DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

Social Media Advice Not To Follow

April 11, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group 1 Comment

When it comes to social media marketing and putting together a social strategy, there is a lot of social media advice out there, which may cause your head to spin. While some advice out there is relevant and your company should follow in that direction, there is some social media advice you should not follow. Below is some advice you may come across, but beware and make sure the advice you follow takes your company down the right path.

Your company should be on every social media platform

While this piece of advice may seem smart to you, you will want to think about if having a presence on every social media platform will truly make an impact on your business. Being present on each platform will take lots of time and upkeep, and could potentially require additional staff as well. Instead take a look at the demographics and find which platform your audience is on most, so you can start to create your social media presence and begin interacting and engaging with your audience.

You need to post on a schedule

Most companies believe that they need to post on a certain schedule. While schedules are great for a lot of things when it comes to business, social media is somewhat different. Do research on the time of day your audience is responding to your posts and interacting with them. The whole point of social media is engaging with your customers and potential customers. Also posting on a schedule may make you company seem rigid and uptight.

Followers are the only way to measure success

Your company may think a large amount of followers is the only way to measure success, but you may want to reassess how your company measures your social media success. The true ways to measure your success is by the engagement rate and with Google Analytics. By definition engagement rate is something you measure by looking at likes, shares, and comments. With Google Analytics, you can see what social media platforms, posts, or ads, are driving traffic to your website and measure success by what end goal your company sees fit.

You should delete negative comments

Instead of deleting any negative comments and trying to sweep them under the rug, people will look up to your company and even begin to trust your company when they see you responding to those comments in a mature way and owning up to them.

Everything needs to be about your brand

Your audience doesn’t always want to see everything your company has to offer or even every sale or promotion you have going on. While social media is a great tool and you should put your sales and promotions on there, you will also want to give your followers and potential customer other valuable information relating to your industry and other information that they would find interesting.

For more information about Social Media Marketing and how we can help yours grow, contact us or leave us a comment below!

Five Cause Marketing Must Haves

April 4, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Whether you’ve just begun the process of organizing your company’s cause campaign, or you’re stuck in a rut feeling overwhelmed by the many marketing tactics available – take a breath and read about these five Cause Marketing must haves.

1. Authenticity is Key

Support a cause that you truly care about and your supporters will show compassion just the same. There’s nothing worse than being asked 6 times in one day if you’d like to donate to [insert cause here] by kids being forced to ask simply to meet their job requirements. There are also plenty of cause marketing email and content templates out there that you could lean on for support, but don’t be cookie cutter, break away from the norm! Show you care! Tell your story, show your support with pictures of you and your team working towards a common goal, get creative all the while remembering why you’re donating your time.

2. Start with a Bang!

If your cause campaign is directly reflected by fundraising dollars, get a head start and donate your own personal contribution in the beginning. Ask your employees, coworkers, and those closest to you to donate right away. Later on down the road, you may formally request another donation and it may seem more feasible to donate again. Or if donations are not your apart of your cause campaign’s goals, start by generating content, branded materials, or signage for the initiative right away. No better time than right now to get started!

3. Give more than Dollars

Even if the Cause Campaign goals your company is working towards is simply to gain monetary donations, show your support by donating your time or resources. Non-profit agencies usually have a lack of support in consistent volunteers. According to a 2015 study of The Nonprofit Sector, only 25.3% of adults volunteer at least once during a year. Your time and efforts may be just what your local non-profit for your favorite cause may need.

4. Involve your team in Cause Marketing

Your coworkers or employees may not necessarily care about the local animal shelter losing funding, but just a small amount of time with a friendly dog might change anyone’s perspective! Encourage your team members to find their niche. Involve your IT department in decorating instead of troubleshooting issues for the local cause office, they might just love it! Allow your team to learn more about themselves while engaging with the cause at hand.

