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DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

Berks County Website Design – The Rubright Group

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The Rubright Group located in Shoemakersville, Berks County PA contacted DaBrian Marketing Group for their new web design project. The goal of the web design project was to increase awareness of Rubright Construction and Self Storage as well as rebar fabrication in Shoemakersville and Berks County PA. The increase in visitors overall would lead to more business opportunities.

Rubright Construction maintains a full time workforce, experienced and knowledgeable in various fields. Rubright Self Storage is located at the rear of our construction business 64 E Bellevue Ave. Shoemakersville, PA 19555. Their units are safely secured and neatly maintained to provide 24 hour service. The units are designed to handle adverse weather conditions and are available in multiple sizes. ReCon-Fab is a company for reinforcing bar grade 60 and custom fabrication that consists of bending and cutting. Alongside their services through ReCon, they provide deliveries throughout Berks County and Eastern Pennsylvania within a 48 hour period.

With The Rubright Group’s diverse business portfolio, DaBrian Marketing Group was able to incorporate all of the business entities into one website. The website now showcases their businesses, provides a photo gallery of their most recent projects, and a map for directions to their facility.

About The Rubright Group

The Rubright Group located in Berks County, PA performs commercial and industrial concrete, rebar fabrication and offers self storage units. We are committed to providing our services in a timely and safe manner.Rubright Construction was started in 1969 by George R. Rubright. George started most projects by trust and a firm handshake. Residential remodeling, home building and miscellaneous site grading was the core of his business. In the early 1980’s George Rubright and his two sons, Jeff and Ted evolved the business into commercial and industrial projects specializing in concrete and site excavations. Today, Rubright performs all aspects of poured and placed concrete, along with a rebar fabrication division.

New Website Design for Former Reading PA Business – B&G Glass

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B&G Glass had been located at 1440 Carbon Street, Reading PA 19601 for more than 30 years and it had outgrown the facility. B&G Glass Service Inc. received a $1 million loan to purchase a building in Bern Township and purchased an existing 30,000 square-foot building at 2668 Leisczs Bridge Road in Leesport, PA. The total project cost was $2 million.

With the relocation from Reading PA, B&G needed a new website design that reflected the growing business. They also wanted to update the local listing within search engine directories to provide accurate information on the new location and communicate this change on Facebook. DaBrian Marketing Group was hired to develop the new website design project, update the local listings, and communicate the relocation from Reading to Leesport via social media.

The website design project was created in WordPress to provide B&G Glass the opportunity to make changes in the future. Over 57 local listing directories were updated for the project and continue as an on-going process to improve organic search traffic. The social media posts were executed 4 months before the official relocation.

About B&G Glass

B&G Glass, which was founded at Reading Pa in 1963, fabricates and installs glass and glass systems in residential, commercial and specialty applications and provides repair and installation of automotive glass. B&G Glass prides itself on a strong work ethic that traces its roots back to the company’s inception. B&G Glass has focused on developing service strengths in glass repair, glass replacement, and glass installation to satisfy market demands. Their reputation for prompt courteous service is unsurpassed, from screen and storm window repair and replacements to challenging, custom residential and commercial glass installation projects.

4 Fixes For Your (Painfully) Outdated Website

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Websites have advanced a lot in just a few short  years. In the ’90s, businesses simply aimed to set up online presences, resulting in an Internet full of electronic brochures. Since then, marketers have improved both the functionality and aesthetics of their websites. As a result, they’ve delivered a better experience to customers – and better outcomes for business owners.

The corollary for marketers is that with advances come heightened consumer expectations. Potential buyers increasingly need more from websites than basic transactions and facts about their favorite brands. They want to shop, learn, and play on their own terms, in a fun, user-friendly, and convenient format. Oh, and one more thing: they want all of that from their mobile devices, and they want it right now.

What Does This Mean For You?

