Menu

Dabrian Marketing Group

Marketing Election 2012

by Leave a Comment

If you voted in the Presidential election yesterday and are still in the voting spirit, you’re in luck! We’ve created our own election where the fundamental marketing belief systems are going head-to-head. No debates and no political attack-ads, and at the end, you’ll get to cast your vote! But first, let’s take a look at the candidates.

Digital Marketing Party

As technology continues to thrive and building relationships with customers holds more marketing clout than ever before, it seems as though digital marketing is building a strong presence to lower costs, increase reach & visibility, and drive sales. Compared to its traditional competitor, the Digital Marketing party touts that it’s more forward-thinking and more in tune with modern audiences.

The Digital Marketing Party’s high-level platform items break down like this:

  • Cost-Effective & Cutting-Edge

  • Removes Geographic Barriers (potential for international markets)

  • Focused on Forming Relationships with Target Audiences

  • Affords Adaptability and Flexibility

Traditional Marketing Party

On the more conventional side of things, some businesses are perfectly satisfied with their current initiatives (phone calls, billboards, TV and radio ads, etc.), and adhere to the “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. The traditional party argues that digital marketing is still new and constantly changing. This party believes that it will take time to see what, if anything from the digital marketers will be able to truly stand the test of time.

The Traditional Marketing Party’s high-level platform items are as follows:

  • Time-Tested, Reliable, and Consistent

  • Some Audiences are Better Reached through Traditional Means

  • Traditional Campaigns can Form Relationships as well

  • Takes the Business to the People (more direct)

The Ideal Sales Process

by Leave a Comment

A balanced and consistent sales process is critical to the survival and growth of any business, agency, or corporation. The fact is a company can only go as far as their sales will take them. This means that, if a salesperson or team is unsuccessful you can bet that the company will be as well. There are many different approaches and views on what the ideal sales process is or looks like. However, if you are looking for the perfect approach, you better be the most patient person in the world because there is no such thing. There are only opinions, judgments, and past statistics to try and guide you in the right direction. So from my experiences, here is my opinion on what the ideal sales process looks like.

The Initial Call

The initial call is one of the most important parts of the sales process. This is where you want to plant that initial seed in their mind and let them know that you are here. It is important to be confident and speak clearly. Control the conversation and show them that you know what you are talking about. The best call is a smart call. So, be sure to know their company, industry, and speak their language. By doing so, this will increase the probability that the call will go well. Sales professionals will get a prospects voicemail the majority of the time, and it is important not to get discouraged when this happens. Even though you did not speak directly with the prospect, a good voicemail is still a step in the right direction and a chance to get your name and company name out there. Also, too many salespeople attempt to sell to the prospect on the initial call. This approach most likely will fail 9 times out of 10. In my experience, the initial call is all about trying to set-up a meeting.

The Follow-Up Email

The follow-up email is a big part of the sales process. However, some sales professionals still do not seem to understand exactly how to send a follow-up email correctly or just how beneficial it can be. What many salespeople do not realize is that even though they may have gotten a prospects voicemail on the initial call and have not heard a response since, this does not automatically mean that they are uninterested. Many prospects are more comfortable communicating with people they have never spoken to before via email instead of over the phone. Also, many prospects are extremely busy and email might be the quickest and most convenient form of communication. So, it is important to be thorough when sending a follow-up email to a prospect. Make sure to tailor each email to those prospects specific needs. The same generic email to every prospect is boring, ineffective, and quite frankly is plain lazy. In my experience, it is also best to send your follow-up emails first thing in the morning because that is when everyone checks all of their emails. By doing so, this will improve the chances of your email being read.

The Follow-Up Call

In my experience, the follow up call is the turning point in the sales process. If are lucky enough to get a hold of the prospect on the follow-up call, you can usually start to gauge how interested or disinterested the prospect is. At this point in the process, the prospect has most likely looked over the information that you have sent them and has a pretty good idea on if they are looking to acquire your company’s services or not.

