DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

Drive Web Traffic With Paid Digital Advertising

February 28, 2020 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

You have a great looking website, but this is not Field Of Dreams. Just because you built it does NOT mean people will come. So, how do you increase traffic to your website? Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email Marketing, Paid Advertising, etc… Where should you start???

Here are a few questions to consider:

Is your website mobile-friendly?
Is your content clear and concise?
Is it easy to achieve the end goal on your website?
Do you have a budget to acquire more traffic?
Do you need web traffic immediately?

While all of the above listed options are valid methods to increase traffic, some take time (SEO), or require an existing audience (Email and Social Media.) However, if you answered “Yes” to all the above questions, then you are ready to run Paid Digital Advertising. Running Paid Ads isn’t quite that simple. What kind of ads – Search, Display, Video or Shopping? Where will these Ads be shown – Search Engines, across the internet, on Social Media? And very possibly the most important how will you reach your desired audience (targeting settings)?

While this blog will never answer all your possible questions about Paid Digital Advertising, let’s at least tackle some of the big ones.

1. Type of Paid Digital Ads

Search Ads – Context based ads that appear above and below Search Results. These ads consist of Headlines, Body Copy, URL and often various Extensions (ie. location, phone numbers and other additional information.)

Display Ads – Image ads that show on various sites above, below, next to, and among a websites content. Since these ads are not the primary reason a person comes to the given website, they need to grab their attention and give them a reason to click.

Video Ads – Often shown before, after or during a desired video similar to a tv commercial. Again, this ad needs to distract a person from their desired video and give them a reason to click.

Shopping Ads – Product focused with the goal for selling typically via an ecommerce site.

2. Placement of Paid Digital Ads

Search Engines – Seems obvious, but Search Ads are shown on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP.)

Display Network – Display Ads can show almost anywhere on the web. There are several Display Networks with the most popular being the Google Display Network (GDN) which boasts to include over 2 million websites,videos and mobile apps. Since videos are included in the Display Network, your video ads will show on this network along with your display ads

Shopping Ads – These ads mostly shown on Search Engine Shopping sections (Google and Bing). However, depending on targeting setting your shopping ads could also be Display ads and therefore be shown across the Display Network.

Social Media Advertising – Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and several other social media platforms have their own Advertising platform. These ads are often similar to display ads, since they are often shown along the side of the page and are not based upon a search, but rather other targeting settings (geographic, demographic and more.)

3. Target Audience

The success of your Ads ultimate starts with your targeting settings. Even with the greatest Ads (search, display or other) shown to the wrong audience will never succeed, While Search Ads are primarily targeting and shown based on what a user searches, there are several other targeting settings involved. A short list of setting that can (and should) be setup on most, if not all, Paid Digital Advertising campaigns:

Geographic Location
Day Parting/Time of Day
Demographics (Gender, Age, Parental Status, Household Income)
Interest/Topics (for Display Campaigns)
Bidding Strategy
Device Targeting/Bid Adjustments
ReMarketing/Similar Audiences/In-Market Audiences

Following this very oversimplified process to setting up your Paid Digital Advertising will help put you on the path to not only driving web traffic but also growing your business and bottom line. However this is only getting you setup, you will still need to monitor and optimize your Paid Advertising campaigns on a regular basis.

Ready to Start your Paid Digital Advertising? Want Help setting up, monitoring and optimizing your Advertising Campaigns, or just have additional questions – Contact DaBrian Marketing Today.

5 Steps To Find The Right Digital Marketing Agency

February 21, 2020 by Michael Sanders Leave a Comment

A great digital marketing agency can increase traffic to your website, leads to your sales reps, and revenues for your business. For example, an agency with expertise in running paid ad campaigns can refine your Google Ads targeting so that your business earns $2 in revenue for every $1 spent. But how do you know when a digital marketing agency is the right fit to work with you and your team? Here are five steps to find the right one.

1. Check Out The Agency’s Digital Marketing Assets

A good agency should practice what they preach. Are you interested in updating your stale website and hiring someone for ongoing SEO management? Search for and review the agency’s own website. If they are using best-practices, the site should rank high on the first page of Google results. Their website should be user-friendly, current, and function smoothly on mobile devices. If you are hiring them for inbound marketing, do they employ a strong inbound marketing strategy, themselves? The site should possess a simple navigation structure, feature an active and relevant blog series, and contain professionally written service pages that prompt clear calls-to-action from users.

