How Long It Does Take to See the Results of Digital Marketing?

digital marketing results

Are you impatiently waiting to see the results of your digital marketing efforts?

This is a frequently asked question. The answer depends on what you are looking to accomplish and the strategy that you have put together.

Are you looking for short-term results or are you planning for next year?

If immediate short-term results are your aim, then you should choose pay-per-click advertising (PPC). The results can be seen in 2 days or in a week.

Comprehensive keyword research and continuous monitoring and optimization of your PPC settings will maximize performance and yield ongoing positive results.

If your vision is for longer-term gains then consider search engine optimization (SEO). A comprehensive and thorough SEO campaign will start to yield results after a few months. This may take 4-6 months or 6-9 months.

Successful results mean not only increase your website ranking on search engine results but also receiving leads that lead to sales.

Visit our website to learn more about our marketing audit and blueprint consulting services.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Monitoring Your Online Reputation With Google Alerts

google alerts for your online reputation

Google alerts is a great way to manage your online reputation.

Promote your brand along with its good reputation on social media and other platforms. However, things get a bit complicated when you have to deal with bad reviews.

First, keep a good reputation by being honest, transparent, setting clear expectations for your customer, and by being in business because you genuinely want to help people around you. It goes without saying that shady practices are a no-no.

Second, you have to prevent any dissatisfaction by a customer from escalating by addressing every complaint you get. It has to be fixed at this level immediately while the customer is still trying to reach out to you. Because once they have felt frustrated and think they have to warn others about your practice, things can get messy.

Nonetheless, you have to set your radar for negative reviews. One good way to do this is to set up Google alerts for your brand terms and name.

What else can you do to safeguard your brand?
  • Claim your brand name
  • Build a consistent identity

Whether your brand is your name itself, your business name or your product name, you need to make sure that no one else can misrepresent you online by owning a piece of your brand. Make sure that you own domain names and usernames associated with your brand.

Suggested tool:
NameChk.com
Build a consistent identity on major channels:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
Pinterest
Tumblr
Quora

Publish content regularly:

The content you publish will define and reinforce who you are, what you stand for, and what your business is all about. This will make up the values associated with your brand. Anything inconsistent with these values will not be immediately convincing to your customers who know you.

Let me know if you need more information. We’d be glad to help.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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How Much Should Your Marketing Budget Be?

marketing budget allocation

It’s important to set a budget for marketing.

Do you have a set rule for marketing budget allocation?

Or do you just allocate marketing whatever is left after all of the projected business expenses for the year have been set?

USBA suggests 7% to 8% for small businesses. However, you can shoot for up to 20% if you really want to smash it hard in the marketplace.

A survey from the CMO Council, on the other hand, comes with similar results with 74% percent of marketers allocating 4% to 6% of their annual gross revenue to marketing, while only 2% apportion more than 20%.

The size of your marketing budget will fuel your marketing efforts, and so if you’re in a very competitive industry, and most especially if you’re in the early stages of your business, then you should really have a strong budget.

How do you structure your marketing budget?

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Social Media Marketing – Does It Work?

social media marketing works

Wondering if social media marketing works?

LinkedIn has over 900 million users. That’s a huge audience. Facebook has an astonishing 1.5 billion daily users. There are 354 million Twitter accounts. The list goes on, and the audiences continue to grow. It’s obvious that if you want to succeed you should be interested in this huge pool of potential clients.

Ninety-one percent of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels. Having control over your social media is essential if you are to become a successful brand. Controlling the messages you send out to your customers is a key factor.

Watch our series on 10 key elements to successful Social Media Marketing.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Using Multiple Social Media Sites Can Grow Your Business

use multiple social media sites

Here’s how using multiple social media sites can help grow your business.

Today’s customers are not only sticking with one social media site. Your target audience is active on many different sites every single day. Actually here are some statistics from a recent study that show just that:

– 28% are on 1 site
– 24% are on 2 sites
– 16% are on 3 sites
– 8% are on 4 sites
– 4% are on 5 sites

Now that you know that your potential new customer is constantly using multiple social media channels, what does that mean for you?

It means that you also need to be visible to them on multiple social media websites! But how are you supposed to know which channel is right for you?

Here is a breakdown of who is using each of the top social media channels in 2019, according to Pew Internet Research:

Facebook:

– 82% of online adults between 18-29
– 72% of all adult internet users
– 62% of the whole adult population
– Especially popular with women

LinkedIn:

– 25% of adult internet users
– 46% of online adults who are college graduates use LinkedIn
– Popular with those with high household incomes

Twitter:

– 23% of all internet users
– 30% of online adults under 50
– Most common in urban areas

These statistics show that you could have access to many new customers by simply expanding your social media presence to other networks. We strongly urge you to add your business to more social media sites so that you can begin reaching more of your target audience today!

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Local Business Alert! Local Search Results Will Give You More Business Results

advantages to local search

There are many advantages to local search.

On-the-go mobile users who are near you and who are searching for a product or service on Google at this very moment should find your business. But are they?

Are you visible in Google’s ‘Local Pack’ and expanded results?

Increased foot traffic, phone calls, or visits to your website should mean more customers for local business owners like you, so optimizing for local search results should be important.

Businesses listed in the Local Pack vary from the searcher’s location. If you are nearest to the searcher at the time of the search, then your business listing should appear there.

However, being closest to a potential customer searching isn’t a guarantee that you will come up in the search results. Your listing and your website must be optimized for local search.

Here are some of the important ranking factors based on a study by Moz:

  • Google My Business Listing Signals
  • Link Signals
  • On-page Signals
  • Citation Signals
  • Review Signals
  • Behavioral Signals
  • Personalization
  • Social Signals

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Should You Hire A Full-time Marketing Director?

should you hire a marketing director

Should you hire or contract the services of a Marketing Director?

