Customer Acquisition Strategies: 7 Ways To Increase Online Sales

Customer acquisition is a crucial first step for startups as well as an ongoing goal for well-established businesses. It’s harder than ever to stand out in today’s crowded marketplace. But with the right strategies in place, you can ensure your business is profitable.

BrianDownard cover 7 of these powerful strategies in this data-backed guide.

1. Get on the first page of Google with content & SEO

80% of people ignore paid ads and instead focus on organic results…

Plus, 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search results.

The truth is…

Your business needs to rank on the first page for keywords that your customers search for.

By creating and promoting content that gets back links from authority sites, your content and website will receive higher search engine rankings.

2. Use authority sculpting to boost any website page

If you want to rank pages for things you sell like ecommerce product pages, service pages or local business pages, you can use authority sculpting to send authority from one page to another usinginternal linking.

The best part?

Authority sculpting can increase organic search by 250% to your desired page.

Be sure the internal links you create are relevant or you’ll end up hurting your page rankings.

3. Go viral by leveraging the right 3rd-party audiences

When you can find and engage influencers who already have the audience you want, then leverage that audience to build your own, you can acquire new customers at lighting speed.

On average, influencer marketing sees a 6-to-1 return on investment.

Social media mentions, guest blogging, link building, partnerships, and press coverage are all examples of how you can use 3rd-party audiences to acquire more customers.

4. Skyrocket word-of-mouth with 2-sided referrals

A 2-sided referral is where both the referrer their friend get rewarded for participating.

This is highly effective because…

People are 4X more likely to buy when referred by a friend.

In fact, for most businesses 65% of new business come from customer referrals!

When you use 2-sided referrals, it increases the likelihood that people will participate and refer others.

5. Use sales-focused content to increase close rates

Content marketing isn’t just for brand awareness…

When you create product videos, spec sheets, and FAQs, you’ll make it easier for customers to make a purchasing decision.

That’s because 61% of people say they are more likely to buy from a brand that delivers content.

When you successfully arm your sales team with these kinds of tools, they’ll be unstoppable!

6. Use email marketing to automate sales

Email marketing is consistently voted the most effective marketing channel.

Why is it so effective?

Because every $1 spent on email has an average return of $44.

On top of that, automating your lead nurturing process with targeted emails can bolster those results.

In fact, automations can increase revenue by 10% in just 6-9 months!

7. Identify top converting channels using analytics

Not enough businesses emphasize the importance of measuring marketing ROI.

Check this out…

50% of businesses find it difficult to attribute marketing directly to revenue results.

Analytic tools solve this problem by allowing you to analyze your marketing channels so you can identify the ones that perform the best, then make adjustments to improve your ROI.

Instagram Ad Cost In 2017 Infographic

As the season of spending approaches, many marketers are in the process of trying to determine how much the cost-per-click will fluctuate as they try and engage with potential customers through social media.

Apple Is 50% More Expensive To Target Than Android

AdEspresso found that the iPhone was up to 50% more expensive to target than the Android smartphone.

Apple has long been considered a luxury brand by the Asian market, especially in China where it was rated the most coveted luxury brand in 2015, but in the U.S. it’s still widely available to the middle class. Even as the latest device comes with a hefty $1,000 price tag, payment plans and credit options will continue to keep Apple products in the mirror-selfies of many a mortal, as well as the celebrities who keep it elevated as a luxury brand.

It’s this association with luxury and celebrity that possibly offers an insight into the steep CPC difference. Those willing to shell out on the latest iPhone may be more likely to have a higher level of disposable income.

Women Remain The Costliest Customer On Instagram

It’s no surprise that women rule Instagram. 58% of Instagram users are women, compared to the 42% that are men.

Pay Attention To Televised Events

AdEspresso noticed an unusual spike for CPC amongst males aged 13-17 in Q2 of 2017. What could have caused it? Analysts believe it was linked to the NBA playoffs. Not only is the NBA the most popular sport association on Instagram, LeBron James has more Instagram followers than the NFL, The New England Patriots, and Tom Brady combined. The NBA is also most popular with young male fans, with 45% of NBA fans under 35.

