78% of marketing executives believe that custom content is the way to go in marketing. 

Digital marketing is the new marketing frontier and every organization needs to adapt to this trend to avoid being obsolete. Traditional marketing is being taken over with social media platforms and targeted ads, making it possible for brands to interact with their specific audiences in real time.

Customers expect a digital presence and are beginning to trust companies with a digital footprint.

With the emerging marketing trends, it can be a daunting task for your in-house team to keep up especially when you need to focus on other areas of your business.

Today, almost every business needs an effective digital marketing campaign. If you can’t design your own campaign, a digital marketing agency can help you design it quite effectively.

Below are criteria for selecting the Best Digital Marketing Agency

1. Know Your Brand Requirements

Even before hiring a digital marketing agency, try to understand what your goals are and what you are trying to achieve. Part of this might include creating or revamping your website, online advertising, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), blogging, or social media marketing. If you are able to articulate your business needs you will have better discussions with your prospective digital agencies.

2. Create Your Budget

How much are you willing to spend to ramp up your business? Most businesses spend between 4% to 6% of gross revenue, but if you want to make a significant impact on your business, you may need to budget close to 10%. Work with your marketing professional to help you create and prioritize a proper budget.

A good marketing firm will create month-by-month marketing plans that can really clarify your marketing activities. Keep in mind though, that marketing is about testing and retesting, so some of your marketing activities will change to welcome new ones.

3. Understanding What Needs To Be Outsourced

It is important to know what marketing strategies your in-house marketing team will be focusing on and what strategies a professional agency really needs to handle. Hiring a digital marketing agency may help with the technical aspects of your marketing strategy, especially since some sophisticated activities can be difficult for your in-house team.

4. Source for An Agency

There are numerous digital agencies out there that do a tremendous job, but there are some that make big promises on their ability to deliver but you get shortchanged. Credibility is important. Don’t be shy to ask the agency for client references.

Read through the clients’ testimonials on their websites and determine whether or not to work with that agency. Agencies should be open to sharing their not-so-pleasant engagements and how they handled the situation. This will give you an idea of their client service and crisis management abilities.

5. A Digital Marketing Agency that Has a Niche in Your Field

A digital agency that has the expertise to match your special needs can be a good fit. When looking into the company’s successful digital campaigns, consider the type of businesses they work with. It’s good to see where their strengths are and the details they pay attention to.

Ask how they approach new industries to see if they have any insights that are fresh and noteworthy. A good agency should evaluate your industry and offer insights that you cannot otherwise obtain. In addition, they should have some case studies of campaigns they have steered in the past and provide their results.

6. How Do They Track Their Key Performance Indicators?

The reason for using digital agencies is to boost your company revenue. It’s not only important to boost revenue with digital marketing campaigns, but it’s also important to keep the cost per client acquisition to a minimum.

The agencies should help clients increase online revenue and drive more traffic to their websites with efficient tactics. It will be important to have candid discussions that will help you achieve specific goals with specific tactics and strategies that are measurable and can be evaluated.

7. How Does the Agency Run Its Business?

After you have identified what you want the agency to do for your company, look through their website and see if they are applying the same for their own company.

If you hire them for SEO, how do they rank on search engines? If you need a blog, does the agency have one of its own blogs?
These are signs of what the agency can do for your company.

8. Be in It for Value

You need to work with an agency that invests in the future of your company. Building relationships and partnerships should always be long-term and have a win-win end goal. Go for a company that can do what they are hired to do and you enjoy working with.

Strategic partnerships take time to build therefore, choose a company that is open, transparent and handles a crisis in a professional manner. This way you can be confident that your money is well spent at the right agency.

9. What’s Their Price?

An agency that prices themselves to low just to be competitive is likely to be a bigger risk than a more expensive agency. Higher priced agencies may be able to deliver more favorably because they can afford to do so. Be sure to understand what the specific deliverables are and how they add up to the overall price.

10. Set Timelines

A good agency should be able to project timelines for most activities. After discussing the timelines and projected outcomes, set benchmarks so that you can determine how you are performing on your way to your goals.

Find the Right Agency for Your Company

Whether you’re a startup or mid-sized company, your clients need to know about your existence, the products or services you offer, and how they can get those products and services.

Hiring a digital marketing agency will help you get results which can accelerate your company revenue and any other desired results. Your digital marketing agency will manage your online marketing needs through analytics-driven and ROI focused activities.

An agency should help you build a plan that is based on your industry. It can help you avoid the cost of setting up an in-house digital marketing team as you focus on business expansion. It can handle the systems and processes that plan and execute campaigns from start to finish.

Check out this page to learn more about digital marketing services.

What if you were bringing your marketing “A-game” to the wrong audience?

There is a world of difference between traditional marketing and digital marketing. Unfortunately, many businesses have trouble figuring out which option is best for their particular audience.

Wondering how to determine which form of marketing is best for your business? Keep reading as we explore the different benefits and features of each style!

What Is the Difference?

We’ve put together a solid guide exploring every aspect of traditional and digital marketing. Before we go any further, though, we need to define exactly what these terms mean.

Traditional marketing is defined as non-internet based marketing which includes print media, such as magazines, newspaper, periodicals, handouts, flyers, brochures and larger format fixed forms of such as billboards, signs, and posters. Tv and radio also fall into this category though there is cross-over into the digital realm.

Digital marketing is defined as electronic internet-based marketing that is usually interactive and dynamic. This can include electronic ads, social media, e-mail marketing, all things website related, and so on. Digital marketing also includes techniques such as automation and SEO to help drive visitors to your site.

Now that we have these terms defined, it’s time to explore the unique benefits each one offers.

Traditional: Going Local

One of the most important considerations is whether you have a local business or a global business. For a local business, traditional advertising reigns supreme.

Places like regional restaurants or “mom and pop” shops aren’t too worried about customers half a world away. Instead, they want to make the locals happy and keep them coming back for more.

This can be pretty simple, too. Major billboards can entice someone into a special Friday dinner, and sales flyers in the local paper can convince someone to return to your shop.

Ultimately, you must go where your customers are. And if your customers are local, you should be doing traditional advertising.

Traditional: It’s Tangible

We love digital advertising. But it has one big downside: it’s never truly permanent.

For instance, people love to share funny images and videos they find online. But that engaging advertising is gone as soon as they click on something else or turn the phone off.

However, traditional advertising is tangible. If a customer leaves the newspaper on their counter, you are effectively advertising to them for several days inside the comfort of their own home.

And appearance is everything. If your advertising appears to be steady and stable, then your business will appear that way as well.

Traditional: Nice and Simple

The final benefit we love about traditional advertising? It’s nice and simple.

Digital marketing offers the ability to do complex multimedia campaigns spread across multiple online channels. However, some demographics prefer things to be much simpler and straightforward.

For example, you might be pouring a lot of money into SEO marketing for your local business. However, if most of your customers grew up in a world without the internet, then internet marketing may be lost on them.

However, traditional advertising is easy and accessible for everyone. Things like TV and radio commercials have been an advertising mainstay for the better part of a century for a simple reason: they are simple and effective!

Digital: All About Analytics

The biggest downside of traditional marketing is that it’s tough to tell what’s working. You might spend a lot of money on a billboard or a television ad and be ultimately unable to tell how effective it was.

With digital marketing, you have the power of analytics. You can actively monitor which marketing efforts helped to drive specific increases in things like website visits, online purchases, and more.

This is invaluable because it allows you to “course correct” as needed. If one form of advertising isn’t working, you can try something else. This sure beats throwing all your money into something that’s not working!

Digital: Surprising Value

Another thing we love about digital advertising is the sheer value of it. You can a lot of advertising mileage without spending a lot of money.

For example, social media advertising is very popular, especially among Millennials. And it costs little or nothing for you to create social media accounts for your business.

Plus, there’s always the chance that some of your content may “go viral.” This means that customers will share what you made with everyone, you know.

That kind of digital “word of mouth” advertising is highly effective. And did we mention it’s completely free?

Digital: Find New Customers

Earlier, we mentioned the difference between a local and global business. It’s important to note that most new businesses are global businesses that cater to customers all around the world.

There is one “hard part” to that approach, though. First, you have to find the customers!

This is where good digital marketing shines. The right SEO or viral video content can lure in customers from all around the world. Combined with analytics, you may discover you have audiences you never even knew about!

