content development

Local Copywriter Uses Psychology to Enhance Digital Marketing

April 13, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Reading, PA Copywriter Uses Psychology to Enhance Digital Marketing Initiatives

As the new Copywriter at DaBrian Marketing Group, Christian H. Kline uses his expertise in psychology to write content that connects with digital users.

13 April, 2017 (Reading, PA) – DaBrian Marketing Group hires Christian H. Kline as their full-time Copywriter. In his new role at the agency, Kline utilizes his knowledge of human behavior to write helpful content for each client’s target audience.

His copywriting position at DaBrian Marketing allows Kline to create digital content that combines both industry-specific research as well as rhetorical techniques to match consumers’ needs. Kline determines the motivations and probable behaviors of users to encourage interaction within digital content. He creates visions and concepts that guide the intended audience to the client’s desired goals and objectives. After the creation of written content for websites, email marketing campaigns, or advertising networks, Kline analyzes that content’s performance through Google Analytics and other platforms that rely upon knowledge of descriptive and inferential statistics.

Content marketing is significantly involved in every aspect of the digital campaigns at DaBrian Marketing. As a result: Kline’s mission is to express a consistent, universal message through any and all marketing initiatives that contain creative material. Specifically, Kline collaborates with the Creative Director, Mark Mapp, and the Web Designer, Nick Davies, in order to ensure that campaigns offer users relevant, action-oriented narratives. Throughout all of the assets that he writes, Kline understands that words, photography, and graphic design compose each user’s experience with creative material.

Kline also notes the importance of collaboration with the Marketing department to ensure that consumers receive digital content in the most advantageous contexts: “I am thankful to be a part of the team at DaBrian Marketing; I enjoy applying the dynamics of human behavior and cognition to collaborate with both the Creative and Marketing departments.”

Christian H. Kline graduated from the Temple University Honors Program with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. Courses such as Social Cognition, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Advanced Undergraduate Statistics, Psychology of Creativity, and Cognitive Psychology prepared him for creative work at DaBrian Marketing Group.

Kline had his first taste of agency-life in the summer of 2016 as an intern at DaBrian Marketing Group. As the Content Marketing Intern, he wrote promotional emails, paid search ads, and web pages for both DaBrian Marketing and clients. Additionally, Kline filmed several of DaBrian Marketing’s promotional videos. During his free time outside of the office, Kline cooks, spends time with his friends, family, and dog, as well as conducts part-time psychological research at Penn State Berks.

Find more information about Christian H. Kline by reading his bio on DaBrian Marketing Group’s website.

About DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC
Founded in 2008, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a full-service digital marketing agency that provides original and strategic digital marketing solutions for businesses. The team at DaBrian Marketing creates brand awareness, increases lead-generation, and identifies insights that improve sales growth. Services include web analytics, creative design, digital branding, pay per click (PPC) advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and web design. Company headquarters is centrally located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading, Pennsylvania 19602. For more information about DaBrian Marketing Group, visit DaBrianMarketing.com or call 610.743.5602.

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

The Biggest Questions in B2B and Enterprise Search

August 20, 2014 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

”We are a B2B company, so we don’t need to worry about organic search or SEO.”

In our experience with various B2B and enterprise clients, we’ve heard this proclamation in one way or another. If and when the discussion comes to this, we typically utilize the example of the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT), which essentially boils down to showing up at the right place, at the right time, and with the right content in order to capture customers at the key decision-making instant.

Being in a B2B sales environment doesn’t dehumanize this process, because people are still the ones making purchasing decisions. According to Google, 71% of people they spoke with use the internet on a daily basis for their business purchase decisions. The questions are: are you there (mobile, tablet, PC), is the content relevant, and is it delivered in a timely way?

”Why do we need content development and strategy if we’re primarily B2B?”

Simply put, if you don’t have content being created on a regular basis, it’s going to be like mission impossible to not only acquire new customers, but retain existing ones. Research has shown that content is of utmost importance to all stages of the purchasing process. Having a plan around content marketing is mission-critical in terms of conveying your products’ features, benefits, and key differentiating factors.

This process starts with the right types of content. Content isn’t isolated to just words on pages, but also images and videos as well. People can find just about anything in the search results, from PDFs (brochures) to online video demos. All of these must work to both represent your brand and differentiate your company from the competition.

”But our target audience already knows our products and our company.”

There are companies out there that I feel very familiar with, but that’s completely different from knowing enough to make a purchasing decision. Without proper details, research, and competitive information, the decision becomes far more difficult. This is because so many factors impact that final purchase decision, including the personnel involved (department heads, procurement, etc.).

Internal site search is a great opportunity to help these folks find relevant content about your company. However, if the best practices for organic search aren’t implemented across this information, it won’t matter how much you’ve invested in your enterprise search configuration. Garbage in means garbage out, and in this case, it means a poor experience for someone looking to learn more about (and maybe even purchase) your products.

”Trade shows and publication ads work for us.”

But can you prove it? I’ve noticed that some B2B companies put a significant amount of their budgets into trade shows or conferences without assessing or measuring their influence on the purchasing process. Prospective clients may visit your booth or see an advertisement, but as some point, they’re going to want more proof that you’ve got the solution to their problems. The ideal setup for trade show marketing is a marketing mix that includes organic search, direct mail, a phone call, email, etc. (aka “multichannel”). In the end, it is the process behind nurturing these prospects that will drive sales growth.

”How can we justify the cost of an organic search campaign?”

You can assess the influence that most tactics that are associated with your marketing mix have on purchasing or lead generation. Organic search should go deeper than a simple justification of cost; it should also be a part of a cost analysis for all tactics within your marketing mix. It is the ability to identify what contributes to revenue and high profit margins which are vital to all businesses.

If you’re still unsure of the way organic search, content, and strategy work together in the B2B environment, then I would recommend the following:

Read ZMOT for more details that focus on B2B
Run a few searches on keywords that prospects are using (see search queries in Webmaster Tools or matched queries from paid search) that led to an action on your website such as a download, form submission, etc. This way, you’ll be able to see if your most engaged visitors are actually getting to the most relevant information on your company, products, or solutions
Determine which marketing tactics are attributing to leads, sales, and revenue over the customer’s entire purchase process
Take a hard look at your “big ticket” items within your marketing mix and assess the cost per sale