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Leverage Digital Takes Home Three 2015 Gold Hermes Creative Awards And Two Silver 21st Annual Communicator Awards

TAMPA, FLA. (May 27, 2015) – Leverage Digital, a web design and digital marketing agency based in Tampa Bay, adds five new international awards to a growing list of professional accolades.

The agency received three Gold Hermes Creative Awards for work on two client websites, Alvarez Homes & Alvarez New Concepts and Trent Cotney, P.A. Construction Law Group, as well as the agency’s own website. The agency’s website also won two Silver Communicator Awards in two separate categories.

The Hermes Creative Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) with winners ranging in size from individual communicators to media conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies. Approximately 6,000 entries were submitted to the Hermes Creative Awards from 23 countries, and only 22 percent received the Gold Award.

The Communicator Awards is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts (AIVA), an invitation-only group consisting of top-tier professionals from acclaimed media, communications, advertising, creative and marketing firms. AIVA members include executives from organizations such as Conde Nast, Coach, Disney, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Estee Lauder, Lockheed Martin, MTV Networks, Pitney Bowes, Time, Inc., Victoria’s Secret, Wired and Yahoo! Of the over 6,000 entries submitted to the Communicator Awards, between 18 and 25 percent of participants received the Silver Award.

“We are honored to receive international recognition for our creative communications work from these two highly respected organizations. Leverage Digital will continue to push the envelope with the blending of design and technology in order to give our clients the results they’ve come to expect from us,” says Leverage Digital Managing Director, Jay Taylor.

About the Hermes Creative Awards

Hermes Creative Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). The international organization consists of several thousand marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, media production and freelance professionals. AMCP judges are industry professionals who look for companies and individuals whose talent exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry. For more information, please visit http://www.hermesawards.com/.

About the Communicator Awards

The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for communication professionals. Founded by communication professionals over a decade ago, The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive and audio. This year’s Communicator Awards received thousands of entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the
world. For more information, please visit http://www.communicatorawards.com/.

About Leverage Digital

Leverage Digital is an award-winning digital marketing agency that specializes in custom web development and online marketing solutions that provide brands with tangible offline results. For more information, please visit http://www.leveragedigital.com/.

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Media Contact

Sarah Edmiston
Leverage Digital
P. (813) 489-4494
sedmiston@leveragedigital.com

Google’s Announcement

In February, Google announced that beginning April 21, they will expand their use of mobile-usability as a ranking signal, and that this algorithm update will have a significant impact on Google Search results. Google is providing what is essentially a deadline to encourage those who haven’t already adapted their websites to mobile to begin making this transition. Even prior to this announcement, Google’s intentions were clear as it made a strong push to encourage website owners to make their web properties mobile-friendly. This included adding “mobile-friendly” labels to their mobile search results, and providing mobile-usability warnings in Google Webmaster Tools.

Mobile-Friendly Websites Will Become the Norm

Up until now, having a mobile-friendly website has been a competitive advantage for most organizations. However, with this announcement, mobile-friendly websites will quickly become the norm as organizations scramble to remain relevant in mobile search. Moving forward, those organizations that provide visitors with the best mobile-experience will have the competitive advantage.

Responsive Design is Still Google’s Preferred Mobile Solution

One thing that remains constant is that Google still recommends responsive design as its preferred mobile solution. Google believes responsive web design provides a better user-experience because it’s less prone to errors than dedicated mobile sites, and we at Leverage Digital tend to agree with this sentiment. We have encouraged our clients to begin making the transition to responsive design since 2013, and those that heeded our advice, will likely benefit from Google’s upcoming algorithm update.

If you’re still on the fence about making the switch to mobile, now is the time to do it, if SEO is a strategic priority. Failure to adapt your website to mobile may result in a significant decline in mobile search rankings and mobile traffic once the algorithm update goes into effect.

For more information or to schedule a consultation, please call us today at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Your website is one of the key elements of your brand. It can often separate you from the competition, and make the difference between whether or not you gain a new customer. In managing the daily operations of your business, however, it is easy to overlook this important aspect of your brand, and as your business, technology, and customer expectations evolve, so must your website.

As Tampa web design specialists, we recommend asking yourself the following six questions to help determine if it is time for a new website.