With traditional advertising, you can focus your efforts on the customers you know. But digital remains the best way to find entirely new customers.

Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing: Which Is Better?

This brings us to the big question, then: which form of advertising is better? The answer depends on the needs of you and your business.

As we said before, traditional advertising is best for local audiences. And it may be downright necessary to help you stay ahead of your local competition.

Digital advertising is best for anyone hoping to find a global audience. This includes many businesses that operate from homes and mail products directly to their customers.

And if your business has both a local and a global presence, it makes a lot of sense to do a bit of both!

The Bottom Line

Now you know about the different benefits of traditional marketing and digital marketing. But do you know who can take your marketing to the next level?

Here at the MAD Group, we help your business to reach its maximum potential. To see how we can help you grow and expand, contact us today!

What if trying to save money ended up costing your business everything?

It’s understandable that most small businesses don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around. So when they go to build their brand, they end up cutting corners in order to save money.

However, the problem with using cheap branding services is that you get what you pay for. Keep reading to discover some of the hidden dangers of these cheap services!

No Guidelines

One of the most important considerations for branding is consistency. Visual elements like logos, colors, images, fonts, headers and footers, and more must all be in perfect alignment.

Creating a consistent brand means creating consistent visuals and consistent messaging. And, to be frank, cheap branding services typically lack the vision necessary to make those elements coherent and consistent.

Without solid branding guidelines, everything falls apart. Customers will be confused as to what your brand really is and how they can recognize it.

Conversely, a really solid branding service can create iconic logos and taglines that will outlast us all. If you want to be the next “Coca-Cola” in terms of marketing, be sure to not cut too many corners!

When Ads Go Bad

One of the best ways to bring more customers to your website is to use ads. However, cheap branding services may create ads that do more harm than good!

For example, sometimes ads are not speaking to their audience in a connecting manner. They can be bland and uninspiring. Online ads may not even link to a page that is relevant to the ad itself. In other words, interested customers click on one thing and they get something else entirely.

It takes only a few seconds for a consumer to make up their mind about your company. If your brand safety is at risk due to misleading ads, then you may have already lost prospective customers.

Bad Ad Placement

We talked about the problem of misleading ads. However, one problem that is even worse is an ad that is in the wrong place.

That’s because the old adage that “there’s no such thing as bad advertising” is completely false. When customers see your ads associated with things like extremist websites, they will think your company holds those same extreme values.

If you’re not careful, this can undo years of creating and following a company mission statement. But cheaper branding services may not be so careful and may advertise your business anywhere and everywhere.

Poor Customer Service

Sometimes, a marketing service helps with your customer service. And in this case, relying on cheap services is truly dangerous!

Customer service is the first point of contact many customers have with your company. And there’s a fine line between saving customers’ time and wasting it.

For example, many businesses now use chatbots to make messaging easier for customers. But badly-programmed bots may leave customers feeling frustrated and ignored by your business.

Long story short? If your marketing service will be helping with customer service, make sure you hire the very best.

Too Much Complexity

Think about the most iconic brands you know. Nike, for instance, is a stylized swoop and three words: “just do it.”

This is because the best branding is short and to the point. Unfortunately, bad branding services have usually not gotten this message!

When your taglines are too long and your logo has too many colors, customers are not going to think your brand is deep and complex. Instead, they’ll look at all that “complexity” and just see confusion!

You want branding services that can do a little bit of everything while still understanding “enough is enough.” That simplicity mixed with vision is the “secret sauce” of good marketing.

Too “Old School”

Most marketing happens online now. Why? Because that’s where most of your customers are!

However, the online world moves really fast. And one of the worst things a branding service can do is rely too much on “old school” cool.

For example, that super-complex webpage might have wowed everyone back in 2001. Now, when most customers will find your site via smartphone, it just looks busy and tacky.

Speaking of smartphones, you’ll want to make sure all your websites are rocking responsive design. Otherwise, they will look terrible on mobile devices and seriously turn your customers off!

If you want marketing that is hot and trendy, you need to hire a team that isn’t “yesterday’s news.”

Buzzword Bingo

At the most basic level, branding comes down to the words that describe your business. However, this “basic” step is actually really hard for cheaper branding services to take!

For example, a lot of marketing out there relies on meaningless buzzwords. How often do you see a business describe themselves as “the greatest” or an individual describe themselves as a “guru” or “thought leader?”

These words have been used and re-used until they stopped having any real meaning. Nonetheless, cut-rate branding services will still use these bad buzzwords because they cannot think of anything else!

And make no mistake, customers can see tired and overused branding from a mile away. It’s tough to convince them that your business is a true innovator if your marketing team couldn’t come up with anything new to say!

Online Data Breaches

The scariest phrase to most modern businesses is only two words: “data breach.”

No matter how much data is actually infected, a breach can cause serious damage to your brand reputation. Customers see you as vulnerable and they see their relationship with you as being dangerous.

Cheap branding services are cheap because they cut corners. These services may deal with individuals and institutions that increase your risk of a data breach.

Remember that a breach is a cat that you can never fully put back in the bag. It’s worth paying a bit more for a branding service that’s actually worth your money.

Branding Services: The Bottom Line

Now you know the perils of hiring cheap branding services. But do you know where you can find a branding service that will really transform your business?

Here at the MAD Group, we specialize in taking small businesses and making them the next big thing. To see what we can do for your business, check out our branding services today!

Advances in technology have made the world more connected than ever. But nothing beats the human connection.

That’s why even in today’s society, trade show marketing continues to be one of the best ways to reach out to your audience and make new connections.

While trade shows rely on good old-fashioned human connection, there’s nothing old about these innovative trade show ideas for 2021.

1. Minimalist Design

Leave the bells and whistle at home. The trade show booth of today is streamlined and focused on offering an open, welcoming space for prospects to come in and learn more about your products through conversation.

Ditch the text-heavy displays and only provide pertinent information on your booths. No one is going to stand there and read the text on the booths anyway, it clutters the space and can be overwhelming.

An open space design is welcoming to attendees and encourages mingling and may make them stick around longer to learn enough about you to leave them wanting more…and leave you with their contact information.

2. Comfort

Some companies focus so much on the booth panels that they disregard one of the most important aspects of the show–the attendee. Like the minimalistic booth, a booth with chairs and sofas (even bean bags!) will keep attendees comfortable.

Trade shows are a lot of work and involve a lot of walking. By offering a lounge area where attendees can sit and unwind, you’ll draw in a larger crowd and open up the opportunity for conversation.  It’s a great way to learn more about them while you have them at the booth.

Offer snacks and beverages so they feel pampered. Extra points if you also have a charging station.

When they leave they’ll remember the experience and they’ll probably refer others to your booth.

3. Socially Conscious Activity

Consumers today will often choose a company that aligns with their beliefs and more and more buyers target eco-friendly, socially responsible brands.

A socially conscious company can integrate their cause with their trade show booth to display their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) actions and connect with like-minded customers.

To display your company’s CSR beliefs, you could do a fundraising activity or hold a product giveaway. First, you’ll want to create a buzz around whatever activity you choose.  And that starts before the trade show.

Email your lists and let them know you’ll be at the show and what you’re doing. Blog about it and announce it in a press release. If you’re holding a fundraiser tell your prospects how they can get involved.

4. Multi-Sensory Experience

It’s no longer just about the booth’s design. Revolutionary trade show booths include items that appeal to the five senses. Think appealing sights, smells, and flavors. The trade show has become a full-blown experience.

Put products on display to feel. A greetings card company could have a sample of different card stock on display shelves. Attendees can touch and feel the product and take some samples to look over later.

Take a unique approach and offer foods that you can align with your brand. For example, a business with an elephant logo could provide peanuts at their booth.

5. Virtual Reality

Trade shows are great for that human connections but technology has a place in helping you stand out. There’s a ton of potential for Virtual Reality (VR) in trade show marketing. Who doesn’t want to get away from reality for a while and just play?

VR can help you attract customers to your booth and keep them engaged. Whatever your product, if you can incorporate that with VR and get attendees’ attention, you’ll stand out and they’ll remember you.

Incorporating VR into your presentation shows that your brand is keeping up with technology trends.

