Venture London was co-founded in 2008 by the London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC), Small Business Centre, The Stiller Centre and TechAlliance. The four-month, two-round business competition was created to encourage and support new London-based businesses. With the help of workshops and feedback from industry leaders, participants learn how to shape their business ideas into solid business plans.

As the winner, ATMOS received the grand prize of $25,000 in cash and business acceleration prizes. This grant will be used to help hire new staff and accelerate the already exciting growth of the company.

Quotes

“We’d like to thank the sponsors, partners and Small Business Centre for organizing an event like this to recognize startups and entrepreneurs in London. We would also like to thank our clients as they have been a tremendous support and advocates for ATMOS.”

- Larry Lau – Partner ATMOS Marketing

“Competitions like Venture London are a vital part to growing London’s economy from the ground up.  A lot more young, motivated people are starting to take start-ups seriously. London needs to keep providing opportunities like this to new entrepreneurs, so we can foster growth, and above all… passion and excitement for business.”

- Corey Dubeau – Partner, ATMOS Marketing

“Venture London recognizes entrepreneurial spirit and commitment. Larry and Corey have impressed us since our first introduction, when ATMOS Marketing was just a concept. So much of our community’s future economic well-being is dependent on entrepreneurs like these, yet we don’t always recognize the risk and sacrifices that they make to create something from the ground up.”

- Steve Pellarin – Executive Director of the London Small Business Centre

“When we’re working with our companies, we can’t emphasize the importance of a strong business plan enough. So, it’s wonderful that one of our member companies, ATMOS Marketing, was one of the winners of this year’s Venture London business plan competition.”

- Marilyn Sinclair – Executive Director of TechAlliance

Learn More

ATMOS Marketing is London’s leading digital marketing firm that specializes in increasing sales, leads and online brand awareness. Founded in 2010 by Corey Dubeau and Larry Lau, ATMOS has launched several successful campaigns for local businesses to national brands in Canada and the U.S.

This isn’t a new concept, and most of you reading this will probably already be using Video in some way or another. But the real question is.. are you you using video properly? As a summary to a recent video by Distilled SEO, I hope to help you answer this question and shed some light on how to properly use Video for Marketing.

Start With a Goal-Driven Strategy

This sounds like something so basic, yet so many people don’t do it.

4 Goals & Strategies of Video Marketing

In Digital Marketing, there are generally 4 different goals to consider when pursuing video, which are as follows:

1. Rich-Media Google Listings

Rich-media listings on Google are the listings that appear with an image in the description.

The reason these are so coveted is because they result in a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR), meaning it is more likely that searchers will click your listing (even if it’s not in the #1 spot). In order to achieve Rich-Media Listings, you have to host the videos on your own site, meaning you can’t just upload it to YouTube and embed it on your website.

A great success story for this, is Kurtz and Blum, a law firm from North Carolina. After creating 53 videos, which cost them under $4000, they were able to achieve Rich-Media Listings for 51/53 of the videos, which resulted in an increase of monthly website traffic by 14%.

2. Attracting Links & Social Shares for SEO

If you are familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you know that one of the most important ranking factors, is the quantity and quality of links that point to your website. (If you’re lost, see our Intro Guide to SEO)

By hosting videos on your own website using a program like Wistia, rather than uploading them to YouTube, you force people to link to your website rather than linking to YouTube. If your video goes viral, all these links will significantly impact the rankings of the rest of your pages, since the overall SEO strength of your website will be increased.

3. Increasing Website Conversions

Conversions on a website, are basically “achieved goals”. These can be anything from purchasing a product, to filling out a contact form.

Video can help to achieve these goals by providing a visitor with more information about a product or service, or helping to answer a question about a topic so that they can feel more informed when making a purchase or requesting a quote. This is called Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).

A good example of this can be seen with appliancesonline.co.uk which includes video reviews on each of their product pages. They describe all the pros, cons, features, etc. so that it’s like you have your very own customer service rep describing each product for you.

The results of using these videos is quite phenomenal. Visitors who watch the videos are 100% more likely to convert into a sale and on average spend 9.1% more than visitors who do not watch the videos.

