is further along in the buying cycle?

How To Increase Social Media Engagement

A lot of businesses often misunderstand what it means to be a social business. Rather than just registering for a Twitter or a Facebook account, being social requires you to actively interact with your online audience on a regular basis (rather than relying on a Twitterbot to do your handy work).

And it’s not just about posting regular content, but making sure that your followers feel heard and creating a thriving community that identifies closely with your brand. Social media is a great tool to gain more exposure for your business while at the same time interacting with your customers in a more conversational manner.

Be Authentic

Customers gravitate towards brands who have a distinct voice. Think about the demographic you are trying to connect with and the types of adjectives you would attribute to your brand and build from there.

Listen and Contribute

Producing great content for readers should only be part of your social media strategy. Set aside some time to see how customers are reacting to your content. Feedback will help you know if your articles are engaging customers. Ask questions

ODA Spring Meeting 2016 #ASM16

What a crazy two weeks it has been! We had such a fun time attending the AACD at the end of April and meeting all of you there. Since there was such a positive response to getting your caricatures done, Kyle offered his services once again for the ODA show! We had a lot of fun connecting with our clients (shout outs to Susie!) and meeting a lot of new faces as well.

Those who got their drawing done at our booth were automatically entered to win six months of FREE enewsletters for their dental practice (psst it's a great way to drive referrals). We will be announcing the winner soon on our site and on Twitter so stay tuned. Till next year! #ASM16

AACD 2016 Conference Highlights

Staffan Sjöö, President of SACD - Swedish Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry and UpOnline's Client Manager and Caricature Artist, Kyle Weber

It was great being able to see all of you at the AACD Conference in Toronto last week! We had an amazing time at the Exhibitor's Hall and glad you all enjoyed getting your caricatures done at our booth. Those who stopped by to get their drawing also became automatically eligible to win six months of FREE enewsletters for their dental practice (click here to learn more about the benefits of sending out enewsletters to patients). All they had to do was tweet their photo using the hashtag #AACD2016 and #UponlineSmiles.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to chat and learn more about our services. See you next year in Vegas!

Should I Use SEO or PPC?

We often have clients asking us what the difference is between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC). If you're not very familiar with these services, one involves improving your ranking for search engines while the other focuses on creating targeted ads, but both require you to understand how keywords play a part in increasing your online visibility and how to set yourself apart from competitors.

Why are keywords important?

Promoting an online business is not that different from promoting a brick and mortar store. While you’ve paid for a space to conduct business and offer quality products or services, you won't be able to draw in customers if they can't find you!

With online marketing it's worth investing time to make sure search engines are able to find your site.

What keywords should I be using?

Get in the head of the consumer and think of what they look for. A keyword could simply be describing what your product is or identifying what problem it could solve (e.g. whitening tooth paste or tooth discolouration). Also take time to think about where your customers are located and which geographical areas you are catering to. (e.g. midtown, near public transit, students) Begin compiling a keyword list that will be the basis of a successful SEO strategy to increase your online visibility.

Should I be using SEO or PPC?

Many people differ on whether or not SEO is better than PPC, vice versa. It's been shown that organic SEO results are 8.5 times more likely to be clicked on than paid search results however paid search results convert on average 1.5 times the rate of organic clicks. The better question may be not which option is better but what objectives you are currently trying to achieve.

In the short run, PPC ads are a great way to drum up attention for a new business, create or strengthen brand awareness, and be able to get instant exposure within a targeted audience. However many argue that organic SEO is more valuable, although it requires more time. While PPC can allow you to show up on the first page of search results for a price, ongoing SEO will ensure that you rank highly on Google for the long term. While both options require time and effort, both are great ways to increase online exposure. They can also work well in tandem if your time and budget allows. Many step-by-step tutorials exist to guide you through setting up proper SEO and effective PPC campaigns.

Need a hand? Contact us today for a free quote.