6. Integrated Marketing Strategy

Marketing doesn’t start at the trade show. The trade show is part of a larger message and can be used as the culmination of your marketing efforts. The lead up to the trade show should include blog posts, website content and social media messaging.

Podcasts are another option to provide listeners with an insight into what to expect at the show and where to find you. Send emails to your lists that include your booth number along with all the information about the trade show.

These activities should start weeks or months before the show to entice prospects to come and see you. While you’re at it, invite them to your booth for a giveaway.

7. Customer Focus

What happens at the trade show doesn’t have to stay at the trade show. No really, take the show off the floor and hold an off-site event for your qualified leads. It will make them feel special and it will allow you to connect with them outside of the hustle of the show floor.

This can be as simple as an informational session to a more in-depth themed event or cocktail party. Incorporate your brand by adding the logo to the napkins or even wine glasses that double as a take-home gift.

Take this opportunity to introduce prospects to your executive team or CEO. This provides an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have to really get to know the people behind the company.

Trade Show Marketing Success

While trade show marketing has changed throughout the years, one thing hasn’t…the human connection should always be at the forefront. Regardless of whether you’re incorporating virtual reality into your booth, pleasing the five senses or doing a trade show giveaway, it’s all about connecting with the attendees.

This combined with providing an inviting environment that caters more to attendee needs than yours will allow you to connect with them better than ever before.

Visit us here for more marketing strategies that will make your company stand out.

Building a brand is never easy, whether it’s one for your business or a personal one. It takes a lot of self-reflection and strategy; a good brand is one that both captures the essence of who you are, while also helping you stand out in your industry. Good branding services will help you understand who you are.

Then, once you figure out what your company stands for, you’ll be able to share it with the world. You’ll be able to use your brand to attract a like-minded audience that looks to you for content. Your audience will look to your brand as a beacon and will rely on it whenever they need to do business in your industry.

Building a good brand is also a lot of hard work. To save time, companies sometimes find cheap branding services to build a brand for them. Yet, such cost-savings will almost always backfire and end up costing the company more than they would have spent on worthwhile services.

Brands are powerful, and if they fail, they can take your whole company with them. Keep reading below to learn how powerful brands can be, and why you shouldn’t skimp on building a good one.

Cybersecurity Isn’t a Part of Branding Services

Most branding services just advertise that they will churn out regular content and post it on strategic platforms. They believe that a brand is nothing more than what people read on the internet. Yet, this couldn’t be any less true. A brand is more than just the content you make.

Your brand includes your business practices and it describes the role you play in your industry. Hiring someone to manage your brand is just hiring someone to create content for you. It’s impossible to get someone to manage your entire brand at a cheap price.

For example, something as banal as cybersecurity is a core part of your brand. Investing in it isn’t just a way to protect your company from hackers. It’s also a way to demonstrate that you care about your customers and want to protect their data. 

A Data Breach Will Damage Your Reputation

A cheap branding service probably won’t include your company’s cybersecurity in its overall branding strategy. That does more than just leave your company vulnerable to hackers and data breaches. It damages your company’s reputation and by neglecting your cybersecurity, you hurt your brand.

If your company doesn’t demonstrate its commitment to staying secure through its brand, people will get the impression that you don’t care. They’ll start to think that you’re apathetic about them and their data. And if they don’t think you care about them, why would anyone do business with you?

Your Brand Needs to Be Unique

One thing your brand is supposed to do is cut through the noise of other companies in your industry. It’s supposed to be unique enough to be recognizable, without being so unique that it puts people off. And for your brand to be truly unique, it needs to truly reflect your company and its values.

Yet, you’re the only one that can make something that adequately shows that. A branding service may try to get a sense for things your company is all about, but it won’t ever truly understand it. As a result, your brand won’t be a true reflection of your company, and it won’t be unique.

Instead, by hiring a branding service, your brand will only ever be a reflection of what the service thinks of your company. It won’t attract the people that truly share your company’s values.

Cheap Branding Services Follow a Template

The worst part of hiring a branding service is that your brand won’t ever be truly unique. Branding services usually follow a template to create different brands. They have a process for developing brands, and when many companies’ brands are developed with the same process, they are never truly unique.

At best, a cheap branding service will leave you with a brand that fades into the background of your industry. Your brand may go against the tide of the industry, resulting in criticism of your company as a whole. In this worst case scenario, your brand simply won’t tell your company story, and nobody will ever understand what you stand for.

Good Positioning Takes Industry Knowledge

One role that brands play in helping you attract new business to your company is positioning. Brands can be used to give your company an advantageous reputation that resonates with people. You can use your brand to be the cheap company, or the high-quality company, or the company known for excellent customer service.

However you want to position yourself, you first need to identify a space in your industry that you can fill. You need to see what kind of company is missing from your industry so that you can become that company. And when you fill a hole in an industry, you help everyone who participates in it.

People will recognize your brand as a valuable part of the industry and will respect you for it. When you position yourself to do something nobody else is doing, you enrich your industry and make people feel happier for being a part of it.

Brand Services May Not Be Familiar with Your Industry

To enrich your industry, you need to be intimately familiar with it. You need the kind of knowledge that only comes by running a business within it. Most cheap branding services don’t have that kind of knowledge.

That means you may not be able to position yourself and your brand as well as you could by yourself. By going with a cheap branding service, you’re costing yourself the opportunity to fulfill a role your industry may need. And you’re losing potential customers at the same time.

Build a Brand That You Love

The most important part of building a brand is making sure it’s one that you love. If you don’t love your brand, how could you expect anyone else to respect it? And that’s one of the biggest benefits of avoiding cheap branding services: you get to build a brand yourself.

You get to recognize all the work that goes into making a successful brand. You get to watch it grow and develop, and you’ll get to see all that work pay off in the end. That doesn’t mean you need to build your brand all by yourself, though.

Everyone needs help at some point, with anything. And if you need help building your brand, just contact us. We’ll work you to make your brand as good as it could possibly be, while also making sure you’re happy with it!

Business conferences and trade shows are among the best ways for companies to attract new customers and raise brand awareness. Everything from booth design, slogan, branding, and communication matters and can make or break your presentation.

Smart companies know they need to market their trade show appearance to their existing audience on social media, paid ads, and via email marketing. Even then, people may pass by your booth without stopping. Is your booth design too boring or too loud? Is your message not clear enough? Are you or your employees passive?

Once you set up a booth, you can’t just sit back and relax. Your job is to smile, engage in conversations, be knowledgeable about the brand, and get as many contacts as possible.

Keep reading to discover the main reasons why nobody’s visiting your trade show booth and what you should do about it.

It’s Too Plain and Boring

What does your booth look like from the attendees’ perspective? Is it visually appealing or plain and boring? While you don’t have to use bright colors and tons of text to attract an audience, you also don’t want to be ignored. Finding a balance with the design of the booth is crucial for your brand presence.

You can spice things up by having a fun mascot, use games, choose a catchy slogan, and organize a giveaway. Many companies do a trade show giveaway to attract an audience. People love competitions and getting free things, so the prize has to be related to your brand and useful for the participants.

For instance, if you give away a tablet and you sell food, there isn’t a connection between the prize and your product. The person who wins will collect their prize and leave, possibly forgetting about your brand altogether.

On the other hand, if you give away a gift card for your online store, people will flock to your booth. They may brag about their win on social media and when they want to use the gift card, visit your website and engage with your brand.

They Don’t See A Friendly Face

People are naturally drawn to smiling, approachable faces full of enthusiasm and positivity. If you or your employees look tired, bored, uninterested or grumpy, people will walk right past your booth.

If you want your trade show presence to be a success and stay on people’s minds, make sure your people are energized and well-rested. Send them on breaks, keep them full and hydrated, and encourage them to talk to people.

At trade shows, it’s not enough to just show up and wait. You need to be proactive and engage in meaningful conversations. Your main goal should be connecting to people and getting their email addresses or information, not selling your product to just anyone.

Your Communication Skills Are Poor

Once you’ve drawn visitors in, the next part of the job is to keep them interested. If your communication skills aren’t polished and you keep talking about your business and how amazing it is, they’ll leave.

To have people stay and actually engage with you, ask them questions they’ll be happy to answer. Ask about their jobs, interests, hobbies – anything that’ll strike up a conversation.

