Archives for July 2015

Expand Your Home and Garden Business With Digital Marketing

July 29, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Digital Marketing comes in all shapes and sizes. For those with businesses in the home and garden field, there lies a recognizable opportunity for your business to grow and bloom with digital marketing. Email marketing, Pay per Click (PPC) advertising, and social media can all positively impact your business if you develop the right niche and utilize the right tools to do so.

How Can Email Marketing Help with Sales?

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing yields an average 4,300% return on investment for businesses in the United States. By implementing email marketing, you can reach all of your current and potential customers while sharing the latest and greatest news and promotions your company is offering. Say you’re a lawn care business and your company is promoting a seasonal special, “20% off Lawn Care Services.” By adequately utilizing email marketing, your current and potential customers will be able to access your promotion all within the click of a button. Along with sharing promotions, emails marketing allows you to successfully measure your campaign and the performance on lead generations or sales.

Are you taking advantage of all Social Media has to offer?

If you are not taking advantage of social media, then you need to get into the game! Social media is the quickest and most cost effective way to share new products and showcase projects or work that you have just completed. Social media allows your business to directly interact and engage with customers, which now goes both ways as well. Your customers are able to reach you with any of their questions in a timely fashion. The personal touch you include in your social media pages will help humanize your brand and allow you to reach a whole new audience.

Can PPC help attract the right audience?

Email marketing and social media are great for showcasing your promotions or new products, but if you want to attract customers searching online for specific products or services you offer, then Pay per Click (PPC) is the way to go. Pay per Click (PPC) allows you to connect with the right customers across all platforms and devices, makes sure your ads are shown in the right place at the right time, and easily tracks and measures how your campaign is performing.

Whether you want to promote a special offer or showcase a finished renovation, having an effective digital marketing strategy can help your business blossom into a marketing producing machine!

Contact us and learn how DaBrian Marketing can help your business flourish.

Project Budgets: An Inside Look

July 22, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Great! You’ve signed the contract, dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s! You’ve gained a new client and your excitement level is through the roof! You’ve been allocated a budget, and should plan accordingly. Let’s take an inside look into how to use your budget wisely.

Develop a Plan

Once you’ve been in your business long enough, you’ve got filing cabinets filled with plans you never use! The best advice I could ever provide, is to stick to it! Develop a plan that is all encompassing, with “if-then” scenarios strategically documented, and with time allocated properly. Discussing your plan with each employee is also key. Assure that the goals within the contract are clear, define roles and responsibilities, confirm the resources needed are accounted for, and guarantee that the time allocated matches any changes made to their processes.

Read more information detailing project plans: How to Create a Clear Project Plan

Match your Plan to your Budget

Once you’ve developed a plan that aligns to your goals, assuring your budget falls in line is a major priority. There are a number of spreadsheets, platforms, and guides to help you align your budget. Smartsheet is one of those platforms that allows team members to collaborate, gain approvals, and report upon budget goals that are being met or exceeded. There are plenty of resources out there to assist in this process, but flushing out this process can only be done once your team is on the same page and your plan is clear. Knowing that in order to build a house, you must start from the ground up, may seem like an easy process to follow, but knowing that the price of insulation has recently skyrocketed might affect your budget and plan.

Stay Up to Date

The key to project plans is tracking progress. Become familiar with your employee’s processes to understand the issues at hand that may affect timelines. Know that the turnaround time for content to become approved by your client’s compliance team is two weeks, but that the company-wide work-retreat may affect this. Even though timelines may never stay on it’s written path, following the path is the objective. Variables outside of your company’s reach are not to be stressed about. Knowing that your team is working diligently to assure these goals are met provides peace of mind. Utilizing tools that allow for easy communication and collaboration can keep you informed and on budget.
Here you can find a blog on 3 Great Messaging Apps for Work!

Don’t be Afraid to Adjust

Adjusting your project’s timeline or budget isn’t the worst thing in the world. The worst outcome would be losing a client due to the inability of being flexible. The continuously gaining cost of ink is far less than the cost of no longer having a paying client. Always maintain a fluid relationship with your clients to notify them of any changes and updates. Keep up the good work and conquer!

For more information about project budgets and how we can help you grow, contact us or leave us a comment below!

Why Should you Update your CMS?

July 15, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Before we get started on why we need to keep your website up-to-date, let’s get to the “why” behind why the updates come about. Updates are made generally to fix incompatibility, security, and bug issues. We can’t forget the most known update, when updating adds more features. If you don’t update your Content Management System (CMS), you might be missing out on fixes, new / fixed features, as well as, leaving yourself open to a security risk.

Why Bug Fixes Are Made

Bug fixes are released because there was some vulnerability in the code that was not caught before. It is easy to miss this because a website’s code might be 10,000+ lines of code long. It’s like watching a movie the 2nd time and catching something you missed before. If you don’t update your CMS, you could be leaving yourself open to be hacked. If you hold customer information, then you have a bigger risk of losing all or a vast majority of your clients if you do get hacked.