5. Use your Resources!

Reach out to your clients, vendors, the UPS delivery person, everyone you know. Ask for help in support of this cause by any means. You could even get your message across on Social Media! Utilizing Facebook Ads, pinned posts, check-ins at a cause’s homefront, etc. can broaden your audience to people you may not have connected with without the use of Social Media for cause marketing. Don’t forget to change your social media “Timeline” or “Background” photo while you’re logged in! Show your team spirit for this cause with a fresh themed background photo. Utilizing your company’s Email Marketing platform, you can also send out emails to your clients and contacts. You can even change your signature in your personal and professional email that notes your interest in your favorite cause and how your recipients can participate. Gather your resources and initiate a plan of attack!

Get on the Right Track for Cause Marketing

Starting down the road to raising awareness for causes you care about and even driving donations may seem insurmountable. With the help of friends, family, your coworkers, and strangers, you don’t have to feel alone. Also remember that 55% of those who engage with nonprofits via social media have been inspired to take further action. You can’t beat those statistics! Show your support and let other follow!

For more information about cause campaigns and how we can help yours grow, contact us or leave us a comment below! Also, check out our latest cause campaign initiative for our local Walk MS event!

A New Approach to Healthcare Marketing

March 28, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

As a Healthcare Provider Are You Confident Your Current Marketing Strategy Is Reaching Your Target Audience?

New Patients Are Online And Ready To Be Engaged

On March 9th DaBrian Marketing Group, a Certified Google Partner Agency hosted a live webcast to explore the impact ever-changing consumer search behaviors have on Healthcare Marketing. The consumer search data trends compiled by Google was presented by Ben Tyson, Head of Sales Enablement for SEM and Directories Partners at Google and Brendan Jacobson, Google’s Channel Partnerships Team member. Understanding the evidence-based approach to medicine that is practiced, it is clear that the Healthcare Marketing strategies need to change. Here are a few points we found particularly eye-opening. We would love to hear your takeaways as well.

Why Healthcare Marketing Needs a New Approach

The Internet Is A Go-To Source For Health & Wellness Information

People Spend More Time Online Than Any Other Medium

77% of People Search the Internet First For Healthcare Information

90% of Patients Begin Searching for Conditions, Symptoms & Treatments

Patients WILL Go Online To Verify Doctor’s Diagnosis

Where they are searching has also changed. It almost goes without saying that the utilization of mobile devices has been rising and consumers use them everywhere, including 16% who are using them while in a doctor’s office!

16% of Patients Use Mobile Phone While In Doctor’s Office!

Implications of Not Changing Your Marketing Approach

So you may be asking why is it so important to be online at this point? Perhaps these findings from Google will answer that:

At time of decision, nearly half of all consumer research ends on an a Branded Ad.

28% visited the website of a hospital that was advertised

50% search for health information because it is quick

77% will switch to another site if it's not easy to find what they were looking for.

And don’t forget the 16% who might be reading a competitor's Ad while sitting in your waiting room!

These few points alone might not convince you to change your approach, but hopefully it has gotten you to think about your current marketing strategies. Healthcare Marketing has been lagging behind other industries in terms of effective digital marketing initiatives, which can be complex in an already challenging field to begin with. So keep it simple and just ask yourself a question: Are you reaching the right people, with the right message, at the right time? If you aren’t, or you’re not sure, DaBrian Marketing Group would be more than happy to talk with you, so give us a call at 610-743-5602.

I encourage you to check out the full Google Partners Connect – Healthcare video. It dives much deeper into the story.

Tips for Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting with Google Analytics

March 14, 2016 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting with Google Analytics

Good morning. My name is Daniel Laws, and I am the Principal Owner of DaBrian Marketing Group, an advertising agency in Reading, PA. I’ve been fielding a few questions around Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics. Today, what I want to talk about is exactly that, Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics. What I’m going to address today is what it is, and first and foremost, how is it different from the existing reporting that’s there. Also, how do you set it up? When you should set it up, where to set it up, as well as who needs to be involved in setting up those elements. Why you should care. What’s the value for your business for you to have those pieces set up.

