Responsive Website Design Blog | POHL Strategic Marketing

Learning to ask good questions

Posted by admin / Search Optimization, Website Design

Learning to ask good questions is a useful skill for our personal lives, relationships and spiritual connection with God.

Our most recent website this year has been a favourite – mainly due to who the client is! Yes, I’m grateful to call this beautiful woman my wife.

This small project required a website as a destination for women seeking guidance, prayer help and coaching as they connect to God through prayer.

Key contributions to the project included:

convincing her to “put herself out there” as a prayer coach so more people can benefit from learning to ask God good questions : )
finding appropriate visuals for some of the themes of the website ( most of the photos were sourced on Unsplash, with many photos by @priscilladupreez)
developing a Q & A page to address some of the questions people may encounter (more to come)
doing search optimization research and implementation for a few applicable search terms

As the Guided Prayer Coach website gains greater exposure in the New Year, we look forward to more women connecting to Jesus in prayer. Here’s to 2023!

See Deanne’s website here:

https://guidedprayercoach.com/

24
Mar

Strategic Inbound Marketing Partnership Poises Mid-sized Company for Growth

Posted by admin / Latest News, Marketing, Search Optimization, Website Design

Already a successful company due to the trust it’s customers place in the people of this company, Denbow – a leading provider of landscape mulch, soils and green sustainability, is poised for continued growth into 2016. Sales research by Wiebe Industrial showed a healthy sales close percentage but inbound marketing leads were limiting business growth.

Denbow contracted Constructiv Works and POHL Strategic Marketing to evaluate their current digital strategy and tactics and generate an optimized inbound strategy that would make the best use of a range of digital tools including website, online advertising, blogging, social media, SEO (search engine optimization) and email. Gary Davey of Constructiv Works observed,

“It’s not that our clients are doing everything wrong. They often do some of the right things and just need a little guidance and help to make the little adjustments that can have a massive impact.”

And this was the case with Denbow. Jason and Gary came alongside the team to develop the strategy, identify and paint a clear picture of who Denbow’s key customers are through a persona development process.

Other strategy pieces were developed including the company brand promise, customer centric approach and a continual user engagement as integral components of the marketing strategy. Once the marketing strategy was solidified a website rebuild was initiated and the launch of the new website was celebrated on Feb 29, 2016 (also Jason’s birthday).

The new website had a number of key areas of improvement over the old website:

Structure
The previous website had products and services grouped together by industry on a single page labeled ‘Solutions’. Searching for a specific product or service would require 2-4 clicks and often resulted in the need to download a PDF document in order to get to the specifics.

Ease of navigation was the objective with the new website. Jason Pohl of POHL Strategic Marketing states,

“The faster the website visitor finds the information desired, the better the user experience. This makes for happier customers and faster sales. A true win-win.”

All the products and services can be reached in a single click from the mega-menu on the home page. Products and services are also grouped into product and service subgroups in case a customer isn’t exactly sure of the specific use or application.

Searching by Industry as well as Professional testimonials of some of the key personas identified in the initial Marketing Strategy are highlighted in the main navigation of the site.

Design
The Denbow brand colours are maintained throughout the new website. The logo displays on a white background with a minimum ¼” margin to avoid visual clutter and competition with the brand message.

Important information is communicated higher up in the page, highlighted by headings and makes use of black text on white for optimal sales credibility.

Large banner images with an inherent “human” element include employees performing the services provided by Denbow and give a strong visual cue of the attention to detail that Denbow pays to customer satisfaction.

Search Friendly
Based on previous keyword research each page was optimized for a keyword or group of keywords and a meta description was crafted to provide context for pages showing up in Google search results. Image keyword optimization, image size optimization, internal linking and links to external authoritative sites were all a part of building a website that is easily found by Google and prospective customers.

Concurrently, a tuning of Adwords advertising and remarketing strategy along with the new website upgrades helped bring a lift in new visitors to the website of almost double that of the previous year!

Denbow Marketing Manager Willetta Les demonstrated her satisfaction with the result of the new website,

“Wonderful, impressive job, guys. Kudos…. – you’re a dream team to work with.”

