DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

How to Transition Marketing Staff and Hand Over the Reins

August 19, 2020 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

In the COVID-19 world, we’re all just trying to survive. That includes navigating remote work, medical leave, layoffs, and co-workers leaving their existing jobs for opportunities that are better for their families. Keeping all of it organized and everyone on the same page is more important than ever. That’s why we’ve put together a marketing checklist of things that businesses should do while in the transition to better position their employees and marketing departments for success.

Ensure You Know What Marketing Projects are In Progress

There is always work to be done so make sure that you know what projects are in progress so you can plan accordingly and assign responsibilities to existing employees or a new hire. Look to understand the role, deadlines, and the employee’s involvement in all projects. I recommend that you gather a list of projects, the employees, the deadlines, and specific responsibilities all in writing so you have a reference document. Depending on the complexity, consider project management software that includes a marketing project template, such as Asana.

Obtain Marketing Plans, Strategies, Goals & Objectives

Collect all existing versions of marketing plans, strategies, goals, and objectives for your existing employees. These documents should have insights that will help the next employee or marketing agency hit the ground running! Find out how you are tracking progress against annual and quarterly goals and objectives. This should save you time, money, and the effort of creating marketing plans or strategy from start to finish. New to marketing strategy? Start by getting your digital marketing priorities in order.

Get Key Contact Information for Marketing, Sales, and IT

Collect the contact information of key players in marketing, sales, and IT. This list of key contacts should include internal and external stakeholders. These contacts will be able to provide historical information and insight into existing marketing projects and marketing plans. Make sure key information is shared with your team.

Gather all of the information about the marketing department so that the next person has an idea of how things work. For example, you should have organizational charts, product/service information, process guides, manuals, etc. These documents will provide your people with a sense of direction, knowledge of processes, and points of contact that will make it easier to get work done.

Examine Marketing Vendor & Partnership Agreements

In most cases, you will have multiple vendors or partners to help with different aspects of your marketing. For example, who do you use for print materials, hosting, and digital marketing solutions? It’s also important to understand what you own versus what you rent. Some web design agencies will say that you own your website but you cannot move it to another web host or agency. Considering company downsizing and the amount of remote work currently being done, it’s key that you examine your agreements to ensure you’re still getting the services that you were promised. Acquire all agreements and make sure you understand the scope of work.

Do not hesitate to contact these vendors and providers to assure yourself of these services and promises. In the post-COVID world, it is imperative to be sure you are receiving what you are paying for. Six months into this new environment, your business partners, by this time, should have their feet on the ground and operating efficiently and effectively to serve you. If not, perhaps reexamine your partnership.

Inventory Your Marketing Tools

Depending on the complexity of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, it could cost your business anywhere between $12 to $300 per month for each user. Build a list of all of your marketing and sales tools. This list of marketing tools will give you information to show you where you are overspending or have redundant tools. Understanding what tools you have will help you to transition duties to another employee and obtain support to get the most out of your tools. In my experience, it would be wise to start your marketing and sales list with your CRM, email marketing platform, social media publishing tool, etc. because these are commonly used among businesses no matter the industry.

Know What Reports the Employee is Accountable For

The marketing department usually has daily, weekly, and monthly reporting which funnel into executive reporting. Request an example of these reports for your reference. Our clients have had success in having discussions about who is responsible, what and where are the data sources, what is the process, and who needs to receive these reports and by what date.

Schedule an Exit Interview & Revisit the Job Description

If an employee is leaving the marketing department voluntarily, you need to gain insight into why. According to Harvard Business Review, exit interviews are key to long-term business success as they help you to keep a pulse on functional units, improve processes, and increase retention. The employee’s feedback can help you to improve the job description for future candidates or uncover issues that need to be addressed. It will also help you in the decision-making process when determining if you will choose your internal employees or outsource some of your marketing efforts.

Create an Onboarding Plan for Staff

Develop an onboarding plan for new employees, transitions in responsibilities for staff, or your new marketing partners. This plan should include obtaining access to marketing tools and internal resources, documentation, training materials, and meetings to confirm or validate their learning as well as capabilities. You’ll see better results by scheduling recurring meetings to measure progress for the first 90 days and throughout the year.

Moving On From Marketing Staff or Ad Agency

According to Spencer Stuart’s 16th annual CMO Tenure Study, the average tenure for Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) decreased from 43 months to 41 months in 2018. You have to weigh the pros and cons of internal staff versus a strategic marketing partner. Going through these steps that we’ve outlined here, give you the information to change processes and procedures, identify talent, and position your business for success with internal, external, or a combination of all marketing resources.

