The quality of your product and service influences customer buying decisions. Their experience does as well. So, how do prospective customers gauge quality and expertise? Often through the reviews and testimonials of others. This social proof gives your business credibility much more than your content.

To gain this social proof advantage, you’ll need a strategy to obtain more testimonials, reviews, and case studies. First, let’s look into the power of social proof and how to get more of it.

The Power of Social Proof

A recent survey revealed that 77% of consumers “always” or “regularly” look at reviews when comparing local businesses. The content of those reviews can shape their decision-making. Only 3% said they would consider a company with an average star rating of two or fewer. While not every review will be five stars, you can manage your reputation by responding to them promptly if complaints arise.

A high volume of positive reviews paints a picture for others of what they can expect. When they read about how you helped another similar customer overcome challenges, they’ll want to know more about your business.

The Path to More Reviews, Testimonials, and Case Studies

Telling great stories about customer experiences is valuable in your pursuit to attract and convert new ones. So, how do you get customers to participate?

Here are some tips for building a reputation management strategy.

• Determine the channels you want to receive reviews. These can include social media, reviews, directories, or third-party websites. If using these, make sure your profiles are complete, accurate, and up to date. You can also ask for direct reviews to publish on your website.
• Emphasize the importance of reviews during the process. Once a customer decides to make a purchase, you can mention how you’d love for them to tell others about their experience. Let customers know that you’re serious about delivering on expectations from the start. This is especially helpful if you want to do a case study before and after.
• Use multiple communication methods to request feedback. There are many ways to ask for reviews. You can do so with email and text messaging. For field service businesses, your technicians can leave behind an insert with instructions. You could also make it part of the invoice you send.
• Create a plan for responses.As noted, not all reviews will be glowing. Regardless of the rating, you should discern how you’ll respond and set a timeframe for this. It’s best to respond as quickly as possible. Using technology tools to alert you to negative reviews will be critical in being timely and responsive. You can reply to the review diplomatically. Also, it would be best to take the conversation offline to follow up on the issue.
• Partner with an agency that uses a third-party review generation and management system. When you do this, it’s off your plate. All you have to do is provide the names and email addresses.

Generate More Social Proof To Win More Business

Social proof has the potential to influence and sway. However, obtaining it isn’t always easy. You’ll need a strategy to do so and a partner that supports local businesses. We’ve been doing this for years and can help you harness social proof to drive engagement. Contact our team today to find out what we offer.

Campaigns in any medium, from paid search to social media advertising to other digital ad types, typically fall into two groups. Those are promotional or brand awareness. Each has its pros, and it’s essential to understand when to use each one. Let’s look at promotional vs. brand awareness campaigns.

What Are Brand Awareness Ads?

A brand awareness ad is about who your brand is and its core messaging. You’d use this type of ad to increase visibility and recall. This ad type will be top-of-the-funnel, meaning users are becoming aware of a problem they need and are considering options.

Here are some brand awareness examples:

• Simple information: This ad conveys what you do, where you are, when you’re open, and other basics.
• Ads to celebrate things like new openings, an anniversary, or “brand” news.
• Ads to expand reach, such as beginning to service a new area or demographic.
• Educational ads that provide content that helps a consumer be more aware of their problems and the solutions available.

What CTAs Should You Use for Brand Awareness Ads?

Since these aren’t offer- or product-specific, your CTA (call to action) could be:

• Learn More
• Find a Location
• Now Available or Now Serving
• Visit Website

What Are Promotional Ads?

Promotional ads do just that: promote. These ads are usually specific to a product or service, and there’s an offer within the ad. These ads have one purpose—conversion. You use them to persuade a consumer to buy or hire your company to fill a need they have.

These ads can be time-limited or ongoing. For example, you may have a sale around a holiday. Or you may have a special discount for first-time customers. You can use them for a product or service launch, too.

CTAs for promotion ads include:

• Buy
• Order
• Get the Promo Code
• Schedule an Appointment
• Receive a Free Estimate

These CTAs are more action-focused and drive the person to take an action that converts them into either a hot lead or a customer.

Brand Awareness vs. Promotional Ads: When to Use Each

Brand awareness and promotion ads have different messaging and objectives. As such, you’ll apply them to different things. Sometimes you may use both. Here are examples for a plumbing company.

