DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

Using Email Marketing to Grow Your Business

April 3, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

There are many tactics in the digital marketing realm from PPC, SEO, to social media marketing. The one that’s often overlooked is email marketing which is probably one of your biggest missed opportunities. It has an ROI of 3800%. When you pair email marketing with your Ecommerce store, the results will be outstanding. If you’re not familiar with email marketing, let’s set you in the right direction and explore some of the tactics you can try.

How to Start Email Marketing

As with any marketing initiative, a clear strategy must be written to clearly align the business goals with your email marketing efforts. From there, create the process. Outline key roles, the frequency of each email, best practices for when your company should be sending out these emails, and any other features you’d like to take advantage of. Once you’ve outlined how you’ll be using email, pick the best email marketing platform for your company.

What Can I Send?

There are so many ways to regularly and creatively stay connected with your customers. These emails are critical in order to stay in front of your customers or those interested in your company. You can send an event invitation, a monthly newsletter, or announce a new product. I’m sure you’ve seen many of these in your personal inbox. But, think about which ones grabbed your attention and the ones you actually read. Having an appealing subject line and a unique element to each email is necessary for it to have any effect on your sales.

Set It, But Don’t Forget It

Automation is the simplest way for you to give each customer exactly what they would like to read. It gives you a chance to cross-sell, up-sell, and follow-up with your customers. Here are just a few ways you’d be able to take advantage of it:

Special Coupons – Deals based on a previous purchase.
Abandoned Shopping Carts – Get them to come back to your site and reconsider!
Recent Customer’s Email – Welcome them!
Customer Re-engagement Email – Win back customers you haven’t heard from.
Best Customers Email – Reward those who support you.

Tell Them What They Want To Hear

Segmenting your lists simply means adding extra information to your email list that will help organize and target specific people. This is the best way to truly give your customers what they will actually need or want. Note which category of items they typically buy, their average dollar sale, or where they live. If your business is B2B, note which industry they are in. This way, you will be able to personalize your emails and make them more inclined to engage with your content. Your customers already receive many emails that they immediately delete if it doesn’t pertain to them. Make them read yours!

Email marketing should not be forgotten with all of the ‘cool’, new tactics that are constantly being created. What ways do you see work best for your company? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

Want to learn more about Ecommerce? Download our Ecommerce eBook, now.

How To Create a Remote Workspace: Part Two

March 27, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

This Blog Post Was Created Remotely!

As I sit on my couch with my laptop and staring out at what remains of #winterstormstella, I am grateful for the ability to work from home. As a matter of fact, because of the storm, our entire team worked remotely for two days uninterrupted from our normal work…except to shovel, of course.

Pros and Cons of Working Digitally

Pros. With an internet connection, you don’t need to let anything get in the way of your work. Whether it’s the weather, being under the weather, or you live hundreds of miles away from your dream job, many people are taking advantage of technology that frees them from the confinement of a traditional office. It may even offer a measure of flexibility on when you work depending on your circumstances.

Cons. If you do decide to break free from a normal office setting, having a schedule and sticking to it is vital! Just because you aren’t in a physical office, doesn’t mean your job is any easier. It’s important to know what you need to accomplish at the start of your work day and keep track of your progress. A good schedule will also keep boundaries between your work and personal life – don’t let it creep into time you could be spending with family and friends just because it’s so easy to check your work emails on your phone.

Communicating Remotely

Everyone uses email. It definitely still has it’s place, but there are so many tools available to communicate with coworkers in real time. Here are a few we’ve adopted at our office.

Dialpad – Dialpad allows every employee to answer their work number anywhere. You can call or answer your phone with your cell phone, computer, or a dedicated traditional phone. It even offers a texting feature that we use often.

Uberconference – Are you wondering how you would accomplish a meeting while working away from the office? Uberconference solves that for us. Everyone on the meeting can call in to the conference line from their phone or computer. But what if you need visuals? You can share and review documents while in the conference call. It works great with our clients, as well. They have monthly conference calls with our team for project updates without ever having to travel to us or vice versa.

Documents Always At Your Fingertips

At DaBrian Marketing, we still work from a dedicated office space in a normal work week. But, every document we create is in our Google accounts. Google offers great tools for creating documents, spreadsheets, and slide presentations. This is great because we can share and edit documents with each other as fast as we can type them up, which in turn helps us to work more quickly and efficiently. This also offers some peace of mind for events like having to work outside of the office unexpectedly or forgetting to bring along your presentation for an in-person meeting with a client. We know we have everything we need just by signing into our Google accounts.

Another useful tool for us is Docusign. You can create an account to create, send, and store all the official documents necessary for your job. No need for scanning and printing. You and the other party can even sign digitally. This is another great time saving tool!

Going digital also eliminates the need for filing cabinets, wahoo!

Keep Your Information Safe

Going remote means you need to make security a priority. All of your work is connected to the internet, so make sure your passwords are unique and change them at least once a year, if not more. However, it can be challenging to remember all of those passwords so I like to use something called Lastpass which acts like a digital vault for all your passwords. Just sign into Lastpass and it will remember all of your other passwords for you! Google can also do this for you to some degree, just check your settings.