4. Increasing Brand Awareness

Consider that YouTube is technically the second largest search engine (more popular than Bing or Yahoo!). So if increasing Brand Awareness is the goal of your video, then this is the platform that you want to use. Rather than hosting it on your website, you will want to upload it to sites like YouTube and Vimeo to capture their audiences. You can always embed the video on your own website, you just won’t get the Rich-Media Listings.

A great example of creating brand awareness through video is DollarShaveClub.com, which made the following video for $4500. The video resulted in 12,000 immediate customers and has since racked up nearly 10 Million views. I’d say that’s a good investment.

Executing the Strategy

Quality videos can be made in a number of ways, but it’s important to pick a video type that matches the goals and strategies listed above. If you want to sell products, then product reviews are probably your best bet. But if you’re looking to break into a new market or create buzz around a new campaign, then you’ll likely want to create something more fun and creative that connects with the average person.

Whatever you decide to do though, always make sure you start with the proper strategy and treat Video as a means to an end.

1. Attract The Right Visitors

This is probably the most important thing you can do to increase the amount of leads you accumulate from your site, however it is also one of the hardest things to accomplish. This relies heavily on SEM (search engine marketing), which includes PPC (pay-per-click) and SEO (search engine optimization). If you are looking for a quick spurt of highly targeted traffic, you will want to use some form of direct advertising such as Google AdWords, or Facebook Advertising. If you are not an internet marketer yourself, you may consider using a PPC management company that specializes in maximizing your budget and increasing targeted traffic. On the other hand, if you are interested in generating long-term traffic and are less concerned about immediate results, you should consider investing in SEO. By having targeted content and a healthy amount of proper links pointing to your site, you will be able to generate organic traffic.

2. Create Targeted Pages

Once you have found a way to attract your target market to your website, you will want to create personalized landing pages (first page visitors see when they arrive on your site). The most common place to do this is the “Services” or “Products” section of your site. The easiest way to make targeted landing pages is by starting with your initial service, and breaking it down into sub-categories. If you (or your client) owns a company that specializes in financial services, your first instinct may be to create a single page that lists all the services in one place. Although this is a good place to start, your next step should be to create individual pages, custom-tailored to each one of those services (ex. Personal Accounting, Corporate Accounting, Investment Management, etc.). This will allow you to direct your traffic to a more specific page that provides personalized information, and thus has a higher chance of converting that visitor into a lead.

3. Target the Long-Tail

To add to our discussion about attracting the right traffic, you should also focus attention on targeting long-tail keywords. (For an illustration of what long-tail keywords are, see this article by SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin). Long-tail keywords draw in more distinct visitors looking for highly targeted phrases. As explained by Alan Mitchell of Calculate Marketing, these keywords generally cost less, have higher click-through rates (CTRs), and convert at a higher rate. So instead of trying to focus all your attention on “financial services”, try narrowing it down to longer tail keywords such as “pension services new york” and be sure to use different variations since long-tail keywords are more unique and searched less frequently. Also, make sure you include these phrases in your image captions, anchor text, URLs, and page content.

4. Turn Interest Into Desire

When visitors arrive on your site, they are most likely already interested in your product or service, otherwise they would not have clicked on your link, ad, search result etc. Aside from just providing basic information about your service/product, you will also want to make visitors desire it. For those of you who took a basic marketing course, you may remember the AIDA principle, which shows the general progression of effective advertising. If you want a consumer to purchase your product, give you their contact information, etc. your copy must take readers through these 4 stages: Attention > Interest > Desire > Action. By highlighting the benefits of your service/product and not just the features, you can increase desire. Below are two examples of this:

Example of Features Only (don’t do this!)

“The SuperPhone-300 comes with a 2000 mAh battery.”

Example of Features and Benefits (do this!)

“The large battery capacity of the SuperPhone-300 requires less frequent charging, so you can talk longer.”

