social media marketing

Grow Social to Build Your Brand

March 12, 2018 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Social media has exploded exponentially the past few years. It started off as a way to share a conversation with a colleague (Facebook), share music with a friend (MySpace), or write all of your personal thoughts in a public diary (Every platform?). But, it has grown into a marketing tactic to allow businesses to get their products or services seen and in the right hands. With how simple it is to click “Buy”, it’s now crucial for businesses to maintain active social media accounts. If you haven’t come to this realization, you’re falling behind.

Creating an account and “posting” just isn’t enough. How do you create worthy content for your customers? How do you portray that your brand is the best to new customers? How do people even find what you’re posting!? With the right advice, this can all happen in no-time.

First Things First: Build Your Organic Reach

With Facebook’s new algorithm, it has become harder to build your organic reach, but doing so will only expedite your social success. Share a mix of intriguing content letting users discover not only helpful tips or information about your industry but allow them to get to know your business and your employees. Customers want to get to know YOU, your employees, and your personality. Any business with a strong company culture can soar on social media, no matter which industry you’re in. If your not an old, bland company, prove it.

Poor Big Mac®, stuck with frozen beef. pic.twitter.com/0r5beTPQfo
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) March 6, 2018

Wendy’s strong social media presence gets everyone talking, even their competition.

— If people like your content, this can also help your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, too! Social posts can be found in search results. —

Make It Known You’re There to Help

When someone messages your company on social media, do you reply? Do you wait days to respond? Do you have an automated message setup and think that’ll suffice? Customers want to speak with one individual, real human being NOW. A bot or automated response may be a time saver and at times, helpful, but it won’t do anything for the customer and in turn, your business. Most feel more comfortable writing to a business rather than calling about a question. Make it known that no matter how they reach out, you care enough to respond. So start getting those responsiveness rates up on Facebook!

Spend Money Where It’s Worth It

While growing your accounts organically is important, there’s nothing wrong with putting money behind the posts that are worth it! In fact, it’s important! There are several opportunities across all platforms that, depending on the scenario and the goal, you should put a few dollars behind. Facebook advertising can benefit almost every business. For this reason, Facebook offers many opportunities to do so such as Boosted Posts and Facebook Advertising. There even is a special, additional way for local businesses to expand their reach. Before you start spending money, think about what you’re trying to accomplish, what will resonate with your audience, and how much should your company spend on this ad? You’ll be surprised how little that cost could be.

Build a Brand Worth Talking About

Building your online presence is an ongoing process and takes a lot of time. While these tips will get you started, there’s much more you can do! If you still don’t see that you need to combine social media with all your other marketing efforts, let’s have a chat – especially if you’re a local business.

Why Your Brand Should Be Using LinkedIn

January 31, 2018 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

In an era of ever-increasing online interaction, social media is one of the most easily-accessible and useful tools in your business arsenal. While Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have rightly earned their status as social media heavyweights, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of LinkedIn’s punch when it comes to promoting your business and boosting your sales. From lifting the lid on internal talent, to curating content: here are some key reasons why your business needs to embrace LinkedIn.

The Right Audience

Over 500 million professionals are on LinkedIn, and as it’s a social channel created for business interaction; its users are already there with their business hats on. On other social media channels, users might have primarily logged on for amusement, friendship etc.; on LinkedIn they are already in the right networking mindset, so it’s the perfect place to execute your business marketing strategy.

Not only are these people switched on and engaged, they are also probably more likely to be key decision-makers and engaged industry professionals. The perfect people your business should be talking to…

However; that doesn’t mean that you should go overboard and hard-sell, or forget the human side of business. Following top entrepreneurs will give you a good yardstick to follow, as they often balance business updates with engaging inspirational posts and stories.

Showcase Your Brand

LinkedIn lets you create a company page for free, which includes space for your company logo as well as a description about the brand. From here you can publish and share content — the first step for getting noticed.

It’s an easy, simple, and pain-free way of getting your message out into the world — and can also become a central spoke for employee engagement and content curation efforts. Use LinkedIn updates to welcome new team members, share company milestones, and cover any relevant industry events.

As well as being an excellent platform to highlight your brand ethos and vision, 64% of social referrals to company websites come from LinkedIn, so it’s also successful at directing potential clients/associates to your homepage.