2. Research Their Marketing Team

I am going to let you in on a dirty industry secret: most local marketing agencies now outsource over 40% of their client work. Every business hires specialists or offloads work during busy periods. After all, that is probably why you are researching marketing agencies right now, yourself. But are you really paying an agency $100-an-hour just to have them turn around and have a freelancer who doesn’t know your business, do it for $5? I didn’t think so.

The digital marketing agency should have a team page that is easy to find and outlines each individual’s competencies. Investigating a company for Google Ads that doesn’t list a paid search consultant on-staff? That’s a red flag that some of the info you convey to the agency will get lost-in-translation by the time it gets to their third-party partner. That will impact the effectiveness of your ads and how those ads align with the branding and messaging of all of your other marketing collateral. Work with a local agency with real people that intimately know your industry and your business.

3. Investigate the Agency’s Tools and Credentials

That digital marketing team should display diverse talents and deep areas of expertise. They should use industry-leading tools and make it easy for you to validate that they have experience using them. If their website doesn’t display their credentials, ask to see them! Here are a few leading platforms to familiarize yourself with prior to beginning your agency search:

Website Performance: Google Analytics
Inbound Marketing: Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot
Email Marketing: Hubspot, Mailchimp
Social Media: Hootsuite, Sproutsocial
SEO: SEMrush, Moz
Paid Search: WordStream, Optmyzr

Agencies that are willing to pay for and learn how to use the best industry tools will usually deliver the best marketing results for your business. They will stay up-to-date on platform capabilities via ongoing training — so you don’t have to.

4. Determine If Their Price Delivers a Positive Marketing ROI

You like their work and their team — now what? It’s time to determine if the value they can deliver will be worth the cost. According to a recent HubSpot survey, the average digital marketing contract can set a small business back anywhere from $500 to $10,000 (or more) per month, depending on how many services are required and the project scope. For most small businesses, that is a huge commitment.

That means whatever agency you work with should have a plan to help you make this value determination. The best way to do this is by tracking all of the traffic, leads, and conversions they generate. If they don’t have a plan for this, don’t sign the contract! Without one, you’ll have no way to know if all of the money you’re spending is worth it.

Your agency should be able to look at your current state and determine how much they can increase your brand awareness, prospects, and/or sales. From there, you should agree upon a unique value for each metric so that you can determine the ROI, or return-on-investment. You should calculate this number overall and for each service channel, individually. This will allow your budget dollars to be more effectively allocated toward higher-performing channels down the road. This process is as much an art as a science, but at the end of the day, the exercise will give you a clue into how wisely you will be spending your marketing dollars.

5. To Find The Right Marketing Agency Ensure Your Work Cultures Align

The final step is often overlooked in the agency search process. Your digital marketing agency will be working closely with your team for a long time (hopefully) so it is critical that their work culture aligns with yours. We have clients that want their hands held through every step of the process. We also have others that just want the bottom line at the end of the month. Neither is right or wrong, but your agency should be able to meet your expectations — not the other way around!

Check out some of their clients. Are any in your industry? As the first digital marketing agency in Reading, PA, we have the experience to recognize that how we work with our financial services clients needs to be very different than how we work with our clients in manufacturing or healthcare. Do your homework, ask around, and make sure the values at the prospective digital marketing agency reflect your own values. And if after all of that you still have questions, we are always here to chat!

Schedule a meeting to talk about how we can be the best digital marketing agency for you.

Why doesn’t my business rank number #1 on Google?

February 5, 2020 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

You just built a new site but it is not ranking well in Google search results. You want to know why your business doesn’t appear on the first page on Google, right? Did the web design company account for Google ranking factors?

Below is a list of SEO ranking factors you’ll need to follow to rank #1 on Google:

1. Technical SEO Signals for Google

Take a look at the content optimization elements for better search engine rankings. These include, but are not limited to:

Use keywords in the page titles.
Use keywords in the page titles.
Create a unique meta description for each page.
Use keywords in image alt tags.
Use Schema Markups to tell Google what kind of content you are creating.
Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to make your pages faster.

Making these changes or improvements can help your user experience. Google uses artificial intelligence to better rank web pages (aka RankBrain). It uses signals such as click-through rate, bounce rate, and time on site to rank pages.

2. Other Opportunities to Rank (SERP Features)

The Zero Position on the Search Engine Results Page is generally for the SERP features. A SERP feature is any result that is not a traditional organic listing. These features include Google Ads and Product Listing Ads, Instant Answers, Local Packs, Image Carousels, Featured Snippets, Top Stories, Reviews, AMP etc. Here is a list of SERP features and examples.