Other ways that you can highlight the benefits and increase desire is by including videos, testimonials, product images, etc. Also to separate yourself from the competition, be sure to feature your supporting services (additional services that increase the quality of the primary service. Ex. Order Tracking, 24/7 Customer Service, etc.).

5. Use a Strong Call to Action (CTA)

So once you have found a way to convince the visitor that they need your product, you will need to influence them to act. By using a strong call to action (CTA), in several locations throughout your page, you can increase the likelihood of them converting into a lead. The key to writing good a good CTA is to focus on the “Why” instead of the “How”. Rather than simply saying “Fill out this form”, or “Contact us today”, try and offer an incentive. If you do not have something tangible to offer (explained in the next tip), try to come up with something that still sounds like it’s benefiting the visitor (ex. “Need help with your project? Have a specialist contact you today!”). Another tactic is to use a CTA that sparks more interest than a regular cookie-cutter approach. In this conversion optimization case study, from Conversion Rate Experts, you can see how they changed a cut-and-dry CTA into one that sparks interest:

CTA Before:

“Improve your traffic and rankings with an SEOmoz PRO Membership!”

CTA After:

“When eBay, Disney and Marriot need SEO help, here’s what they do…”

The original CTA was not necessarily bad as it included both a benefit and a follow-up action; however, the optimized rendition provided a sense of curiosity and prestige, enticing visitors to continue reading.

6. Offer Something In Exchange

As mentioned in Tip #5, it is important to have a strong and/or creative CTA in order to entice visitors to fill out a lead form or purchase a product. In our experience, the strongest CTAs are the ones that offer something in return, specifically when dealing with lead generation. What we often times will do with our clients, is have them come up with something tangible, that they can offer to visitors in return for their contact information. This incentive can be anything from a white-paper or case-study, to a free trial or coupon. However, the key is to maintain a strong ROI, thus you will want to avoid the use of discounts or rebates if they are going to have a drastic effect on profit.

7. Soft-Sells Still Count

If you’re finding that no matter what you try, your visitors are not converting into leads, then you may need to take a soft-sell approach. Often times visitors are discouraged by long contact forms, and may be on the brink of wanting your service but still want to shop around a bit, so they avoid filling out your lead form. For these visitors, you will want to include a low involvement way to capture their contact information so that you may contact them at a future time in their purchasing stage. Examples of these would be a quick and easy e-mail sign-up form where visitors can input their email to hear about special offers or receive newsletters. An interesting tool that allows you to do just that is the Hello Bar, which can be installed on your site relatively easily, and is very subtle. Since every visitor costs money (directly or indirectly), you will want to maximize the conversion rate as much as possible. Using the soft-sell approach will ensure that each visitor at least has the chance to partake in a low-commitment form of communication, while still increasing your lead-pool.

8. Make it Easy for Visitors to Convert

So you have the targeted traffic, compelling content, and strong CTA’s.. Now what? All of these things are great, but without having the right forms of communication available, your visitors will become impatient and discouraged, at which point they will hit the one button that all internet marketers fear.. the “Back” button. So how do you solve this problem? Simple.. By ensuring that you provide multiple and easily accessible paths for the visitor to take in order to contact you. Without being too “in-your-face”, try to make sure that each page has a contact form and a phone number. Many companies are now using individual landing pages, targeted at specific topics that include only three options for visitors – fill out the form, call the number at the top, or hit the back button. By placing a phone number in key areas on the landing page (ex. as part of the copy and within the header), and by making your contact form prominent (some take up as much as half the page), you can ensure that your users will not have to go through a treasure hunt, just to give you their information.

9. Use Multivariates and A/B Testing

Using all the tips I just mentioned, you will now want to test, test, test! If you use the first 8 tips and only apply the principles once, you will miss out on other possibilities that may lead to better results. Very rarely will you ever create the highest performing landing page on the first try, which is why it is important to use multivariate and a/b testing. Both of these are forms of “split testing” meaning that you would create two or more page variations and literally split the traffic between the two to see which one performs better. Multivariate testing involves changing a portion of the page such as an image or CTA, while A/B testing compares two entirely different pages. WhichMVT.com provides a full list of multivariate programs to choose from, including Google Optimizer, which is free.