Be careful not to push with a sales pitch right away. The most important aspect of a conversation is listening to the person carefully so that you know what to offer them as a tailored solution.

This is one of those simple and free trade show booth ideas that’ll keep bringing you foot traffic. If you learn effective communication, it won’t take long for visitors to become customers.

They Don’t Understand Your Message

You know your business inside out, but many trade show attendees will be seeing it for the first time. It’s crucial to send a clear, effective message about who you are and what you’re about.

This is where branding and copywriting come into play. Everything in the booth should represent your vision, mission, and services in a professional, visually-appealing way. The minute you go overboard, people will feel like they’re being sold to and move on to the next booth.

Your Booth Design Is Bad

Setting up a booth takes up a lot of time and money, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to the design. Brainstorm booth trade show ideas with your employees and listen to their feedback.

The booth design should be eye-catching, but not too loud and obnoxious. Use natural materials when possible and keep the display signs simple and minimalistic.

If your booth design is of bad quality, people will instantly think your products or services are also bad quality. The visual elements of your booth have the power to attract or deter, so be extremely careful about the booth style you decide to put up.

You Didn’t Market Your Booth Enough

In this day and age of social media, you can’t rely on people coming to your booth to inquire. You need to market the event and your presence at the trade show weeks before you attend. This will help create a buzz among your audience and attract the right people who are already interested in your business.

Make sure to tell family and friends about the trade show and ask them to spread the word. Use all marketing and advertising tactics at your disposal to inform as many people as possible.

Send out email reminders once a week in the weeks before the event. Also, make sure to collect as many emails as possible at the show so you can follow up after.

Make People Line Up In Front Of Your Trade Show Booth!

Trade shows are one of the best places to reach new customers and present your business in the best light possible. To do that, you need an impressive trade show booth that’ll attract people’s attention.

If you or your booth are too pushy in your approach and only focus on your sales pitch, people won’t waste their time listening to how great your products are. If you want to see a line in front of your booth, you need to provide something of value.

Ready to get noticed? In this article, we discuss the best brand building strategies for beginners and share tips on how to implement them effectively.

Television advertising revenue has increased by 7% in the last year, and for good reason. Brands are combining the power of advertising and marketing to create a long-lasting and effective strategy that yields big returns.

Still, you might hold some confusion as to the difference between advertising and marketing, and how to best utilize each in your brand strategy. Fear not, here we will break down some helpful tips on how to combine the two. 

What is Advertising

We are exposed to hundreds of ads a day, and yet many are unsure of what advertising is and how it works.

In it’s simplest form, advertising is using specific types of content and mediums to evoke an emotion from the audience. Those emotions are then linked to the brand to create a lasting impression. If all goes to plan, the end result will be increased sales and brand awareness. 

For example, the Michael Jackson Pepsi ad is a great example of advertisers using positive emotions to sell a product. 

What is Marketing

Marketing covers a wide range of mediums and methods, however, it can be best summarized as efforts made to directly reach audiences.

Marketing methods include everything from advertising campaigns to guerilla marketing and research efforts. Even a simple survey that offers the right insight can be viewed as a valuable marketing tool.

Advertising vs Marketing

Often the terms advertising and marketing are used interchangeably and for good reason. The two are connected in a number of ways, and while all forms of marketing may not be advertising, all advertising can be considered marketing.

The difference between the two lies in the fact that marketing is an effort to send a message to your audience, promoting a person, product, or brand. While advertising involves using a paid medium to deliver that message

This means you could label radio ads, print ads, tv commercials, and even billboards as forms of advertising. However, other mediums like direct mail, email marketing and social media marketing (excluding social media ads) are considered to be marketing but not advertising. 

How to Combine Advertising and Marketing 

However you may classify them, there is no denying that advertising and marketing work hand in hand to deliver the strongest results.

Often, marketing is needed to bring a strategical approach to how advertising happens. While you can put together an ad you feel looks good and send it out into the world, hoping for the best, chances are this will be a waste of time and money.

It’s the target audience research, messaging, and branding that allows advertising to really do its job. On the flip side, the powerful effects of advertising on audiences is what gives marketing strategies their edge!

The Benefits of Combining Advertising and Marketing

So why combine advertising and marketing for your strategy? While it’s possible to reach audiences on marketing efforts alone, advertising comes with its own benefits.

Read on to learn why it’s worth combining these powerhouse tools. 

Getting Content in Front of a Larger Audience

While some marketing efforts can reach larger crowds (like your impressive email list), chances are you want to reach a larger audience. To reach thousands in one go you’re going to need some advertising.

Whether you choose to run your ads through tv or radio, by choosing mediums with a high audience you can greatly enhance your exposure. 

Stronger Targeting Capabilities

Hopefully, while creating your marketing strategy you’ve taken some time to carve out a strong target audience. This audience is the group you find to be most responsive to your messaging and products. In the very least you should know important demographic information, like their age range, average salary, and location. 

Once you’ve created this target audience, you’ll have to find the right mode of outreach to get your message to them. This is where advertising comes in. By simple gaging the interests of your target audience, you can place ads where you know they are likely to see them.

For example, if you find that the same audience you’re targeting also has an interest in golf, then placing an ad in a popular golf magazine would be a smart choice.

Powerful Analytics to Back New Strategies

Advertising trends are constantly evolving, and it can become easy to simply follow the competition. However, what’s “in” isn’t necessarily what will yield the strongest results for your brand.

This is where marketing comes in handy. Marketing utilizes research and analytics to properly steer new strategies. This means enhancing your chances of a strong ROI.  

Increase Brand Awareness

You have a laundry list of reasons why your product stands out among the competition, and you want your audience to know about it! Unfortunately, the average person’s attention span is now a mere 8 seconds.

That means you have to deliver as much information to your audience as you can in a short period of time. Advertising uses imagery, text, and even background music to deliver valuable brand information in one short go. 

Finding the Perfect Balance

Once you’ve tapped into the perfect balance of advertising and marketing, you’ll find it remarkably easy to tap into your audience and deliver your message seamlessly. 

However, it’s important to remember that there’s a learning curve that comes behind finding the right marketing technique. If you’re looking to achieve great results without taking time and energy away from your business, contact us today to see how we can help. 

If you run a business, you’re always looking to find the most effective forms of marketing. And you also want to get the most bang your marketing buck.

So, now that we’re firmly in a digital world, you’re likely wondering if a traditional marketing approach is the way to go, or if you should be fully digital with your marketing.

It’s a great question, and one we’ll take a look at in this post.

We’ll go over the pros and cons of traditional marketing and digital marketing so you’ll have a better sense of what each one can bring to your business, as well as the potential drawbacks for each. 

And you can make an educated decision as to which might be right for you and your company.

Sound interesting? Keep reading to find out more!

Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing is exactly what it sounds like. The marketing that has been used for decades as the primary means of spreading the word about goods, services, and the companies who offer them.

It sometimes might seem like the era of traditional advertising is over, given the amount of non-traditional marketing that goes on. 

But that’s actually not true. Traditional marketing is still popular and effective amongst some demographics with mediums like newspapers and magazines, TV, radio, brochures, flyers, and more.

Let’s talk about some of the advantages of traditional marketing.

Reach A Local Target Audience Organically

Sending handwritten letters with inserts is still highly effective. Buying ad time on local radio stations or sending flyers in the mail that have compelling call-to-actions are also effective. You still have the ability to target specific demographics in specific local areas with this form of marketing.

That means you can get a level of marketing specificity even with a relatively lo-fi method. 

Ease of Use

A Canadian study showed that direct mail marketing calls for more than 20% less cognitive brain power than digital marketing.

And it’s also something that can be sent to anyone across the country, even those without regular Internet access. 

Plus, if you are utilizing tangible items like paper flyers, people have an opportunity to physically save them in their home as a reminder. 

Next, let’s look at some of the negatives of traditional marketing.

Engagement

Some drawbacks to traditional marketing can be its expense, less ability to track accurately, the ability to engage with consumers, even targeted follow-ups on those people who are interested but ready to buy yet. Of all of these, engagement might be the biggest drawback.

This means you are putting information out there and just hoping people pursue it.

Cost and ROI

Traditional marketing can be more expensive with some mediums. This is especially true when it comes to anything TV related. But even radio ads on small-town stations can quickly add up. 