Dangers To Update Your CMS

I have 10+ updates and I want to update now! — Hold on there, don’t rush and wildly update your CMS without a plan. Updates come with new / fixed features and they might remove some old features, too. When that happens, and you are updating past a few versions, chances are your site will break. If your site is having issues check out one of our past blogs to help fix it.

What To Do Before Updates

Before you update anything, always make a full backup of your site in case it does go down. Depending on the size of your site it might take a few minutes or a few hours. Once that is done, update the CMS core first. It is the most important part of your site. It is your sites engine and needs to be in top condition. If something is going to break, chances are it will be here.

Now that your site’s core is updated, you need to update any plugins/extensions. If you’re updating more than 1 version, something might break which is why you should do the smart thing and schedule the update to you when your site has the least traffic. You usually start on a Friday and if needed, you then have the weekend to fix it. Just make sure your developer is reachable in case something breaks, so they can reprogram it to minimize downtime.

Lastly, the theme updates. These may get messy and often go against the principle. Updating the theme you are using often isn’t a smart thing to do. When the theme is updated, your custom code (if any) will most likely be removed. This forces you to reprogram much of your site. Generally, themes don’t update often, but if yours has one, back everything up first and then do the update. After any update, look over your site to assure nothing is broken. If everything’s good, then you’re all okay! If something broke, then roll it back to your backup, and notify anyone who would possibly update the site to not do that update.

Conclusion

Even if you have 1 update or 10 updates to make, always make sure to backup your site before each one. Remember, updating it can also cause issues to arise on your site, so be sure to schedule it during your site’s lowest traffic time. By doing that, you will prevent 90% of issues and protect yourself from being hacked. If you are interested in starting a wordpress blog site, check out this article.

Have a question about updating your CMS? Fire away in the comments below!

Ecommerce Website Platforms That Help Grow Your Business!

July 8, 2015 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

Make Sure Your Ecommerce Website Platform Is Up To Par

With summer time quickly passing by, the daunting thought of back to school shopping approaches every parents mind. If your Ecommerce platform is not up to par with your competition, parents will be choosing them over you for their back to school needs. Even if your website doesn’t have a shopping cart, you may lose business to competitors who do. Did you know that U.S. eCommerce sales will increase over 11% this year, and over 10% again in 2016 and 2017.

If you’re considering changing or adding an Ecommerce function to keep up with the shopping trends, here are a few platforms that can give your website the shopping power it needs, when it needs it the most!

Volusion

Volusion has a lot of features, simple interface, and good security. It has over 900 features which include store builder, design, built-in marketing, social media tools, inventory management, secure hosting, and 24/7 customer support. It also features a mobile-responsive website and administrative section. If you have a small number of products (100 or less) and still want all the features, then a $15/month Mini Plan, which includes unlimited storage and no transaction fees, is perfect for you. The Premium Plan is $135/month for unlimited products. Could this platform help you with the influx of shoppers online?

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce is easy-to-use and has a lot of built-in features which let you create a store that converts interest into sales. It offers mobile responsive themes, flexible product management, inventory control, optimized checkout, analytics and 24/7 support. In addition, a setup wizard and Bigcommerce University offer lessons in online store design and marketing. Standard pricing is $29.95 per month, with a 1.5% transaction fee, in addition to other credit card processing fees. A Plus account is $79.95 per month with no transaction fees. Will bigcommerce be the right platform for your business needs?

3dcart

Opening and running an online store is fast and effortless as 3dcart includes many of the most needed features. The dashboard is easy to navigate and quickly allows you to access the most important store areas. The dashboard includes data on SEO, social media, mobile store templates, product management, statistics, and security. 3dcart also offers an app store with a substantial number of add-ons. Their “Mini” costs $19.99 a month for up to 200 products, while the Power Plan costs $129.99. Both plans offer no transaction fees. Will the 3dcart platform help your business when it needs it the most?

Shopify

Shopify’s features include over 100 themes, mobile commerce capabilities, your own domain name, marketing/SEO, a blogging platform, the ability to host an entire website, and online education. Shopify also has many apps that you can download and install in your store. Pricing starts at $29 per month, with a 2.9% plus 30 cent rate if you use their credit card processor. Higher plan’s have lower per-transaction fees. Does Shopify seem to fit your business needs?

Big Cartel

Big Cartel is a basic platform which targets artists looking for easy solutions to sell their products online. If you are looking to sell a few products online and don’t mind basic features and limited themes, this is for you. A basic Gold Plan allows you to feature five products for free, with no inventory management. The Platinum Plan is $9.99 per month for up to 25 products, while Titanium is $29.99 per month for up to 300 products. The more you pay the more features you unlock. Does the Big Cartel have all the things your shopping platform needs?

With Ecommerce sales on the rise year after year will your platform be able to handle the rush at back to school time or during the Holiday season?

Contact us today or leave us a comment below for more advice and information.

SEO: Looking Beyond the Rankings

July 1, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

With several algorithm changes in the past years, the definition and primary focus of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed immensely. These changes have caused confusion amongst many business owners. Although many businesses understand the importance of SEO and have benefited from it, few are aware of the process that goes into it. Most believe that SEO is all about rankings. Yes, SEO will increase your rankings in the search engines, but that’s a byproduct of the process, not the end goal.