It means that if your business hasn’t retooled its website in a while, you’re probably sending the wrong message to potential customers. And by sending the wrong message, we mean you’re losing customers to a competitor. Someone who is more fun, more user-friendly, more convenient, more mobile-responsive, and more “right now”.  Luckily for you, we’re willing to take the time to outline a few ideas to fix your painfully outdated website:

1. Clean Up Your Site

Fast Fact: “94% of negative feedback for websites is design related”

If you’re like most of our new clients, you can probably find everything you need on your own website. And if you’re like most of our new clients, your potential customers probably can’t find a thing. That’s because when you build up a website over time, you begin to lose the intended structure. Your page organization fails to highlight newly released product lines . Links lead to 404 errors. Posts get housed under random categories. For the business owner, it’s just part of a growing business. For maximizing your website traffic, it’s a mess.

The problem is that your site might make sense to you and your team (after all, you made the mess) but your audience is probably lost. So have a fresh set of eyes look over your website. Within 5 seconds of landing, can she tell exactly what your company does? Can she find the blog? Subscribe to the blog? Give her a product description to “purchase” – how long does it take her to find, view, and watch a product video? How many broken links and outdated bits of information did she encounter in her journey? If just imagining this scenario is painful, consider a (free) website audit to discover simple ways to clean up your site.  

2. Speed Up Page Load times

Fast Fact: “A 1 second delay correlates to a 7% reduction in conversions”

Customers no longer tolerate websites with slow load times. You can test the load times of pages and identify the bottlenecks with a number of online tools. You need these tools because your website is a lot slower than you think it is. You’re probably reading this blog on a desktop computer at work (i.e. you’ve got a fast, stable Internet connection). But how would it render on a spotty 3G connection? That’s where you might be losing the people who have better things to do than wait for your site to load.

Resist adding bandwidth-hogging (and annoying) features like videos or music that auto-load. Pick and choose design elements that highlight product features and engage readers – without slowing down your site. That amazing copy you wrote can only sell your product or service if the page renders. And if you have a hero video, 13 images and myriad design elements on the home page, readers never get that far. The best thing you can do is keep your landing page(s) simple. If a reader finds that landing pages take too long to load, that reader is probably going to hit the back button and shop with a competitor, instead.

3. Make It Mobile Friendly

Fast Fact: “57% of all US online traffic comes from smartphones”

How does your site look on a smartphone screen? Here’s one better: how does your site look on an iPhone X compared to an iPhone 6? If you don’t know the answer to those questions, you’re taking a big risk with your website. Customers increasingly rely on mobile devices for browsing. Many of our clients now get over 60% of their traffic from mobile channels. That means that whether browsing, shopping, or scheduling, your customers are probably doing it from their phones.

A mobile-friendly website is crucial to convert these users. Either have your site professionally redesigned for mobile or use one of the many responsive templates out there for WordPress, SquareSpace, or Weebly. Our design and marketing teams can review your bounce rates in Google Analytics (because you DO have Google Analytics code on your site, right?) to tell you what pages to focus on. Next, consider your contact us, make an appointment, and other lead generation forms. We haven’t even seen them yet but I bet they are too long, too free-form, and too hard to complete on a small screen.

Your best bet is to work with a digital agency that adheres to a mobile-first philosophy. The old practice of designing a website for desktop and then tweaking it for the mobile experience, later,  is no longer good enough. Ask your current design team for their thoughts on accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) for your site. (If their answer at any point includes a blank stare, contact webdesign@dabrianmarketing.com).

Accelerated mobile pages are part of an open source initiative that allows developers to create web pages that load quickly on mobile browsers. If your website has a lot of different stories, products, and articles combined with high (or volatile) website traffic, AMP functionality could greatly improve your performance on mobile devices. 

4. Refresh Your CMS

Fast Fact: “82% of customers have a more positive view of a company after reading custom content”

If you’re still relying on your website designer to update content on your site, you’re already behind the competition. Your marketing team should be able to add information to your site through an easy-to-use content management system (CMS), like WordPress. You should have multiple portions of your site updated regularly with current news, upcoming events, and recent blog posts to ensure that new traffic becomes repeat traffic.