10. Analyze Your Data and Adjust

By now you have gone through the entire list of tips, including split testing, and are wondering where to go from here. You will want to ensure that from the start of your efforts, you have some form of data gathering system to refer to. This could be Google Analytics, SEOmoz, or even stats from your AdWords account. My recommendation is to get as much data as possible, because in the end, this will be your secret weapon. Once you have a sufficient amount of data to work with, you should start making adjustments to your pages. Things to look for are trends (ex. pages with longer forms may perform better, while pages with too much content could perform worse, etc.). By paying attention to stats like bounce-rates, time-on-site, and exit-pages, you will be able to identify weak areas of your site.

Of course every website is different, and the results vary from industry to industry, but by following these tips you should be able increase the conversion rate of your website. The key thing to keep in mind at all times, is that your website is a sales tool, and as much as you want to provide information about your company, you should also be trying to connect with your visitors.

If you have any questions or would like to stir up the pot with some suggestions, please comment below. Cheers, and good luck!

For those who are looking for a hands-on lesson, I should warn that this is not meant to be a tutorial, rather a set of ideas and strategies that you can implement on your own or by hiring someone. Due to the significant difference in business models, I have split this article into two sections; one for agents and another for developers & builders.

Online Marketing For Real Estate Agents

Websites

By far the number one thing you will need is a website. Sure you could survive on just a Facebook page, but if you want to thrive as a real estate agent, you should have a website that is dedicated to just you and your properties. With CMSs (content management systems) like WordPress, you could easily get a professional looking real estate website that you can manage with little technical know-how.

Basic features you should look for in a website are MLS listing management, blogs, galleries, etc. If you are not familiar with WordPress but would like a great looking site for an affordable cost, talk to a company that specializes in Custom WordPress Design.

The ideal way to use a website for online real estate marketing, is by adding value to your visitors so that they trust you and build a rapport. Consider including extra tools and resources like mortgage calculators and local real estate information to help your traffic stay longer. They may also be more inclined to browse through your property listings if they find value in other information you provide.

Social Media

If you are into marketing, you should understand how social media can help businesses. Real estate agents are great candidates for Facebook, Twitter and Blogs, as the business itself is very personal and engaging in nature. Try setting up an account on Facebook and/or Twitter, and use it to share relevant articles on mortgages, titles, buying/selling tips, etc. Better yet come up with your own articles and link back to your blog so you gain more traffic.

I find Facebook is often a challenge to connect with people in a B2C way, unless you are offering highly valuable information or can come up with good contests/sweepstakes that will bring people in and keep them interested. Twitter on the other hand has great search options to find what people are tweeting, and where they are located.

You could essentially use twitter to find customers and directly approach them. Here’s a little experiment that you can try every few days for the next week or two.

Step 1 – Go to twitter.com/search .
Step 2 – Click “advanced search” located below the input field.
Step 3 – In the “All of these words” field, type something like “selling house”, “looking for a new house”, etc.
Step 4 – In the “Near this place” field, type your city or area code.

You might just be surprised at what you find. I found this tweet within my first try:

The key to using social media for business is to constantly connect with followers to keep your visitors engaged, and to build a relationship with them. Once you’ve built trust, it’s easier to pitch your services without sounding like a complete self-promoter.

Finally ActiveRain is good place to connect with other real estate agents. The benefits of knowing other agents and people in your industry are endless.

Marketplaces

If you are an agent selling properties, and you have access to this thing called the internet, you NEED to be doing this. Marketplaces are sites that provide buyers with a list of properties to choose from that match their specifications (price, location, type, etc.). On the flip-side they also provide agents with a place to promote their listings, by submitting their property information, images, etc. (see image):

There are plenty of marketplaces to choose from, and most of them have free and paid options. To name a few that are out there, check out the following:

• Backpage
• ByOwnerMLS
• Enormo
• FrontDoor
• HotPads
• Local.com
• Lycos
• MLS.com
• Oodle
• Overstock
• Realtor.com
• Trulia
• Vast
• Yahoo! Real Estate
• Zillow

 
Rather than entering these options one-by-one, try using a tool like Postlets that will do multiple list submissions for you at once.