With that being said, I’d like to kick this off with a little bit of information. Don’t mind me. I’m looking at dual screens here where I’ll drag a few things in, and obviously try to show you what I can. Obviously because of confidentiality with some of our clients and showing you their Google Analytics, can’t necessarily do that, but I’ll do my best to make it as informative, and give you the appropriate resources, and also load this information to our blog so that you might be able to get links directly to the assets. With that being said, I’m going to kick this off. Bear with me one moment while I share my screen. First and foremost, what I want to talk about is what is Enhanced reporting. With that being said, we’ve got Enhanced reporting. What you can see here is Enhanced reporting is going to give you more granular information than what you would get typically from Google Analytics as it pertains to shopping behavior, performance behavior, sales, product performance, sales performance. Those types of components will be more informative to you.

I’m looking for the screenshot here of something that’s actually going to be of value. What you can see here in this particular area is that it’s able to give you information as far as shopping activity, where the abandonments are happening simply from the shopping behavior components, as far as adding things to the cart, abandonment from cart, abandonment from checkout, those types of pieces. It can give you more information as well but at a high-level, I think one of the things that you’re going to be able to see … I know you’re going to be able to see is the shopping behavior, as well as a number of other items that will help you to make better business decisions around what sales items are working, perhaps identifying opportunities to fix the site, what have you.

How is this different from AdWords Shopping? From an AdWords Shopping perspective, you’re going to get high level information as far as clicks. You’re going to get information as far as Ecommerce revenue, conversion rate, those types of things, cost per click, to be a little bit specific. It’s going to give you some of those components if you’re running shopping. Obviously, this is a blank scenario. That’s why I used it in a test environment, so to speak. Obviously, it’s going to give you that type of information within the reporting, which is uniquely different than what you’re going to get from an overview of shopping behavior types of components. Now, what we’re looking at is shopping related information, revenue affiliates, campaigns, transactions. Those types of things are going to populate within the shopping. As you can see, it’s rather different than the other components.

The other piece of this is how do you set it up. I think one of the best resources that are out there are … Obviously you’re going to want to go to the Enhanced Ecommerce reporting section. Again, I’ll put this link towards the conclusion of the video. You’re going to want to get that information around Enhanced reporting. How you set it up can be complicated. I don’t want to say it’s very complicated, but it can be complicated in some scenarios. You want to make sure you have the most up to date analytics component there. What I mean by that is if you take a look, if you’re not on the most up to date Google Analytics version, if you’re not on analytics.js, you will run into issues and will need to migrate. Again, this is the information that’s there. You’ll need to migrate to that. You do have two options. You can migrate in an existing component or you can create a new property. In most cases people are going to want to have some of that historical data, be able to look at it in one fell swoop. The migration can become a little bit cumbersome in order to make that happen. Perhaps at a later date I’ll be able to shed some light on that for you as well.

You want to make sure that you have a measurement plan, first and foremost, before you go on this. Why are you doing what you need to do in order to capture this information? What metrics and KPIs? How are you going to troubleshoot and validate everything that’s there? Looking at some of those high-level components within the measurement plan … I’m not going to get into the details. If you haven’t done or looked at a measurement plan, I would recommend that you take a look at Google Analytics Academy, which gives you a high level overview of a measurement plan and how to break that down. Make sure that you have all those metrics, those elements, goals and objectives lined out prior to implementing the Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics.

When should you set this up? In most cases, people are already going to have some type of data already established, some campaigns, things that you’re already doing. I would say as quickly as humanly possible. The reason why I say that is it’s going to shed some light on a number of different areas, as I eluded to earlier, and perhaps help you to identify some low hanging fruit. With that being said, you want to do it now. If you can’t do it now, do you schedule regular updates for Google Analytics in order to roll out new capabilities? When you roll out those updated capabilities, I think that is when you’re going to want to take a look at updating the code and implementing the necessary components.

The reason why I say that is that it goes back to what you’re going to want to enable first and foremost, the tracking capabilities in itself and turn on Enhanced reporting. One of the prerequisites for this, as you can see here, is to turn on that particular element. That is inside the Admin Console. Due to confidentiality, obviously, I won’t show you that right now. If you want to go to that particular area, you go into Google Analytics. You go to Admin, and then you navigate to the view area of Ecommerce Settings, enable that particular piece, and that should be able to help you with some of those elements. Obviously you want to save, and then you want to implement the appropriate tags. That’s where it goes back to the Google developer components of what needs to be there and establishing that plug-in. It’s a great resource for that type of information as far as impression data, product data, and action data, as far as what needs to be required within updating that code.