1. Does your website align with marketing objectives?

All marketing initiatives intentionally or unintentionally lead back to your website. So, you must ask yourself, are the objectives I am trying to achieve with my marketing efforts strengthened when a prospect finds my website? The answer to this question could be “no” for a number of reasons. For instance, an outdated design, unfocused and unorganized content, broken links, or a website that is incompatible with mobile devices all lead to potential issues with the perception of your brand, and in turn, hinder your marketing efforts.

2. Is your website mobile-friendly?

Is your website mobile friendly? If not, it should be. Mobile usage is increasing globally as people are becoming more and more accustomed to using their smartphones and tablets to search for information online. Your customers are going to visit your website from a mobile device, so it is crucial that your website provides a positive mobile user experience.

3. Can visitors easily find information on your website?

Information hidden deep within your website because of a confusing navigation structure is a surefire way to frustrate your customers and lose business to your competitors. If you constantly receive feedback asking for information that is already available on the website, this may be an indication that the content is not organized in a way that makes it easy for your customers to find what they’re looking for.

4. Is your website compatible with the latest browsers?

Customers will visit your website using a number of different browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari. As these browsers update over time, compatibility issues may occur, causing broken links, slow page load times, and a number of other potential issues that will create a negative user experience. If your current website is not compatible with current web browsers, this is another indication that it’s time to update your current website.

5. Are you able to easily update the website’s information in-house?

Outdated information on your website is detrimental to your credibility. If your business does not have the ability to easily update information in-house, creating a new website on a content management system is an excellent solution. A content management system gives you the ability to add information, update projects, and add company news with little to no technical expertise.

6. Have you redesigned your website in the last five years?

Web design standards and technology are constantly evolving to create a better user experience for website visitors. These standards often relate to the aesthetics, functionality, and usability of your website. Today’s standards use a clean, minimalist approach, strategically designed to accommodate the way users interact with a website across different devices.

Conclusion

Much like your company, website technology and design standards are constantly evolving. To adapt to these changes, it is important to view your company’s website as a dynamic part of your brand that should be regularly updated to meet your customers’ expectations. If you answered no to any of the questions about your current website, we recommend consulting with a knowledgeable Tampa web design company.

For more information regarding custom web development services, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

It’s time to shift thinking away from the idea that smartphone usage is only for people on the go. In today’s reality, the relationship between consumers and their smartphones expands far beyond a means to find a location, send a text, or make a call. In a 2013 mobile consumer survey by Google, 58% of smartphone users stated that they use their device to stay informed by reviewing websites, products, and news online, and 82% stated they use their device to casually browse the internet. Social patterns and behaviors have shifted and every aspect of people’s lives are integrated with their smartphone in hand.

With this evolution in behavior, a societal expectation has emerged. Consumers expect the ability to access online information from anywhere and at any time with the same user experience across all devices. To sum up their survey findings, Google states, “Having a mobile-optimised site is critical and a cross-channel strategy is needed to engage consumers across the multiple paths to purchase.”

What does this mean for your business?

Your Brand Must Be Mobile

For starters, it is a necessity to embrace mobile and cater to your mobile customers. Whether it be through a mobile-friendly website, a mobile app, or a combination of both, your brand should be able to connect with your audience through their mobile devices. If that communication channel is disrupted, brand perception suffers, because it sends a message that says, “I am out of tune or don’t care about the needs of my customers.”

Your Sales Strategy Must Be Mobile

By building sales strategies around smartphone usage, you will see an increase in mobile conversions. In the aforementioned Google consumer survey, 46% of smartphone users stated that they made a purchase directly from their device, and of those, 60% make at least one smartphone purchase every month. The survey also shows that 38% of smartphone users made an offline purchase as a result of preliminary research performed on their smartphone.

Conclusion

Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and it is important for your business to stay current with these changes or run the risk of alienating prospective customers. If you don’t have the time, capabilities, or desire to develop a mobile strategy in-house, consult with a Tampa web design company that specializes in mobile. Mobile is not a thing of the future. Consumer behavior is changing now, and smartphones are at the center of this societal shift.

Download the entire Google mobile consumer survey.

For more information regarding how to develop a successful mobile strategy, please call (866) 611-6267 or submit our consultation request form.

