Social Media Marketing & Management

Does Your Company Exist Without Social Media Marketing?

August 22, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Your nieces, nephews, children, grandparents, and even great-grandparents are all on social media. Do you actually exist anymore if you don’t have a social media account? In today’s society, it’s our way getting to know someone. When we want to see what someone looks like, figure out when a birthday is that we forgot, or find out what someone has been up to these days, we check Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat. So, if this is how we get our news about each other, why doesn’t your business have a social media marketing strategy to get to know “these people” or should we say, your customers?

1. Immediate Customer Service

Whether you’re tagged directly in someone’s post or if someone mentions your company’s name at all, you can track what they’re saying about you. Directly responding to them publicly will show the customer you want an open and honest relationship with them.

2. Social Media Marketing will Humanize Your Brand

As mentioned through customer service, building relationships with your customers will further your lifespan as a company because customers will trust you. People don’t want to see advertisement after advertisement of you trying to get them to buy your product. People like seeing other people! Show off your employees, post about the holidays you celebrate, and give your company personality! Research by Texas Tech University shows it’ll bring long-term brand loyalty once you do.

3. Expand Your Company’s Reach

Traditional marketing can be limited at times. A billboard will soon become unnoticed by townies which limits its worth. Social media allows your company to be everywhere and anywhere at any time of day. A customer may tag you in a post boasting about your wonderful product or service which may be seen by someone outside your target audience. This customer may do the same and this process will be repeated over and over again. (and if you have ecommerce built into your website, they can buy your product from anywhere, too!)

4. Drive Customers Directly to Your Website

Whether it’s an organic post or a paid ad, interesting content will get people to click their way right to your services’ or products’ pages. Social media advertising is relatively cheap (as low as $0.10 per click sometimes) which means a higher return-on-investment (ROI). Paying for a few clicks to lead to one sale is definitely beneficial! Daily monitoring of engagement on what content your followers are interested in with further help your overall marketing strategy and what you should be focusing on. (That’s where we come in!

5. Outdo Your Competitors

Your competitors are already using social media to connect with their customers and possibly, your customers. Since social media boosts brand loyalty, it may be hard to steal customers back from your competitors. Share interesting customer stories, pictures, gifs, videos and more to get people to follow what YOU have to say, not your competition.

While there are many more reasons you should be utilizing social media marketing, these few mentioned should be the most relevant to convince your company to invest in it. Strategizing for each specific platform you could be utilizing will positively impact your business and your customers will also thank you. Not sure which platforms will be most effective for your industry? Stay tuned for my next blog.

For more information about Social Media Marketing contact us today or leave a comment below!

Why Your Small Business Needs Digital Marketing

August 8, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group 4 Comments

As a business owner, your time is precious, budget is limited, and your hands are always full with a thousand different things. Currently, you have a website and are running ads in the local newspaper, but you know it’s not enough in today’s digital world. In order for your small business to be competitive in your respective industry, you need to utilize digital marketing.

Why Your Small Business Needs a Digital Marketing Agency

By hiring a qualified and reputable digital marketing agency, you will gain an entire team focused on your goals and objectives without the additional salaries and benefits to your payroll. As easy as it is to hire a digital marketing firm, you can just as easily fire them if they’re not performing to your standards. You pay for performance. Simple as that.

You will have more time to focus on your area of expertise. There are a lot of facets involved in digital marketing as you can see in the word cloud below.

You don’t have the time to learn it all, let alone manage it effectively and efficiently. You will quickly become overwhelmed. Hiring a certified partner agency with the likes of Google, Bing, Hootsuite, and Big Commerce, you won’t have to waste time training employees. An agency will allow you to hit the ground running as you and the agency focus on the areas of expertise you each possess.

Digital Marketing Helps David Fight Goliath

Digital marketing helps level the playing field. Done properly, it allows you to reallocate your marketing investment and target the audience you want to reach more efficiently. An agency will utilize their expertise and experience and be able to show exactly what is working and what’s not via analytics. The best practices large corporations use are the same ones an agency will (or should) be using. Let them use their expertise so you can use yours.