Clever Content Marketing

Great content marketing material should educate, inform, or entertain your users. LinkedIn is ideal for promoting informative blog content or useful, practical advice about running a business. You will also find that inspirational people stories or anecdotes do well on LinkedIn, as does any relevant event coverage.

When planning out your LinkedIn strategy, make sure you mix up post formats and messages so as not to not have a brand that’s on social ‘autopilot’. You need to get to grips with brand storytelling, not broadcasting.

Just remember that images and links are key to well-performing posts on LinkedIn – 98% of posts with images receive more comments and posts with links in have a 200% higher engagement rate.

You should also encourage team members to publish native content on LinkedIn. The platform gets a lot of engagement, and it’s a fantastic place for events roundups, and short, reflective posts.

Connect with other experts

80% of all B2B leads come from LinkedIn. If you run a B2B company, LinkedIn provides the perfect opportunity to reach out to potential clients and form strong business bonds. It’s a great way to give back to your community of clients and associates — you can share their content, endorse them, and generally keep in touch.

Even if you have a consumer-facing company, you can still utilize LinkedIn’s large wealth of contacts by forging alliances for things like partnership marketing. It’s also ideal for scouting out new suppliers and distributors if you run an e-commerce business.

The rules of social networking are shifting, but the basics still ring true: listen, be authentic, and connect with meaning.

Another level of interaction

LinkedIn prioritizes relationship building. Whenever you send an invite to someone to ‘connect’ with you, instead of a blanket request being whizzed straight out, you can fully personalize the invite to explain why you’re getting in touch, where you found their details etc. You can also use the ‘cold’ mail option on LinkedIn: this is a scalable sales channel.

There is also the groups section where you can opt to meet with people who have similar interests. By joining groups that are populated by your target audience, you can then use this as a forum to promote your content. (But again: have respect for community).

A useful research tool

LinkedIn not only helps you promote your company and engage with clients and consumers, it’s also the perfect place to suss out the competition, talent spot, and generally keep your fingers on the industry pulse. If some of your rivals have a bigger presence, you can observe what they do and which circles they operate in.

LinkedIn is a place where many interesting conversations take place, but you run the risk of missing out on them, if you don’t engage. It’s a good idea to earmark some ‘engagement’ time in your social calendar, to help you unearth conversations that are worth listening too. Don’t forget that a roundup post of content found on LinkedIn is a quick way to leverage the channel elsewhere.

Whether it’s for building your brand reputation, making important business connections or distributing your content marketing, LinkedIn can truly transform your company. Leverage the power of LinkedIn for your marketing strategy and you’ll see increased engagement, SEO clout, and sales. If what we’ve said isn’t enough to convince you, just check out how these successful CEOs use it to their advantage.

Victoria Greene is a content consultant. On her blog, VictoriaEcommerce, she shares tips on how companies can improve the way they represent their brand. She is passionate about using her experience to help brands improve their reach across a variety of different social or content channels.

Social Media Marketing: An Effective Sales Tool For B2B Companies

September 12, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group 1 Comment

Social media marketing initiatives do not have to be strictly for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. Yes, social media is used for connecting with loved ones, watching dog memes (because who doesn’t love doing this?), and sharing cool activities you’ve done recently, but we can’t forget one important detail. These same people have day jobs that your company could do business with.

Business-to-business (B2B) companies have the same opportunities to create relationships and leads with other professionals to grow business and increase revenue.

Where to Start with B2B Social Media Marketing

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ are all social platforms a B2B manager should utilize.

LinkedIn is clearly the one platform that has the reputation for being for professionals. It includes tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and advertising methods like Sponsored InMail that assist with targeting the right prospects.

Twitter

Some may find this surprising, but Twitter falls second in generating leads. Most of my clients, whether B2B or B2C, are actively engaging with other businesses on Twitter. This on-the-go app makes it easy to share quick snippets and enticing phrases that lead to content and strengthen the case to work with you. Google also takes into consideration Twitter signals where individual tweets have the potential to be linked directly on the search and help your rankings. Plus, posting a few times per day is accepted here, so share as many articles, stories, or images as you’d like!

Facebook

Facebook is the head honcho of social media, but it’s mostly considered as a B2C marketing channel, however, this needs to be part of your social media marketing strategy as a B2B company. Use photos and videos to catch the attention of users on your latest new content, industry statistics, or share expert advice.