Like what you’ve read? Have we inspired you and given you a springboard for moving your marketing department and business into the post-COVID business arena? Access more valuable information regularly by subscribing to our blog and following us on social media.

What is Inbound Marketing?

August 7, 2020 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Inbound marketing is the methodology of attracting customers by creating valuable and relevant content experiences tailored to potential customers. The process of inbound marketing requires your content to be tailored toward your target audience and buyer personas and their needs. Inbound marketing forms a connection by solving problems that your potential customers have.

What is the Inbound Method?

The inbound methodology is focused on growing your company by building meaningful, lasting relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers. It’s about helping and empowering people to reach their goals at any stage in their customer journey with you. When they succeed, your company will succeed and increase the likelihood of customer retention as well as referrals.

Inbound Methodology is often used in 3 ways:

Attract: getting the right people with valuable information and actions to establish you as a trusted advisor that they want to engage with. Engage: provide insights and solutions that align with their problems and goals so they are more likely to buy from you. Delight: deliver guidance and support to help your customers succeed with their purchase.
Engage: provide insights and solutions that align with their problems and goals so they are more likely to buy from you.
Delight: deliver guidance and support to help your customers succeed with their purchase.

Types of Inbound Strategies

There are three inbound strategies that will help you market to your target audience through the inbound model. Each of these strategies will help your business grow better. Below are the types of inbound strategies:

Attracting Strategies drive traffic from your buyer personas and target audience by creating and publishing content that provides value and helps potential customers to solve their challenges.
Engaging Strategies will communicate and connect with leads and customers to build long-term relationships with your business. Actively provide them with solutions to their problems while addressing their needs and wants.
Delight Strategies ensure that your customers are happy, and provide them with support after the purchase, which transforms you into their trusted advisor as new challenges are presented.

How to Use the Inbound Method in Your Marketing?

Select the inbound strategy that makes the most sense for your business. For example, if you are just getting started, consider working on the attracting strategy. The tools to attract customers are: ads, video, blogging, social media and a content strategy. Create valuable content for your target audience, distribute the content on these channels. Provide an offer (i.e. downloadable, consultation, value-added, discount code, etc.), then measure your ability to attract potential customers. If you need help, you can hire an inbound marketing agency to help you. There are a few HubSpot solution partners in Reading, PA and surrounding states.

Want to learn more about inbound marketing for your business? Subscribe to the blog and follow us on social media.

5 Steps You Can Take Today to Bring More Traffic to Your Website

July 23, 2020 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Website traffic is an important business indicator and a driver for growth. You get to see how your marketing is working while gathering insight about your target audience. More traffic to your website builds your credibility on the web. It’s important to drive quality traffic that will impact lead generation and sales.

Create a Blog Editorial Calendar & Write Your First Blog Post

A blog is a regularly updated web page that is typically run by an individual or small group and is written in an informal or conversational style. Create a blog schedule or an editorial calendar that zeros in on your target audience questions, concerns, and challenges.

I recommend that the blog editorial calendar include who is responsible for writing, idea topics, and due dates. Start out small with 1 blog per month then make adjustments based on your goals. Consider how you will distribute the content to increase the likelihood that it will get into the hands of potential customers.

69% of businesses attribute their lead generation success to blogging. (Source: HubSpotⓇ)

Develop a SEO Plan to Increase Traffic from Google & Bing

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. SEO techniques include content creation, linking, site navigation, local business listings, site speed and more. Develop a SEO plan that is specific to your business situation.

Start by getting an SEO or website audit. The website audit will provide information on website issues that are hurting your position in the search engine results. You can get a free evaluation of your website:

The local business profiles on Facebook®, Google My Business®, Yelp®, and Bing Places® also attract more local customers. These business profiles should include reviews, maps, services, a link to your website, and a description of your business. This information is used to populate local listings and provide directions to your local business.

Try the Yext business listing scan to review your business listings.

According to consumers, businesses that respond to reviews are 1.7X more trustworthy than businesses who don’t (76% vs. 46%) Source: Google

Start Social Media Posting on Relevant Platforms

Social media enables users to create and share content, career interests, ideas and to participate in social networking conversations. What social media networks are your existing customers using? Share information that is useful to your customers. Use polls to get their feedback on your products and services.

Use social media as a distribution channel for your blog editorial calendar. I recommend adding a post to your Google My Business profile so that it stands out from others. Use social media management tools such as Hootsuite®, Buffer®, and SproutSocial® to schedule your posts.