Perhaps the other option for when you should set this up is when you roll out new products, new site features, whatever it might be, is incorporating that into that roll out if you can’t get it out now. You’ve heard me talk a little bit about the code, and updating the code, and what do you need, and those types of things. The other piece of this is who needs to be involved. To some degree you’re going to need somebody with some programming skills, familiarity with Google Analytics code, so a web analyst or someone who can obviously read through some of the material and the reference materials within the guides, and assist with those elements. In general, that’s going to be a programmer, somebody with familiarity with JavaScript, HTML, CSS if necessary. That’s generally not often required. It’s usually JavaScript, HTML code, PHP, those types of things, depending upon what your site is built on.

Where does this information go? Obviously, what you need is a site, as I eluded to before, you need to enable this inside your Google Analytics as I showed you before. You’re also going to want to have access and administrative access to Google Analytics when you bring the necessary parties involved. You may opt to implement this from a Tag Manager perspective. For the purposes of right now, I would say test it, get it up in the test environment. If you have the appropriate Google Analytics configuration, you’ll generally have an unfiltered view, a master view, and in the test view, I would say get those elements up and running first and foremost. If you’re going to use Tag Manager, make sure that you’re utilizing something within a test environment with Tag Manager to populate that information. When I say Tag Manager, I’m referring to Google Tag Manager specifically.

Why should you care? Number one, it integrates with your Ecommerce site, which is uniquely different from the shopping campaigns. The shopping campaigns and AdWords are very specific to you utilizing shopping campaigns via Google Analytics, no more no less. With the Enhanced Ecommerce Shopping, will allow you to gauge opt in opt … Not necessarily opt-in but abandonment rate, check out issues, sales performance issues, as it pertains to your Ecommerce site without running a campaign in its entirety, or without the necessity to have to run a campaign, if that makes sense. With that being said, it gives you an opportunity to improve revenues, increase revenues, identify broken processes that are impacting conversion rates. Why are people abandoning the shopping process? Why are people not putting items in the cart? At the same time, identifying ways to improve the average order value and the efficiency of your marketing. Where does the efficiency of your marketing come in? Comes very much so into play with internal promotions, and order coupons, and being able to get that information within Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics.

One of the other pieces of this, as I eluded to, is obviously the checkout, the shopping behavior, the checkout behavior analysis, their performance, product performance, sales performance. There’s also the internal promotions, order, and coupons just to name a few others that are going to provide you with information on what is working, what products are moving, what sales are performing well, do you modify things, and being able to collect that information based upon the measurement plan that I had mentioned earlier, and looking at those core metrics and being very focused on the goals and objectives to be able to pull out those insights and to do something about it.

With that being said, what’s the value to your business? The Bottom line is this information is going to help you to increase sales and revenue. It’s going to help you to improve marketing efficiency. It’s going to help you to prioritize items that are going to impact growth. One of the things that we often see is you have business owners that are running their business themselves and are handling their Ecommerce site, or working with a vendor directly, or they’ve got a marketing manager that is all encompassing. You’ve got a huge organization where not all of the pieces are connected. Where do you prioritize what’s going to have the maximum impact on the business?

By implementing the Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics, it gives you the opportunity to prioritize that information more specifically, look at those low hanging fruits that can impact revenue and growth, and to make sure that you can allocate time with things that are going to have the maximum impact, as opposed to trying to tackle everything. In most cases, there’s a lot to tackle from an Ecommerce perspective. We’re talking about SEO. We’re talking about advertising, paid search, banner ads, shopping campaigns, remarketing, a number of different things from an Ecommerce perspective, and retail perspective is everything from inventory ads.

Where do you prioritize your time? I think by enabling Enhanced reporting, it gives you a little bit more visibility into that. It gives you better metrics and allows you to justify advertising spent. Listen to me again, allows you to justify advertising spent. Many times we’re spending money on SEO. We’re spending money on pay per click. We’re spending money on email campaigns. We’re able to see what’s generating revenues, what items are being bogged down. You can slice and dice that data by segment, by marketing tactics so to speak, whether it’s the source medium. From a Google Analytics perspective, allow you to slice and dice that information and look at that shopping information very specifically.

