Dabrian Marketing Group

DaBrian Marketing Group Hires Nick Davies as Web Designer

March 1, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Nick Davies contributes his expert-level knowledge, skills, and abilities to creating and implementing web designs, photography, and videography for clients of DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC.

1 March, 2017 (Reading, PA) – DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC hires Nick Davies as the full-time Web Designer to collaborate with rest of the agency’s team members to create diverse digital marketing materials for clients.

As a graduate of Full Sail University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science & Graphic Design, Nick delivers creative ideas and innovative work to the team at DaBrian Marketing. His daily tasks include formulating new designs for clients’ websites and downloadable content, creating and implementing photography into advertising campaigns, as well as filming and editing video marketing.

Nick operates as a valued member of the Creative department at DaBrian Marketing. He most often collaborates with the Creative Director, the Copywriter, and the Inbound Marketing Manager to ensure that all visual elements of clients’ digital marketing match their goals and generate profitable results. This involves Nick in every stage of the development of marketing materials – from brainstorming, to web design, to copy fitting, to implementation.

A welcomed new addition to the office, Nick gave the following statement:

“I’m excited to be part of the DaBrian Marketing team and I am looking forward to creating some great work with them.”
With additional experience in print design and social media marketing, Nick is a flexible team member that aids in not only designing websites but also the materials that lead users to those websites. This results in a consolidated, streamlined creative process for the rest of DaBrian Marketing’s team. Whether it is a printed brochure, a paid advertising campaign, a promotional eBook, a fun video, or an entire website, Nick devotes his unique and varied skill-set to the collective efforts of DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC. This allows the digital marketing agency to create work that increases brand awareness and improves user-experience.

About DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC

Founded in 2008, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a full-service digital marketing agency, focused on providing original and strategic digital marketing solutions for businesses, that want to create digital awareness, increase return on investment (ROI), and identify insights that not only will help achieve goals but will also help to increase your business’s efficiencies. DaBrian Marketing Group’s services include email marketing, digital branding, search engine optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising, web design, web analytics, social media marketing, and more. Company headquarters is centrally located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading, Pennsylvania 19602. For more information about DaBrian Marketing Group, visit dabrianmarketing.com or call 610.743.5602.

Content Marketing Is Like Being a Parent

February 20, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Content - A General Word for General Stuff

Quite literally: your content is any text (also known as “copy”), imagery, video, or other material that engages consumers. In other words: content is everywhere and on everything. When you engage in any digital marketing – digital branding, paid online advertising, social media marketing, search engine optimization, or web design – you will be creating and using content.

But, that’s just it! Once you create and use your digital content, the job’s not done. The biggest mistake that you can make is believing that your content doesn’t need to grow up.

Congrats! You’re a Proud New Parent

When you create content for your new website or digital campaigns, you basically become a parent to that content. Just like any good mom or dad, you’ll want to give your new baby constant attention. After you actually create and implement content onto web pages, email campaigns, or social media posts, measure your content’s performance.

Identify the areas of growth that you want to see and that define your business’ success. Keep track of how those areas change with your new content being used. If there is any room for improvement or progress, make necessary changes. Increase your business’ generation of leads by always enticing your target audience to click or call.

Your Content’s First Steps

It’s the moment that every parent loves, the most: your baby starts to learn how to walk! In the same way, your digital content needs to learn how to navigate your target audience to where they need to go. Continuously guide your content marketing to include new facts, consider new members of your audience, and feature new copy or visual material.

A recent article from Think with Google stresses the importance of every second in a consumer’s search for your products or services. Your content must always be relevant to what paying customers want at the moment that they search. Keep one eye on the path, ahead, by understanding trends in consumers’ behavior. Keep the other eye on your content to make sure that it’s walking in the right direction – profits.

But, don’t worry if your content falls down a few times. Creating effective and relevant copy, videos, and designs requires time and lots of practice.

Treasure Each Micro-Moment with Your Content

As your content starts to mature, you’ll also notice that the world keeps on changing, too. Technology always advances and consumers’ behavior keeps adapting to it. Your content must do the same.

Consumers searching on mobile devices are often moving around their local areas. Whatever they’re trying to find, they most likely need it, NOW. They want informative, helpful content that solves their problems at that very location. How can your digital content do that if it’s still a baby?