Remote offices are becoming more prevalent and it works for us. It can be a possibility for you with a little planning.

Have you already made the switch to a remote workspace? How did you manage to do so?

Tell us all about it in the comments. See all kinds of updates from our digital workspace on Facebook and Twitter!

The Simple Complexity of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

March 20, 2017 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

Does PPC Advertising Even Work?

True Story: Recently, I was told that Pay per Click (PPC) advertising does not work. As the Search Manager at DaBrian Marketing, I was naturally curious as to why the person had renounced paid online advertising. After having a longer conversation with this person, I found out that his/her existing campaigns simply did not consider the appropriate keyword match types. The campaigns were not complete!

Yes, If You Do it Right

While the campaigns may have contained relevant ad copy and led users to helpful landing pages, there was no sufficient targeting. In other words: this person’s ads were displaying for a multitude of search queries – many of which did not actually pertain to the advertised product or service.

Only broad match type was implemented without negative keywords. In other words: the person spent a marketing budget on impressions and clicks without considering how to actually gain new customers. For any advertising campaign – including a PPC campaign – to work, it must consider the complete sales-process.

Accomplishing desired goals connected to new customer acquisition requires precise and accurate targeting in PPC campaigns. Like the kind of targeting the gif, below. But, just with a much happier ending: more sales for your business rather than a concussion. Using several match types (broad modified, phrase, exact, and others) as well as negative keywords could have prevented several unwanted impressions and costly clicks for the person in this story.

Make Your Ads Count & Stop Wasting Money

For your own paid online advertising, eliminate wasted ad spend by ensuring that your ads are reaching the right target audience with the right search queries. Create well-managed keyword groupings that:

1) Cover a host of in-the-moment needs for your potential customers
2) Filter out users that are searching for content that is irrelevant to your business.

When you account for these factors, your PPC campaigns will effectively create impressions, clicks, conversions, and ultimate sales for your business.

For in-depth knowledge about this topic, download our white paper on PPC Keyword Match Types.

When have you seen a badly targeted paid ad on Google or Bing?

Tell us about your experience in the comments to hear from us. Or, just give us a call for fast help and improvement of your PPC account.

How SEO Can Help Your Auto Business Outrace The Competition

March 13, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Traditionally, automotive marketing techniques have been rather standard. Car dealers and shops may have bought billboards, ads in the newspaper, and maybe even produced a corny, but fantastic commercial (you’re welcome).

Like that commercial, these marketing methods are outdated. Now that we live in a digital world, it’s time for your business to switch gears and go full-speed ahead with digital marketing. Here are four SEO tips that will help increase your automotive business’ online presence and overall sales.

1. Dominate The Local Market

As a car dealership or an automotive shop, your target audience is predominantly local. Knowing this, it’s imperative that your automotive business invests in local SEO. Major search engines, such as Google and Bing, have updated their search algorithms over the years to place a heavy emphasis on locality. Search engines do not only evaluate your company’s website but also other local listing platforms – including Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook, and an array of others. In order for search engines to accurately pinpoint your business, your contact information (name, address, and phone number) must be consistent throughout the web.

Think about local SEO as if it were the dashboard of your car. When icons appear, it means there are issues that need to be resolved. The icons represent your website, local listing profiles, and other websites with your information. Your car is your overall digital presence. In order for your marketing efforts to be successful, you need to make sure these issues are taken care of. Don’t ignore them!

Like your cars, your customers are always on the move. People are searching more on their mobile devices than desktop. How does this impact the automotive industry? Well, Think With Google reports that 1 in 3 car shoppers who use their mobile devices as part of the car purchase process also locate or call a dealer on a mobile device. By not having your information listed accurately across the board, you’re missing out on potential sales.

2. Your Content Is Your Sales Pitch

Being a good salesperson is an art and a science. You need to make the customer feel welcomed, informed, and persuaded to take action. The same is true for the content on your site. Your website is not just another asset to own. It’s a marketing and sales tool. A basic website is basically like buying a lemon – it’s useless. Provide your customers with all the information they’ll need online (price, features, reviews, etc). This gives them peace of mind knowing they have all the details, as soon as they need them. It helps build trust in an industry that is typically associated with not being trustworthy (like this shifty car salesman).

Aside from the technical/product details, be sure to convey emotion and storytelling through your content. Purchasing a car is an emotional, long-lasting process. It needs to feel right.

Your content is not just confined to the text and pictures on your website. It also encompasses video. Video marketing is a huge opportunity for the automotive industry. And no, I do not mean producing more commercials like the one in the beginning (although, it just may be the greatest thing I’ve ever seen). According to Think With Google, 69% of people who use YouTube while buying a car are influenced by it – more than TV, Newspapers, or Magazines. The top 3 most popular types of these videos are test drives, feature & option overviews, and vehicle walkthroughs. The time spent watching these kinds of videos has doubled in the past year.