Get more value from your CMS by implementing a process to review and update leading plug-ins. Plugs-ins are bits of software that can be uploaded to expand the functionality of your site. If you can imagine a way to extend and enhance your site, someone else probably has, too. And there is probably a plug-in to accomplish it.

Finally, grant multiple people the ability to post custom content. You can assign some to create content and others to review and approve it before it goes live. You can also outsource work to contractors, giving them limited rights to partitioned areas of your site. It takes a little bit of time and effort to get the most from your CMS, but in the end, the timeliness of content and ease of updates ensure a better experience for prospects, customers, and marketers alike. 

Wrapping It Up

The user experience needs to be the forefront of your thought process when updating your website. It needs to be a friendly, smooth-sailing, information-packed adventure that leads prospects toward a conversion. Having an updated site can make all the difference between “I don’t have time for this” and “I’m ready to checkout”.

Once you’ve refreshed your site, set a few dates to review it each year. Keep an eye on other websites and note the things they’re doing that you’d like to see on your own site. Pay attention to the way other companies interact with their customers through their websites, and emulate the best practices that might work for your business. Sooner or later, the competition may even start to emulate you.

Using the information provided here will give you insight and a starting point to fix your outdated website. But if you need a more comprehensive plan to update your business’s website, reach out to our team to discuss our free site audit process.

In the meantime, we love a good laugh, so feel free to share your frustrations with outdated websites. Tell us about it in the comments below!

How To Do Lead Generation Via Pay Per Click?

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Let’s be clear PPC ads don’t (primarily) generate leads. Ads get Clicks and generate traffic. [A few exceptions, which will be covered later, include call-only ads, call extension and message extension.] However, PPC is more than just Ads. From a customer’s journey perspective it starts with their search query which triggers your ad via your keywords and other targeting settings. Finally, assuming your ad gets their click, the Landing Page and experience on your website. If you really want leads it is important that this journey is clear and painless, otherwise your potential leads will be leaving you for one of your competitors.

While the customer journey starts with a search, the marketer’s building process should begin with the desired outcome (Goal/Conversion) and work backwards.

Step 1: What is a PPC “Lead” for You?

Great, you want to generate Leads! What is a “Lead” to you?

  • Form Submission
  • Contact Us
  • Phone Call
  • Subscriber
  • Social Media Follower
  • Other

Step 2:, Why should People Become a Lead for You? (Enticing Valuable Offer, Feature, and/or Benefit)

  • Free Offer/Trial
  • Downloadable Content
  • Discount Offer
  • Unique Feature/Benefit
  • Other

Step 3: How Are Users Becoming Leads? Create A Great User Experience

Let’s say you decided that your Leads are Trial Request and you are offering a 30 Day Free Trial. This answers the “What” and and “Why” in Steps 1 & 2. Now is the How? This includes the information needed to start the free trial (your form) and the content (contextual and visual) on your landing page.

A few things to keep in mind to boost your Conversion Rate:

  • Optimize for Keywords (will help with PPC Quality Score)
  • Design for Mobile First
  • Only Ask for Information that is Truly Needed (less form fields = more submissions)
  • Keep It Simple – Build for Fast Loading

Step 4: Drive Traffic & Get Clicks (Not the Same Thing)

Finally diving into Ads. If you want form submissions focus on Ads that lead to your landing page. However, if your desire is phone calls, make sure to create Call Only Ads. These Ads will only show on devices that can make a phone call and a click will open their phone/call app with your phone number ready to go. While this counts and is charged the same as a Click the user is never sent to your site.