For more insights, you can read the study on Instagram ads cost in the infographic attached below:

Different Generations on Social Media Infographic

We use Social Media every single day. From the day starts to ends with social media networks. To follow the modern trends, you need to know social media marketing directions, even if you run just a small local business. Every business needs a social media presence. There’s no way back!

With the help of this infographic, you’ll be able to understand if your business moves in the right direction.

51 Tips for WordPress Website Maintenance

WordPress is one of the best CMS’s on the market today! It is flexible, easy-to-use & update, SEO friendly and comes with thousands of WordPress plugins & themes that makes creating a WordPress website a breeze.

However, like with everything else, WordPress, too, require daily upkeep and maintenance for it to work smoothly across various platforms. Having a well-maintained WordPress website that provides a hassle-free user experience is the key to a successful online business.

Therefore, to help you in this endeavour & to save time, we have come up with this detailed WordPress website Maintenance checklist that will provide you with a comprehensive list of essential things that you need to accomplish, if you want to retain & attract readers and maintain your SEO ranking on SERPs.

Now, before we get started, take a look at this WordPress website Maintenance checklist Infographic that summarises the important factors mentioned in this post.

#1. WEBSITE SPEED AUDIT

Poor website loading time can be a result of a number of things like heavy media files, unoptimised browsers, unreliable web host etc. By doing an audit of your website’s speed, you are able to find & fix these issues, resulting in improve user experience and increase in traffic and sales.
Moreover, since website speed is considered as one of the ranking factors by Google, checking up on your site’s page speed and loading time is important if you want to avoid getting penalised.

How to analyse your website’s Page Speed?
PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom Tool are two of the best free tools that’ll help you analyse your page speed performance as well as provide you insights on issues that needs to be fixed.

#2. CHECK FOR BROKEN LINKS

Broken links can have a negative effect on your site’s search engine ranking as it stops search engine robots from effectively indexing your site. In addition, it also leads to poor user experience, as clicking on a link & landing on a “404 error page” can be quite frustrating for users, leading to high bounce rate and lower website traffic. Thus, as a part of your WordPress website maintenance service, it is essential that you find & fix broken links on your website immediately.

• How to Find and Fix Broken Links?

The WordPress Broken Link Checker Plugin can assist you in finding and fixing broken links on your website. To know more about how to use this plugin, click here.

#3. 301 REDIRECT FOR BROKEN LINKS

As mentioned above, clicking on a link and landing on a 404 error page is quite frustrating for a user. Hence, to avoid this make use of 301 redirect to redirect web pages with broken links to other similar pages.

By doing this you are able to retain important metrics like page authority, domain authority, trust flow etc that are present on the old page.

In addition, WordPress has a simple redirection plugin that makes it easier to monitor 404 errors and map these to 301 redirects. For more information on 301 redirects, go here!

#4. CHECK SIDEBAR LINKS AND BLOGROLLS

The sidebar links on a website are particularly used to display content that visitors might find useful. Similarly, blogrolls help users discover new blogs on a site. Thus, it is crucial that you check your sidebar links as well as blogrolls frequently to avoid the issue of dead links and irrelevant content.

Make sure that the sidebar links are working & up-to-date. (if you are linking out)

And your blogroll displays new & recently updated blogs.

#5. UPGRADE WORDPRESS TO THE LATEST VERSION

Another essential WordPress website maintenance factor, in order to not miss out on new features and to ensure that your site’s security is robust, it is critical that you always upgrade your site to the latest version of WordPress.

WordPress is always evolving and when you receive an upgrade message in your WordPress dashboard, be sure to run an upgrade to prevent your site from getting hacked.

#6. DELETE SPAM COMMENTS

One of the reasons for your site’s slow loading speed is spam comments. These comments unnecessarily take up a lot of your website’s space leading to poor website speed and hence, to ensure that your website is clutter-free and optimised, it is important to delete spam comments permanently. Try out Delete Pending Comments plugin to clear out spam comments in bulk.