What is SEO?

Wikipedia defines SEO as, “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page.” While this is true, it is far less descriptive than it should be. SEO refers to the consistent development of a business’s online presence to increase reach and visibility to a target audience. The development process is based on search engine algorithms that are regularly updated and modified. That being said, there has always been one factor in these algorithms that has stayed true and consistent: Good content. The algorithm updates ultimately work towards determining how well a site meets the needs of the user. With fresh industry related content, users will likely visit more pages, stay on your site longer, interact (comment, like, download, etc), and convert on sales. All of these metrics are reflected positively by search engines and are reflected in the rankings.

Several business owners tend to get tied up in the thought of keywords and rankings. While keywords are important, they don’t mean anything without the right content containing those keywords. Sure, you could rank well for certain areas of interest, but if your web page does not follow SEO best practices and does not have updated relevant content, it will actually have a negative impact on your online presence. Websites with poor or no SEO will have a high bounce rate, when visitors leave after viewing only one page, which will drastically decrease a Business’s positioning in search engines. More importantly, that means a loss of visitors and sales. This means businesses should put less focus in stuffing your website full of keywords and more focus on maximizing the user experience.

The purpose of SEO is to increase visitors to your site and their retention level, increase brand awareness, and most of all increase sales and leads. With effective SEO, all of these will be accomplished which in turn will lead to an increase in rankings.

What can SEO do for my Business?

It’s 2015, business is no longer just walk-in sales. Businesses are seeing a huge percentage if not their majority of visitors and sales via online. Evermerchant reports that e-commerce sales generate more than $1.2 Million every 30 seconds! Without an effective SEO campaign, your business will miss out on a great financial opportunity.

With that being said, more visitors to your site does not directly correlate to an increase in sales or leads. An effective SEO campaign enables your business to target relevant consumers with relevant content or products/services. Good SEO speeds up the process of generating traffic to your webpage and makes it much easier for consumers to find just what they are looking for. Search engines distinguish the most relevant content to match a user’s search query, so the way you create, maintain, and position your website’s content is vital to your business’s success.

A properly optimized site should answer 9/10 questions a visitor has regarding the topic they searched for. This means that the page they land on should have up to date useful content as well as easy to follow navigation that points visitors in the right direction. Let’s say for example you’re searching for a new cell phone. After adding your specifications to your search, you click on a cellphone distributor. If this site has been modified effectively, you would hope to see a list of relative cell phones, content about them, and even comparisons amongst them. The page should also have links to other internal or external pages that provide more information. That is what a site with good SEO looks like. The goal is to help the customer as much as possible and provide them with enough information so they are comfortable enough make a purchase or to interest them enough to generate a lead.

Rankings aren't Everything

“If you ain’t first, you’re last” is the common misconception regarding SEO and search engine rankings. While it is true that ranking higher in search engines leads to more visitors, it does not mean these visitors are the ones you’re targeting. Having an effective SEO campaign is all about quality over quantity.

Years ago the rankings within search engines were a decent method of evaluating a sites performance and relevancy but those days are no more due to several algorithm changes. Now search results are much more personalized with the user’s experience as the top priority. Google, for instance, takes search history, geographic location, social media, as well as the device being used to search all into consideration when a search is conducted. All of these factors take less control out of the website owner’s hands with regards to rankings.

Let’s say for example you own a small plumbing company and you are interested in improving your business’s SEO. You, as many businesses owners do, search Google for “plumbing” or “plumbing services” to evaluate your site’s performance. The problem with this method is that what you see is not what everyone else sees. Google’s search results will adjust its ranking order based upon what sites you have visited already with regards to plumbing. This will more than likely boost your site assuming that you visit it more than other sites. It will also show you local listings of plumbing companies in your area near the top of your results. These local listings are not only tied to your business’ website but also to your business’ profile on Google My Business and other local directories, which do indeed increase relative traffic. Google will also include sites that your Google+ friends or associates have either followed or interacted with.

Google and other search engines are businesses and search results are their product. They want their product to be of the highest quality it can possibly be, so search engines have shifted the focus towards improving the user experience. So what does that mean for your business? It means to worry less about rankings, and more about developing and updating all platforms in use, as well as evaluating your current data to identify your strengths and weaknesses. If your website is seeing an increase in activity but is not necessarily ranking high, do not sound the alarms. You can’t always control your ranking, but you are in control of improving your visitor’s experience. Put your efforts towards providing up to date industry related content and watch the numbers speak for themselves.

Conclusion:

As a business owner, understanding and utilizing SEO is vital for both financial growth and brand awareness. Years ago, evaluating rankings were a clear depiction of how well your SEO campaign has been but not any longer. Now business owners should look past the misleading rankings and focus more of their attention on the analytics. The process of SEO is not a sprint, it’s an ongoing marathon. If you’re seeing a steady increase in traffic, mentions, leads and sales, keep doing what you’re doing and let the rankings take care of themselves.

By: David McDowell