LinkedIn’s number of users in the U.S. reached 160 million, making it the country with the most users in the world. (Statista, 2020)

Launch a Paid Search or Social Media Campaign

Paid Search or pay-per-click (PPC), search engine advertising, and sponsored listings are often used to define ad types such as Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), Google Product Listing Ads, Google Shopping Ads®, and Bing Ads. Paid social media display advertisements or sponsored marketing messages on popular social media platforms and target a specific sub-audience.

Define the goals of the paid search or social media campaign before starting your campaign. Consider the type of ad campaign that would be most likely to succeed. For example, if you are selling ecommerce products, I recommend a shopping campaign. Create the campaign for your target audience that minimizes cost and improves results.

If you are already running a campaign, get a free paid search audit to improve your return on investment.

In 2019 the U.S. was the largest global market based on mobile advertising spending. (Statitsa, 2019)

Create Content for Your Target Audience

Content is high quality, useful information that communicates a story presented in a contextually or visually relevant manner with the goal of soliciting emotion and engagement. The content can be used as part of social media posts and added to your website for SEO.

Create content that is useful to your potential customers and target audience. For example, I recommend video demonstrations, product guides, flyers, and brochures. These content pieces must be accessible via a mobile device.

70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. (HubSpot, 2020)

Combine Tactics to Increase Your Web Traffic Today

The increase in website traffic provides businesses with more opportunities to sell products or services. A one-size-fits-all model will not achieve your target results. All of these ideas are connected and will have a greater likelihood of achieving success when used in combination with each other

Understand where your business is going and measure if and how you are increasing traffic. Look to understand what is working and the impact that it is having on your sales. If you need any help, give us a call or check out our other blog posts on these topics.

Get an Inbound Marketing Assessment!

5 Signs You’re Attracting The Wrong Customers — And How To Fix It

July 15, 2020 by Michael Sanders Leave a Comment

Understanding your ideal customer(s) is paramount to your digital marketing success and the growth of your business. Many organizations attract the wrong type of website traffic, leads, and clients. Narrowing your focus and refining your buyer personas will help you stop wasting valuable resources on the wrong types of people and enable you to bring in more ideal customers for your business.

One key factor is to ensure you are targeting not your current customers, but the customers that will drive your business forward. Chances are, you are attracting more potential clients who will not be profitable or engaged. In this article, we examine five signs that your business is attracting the wrong customers — and how to fix the underlying issues so that you bring on more of the clients your business wants in 2020.

1. You Still Haven’t Defined Your Customers

If you still haven’t defined your current and ideal customers and shared that knowledge among your employees, you’re firing blind. The most critical attribute to discover about your customers is their buying intent. Knowing why the people who buy your goods and services chose your product or service is paramount to understanding both what is driving the marketplace and your key differentiator within it.

2. You Haven’t Defined Yourself

If you truly believe in something, someone will probably disagree with you and get upset. And that’s ok. If you aren’t upsetting anyone, it’s likely that your brand is so vanilla that it doesn’t mean much of anything, to anyone. It’s impossible to gain the vocal champions you need among clients to spread the word about your business if you don’t stand for anything. Your goal should be to have a clear vision and mission statement and attract clients that share your values. Check out our blog to learn how to find your brand voice.

3. You Compete Primarily On Price

There are only a few valid ways to compete — and if you are Walmart, go ahead and compete on price. Are you Walmart? I didn’t think so. If you don’t have the lowest cost structure and compete on price, eventually you’ll go out of business. That’s just how numbers work. Stop chasing low value clients who prompt you to do 80% of the work but 20% of the profits. The ones worth your while aren’t the ones who talk about price until you’ve established your value. And once you’ve established your value, you have the flexibility to charge more. It’s really that simple.

4. You Don’t Do Enough Discovery During Sales & On-Boarding

Before your marketing team can effectively do anything, they need to intimately understand the pain points and goals of your new clients. If your customer service, project management, and/or salespeople don’t have the right tools or exert enough effort to have a firm grasp on the motivations of new customers, it will be next-to-impossible for your marketing team to consistently deliver value-driven solutions.

5. You Have A Disorganized Sales & Marketing Process

If your company doesn’t continue to put energy into re-establishing your brand, over and over again, you will find that your brand value erodes over time. A disorganized brand will attract disorganized clients, and that spells death for your business. You want a firm brand (again, it’s ok to alienate some folks) that evokes a belief in everyone on your team — and by extension, it will evoke a belief in the people with whom you want to work.