To get your marketing performing at its optimum, you would need a Marketing Director to oversee the strategy and implementation. However, a Marketing Director would cost at least $11,000 a month. This is a huge cost to deal with for most small business owners like you.

As with any HR activity, there is additional work required of you to hiring a Marketing Director, such as;

  • Job Description Preparation
  • Job Posting/Advertising Cost
  • Interviewing
  • Background Checks
  • Qualification/Certification Checks
  • Evaluation
  • Employment Agreements
  • Onboarding
  • Training

Do you think hiring a marketing consultant to perform a marketing director role for your business at an hourly or contract rate for a few hours a month would make more sense?

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Aligning Your Digital Marketing Strategy With Your Business Goals

marketing evaluation

Your digital marketing strategy needs to be aligned with your business goals.

Nearly half of businesses (44%) don’t have a clearly defined marketing strategy. For firms that are active in digital marketing, nearly half do not have a defined digital plan or strategy (47%).

No wonder many small businesses are struggling to understand why their online marketing campaigns aren’t delivering an ROI.

Successful businesses that are running online marketing campaigns that impact their bottom line are NOT doing it merely because their competitors are doing it too, but because they have drawn a clear path to how online marketing can help achieve their business goals.

A Marketing Audit has to be performed for you if you have a digital marketing campaign currently running or had one in the past. The next step is to consult with an expert to identify your goals, budget, benchmarks, implementation plan, and targets — producing an online Marketing Blueprint in the process.

Can a building be constructed without a blueprint? Can a building stand without a foundation? No. These principles hold true for your marketing.

Here are some variables that will shape your Marketing Blueprint:

Marketing Audit
Business Goals
Budget
Benchmarks
Consulting Services
– Strategy Recommendations
Marketing Services
Backup Plan
Targets

Your marketing needs a foundation to stand on — your business goals. You need a plan for your marketing with all of the parts working together to reach new heights in line with your goals.

Your goals could be a mix in any of these categories:

Brand Exposure
Social Media Engagement
Website Traffic
Sales Targets
Target ROI

If you are willing to spend $1,000 to $3,000 a month – or $12,000 to $36,000 a year – on your marketing, doesn’t it make sense to invest in a Marketing Blueprint to ensure a spot-on marketing campaign.

Contact us today to learn more about a Marketing Evaluation and creating a Marketing Blueprint for your business.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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8 Reasons To Use Google Analytics for Your Website

reasons to use google analytics

Here’s 8 reasons to use Google analytics!

As business owners, we must ensure that our marketing efforts are worthwhile.

We need to make sure that our website’s design and structure is at optimal levels to maximize our marketing campaigns.

Having someone on your team that can analyze your website traffic data will help ensure that your efforts are worth every little bit of time and money you spend on marketing.

Installing Google Analytics makes acquiring this information easier than ever. Understanding this information will help you strategize and improve your marketing efforts.

Here are 8 simple ways to use Google Analytics to advance your business to next level:

1. Identify the Sources of Your Traffic

Use analytics to track the traffic on your website. This will help you understand what sources send the most traffic to your business.

2. Determine the Path that Leads to Conversions

Determine what pages are driving conversions for your business. Conversions could be making a sale, the download of a white paper, a filled out contact form on your website or one of many other actions that positively impact your business.

The quality of your traffic relies on if you’re bringing the right buyer personas to your website who are genuinely interested in your company’s offerings.

3. Understand Which Relevant Keywords Drive Traffic

Analytics informs you how your business is ranking for key search queries.

Ranking highly for the most important long-tail keyword phrases related to your business can drive quality visitors to your website on a regular basis, which is why marketing around these search phrases is essential for your business.

4. Understand Time on Site

Start by understanding how engaged your visitors are by using the engagement report to better understand their time on site.

The reason why this is so important is that the longer someone is on your website, the more likely they’ll perform an action with your business whether that’s a download, completing a transaction, etc.

5. View Multi-Channel Funnels to Locate Understand a Visitor’s Path

The multi-channel funnels report in Google Analytics is one of the most important to monitor. It provides an overview of the most common paths to conversions. Take a look at which funnels are driving the most activity for your business and try to spur more movement across these channels.

6. Know Which Device Users Drive Results

Improve the quality of your ongoing traffic by analyzing and catering to where your traffic is coming from –desktop, mobile or tablet devices.

7. New vs. Returning Visitors

This report is important to monitor regularly to see if your existing audience is continually returning to your website, while also informing your business of your audience growth over time as seen through new visitors.

Ideally, there should be a healthy balance of both new visitors and returning visitors to inform the quality of your website.

8. Manage Your Backlinks

This can help your business understand what websites are linking to your site, which is a major factor that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when ranking your website and driving traffic to your business.

Your backlink profile is a crucial factor to help ensure that only quality websites are linking to your business and that you’re building trust with your customers and the search engines.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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Using Reputation Marketing to Gain Customer Trust

reputation marketing strategy

Looking to gain customer trust online? Try using reputation marketing.

Any smart business that is keeping up with current business trends will know all about how reputation marketing can affect their business, and how it directly affects things like customer retention, brand awareness, and most importantly, consumer trust.

And if you aren’t taking advantage of online review sites for your business, you could be missing out on gaining more customers and clients.

Having a good reputation marketing strategy where you have someone manage the aspects of online reviews can be very rewarding especially when it comes to building trust for your brand.

Getting listed on these review sites is the first step in wowing potential customers, and at the same time showing these future prospects that you care about your brand, and care about customer experience. If you don’t do this, your competition will, and are already likely taking advantage of getting positive reviews.

Don’t wait a minute longer to find out that your business has unchecked reviews online. Take control of your reputation marketing strategy now.

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, please reach out to us.

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