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Dabrian Marketing Group

2015 Social Media Wish List

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In this video, Steve Groller and Jim Doherty discuss the biggest social media marketing gifts Santa forgot to leave under our trees in 2014.

Here’s to a New Year of social media success, useful integrations, customized business solutions, more efficient management, and killer reporting!

1. Desktop Notifications

Social media is a really fast-paced environment from a marketing standpoint, and I think it’s important that there’s a one-to-one connection with the intended audience. It can be a big disconnect from a brand standpoint if that communication is stalled or delayed by a certain degree of time.

A lot of social media platforms in 2015, we’re looking for that more instantaneous notification system. A lot of them have those notification systems, but they’re very mobile-based; they’re not so much desktop-based. And throughout the day, a social media marketer might not be on their mobile phone, on that mobile application as much as they might be on their desktop. And most social media marketers might have ten lists open with five or six tabs, and might not have the time or even the inclination at some points of the day, to scroll through and refresh each one of those feeds. But they would rather have that notification system, whether it’s a desktop pop-up or an email or something along those lines to let them know about the important things that are going on behind the scenes.

2. Realistic Upgrades

So the beauty of social media management solutions is their ability to integrate with other third-party solutions, whether it’s a CRM or whether it’s an app, different analytics platforms. That connection is great for businesses that have existing platforms but want to bring and tie all the pieces together.

A lot of these solutions say that all of these integrations are coming forward and they’re in the pipeline and they’re in the works, but none of these transitions actually translate into meaningful data that we can use.

So one thing that we wish for in 2015 and moving forward from these platforms is a more clear distinction between the expected roll-outs for updates and integrations and for better data, for better features, and what actually makes it to the platform at the end of the day.

3. More Robust Reporting

For any business that has made the foray into social media, one big challenge that we’re seeing is the ability to justify the expense and the investment, and show a return on investment for their activities on social. And for the most part from the marketer’s standpoint, that falls to reports. Reports of progress, reports based upon activities they’re doing on the networks and that sort of thing.

So from a reporting perspective, the visual interpretation that we’re able to provide to our clients and to upper management is key in our industry, especially when social media is becoming more visual in and of itself; that holds true for the reporting aspect as well.

So that’s why we hope for, on our wish list for 2015 for social media, that a solution comes around that can strike that balance between great looking visuals, customizable information, and quick exports into a presentable format.

4. Small Business Solutions

For a small to medium sized business to only be able to manage three of their accounts on a free version of a solution usually is problematic. Usually if they’re a local business, they have more than just a Facebook, a Twitter, and perhaps a Google+. There are other platforms that are very valuable to their business such as review platforms like FourSquare and Yelp. If they do videos on a regular basis, their YouTube is also probably a very important social asset.

There’s often a big disparity between the features any business needs and the features that really are catered to an individual person, so where you might want to run a campaign or a contest or something a little bit more elaborate for your small business, in most cases that costs an exorbitant amount of money in relation to how much you pay just to use the platform on a monthly basis.

In 2015, we’d like to see more middle-of-the-road options for small and medium sized businesses who don’t want to necessarily break the bank to run a contest or a promotion, to incentivize their customers to connect with them, to have a more meaningful relationship with their customer base, and eventually turn that social media traffic into foot traffic.

What items are on your social media wish list? Let us know in the comments!

Marketing Tips for Businesses in 2015

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This week, we’re pleased to feature a guest blog post from Ivan Serrano, a digital journalist hailing from Northern California. If you’d like to catch up with Ivan, you can hit him up on Twitter!

The New Year is a time for change and a fresh start. Whether your 2014 marketing strategy was solid or not, it’s time to look to the future and make some necessary updates for 2015. The most important ingredient for marketing success now and in the future hasn’t changed though: You must know your customers and understand what they want. These marketing tips can hopefully steer you in the right direction and give you some ideas for your own digital strategy.

Digital marketing tips for 2015.

Go Mobile

It is clear that it is becoming an increasingly mobile-first world. Worldwide there are over 7 billion mobile devices with smartphones making up 25 percent of the total. If you haven’t already gone mobile, now is the time to embrace it as more people expect brands to offer mobile optimized websites. While this might require a complete overhaul of your site, approaching your site design with a mobile- first mentality will lead to more traffic. Consider this: 61 percent of people will immediately navigate away from a site if it isn’t mobile-friendly. When revamping your site for mobile, use a responsive design instead of a new mobile site. A responsive site will automatically adjust your webpage to fit on different screen sizes.

Don’t stop at your site though. Make sure you optimize your email messages for mobile as well. Surveys suggest that 80 percent of mobile users will delete emails if they are not optimized for their screen. Keep your emails easy to read with larger fonts and a simple layout.

