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What Is a CRM and Where to Get Started

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CRM may be an acronym you’ve heard floating around before – but what is it? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, basically it’s how you can keep track of data on past, present, and potential future customers and log interactions with them whether it’s through, emails, phone calls, mailings and so on.

Why would you want to have that information? With information like that you can manage how to regain former customers, retain customers, and gain new ones. You’re probably starting to see that a CRM is an integral tool for sales and marketing for businesses and in fact it is.

You could start a CRM system by collecting and entering customer and potential customer information into something like an excel sheet but that can become tedious work that wouldn’t be very helpful in the long run. Fortunately, there are a ton of CRM systems out there that can help.

Track Conversions

There are a few helpful things to keep in mind when picking out a CRM:

Is It Automated?

As in does it integrate with any platforms you are already using such as your email and social media? This is useful because it will save you or your employees time from having to manually enter every bit of customer information on your own.

Is It Mobile?

Can you access your customer relation information on the fly? This is helpful when you meet a new prospective customer and want to get them in the system right away or access all the information about a customer out in the field without having to log into your computer.

Is It Usable?

A major factor to consider: is the program easy to use for you and your employees? A big reason for businesses leaving their CRM to the way side is not knowing how it functions.

However, searching through all of the CRM options out there can be overwhelming in of itself. I’ve picked a few of some of the best ones out there to get you started.

SalesforceIQ CRM

One of Salesforce IQ’s features is the automatic collection of customer data such as emails, calendar events, and smartphone calls so you can spend more time focusing on the client and less time on data entry. You can also share information with other employees in order to collaborate when communicating with customers. It also creates reports to keep you on track and focused on the most promising sales. It’s mobile so you can work from anywhere and streamline your workflow.

Prosperworks

If you use G Suite then Prosperworks might be the best option for you. It was made for G Suite and seamlessly integrates with G Suite’s apps such as Google Sheets, Docs, Slides, Calendar, Inbox and Gmail and automatically syncs collected information from these apps. It will also remind you when you are not following your schedule to follow up with customers or potential customers. And whenever you update your Google contact information, it will roll over to your CRM.

Hubspot CRM

Hubspot has a great dashboard to gain visibility into what’s going on in your CRM to keep everything organized. You can also swiftly sort customers by a number of filters to keep track of what’s happening. Hubspot also syncs information across several platforms for email, social media, and phone calls. One of the best things about this platform is that it’s free!

Do you use a CRM platform? If so – which one? What are some of the benefits and pitfalls you’ve experienced with a CRM platform? Let us know in the comments.

How SEO Can Help Your Local Business Compete With Bigger Brands

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In the story of David and Goliath, David (not very big) is faced with the daunting task of killing Goliath (the name speaks for itself). With an effective strategy and persistence, David accomplishes this feat over his much more powerful adversary.

In today’s economy, your local business probably feels a lot like David: small and up against much larger foes such as national brands. But, fear not! With a well-thought-out SEO strategy, combined with hard work and dedication to the tactics listed below, your small business can walk amongst the giants.

SEO Tips for local businesses

Local SEO: David Has Home Field Advantage

If you’re going to battle, you’d ideally want it to be in an area you’re familiar with. The same is true for your small business. If you’re going to compete with bigger businesses, you have to do it in your local market. While bigger companies surely carry more notoriety, local SEO will prevent your business from going unnoticed.

When it comes to Local SEO, there are two tactics you need to cover: on-site and off-site.

Tactic #1 - On-Site

On-site local SEO is essentially optimizing your website (hence “on-site”) from a local perspective. To do so, I suggest covering the following:

  • Include Your NAP (name, address, and phone number) on every page of your site.
  • Create localized content.
  • Include local signals within your tags, titles, descriptions, and headers whenever possible, while sounding natural.
  • Add schema tags to your website.

Tactic #2 - Off-Site

Off-site local SEO deals with factors that influence your website’s performance that are not directly on your website. A huge factor for visibility within search engines is local listings. Being identified or “listed” accurately and consistently within local listings will send local signals about your business to search engines. This will allow you to appear higher in the search engines in your geographic area.