The Meeting

The Meeting is the most important part of the sales process. This is where you separate the men from the boys. When a sales professional is lucky enough to get a meeting it is time to buckle down and prepare physically and mentally. Make sure to develop a presentation that briefly highlights your company’s services and how you can help the prospect address their major pain points. Also, too many sales people go into a meeting and continuously talk about their company and achievements.  This is a big mistake! It is important that when you go into a meeting that it is conversational. You need to find out everything you can about that prospect and what their needs or struggles are. Then you can speak to how your company can help to address that need. In my experience, if you go to a meeting and you are talking more than the prospect is that is not a good sign. So, be confident and engage the prospect! Finally, be sure to ask the prospect what the next step is and always leave something behind (e.g. business card, folder, etc.)

Do Not Give Up!

It is very important that a sales professional never lets a potential prospect fall through the cracks. If someone asks you to follow up in 6 months, then follow up in 6 months. If you cannot get a hold of a prospect or keep getting their voicemail, then continue to leave voicemails. Continue to let that seed from the initial call grow! One of two things is going to happen, either they are going to ask you to stop calling or they are going to finally give you that 30 minutes you need to show them what they have been missing. So, unless a prospect asks you to take them off of your list, keep trying to get that meeting and never give up! As is mentioned earlier, everyone has a different approach or view on how the sales process should be done. There is no perfect way to sell! In my experience, the most important thing is to be confident, be unique, know your product, and commit to the process. Selling is not always the easiest thing to do, but as long as you stick with it and commit to what works for you the future will be bright for you and the company.
Want to share your ideas and views on the sales process? Let us know in comment section below, or contact us at 610-743-5602.

Streamline Your Tag Management Strategy

by Leave a Comment

So your organization has made the decision to pursue digital analytics. You’ve managed to get the buy-in you need from the decision makers and now you have plans to measure everything under the sun, from billboards, to pay-per-click campaigns, to social media. You’ve created scope documents and measurement plans until your fingers bled. To quote one of my favorite movies, Independence Day, now it’s time for “the really icky part”: deployment.

Let's Rewind a Bit…

If you’re familiar with deploying web analytics tracking on your site and your campaigns, you are surely aware of the time and effort that may be involved. For the less technically-inclined, it’s easy to get lost in all of the Javascript, URL tags, and parameters. Luckily, there are some powerful (and free) tag management tools out there to help streamline this process as well as improve the load time of your website. These platforms provide a single place to manage, change, and deploy all of your tags, regardless of their source. With this in mind, you should consider developing a strategy for tag management for your measurement initiative.

Creating a Tag Management Strategy

After you have established what you will measure by aligning business goals and objectives with the right KPIs in your measurement plan, it’s time to get the how in place. This starts with getting the right people in a room (or conference call) together. The IT personnel and webmasters should be present, as well as any marketing and advertising partners that will be involved with any of the initiatives that are to be measured. During this meeting, establish any technical requirements or limitations that may exist when it comes to analytics deployment. It is imperative to identify any constraints at this stage, as any roadblocks may require additional planning and maneuvering.

After you’ve gathered sufficient information, it’s time to take a look at potential tag management solutions. It is important to understand the great deal of time that can be saved when using tag management solutions. It provides a single place where you can manage tracking scripts and tags and only requires a single script to be placed on the website to be tracked. This is ideal when you have large quantities of tags to spread across a site.

There are a handful of excellent platforms out there that offer a great deal of flexibility for multiple analytics and measurement tools. Google recently announced their own free solution, Google Tag Manager. This platform has clearly been designed with Google Analytics in mind; however it offers great flexibility when it comes to using it to deploy scripts for other solutions as well.

If you’re not a fan of Google, there are other tag management solutions out there. UberTags is a powerful paid solution that allows for 3rd party scripts.

Less Time, Less Headaches

Large amounts of time and effort go into preparing tactics for measurement of campaigns. Implementation of tracking scripts can take up even more time than the planning – but it doesn’t have to. Identifying the right tools to help reduce deployment time can spare your organization unnecessary headaches and create efficiencies that lead to saving more money.
Be sure to share any questions or experiences you have had about tag management in the comments below!

3 Ways Gamification Can Help Your Marketing

by Leave a Comment

What Is Gamification?