With traditional marketing, it’s also tricky to figure out if there’s a direct return on investment from your marketing campaign. There aren’t as many tangible numbers you can use to measure this. 

Next, let’s take a look at some of the advantages of digital marketing.

Digital Marketing Targeting and Tailoring

The Internet lives everywhere, so putting up a blog or a post to advertise your business can just as easily reach someone across the globe as it can reach your next door neighbor. 

You can also tailor your content in more ways, in order to reach hyper-specific segments of the population. If you know some of the parameters of your ideal customer, you can target them with much more precision with digital marketing.

And, since it’s constantly evolving, you can always update your digital marketing to find the best methods.

Better Engagement and More Options 

As anyone who enjoys social media can tell you, a lot of its fun lies in the engagement with other people. So if you are using social media as a part of your digital marketing strategy, it means people can respond and interact with you.

It also means that people can often choose the medium with which they engage you and your brand. If you have an Instagram ad, it means people who are partial to Instagram will interact with you on that platform.

And the same goes for people who are partial to all the other major platforms. You are essentially communicating with them in their comfort zone, which helps build trust. 

Cost and ROI

Digital marketing can be much more cost effective than traditional marketing. And that’s even with the help of a marketing company and paid ad buys. 

And there’s no comparison when it comes to measuring ROI with your digital marketing plan. 

Services like Google Analytics can give you precise numbers on things like how many people have visited your site and how many of them clicked on ads.

It can also tell you how long people stayed on your site, and who purchased what from you.

These analytics make it a snap to figure out if your latest digital marketing moves are having any effect on your return on investment. 

Non-Intrusive, and Potentially Viral

If you’ve ever been locked into the twists and turns of a TV show, only to have it interrupted by an annoying ad, you know the experience of intrusive advertising.

With digital marketing, you can sometimes avoid this type of intrusion. If people want to ignore your online ads, for example, they can do so. But if they are intrigued by what you are offering, they can click on the ad and follow it to your site.

And digital marketing has the potential to go viral, something traditional marketing really can’t do, other than by strict word of mouth.

With digital, a post, video or social media meme can spread around the world in minutes, giving you the ultimate in marketing success.

Traditional Marketing and Digital Marketing 

As you can see, there are reasons to hang onto traditional marketing techniques, as well as reasons to move forward to the world of digital marketing.

Depending on what you and your company needs, you might even want to try some of both.

Either way, this primer should have given you a better sense of the pros and cons of each. And now it’s up to you to decide which strategy fits your company, your brand, and your marketing goals.

If you have questions or want to know more, contact us today!

Today’s business climate is an extremely competitive one and it’s difficult to keep up especially in the digital world.

When potential clients are looking for business services or products online, more than 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, and 47% of people click on one of the first three listings. 

How do you get noticed by online search engines?

The answer is SEO. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It’s one of the most effective ways to get traffic to your website and get your business’ website to rank at the top of search results.

Though many business owners are tired of marketing companies that try to sell SEO services, most businesses would certainly love to be at the top of search results.

Here’s what our San Diego SEO Expert has to say about staying relevant today.

The Basics of Understanding SEO

You, along with most business owners realize that SEO is of great importance in this day and age. But do you really know what it is, and how it can change your business?

Any SEO expert will most likely tell you that the process is complicated and takes tens of thousands of hours to perfect. And that is true.

Yes, it’s about knowledgeable, technical experts who know the how, but our SEO expert in San Diego knows that it’s not JUST that. It’s about diligently optimizing campaigns to increase rankings. It’s also about the business owner understanding the basics, and understanding the goals.

The basic process of SEO is as follows:

Keywords Research

Competition Research

Creating a short and long term strategy

On-page optimization

Off-page optimization

Content Creation

Connecting With High Authority Websites

Posting articles in major online publications

Measuring results

Making adjustments

And More…

The SEO process sounds simpler than it actually is, but, if you spend any significant time with your SEO specialist, then you can begin to really understand the depth of their job.

The key to SEO success is that your SEO Expert needs to understand what you want to achieve for your business. It sometimes takes SEO Experts that think like business owners to create an SEO strategy that really works.

Keyword Research and Competition Analysis

An SEO expert may not understand your competition as well as you do, however, they have an advantage of incredible data and statistics about your competitors that most business owners don’t have.

If their website is showing up on search results that are higher than yours, they’re doing something you are not. It’s an SEO expert’s job to find out what that is.

This is where keyword research and your competitive analysis comes in.

There are keyword research tools that are available to understand your competition and what it takes to surpass them in the ranking.

Once your SEO Specialist has defined your keywords this will form the basis for rearranging your website, your content, and other elements so that you can move up the search results ladder.

Knowing your own keywords is only part of the process.

The next is to be in the know on what your competitors are doing. Find those websites that seem to be performing better than yours. Make notes of phrases and keywords that show up regularly throughout their website.

These are the phrases that might be helping their website perform better than yours, specifically if they’re not on your website.

There are tools that your SEO Expert will use that helps this process so that hours are not spent crawling the web for these insights.

Combining the findings from your keyword research with your competitor analysis will form a basis for your SEO campaign and content plan.

Website Structure

There are various other concerns that your SEO Expert will need to analyze.

Not only do the keywords and the content on your website contribute to your search engine success, but so does the structure of your website. For example, if you have accordions or tabs on your site that are hiding valuable content, that could affect your rankings, amongst many other things.

Engagement on your website, time spent on your website, and sharing of information through your website also helps SEO ranking. Call-to-actions are a good way to achieve some of this.

The focus here is to decide what the end call-to-action needs to be on your website. Look into examples of CTA campaigns, to get inspiration for your website.

Questions to ask yourself may be: Do you want the user to learn more about your product or service? Do you want them to make a purchase? Or send an inquiry?

Determining how functional your website is for a visitor is paramount. You need your website to be user-friendly with clear call-to-action buttons, and believe it or not, Google will understand by engagement ratios how clear and user-friendly your website is.

Links and More Links

Now you understand keywords, you’ve got an idea on what your competition is doing, and you understand your new website structure and what your call-to-action is.

Yes, you guessed it. There’s more to come.

Links within your website are particularly important to the success of your SEO campaign.

You want to make sure that any links inside your website are quality links. Some larger SEO firms will say that individual SEO Experts aren’t as good as their businesses and don’t have access to as many linking resources as they do. But this is not necessarily true.

Your SEO company certainly needs to include a linking strategy, yes.

By now you should know that high-quality content providing value is the next way to get natural backlinks to your site.

Links are also inclusive to internal linking of your website. The objective here is to keep the visitor on your site by linking to other areas of interest, within reason and staying relevant.

For example, one may be on a page that sells a marketing service, and within that page, the business may talk about branding and could link to another page within the site where they talk about their own branding service and the benefits there.

Do you see what we did there?

We took your visitor from a one-page viewer to someone who stays a bit longer, and the likelihood of them purchasing has just increased.

Hiring Your San Diego SEO Expert

It’s totally worth it to have an agency that conceptualizes and executes your SEO strategy and campaign for you.

When hiring an SEO Expert there are things you need to be mindful of, and things you need to steer clear of.

As mentioned previously, steer clear of organizations that sell themselves as backlink brokers, you don’t want to purchase low-quality links, you want to purchase content that is relevant, high-quality and linked with meaningful connections. A backlink broker won’t give you this.

Read up on the SEO Specialist before you choose one.

Read their reviews and customer testimonials. Most reputable SEO Experts will have a section on their website showing results for previous businesses.

They will show how much they grew the traffic by, and how many leads were generated from their SEO campaign. These are important numbers to take note of when hiring a professional.

Basically, you want to know what their success stories are.

An expert is not an expert, purely because they say they are. As the old saying goes, “The proof is in the pudding!”

Measurable SEO Success Factors

There are a number of factors you need to consider when trying to measure your SEO success.

Obviously, the number one factor would be sales.

But simply implementing an SEO campaign and then seeing an increase in sales is not enough.

You need to know where these sales are being generated from, and who to thank for the leads.

The key success factors look a little something like this:

Increased Rankings = More Organic Traffic

Increased Organic Traffic = More Calls or Web Forms

Increased Calls or Web Forms = Increased Sales

Increased Sales = Increased Revenue

Voila!