Fixing The Issue

Now that we’ve established the “wrong” customers, how do you go about attracting the right customers? Everything boils down to a strategy that aligns your brand, profit model, and target buyer persona with each other. Try these three fixes for starters:

Create Your Target Persona

Note: the operative word here is “target”. That means you need to stop being all things to all people. You have to drill down and discern what is the core audience your business aims to serve. It may be a role, an industry, or a service — it might even be some combination of all three. Either way, focus on a narrow niche and get to know it better than anyone else in your market. That will lend credibility to your offering and allow you to earn a better profit for your services (see below). Here is a previous article to help get you started on writing to target personas.

Create Your Profit Model

When businesses attract the wrong types of customers, it’s often due to a bad pricing strategy. If you price too low, you’re going to attract bargain shoppers who bleed your time and resources. We are not advocating that you overcharge: we’re just saying you should reframe your business and brand story so that it focuses on the value that you can bring to customers. Sell them on your unique ability to solve their problem and you’ll be surprised what they’re willing to pay.

Create The Right Story

Your brand narrative acts as a beacon to attract and retain the right (or wrong) types of customers. Creating the right story typically involves the following elements:

Distill your core values and your brand purpose
Create a mission statement if you don’t have one
Dig deep to understand why you started the business in the first place
Find elements that make your brand unique

When telling your story, try and visualize the ideal customers. Craft your story to appeal to them. Introduce story elements that would filter out customers that are wrong for your business. For this, you need to go back to the buyer persona creation step.

Wrapping it Up

Being prepared for the post-COVID world means knowing whether you are attracting the right — or the wrong — customers, and why. Understanding where you’re going wrong from among the five common errors is a start. From there, narrowing your focus and refining your buyer personas will help you stop wasting valuable resources on the wrong types of people and enable you to bring in more ideal customers for your business. If you still have questions, contact DaBrian Marketing Group Today.

Ontelaunee Township Website Gets a Face Lift by Berks County Ad Agency

March 25, 2020 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Ontelaunee Township serves the residents of Ontelaunee Township PA. They needed a secure mobile-responsive website that functions as a resource for the residents they serve and contractors working in their geographical footprint. Ontelaunee Township has approached DaBrian Marketing to design and develop the new site.

Prior to the web design project, the Ontelaunee Township website was not mobile friendly. The site had a number of pages that had been added over the years and was not organized in a way that was easy for residents to find information. Also, the website did not have an SSL certificate for security and no way gauge the usefulness of the website for residents or businesses looking to relocate to the township.

Now, the Ontelaunee Township website is now a mobile friendly website that responds with the type of device that customers are using. We created a user-friendly visitor journey with easy access to commonly requested information. The site utilizes an easy to update and edit website platform for employees of Ontelaunee Township.

About Ontelaunee Township

Ontelaunee Township serves the residents of Ontelaunee Township PA. Ontelaunee Township is a township in Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 1,646 at the 2010 census. They serve as a resource for the residents they serve and contractors working in their geographical footprint.

Contact the Ontelaunee Township about zoning, emergency services, and more for residents and businesses.

Our Commitment to Clients During COVID-19

March 20, 2020 by Michael Sanders Leave a Comment

During these unprecedented times we wanted to provide an update and communicate suggestions to our valued business partners. We hope these recommendations can both help you proactively manage your own clients in the coming weeks and emerge from this challenge well-positioned for growth.

DaBrian Marketing Is Here For You

Pursuant to Governor Wolf’s recent order, we have closed our physical location on Blair Street. However, each member of the DaBrian team is working regular business hours from his/her respective home office to ensure the timely completion of all client deliverables. Besides regular, monthly project work, we also want to help you stay top-of-mind with your own customers.

FAQs to Communicate To Your Clients

Here are some suggested topics to communicate to your client base as it relates to modifications your business has implemented due to COVID-19:

How to Reach Your Customers

Consider the different media you may need to employ to get the answers to the questions above detailed to your customers. This could include an update to your local listings, a banner ad or resource/FAQ page on your website, social media posts, and/or an email communication. We can help with both strategy and marketing execution for any required channel. Finally, don’t forget non-digital communication such as brochures, signage, and other forms of advertising.

Think Differently About Marketing

We have already had a couple of clients reach out about using this “down time” to redesign their website. You may have wanted to start a blog but didn’t have the time until now. Or maybe you want to try to build a Twitter following for your business. Don’t be afraid to think differently and take the opportunity to try something new with your marketing.

Options For The Coming Weeks

As your marketing needs are in flux during this challenging time, we will be happy to use existing support hours and/or reallocate hours from other contracted projects (ex: from PPC to design, SEO to content, etc.) as requested. We are also amenable to incremental content & design projects to lay the foundation for growth once the crisis abates. Feel free to reach out to the team directly with any questions or concerns.