Also, another option is to use the WordPress Akismet plugin.

This plugin automatically checks all comments and filters out the one that looks like spam, thereby saving you a lot of time that would have been otherwise spent on comment moderation.

#7. DELETE UNWANTED THEMES

Outdated themes are one of the common causes for a hacked website. It makes your site vulnerable & poses a risk to your website’s security and thus, it is crucial that you delete unwanted/unused themes from your WordPress themes directory right away.

#8. DELETE UNWANTED PLUGINS

Too many plugins can affect your site’s speed as they eat into your database space. Plus, they compromise your site’s security. Hence, as a part of your WordPress website maintenance, it is critical that you uninstall unnecessary plugins, which will help de-clutter and optimise your WordPress website.

#9. UPDATE YOUR WORDPRESS PLUGINS

In tandem with deleting unwanted plugins, it is also important to update the plugins which are activated on your site. Since obsolete plugins leave your site open to malicious hacks, to prevent this, make sure to always update your plugins to the latest version.

#10. UPDATE YOUR WORDPRESS THEME

Similarly, for added features & functionality and to improve your site’s security, it is also essential that keep your WordPress theme up-to-date.

#11. UPDATE YOUR WORDPRESS WIDGETS

WordPress Widgets are simple to use and help you to customise your site’s layout. It provides you with added functionality that makes navigating your site easy and as such, like WordPress plugins & themes, updating your widgets are also important as it helps enhance your site’s functionality & performance as well as helps to tighten up your site’s security.

#12. CLEAR TRASH

You may not be aware of it, but items – be it page, post, comments or media files – which are moved to trash continue to take up your database space until they are permanently deleted. Hence, clearing out your database trash should be a part of your daily maintenance, to ensure that your website runs and functions smoothly.

Also, while the default for clearing trash in WordPress is set to 30 days, you can change this to your preference or simply disable trash completely by adding the below-mentioned code to your wp-config.php file.

#13. WEBSITE SECURITY MONITORING

From taking regular backups & making updates to checking your site for performance issue, fixing vulnerabilities & security loopholes, it is essential to monitor your website’s security on a daily basis to keep your site safe from phishing, spamming, malware and other malicious attacks.

#14. MEDIA FILES CLEAN UP

One of the main reasons you run out of storage space on your website is because of temporary and redundant media files. Over time your website may be cluttered up with unused images, which if not checked & rectified can remain in your media folder for days on end.

Therefore, to improve the performance & speed of your website, it is important that you clear up these unnecessary junk from your media library immediately.

Best part, WordPress has a plugin called Image Cleanup that makes your task of clearing up redundant media files a breeze.

#15. OPTIMISE DATABASE TABLES

An important issue that is often overlooked during website maintenance service, clearing database tables that are left behind after you have deleted a plugin or a theme will help to optimise your WordPress database leading to improve website speed.

To fix this issue, you can make use of the WPDBSpringClean plugin, if you are unable to perform this task manually.

#16. TEST BROWSER & DEVICE COMPATIBILITY

If your website runs on different browsers and devices, then checking its compatibility on each of them is important if you don’t want to lose out on potential traffic.

Also, since Google loves website’s that are “responsive”, making your site mobile-friendly is essential, if you want to avoid getting penalised by Google.

You can test web browser compatibility on Cross Browser Testing or BrowserStack and for checking mobile compatibility use Google mobile-friendly test.

#17. CHECK YOUR DOWNLOAD LINKS

Imagine clicking on a link to download something and it doesn’t work. Annoying, right? This is what your visitors feel too, when they can’t download stuff they want. Therefore, to improve your site’s usability and accessibility and to reduce bounce rate, it is important that you check your download links regularly.

#18. CHECK SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

One of the best ways to generate more leads as well as to increase your email subscribers list is to add social sharing buttons to your content across your website. This makes it easier for your visitors to share your content, leading to improved content visibility as well as an increase in referral traffic.