When you’re measuring success you need to see in which of the above stages your SEO is performing, so that if one section is not, you know where to direct your resources and attention to make it better.

A reputable, trustworthy SEO partner will have the ability to show you this process in detail, and where your clicks and leads are coming from. Keep this in mind when considering who to hire.

Your SEO Expert should feel like an extension to your team and not simply a supplier. It should feel this way from the beginning, then you know you’ve found the right fit.

Build a Content Strategy to Fit Your SEO Growth Goals

Your content strategy needs to fit your SEO growth goals. Simply creating meaningless content is not going to aid you in your SEO growth.

Building your content strategy solely around your keywords doesn’t mean that your audience’s content needs are solved.

A great way to sort out this problem is to speak to your sales representatives and your customer service department. Find out from them what questions your current customers are asking, because if you solve these problems for potential clients, it may mean that your potential client turns into a sale with minimal effort.

So, this means your keywords are great for developing your SEO campaign but not for your content strategy. Move away from a keyword-driven content strategy, and focus more on the dynamic needs of your audience and how to help them.

This will mean the difference between good content and great content while simultaneously achieving your SEO growth goals.

SEO Jargon or Professional ‘Speak’

There are many words associated with SEO that you will come across in your search for your San Diego SEO Expert. Understanding some of them in basic language will let you know if your expert is on the right path.

Keyword Research and Analysis: what keywords your business will use, which ones you should change and the basis on which to move forward.

Technical Website Optimization Edits: technical terminology for optimizing your website to be indexed by search engines.

Title Tags, Description Tags, and Keyword Tags: different HTML elements around your website that are basically descriptions throughout your site.

Website Content Tweaks: changing the content on your website slightly so it follows your SEO growth strategy ie: small changes here or there that may not be easily noticeable to you or to recurring visits.

Link building, Link Audits, and Management: building quality, reputable links both internally and externally and a continued evaluation on your site through the management of these links.

Competitive Research: ongoing research of your competitive environment in the SEO world.

Google Penalty Checks: A Google penalty is the same as a sports penalty. Your website has done something wrong, whether it be that it is no longer listed in search results or that your ranking has dropped significantly. Checks on these by your SEO Expert should be done regularly.

High Authority Guest Posting: Authoritative posting by your business on other reputable websites thereby making you an authority in your industry.

SEO Blog Writing: The blogs and articles on your site should not only be content-driven with a goal but also include the elements from your SEO strategy.

Directory Citation Building: A citation is a mention of your business anywhere on the web. These are great for local businesses trying to maintain a geographical excellence rating.

Automated Review Systems: Reviewing your site regularly so that performance issues are not punished in search rankings.

Google Maps and Google My Business: Making sure that your business information is correct, always.

Reports and Analysis: Ongoing reports for how your SEO Campaign is performing, your SEO Expert should report and analyze continuously throughout your campaign.

Now that you have the lingo, you may have a better understanding of what your SEO Expert is talking about when you have your initial meeting and start talking goals, services and expectations.

Benjamin Franklin

As the great Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

We’ve armed you with the most actionable tips in the search for a San Diego SEO expert!

Although, we think you’re already in the right place.

Fill out the form, and MAD Group will do all of this and more for you and your business.

SEO Expert San Diego, over and out.

Trying to keep your business ahead of the competition in 2022?

Are you staying on top of the latest digital advertising trends?

In the digital age, everything is changing and that includes the way that brands advertise their goods and services to potential customers. There are more opportunities than ever to get a message in front of an audience, and 2022 is bringing even more varied options than ever before.

If you want to keep your business competitive, you need to look for ways to implement some of these digital advertising trends into your own marketing plan.

Luckily, we’re here to help. Below we’ll look at the top digital advertising trends you need to know about in 2022.

1. Stories Are Becoming More Popular

One of the biggest up and coming trends in advertising is the use of Instagram and Facebook stories. Taking inspiration from Snapchat, stories on social media platforms are posts that show up and disappear after 24 hours.

This type of advertising seems more authentic and spontaneous to social media users and can be a great tool for marketing a business in a fun and attention-grabbing way. Stories ads are highly engaging to users on these platforms. If done right and in a creative way, they can be a goldmine for a business trying to build their brand online.

You can expect to see a bigger increase in the use of Instagram and Facebook stories during the coming year as more advertisers learn just how useful this type of content can be.

2. Advertisers Will Use Chatbots and Messengers

Chatbots and messenger marketing are also proving to be great options for advertisers in the digital age. These tools allow you to instantly market your services and goods to a social media user and get your message in front of them when they need it most.

Whether you have a special promotion going on that you want a follower to know about or you want to remind a customer about an abandoned shopping cart, using messengers can be a great way to reach them.

In addition to messenger ads, chatbots can be great to use on a website or a social media page. They can connect with customers and help them find what they’re looking for. Chatbots can help with customer support questions but can also help a customer choose the right product for their needs.

3. Online Giants Are Expanding

Online giants such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon are all growing and expanding at a rapid rate. They’re trying to get their hands into as many pots as possible. The lines are starting to blur online as each of these big companies continues to expand their offerings to users online.

For example, through the use of Instagram, Facebook is now becoming a bigger player in the e-commerce arena. Amazon’s influence is ever growing and Google is continuing to be as strong as ever.

As each of these sites expands to offer more services from music streaming and video streaming to video to social tools, advertisers will need to expand their toolsets as well. Advertisers will need to experiment with the many different avenues that become available to them to find an advertising platform and strategy that works for them.

4. Voice Search Is Growing

Voice search has been on the rise for some time, but in the age of Amazon’s Alexa, it is becoming even more important for brands to be aware of voice search for advertising purposes.

For anyone working on SEO as a form of marketing, it will be important to be more conversational with site content and to optimize for searchers who will be using their voice. More businesses will also turn to voice-based advertising to get new customers online.

Advertisers will need to be aware of voice searchers and plan accordingly if they want to make use of this growing demographic of people who are searching for goods and services using smart devices rather than a web browser.

5. More Advertisers Will Use Remarketing

Remarketing ads have been around for a while, but more advertisers are starting to recognize just how useful they can be. With remarketing, advertisers can target users who have already visited their business website, bought a product, or who have interacted with their business in some other way.

Remarketing is one of the most effective ways to advertise online and can easily be done using platforms such as Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. More businesses are recognizing the importance of this “warm” type of advertising, so you can expect to see more of it happening in 2022.

6. eCommerce Ads Are On the Rise

eCommerce is also joining the force of online advertising. Amazon, for example, has made the leap into the advertising scene recently. Chances are that other major retailers will follow suit as well to claim their piece of the advertising pie.

While Google and Facebook have been the biggest avenues for online advertisers in recent years, the tables may turn as Amazon and other retailers start to join the advertising game as well. You can expect this rise in eCommerce advertising platforms to change the digital world a lot over the coming years.

7. Influencers Will Become More Influential

Influencer marketing has become bigger than ever over the past few years and is continuing to grow quickly in 2022. Businesses started working with influencers heavily a few years ago, and their presence in advertising budgets only seems to be growing.

You can expect to see more of this type of influencer marketing and partnerships in the digital space in the coming year. Whether this type of advertising includes Instagram stars, Youtube celebrities, or other social media giants, many more influencers will be joining up with businesses to promote products and build brands over the course of 2022.

Learning to Use These Digital Advertising Trends in 2021

By making use of the digital advertising trends above you’ll set yourself apart from your competition and get more new customers that will grow along with your business. Make sure you look for ways to incorporate these trends into your advertising strategy if you want to move your business forward in 2022.

Ready to get started with a great advertising plan in 2022? Contact us today to learn more about what MAD Group can do for your business.

Finding the right marketing agency for your small business can be difficult. Let us help.

The drastic changes and advances in marketing practices these days are getting hard to keep up with. There’s no telling where it’ll go next. If you’re running a small business, you might not have the time or resources to put into a proper marketing campaign.

Sometimes, it’s just easier to admit that you need help. There are marketing agencies all over the country that specialize in digital and old school marketing tactics. So, why not pay up and get your business marketed the right way?

Finding a marketing agency can be difficult, however. It’s a fine line between symbiotic and confusion in the marketing world. It’s good to have help from a marketing agency but if they don’t capture your voice or the identity that your business is going for, then there’s no point.

