DaBrian Marketing Blog: News, Insights, and Digital Marketing

Writing to Personas: The Human Side of SEO

September 6, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

In the beginning, search engines were merely a shell of what they resemble today. Previous algorithms placed a heavy focus on keywords within content and other on-page factors (Meta tags, titles, and descriptions). With such a simple ranking process, people began to abuse the system with “black hat SEO techniques” such as keyword stuffing and cloaking.. As the quality of search results began to diminish, the algorithms were updated (and continue to be). Many previous SEO methods are now penalized, and the primary focus has shifted to improving the user’s experience by better understanding the searcher’s intent.

1. The UX: A Top SEO Ranking Factor

Search engines such as Google and Bing, are a business, just like yours. Their goal is to provide customers (those using search) with the best experience possible by giving them the most satisfying search results. In order to deem what would be “most satisfying,” search engines attempt to match relevancy to the searcher’s intent by evaluating other user’s experience and their personal experience (if applicable). If search engines see that a site has a high bounce rate (when a user views only one page and then leaves the site), or if the time on site and pages per session are relatively low, they will take that as a bad sign and reorder their rankings based upon performance. Other websites that users consistently bounce to and stay on will be seen as providing a better user experience for a specific search term/topic and will improve in the rankings.

So when creating content for your site, know that yes, you should still focus on keywords within the copy and other on-page factors (meta tags, titles, and descriptions), but you also need to place yourself in the user’s shoes. By offering your business’ message in a clear, concise manner that matches the searchers intent, more than likely the user will stay longer, explore more of your site, and possibly perform an action you deem a conversion (contact submission, phone call, direct sale, etc).

2. Developing Personas

Before developing content, most people create an outline and plan that contains main focal points, what the desired actions of the readers are, and when and how the message will be disseminated. Shouldn’t your target audience be taken into consideration during this planning process as well? Businesses need to develop personas that encompass different segments of their target audience’s interests, roles, and concerns. This way they can determine which topics are most relevant, and how to shape their message to be most effective.

3. Speaking to Your Target Audience

To ensure your users will have a satisfying experience, your message must speak to their interests and concerns, all while using their specific terminology. For example, for a B2B company, content around a similar topic would change drastically dependent upon which audience they are writing to. If the message is crafted towards business owners, the content will heavily focus on financial benefits such as ROI. Whereas if the message is directed towards marketing managers, the content should focus more on the process of specific services, and areas of improvement.

The same is true for a B2C business, except instead of focusing on a hierarchy of positions within a business, they target specific traits within a demographic. Their message should speak to a specific audience based upon factors such as geographic location, age, employment, education, etc.

Regardless of the industry you’re in, you need to make sure your content speaks to the message your audience wants to hear. Writing for a persona as compared to blindlessly writing, could be the difference between just a page visit, and a page that leads to a conversion. Also, to guarantee you’ve provided your users with all the information necessary, encourage questions and comments for further discussion/elaboration via comments or email. This way they’ll never need to travel to a competitor’s site to discover answers to the questions you failed to address.

Conclusion:

Writing strictly for search engines is a thing of the past. In order for your site to truly perform well, you must put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Before you create content, develop the personas of your business’ audience. Map out their interests, roles, and possible questions. Then, develop content intended to enhance their user experience.

For more information regarding about SEO and Content Marketing, please leave a comment below or contact DaBrian Marketing today!

By: David McDowell

5 Ways to Get Customer Insights from Google Analytics & MailChimp

August 29, 2016 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Businesses are always attempting to understand customer behaviors more accurately. MailChimp (email marketing service) provides businesses with the ability to send promotions, automated follow-up emails, and a lot more. Unfortunately, it doesn’t automatically connect the email marketing metrics with your website’s Google Analytics metrics to gain an understanding of what people did after clicking a link to your website. Here’s some information to help you understand the purpose and get more data to improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns through Google Analytics and MailChimp:

Implement Basic Set-up Google Analytics & MailChimp

The integration between Google Analytics and MailChimp gives businesses an opportunity to track email marketing campaigns within analytics. It goes beyond the standard email marketing metrics within Mailchimp and into the customer’s behavior after leaving the email to browse your website.

How to Integrate Google Analytics with MailChimp?

Annotate Google Analytics with MailChimp Launch Dates

In many cases, your email campaign will be opened within 48 hours after the launch. Did you notice any incremental customers on your website, new leads, or online purchases? By annotating your Google Analytics account correctly, you will be able to see any incremental activity.

A/B Test Email Marketing Campaigns with MailChimp

Email marketing campaigns are used to increase awareness of an offering or generate leads and sales. Why not test which email marketing elements are leading to awareness, leads, and sales with A/B testing? With MailChimp, you can test elements such as subject lines, who it’s from, content, and delivery time. When Google Analytics and MailChimp are integrated, an email marketing campaign that’s associated with the A/B test will be visible within Analytics too.

Create A/B Test Campaign with MailChimp

Track Users Across Devices with MailChimp IDs & Google Analytics

Your potential customers are using multiple devices (tablet, mobile, and PCs) to compare offerings or products. Track your users across devices with a MailChimp ID to see which devices generate leads and sales. You’ll need the Google’s Universal Analytics code on your website. Set-up a User ID view within Google Analytics. Add the MailChimp ID to the links within your email campaign. Finally, send the User ID to your Google Analytics.

Create a Custom Dimension in Google Analytics for MailChimp User ID

The User ID is not a dimension in Google Analytics, so you’ll need to create a custom dimension for your reporting. Again, you’ll need to use Google Universal Analytics. Go to the Admin section within Google Analytics and click on “Custom Definitions”. This will allow you to access “Custom Dimensions” to name your dimension and Scope. Go to “Custom Dimensions” to name your dimension and Scope (hit) to create it.

I only touched on the capabilities for integration between Google Analytics and MailChimp here. I encourage you to implement these and see how it impacts the top of your email marketing campaign funnel (delivery > opens > click> website > conversions). Send me any thoughts or issues that you’re having with Google Analytics, MailChimp or your email marketing platform.

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!

Our New eBook, Your New 5-Step Guide to Ecommerce

August 15, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

The Ecommerce Revolution

Shopping, today, is different for consumers when compared to traditional methods and practices. Where people once had to travel to stores and order from paperback catalogs for nearly every purchase, people currently sit down with a phone or tablet in their hands. Ecommerce – online shopping – has transformed the marketplace for retail companies.

The New Marketplace

The act of researching products online – finding their basic information, availability, and price – is almost a prerequisite to visiting a company’s physical location. Similarly, increasing amounts of people choose to purchase products through online stores in addition to visiting physical stores. This overall trend in consumer behavior is the reason that DaBrian Marketing Group’s new eBook, A 5-Step Guide to Improve the Performance of Your Ecommerce, has been written.

DaBrian Marketing’s Solution to Your Problem

Watch our SEO Consultant, David McDowell explain Ecommerce.

Within your FREE Guide to Ecommerce, our Bing Ads-certified team details the five major objectives that work to maintain an effective online store for your company:

Create a strategy
Use the right Point Of Sale (POS) system.
Study your customers’ journey.
Meet expectations.
Invest in the right channels.

Inside of this FREE eBook, find valuable information about today’s marketplace from reputable sources within the digital marketing industry. Get recommendations for several online shopping platforms that are easy to use and actually make shopping easier for your customers.

To keep customers buying from your company, let them make purchases in the most convenient way: online. Download your FREE Guide to Ecommerce, today.

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.