Tiny_Coast

Hi there, In my experience, if you have both GA and tag manager running on a page (rather than just tag manager) it can sometimes be interpreted as a duplicate view and skew the bounce rate very low. Hopefully this issues clears up for you 🙂

The best thing you can do before you start with paid social is to get clear with what you are trying to accomplish. For example, is this a branding exercise? Are you looking for email signups or engagement with a free trial? Or are you looking for someone to make a purchase? From there, you can make sure you have the necessary tracking in place to measure what you are trying to achieve. You can also place a dollar amount on different metrics. If you are using paid social to drive conversions, but the acquisition cost is more than your product (and margins), paid social may not be worth it. A better route may be using google search ads because people have more search intent and are more likely to convert. However, it is always essential to think about your corresponding landing page experience to understand where the disconnect arises if you have a great click-through rate on your ads but aren't seeing the results you'd like. If, however, paid social is excellent for bringing in people who are eager to do a free trial, and each new client is worth more than the cost of acquisition, social may be a great channel for you. In my experience, start with a small budget, and test a few different types of messaging, and creative and see if people are engaging with your creative. Try a few different formats, and landing pages, and once you start to get some traction, you can increase your ad spend. In time, hopefully, you'll have a rough idea how much an email sign up, or download, or purchase usually costs via different ad channels. Different types of ads are better suited to branding vs people actively searching out a solution. Before you start with paid social you want to consider: 1. goals of your paid social efforts 2. your audience (personas?) 3. messaging - what kind of messaging resonates? 4. creative - what kind of ad formats resonate? 5. social channel - what channel is best suited to your audience (LinkedIn, instagram etc) 6. call to action - what do you want people to do 7. landing page experience and URL (where are you sending people, and does your ad messaging mirror your landing page?) 8. Cost (is this channel helping your business financially)

Love the blog articles. Very inspiring 😊

It is a lot of effort, but I do think one of the best things you can do is offer something of value. That may come in the form of tutorials, discounts, free trials, information, engaging content, etc). It is important to establish what your audience finds valuable, and when (do they need a free trial to consider purchasing your product, or a discount to encourage them to buy from you again. Different people are likely at different stages of the buyers journey and have different interests - so digging into web analytics, social comments, sending out surveys, or doing some of your own experimentation can help you determine what kinds of offers / content to offer your audience at different stages of the buyers journey.

When it comes to expanding into new channels, I think it can be very helpful to evaluate your short and long term website / digital marketing goals. SEO and content strategy can be a long game, so if you are looking for leads or sales in the more immediate future, you may wan to invest your time and resources into paid ads, while you simultaneously work on growing your discoverability in search engines. Once you define your short and long term goals, it can help to do a digital marketing SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) to prioritize your marketing efforts. Examples: How well do you rank in search engines? How expensive are paid ads in your industry? (can you acquire customers at a reasonable cost of conversion?) Do you have a good social following on all / some channels? (Can you engage these channels. Does a certain type of content perform well? Would it be valuable to expand this type of content to different channels (ie tik tok) Is your conversion rate high? (if you increase your traffic, and maintain your conversion rate, could this be very profitable for you?) Is your traffic great but conversion rate low? (could you improve your UX / messaging and increase your conversion rate) Once you determine opportunities you'll be able to think about your audience and the kind of content that resonates with them and get more tactical with campaign planning. For example, deciding on messaging, CTAs, destination URLs and so on.

I think the site looks really solid and polished. It was not overly intuitive to me that these were blog posts that I should click into. Perhaps considering adding a CTA to read more. I understand that you may want a clean look that doesn't include a button, but perhaps even "Read Review → " under the title. In the actual articles you have a lot of great content but it may be worth adding headings to keep people engaged. Best of luck!

Site URL: https://tinycoastdigital.com/webdesign Hello! I have a simple table on my web design page and it works well on desktop and mobile, but not on tablet. https://tinycoastdigital.com/webdesign I've been trying to adjust some css, but not having any success. The table is designed using markup - on tablet, rather than adjusting to the screen size and pushing into vertical columns, the tables get very long and skinny, and the text gets quite jumbled. Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance!! 🙂 Here's the table:

Hi all, I put together a free marketing resources page to kick off the new year. It includes worksheets for campaign planning, defining your services and products, and getting clear on your audience. Hope some of you find it helpful 🙂 https://tinycoastdigital.com/digital-marketing-resources

Site URL: https://tinycoastdigital.com/digital-marketing-for-beginners-course Hi all, I built out an online course that links out to the Thinkific platform. Ideally, the course would exist within Squarespace. Is anyone aware of any upcoming plans for Squarespace to create a course creation feature? Alternatively, has anyone used member areas to create the experience of an online course, and would you recommend it? Any help would be very appreciated. Thank you!