Use Long-tail Keywords

Over the years, people’s searches have moved more towards long-tail keywords, as it produces more personal and relevant results, especially with the increasing popularity of mobile. Choosing the right long-tail keywords can be difficult but there are several options you can use to find the best ones for you:

  • Google Keyword Tool or other similar services
  • The meta tags in your competitor’s source code
  • Common keywords on comments, forums and emails

Once you have identified the long-tail keywords relevant to your business, create unique content around it. Do not try to stuff all of your keywords into one post though. Instead, spread it out among several posts or pages. Not only will your content sound more natural, you will also attract the right audience to your pages. As an added bonus, the more pages you have the more likely your site is to appear in someone’s search results.

Personalize Your Communication

With so many businesses and sites vying for people’s attention, it is no longer enough to just send out a mass email or post a generic update and expect to see results. People now expect a level of personalization to their customer experience. Without it, they will move on to your competitors. Personalization isn’t necessarily difficult, but it will take some time. You might already dabble in it with your social media accounts by responding to comments and directly interacting with your followers. In 2015 you’ll need to go a step further by personalizing every interaction your audience has with your company. Some important examples include:

  • Emails – While including a person’s name in the subject of the email can increase open-rate by 22.2 percent, you can go a step further by tailoring your message to suit the customer. Where do they live? What have they bought from you in the past? How long have they been subscribers? If you take all of these into account you can create a more personal email message that will lead to a higher CTR.
  • Content – Before you publish another post or update, take your audience into consideration. Do they prefer videos or case studies? What influencers do they go to for information? Create a profile of ideal customer and then base your content around what they want.

Go Local

95 percent of mobile users have used their device to perform a local search, with 88 percent taking action within a day of the search. Local search has become so prevalent on mobile that Google has included location signals in their mobile algorithm. The quickest way to go local is to include your address, phone number and email on the homepage of your site. Make sure you add a click to contact feature so customers can easily reach your business with a single tap.

Incorporate Videos

The growth of video as the major form of content will continue to increase as more social platforms incorporate it on their sites. Video will no longer be about just providing a polished viewing experience; it is moving more about providing experiences to the viewer and starting a conversation.

Usher in 2015 with a Solid Marketing Plan

Personalization will be the name of the marketing game in 2015 as people become more selective with what they choose to read and watch. Adjust your marketing plan accordingly and then continue improving throughout the year.
How do you intend to update your marketing plan in 2015? Tell us in the comments!

Rackspace vs. GoDaddy Hosting Platforms

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Rackspace eCommerce Platform

A new contender has joined the eCommerce competition. Rackspace is a UK-based web hosting company that boasts some premium services, but they have been known to be on the expensive side. Compare them to GoDaddy, the widely popular (and often less pricy) eCommerce hosting company, and it might seem like the decision between these two is easy. Let’s see how these two eCommerce platforms stack up against one another.

Rackspace eCommerce Hosting

Some advantages of Rackspace include…

  • They have nice diagnostic tools like page load speed checker and downtime cost calculator. Those alone can make a huge difference for webmasters when it comes to troubleshooting issues on an eCommerce site.
  • They have reliable hosting and rarely experience outages.
  • If your eCommerce site receives a sudden influx of traffic, Rackspace can easily manage the bandwidth.
  • Rackspace is well-known for their excellent security. We have yet to see them make a list of
    “hacked hosting companies.”
  • Rackspace offers multiple eCommerce software options, including the ever-popular Oracle and Magento.
  • In our team’s experience, Rackspace has had excellent customer and technical support.
  • Rackspace has 24-hour support, so there’s no need to worry if you ever have an issue.

The disadvantages…

The price. Their lowest eCommerce package is $300 a month.

Rackspace
Rackspace

GoDaddy Hosting

Some advantages are…

  • Pricing for GoDaddy is much less expensive than Rackspace–you can generally get hosting packages in the $5-$10 a month range.
  • In a span of 5 years, they have been reported to only of been down for 6 total hours. That’s quite impressive, even though they have received more media coverage than some smaller hosting companies.
  • There are several various add-ons you can implement on your eCommerce site (though most of them require you to purchase access to them). The add-ons differ from Rackspace; Godaddy’s add-ons are more along the lines of email, SSL, domains, etc.
  • They have 24/7 customer support.

The disadvantages…

  • Even though they have round-the-clock support, we’ve noticed that we often get transferred through several departments before we get to someone who can help solve our issue(s).

Because they’re so popular, they’re usually targeted for malicious attacks. So even though they claim to have excellent security, they’re not completely protected from hackers.

GoDaddy
GoDaddy

If you are a smaller eCommerce company that does not max out its bandwidth and uses little space on your server, then GoDaddy may be your best bet. If you have a larger or resource-intensive website and choose GoDaddy, you may find yourself dealing with customer service a lot. To save yourself that time and aggravation, you may wish to check out Rackspace and determine if the higher cost is the most effective business decision.