For example, when I conduct a Google search in Reading, Pa for “Italian Restaurant,” local restaurants appear as opposed to bigger chains.

Seo Consultants in Reading, Pa

On top of that, these local listings appear above the organic search results. That means that if you’re listed in them, you could be the first thing your searchers see.

Tactic #3 - Local Link Earning: Get The Crowd Cheering For You

When you’re in a competition, positive support from those around you can help. The same applies in the digital realm. In order to gain recognition and increase reach and visibility within the local market, you’ll need to place a heavy emphasis on local link earning (also known as link building). Link earning is a crucial part of any SEO campaign; but, the strategy is different for local businesses.

As opposed to going after major brands and influencers to obtain links like national brands do, local businesses should target the influencers within their community. These include:

  • Local Chambers
  • Local Online Directories
  • Local News Stations
  • Other Local Business
  • Local Bloggers
Local SEO Link Earning Tactics for Businesses

Tactic #4 - Social Media: There’s Strength in Numbers

Social Media has continued to grow in popularity and influence in digital marketing. For SEO, specifically, a social media presence is now an important ranking factor. Search engines want to see you engaged with your audience, having an active conversation, and disseminating relevant content.

As opposed to other digital marketing tactics, Social media is not all about metrics – it’s about relationships. This is where most big bands miss the mark. Many major companies are more concerned with just having high-level brand accounts that all speak the same (non-personalized) message.

You know your local audience better than the big brands, so speak to it! Craft messages they’ll relate to and connect with other local accounts. The more locals that share your social posts and the more local accounts that engage with you, the more buzz you’ll generate within your area. This will help boost your local positioning within search results, too.

Social Media Marketing Boosts Local SEO Performance

Local businesses tend to stick together, so it shouldn’t be difficult to gain support from others. You know what they say: “The more Davids, the better.”

Moral of This Local SEO Story:

With an effective SEO strategy intact, combined with a dedicated team, your small business can go toe-to-toe with the Goliaths of your industry. Oh yeah, and that all Davids are bound to be successful.

What are the biggest issues your small businesses face? Let us know in the comments below! To set up a consultation, contact us today!

By: David McDowell

Your Business Technology as Marketing – Mike Sutton, Guest Blogger

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Check out this educational guest-blog post and video from Mike Sutton at TS Tech.

Would you go out to a business mixer or shoot a promo video in a dingy old shirt? Of course not, because you know your appearance sends a message about your professionalism and competence.

But what about your operations process? Or your technology infrastructure?

Everything you do sends signals to your market and the people around you. Sometimes, like with your marketing and sales messaging, those signals are carefully crafted and intentional. But other times, they are not as closely managed.

When you communicate, it’s not just the content, but also the timing, style, and medium that signals your professionalism, responsiveness, and attention to detail. Consistency and clarity in your follow-ups say a lot about your quality and competence as a service provider. Your efficiency shines through when you can address inquiries quickly and accurately the first time.

Your internal operations process and technology integration can have a huge impact on your ability to do these things. I’m going to touch on three areas where your operations and technology act as marketing for your company.

Client Touch Points

Do you have a way to easily and consistently follow up with clients and prospects that serves to keep them informed, feel connected to the process, and helps to effectively manage expectations? Automated status updates to clients and follow-up reminders to you triggered by relevant events and timing can reinforce the appearance that you are responsive and competent. This kind of effective communication will add value and build relationships and trust in a way that can’t be matched.

High Quality Integrated Experience

If your ordering, customer service, billing, and delivery systems are properly integrated, it will not only make your life easier, but it will impress and satisfy your client’s desire for ease, convenience, and accuracy. Proper integration reduces mistakes and workload. This will not only make you more profitable, it will help you keep costs down and retain clients.

Business Technology Integrates & Automates Your Marketing for Efficiency

Efficiency Is a Win-Win

Technology is a resource multiplier. By properly equipping your team and integrating your systems you will be able to do more for a bigger market with fewer people. You keep costs down and deliver a high quality product or service. And your clients get fast, reliable, consistently good service. This creates a loyal fanbase and good word-of-mouth marketing.