The fact is, many companies are still not utilizing digital marketing, so there is a real opportunity to grow quickly. This is especially true when you can eliminate the learning curve and hire a certified partner agency right from the start. They live and breathe SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, click-through rates, and conversion rates. An agency understands that your success is essential for their success and ultimate survival. That is a rather big motivation, wouldn’t you say? So you’ve waiting long enough, hire a certified partner agency before your competition does.

For more information about our digital marketing services, leave a comment below or call us for a free consultation!

Stay Connected With a Social Media Certified Partner

August 1, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

What’s all this Hoot-n-Holler about Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a social media management program which helps consolidate a variety of social media platforms into one location. From Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn and even YouTube, Hootsuite gives us the ability to check posts, images, comments, reviews, likes, hashtags, and more all on the same page.
We can create individual posts to immediately share or schedule it for a later date and time. We can also bulk-upload an entire month’s worth of content at once. It shortens links (called ow.ly links) within the posts to allow for more room to write (which is extremely helpful with Twitter’s limit of 140 characters).
Hootsuite has many integrations. If you use MailChimp for your email marketing or WordPress as your website builder, there’s an app to include updates and track your activity. Tracking information through Google Analytics can be easily transferred into a Hootsuite analytics report for an easier way to disseminate the results.

Team Up With Hootsuite Certified Partners

Being Hootsuite certified requires us to take lessons on how it operates and pass an exam with a grade of 95% or higher. We understand the platform and know each of its capabilities (and there are a lot, believe us). As an agency partner, we have a point-of-contact on their staff that will immediately answer any questions or assist in solving any issues. Whenever any changes occur within the platform, we are the first to be aware of them. We are on Hootsuite every day monitoring the accounts, responding to customers, and making recommendations for your company, so we are completely knowledgeable on what it can do.

Hootsuite’s Analytics reports display just how well your social media accounts are performing and we always explain them, thoroughly, for you to understand.
Since we’re in-the-know, you’re in-the-know. You will never have a slacking social media marketing campaign if you’re on our team.

How We Use It to Help Your Company’s Social Media Marketing

Whether you have a campaign that you’re interested in implementing or you’re not sure what you should be doing with social media, we will work with you to get started. Whatever ideas you may have, we provide you with feedback on what will work the best. We work with you to develop a unique hashtag, customize the imagery, and figure out the distribution of posts across all accounts.

We will track specific keywords, hashtags, and geocodes (those are keywords within a particular location). Whenever someone mentions your industry or business, we will know about it. We will collaborate with you in order to provide the best customer service to your digital customers or prospective customers. We will represent your brand in its entirety; from tone of voice, to language, to imagery and video.
We won’t let you struggle like this social family.

If you’re ready for a kick-ass social media marketing campaign to connect with an assortment of current and potential customers, chat with us about what we can do for you.

DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC Hires Logan Bucks as Inbound Marketing Manager

June 28, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Reading, PA – DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC hires Logan Bucks for the new position of Inbound Marketing Manager.

Responsibilities of the Inbound Marketing Manager at DaBrian include the application, maintenance, and growth of clients’ social media accounts, email marketing campaigns, and all other forms of digital content. The Inbound Marketing Manager’s tasks are to evaluate the use of social media, email, and content, attract a client’s targeted audience through paid and organic initiatives, and promote services or products through a voice that matches the client’s unique brand. Answering customers’ questions, promoting discounts or sales, sharing a company’s unique culture, and building a company’s brand awareness are just some of the major goals of the Inbound Marketing Manager at DaBrian.

Logan Bucks is a 2016 Kutztown University graduate with a dual-major B.S./B.A. in Marketing and Management. Bucks, a former intern at DaBrian in 2015, demonstrates her skills and abilities to understand and utilize the world of social media, email marketing, and digital consumer behavior to improve clients’ online presence. She is a valued new addition to the close-knit team at DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC.

President and CEO, Daniel Laws gave the following statement: “We’re happy to have Logan back at DaBrian Marketing Group and we look forward to her continuous growth and valuable contributions to our team.”

Visit the team page of DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC’s website to learn more about Logan and the rest of DaBrian’s personnel.

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!