Top Floor to Speak at Business Education Seminar Series in Milwaukee

Top Floor Technologies is pleased to announce our participation in an upcoming series of business education seminars offered by the UWM Small Business Development Center.  These two-hour seminars are partially funded by a special SBA grant and offer education on key small business issues.  Any small business located in Milwaukee County and in business prior to June 2008 is eligible to attend.  We’ll be leading the following sessions:

Friday, October 2, 2009 – Website Strategies
7:30 – 9:30 AM – Polish Center, Franklin, WI

Friday, October 30, 2009 – Leveraging Social Media to Grow Sales
7:30 – 9:30AM – The Pulaski Inn, Cudahy, WI

Friday, December 4, 2009 – Using Email to Reach Your Market
7:30 – 9:30 AM – Polish Center, Franklin, WI

Friday, February 5, 2010 – Leveraging Social Media to Grow Sales
7:30 – 9:30 AM – Polish Center, Franklin, WI

Friday, March 12, 2010 – Website Strategies
7:30 – 9:30AM – The Pulaski Inn, Cudahy, WI

Friday,  April 16, 2010 – Using Email to Reach Your Market
7:30 – 9:30 AM – Tri City National Bank, South Milwaukee, WI

For more information on any of the above sessions, or other classes offered, contact the UWM School of Continuing Education at 414-227-3098.

Common Mistakes on B2B Websites – Part 3

In our business, we’re reviewing and improving B2B Websites every day.  I continue to be amazed at some of the issues that come up again and again.  For every site that gets it right, it seems that at least five completely miss the mark … leaving business on the table for their competitors to grab.  Perhaps the most common (and potentially fatal) flaw is poor navigation.

Common Mistake 3 – Poor Navigation

Let’s consider an illustration from the bricks and mortar retail environment.  Imagine entering your favorite

Impact of Increasing Your Conversion Rate on Your Bottom Line

There are only two ways to get more conversions; more visitors or a higher percentage of conversions.  In this post I will cover the impact that getting more visitors to convert has to your bottom line.  We first need to know where we stand with visitors, our conversion rate, and the average value of a conversion.

Search is from Saturn Traditional Marketing is from Mars- part 2

In part one I strived to address the fact that because there still tends to be such a wide divide between the mindset of the traditional marketing agency person and the search marketing person that often times clients do not get the best return on their investment.

I asked for examples of this but instead received at least one comment, that I expected, which revolved around the idea that the traditional advertising agencies are run by dinosaurs and they will go extinct. While in some cases that maybe the case what I am trying to establish is why these worlds are so far apart? How does this divide specifically end up harming our clients return on investment?

Let’s face it- those of us from the search side of the isle have seen the following time and time again.

Common Mistakes on B2B Websites – Part 2

How many times have you visited a Website and struggled to understand the purpose of the site or how you might take a next step of engagement?  Perhaps it’s an issue of misguided content, poor navigation, a phone number that’s next to impossible to find, cumbersome contact forms, or more.  In too many cases, businesses make it difficult for their Website visitors to engage with them and suffer the consequences of poor online conversion.

Common Mistake 2 – Lack of Clear, Compelling Calls to Action

Throughout your Website, you need to do more than simply provide content; you need to guide your site visitors through a logical process toward a successful outcome.  Conversion doesn’t just happen – it needs to be strategically planned. 

Being #1 in Google is Only The Start

Great News!!!

You just received your most recent search engine ranking report and the investment has paid off.  Your top trophy keywords are now ranked #1 on Google.  I guess this means you can shift your search engine optimization budget to something else, right?

The Holy Grail of B2B Marketing: Social Media

Is Social Media Really For B2B Marketing?

What does every B2B want? More business, more reach, and more consumers. The last few years have seen an explosion of business-to-business getting involved in search marketing in one form or another.

Mainly, they’ve gotten their feet wet with pay-per-click (PPC), usually run in-house, on a relatively low budget, targeting keywords and phrases they “think” possible consumers are looking for.  And over the years, they’ve had relative success, albeit small.

Some B2B’ers understood what Google was going to do to ALL businesses and how it was going to change the face of doing business. Those who understood, got a tremendous head start, and got themselves hooked into search engine optimization. And, if you look around the B2B landscape today, there are still plenty out there who’ve yet to get the message.