Also, don’t forget to use free general marketplaces such as Craigslist, eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji to promote your property. Better yet, find a real estate marketing service that will do it all for you!

Obviously there’s much more that you can be doing to promote yourself online as an agent, but these are the three core things that you should most likely be doing regardless of the other options. Now to tackle developers and builders..

Online Real Estate Marketing for Builders and Developers

Websites

Once again, this is the main thing you will need as it will serve as the foundation for all other marketing efforts. The site should be used to promote your communities and properties and should provide information on property details, layouts, amenities, the builder/developer. Consider using features such as video tours, image galleries, concept sketches, interactive guides, etc. to boost the experience and keep visitors on your site longer.

Also, ensure that your site is lead-focused, so make sure you include a contact form, phone number, and strong call-to-action on each page to increase the amount of leads from your website. Information is good, but too much might answer all the visitor’s questions, meaning they will be less inclined to call or fill out a form. Try leaving price and availability off the site so that it entices people to contact.

Some of the same methods listed above can also be used to drive traffic, but also consider the two options listed below. Since builders and developers mainly have multiple properties with similar specifications and larger returns on each sale than an agent does, you can afford to invest in traffic.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is essentially the ‘natural’ way of being found in search engines. You will want to optimize your site for a keyword phrase (or multiple phrases) that fit your property or service (ex. ‘custom homes Dallas’ or ‘land for sale Florida’). SEO is good for long-term traffic, and will bring in a trickle of targeted visitors at a steady rate.

Assuming your site is lead-focused, you can easily turn these visitors into potential buyers. If you are unsure about how to optimize your site for search, consider using a company that offers online real estate marketing service. Or if you’re feeling ambitious, consider learning SEO on your own.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click marketing means exactly what it sounds like (i.e. you pay every time someone clicks on your ad to visit your site). This option is not always suitable for certain businesses, and I personally would not advocate it for real estate agents. However, land developers and home builders are quite possibly the ideal business-type to use PPC. Now, keep in mind there are no guarantees when it’ comes to PPC, but I have only ever had a single developer stop using my PPC program, and in less than a year they signed back up for my services. What does that tell you?

The great thing about PPC is that you can target it to a specific keyword phrase like “luxury homes in Toronto”, and you are almost guaranteed to instantly show up in the results. Another great reason for using PPC is that you can easily track cost and returns to see how well the program is working.

However, if you are considering using PPC, I strongly recommend you hire a professional to manage your campaign, unless you really know what you are doing. It is easy to waste away thousands of dollars on AdWords, but with the right help, it can be very successful. When hiring a PPC professional, make sure they offer landing page management as part of their marketing services, as a dedicated web-page is usually more effective at generating leads than a large website full of information.

Real Estate Marketing in A Nutshell

Well there’s really no ‘conclusion’ to this article, other than me telling you to go try some of these techniques right away (seriously, like right now). Also, I wouldn’t get too tied up with researching 100 different marketing strategies, rather I would try some basic ones immediately and see how they work. Sure you might come across some better ideas that could be more effective, but all the time you spent researching them, could have gone into building up your online presence.

If you don’t know where to begin, use this article as a general strategy, and then research the fundamentals, like how to build a website, how to get relevant Facebook likes and Twitter followers, and how to get your site ranking in the search engines, or how to submit to marketplaces. With those three basic techniques at hand, you can make serious dent in your online presence.

Side note –These tips should be used in addition to the optimization practices you currently utilize.

Tip #1 – Use the Search Terms Tool

This tool shows you all of the specific keywords or search terms that were used when a visitor clicked on one of your ads. It is very beneficial in order to determine new keywords to start bidding on and for developing your negative keyword list. To find this hidden gem you must be first in the Keywords tab, and then you click on “Keyword details” tab and either select specific keywords or see all of them.