In this article, we’re going to tell you how to find the best marketing agency for your company’s important needs. It’s about time someone other than you did something around here, right? 

Finding the Best Marketing Agency for You

There are certain steps that you should take when looking for the right marketing agency. It’s all about knowing who you are, the demographic you’re trying to appeal to, and being able to trust someone to nail your brand. Here’s what you’ve got to do.

Know Your Own Brand

Who knows you better than you? You can’t go into this search process without having a strong sense of identity for your company. The company branding ultimately comes down to you and your employees’ cohesiveness when it comes to identity.

It’s important to be able to take yourself out of it and see your company through the eyes of the demographic that you’re targeting. If you can do that, you can better figure out how to appeal to their wants and needs.

When you start researching and interviewing marketing agencies, you’ll be asked questions about what your brand is and where you want it to go. If you’ve got a strong sense of it then you’ll have a much easier time finding the right agency.

Figure Out Your Needs

The other thing that you should do before you even start Googling marketing agencies is to figure out what your needs are. Start a doc with some of your higher ranking employees and make a list of what you want to accomplish by hiring a marketing agency.

Having a sense of where your strengths and deficiencies are as a company, and being able to communicate that to the agency representative, will make this process much easier. 

If you’re a new company, maybe you’ll want them to focus on creating brand awareness. If you’re an online shop, maybe you want to see increased sales. If you’ve been in business for a long time, maybe you’ll just want a digital marketing update to keep up with your competitors.

Marketing agencies provide a wide range of services from digital, email, and video marketing to social media, website, and brand development. So, knowing what you need is a good way to start your search.

Start Searching

Okay, now you’re ready to start searching. It’s not surprising that the best way to find your new marketing agency is through Google. All the research that you’ve done prior to this will help you in the beginning stages of your search.

Depending on what you’ve decided your needs are, you can specify your search to get the best results. Using local SEO to take advantage of Google’s search results should be something your prospective marketing agency is aware of and able to help you with. 

For instance, if you’re in southern California and you want an agency to help with your social media marketing, then you’d type in “southern California social media marketing agency,” and see what comes up. 

Be wary of paid ads that appear at the top of the SERP, but you shouldn’t have to do too much digging to find a good marketing agency.

Online Presence

When you’ve found a few suitable candidates, scope out their websites. In this case, judging a book by the cover is actually a smart thing to do. If their website is outdated or hard to navigate, how are they supposed to help you with your digital marketing?

Secondly, you should be able to easily find information on what you’re looking for through their site. In the example above, we were looking for social media marketing in So-Cal, so it should be clearly displayed that they offer this service on their website.

Take a look at their social media numbers as well. Do they have a good number of followers? Do their branding and online presence appear to be in-line with what you want to do?

It’s okay to scrutinize everything about what they’re presenting online because these are the people that will be handling your marketing campaign.

Testimonials

Any reputable marketing agency will have a testimonials section on their website, but how do you really know that it’s an honest representation of what happened?

While this can be a good source of information, you should bring this up when you start having meetings with them. Don’t only focus on their success stories, either. A good company will be able to openly discuss where things have gone wrong in the past and how they use that information to be better in the future.

You can also go as far as talking to other businesses that they’ve worked with before to get an idea of what they’re like to deal with. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak, so don’t be afraid to narrow your search in this way.

Interview Different Companies

When you start interviewing your top candidates, keep in mind what you’re hiring them to do. They should be able to focus in on how they can help your business thrive in today’s digital marketing-heavy world. 

Have a list of important questions prepared for them and don’t be afraid to tell them if you don’t like one of their answers. You’re paying good money for this service and you should have it done right.

In the end, you’re going into business with this company, so you should enjoy being around them. A simple meeting over coffee or beer should give you a sense of how genuine they are, not only with you but with your customers too.

Start Your Marketing Agency Search Today

Alright, now you’re all set to start your search for the best marketing agency. Remember, you don’t have to settle for the first thing. It’s important to take your time and find the right people to take the marketing for your business to the next level.

Mad Group is San Diego’s premier digital marketing agency; we provide a range of services from website building to branding makeovers. Contact us to get the ball rolling on a new marketing campaign for your business.

In 2021, businesses around the world outsourced over $85.6 billion worth of marketing. The businesses came in all shapes and sizes, with unique desires and diverse needs. The question is why did they choose to pay someone else to run their marketing campaigns?

The answer is simple: the benefits outweighed the costs. The return on their investment made it worth their while, and it isn’t a new trend. Companies have been outsourcing their marketing since before humans created the barter system.

The difference is that now there are more reasons to outsource than ever before. In the article below we outline these reasons in broad strokes.

Curious to learn more about the benefits of outsourcing your marketing?

When you’re ready to learn why businesses like yours hire professionals to run their campaigns, read on.

You Can Scale Easily

We live in an era in which competition is steep. It takes more to build a business—more time, more expertise, and more money. Businesses have developed new strategies to contend with these pressures.

They must grow rapidly to keep from smothering under the shadow of their competition. They also must downsize to contend with the rapid fluctuations in the economy. Fortunately, technology makes scaling a business a straightforward process.

When you outsource any part of marketing, what you’re doing is renting marketing experts. You can rent them for as short or as long a period as you like. If you don’t find one marketing team beneficial, then simply switch to another one.

That also means you don’t have to pay benefits, sick leave, or deal with the headaches of hiring and firing employees. Scale up when you need a boost to your sales. Scale down when you’re struggling for cash. It’s as simple as that.

You Get the Expertise of Marketing Masters

Many small companies simply can’t hire in-house marketers. They don’t have the budget to keep an extra person on staff. Even if they did, they would be hiring a single person for the job.

Unfortunately, marketing in this day and age often requires proficiencies in many fields:

• Social media advertising
• Blogging
• Copywriting
• Graphic Design
• Web Design
• Coding
• SEO
• Etc.

No single person is a master of all these. Only a marketing group could claim expertise in all those fields. Large corporations still hire experts to fill each of these rolls on their marketing teams.

Well, now small businesses can do the same. Or at least they can rent them to build their marketing formula, social media campaign, or whatever else they need.

You Increase the Chances to Get a Better ROI

When you hire an expert, what you’re doing is bypassing the learning curve that comes with learning any new skill. Think about it for a minute.

If you’re new to digital marketing, you’d need to create ads for search engines and social media platforms. That alone means understanding the intricacies of the platform and the habits of its users. It also means mastering the art of persuasion, copywriting, color theory, and a whole laundry list of other skills.

The whole time you’re doing this, you must pay for your mistakes. Quite literally. Those mistakes add up quickly and can easily put your business in the red.

When you outsource, you pay marketing experts not only for their time, you pay them for their history. They’ve years of experience. They’ve already learned from their blunders, so they’re likely to skyrocket the return on your investment.

You Can Focus on What’s Most Important

As you know, owning a company requires you to play many roles. Nowhere is this more obvious than for the solopreneur. Unfortunately, solopreneurs have a finite amount of time each day to do their tasks.

When solopreneurs split their attention, they’re pulling time away from critical areas in their business. For most owners that includes areas that need high-level thinking and strategic planning. Without these, a business will stagnate and fall apart.

The same is true for small and mid-size businesses. Owners must have a vision for their business. It’s the only way to assure growth.

If an owner must pull his focus away from that vision and focus on the minutiae, he leaves his ship without a captain. That’s a certain recipe for disaster.

You Stay Current

Have you read up on the video marketing trends of 2021? What about Neil Patel’s latest blog post on optimizing a landing page?

You see, that’s the double-edged sword of progression. The availability of new tools can have a profound effect on the success of a business. Unfortunately, navigating the ever-changing terrain requires vast amounts of energy.

It makes it impossible for a single person to stay current on an entire industry. There’s so much information that you can only remain up to date on a small range of subjects. If you attempt to stay current on digital marketing, you’re going to lag behind in another area.

When you outsource, on the other hand, you’re assured that your marketing team already knows the latest information. They won’t waste their time on outdated methods. The best part is that you don’t have to pay for the time they spend sifting through blog articles and attending conferences. It comes free with the package.

One Quick Caveat Before You Go

The sections above presume that you hire a qualified marketing team. Unfortunately, the industry is clogged full of pretenders with little experience and even less know-how. If you plan to outsource your marketing, perform your due diligence.