Listing Ads

Instant Answers

Local Packs

Image Carousels

Featured Snippets

3. Google My Business

Google My Business is a free business profile that lets business owners easily connect with customers across Google Search & Google Maps. According to local ranking factor industry research, Google My Business “signals” is the most important ranking factor for local pack rankings. These signals are the business name, address, telephone number, primary category, and website.

Being active on your profile by postings, responding to messages, and reviews will also help. Google My Business signals had a significant increase in ranking importance between 2017 and 2018 — rising from 19% to 25%.

Don’t just create a Google My Business profile, proactively use it! Share posts, list your products or services, show your menu,and engage with customers for Google reviews. You can use the “Insights” to see how people found your business and what action they took such as visits to your site, request for directions, or calls.

4. Duplicate Content

Duplicate Content can be either exactly duplicate or closely similar text that appears on multiple pages on the internet. Ideally you don’t want to have duplicate content on your site. It splits the value of the content to the duplicate page instead of one page to rank well.

Search Engines, just like actual people don’t want to read the same thing multiple times. Try putting things into your own words or writing the content from a different perspective.

SEO Tools such as Moz, SEMRush, and ahrefs can help you to identify duplicate content. Some of these tools provide guidance on how to resolve technical SEO issues. Google Search Console can also help and gives information to “avoid creating duplicate content”.

5. Create, Add Or Update Your Content

Content can be in the form of blog posts, infographics, videos, quizzes, etc. When content creation is done effectively, it will help you rank for specific keywords and improve the click through rate to your site. Consider the content length and how the piece of content will be used or deliverable to your audience.

In many cases, new content often leads to Google re-indexing and listing your content into the search engine results. New content can help to bring new people to your site and keep people coming back which gives your website more authority on the search engines.

6. Mobile-Friendly

As of July 1, 2019, mobile-first indexing is enabled by default for all new websites. The older or existing sites are informed by Google Search Console of the date when your site has been switched to mobile-first indexing. Google Search Console is a free tool that will help you to measure your website’s search traffic, performance, fix issues, and get into Google search results.

So, your new website should be designed for a mobile user experience before designing it for the desktop version. If you have an older site, you should proactively identify and implement mobile improvement to prepare your site for mobile-first indexing.

According to Google, 94% of people with smartphones in the United States search for local information on their phones. 77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work, places where desktop computers are likely to be present. If you are not mobile-friendly, your business is missing out on the opportunity to win new customers. Test your site with Google’s Mobile Friendly test, see the results of your site’s mobile version, and take action!

7. Loading Speed

In July 2019, Google announced that page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches. Based on data from Alexa, web pages on fast-loading sites rank significantly higher than pages on slow-loading sites.

Try the PageSpeed Insights tool for information to make your web pages fast on all devices. By improving your site, it should help your local SEO and help people searching for your business.

Resource: PageSpeed Insights

8. Social Media

Google uses social signals to determine which websites are active and tells them which sites should rank higher. Social signals are interaction metrics on social platforms such as likes, dislikes, shares, votes, views, etc. Search your competitor by name, you will likely see their social media accounts after their company domain in the search engine results. It’s another opportunity for your brand name to appear in the results. It can help to protect your brand by claiming, monitoring, and communication on social platforms.

Create and use your social media accounts to share information with potential and existing customers. You can use social media to promote jobs and promotion without an advertising budget. Some businesses even use social media for customer service and proactively get product or service reviews on Facebook.

9. Backlinks - Fans or Votes of Confidence

Backlinks to your site are important because they represent a fan or vote of confidence from one website to another. The more links you have to your web page or site the more likely the search engine will rank and show your site on the search engine results page (aka SERP).

If all SEO ranking factors are equal between your business and a competitor, high value backlinks can give you a competitive advantage to rank number 1. Create a content marketing strategy to assist in your backlinking or link earning campaign. Content marketing is focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for your target audience online. Good content often leads to backlinks and sharing of the content.

10. Unsecured or Not Accessible to Search Engines

Your website should be secured with a SSL certificate. According to John Mueller at Google, it’s a “light-weight ranking factor” and it is great for the users because it implies the site is safe for usage.

Use robot.txt files tell Google where to go for information on your site. You should make sure that you have an XML sitemap and add it to your Google Search Console so Google can access the pages for indexing.