Another article from Think with Google reports that approximately 61% of people on smartphones will probably buy from websites that adjust their content to specific locations (data from Wave 3 & Google/Ipsos). If your content isn’t changing to meet consumers’ spontaneous and local needs, your content is unsuccessful. Protect your content from failure by creating new material that reaches and informs your audience at the right moments.

Before You Know It, They’re All Grown Up

That’s right. Sooner or later: your digital content is going to be a great success:

Your ad copy will inform searchers and emotionally attract your audience.
Your imagery will show consumers what they need in that very moment.
Your videos will answer any question that a potential customer has.

Create and implement effective content throughout your digital marketing campaigns. Measure the results with insightful analytics. Continue to optimize and refine your content to generate the leads and sales that you need. Always adapt your content to reach the right audience at the right time and place.

Your Content Will Always Be Your Baby

Just like parenthood – content marketing is a process that is never truly finished. But, it’s all worth it when your content raises your company’s revenue.

Need help raising your digital content, the right way? Just leave a comment and you’ll hear from us. Or,contact us to chat about your current digital marketing plans.

Hot Web Design Trends of 2017

February 13, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group 3 Comments

Here at DaBrian Marketing, we love to make predictions on hot web design trends you’ll see in the upcoming year. In the past, our own Creative Director, Mark Mapp, has made predictions in both 2015 and 2016. Heading into 2017, it’s time again to see what has survived and died in the past few years of web design.

Web design is always evolving to keep up with the latest technological advancements. What started in 1989 with just text on the screen, has now progressed to complex websites that can auto adjust to any size while also having all sorts of bells and whistles. Today, we are looking towards the future as designers and developers as we begin to create the next great innovation in the web world. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest trends carrying into the new year.

Flat Design

First catching fire in 2010, we haven’t let flat design go since. We ditched the glossy buttons and shadow effects for vector icons and images. In doing so, we went back to our design roots to focus on layout hierarchy and content structure. Some debate has been made that all flat designs look the same, thus killing the creative aspects of web creation. I actually believe that it is simplifying the design-process. In turn this opens up more opportunity to be creative in other areas of web design. Not to mention: looking similar isn’t always a bad thing. As stated by Forbes Steve Widen: “Familiarity creates confidence.” When it comes to websites, familiarity makes users feel that they can trust the site. For examples of the best flat design websites, go to awwwards.com and check out their nominies.

Material Design

If you haven’t heard of material design yet, then it is about time. Material design is Google’s answer to the next step in the evolution of web design. Like most things that Google does, material design is making waves in the web community and everyone is following in the wake. The goal is to “Create a visual language that synthesizes classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.” Material design is a spin-off of flat design that focuses on the fundamentals of design while taking it a step further by adding subtle gradients and motion to provide more meaning within designs. The driving force behind this style of design is an emphasis on user actions. This makes the core functionality immediately apparent and provides waypoints for the user.

Mobile Ready Responsive Design

The most important trend that will continue to carry into 2017 is creating mobile-ready responsive designs. As mobile continues to gain importance, you will see websites increasingly dropping the classic, heavy, top navigation in favor of a slimmed down mobile version. Having mobile at the forefront of your design will not only improve your site’s ease of use, but also increase site speed. When you consider that “Mobile devices now account for nearly 2 of every 3 minutes spent online,” it’s no wonder that we are going in the direction that we are.

On the Horizon: Virtual Reality?

Looking back, you can see that many trends we have today have evolved, and continue to do so, as technology advances and new challenges arise. New ideas arrive out of a changing consumer-based, interactive environment. It seems that we have grasped a solid foundation to hold onto in web design and are now beginning to refine our approaches in building and designing. With exciting new innovations like VR (>Virtual Reality) becoming more common, I am thrilled to see what possibilities this will bring to the web. Who knows? Maybe a virtual space to visit “the internet” is right around the corner.

What websites stick out to you? Do you have an example of another well-designed website? Leave a comment, below! Or, if you have hilarious examples of poorly designed websites, we’ll take those too.