Moreover, social signals can influence your site’s ranking on SERPs and therefore, it is essential to keep the social media links on your website up-to-date to avoid losing out on traffic.

#19. IMAGES OPTIMISATION

Image optimisation is an important part of on-page SEO. By using optimised images on your site, you are able to improve search engine indexing leading to enhance user experience. Plus, it helps improve your content marketing strategy, resulting in a higher ranking on search engines.

• How to optimise images on your site?

Check out this guide that explains in detail how to optimise your images for improved SEO.

#20. REFRESH HEADER BANNER AND SITE IMAGES

Since the visual elements on a website are the foremost thing that instantly captures a user’s attention, keeping them (header banner & site images) fresh at all times is important. This will help you to not only increase your site’s traffic, but it will also help to improve your site’s functionality as well as performance.

#21. CHECK YOUR SITE’S NAVIGATION

A user-friendly navigation is of utmost importance for a blog/website to be successful. Unruly navigation is a major source of frustration for users and can lead to high bounce rate. Thus, to avoid this, it is pivotal to check all navigation links on your site to ensure smooth & hassle-free user experience.

#22. CHECK EMAIL OPT-IN AND CONTACT FORMS FUNCTIONALITY

This is one factor in the WordPress website maintenance checklist that you need to pay special attention to, especially, if emails and contact forms are your primary source of generating leads for your business.

Checking on the functionality of these 2 on a daily basis is absolutely crucial and will ensure that you are not losing out on potential customers, resulting in improve sales and better conversion rate.

#23. REVIEW GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Google Analytics provides insights on how well your site is performing along with suggestions on what needs to be improved upon to boost productivity.

Keeping an eye on it will help you figure out key metrics such as pageviews, traffic results, bounce rate, goals, conversions as well as it will help you to identify errors that need to be fixed on your site like malfunctioning, crawl errors, loading issues etc.

Thus, reviewing Google Analytics on a weekly basis is a must, to ensure smooth functioning of your site as well as to improve your SEO campaign.

#24. CHECK GOOGLE CONSOLE (WEBMASTER) TOOLS

Google Console is one of the most powerful and free SEO tools that needs to be checked on a daily basis as it provides vital information about your site’s performance such as backlinks, keywords, search queries, deadlinks, crawling & indexing activities and more. Utilising this tool will help you keep your site up-to-date, resulting in more organic traffic and improve ROI.

For more information, check out this beginner’s guide on Google Search Console by Moz.

#25. REMOVE DRAFTS & POST REVISIONS

If you blog on a regular basis, chances are that your database is clogged with post revisions & drafts and if you have limited database space, this could affect your site’s speed. Hence, in order to optimise your site, it is important that you clean up drafts & post revisions on a weekly basis.

What’s more, you can easily accomplish this task by installing the WP-Optimize plugin.

This plugin will effectively clean up all the drafts, post revisions & unnecessary data, thus keeping your WordPress database optimised.

#26. CHECK RESOURCES USED

As mentioned before, too many unnecessary plugins can affect your site’s loading time making it sluggish. Thus, to keep your site’s speed optimal, it is essential that you monitor the resources used by various plugins on your website.

• How do you monitor your plugins?

It’s simple! Just download & install the P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) plugin

This plugin will analyse all the other plugins on your website and will provide you with a visual breakdown as to which plugins are making your site slower.

#27. VALIDATING YOUR WEBSITE

To ensure that the web pages on your website are not violating any norms or standards set by the W3C organisation, it is critical that you validate your website from time to time. Validating also helps you unearth errors in your code, thus preventing hacking attempts and making your site secure.

• How do you validate your website?

Make use the W3C Markup Validation Service to validate your website. Also, to know more about Validation, check out this guide.

#28. DISABLE AUTOMATIC WORDPRESS UPDATES

While automatic updates are mainly for your site’s maintenance and security, allowing WordPress a free reign to make changes is not in the best interest of your site. Since the chances of automatic updates breaking your site are very high, disabling it is important from security as well as SEO perspective.