Facebook Live is another great visually appealing way to start the conversation with prospects by having them comment during the stream. There are multiple other ways to target B2B prospects such as social advertising or as simple as engaging with another business’ content. Experiment to find out what works for you.

Google+

Google+ has over 300 million users as of 2016 – believe it or not. While many businesses don’t take advantage of this platform, it has its perks for any B2C or B2B company. Forming communities on G+ will help start the conversation with customers and prospects. These communities can serve as forums to aid with customer service or chat with leads. On top of this, the search engine optimization (SEO) benefits are also exceptional since Google search and Google+ integrated. Google has slight favoritism for its own social platform.

You might as well get used to using it now because it’s not going anywhere. By 2050, it’s reported that every business will have a Google Plus page.

Share Relevant Content Consistently

Grasping the concept of reaching out to prospects through social media is easy, however, what to post may not be. Content marketing is critical when utilizing social media for your business. Show your audience and your prospects that you are an industry thought-leader and know what you’re talking about! And hey, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing. All it takes is the time and knowledge to create a piece of material that’ll convince your future customers to sign on with you. Drive people to your website. Make let them learn more about what you have to offer. Get people talking about your brand!

Monitor Your Online Brand and Reputation

People always have an opinion about your work or company. This could be from your employees, customers, or competitors. Unfortunately, social media is typically the first place people go to complain or share negative feedback. Being the first to respond and to react to these situations will only allow for a better outcome.

But don’t forget to thank those who give you the 5-star reviews, too! Appreciating your customers for taking the time to share their experience will go a long way.

Regular Social Monitoring Helps With:

– Voluntary Feedback

– No matter the sentiment behind the review, it can only improve products/services, attract customer, and allow for additional customer service.

– Employee Actions, Images, and Posts

– Some companies have strict social media policies that restrict an employee in engaging in certain behaviors online.

– Handling an Immediate Crisis

– Negative feedback can spread like a wildfire in today’s online world. Be the first to address the situation and hopefully, convince the user to take it down.

– Attracting New Customers

– When your content is shared, you have the ability to get in front of new prospects you might never have thought of.

– Tracking Competitors and Industry Trends

– What are you competitors talking about? What’s trending? What should you be addressing in your feed?

Social Media Marketing is Right for Your B2B Company

Social media marketing works hand-in-hand with content marketing, search engine optimization, customer service, brand management, and so much more. Skipping out on this marketing tactic is a mistake. When you find the right platforms and strategy for your business, your sales will reflect this. Your hard work will pay off as long as you keep at it.

Interested in learning more about the tips and tricks to social media for growing your business?

2017 Social Media Updates

June 27, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group 4 Comments

In my younger years as a millennial, there seemed to always be a new social media platform. From Xanga, to Myspace, and then finally to Facebook, none of them seemed to stick around and keep our attention. However, Facebook started a new trend – consistent updates and new features. Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram also utilize this method to stay relevant and appealing to its users. These updates are critical to their survival.

As a millennial, these changes were simply… fun. But, now as a social media marketer, they are important to keep your audience’s attention. Only half way through the year and we have seen many updates thus far! Here are a few of the latest.

Twitter - Live From The Twittersphere

Twitter has been having an identity crisis. Competing with the ‘almighty’ Facebook could leave it feeling lost and distressed. Last year, began its outcry to rebrand itself. They began to reiterate the fact the Twitter is for what’s happening right now around the world. This led to the recent launch of the #SeeEverySide campaign. This will feature tweets from real people across the globe of every point and perspective. Check it out:

Who’s your greatest of all time?#SeeEverySide https://t.co/x3g3fHVur1
— Twitter (@Twitter) June 26, 2017

In addition to its fight to stay top-of-mind, they’ve recently unleashed its ‘refreshed’ look. Some features were initially on Android last year, but after a lot of approval, it is now on IOS, too. The Twitter updates include:

Reorganized navigation
Articles open directly inside app, so a user stays logged in
Bolder headlines and refined typography.
New symbols – Many new users complained the old reply button looked like a ‘back’ or ‘delete’ button.
Live updates on likes, retweets, and replies proving Twitter is providing you real-time information

At the request of its users, major improvements have made the user experience great. Most people are pleased with how it looks. Next, Twitter needs to listen to the businesses, those connecting with their users, to provide each “Tweeter” an even better (local) experience.