Combine Your SEO & Social Media Strategy To Maximize Success

February 6, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

In the past, both social media and SEO were worked on in silos. SEO was primarily focused on technical improvements and on-page optimization while social was (and often still is today) not even considered a part of the strategic marketing plan. To maximize your digital marketing efforts, SEO and social media need to be in a committed, strategic relationship.

1. Social Signals Are A Ranking Factor

As the use of social media continues to grow, so does the influence it has on search visibility (the likeliness of being found within search results). In 2016, Google and Twitter agreed to make a deal that now gives tweets a prominent position within the SERPs (search engine results page). Additionally, Facebook and (especially) Google + both show up within Google’s organic search results. This not only means that you need to be active on these major platforms but also that it’s imperative to optimize your accounts.

Create relevant posts to reflect your strategy (using the same keywords, message, and tying them all together).

The image below shows social media presence amongst Google’s organic search results.

Search engines not only take into account being listed on these social platforms – they also evaluate your authority. A company with millions of followers receives stronger social signals than a company with a few hundred. With that being said, search engines aren’t stupid. Social media metrics can be easily manipulated and search engines know when that happens. For example, search engines can detect the quality of your followers. This means buying 100,000 proxy Twitter followers will not do much.

The best approach is to build your following organically. Keep in mind that this takes time to do it right.

2. People Are Showing Love, Love Them Back

Your business’ digital presence is not limited to your website; it’s throughout the entire internet. People are talking about your business and their conversations have a direct impact on your efforts. You need to be a part of the discussion. This is where both SEO and social media come into play (in holy matrimony).

With SEO, your company will have complete access and control of your local listings, some of which incorporate popular review systems (Google My Business, Yelp, etc). With social, you’ll interact – through comments, likes, shares, and retweets – with the actual people that use those popular review systems. Through proper management, you’ll see when anyone mentions your company’s name (even when you are not directly tagged in the post).

Facebook also has a popular review system. Most of the time, if a consumer is unsatisfied, he or she will immediately go to social media to complain or write a review. 90% Of Customers Say Buying Decisions Are Influenced By Online Reviews. Not monitoring and responding to them is a huge missed opportunity.

3. Social Sharing is Caring

In terms of outreach: The goal of SEO is to acquire more high-quality links and increase visibility for new/existing traffic, lead conversion, and content exposure. The goal of social media is to engage with your community, connect with new audiences, and increase your brand presence.

Now, as social media and SEO have begun to blur the lines of separation, these both have been somewhat combined, naturally.

As opposed to traditional, and often ineffective, outreach methods – emails or contact submissions – a more modern approach is connecting with target audiences via social. By creating these social relationships, you’ll not only know which of your followers to send your content to, but you also enhance the probability of them sharing and reposting it. While social links do not carry the same link juice that highly-reputable sites do, it does increase your content’s overall exposure. This increases the chance of reaching other industry influencers and succeeds in showing you’re a leader in your industry.

Since it was shared by their peers, those influencers are more likely to share it on their site or blog. It also shows that you care when your audience engages with you and you care about building relationships with them.

4. Your Social Audience Helps Shape Your Content

SEO and content marketing are not all about just search trends, volume, and other metrics. It also has to do with actually producing content your audience gives cares about. Sure, you could look at historical data to see what has traditionally performed well (or not so well) to develop your content. But, that will always leave you one step behind if this is the ONLY method you use.

You need NEW content, too.

With social media, you should stay up with the latest trends, events, and news, as well as monitor the type of content your audience is interested in. On top of this, you can evaluate what’s working or not working for your competitors. This information will allow you to craft content that is timely, meaningful, and strategic to your users. In doing so, you’ll see engagement increase (comments, sharing, and contact submissions) and you’ll appear higher in the rankings for producing fresh, relevant content.

One simple way to view trending topics is to see what’s trending on Twitter.

5. Get Engaged To Your Community With Social & Local SEO

Businesses, especially small ones, can not succeed without the support of their community. This applies to the digital landscape, as well. In terms of SEO, the impact of your local area has never been greater. Major search engine’s – such as Google’s and Bing’s – algorithms have shifted towards more personalized results with a heavy emphasis on locality.