Have a question about these two eCommerce platforms? Leave us a comment below!

Putting the Biggest Content Marketing Questions to Rest

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Content marketing is going full-on beast mode.

And business owners are starting to pick up on it. More small businesses are allocating resources to it, and more B2B content campaigns are in the queue than ever before. With this trend, two big problems arise. The first is for the stragglers out there, who have to justify the expense to a greater degree than the argument that it’s “what everyone else is doing.” The second is for the folks who have already begun investing time and resources into content, but encounter the issue of showing its business value.

This week, we’re taking some of the biggest questions in the content marketing space and resolving them, once and for all. *drags out soap box*

How do we even know what to write about?

What this boils down to: Resources

Creating content that’s actually valuable requires more than a good idea. Why? Because those ideas don’t come out of thin air. They take people; knowledgeable, creative, driven individuals. When making the case for content to your higher-ups, the conversation will quickly turn to dollars and cents and personnel and budgets.

The fact of the matter is, content marketing is an investment that impacts all aspects of a business. Sales managers can supply service/product information to prospects, blog posts can reinforce a smaller team’s subject matter expertise, and case studies can act as proof that a company’s product or service helped a client overcome a major challenge.

As it stands, an investment in content marketing covers far more areas than the final document, video, or blog post. It’s really an investment in your entire brand, arguably your most valuable marketing resource.

How would we determine our return on investment?

What this boils down to: Value

We knew this was coming. With all the talk of business value, monetary value is the next logical step. Sure, pieces content explaining the features and benefits of a service are an important touchpoint on the path to a sale. The other types of content, the stuff that reinforce your brand’s story? Tying them to monetary value can be a little more enigmatic.

By Vancouver film school
By vancouverfilmschool. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

In conversations to get content marketing off the ground, you’ve got to have a mutual understanding of something: content marketing ROI exists, but it doesn’t happen overnight. In our experience, this type of objection to adopting content doesn’t come from someone who’s leery about the investment; it comes from someone who doesn’t understand how content can have value at all.

This is where your strategic approach and key performance indicators (KPIs) come into play. If your focus is leads, your strategy can contain KPIs like conversions and subscriber retention. And if it’s brand awareness you seek, take a look at consumption metrics like social media shares and website session duration. So long as you align your KPIs to what you hope to achieve overall, justifying content should be no problem.

Isn’t this just part of the SEO and social media we’re already doing?

What this boils down to: Education

Now this can be a tough one depending on who the folks in the room are. On one hand, yes, social media and SEO heavily depend upon valuable, interesting, and edutaining content. But are they one in the same?

Yes and no. Allow me to explain.

Because SEO, social media, Pay per Click, and others all need content to exist and be effective, they’re definitely associated with content marketing. On a different level, though, content marketing is an entire way of approaching how your brand interacts with customers. In that way, it’s distinctly different from the tactic of SEO or the channel of social media.

So back to the question at hand. Is content marketing a part of SEO and social? Yes, but to be successful, we have to think about it as more than that. Rather than ask:

  • “How should we do SEO better?”
  • “What do we post on Facebook this month?”

Take a second look at your marketing tactics through a content marketing lens:

  • “Are we providing valuable content based on what our target audience is searching?”
  • “Is the content being posted to Facebook relevant to the right users?”

That’s quite a difference, isn’t it? On one hand, thinking about digital marketing in this context more closely associates your tactics as means of achieving your business goals. On the other, it allows your team to understand how individual areas work together as you speed down that path. And at the end of the day, your content is going to be what holds it all together.

Still left with burning content marketing questions? Let ‘em fly in the comments!

3 Reasons to Fire Your Local SEO Service Provider

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Clicking the send button for the third time, you’re starting to wonder if your Internet is down. Or if you spelled your account rep’s email wrong. Or if a sinkhole opened up beneath the city where your local SEO agency is located.

In any case, this lack of communication is the straw that’s about to break the camel’s back. And that’s not even the half of it. It’s time to cut ties with your local SEO service provider. Open up your company letterhead and start that strongly-worded termination notice, because…

1. They’ve been trying to game the system

local SEO services in Reading, Pa - DaBrian Marketing Group

It’s no secret that there are companies out there that disguise unethical tricks and aggressive techniques as “premier local SEO services.” The bottom line? They might be able to provide temporary boosts in rankings, but you shouldn’t expect those incremental shifts to stay for very long. In fact, if you haven’t seen your organic search performance take a nosedive as a result of your local SEO agency’s work, you should consider yourself lucky.