You want to make it easy for Google to find and get your content so you can rank higher in the search engines. If you use WordPress, SmartCrawl and Yoast plugins will set-up a sitemap for you. If not, check out XML-Sitemaps.com to generate a sitemap. If someone manages your site, confirm that the XML sitemap has all of your web pages in it and use the Open robots.txt tester to make sure you are not blocking content from Google.

Conclusion

The list of seo ranking factor you need to rank #1 will continue to evolve. The list is a good start to improve your ranking. I would recommend that you continue to monitor your ranking and overall organic search traffic to see what is having an impact on your business. Put together key performance metrics to gauge progress and the goals of your SEO.

Stay up-to-date on Google algorithm changes.

Get a Free SEO audit to see if your site has these items implemented. If not, hire an SEO agency or SEO consultant to resolve any issues.

American Products Gets a New Website

January 29, 2020 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Contract Manufacturing Specialist & Electronic Design Company Get a Content Upgrade & New Website

In August 2019, American Products, Inc (API) of York PA decided to redesign the website for a more modern look and feel. The goal was to aid in the establishment of a strong market presence with a high value web experience for potential buyers that will increase visibility, value, and brand recognition to ultimately yield greater sales. The new website needed to easily guide the target audience through American Products, Inc. website to obtain any information needed for them to get a quote or contact API.

Prior to the web design project, the API website had not updated the programming or content to be current with the organization offerings. The website still utilized flash and was not a responsive website. There were several technical issues that limited American Products ability to appear in the search engine results.

Now, the American Products website is a mobile friendly website that responds with the type of device that customers are using. Most of the technical issues that limited their search engine ranking were resolved, improved the overall site, and enhanced the user experience. In addition to web development, we wrote content to help API communicate what they offer, what they do, what differentiates them from competitors, industries expertise, and the quality assurance elements of contract manufacturing and product development.

Before

After

This was a web development and content writing project, not SEO. You can see the impact that a good site can have on the overall site health. The web design and content improved the site indexing with the search engines, internal linking, page load speed, and site performance.

" DaBrian Marketing produced high-quality web design and used a customer oriented approach from start to finish. I was impressed by the team’s effective communication completed the website before the deadline, and within their agreed-upon budget. Their web design resulted in a web project superior to our expectations. We definitely recommend DaBrian Marketing for website design and development. "

About American Products, Inc.

American Products, Inc. (API) was established in 1983, and has gained a reputation for excellence and professionalism in the industrial electronic industry. API has built a business on customer service, flexibility and the highest quality standards. With their sales, engineering and manufacturing facilities they are able to offer a totally integrated solution to your project. This turn-key approach offers a single source solution for product design from prototyping through production. American Products Inc. specializes in printed circuit board design and manufacturing as well as cable and harness assembly, panel and chassis assembly. American Products, Inc. has been ISO certified since 1997 and currently is ISO 9001-2015 certified.

If you need help with contract manufacturing, product development, or assembly, contact the American Products, Inc. for a quote.

The Power Of Voice Search And Its Effect On Your Business

December 19, 2019 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

As all digital marketers know, search engine optimization (SEO) is a key component in a marketing strategy and one that is constantly changing. For example, when Google’s algorithm to prioritize websites that have been optimized for mobile users was implemented, we saw the entire industry pivot towards a “mobile-first” strategy to prevent any penalties handed out by the new algorithm.

So what’s next you ask? Voice search. Yes, that’s right, voice search. Don’t be surprised how this relatively new SEO trend could affect your visibility and credibility as a business in 2020 and beyond.

What Is Voice Search?

Voice search, or search by voice, is the ability to speak to a device – be it smartphones, laptops, or smart home devices – to make a request or search for information, rather than your standard text-based search. The voices inside these many devices are called voice assistants.

Some current examples of voice assistants are:

Amazon Alexa

A voice assistant on countless Amazon products such as Echo, Echo Show, and FireTV.

Google Assistant

A voice assistant on Google products like Google Home, Google Mini, and Google Home Hub.

Apple Siri

A voice assistant on Apple products such as iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watch.

To develop a sound SEO strategy in 2020, it’s important to understand the power of voice search and how to optimize it for your business. According to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, around 20 percent of search queries are done by voice. More people these days use their voices to search for information for two reasons: it’s faster, and it’s natural. Not only do people use voice to search for information, but they also use it for the following:

Play music
Play games
Shopping
Set daily reminders
Make a phone call

Case and point, voice is here to stay and there is no way around it. It is not optional!

How Will Voice Search Affect My Business?