Tips for writing Lead Generating Ad Copy:

  • Use Your Customers Words (Not Industry Jargoon)
  • Focus on the Problem You Solve
  • Highlight Features & Benefits
  • Use Clear Call To Action (this is for Ad Copy and Landing Pages)
    • Call Now
    • Request Info
    • Claim Offer
    • Download Content

After your Ads are ready to go, make sure you are using all the appropriate Ad Extensions (call, message, location, callout, site links, etc.) that will help you not only get additional Clicks, but help capture the lead

Step 5: Target Your Ads - Keywords and Intent

Last step – get you Ad in front of the correct audience. Yes, this includes more than keywords (learn more about all ppc targeting options), but for simplicity let’s use keywords to uncover intent. Since this blog is focused on Lead Generation, you will want to focus on keywords that reveal that the customer is in the research phase of the purchase process. Include search terms such as “reviews”, “best”, or “how to do…”.When it comes to keywords, Negatives are wonderful. Searchers for Brand Names, discounts, deals, or unrelated terms will help you prevent wasting your marketing budget on Clicks that are doomed from the start.

As a quick review, make sure that throughout the entire set up process you stay focus on your goal which is to generate leads. This will ensure that your message to the future customer is consistent from keyword to ad Copy through to the Landing Page.

Quick Backwards Review of the PPC Lead Generation Steps:

5. Use Keywords that show user intent that aligns with a lead generation goal

4. Highlight Problem Solving Features & Benefits in Ads with Clear CTAs

3a. Lead Searchers to Landing Pages that are User (and Mobile) Friendly

3b. Short Concise Forms that Only Capture Required Info

2. Promote an Enticing Offer that cannot be refused

1. Know Your Desired Outcome!

Seems simple try Google Ads or Bing Ads for yourself, or if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask via comments.

What action do we want them to take? This is where we are falling short. We are just conveying info. Let’s direct them to subscribe for future blogs or something with more meat on the bone.

How to Set Your 2019 Digital Marketing Budget with Metrics & Data?

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It’s the end of 2018 and we are having a number of discussions with potential prospects and customers to plan for the New Year. What we are noticing is many of our customers & prospects don’t have high levels strategies, goals, objectives, and metrics for 2019. A few prospects don’t have projected budgets for 2019 but have big goals for the New Year. Of course, that’s why they came to us for help. Below are a few ideas to help move you towards the desired marketing budget with metrics to back them up.

Set Achievable Goals with a Budget to Fit

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends that small businesses with revenues of less than $5 million should allocate 7-8 percent of their revenues to marketing. This percentage is based on a margin range of 10-12 percent. For small businesses, I would use 7-8 percent to start with this recommendation for your 2019 marketing budget.  I use the marketing budget by industry from The CMO Survey and Deloitte Digital as a reference for businesses with revenues greater than $5 million.

I would also recommend that you look at your historical performance such as cost per acquisition, total conversions and conversion rate. With 7% of your revenues allocated to marketing, let’s say that your cost per acquisition is $100, with 100 total conversions, and a conversion rate of 3% has been the historical performance for the past 3 years. Unless revenues have increased significantly, you can set the expectation that 8% of revenues allocated to marketing is not going to generate 300 conversions next year!

Create a Realistic Digital Marketing Strategy

A digital marketing strategy is the series of actions that help to achieve a company’s goals through online marketing channels. These channels include paid search, organic search, media buying, email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, etc. to support a common campaign. According to Smart Insights report, half of the businesses surveyed (49%) are doing digital marketing and don’t have a strategy. Begin the New Year with a digital marketing strategy to set the direction for the business.

Align the Marketing Tactics to Achieve Goals & Objectives

The tactics are the specific actions taken to accomplish the digital marketing strategy. The tactics must align with the strategy, target audience, research, and the user experience. The objectives must be specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and within a time period. For example, banner advertising and podcast ads could be used to accomplish the strategy of brand awareness among millennials within the next 12 months. The research will help to identify where to place the banner and podcast ads. Focusing on the user experience can concentrate the efforts on devices, apps, and podcast stations that are most likely to resonate with millennials.