Aside from maintaining an accurate profile within the local listings, it is also extremely beneficial for your business to produce both localized content and social posts. Create blogs and other web pages that speak directly to your local audience. Then, utilize social media to disseminate it to local businesses and influencers (news reporters, bloggers, or those active in the community). This will increase not only the local discussion around your business but also the likelihood of earning local links. All of these signals will improve your ranking position within the organic search results.

The image below shows a blog post from a staple restaurant in West Reading, Pa, Say Cheese!, and a fellow DaBrian Marketing client. The blog highlights the restaurant, it’s history, future plans, and the announcement of their new website.

Tying Your Efforts Together

Your SEO and social media efforts need to be tied together to maximize efficiency. But, why stop there? For your digital marketing plan to be truly effective, you need to make sure all of your efforts are tied together. This includes your PPC (Pay per Click) advertising, web design, content marketing, email marketing, strategy, and your overall digital brand, in addition to SEO and social media. Your mindset needs to shift from different departments working independently to your business functioning collectively as a team, allowing to not let anything fall through the cracks.

Need someone to align your SEO and social efforts to help generate leads?

Why the Financial Industry Needs to Invest in Social Media

January 31, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Social media’s original purpose was for friends and family to stay connected with one another. Since its birth, it has evolved into more than just a way of communicating. It’s an effective medium to get in front of your customers. Often, banks, wealth management firms, and insurance companies skip out on this marketing opportunity because of the fear of breaking regulations with compliance. Do not fear compliance. With your own policy and social media strategy, you’ll soon be adding another powerful marketing asset, connecting with new potential customers, and having more people walk through you door.

Is it actually worth the risk?

Yes. The average person maintains more than 5 social media platforms. Millennials specifically use it when they wake up, multiple times throughout the day, during their downtime, and right up to the moment they fall asleep. If they’re using it, you need to use it, too. This group is quickly gaining purchasing power. Get in front of them before they make the final decision on opening a checking/saving account or gaining financial advice from one of your competitors. Yahoo! states, “50% of shoppers have made a purchase based on a recommendation through a social media network.” Your presence on social is critical to staying relevant in today’s digital world.

How to Start

Many banks and firms have had many mergers and acquisitions. So, there may be social media accounts associated with previous company names that lead to your current website, address, or phone number. Gain access, merge your pages, or delete old accounts that have nothing to do with your current brand. Not only do you need to think about the business’ accounts, but some employees may be marketing themselves through social media. If you do not have someone monitoring, you have no insight into what your employees are saying (social’s not just about your customers).

Once you have the appropriate channels, you’ll need to decide what you’re goal is for them. Obviously, gaining more customers for your business is one of them. But, this may not be the true purpose of your pages. Goals may include to quantify content to a dollar amount, to educate your followers, to recruit, or to provide faster customer service. Defining this will help you get started on the type of content you will be providing and give you a clear vision of where you are heading.

Posting Without Fear of Compliance

The FINRA, the SEC, FFIEC, and the FDA will need to know about your social media channels and you know they will be auditing your content. Creating a standard strategy for you and your employees to abide by will help you to avoid violating any regulatory guidelines while maintaining full control on all content disseminated online. Setting these standards on what you expect to see will leave anyone with admin access in a comfortable position for posting onto social media. Avoid the madness, completely, and never have an issue with compliance.

Get to Know Your Customers

Monitor the conversations that are happening about your brand. The first place people go to complain, to brag, and to share their opinions is a social media account. You’re leaving your reputation in the hands of others without any say. Be a part of the conversation. If a negative comment occurs, be the first to respond. Having a social voice will not only help your credibility; you’ll soon truly get to know your customers. What are their interests, hobbies, locations, and languages? What do they like or not like about you? Where did they come from or go after interacting with your brand? Answering these questions will eventually help you in all areas of marketing for your company. If you want customers to invest their time and resources into you, you need to invest in them.

Working With a Social Media Marketer

We’ll do what we need to in order for you to have peace of mind about your new venture. We’ll help you educate your employees – what they’ll need to look out for, how to build those relationships, themselves, on their own channels, and the appropriate language and wording. We’ll thoroughly explain the strategy to leave no one questioning any part of it. We’ll help you gain access to all of your previous channels and secure each page. Our social media management tools have built-in compliance features that will help us all avoid disasters. Most importantly, we will create a crisis management procedure if a problem were to occur. The combination of a social media marketing team and a compliance officer will allow your content to be accurate and entertaining for your followers. (Yes, entertaining. Your boring content won’t get you anywhere. We’ll give you a personality compared to your standard legal jargon.)