It all comes down to being open with your customers. You need to speak to them online as if you were trying to make a sale in-person. The more transparent you are, the more likely someone will feel comfortable enough to make such a big financial decision.

3. Search Results Come With Added Features

Search results are no longer just your traditional top 10 organic results. Now, they contain paid ads, local listings, social media, images, videos, news, and more. And, if the results have changed, so should the measurement.

While rankings do matter, they do not paint the entire picture. In order to keep up in the digital race, you need to analyze your competitors and the industry norms to see what kind of search marketing methods are happening and what type of content is being disseminated. If your competitors are active on social media, creating great videos, and are listed in local, they are going to appear before the organic listings. It would behoove your business to do the same.

4.Link Earning: Win The Race With Help From Others

A huge part of having an effective SEO campaign is link earning (often referred to as link building). Link earning is the process of obtaining high-quality links from other reputable websites. This not only helps your overall exposure, but links from other sites also pass link juice (fun, right?). The more high-quality links you can receive, the more reputable search engines will deem your business. This places your site higher within the rankings and makes it appear more often for your desired audience. If you own a car dealership, an extremely important link is from the corporate website. For example, if you’re a Ford dealer, you need to be listed on their “Find a Dealer” tab.

Link earning can also help with your local awareness. By acquiring links from influential organizations within your community, your local search visibility will increase. And, if you didn’t skip to the end of this blog and you read numero uno, you’d know that local is kind of a big deal.

On Your Mark...Get Set...Go!

The entire automotive industry, including your competitors, is moving towards digital marketing. Don’t get left in the dust! Use the SEO tips listed above and start competing for first place.

Have additional questions surrounding automotive marketing? Leave them in the comments below!

By: David McDowell

Why Your Business Might Need a One Page Website

March 6, 2017 by Mark Mapp 1 Comment

Among businesses throughout the world (and, possibly the universe), one page websites are becoming increasingly popular. Just take a look at this list of one page websites
from Awwwards. They go by several names – including “single page” and “pageless” web designs.

While there are lots of benefits to using this simple, visual, and text-light design, this doesn’t mean that a one page website is always the right choice, though. A perfect example is Parallax Scrolling – an often-used pageless layout. It emphasizes flat design and responsivity of background images. However, its use is limited to certain templates because of technical aspects of its programming.

Before you implement a one page website, decide whether or not it is right for your business and your unique marketing goals. If the following attributes sound like your business, you will most likely benefit from a single page or pageless web design.

1) Your Business Tells a Story

A continuous scrolling experience creates the perception that you are actually reading a continuous narrative or story. Each section naturally leads to another section because the bottom of each is a cliffhanger to the opening of the next. MayeCreate Design would agree with us on this one.

As a result of no links to other pages, it is necessary to develop interactive features on your website – such as animations or lightboxes. Digital Telepathy discusses this in a recent blog post. Since users are always contained within that single page rather than multiple pages, you can easily concentrate their focus to engaging features. This means that your website is really a funnel to a contact form, subscription, or purchase that gets you in contact with users (UXPin Studio’s blog post). Every story leads to an ending.

2) Limited Content

For businesses with a small number of major products or services, a one page website would definitely be a helpful way to display that information. Without numerous offerings or plenty of content, save time and money by conserving the amount of space on your website (UXPin Studio’s blog post).

Also, straightforward or proprietary service-related strategies benefit from a one page website. If you technically or legally can’t talk for pages and pages about your business, use what suits you. Like shopping for clothes, a small amount of content needs a right-sized website to maximize users’ engagement.

3) Selling Your Business a Whole Experience

Often, businesses sell products or services that nearly always go together. A single page layout is perfect if you usually end up selling your offerings as a package rather than as individual choices.

Users read about all of your offerings on “one page” or within the same space. This emphasizes that your products or services go together.

4) You Want Your Customers to Get Through the Website Fast

It is rarely the case that a business wants users to spend hours or even days visiting and returning to a website. The point is most often to drive profitable traffic to your office or phone, ASAP.

Pageless web designs are effective ways to quickly escort users through a brief introduction before generating meaningful interactions and conversions. WholeGrain Digital will tell you the same.

5) You Want Your Website Cheap

Finally, what probably matters the most to you: the cost of one page websites. Good news! They are often dramatically cheaper than traditional layouts because of the consolidated amount of space and streamlined content (Digital Telepathy’s blog post).

On the Other Hand...

Again, be mindful that a one page website is not right for every business. This kind of web design might make it difficult to track data in Google Analytics and make the time to load your website longer (WholeGrain Digital’s blog post). So, if you’re focused on measuring or analyzing your website’s performance, a single page web design might not be your cup of tea.

In the end: you don’t want to make the decision to use or not use a one page website without the help of digital marketing experts (you know, like the folks on our team #shamelessplug). There are lots of aspects of your business to consider – including those listed, above.

Seen any well-designed one page websites? What do you look for in an interactive website? Let us know what you’re thinking in the comments, below. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get more digital marketing advice.

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.