What else should throw a red flag? If you notice any of the following:

  • Inaccurate or non-specific local listing information
  • Too many Google reviews you don’t recognize
  • Multiple listings for your single business location

It’s very likely that the agency providing your local SEO services is more concerned with compensation than actually helping your business’s local visibility. And if you haven’t heard from them in a while, it’s probably because…

2. They’ve Left the the “O” out of “Local SEO”

Because the local SEO space changes so often, whether from the perspective of user search trends, algorithms, or the platforms themselves, it’s in a local SEO service provider’s best interest to stay up-to-date. And really, that’s what it’s all about. It’s called “Optimization” for a reason; it’s a process that must change and adapt as the search engines do. No business can hope to succeed if their agency is taking a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach. If you suspect your vendor is guilty of this, here’s a great way to evaluate their approach:

Simply ask: “What does your roadmap for local SEO services look like for the next 3 months?”

If your agency rep either A) has no idea what you’re asking them, or B) makes no mention of a specific change made by Google, Yahoo, or Bing, your Spidey senses were spot-on. And while you have your agency on the line, it might be worth asking about why…

3. They’re not measuring progress in a meaningful way

If you can remember the last time you got an SEO report from your agency, you’re off to a good start. The better question is, “When was the last time you took that report and actually did something with it?”. In reality, local SEO services shouldn’t stop at the services themselves. Without a transparent culture where the client is fully aware of the progress of a local SEO campaign as it relates to your business as a whole, there’s an immediate disconnect. A disconnect not only between what your local SEO agency has promised and the results you should be seeing, but also between your marketing budget and what led to a measurable return on investment. A professional local SEO report should contain:
  • Key measures of success that you’ve seen before and/or approved
  • A comprehensive data set without any big gaps or inconsistencies
  • Action items and/or a timeline of next steps that they will take on your behalf
A good way to determine whether it’s really time to pull the plug on this agency of yours? Do some research on your own and challenge them to see if they’ve done theirs. If they don’t have data to back up what they’re doing or a culture of measurement to prove that what they are doing is effective, it’s time to show them the door. That is, as soon as they answer one of the emails you’ve been sending.
Is your local SEO agency helping or hurting you? Share your thoughts in the comments!

PPC Christmas Time KPIs

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That’s right; it’s Christmas shopping time. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are quickly approaching. The question is—Are your PPC Campaigns ready? Whether you think you are prepared for the holiday season or just starting to get ready, here are a few things to keep in mind.

What to Expect this Holiday Season

During the 2014 Christmas season, everyone is going to be searching for that perfect gift. This means more online searches and more impression opportunities. Below is a screenshot from Google trends showing that search volume for retail-related keywords and phrases   this time of the year. Although the graph only goes back 3 years, the trend is consistent for much longer.

Annual search trends for electronics, toys and retail during the Holiday season
Annual search trends for electronics, toys and retail during the Holiday season

While an increase is search volume may be the only guarantee, it is safe to assume you will also see an increase in Impressions, Clicks, and Cost. However, the real Christmas joy comes from seeing the increase in Conversions and ROI, which is never guaranteed. Keeping your focus on specific KPI’s and not the rising search volume will help you achieve PPC success this holiday season.

Important Christmas KPIs for Your Pay per Click Campaigns

Important Christmas KPIs for Your Pay per Click Campaigns

First off, ensure that you maintain your IS compared to previous months, and not miss  out on impression opportunities due to low bids or insufficient budget this holiday season. This will at least guarantee that your Ads are being shown.

Click thru Rate (CTR) and Quality Score

More Impressions are great, but more Clicks are even better. Monitor your CTR to ensure that this influx of impressions is maintaining or improving your CTR. If not, take action immediately! Whether it is new ad copy testing, increasing bids, or changing keywords and their match types, make sure that you are at least maintaining your average CTR. Dropping CTR could lead to lower Quality Scores and worse positioning, which means you will need to increase your CPC to stay competitive. Of course, the inverse is true too. A higher CTR can allow you to lower CPC without hurting position and performance, which means increased profit margins.

Conversion Rate and Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

Again, more impressions are great, more Clicks are better, but more Conversions is the best. Seeing how this is Pay per Click, more Clicks also means higher Cost. So, an increase in Clicks without an increase in Conversions will seriously lower profits and drive up your CPA. Although it seems obvious, monitor your CPA and make sure it does not exceed the value of your Conversion. This should not be a problem if you are able to maintain your Conversion Rate during the holiday season.

Have a Wonderful PPC Christmas

During all the craziness that is the holiday season, if you are able to stay focused on the basic KPIs of PPC you will have a wonderful PPC Christmas. Remember that more impressions are great, more Clicks are better, but more Conversions are the best. Keep an eye on CTR and Conversion Rate. While growth is always the goal, just maintaining these rates through the holidays will lead to higher totals of Clicks and Conversions, since searches will be increasing. Most importantly always remember to watch Cost, especially CPA, compared to revenue of your Conversions, and keep your PPC out of the red this Christmas.

If you have any feedback, questions or other holiday preparation suggestions, please leave a comment below. Wishing everyone a Safe and Happy Holiday Season!