Select Your Metrics Gauge Tactical Success Wisely

You have successfully gotten potential customers to subscribe to blogs, receive discounts and promotions of your products or services. It’s time to activate your customer database with drip email campaigns or marketing automation. Segment your audience to improve the effectiveness of the email marketing campaign. For example, you can target local customers with in-store sales to increase your total revenues.

Report on the Performance, Obtain Feedback, and Recommendations

You’ve heard the saying, “what gets measured gets done!” I would recommend regular reporting (bi-weekly) to keep everyone focused and to use that information to make decisions to improve your results. Get the reporting into the inboxes of the individuals that can drive results. Schedule a standing meeting (15 minutes) to review the results, obtain feedback, and make recommendations to improve the results.

Want more?

Download our one-page business plan that helps you to prioritize your strategies, how you will accomplish those strategies, what specific tactics, metrics, goals and the anticipated results to be able to measure performance.

2019 Actions to Increase Online Sales

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The end of 2018 is quickly approaching and most of us are planning for 2019. One of the most common goals for the New Year that we are hearing from our clients is the need to increase online sales with digital marketing. The competition will only increase in 2019 – but so will the opportunities for sales growth. Here are my recommendations to increase online sales and to make 2019 your best fiscal year yet!

Prepare for the Voice Search Explosion

Voice Search is rising with the additions and enhancement of products like Google Home mini and voice-enabled digital assistant users. Voice search will become a more important part of the online sales process. Get the facts on voice search statistics, create an action plan, and prioritize your action to improve the user’s experience on mobile devices and to increase online sales.  

Get on the Inbound Marketing Bandwagon to Attract Potential Customers

Inbound marketing is a strategy that utilizes content marketing, blogs, events, SEO, social media and more to create brand awareness and attract potential customers. A good inbound marketing strategy requires keyword research and personas to create relevant content to attract new customers. The blogs and social post should focus on ways to attract new customers. For example, researching frequently asked questions and creating your own unique content so that your brand is there to answer the questions.

Stay in Front of Potential Visitors with Valuable Content

Once you have attracted potential customers with inbound marketing, stay in front of them with video and display ads to get them to take action. According to ComScore, 64% of web visitors are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video. We have added software and staff to support the growing requests for a video. An example would be an online form to receive a discount coupon. You can use the contact information on the form to send email campaigns in the future. The contact information should go into a customer database.

Invest in Amazon Advertising in 2019 for More Online Sales

If you are selling products online than you need to be investing in Amazon. Amazon is the largest search engine for finding products and that trend will continue in 2019. I would recommend that you start by building your Amazon store and optimizing your Amazon Product Listings to improve your conversion rates. Check out Amazon Advertising offers several solutions to find, attract, and engage customers ranging from Sponsored Ads to Video Ads.

Activate Your Database with Email Marketing Campaigns

You have successfully gotten potential customers to subscribe to blogs, receive discounts and promotions of your products or services. It’s time to activate your customer database with drip email campaigns or marketing automation. Segment your audience to improve the effectiveness of the email marketing campaign. For example, you can target local customers with in-store sales to increase your total revenues.

Cross-Sell & Upselling to Increase Your Bottom Line

Cross-selling is a sales technique used to get a customer to spend more by purchasing a related product for something that a customer already bought. I get this all the time when I purchase a pair of shoes and the online retailer shows me the matching belt and socks.

Upselling is a sales technique of inducing the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. For example, you intended to purchase the basic model and the sales rep sold you on the deluxe model with the 3-year warranty.

Both of these sales techniques can be implemented in-store or ecommerce website. Some of the ecommerce websites offer apps to help with the cross-sell and upselling features. I have seen the use of live chats to upsell. For in-store purchases, giving away a reward or an incentive to increase cross-selling and upselling.

Look Before You Leap in the Actions to Increase Online Sales

Before you just go implement all of these actions at once, I would recommend that you determine which action align with your 2019 goals and objectives. Let’s be realistic, some of these action items require time, money, and people to execute which are limited. I would encourage you to pick 1 or 2 of the 2019 actions to increase online sales per quarter.

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