As of April 1, POHL Strategic and Constructiv Works will begin the roll-out of a marketing calendar of ongoing on-site and off-site search engine optimization, online advertising, social media engagement and content development of relevant information for Denbow customers and prospective customers.

As we attract customers with relevant needs to the Denbow website, we gain satisfaction in know that those who arrive there will not be disappointed. “Delivering Satisfaction” really is more than just a tagline and actually speaks to the level of commitment Denbow has to their customers.

10
Jun

Commercial Listings Website Launch

Posted by admin / Latest News, Website Design

Konrad Commercial has been a long time client with a simple commercial listings website that was originally built on Joomla. It ranked reasonably well for many years and has been the main promotional medium for the company.

Challenge

Since Google’s recent algorithm change, a website’s mobile search rankings are demoted if it does not display well on mobile devices. Konrad Commercial was not mobile-friendly. In addition, it was a bit of a bear to update and add new listings. Time to step into 2015 with a responsive WordPress website.

Solution

The move to WordPress was a step in the right direction to achieve ease of content management going forward. However, though we initially started the project intending to use a “real estate listings” plugin, it became clear that it was going to be too restrictive for our client’s needs.

With the help of the awesome Advanced Custom Fields plugin we were able to craft a custom solution using Wordpress’ default post type. The result was an easy-to-edit, flexible and responsive listings solution. A better targeted and implemented on-site keyword strategy will also help improve search engine visibility.

Result

Though it’s too early for results, the on-site SEO improvements and Twitter integration should help boost traffic to the website. The enhanced user experience for mobile will serve prospective customers, realtors, business owners and ultimately our client, well.

04
Apr

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Ranking Signal Deadline

Posted by admin / Mobile-Friendly Search, Search Optimization

In the past month I’ve been getting notifications from Google that the mobile rankings of some of my client’s websites would be affected due to their inability to display properly on mobile devices. This informative article that I discovered via MOZ’s weekly newsletter, states that as of April 21, 2015, Google will make ‘mobile-friendly’ a ranking signal. This means that if your website doesn’t display well on mobile, according to Google’s criteria, your website will rank lower on mobile search requests. With 25-50% of users on mobile devices (depending on the industry and demographic of users), this could seriously affect web traffic on a previously well-optimized website.

Google’s ‘mobile-friendly’ test

Wondering how your website will fare with this algorithm update? The Google Developers site provides feedback on if you website is mobile-friendly or not. Simply type in the URL of your website and it will return a screenshot of how your site displays on a phone, along with the mobile-friendly response.

So, if your website doesn’t fare so well in the eyes of mobile-focused Google, what are your options? According to insight gleaned from the preceding articles, here they are:

1. Make some pages mobile friendly

With a limited budget, it might make sense to make the highest traffic pages on your website mobile-friendly, as a short-term solution.

2. Add a separate ‘mobile-friendly’ website

This can be achieved by plugins or template sets that are optimized for mobile. This may be a good option for high-traffic e-commerce websites but for most this is not the most effective or cost-effective solution.

3. Responsive site rebuild

If it’s been more than 3 years since the last website build, this option makes the most sense. Most companies or organizations could use a content or brand refresh within that timeframe. With the growing trend towards mobile and tablet use, a website optimized for all devices (mobile, tablet & desktop) makes the most sense from a brand, user experience and long-term budgeting perspective.

Let me know your thoughts below. If you need more information or are interested in learning more about your options, we invite you to get in touch.

07
Mar

Lead and Client Nurturing

Posted by admin / Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing

DID YOU KNOW?

NURTURING PROVIDES UP TO 375% LEAD GROWTH
Managing prospect relationships in the early stages of a sales cycle is one of the most effective ways to ensure a steady and predictable delivery of qualified leads that are ready to buy.

Are your qualified prospects and clients falling through the cracks due to lack of attention?

Companies engaged in technical and complex sales typically have a sales cycle of between 6 months and 3 years. For each of these companies, short-sighted marketing strategies have limited effectiveness – a sustained lead management strategy is required to keep the business top-of-mind until the prospect is ready to buy.