Business Technology Is a Tool

When effectively implemented, technology will improve quality, productivity, consistency, and efficiency in a way that supports your strategic vision, goals, and objectives. If it’s your goal to be a budget solution provider, the efficiency of properly integrating your systems will be invaluable. If you desire to be a best-in-class provider and a price leader, leveraging your technology to deliver a top-notch, fully integrated client experience while maximizing quality and profitability will be invaluable to your organization.

The bottom line is that what you do and how you do it will deliver more impact than what you say, so make sure that your actions match your words. If you’re out there saying you’re the best in your industry, your infrastructure and process had better back that up.

If you’re looking for additional ideas on how to digitally transform your business, please check out my 20-minute video presentation on Digital Transformation for your business. I share over a dozen case studies and ideas to digitally transform your business that I’ve either used personally or with my clients to increase market share, expand to new markets, or maximize profit, revenue, and opportunity. You can find the video at tst.io/dabrian.

DaBrian Marketing Redesigns Grove Dental Group’s Website

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Visitors to Grove Dental Group’s new website benefit from improved usability as well as enhanced accessibility to research and register for dental services.

Web design company in Reading, Pa

March, 2017 (Reading, PA) – In coordination with managing their digital marketing to reach new patients, DaBrian Marketing Group noticed that Grove Dental Group’s website needed a new layout and structure to rank higher on search engines and improve usability.
The website’s new design and architecture improves both the business’ visibility on search engines and allows customers to easily learn about Grove Dental’s services. This involved organizing the content of Grove Dental’s former website into an updated structure. This enhanced the indexability and significantly improved the value of Grove Dental’s content to search engines. Overall, users on major search engines, such as Google and Bing, are now more likely to find and visit Grove Dental’s website.

Visitors to Grove Dental’s website also experience an increase in speed when they navigate through pages. The new, simplified design decreases the time that is required for each page to fully load. After a visitor finds the service in which he or she is interested, a newly created registration form allows that person to immediately contact Grove Dental’s staff and schedule appointments. DaBrian Marketing Group placed these registration forms on the new website to expedite people’s next step from learning about Grove Dental to actually requesting their services.

Megan Link, Director of Projects, Marketing, & Financial Operations at Grove Dental expresses excitement over the improved capabilities of the website and DaBrian Marketing Group’s services:

“Partnering with DaBrian was a no brainer for us and we couldn’t be more pleased with the service they provide. DaBrian is like your best friend, always has your back and looks out for your best interest. They are really an extension of our team, and the transition was smooth and effortless on our part. Our new website is living proof of my statement. They knew when to ask questions about what we wanted, but really I had very little to do with the new website other than giving the final a-ok. I recommend DaBrian to any business looking to change their online appearance.”

Grove Dental’s precise branded guidelines made the redesign of their website a simple project without complications. Grove Dental concretely identifies its brand – from the personnel’s attitude and level of patient-engagement to the overall mission of the company. This allowed DaBrian Marketing Group to create a layout and structure that effectively communicates Grove Dental’s digital brand to potential patients. This redesigned website complements the organic (search engine optimization or SEO) and paid (pay per click or PPC) search engine marketing efforts as well as the social media marketing efforts that DaBrian Marketing Group continues to perform for Grove Dental.

Visit Grove Dental Group’s website to experience the latest web design project by DaBrian Marketing Group.

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.

How to Use Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, and Houzz to Build Your Business

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As a part of the home services industry, people regularly open their doors to you and bring you into their living spaces. While many people may not consciously realize it, that action requires a certain level of trust. To enter any person’s home is to be trusted in one’s personal area of daily living.

To succeed in the home services industry, then, your target audience must know you. They must feel comfortable with your brand and your identity in order for you to be allowed into their lives (learn more on our industry page).

So, how are people hearing about you? If you are not active in the digital landscape, it may be difficult for you to answer that question.

With Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, and Houzz, your business can gain significant brand awareness to gain leads and stay informed with customer-reviews. These home services resources are both popular and currently growing solutions for consumers to both rate and find service-providers. A recent article from FieldPulse reports that, as of 2015, Angie’s List has over 3 million paid memberships.

These platforms provide both consumers and businesses with opportunities to connect with each other and ensure that reliable, valid work is completed. This avoids situations like the one, below.

Home Services Marketing Agency in Reading, Pa

Angie’s List: Establish a Higher Level of Credibility for Your Brand

One of the hallmarks of Angie’s List is the ability for consumers to openly discuss the quality of service-providers. Angie’s List utilizes a BPA-certified review collection process that filters any fake reviews of home services businesses. Therefore, fellow consumers only experience genuine opinions from actual people that had work done by those hired businesses.

This is a prime opportunity for your business to get maximum exposure of your high-quality offerings and completed projects. Find your business and claim your profile to get further insight into reviews of your work and consistently improve for better quality.

Positive experiences with your brand will most likely generate more positive experiences and profitable leads. Fellow consumers will see positive reviews; and, they may be more willing to trust you. Likewise, you will understand exactly what customers currently love about your services.

Do not underestimate the power of customer-reviews. Ironically, they operate as non-paid advertising for your business. And, they definitely make a difference to people. Even in 2014, a study by BrightLocal found that 88% of consumers reported that they equally trust online reviews and personal recommendations. Read the article from Think with Google that reports this statistic.

Overall Benefit for Your Business:

Your presence on Angie’s List creates a signal that your brand highly regards customers’ opinions. For those that are searching for help with their home improvement, repair, landscaping, home pet care, or a host of other needs: this signal makes you relevant to their current situations. This ultimately increases your credibility in the minds of your target audience because you value people’s feelings.

How to Use Angie’s List to Grow Your Business

HomeAdvisor: Generate Meaningful Interactions with Customers

Whereas Angie’s List can be seen as a valuable resource for consumers to obtain advice and recommendations for service-providers, HomeAdvisor is a tool that connects home services businesses with searching consumers. It is important to note that Angie’s List also offers this capability; however, this is not the primary focus of that platform.

In this way HomeAdvisor has an equal but also separate benefit than Angie’s List. Both of these platforms assist consumers; but, HomeAdvisor serves as a direct link between your business and a consumer that needs your help.

This home services resource allows your business to create a personalized profile that utilizes your specific business-related needs to meet consumers’ demands. People that use HomeAdvisor to find reliable home services businesses for their projects will be matched to your business as a function of availability, desired work to be completed, location, and other relevant factors.

Specifically, the platform walks searching consumers through the process of choosing a service-provider to get them the best possible help for their particular situations.

As a result of HomeAdvisor’s program, the quality and profitability of your interactions with consumers may increase. HomeAdvisor works to make sure that you, as the service-provider, and a consumer, as a person that needs a service, have the same goals to make more sales and loyal customers. There is significantly less ambiguity about the type of service that people need or the kind of work that you offer.

Overall Benefit to Your Business:

HomeAdvisor serves your business as much as it serves consumers. Where people gain the benefit of faster help for their projects, you gain the benefit of meaningful interactions with those people.

How to Use HomeAdvisor To Grow Your Home Services Business

Houzz: Increase Your Reach & Visibility in a Consumer-to-Consumer Network

Although it is not yet as well-known as Angie’s List or HomeAdvisor, Houzz is a growing social media platform that offers a digital community of both service-providers and consumers. Similar to both Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, Houzz does allow direct communication between consumers and service-providers.

However, the particular advantage of Houzz is the ability of consumers with home improvement projects to discuss options, styles, and service-providers with each other. Houzz also allows users to read recommendations and receive information about current trends to generate ideas for their homes and gardens.

This is an interactive experience that does not simply entail a searching consumer that reads a review of your business’ completed projects. Rather, Houzz provides a lively and behavior-based space in which people can converse about a variety of home-related products and services.

You can become a part of that conversation to reach your target audience. Beyond the abilities that Houzz offers to consumers, this platform offers profiles for service-providers to actively gain visibility for their brands. You can publish photographs of your work to function as case studies wherein you solve customers’ problems with high-quality solutions. Solve those problems, quickly, by actually selling your products on Houzz.