• How do you disable automatic WordPress updates?

Add the following code to your wp-config.php file, to manually disable automatic WordPress updates.

#29. BACKUP YOUR WORDPRESS DATABASE

Backing up your WordPress database is of utmost importance, in order to ensure that your business doesn’t suffer a major setback in the event something goes wrong.

Taking a backup of your plugins settings, user accounts, menus, themes settings and other will help you restore all if your site goes down entirely. Plus, thanks to the WP Database Backup plugin, you can backup your entire database at a click of a button.

#30. TAKE DAILY BACKUPS

Along with your database, it is also important that you take backups of all your posts, pages, media files etc on a daily basis. This is a vital WordPress website maintenance routine and will ensure that you have all the important data at hand, in the event, your website gets hacked or in the case of a server failure.

Best part, WordPress has powerful plugins such as BackUpWordPress and BackupBuddy that’ll aid you in backing up your entire site, including your database at a schedule that best suits you.

#31. UPDATE YOUR CONTENT

Fresh content attracts both – users as well as search engine spiders. By continually updating your site’s content, you are providing search engine spiders with a reason to visit your site, leading to frequent search engine indexing of web pages, resulting in a higher ranking on search results as well as improved user experience & more traffic.

#32. REVIEW META TITLE & META DESCRIPTION TAGS

Optimised meta tags and description are an important on-page SEO factor that helps to improve your site’s CTRs.

A unique, well-written meta tag with relevant keywords inspires curiosity, thereby getting you that all important click & increasing your ranking and thus, it is important that you review meta tags from time-to-time.

#33. POSTING MAINTENANCE

Another daily maintenance routine, it is always wise to keep your post or web pages private and check it for any irregularities before you go live with it. Since it’s not uncommon to make small mistakes when getting your blog/web pages live, by keeping it private and re-checking your post you are able to fix errors, thus saving yourself a considerable amount of time and unnecessary hassle later on.

Read this Blog Post Checklist that explains things that you need to check before publishing your blog post.

#34. REVIEW ON-PAGE-SEO

On-page SEO is the key that helps you optimise your blog/website for search engines as well as users. It is an important factor that’ll determine the success of your website and thus, it is crucial that you put special efforts into this strategy if you want to make your site SEO friendly.

• What comprises of on-page SEO?

Well, here is a comprehensive SEO checklist that explains in-depth the key on-page as well as off-page SEO factor that you need to implement on your site.

#35. REVIEW YOUR ABOUT US PAGE

The About Us page is often the most viewed webpage on a website. Apart from explaining what sets you apart from your competitors, the About Us page provides vital information as to who you are, what are your core expertises, what services you provide etc and hence, keeping it up-to-date is pivotal if you want to improve your brand’s credibility.

#36. CHECK WEBSITE SECURITY

Website security should be given a top priority on your WordPress website maintenance checklist to ensure that your website is functioning smoothly and is safe from all malware, viruses and other internet security threats.

Moreover, managing this task becomes easier thanks to the availability of a wide range of WordPress security plugins like WordFence, iThemes Security, All In One WP Security & Firewall among others.

#37. CHECK YOUR SITE’S FEEDS

RSS feeds automatically updates subscribers each time you publish fresh content or make new changes to your site. Therefore, to avoid losing traffic it is vital to keep an eye on your RSS feeds.

Read more about the RSS feeds and its uses, here!

#38. DISABLE TRACKBACKS AND PINGBACKS

Trackbacks & Pingbacks, when enabled on a WordPress website, notifies blog owners when other blogs link to them. However, while before this method was useful, today it has become just an annoyance & a spamming tool and thus, if you want to curtail spam on your website, then it is important that you completely disable trackbacks and pingbacks from your WordPress site.

• How to disable trackbacks and pingbacks?

Login to your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings – Discussion page.

Now, under the heading “default article settings” uncheck the box that says ‘Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles.”