Brand Awareness

A plumbing company may run brand awareness campaigns to inform the area of their solutions with a number and website. They could also use this category to remind their audience about when they should contact a plumber.

Promotional

Plumbing businesses can run many promotional ads for specific services like maintenance or emergency help. They can also create promo ads for discounts on services on certain days or for new customers.

Brand Awareness and Promotional

A person may click on an ad that offers educational content on keeping drains clean. At the end of the content, there could be a CTA to schedule an appointment. If the user doesn’t do this, you could use retargeting ads to offer discounts for previously viewed services.

Brand Awareness vs. Promotional Ads: Use Both to Meet Lead Generation Goals

Brand awareness and promotional ads can get you exposure and traffic. By using them thoughtfully, you can connect with audiences, build trust, and gain customers. Need help with digital ads? Contact our experts today to get started.

Your website is for your audience. Its look, feel, and functionality should always prioritize user experience (UX). Often, companies forget that those who land on their website are looking for information, answers, solutions, and products. Failure to present this story and focus on UX can lead to users coming and going swiftly.

So, how do you prioritize UX?

What Is User Experience?

First, let’s define what UX is. It describes a design framework that focuses on aesthetics and function. It’s about creating a digital space that’s easy for a user to understand and navigate. The objective is to create a meaningful, relevant experience for anyone who visits your website.

UX has many components and elements to consider. Next, we’ll define how to ensure UX is a priority for your website.

Prioritizing UX for Your Website

For an existing website, you’d want to start with assessing how simple it is for a visitor to find information and move through pages. Having a design team evaluate this is a good approach. Even if you don’t realize it, you have bias because you know all the things about your company. Users don’t. Here are areas to improve to ensure UX is a priority.

The Mobile Experience

Mobile now dominates online viewing. Most of your prospective customers will be viewing your site on their smartphones. First, your website needs to be responsive, automatically adjusting the scale depending on the device.

But there’s more to mobile UX. It also includes things like:

• Font legibility
• Size of buttons
• Navigation placement
• Image quality
• Scrolling
• Arrangement of content sections

The experience of consuming content and navigating your website on mobile should be seamless. Having a mobile-first approach to design ensures it will be.

Website Speed

If your website is slow to load, users will leave. In the age of 5G and lightning-fast rendering, you only have a few seconds to catch their attention. Often, the culprits of a slow site are unnecessary code, image size, and lots of redirects.

Test your website speed on desktop and mobile. If it’s stalling, you’ll need to look at the backend and make changes to accelerate loading.

Layouts That Engage

No matter your industry or the size of your website, keeping layouts simple and clean is a UX best practice. “Fancy” design elements won’t make an impact if they seem inconsequential to your content. It can easily confuse visitors, and that’s the last thing you want!

Instead, use lots of white space and subtle breaks like lines between content sections. Also, use lots of headers and subheaders to make it easy to read. Bullet lists are great too for scanning.

User Flows Are Smooth

Another part of UX is the user flow. For this component, you’re tracing a user’s journey through your website, asking questions like how many clicks it takes for visitors to find what they need. Web design experts can help you understand how users explore your website from your analytics and identify where roadblocks may be. The more streamlined the user flow, the better the experience.

Make UX a Priority for Your Website

If you haven’t thought about the user experience, it’s time to make it a priority. With these changes, you could see a boost in traffic, time on site, and conversions. To get started, talk to our team of pros today.

Your brand has an identity, and the design elements are its attributes. Often these need a refresh because they appear to others as dated or frozen in the past. So, how fresh is your brand identity, and could it be turning off prospective customers before they ever contact you?

Let’s review what brand identity is and the best steps to modernize it.

What Is Brand Identity?

Brand identity describes all the elements a business develops to portray an image. Those elements are the visual representation of your brand’s style. Brand identity makes you recognizable to others, but that doesn’t always mean it’s positive. Others can have negative feelings about your brand, especially when the design aspects seem outdated.

If you want others to see your brand as modern and relevant, these areas will need improvement.

Typography and Font

Yes, font matters! You want to ensure a few things with typography. First, it needs to be easy to read across all mediums, including everything from print to mobile. There are four main types of fonts:

• Serif: Classic and traditional
• Sans serif: Sleek and modern
• Script: Emulates cursive
• Display: Specialized elements and more unique

There isn’t a “wrong” answer in choosing typography. However, updating serif to sans serif would provide a more contemporary look. Display can be a secondary font for web to highlight specific areas you want to stand out.