Snapchat - “X” Marks The Spot on Snap Map

Snapchat, another “real-time” social media platform not only has consistent updates, but very unique ones at that. The latest update, which has been stirring up controversy, is their Snap Map. You can explore any event around the world and see exactly where your Snap-friends are at that moment. Snapchat wants you to see where your friends are or local events nearby, so you can join in on the fun, too! This worries parents, but the company assures anyone who does not want their location visible to friends, the user can turn on ‘Ghost Mode’ to disable the Snap Map.

A business update Snapchat has implemented is that every business now has its own geofilter. It shows the business name along with the city it’s located in. This screams to me, “Brand Awareness!” and I like it, a lot.

Instagram - Helping Businesses Tell Their Story

Since being bought by Facebook, a lot of what you see on Facebook is also on Instagram which now makes it a major competitor. Instagram’s recent updates focus more on businesses who use platform than their audiences. Instagram Stories now has business tagging and linking. From someone’s story, a location can be found on a map or an external link can be clicked on. Instagram Story ads also have new objectives (not simply to build brand awareness). We can now track reach, video views, traffic to a website, conversions, and mobile app installs which will be great to track future performance of a particular ad.

Facebook - The Older You Are, The Wiser You Get

Lastly, my absolute favorite to manage – Facebook. As soon as I finish writing this, I am sure that Facebook will be soon releasing another new feature that we will have to get up-to-speed with (and personally, I am completely okay with that – hence why, I love social). If you currently are on Facebook or are running a Facebook account get ready for:

GIFs in comments – However, I can’t wait until these are added to posts
More control over ad placement – The location of ads will change slightly
Soon-to-Come Cover Videos along with new text headlines – How fun is that?!
Target a particular post to a specific audience
Facebook Live updates coming soon – I highly recommend your business use Facebook Live
New Photo Album Features

Phew! This is a lot of to keep up with and this isn’t even all of it. In a few years, Facebook will release an augmented reality component. There are many things this will allow a user to do. One in particular, you will be able to leave secret messages for friends a bar or restaurant. By using the app, the message will appear exactly where they left it on the table or bartop.

Overwhelmed? This is why hiring a social media marketer makes your life easier.

While it might be a pain to constantly update your applications (and clear more room on your IOS system), your business’ social account must stay trendy and relevant. Your competitors may find new features to grow their business before you and you’ll be forgotten just like Xanga and MySpace.

To learn more about social media marketing, ask a question below or check our social media accounts.

DaBrian Marketing Redesigns Grove Dental Group’s Website

May 2, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Visitors to Grove Dental Group’s new website benefit from improved usability as well as enhanced accessibility to research and register for dental services.

March, 2017 (Reading, PA) – In coordination with managing their digital marketing to reach new patients, DaBrian Marketing Group noticed that Grove Dental Group’s website needed a new layout and structure to rank higher on search engines and improve usability.
The website’s new design and architecture improves both the business’ visibility on search engines and allows customers to easily learn about Grove Dental’s services. This involved organizing the content of Grove Dental’s former website into an updated structure. This enhanced the indexability and significantly improved the value of Grove Dental’s content to search engines. Overall, users on major search engines, such as Google and Bing, are now more likely to find and visit Grove Dental’s website.

Visitors to Grove Dental’s website also experience an increase in speed when they navigate through pages. The new, simplified design decreases the time that is required for each page to fully load. After a visitor finds the service in which he or she is interested, a newly created registration form allows that person to immediately contact Grove Dental’s staff and schedule appointments. DaBrian Marketing Group placed these registration forms on the new website to expedite people’s next step from learning about Grove Dental to actually requesting their services.

Megan Link, Director of Projects, Marketing, & Financial Operations at Grove Dental expresses excitement over the improved capabilities of the website and DaBrian Marketing Group’s services:

“Partnering with DaBrian was a no brainer for us and we couldn’t be more pleased with the service they provide. DaBrian is like your best friend, always has your back and looks out for your best interest. They are really an extension of our team, and the transition was smooth and effortless on our part. Our new website is living proof of my statement. They knew when to ask questions about what we wanted, but really I had very little to do with the new website other than giving the final a-ok. I recommend DaBrian to any business looking to change their online appearance.”