Social media may play a significant role in your organization’s marketing strategy, but as a Tampa SEO company, we want to set the record straight. Tweets, likes, and shares do not equate to higher rankings in Google Search.

This topic is the source of significant misinformation, but the head of Google’s spam team and distinguished engineer, Matt Cutts, debunked the myth earlier this year during a Q&A video posted to the Google Webmasters’ YouTube page. In the video, Cutts clearly states that any relationship between social media and rankings is purely the result of correlation and not causation.

Correlation Vs. Causation

To put this into context, let’s say you produce content for your website in the form of a blog post, and then share that blog post to your social media pages resulting in hundreds of likes, shares, and re-tweets. A few days later you evaluate the rankings for that blog post, and see that it has made its way to the first page of Google Search. This would seem to point to a causal relationship between social shares and search engine rankings. That observation, however, would be incorrect. High rankings and social media success are unique to one another, but both result from the same source, GREAT CONTENT.

If you provide valuable content that people find useful and engaging, then it is more likely to be shared on social media, and also given greater authority on Google Search.

Cutts describes this by saying, “There was an SEO that said, okay we see a lot of likes on Facebook and those are the pages that rank well, but that’s correlation, not causation. Instead, it’s probably because there’s something really awesome, then it gets a lot of likes on Facebook and a lot of people decide to link to it. The better content you make, the more people are to like it, in Google, Twitter and Facebook.”

What about Google+?

It has also been speculated that Google +1’s result in higher rankings, but Matt Cutts debunked this myth as well in a response directed to an article published on The Moz Blog that implied Google +1’s do influence Google rankings. In his response, Cutts stated that “If you make compelling content, people will link to it, like it, share it on Facebook, +1 it, etc. But that doesn’t mean that Google is using those signals in our ranking. Rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much better spent making great content.”

Conclusion

While social plays an integral role in building your brand identity and connecting with your audience, it is important to understand that Google’s algorithm does not consider social signals when determining how to rank pages on your website.

If you are searching for SEO services in Tampa, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our consultation request form today.

As a company that specializes in digital marketing and custom web design in Tampa, we can say with 100% certainty, email marketing works. According to a study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email was shown to have the highest success rate over any other outbound strategy, with 66% of consumers stating they have made a purchase after receiving a marketing email.

To create a successful campaign, implement our recommended three C’s of email marketing.

Compelling Content

The essence of email marketing is creating a connection with your target audience. This relationship is built and strengthened by the quality of the content you provide. Once an email is opened, you have mere seconds to grab the attention of the recipient, so from the headline to the conclusion, make it compelling.

Before publishing an email, ask yourself the following questions.

1. Is this content relevant to my audience?

2. Is my message clear and concise?

3. Does my content provide value?

4. Is my industry knowledge being expressed?

5. Does my content go beyond the surface of the topic?

If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you are on the right track. Also, make sure you are taking the time to properly edit your work. Grammatical errors and the use of incorrect or false information can be detrimental to your credibility.

Customize Formatting

Once the message is perfected, the next step to designing an effective email is to ensure that the email is properly formatted. If the layout of your email is not stylized, the content may seem overwhelming and difficult to read. The use of headings and subheadings can help bring attention to important points, and also make large quantities of information easier for readers to digest. If a certain point in your message relates to a service your company provides, a previously published article, or an industry study, provide links to extend reader engagement. Finally, keep in mind that some readers may use a mobile device to access their email, so font sizes, style, and color should be legible across all devices.

Calls to Action

No message is complete without a call to action. It is important to provide interesting information that does not explicitly try to sell your product or service, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an objective. If there is not a definitive action to take, the user experience ends at the email. Whether you want the reader to schedule a call or visit your website, at the close of every written communication, provide a clear call to action. The call to action should epitomize the objective of the email and guide readers to the next step.

Summary

A successful email marketing campaign can be achieved through a well thought out strategy. Take the time to write compelling content that connects with and engages your audience. Then, design your layout in a way that is not only visually appealing, but compatible across different devices. Finally, always keep the end goal in mind, and close every email with a clear call to action.

If you would like to learn about our Tampa web design or email marketing services, please call us today at (866) 611-6267, or request a free consultation.