Color Palettes

The human brain is sensitive to color, and we often immediately have thoughts or feelings about certain colors. That doesn’t mean you should toss out any hues that might have negative connotations, like red. You do want to think about color’s influence, but you should ultimately create a palette that’s complementary.

Upgrading your brand colors could simply be the addition of a new, bolder accent color. Or you may want to change it all up and go for colors that look more modern.

Logos

Your logo is the heart of your brand identity. It should communicate who you are and what you do. It should be visually appealing and make an impression. Updating your logo may just be changing colors or font. You could also add more details to represent your brand better. You could also start from scratch, but you’d only want to do this if your logo isn’t very old or isn’t synonymous with your company.

Website Layout and Shapes

The last primary piece of a brand identity is your website design. You’ll start by changing the font, colors, and logo. Now consider your entire layout. Are there elements that scream old? One of the tell-tale signs of this is a website that doesn’t stretch side to side but sits in a “box.” That needs to go because it looks bad and impacts the user experience.

Other areas that may need a redesign include the “shapes” where images and content reside. Does this contribute to a look that’s not clean? Do they make it difficult for users to follow your message? You don’t want people who visit your website to struggle to consume your content!

Ready for a New Brand Identity?

If your brand is ready for a refresh, the team at AQ Marketing is here to help. We offer brand identity and logo and website design. We can give your brand the facelift it needs to stay current and make the best impression. Contact us today to learn more.

Your spa and salon website is how people find your business. If it’s optimized, attractive, and engaging, you’re more likely to gain more clients. While putting up a website is easy, one that attracts and converts requires more work. So, what spa and salon website best practices should you be considering?

Designing Spa and Salon Websites Should Include These Best Practices

Whether you’re building your first website or redesigning it, keep these tips in mind.

Wow Visitors with a Home Page That Dazzles

Most visitors will land on your home page first. As such, it should make a great first impression. You’ll want to do that with words and visuals. Start with a strong value proposition at the top, illustrating whom you serve and what you offer. Include high-quality images that display these services. A home page should also provide operational details, such as hours of operation, address, phone, and email.

Customer reviews and testimonials need prominent space because new customers will want to see these. They represent that your company is credible and legitimate. Within the body of the page, you can also have brief explanations of each service and then a link to that page. Another aspect of the home page should be your book online feature.

Other front page must-haves include current promotions, company recognitions (e.g., best of awards), and links to your social media profiles.

Stick to Your Brand’s Colors and Fonts

Your website doesn’t need to be a rainbow of colors. More colors won’t make it more attractive. It could make it distracting instead. The colors and fonts of your brand that you use on your business cards and storefront should be the same for your website. Doing so creates a consistent experience from digital to physical.

Describe Services and Include Pricing

Each type of service you offer, from hair to facials to other treatments, should have its own page. Then provide a brief description of what it is, how long it takes, and the costs. Pricing may vary depending on things like the length of hair, so you can insert a range.

These pages are also great for interweaving customer testimonials about the service and any before/after pictures you have. This provides visitors a preview of what to expect and can answer any questions they may have.

Add Online Booking

You could be losing appointments without the ability to book online. Consumers want convenience in scheduling that doesn’t involve picking up the phone. Having this feature on your website can reduce phone calls that you may miss anyway if you’re with a client.

By integrating a booking software with your website, someone can schedule in minutes, and you’ll be able to view availability in real time.

Make Navigation Easy Breezy

One thing to consider in website design is that most people will be looking at your site on mobile. Because of this, the navigation of your website needs to be simple. You’ll want to work on the mobile experience so it’s easy for users to find what they need quickly. Otherwise, they may abandon your website.

Introduce Yourself

Finally, it’s a great idea to include an “About” page that tells your story. Each service provider should have a bio that highlights their experience and some fun facts. If people can relate to you, they’ll be more likely to try out your salon.

Spa and Salon Website Best Practices: We Know Them All

Are you ready to wow clients with a website that looks great and works effectively? Then tap our designers and developers to create one you and visitors will love. Connect with us today to learn more about our website design services.