DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

What is Inbound Marketing?

August 7, 2020 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

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

What is the Inbound Method?

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

Inbound Methodology is often used in 3 ways:

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

Types of Inbound Strategies

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

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

How to Use the Inbound Method in Your Marketing?

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

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

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

July 23, 2020 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

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

Create a Blog Editorial Calendar & Write Your First Blog Post

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

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

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

Develop a SEO Plan to Increase Traffic from Google & Bing

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

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

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

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

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

Start Social Media Posting on Relevant Platforms

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

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

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

Launch a Paid Search or Social Media Campaign

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

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

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

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

Create Content for Your Target Audience

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

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

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

Combine Tactics to Increase Your Web Traffic Today

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

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

Get an Inbound Marketing Assessment!

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

July 15, 2020 by Michael Sanders Leave a Comment

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

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

1. You Still Haven’t Defined Your Customers

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

2. You Haven’t Defined Yourself

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

3. You Compete Primarily On Price

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

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

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

5. You Have A Disorganized Sales & Marketing Process

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

Fixing The Issue

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

Create Your Target Persona

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

Create Your Profit Model

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

Create The Right Story

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

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

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

Wrapping it Up

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

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

March 25, 2020 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

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

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

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

About Ontelaunee Township

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

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

Our Commitment to Clients During COVID-19

March 20, 2020 by Michael Sanders Leave a Comment

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

DaBrian Marketing Is Here For You

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

FAQs to Communicate To Your Clients

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

How to Reach Your Customers

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

Think Differently About Marketing

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

Options For The Coming Weeks

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

Let Us Know How We Can Help

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.