#39. REPLY TO COMMENTS

Replying to comments help improve user engagement as well as maximises your brand’s credibility. It also shows your audience that you are knowledgeable about the topic at hand, thus making you an authority in your niche industry. Plus, it helps improve visibility as the more interaction you have on your blog, the better that blog would rank on search results.

To know more about the importance of replying to comments, read this blog by Neil Patel.

#40. UPDATE COPYRIGHT DATE IN YOUR FOOTER

An updated website helps build user trust in your brand. It shows your audience that your website matters to you and that you care and as such, keeping your site fresh and up-to-date is important which includes updating your Copyright date.

#41. REMOVE INACTIVE WEBSITE ADMINISTRATORS

Another vital WordPress website maintenance task, removing inactive website administrators is extremely crucial for the overall security of your website.

By overlooking this security loophole, you are leaving your site open to hackers who can easily steal sensitive data or inject malware into your database and thus, in order to prevent this, make sure to remove inactive website administrators from your site immediately.

#42. CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS

One of the most effective ways to prevent malicious attacks & hack attempts on your site is to change your passwords frequently. Think of a unique password that consists of alphabets, numbers & symbols or make use of the free LastPass tool to generate a strong password for your website.

#43. DEFINE AUTO SAVE INTERVAL

The WordPress “Auto Save” is an extremely handy feature that automatically saves all your pages & posts as you write, thus preventing the risk of losing data in the event of power outages or browser crashes. However, this feature could unnecessarily take up a lot of your database space.

Therefore, to avoid this, it is important that you define “auto save internal” in your wp-config.php file. By doing this you would be able to limit the number of revision saved per post, thus keeping your database optimised.

• How to Control Post Revision?

Add the following code to your wp-config.php file, to limit post revision or to disable it completely.

#44. MALWARE SCANNING

Another critical WordPress website maintenance task, doing a daily or a weekly malware scanning is important to help tighten up your site’s security.

Since common malware like phishing, injection of spams & viruses, malicious redirects etc are on on the rise, adding this extra security layer to your website will ensure that your site is bulletproof against hack attempts.

How to detect Malware on your website?
WordPress Sucuri Security plugin is the best tool to detect malicious threats on your website.

Apart from this, you can also make use of other WordPress security plugins like WP Antivirus Site Protection plugin or Wordfence Security plugin.

#45. DISABLE THE DEBUG MODE

Add the below-mentioned code to your wp-config.php file to disable the debug mode on your WordPress website.

This will help prevent error messages from being published on your live site.

#46. CHECK WEB HOST STATISTICS

Checking up on server uptime, bandwidth usage, disk space, CPU throttling is another essential WordPress website maintenance task that you shouldn’t ignore. Monitoring these statistics will ensure that there is no downtime on your website. Plus, you would be aware of any irregularities that need to be dealt with post haste.

#47. RENEW HOSTING & DOMAINS

Timely renewal of hosting and domains is important if you want to avoid downtime time on your website. Since unplanned downtime can have a severe impact on your business, leading to loss of revenue and other additional costs, to avoid this hassle make sure to renew your domain & hosting plans within the stipulated time.

#48. INCREASE MEMORY LIMIT

The memory limit in WordPress is by default set at 32MB. However, as your business grows it is important that you review and increase your site’s memory limit (Disk space) in order to seamlessly upload images, videos, and other files.

To accomplish this task, you can either contact your web host provider or you can do this manually by adding the following code to your wp-config.php file.

#49. CHECK AFFILIATE LINKS

Affiliate links are one of the easiest & simplest ways to make some extra money through your blog. Thus, if you have affiliate links on your website, then keeping them up-to-date is essential to avoid penalty from Google as well as to avoid losing out on potential traffic and sales.

#50. CHECK ADSENSE ADS ON YOUR WEBSITE

Redundant or irrelevant ads can affect your sites click-through-rate. Hence, if you display ads on your website, then make sure to check it periodically to avoid hurting your site’s conversion rate.

#51. RUN SITE THROUGH WP CHECKUP

From site’s security and performance scanning to SEO and more, running a WP Checkup will help identify & fix any issues on your site in a jiffy.