With that being said, what I’ll do is I’ll load some of these resources to our blog when the video is live, point you in a right direction. Perhaps at a later date, we can get a little bit more granular on implementation of the code. Maybe we’ll get our buddy, our resident programmer webmaster here, Brett, to actually walk through some of those components for you. With that being said, thank you very much. Hope it was useful. Please let us know if we can add anything else of value. Thank you very much.

Resources:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6014841?

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3455481?https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/

Web Security Can Compromise Your Company

March 7, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Why Is Web Security Important?

The more information you have, the more web security is important. It is crucial for your business to have security in place if you have customer’s credits cards on file in a server. If a hacker would get their hands on your customers credit cards, then you business could potentially run the risk of being sued.

Now, granted not many companies keep that kind of information. Most of the information you have on your site are documents of agreements, files made specifically for a client, etc. You wouldn’t feel good if you were the client of another business. Then one day that business got hacked and lost some of your information, and because of them, that information became public knowledge. Not something anyone wants happening.

How Can Web Security Affects Your Company?

A hacker can turn your website against you in minutes, getting your website blocked by common search engines like Google or Yahoo. Once your website is blocked by Google or Yahoo, it is a very long process and sometimes impossible to get it unblocked. A hacker can also send spam emails to all your clients, and potentially leak private client data, all without your knowledge of any of it happening.

Without some good security protecting your company’s website and computers, you could easily find yourself on the 5 o’clock news. There is a laundry list of things you can do to protect your company. Below are some of the basics to help you get started. This should not be the basis of your company’s security, merely a double check that everything is in place to keep you and your business safe.

Tips To Securing Your Website

Keep all software up to date. This may sound trivial, but you would be surprised at how many sites get hacked by an old security hole found long ago that was patched, and simply updating it would have fixed it.
Switch to HTTPS. An easy enough switch. Provides peace of mind to your customers knowing your secure and thanks to Google recently, you would also be increasing in search rankings.
Use strong passwords and change them regularly. This may sound like a simple change to make, but a site is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Making sure all passwords are strong boosts your security.

Tips To Securing Your Computers

Get an antivirus. Make sure you get an antivirus for your computer. It can be free or paid. If you pay for an antivirus, once the subscription runs out it is doing nothing for you. Anyone looking for an antivirus, Kaspersky is a good place to start.
Update your PC. Having all your software up to date will help make sure it is more secure.
Consider using a firewall. A firewall manages all files going to and from your computer. Usually, it notifies you of something that it does not recognize or it knows is malicious.

With these helpful tips, you will be keeping your computer and your website secure. This should not be your only security. Theses tips are only meant to help you get started. We are not responsible if your company gets a virus.

If you have any security questions ask away in the comments below or Contact Us today!

Importance of Keyword Research

February 29, 2016 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

Is your local target audience finding you when they search online? If you are using the wrong keywords within your content (Headlines, Paragraphs, URL, Blogs, etc.), then there is a good chance your business is not being found. The question then becomes, how do you know what the right keywords are? Answer: Keyword Research.

Local Keyword Research via Google Trends

Scenario: You are a doctor looking to acquire new patients.
People across the US are searching for doctors, but everyone doesn’t use the same keywords to search. We ran “family doctor”, “primary care physician”, and “family physician” through Google Trends (see image below.)

Clearly “family doctor” is the most searched, but this is at a nationwide level. For doctors and other health care providers with a physical location, it is crucial to look at your specific location when doing research. While most cities across the nation will closely resemble what is shown above there are some cities that will be drastically different. For example here is the last 12 months worth of searches for the same terms in the Boston area.

While “family doctor” remains high, it is surpassed by “primary care physician.” When writing for your target audience, make sure that you are using terms that they are familiar with and use. Having these terms inside headers, context, and links throughout your website will help users find, understand and engage with your site.

Hopefully, Google Trends will help you identify what keywords your local audience is searching and would help boost your website’s visibility and performance. While search volume is a critical part of keyword research it is only the beginning.