LionShark Digital Marketing Blog

How to Switch Between Brand Voices Seamlessly without Going Crazy

4/30/2015

As a content marketer, I do a LOT of writing for clients – crafting optimized content for websites, ghost blogging, and general copywriting.

Each client has a distinct voice and tone that I have to embody while writing to provide brand consistency among all of their communications. I take this responsibility very seriously because I feel like it’s really obvious when a company outsources its content to a bunch of different people and cobbles together their brand. It comes off as sloppy and cheap and portrays the brand in a really negative light. So when I do client work, I strive to maintain a consistent brand voice that achieves all of their business goals and is engaging to their audience. Let me give you a better idea of what I’m taking about…

Mitigating Fraud Risk for your Ecommerce Store

4/28/2015

Running an online store comes with many unique challenges, one of which is protecting yourself against fraud. It can happen to any online store owner – you process an order without realizing it’s been placed with a stolen credit card and the next thing you know, you’re the one paying to clean up the damage that results.

Fraudulent orders placed on your online store that are not detected before products are shipped out can result in a substantial financial loss because these products are seldom recovered. Additionally, chargeback fees against businesses that process fraudulent orders can compound, resulting in further financial damage.

Aside from the financial aspect, there is also the damage to a business’s reputation that can result from processing fraudulent orders. For instance, chargeback information is reviewed as a part of a merchant account application. A large number of chargebacks can result in unfavorable credit card processing terms like higher processing rates, a waiting period before funds are made available, and so forth.

Employees on Social Media – Is It a Good Thing?

4/23/2015

Some companies allow employees to use social media sites at work and even encourage employees to share and promote the company that they work for on social media as well, while other companies ban all use of social media. However, most companies fall somewhere in between, not specifically encouraging social media usage but not expressly forbidding it either. As social media usage has gotten more prevalent, companies have struggled to establish social media stances and policies that will address their concerns while also balancing employee freedom.

So is it a good idea to have employees on social media, or not? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons:

Ecommerce Tips you Can Learn from Merchandising

4/21/2015

Grocery stores and department stores are merchandising champions. When it comes to products, they know when to place them where and how to display them in a way that helps them hit revenue goals. While it may not be entirely obvious to the casual onlooker, these retail giants can actually teach online store owners a thing or two. The following 5 ecommerce tips are the most important lessons that can be learned from product merchandising strategies:

How to Survive in a Boat with a Tiger… Or At Least in a Cube with your Really Annoying Coworker

4/16/2015

I couldn’t help myself – Life of Pi is one of my favorite books of all time, thus the tiger in a boat reference. But seriously, trying to get through a day at work with a really annoying coworker sometimes feels just as challenging as trying not to get eaten by a tiger in a lifeboat. If you’ve ever had a REALLY annoying coworker, you’ll know what I mean. Here are the top ways to cope:

Why Choice is a Bad Thing in Marketing

4/14/2015

A famous market research study conducted 20 years ago regarding the sale of jam at a gourmet market uncovered the psychological affect that choice has on purchase behavior. A business professor posed as a jam vendor, first offering 24 varieties of jam for shoppers to sample and offered them a coupon to use on a subsequent purchase. She then repeated the study with just 6 jam varieties, offering the same coupon. The results were pretty astounding! With the 24 jam variety offering, 60% of people sampled jam but only 3% made purchases. However, with the 6 jam variety offering, 40% of people sampled jam but 30% made purchases. That means that if 1,000 people passed by the larger jam assortment, only 18 actually bought any jam, but if that same crowd of 1,000 people passed by the smaller jam assortment, 120 went home with some jam!

Psychologists and neuroscientists would say that the reason why we react in this way to choice is because our brains quickly become overwhelmed. Too much choice paralyzes us into indecision; and if we do ultimately bring ourselves to make a purchase decision, we find that we’re less satisfied because we worry that we could have done better if we had made a different choice. Marketers call these feelings “purchase anxiety” and “buyer’s remorse” respectively.

How Me-Time is Really Business-Time

4/9/2015

Self-employed business owners know the feeling – you want to do something personally satisfying during the day, but you feel selfish for taking the time to do it. This is especially prevalent among business owners that work out of their home. Whether the thing you want to do is go for a run, tidy up the house, meet a friend for lunch or coffee, soak up the sun outside or any number of other me-time activities, business owners often find it hard to justify doing so because they feel like they need to be 100% committed to their business.

It took me a while to finally realize this, but me-time is really business-time in disguise.

When I first started out, I thought I was on business-time when I was answering emails, doing client work, looking for business opportunities, and maintaining the website for my digital marketing company. And I thought I was enjoying me-time was when I was doing… everything else! As a new business owner it seemed lazy and uncommitted to be taking time to do the things I enjoyed outside of work.

4 Things Every Ad Needs

4/7/2015

PPC can be an incredibly effective strategy, but only when all of the pieces come together. Your ads are a major piece in the PPC game because they are the first impression of your company that searchers have. Compelling ads will attract searchers to click and bring traffic to your site, while lackluster ads will be overlooked. So what are the 4 things that every ad needs?

6 Reasons Why You’re Not on Page 1 of Google

4/2/2015

Chasing after rankings can be an exhausting (and often futile) endeavor, which is why SEO professionals will always tell you that simply going after rankings is the wrong approach. Jumping from one fad to another in the hopes of boosting your rankings is a tenuous strategy that can also be dangerous if Google makes an algorithm change that ends up penalizing your website.

The real aim of SEO is to create search relevance and build authority, because authority is positively correlated with better rankings. While the end result may be the same, this is a better approach because the effort it takes to get there is much more focused and the results often last a lot longer. This strategy also creates a positive customer experience, which is a win-win in the digital game.
But if you’ve been trying to “do SEO the right way” and aren’t seeing the fruits of your labor, you may want to take a closer look at your site to determine if one of these issues is to blame:

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