Qualified leads and clients may not be ready to buy immediately but if they can be engaged in a conversation that is of value to them (not just hearing about your company’s products or services), you will be top-of-mind when they are ready to buy. Enrolling prospects into an opt-in automated nurturing track gives you the ability to track and measure which lead generation efforts are most effective in producing qualified leads that convert to a sale.

Our lead nurturing services include:

Strategy and Sales Integration

Automated program development – personalized integration of email, direct mail and/or phone dialogue
Marketing automation software (Marketo, Act-On) setup and integration
Lead qualification & scoring
Coordination with sales to facilitate the lead hand-off

Ongoing Analysis & Support

Recommendations based on web analytics
Newsletters
Email campaigns
Development and/or re-packaging of existing sales materials into resources that are *relevant* and useful to your prospects and clients

22
Jun

Abbotsford Website Design Company

Posted by admin / Website Design

POHL Strategic Marketing provides Abbotsford website design services that engage your target client and deliver a clear call to action. We help you refine your sales message and develop a professional, compelling website that sets you apart from your competitors.

Whether your business is seeking to reach a market located within Abbotsford, the Lower Mainland, Greater Vancouver or worldwide, our web design and development services can help you gain professional exposure that will help you sell your product or service.

RESPONSIVE WEBSITE DESIGN OPTIONS

We work with you to deliver an appropriate online solution that is in line with your business objectives and budget. We work with clients that have an existing website, to refine the brand and provide an updated website design. We have experience working with multiple CMS’ (Content Management Systems) but specialize in WordPress and Shopify, providing integration and development on these platforms.

A typical website design process includes working with a designer to integrate existing company branding, logos or colours in the new design. Several design options and revisions are provided and once the client has approved the design, the design is built into a responsive web template that is integrated into the CMS.

For a lower-budget website, we will typically purchase a template that can be altered slightly by the designer to fit company branding. In either case integration into a CMS allows for scalable growth of the website and control of the content by the client.

Some of the additional services we provide include:

ongoing website management
marketing strategy assessment
email marketing campaigns
search engine optimization (SEO)
pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
social media strategy consulting

07
Oct

Online Lead Generation: Is it right for your company?

Posted by admin / Lead Generation

On the web many companies tend to provide services for segments of the lead generation process, such as search engine optimization (SEO), without any attention to guiding the buyer to that important point of decision or “conversion”. Our online lead generation services are provided in consultation and alignment with your sales objectives, building your opt-in house lists of leads and clients for further nurturing.

Our online lead generation services include:

Web Development
- Design & (re-)branding
- Responsive design implementation
- WordPress and Shopify website development
Search Optimization
- Keyword research and recommendations
- On-site search optimization
- Off-site optimization (social media assets, trade directories, articles)
Sales Conversion Optimization
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Landing page optimization
- Subscription page optimization
- Copy writing
- Testing for quantifiable results

Much of the online content developed by our team is also transferable to other mediums such as printed product spec sheets or company brochures.

Once we’ve helped you develop a set of qualified leads, we are able to provide lead and client nurturing services that keep your prospects engaged with your product or service.

02
Aug

Abbotsford Marketing Services

Posted by admin / Marketing

POHL Strategic Marketing provides online Abbotsford marketing services that engage your target client and deliver a clear call to action. We help you refine your sales message and develop professional, compelling marketing tools that set you apart from your competitors.

Whether your business is seeking to market locally within Abbotsford, the Lower Mainland, Greater Vancouver or worldwide, our online marketing services can help you gain exposure and sell your product or service. Some of the services we provide include:

marketing strategy assessment
web design, re-design and branding
email marketing campaigns
search engine optimization (SEO)
pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
social media strategy consulting

ABBOTSFORD AND GREATER VANCOUVER B2B MARKETING SERVICES

Our business-to-business (B2B) marketing services are delivered in alignment with your company’s existing sales strategies – with the aim to engage the prospective customer in a conversation around your products and/or services. This engagement is initiated through our online lead generation services and is further developed through a lead and client nurturing program that delivers relevant resources to your prospects.

These services are tracked and measured using analytics software that delivers quantifiable results of each campaign or initiative. Our efforts produce the best results when we receive feedback from sales regarding which efforts generate the best leads and which messages are most effective in the conversation with the buyer.

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