Tip #2 – Get Your Ads onto the 1^st Page

It is important to have your ads on the first page and even in the first couple ad positions, since the majority of the clicks are received by the ads in those top spots. There are many ways to help boost your ad position including:

• Improving Your Quality Score – by ensuring relevancy between your keywords, ads & landing pages.
• Increasing Keyword Bids – make sure that all keyword bids are high enough to show on the first page. (If they are too low, there will be a warning in orange writing. See image below)

Tip #3 – Try New Ads

My last and final tip for you today is to simply write a few new ads. Try new copy or a new offer and see how they fair against your previous ads. Sometimes a little tweak in an ad will make a world of a difference. Let the new ads run for a week or two or until they receive enough traffic in order to compare to previous ads.  It is also important to make sure that your Ad Rotation settings are set to “Rotate Indefinitely.” This ensures that the ads are being evenly rotated and that the data is not skewed when you go to compare the ads. To find the “Ad Rotation” settings you must first select one of your campaigns and then click on the Settings tab. The “Ad Rotation” settings are then located in the “Advanced Settings.”

I hope these tips give you some insight to some of the basic techniques that are used to optimize Google AdWords accounts.  I would also like to re-iterate that you should not rely solely on these tips to optimize your accounts. There are many other strategies for optimization and many depend entirely on the specific account that you are dealing with. In order to properly optimize an account, one must be very comfortable using the Google AdWords interface and understand how all of the micro tools work together. If you are looking to spend a fair amount of money in Google AdWords I would highly suggest hiring PPC Specialists to ensure that your money is being spent in the right spots!

A common challenge for marketing professionals is convincing their clients to adapt to Social Media as an effective marketing tool to promoting their products and services. You may have already thought of some of the benefits but we’ve compiled some ideas for others who didn’t or a couple you haven’t already thought of.

Most importantly, Social media offers an easy, affordable and effective way to connect with your target audience while creating brand awareness.

Directly Connect and Promote to Consumers

With Social Media, businesses are able to directly connect and promote to consumers immediately. This is definitely a cost effective way to advertise to already interested users who have already followed or liked your business. Not only are you able receive additional feedback from users, you are able to interact with them as well.

Viral Promotions

Social Media is commonly used by businesses for contests and sweepstakes. Different than promoting to just your interested consumers, this is a great way to virally spread the word and create consumer interactions as well as increase brand awareness. Good ways to use Social Media to virally promote your business would be to think of contests or promotions that require applicants to engage themselves with your business. By using a voting system, whether that be the most likes on Facebook or the most tweets on Twitter, this will be a sure fire way for contestants to spread the word to their friends and family!

Libro Financial has a campaign, Young & Free Ontario, to find their next Youth Ambassador. This campaign is heavily dependent on the use of Social Media channels like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Contestants are required to create videos of why they should be chosen as the next Youth Ambassador for Libro Financial, using both YouTube and Facebook to leverage their candidacy. Heavily influenced by the use of Social Media, this campaign has successfully increased awareness for both Libro Financial and Young & Free Ontario in previous years.

Help Increase Traffic and Link Building

If users found the Social Media account before the website, this is a great opportunity to drive them there. A lot of times, users discover new promotions, businesses and events simply because one of their friends joined or liked a page. Nosey users will click to see what it’s all about. This is your chance! This is a great opportunity to steer these curious cats to your website which will increase traffic and help link building!

Strengthen Customer Service

A great example of a company using Social Media to their advantage is Telus. They provide technical support on Twitter and reply when they are tagged. Although customers are able to tweet directly to Telus Support (http://twitter.com/#!/TELUSSupport) for questions and concerns, Telus Support will also approach you when have tweeted issues with Telus and their services.

Other Ways to Use Social Media

Aside from what we’ve already mentioned, you can use also use social media to spy on business competitors to see what they are doing. There is nothing wrong with going to the fan page of a competitor to see if your business can provide a better promotion or deal. Social Media can only be used to conduct market research and surveys by asking for user opinions. There are numerous ways that Social Media can help businesses, it all depends on your company and the industry you are in. How you can be innovative with Social Media is what will differentiate and help propel your business above all the others.