Participate in consumer-to-consumer conversations to give clarification and expert-level guidance for their complex projects. Additionally, Houzz allows you to collaborate with your customers through digital interactions and the sharing of electronic documents.

Overall Benefit to Your Business:

As a social medium, Houzz gives your home services business the reach that you need to secure members of your target audience through direct interactions. Secondly, you receive visibility that gets you increased brand awareness through visual evidence of your work and the ability to sell your products.

Build Even More Trust in Your Home Services Business

The digital marketplace is a landscape that allows both consumers and service-providers to interact, discuss projects and needed work, as well as get that work accomplished. Three effective tools or resources that help your business to generate digital brand awareness are Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, and Houzz.

While each of three home services platforms offer distinctive benefits, all of them grant you the enhanced ability to get your name in front of the consumers that need you, now.

Need Help Optimizing Your Profiles On These Platforms?

Tell us about your needs in the comments, below. Learn more with constant digital marketing advice when you follow our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

How to Set Up Your Auto Company’s Product Feed in Three Steps

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As an auto company that offers Ecommerce, you obviously want your customers to enjoy using your website. They should be able to quickly and easily find and buy your products to meet their needs. This means that your website’s product feed must be properly designed to help those customers get parts or accessories. It’s an interactive experience.

A fast, intuitive, and organized pathway from your products to your checkout will help to create loyal customers. Follow these three steps to get the best product feed in the auto industry (or any industry for that matter ?).

How to Set Up Your Auto Company’s Product Feed in Three Steps

Step #1 - Clean Out the Unnecessary Code

Get rid of the spans, styles, and other hindrances in your HTML that increase your load-time. These are types of code that may very well be present within your web pages. Overall, they are not useful to the functionality of your website. And, any style code (if it can) should be placed inside your CSS rather than your actual web pages. This is because spans and styles act like extra baggage at an airport. They slow your website down by increasing the time that it takes to load.

To maintain a reasonable size and speed to your web pages, delete those spans and styles. Increase the speed of your website to make the purchasing process go as quickly as customers need to buy from your inventory.

Automotive Marketing Agency in Reading, Pa

Step #2 - Only Use Optimized Images to Display Your Inventory

There’s no clear or uniform benchmark under which to keep your images’ resolution. It completely depends on the size of your images. But, you should try to stick to Google’s algorithm guidelines to avoid penalizations and get the best possible results. Implement optimized images for the specific pages and sections in which you want those images to be placed.

For your auto company, this is critical because of the high amount of photographs of parts and accessories that you will most likely have on your website. Always remember: shoppers love to see images. But, they have to be images that properly appear and interact with each web page’s text and design.

Read more about this in our downloadable SEO white paper.

Step #3 - Categorize Your Inventory to Meet Customers’ Demands

Guide your customers through the steps to find the solution to each problem that they experience. Avoid confusion by creating an easy system that allows customers to find the correct category of parts, type of accessories, or section within your inventory. Do not allow products to be lost within your website!

While they may not seem be “lost” to you, some products may be so obscurely located on a web page that requires numerous clicks to find that customers will not be able to see them. This kind of disorganization or a lack of categorization delays purchases. Instead, show customers all of the options that match their criteria, allowing them to collect the items that they want as they move through your website.

Digital Marketing For Automotive Businesses

The End Result - More Paying Customers for Your Business

A well-designed product feed on your website means that users can easily pay you for your products. In other words: a simple purchasing process is a crucial component of a successful Ecommerce website. This is especially true within the auto industry because of the confusion that customers can face when purchasing car parts.

Give users the experience that they want from your brand. For auto companies: this starts with the design of your product feed. Whether it’s cars, trucks, parts, or add-ons, you must guide customers to the section of your inventory that they need with ease.

Still Have Questions About Your Product Feed or Automotive Marketing as a Whole?

Let us know about your situation in the comments, below, and we’ll find a solution. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for constant digital marketing advice for your website!