Gamification, whether you realize it or not, has already had an impact on your everyday life. If you’ve ever checked-out in an online store that marked your progress, earned badges using Foursquare, or been a part of a customer loyalty or “frequent-flyer” program, then you’ve experienced Gamification first-hand.

So what’s it all about? Gamification is the practice of taking game-design elements and applying them to non-game contexts. The achievements, leaderboards, rewards, and progress bars in our examples represent elements we might find in a game, but are used when we shop or interact on social networks. While the technique has been around for a while, Gamification’s marketing uses have only begun to take hold.

Incentivizing Online Activities

The goal of every game is enjoyment from the user, and one way this has been accomplished online is by offering incentive for completing certain actions. “Sign up and get the first month free,” “Receive 10,000 Bonus Miles after your first year,” and other similar offers have compelled consumers to take action because it results in something of value, i.e., a prize, reward, or bonus. The marketing implication of this lies in the power of achievement and feeling a part of something exclusive. Your customers will be far more likely to sign up for a newsletter, answer a survey, or fill out a form if they feel as though their actions are worth something.

Game Mechanics

The web user experience is often one of the most important marketing materials, as it constitutes one of the first touch points a prospective customer will have with your business. To that point, there are many opportunities to “gamify” this experience, starting with your content. According to a theory known as “Cascading Information,” consumers respond better to information in small pieces, ensuring they fully comprehend everything before delving deeper. How can this apply? Take YouTube, for example. The average viewer will typically drop off after only a minute or so (and you can check the analytics to prove it). By creating shorter sections of this content, you build your audience up to greater levels of complexity. Throw in a call to action (or a reward) along the way, and they’ll come back in droves to see what comes next.

Interactivity & Engagement

As I’ve said, these techniques and mechanics have the central purpose of appealing to the user—making something that is boring or taxing enjoyable and worthwhile. From a marketing perspective, all these translate to better engagement with your target audience. The other great part about utilizing Gamification is that it can apply to all aspects of your Digital Marketing plan, including developing contests via social media, advertising limited-time promotional offers, motivating staff & employees, or combining incentives to create a “meta-game,” the possibilities really are boundless.

If you don’t think Gamification fits in with your industry, think again. Even if it’s not at the forefront of your marketing strategy, game elements can still work behind the scenes to help you define customer behaviors and lead them to your company to fulfill their needs. Let us know what your thoughts on Gamification are in the comments below (1,000 Bonus Points go to the first 5 who post!).

DaBrian Marketing Group Enters Rackspace Partner Program

by Leave a Comment

Reading, PA - October 1, 2012

DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is proud to announce that they have entered into the Partner Program with Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the open cloud company. This relationship is designed to add mutual value for current clients and to increase targeted exposure and reputation for both companies.

“Rackspace provides us with the global computing resources to provide Internet Marketing & Web Design services to clients around the world,” said Daniel Laws, president and CEO of DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC. “This relationship gives us the IT solutions to capture more market share & grow our revenues.”

DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC offers an array of cost-effective Internet Marketing services, with a distinct emphasis on consistent customer engagement and building strong client relationships. With Rackspace’s tools, materials, and unique co-branded collateral now at its disposal, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC can continue to expand their service offerings, develop efficient tactics for gaining new prospects, as well as strengthen existing client interactions.

About DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC

DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a search engine marketing & analytics agency that provides internet marketing solutions to businesses that want to obtain digital expertise, transparent customer service, innovative ideas, and strategies that lead to better customer insights and higher ROI. Company headquarters are centrally located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading, Pennsylvania, 19602. For more information, check out the DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC website at https://dabrianmarketing.com, and blog at https://dabrianmarketing.com/blog, or contact us 610-743-5602.

Video: Saving Time in Google Analytics

by Leave a Comment

When it comes to Web Analytics, your time literally equals money. That’s why our chief web analyst made a comprehensive video guide outlining 4 ways you can save time in Google Analytics. Spend more time analyzing and less time gathering data!

Check out the guide below, and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more updates!

Want to learn more about Google Analytics? Sign up for our Free Webinar on October 29th; we’ll be covering a host of features that can save your business time and money!