This is a great question! One thing I think is important to consider is that your google ads campaigns don't exist in isolation - your website and marketing strategy also play a big role. When you are creating ad campaigns you want to make sure you have tracking set up so you can measure your results and iterate as you go. When it comes to setting up your ad campaigns, I think it can be tempting for people to send traffic to a homepage. Rather than sending people to a page where they need to dig through a bunch information (like a homepage) , consider the goal of your ad campaign, and send people to an individual landing page. For example, if you are a bakery, you might not want to send people to a homepage that showcases your coffee, and muffins and office catering options if someone is specifically searching for "birthday cakes." Instead, you may find more success sending them to a page specifically about your birthday cake offerings. This is even more important when you consider a mobile experience. People looking to efficiently order a birthday cake may land on your homepage, find themselves confused or even frustrated, and not even get to the part where you showcase your birthday cake offerings). You don't want to pay for clicks to have someone leave right away. Landing pages should have a narrow focus, and the copy used on your landing page should mirror your ad copy in your campaigns (this can help with quality score). A good landing page has the following components: Your unique value proposition Features & benefits Testimonials & social proof A hero image that draws people in Call to action (CTA - what do you want people to do?) Lead capture form (what information do you want to collect) Here is a more detailed post on creating landing pages for paid ads. Hope this helps :)

I have noticed softer, calmer colours have been very popular in the last year or so. This is a fun tool you may want to check out: https://coolors.co/

Creating content is a lot of work! Before getting started it is well worth it to take a bit of time to consider your content goals. Before creating content I find it is valuable to try and answer these questions: 1) Is this piece of content for someone who may be learning about my services for the first time, or someone who is familiar but may need a bit more information before making a decision? 2) Who am I communicating with? What are my buyer personas? 3) Based on what I know about my audience or potential audience, what kind of content will they engage with or find valuable? What kind of creative would appeal to them? 4) What channels are the best to reach my audience? 5) What is my call to action? 6) Do I have measurement in place so I can tell what is working and what isn't? I wrote a blog post breaking down this process in more detail - https://tinycoastdigital.com/insights/content-marketing-101 Thanks 😊

Thought this article did a great job looking at conversion rate and using people in pictures. Learn more here: https://vwo.com/blog/human-landing-page-increase-conversion-rate/

hello! I offer digital marketing and web design services for small business owners. Stepping out and working on my own rather than agency or in house positions has been a great new adventure. You can learn more at tinycoastdigital.com Looking forward to learning about everyone's businesses 😊

Digital marketing can feel very overwhelming. Most people know they need digital marketing, but it is hard to know where to start. It is best to get very clear on your business goals and your audience to remove all the noise. When you decide on your goals, make sure you get clear on what you want to achieve. For example, rather than saying "I want more website traffic," call out what you really want - "I want to increase sales by 10% in the next six months." Increased traffic with a high bounce rate and low time on site likely isn't a win for your business and, therefore, will not help you reach your goals. Reaching your goal of increased sales may require more traffic but a better strategy for reaching your goal is probably something more concrete, like "gaining ten qualified leads a month." Once you know that you are going to hit your sales goal by increasing your qualified leads, you can think about HOW you will do that. Addressing your goals allows you to narrow in on where you can improve and where to invest your time and effort. Perhaps you already have a lot of traffic, but you need to hone in on your messaging and increase your conversion rate. Alternatively, you may have great UX and messaging, but you need more traffic to increase your conversion rate and reach your goal. Once you have established your audience and goals, tools and tactics become much clearer. Next, you can get more tactical and think about the kind of content to create and what channels are best for reaching your goal. Before you set out on paid ads, I think it is essential to make sure you can communicate what you offer and why your product or service is of value. This kind of messaging will be key for ad and landing page copy. From there, make sure you have tracking, like google analytics installed, so you can test and measure results. A lot of digital marketing is experimentation, and measurement lets you know where to invest more resources or change direction. It is always good to remember digital marketing is holistic. So, for example, if you have an excellent click-through rate on your ads, but your landing page isn't performing well, consider how you can improve your landing page. Thank you 🙂

Hi there, I am currently trying out Thinkific. At this point it is a bit of a disjointed ad on - you can see the Squarespace component here https://tinycoastdigital.com/shop and the course here https://tinycoastdigital.thinkific.com/courses/digital-marketing-for-beginners. I haven't done enough digging into it but it does look like Thinkific has some opportunities for integration with Squarespace. Some more information on that here: https://support.thinkific.com/hc/en-us/articles/360030720213-How-to-Link-Thinkific-With-Your-Existing-Website Hope this helps 🙂

Font is a creative and practical choice. It can play a big role in your brand personality, and it also needs to be easy to read. Another consideration is that the fonts you use pair well together and work across all of your marketing materials (ebooks, social assets, downloads and so on). https://www.typewolf.com/ is a great site for discovering different fonts and font pairings. It also provides free font alternatives which is super helpful.