As I mentioned in the beginning, voice search is currently not a part of Google’s algorithm however it is still dictating current search results. Voice search queries often yield different results than if the user had typed in a text-based search. SEO wise, it’s a good idea for businesses to be on their toes with voice search components for their consumers who are adapting and switching over to that medium. According to experts in voice search, content must be optimized for voice. It needs to be more direct and conversational so it will be synced with search queries. This will help boost traffic by staying relevant and more visible to consumers.

Who Uses Voice Search?

According to an article by AllBusiness, people of all ages have used voice search for a source of information. However, the data also highlights the need for local businesses to utilize voice search to target younger customers:

76% of consumers ages 18 to 34 had used voice search to find information for a local business within the last year.
64% of consumers ages 35 to 54 had used voice search to find information for a local business within the last year.
37% of consumers ages 55 and older had used voice search to find information for a local business within the last year.

What Industries Are Most Affected by Voice Assistants?

Statistics show people use voice for mostly food-related requests.

Restaurants/cafés (51%)
Grocery stores (41%)
Food delivery (35%)
Clothing stores (32%)
Hotels/bed and breakfasts (30%)

Some of the things they may be doing, while asking for these industries, are checking inventory, checking business hours, or even making a purchase.

Typical Actions Taken By Voice Search Consumers

Voice search drives action for local businesses, much like a call-to-action button on a web page. Here are the possible outcomes after someone does a voice search:

28% of consumers call the business.
27% visit the business’s website.
19%visit the business in person.

Is Alexa The Future?

Voice search has been a useful tool for many people for many many years and many more to come in the future. As more people interact with them on a day to day basis, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the number one source of information. This increase can make or break a business. The earlier you start, the more likely successful your company will be.

Subscribe for more information or get a quote for SEO for voice search.

Improve Your Brand, Sales and Improve Customer Loyalty With AdRoll

December 5, 2019 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Online marketing shouldn’t be about guessing, but too often that’s what we have to do when trying to predict what our customers really want and how to make them buy.

Certainly we can sometimes make educated guesses by looking at separate data from all of our different marketing channels, but there’s still some A/B testing and finger-crossing involved that we are using the correct data and have enough of it to make proper decisions.

By incorporating the AdRoll growth marketing platform in your customer outreach efforts, you’ll be able to learn more reliable ways to combine all your analytics into one cross-channel stream and also gain access to all sorts of relevant customer information.

For example, AdRoll provides information on audiences. You can connect your Marketo or HubSpot CRM and target prospects based on their actions. You can also segment audiences based on your site pageviews.

Why use AdRoll?

Using the latest AI tools, AdRoll can blend your first-person data with robust second-party and third-party data to present you with accurate info about your ideal audiences. Clients can access AdRoll’s IntentMap that offers in-depth looks at more than 1.2 billion shopper profiles, including their past purchases, marketing preferences and demographic info. You have the option to run Ad Campaigns or Email Campaign on the platform. The Ad Campaigns can include social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. Their display network includes sites such as Yahoo!, CNN, People, and a lot more.

Having all of this data within easy reach can reduce your research time and guesswork and make it easier to target and engage current and future customers.

AdRoll has been designed to easily integrate with common e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magneto and WooCommerce, along with a variety of other add-ons. It also includes a social media and email presence to provide more “touches” for your customers and get them even more excited about what you have to offer.

Within AdRoll, you can see the overall impact that AdRoll is having on you business. The Attribution section can give you insight into which channels are generating the most revenue and influencing the time to a sale.

Part of the strength of AdRoll is being able to track every point of a customer’s journey through an ad campaign from awareness to purchase, plus any follow-up. It also includes the ability to optimize certain areas of this journey, including creating different types of customized messages designed to reduce cart abandonment.

Essentially, you’ll learn new solutions to attract business and convert visitors into customers. By creating a positive experience, shoppers will be more likely to remain loyal and return for future transactions.

How DaBrian Marketing can help with AdRoll?

DaBrian Marketing recently has received AdRoll certification, so we’re happy to share our training knowledge on this new platform with new and existing clients to help them better identify their customers, grow their sales and build awareness of their brands.

Though businesses can certainly try to learn this software on their own, it makes more sense to partner with an agency with AdRoll certification to help your business see success.

We’re happy to offer personalized strategies to help you create the perfect campaigns, including useful ways of tracking leads, sales, traffic and overall ROI. This includes looking forward in the short-term and the long-term.

Partnering with an agency with demonstrated knowledge of this platform can mean you have access to an impressive amount of tools, which can cut down on your costs and efforts and also improve your overall effectiveness.

Let us know how we can help you get started!