Grove Dental’s precise branded guidelines made the redesign of their website a simple project without complications. Grove Dental concretely identifies its brand – from the personnel’s attitude and level of patient-engagement to the overall mission of the company. This allowed DaBrian Marketing Group to create a layout and structure that effectively communicates Grove Dental’s digital brand to potential patients. This redesigned website complements the organic (search engine optimization or SEO) and paid (pay per click or PPC) search engine marketing efforts as well as the social media marketing efforts that DaBrian Marketing Group continues to perform for Grove Dental.

Visit Grove Dental Group’s website to experience the latest web design project by DaBrian Marketing Group.

About DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC
Founded in 2008, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a full-service digital marketing agency, focused on providing original and strategic digital marketing solutions for businesses, that want to create digital awareness, increase return on investment (ROI), and identify insights that not only will help achieve goals but will also help to increase your business’s efficiencies. DaBrian Marketing Group’s services include email marketing, digital branding, search engine optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising, web design, web analytics, social media marketing, and more. 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.

Humanizing B2B Marketing for Better ROAS

May 1, 2017 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

A core component of producing a humanized or relatable B2B marketing strategy is to first measure that strategy, correctly. Recently, business-to-business (B2B) marketing has focused on content marketing, marketing automation, and social media management to grow a business’ return on investment (ROI). While measuring ROI is an effective way to measure success, it’s about time we shift our mindset to think more about return on ad spend (ROAS).

Focusing on the the individual advertising tactics rather than the strategy as a whole allows you to more precisely analyze the results of your marketing efforts – including advertising campaigns. This also helps you to humanize our B2B marketing initiatives by understanding exactly what kind of marketing efforts work. These include behavior-based tactics such as:

Responsive web designs
Unique and helpful content
Consistent interactions on social media
Personalized and attentive client relationships.

Although you’re prospecting another business rather than an individual (B2C), we cannot forget the fact that the decision-makers are still “normal” customers. How are you going to speak to them to build the relationship between their company and yours?

Commit to Responsive Web Design

When we envision a person in upper management, we typically see them sitting at his or her desk all day long. This is never the case. Business decision-makers are on the move and will most likely visit your website through a mobile phone to find more information about you.

Your website must be mobile friendly in order for them to clearly review your products or services and understand how your business is different from the competition. The mobile experience must quickly provide that information. It must be easily read by the most popular smartphones of your target audience. In fact: 62% of B2B marketers planned to invest in responsive web design in 2016. Invest now to be ahead of your competitors in the rest of 2017.

Attract New Customers with Unique Content

Craft your copywriting, design, and imagery to appeal to your potential customers while enforcing your brand on every page. Not only must the content be written in the most common languages of your target audience, but it must also be accessible with Google and Bing.

To market your written content and business, it’s recommended to assist your content marketing efforts with SEO and Paid Search (PPC) advertising to increase awareness of products and services. Follow the SEO best practices and work with a Google AdWords partner for optimal results.

Socialize with Business to Business Customers

Friends, family, and customers all use social media for leisure and business purposes. With the growth of social media management, potential customers are looking for your business to provide helpful information about your industry along with being someone they can talk to. Socializing with them provides you with an opportunity to demonstrate expertise and reinforce your brand’s value.

Dedicate time to sharing content on your personal and business social media accounts. This will prove your expertise and help you to stay top-of-mind. You can also advertise products and services on targeted social media networks. Facebook and LinkedIn ads have shown the best value for B2B social marketers.

Nurture Individual Accounts with Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Lastly, marketing automation can create consistent interactions with potential customers and provide you with the ability to nurture existing clients when executed appropriately. Take a look at this annual trends report from Econsultancy and Adobe for quantitative evidence.

For example, the use of account-based marketing brings several departments together to keep your current business while obtaining new prospects simultaneously. ABM is a business-to-business strategy to drive collaboration between business marketing and sales teams by focusing on building individual client accounts to drive revenue. Pardot and Marketo have templates to help you to nurture individual accounts and grow your revenues.

Your Business is Made Up of Hard-Working Humans. Show It.

There are many tactics to attract new customers for any business, no matter if you’re B2B or B2C. It’s just important to keep in mind that when marketing to other companies, there is still an actual person on the other end, not just another business. Be relatable to the people at those other companies and understand their behavior and motivations to see profits on your own end.