Example of Financial Companies Utilizing Social Right

We understand the uncertainty you may feel about utilizing social media marketing. There’s the pressure of legal limitations and costly violations if an error occurs; but, you must soon realize the pressure is even greater to be active on social media. You’ll soon be a forgotten face in a crowd of your competitors without it.

Learn what is being said and what needs to be said. Let’s build our relationship so we can help you build one with your customers. We know you have questions, so ask away in the comments below!

National and Local Companies That Excel on Social Media

January 24, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. Your customers are on them, every day. Are you connecting with them? Don’t lose out on valuable interactions. Check out this list that we made of companies that exemplify social media marketing best practices.

Sharing (Cute) Stories on Social

Animal Rescue League of Berks County – @BerksARL

Stories that accompany images are always important for Facebook. Users have the privilege of extended text in posts on Facebook. The Animal Rescue League of Berks County uses this privilege, well. They know how to stop scrollers in their tracks (who doesn’t stop to look at adorable animals? ? ??). They emotionally attach users to their images with personal, stories about the animals in each photo.

Wendy Isn't a Girl to Mess With

Wendy’s – @Wendys

The best part of Wendy’s social media presence is that they’re actually present.. They consistently post relevant content that directly communicates with their target audience. And, they respond to users that mention them in posts or ask questions. This often results in hilarity for the rest of us. Take a look at this article about an interaction on Twitter for a perfect example. Wendy’s social media marketing emphasizes the power of relationships. It is as if Wendy, herself, talks to people. And, it gets people to come to their restaurants.

Protecting and Connecting

Exeter Police Department – @ExeterTownshipPD

This local police department expresses regular updates that lighten the mood of stigmatized work. Exeter P.D. makes positive impressions on users through jokes and creative photography. They also provide relevant information about the current activity of Exeter Township. Videos and imagery offer safety advice and comment on their own workplace culture. Exeter P.D.’s posts make people want to connect with them. Even in the serious business of law enforcement, we can always enjoy a good laugh!

Getting a Slice of the Social Pie

Mimmo’s – @Mimmosrestaurant

A focus on social media marketing gets people to Mimmo’s for popular events. Mimmo’s knows it’s own brand: a great place for lots of people to gather and celebrate the Super Bowl, New Year’s Eve, and family occasions. They capitalize on the changing seasons with posts about reservations for holidays like St. Valentine’s Day. They also sponsor posts through Facebook to expand their reach to the local community. This naturally gets more customers to the restaurant. It helps that their food and drinks are pretty good, too.?? ?

Spreading Smiles Physically and Digitally

Grove Dental – @GroveDentalWyomissingPA

You might not expect a dental practice to connect with users in a human way through their posts. But, Grove does. Highlights of employees’ achievements communicate their expertise. Posting articles about dental health captures the attention of users that need information. Grove also keeps their social media fun and entertaining. They make the dentist’s office social – not scary. Promotion of their social media through business cards and employee-referrals only brings in more customers. And, yes. We do Grove’s social media marketing. #shamelessplug

Getting Shredded on Snapchat ?

Shredz – Shredzsnap

This national company is the proud and only entry on this list that capitalizes on the power of Snapchat. Shredz specializes in fitness and workout supplements. For an active company, an active and mobile social medium is necessary. They use Snapchat to give momentary updates on relatable moments that their target audience experiences on a daily basis. They announce sales for their customers via the app to capture users at any time, anywhere.

Learn from these companies:

Tell stories to your audience – keep it relatable and relevant.
Capture users’ attention with videos and imagery.
Create consistent posts and always respond to comments and questions, ASAP.
Communicate your company’s culture with humor or professionalism.
Be relevant to the changing needs of your customers.
Promote your posts to expand reach across your region.
Connect with mobile users instantaneously with opportunities for interaction.

Have any questions? Ask the certified members of our team. Place your comment, below, and we’ll get right back to you. Let’s start a conversation!