I think this is a great question. I think one thing to consider is the cost of acquisition. Digital strategy should be part of your larger business strategy - it is important to consider how you will drive traffic, margins, and cost per conversion. In-person, for example, you may have a great location with lots of foot traffic. Online, however, you may be up against several competitors and rank poorly in search engines. You may want to do a SWOT of your digital properties. For example, perhaps you have poor SEO, but a great social following or email list - this gives you an idea of channels you can prioritize and where you need to allocate more energy to grow. Additionally, you want to clarify how much you are willing to pay per lead/conversion. For example, if your product sells for $20, your margin is 40%, and it costs $6 to acquire each customer through paid ads, you will need to sell a lot of your product or consider other methods of driving traffic. Having clear goals in mind and stating the tactics you plan to use to reach those goals can help keep you on track. Thanks 🙂

Site URL: https://tinycoastdigital.com/ Hi All, I created a guide for growing your business with content marketing. The guide covers establishing your audience, picking the right channels, deciding on the right content types, on and off page SEO, and more. I've personally found content very helpful in increasing my visibility in search engines, and hope you find this guide helpful 🙂 You can find it here: https://tinycoastdigital.com/insights/content-marketing-101

Site URL: https://tinycoastdigital.com/ Hi All, I put together a list of digital marketing resources. Topics covered include content strategy, landing pages, website traffic and more. Please feel free to check it out at https://pin.it/1dNuAZT. Hope it is helpful!

Good question! For me, a qualified lead (form fill) is a conversion. As such, I find time on page a valuable indicator. Of course, KPIs are often contextual, and a lengthy time on page isn't always a good thing - perhaps people are confused, and calls to action aren't clear. In my case, however, time on page gives me a good idea of if people are landing somewhere that meets expectations. If I'm running ads through search, display, or paid social and my click-through rate (CTR) is good, but time on page is short, it is an indication that my landing page doesn't appropriately align with what they were hoping to find. I also find traffic sources valuable - this gives you an idea of how different channels are performing and if they are contributing towards conversion, and where there are opportunities to build out a larger content strategy. Looking forward to hearing what other people find helpful :)

1) Use headings to help google understand and prioritize your content and to help improve usability for website visitors. 2) Don't create spammy copy for the sake of SEO. Also, don't get so caught up in clever copy that you miss out on SEO. Strive to create content that considers SEO and brand voice. 3) Write as you naturally would. Yes, add headings and keywords, but do so in a way that it would happen organically.

For me personally I always try to capture what exactly myself or the client is offering above the fold. Perhaps if you are a massive brand or very recognized with signature creative, this is less of an issue for you. If you plan on using tools like Google Ads to drive traffic, you may want to emphasize communicating your service or product above the fold. You don't want to leave potential clients confused about what you do or offer, and waste ad spend. A brand with recognizable creative, however, may have the advantage of someone already knowing what they offer and find themselves less concerned with confusing potential customers.

I think it is easy to get caught up in creating content and posting on social without having a clear idea of how the content fits into business goals. Before posting on social, I think you want to have a clear idea of your online business goals (SMART goals), and then you can identify how you want the content to help you get there. From there, you can consider your audience, the kind of information they find valuable, the creative that would resonate, and the best channel to meet them on. You also want to consider what part of the buyer's journey they are on. Some content is excellent for creating brand awareness; other content helps minimize confusion around a product. These are the key questions I think are helpful to consider around content (social included). Because you want to consider destination URLs and so on, it can be very helpful to create a content calendar to keep you organized and on track. What are your content goals? Who is your target audience (who are we trying to reach)? What is your budget for distributing content? What channels (Instagram, LinkedIn, Google display, email, press releases, sponsored content etc.) will you use? What are your destination url(s) (blog posts, landing pages, services pages)? What is your key messaging? Have you decided on your CTA’s "calls to action" (Sign up, Subscribe, etc.) What campaign assets are required (white-paper, free guide, etc.) Do you have creative assets sized for different channels? Do you have tracking and analytics in place?

I really like this website - the copy, imagery, and colours are all working really well together. Well done 😊 I'd consider adding a gallery block with some images highlighting the amenities to the bottom of the homepage just under the book now block. Or, perhaps in place of images, a quick and snappy testimonial to give people one last nudge to click book now.