That means figuring out what you need. It means checking the background of whichever company you choose to hire. It also means avoiding cheap labor, and realizing experts cost money. Fortunately, the ROI is worth it.

After You Read the Benefits of Outsourcing

Now that you understand the benefits of outsourcing your marketing, it’s time to evaluate your business. Check to see if your business would benefit from more visitors to your website and more sales. If so, dig around in your budget and see how much money you could allocate to hiring a marketing team.

If you found this material enlightening, pop over to our library and browse our other spectacular marketing articles. So long and good luck!

Did you know the global digital advertising market is worth over $192 billion?

Are you curious about the difference between advertising vs. marketing? Not to worry! In this article, we’ll go over the differences between the two and how they work together.

Want to learn more? Keep reading to find out!

Advertising Vs. Marketing: A Guide

Marketing includes the business of strategizing to promote services, products or brands. This is an umbrella term including all the things you do to spread the word about your business.

This includes setting up social media channels, creating graphics, and advertising. Advertising falls under the category of marketing and is the end piece of a marketing strategy.

For example, it’s understood as the practice of calling attention to a business’s service or product. Traditional advertising includes TV commercials or radio ads. You might find an ad in a newspaper or magazine, or even on a billboard.

Digital marketing strategies focus on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Another example is putting paid ads on social media platforms.

Let’s take a look at both in more depth.

PPC and Social Media Advertising

PPC is a form of advertising that works with marketing. Your business’s charged a minimal fee when someone clicks on your ad link.

This advertising depends on a good understanding of your audience and keywords. If you aren’t found on the internet with a common search term, you might miss out on possible sales.

Search engine optimization is a part of digital marketing that helps you get found on Google. If you need help with this, contact a professional. Specific companies help you with SEO services. 

Combine both PPC and social media advertising. Knowing what social media platforms your audience uses provides you with insight. You can make a strong advertising strategy and reach new customers this way.

You’ll have increased traffic to your website. You may see stronger engagement from your target audience.

To have success with an advertising campaign, you need to do some marketing research. Combine these two elements for a greater chance of success.

Research the Market

Conduct product testing and surveys. You’ll gain insight into what your customers seek and what they’re willing to spend on.

If you advertise without doing any market research, you might not succeed. Don’t waste your money. Take the time to research your audience before launching ads.

Break Down Your Marketing Strategy

Separate your plan into four phases: product, place, price, and promotion.

Product refers to services you’ll bring to the marketplace. These products or services will meet specific consumer demand. Consider factors like perceived value and margins for pricing.

Look into strategies like franchising, selective distribution, and exclusive distribution. This also includes physical outlets like online sales platforms or brick and mortar.

How will you promote your brand? This is an essential facet of your strategy. You’ll figure out how you’ll communicate about your services and products.

Do You Have a Brand?

You may offer an excellent service or product to customers. But without a brand, it’s hard to build a loyal following. With a logo or catchy name, you’ll stand out from the crowd. This is how marketing comes into play.

Consider using the same colors in your advertisements. Include your logo in marketing materials, so your customers remember you. This will help you build brand loyalty. When a brand has a strong identity, customers can relate to it. 

Build a unique website that has a lot of information customers seek and is easy to navigate. If the elements on your website match your brand, customers will recognize you. 

Do You Have a Social Media Following?

You may have unique advertising ideas, but you first need a social media following who will see these ads. Aim to find audiences with similar purchasing habits like your customers.

Engage with your followers. You can post useful and relevant content in the form of blogs. Answer questions or respond to comments folks share. This helps you build an interactive community online. 

Try Out Different Platforms

Where do you tend to hear or see ads during the day? Do you have a ton of social media apps on your phone? For example, people use Spotify and YouTube almost every day. They also might watch television or listen to the radio.

Customers don’t spend time in one spot. Take this into consideration when thinking about your marketing and advertising budget. When you’ve researched your target, develop a marketing plan to reach new customers.

Marketing and Advertising Work Together

To find success, you need to have a strategic plan to bring your service or product to market. Advertising is a part of your marketing plan.
Focus on public relations, media planning, brand development, and distribution.

These factors need a budget. Advertising tends to cost a lot, but it works well with other parts of the marketing strategy. This increases sales and spreads the word about your business to new customers.

When you see how advertising and marketing work together, you’ll build a strong business.

A strong marketing strategy will include advertising across various platforms. Create a comprehensive approach to ensure your advertising campaign reaches its full potential. 

Contact Us Today

We hope you found this article on advertising vs. marketing insightful. Take time to build your brand and research your target audience.

Want to learn more? Contact us today! We would love to chat with you.

Increasing customer retention by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. One of the important things you can do to increase customer retention is building a trustworthy brand.

Branding is an essential part of building a sticky business where customers stick around for the long-term. Continue reading this article to learn the top branding trends of 2022.

What Is Branding?

Branding is not just creating a name, symbol or design that sets your company apart from other companies. Branding is your company’s unique personality, character and set of values. It is displayed with messaging, visuals and a strategy. Branding can also be created for each specific product or service as well.

If the market you are in is highly competitive, your branding will play a major role in your success.

Building Your Business Brand to Dominate

When you want to dominate in business, you need to build a trusted brand. With the right guidance, building a brand isn’t as difficult as it sounds. The below tips will help you see what you need to do to keep up in 2022.

1. Customer-Driven

When you’re working on your brand, you need to align it to your vision. These days, if you want to have an endearing brand, it needs to be true to who you are and customer-driven simultaneously.

What do your customers want? What is important to them? If you try to push your agenda on your customers, they are going to run the other way. Companies are getting better at connecting with customers. If you are behind the times on this, your bottom line is going to suffer.

Your customers want an experience they can brag about. Your customers want to know you are listening to what they want. Being customer-driven is the only way to go this year and from now on.

2. Niched Down Brand Ambassadors

Instead of fancy celebs and athletes, brands realize that niched down brand ambassadors are the way to go. Influencers that have a strong following can move the needle for brands more than other spokespeople.

The message of “if you talk to everyone, you talk to no one” is finally resonating with brands. As they niche down and talk to people specifically, brands see they can spend less money on marketing and still get a good return.

3. Content Creating

Content creation is becoming a necessity for brands that want to make it online. Content is a way to stay in front of your target market without being obnoxious. Even potential clients that sign up for your email list often aren’t at a place where they are ready to buy.

Brands that create content build goodwill with their potential clients. When it comes time to buy, soon-to-be customers are likely to have an email or bookmark of the company website.

4. Coaching

Taking it a step further are brands that offer coaching to help with their products and services. Instead of leaving customers to learn everything on their own, live webinars and Q&A sessions are put in place to help customers with their purchases.

Clients that get coaching are more likely to stay on with the company. The reason customers are more likely to stay on with companies that offer coaching is that they know how to use the product. Since they know how to use the product, they will get the results they want and continue to use the product or service.

While coaching through webinars and other mediums may cost the company money, the retention they are able to get makes up for it. Many times the retention doesn’t only make up for it, but it brings in more revenue.

5. Varying Logo

Branding experts have been against changing logos for as long as we can remember. Now not only are experts changing their tune about upgrading their logo but now companies may have more than one logo. Depending on the platform the logo is being displayed on, it may be a different variation.

6. Super Detailed

Companies are taking their logo and design to the next level. Creating super detailed and intricate designs and logos are meant to draw customer attention.

7. Neo-minimalism

Neo-minimalism is having a very minimal design with a lot of negative space. The parts that are not negative are very bright and colorful hence the neo in the name.

8. Playful Interactions

If you’ve interacted with any highly popular brands lately, you may have noticed that they have various playful interactions in place. You might see some funny hamster or cat gifs. Other companies even say funny things when they welcome you to their email newsletter.

Exciting Developments Happening in 2022

Even though we’re not even halfway through the year, it is easy to tell there is something special in the air. Developments are happening at an increasingly fast rate from voice search to augmented reality.

Now is the perfect time to be a business on the rise. The opportunities are endless and working on your brand is a necessity to capitalize on this exciting time in history.

Old brands are rethinking their strategies and trying to keep up with upstarts that challenge their market share. Companies that can “out think” the big guys have the opportunity to compete and even surpass some of the companies that are most well-known.

Every element of businesses from chatbots to online portals will be branded to get customers to embrace the message and community of the company. The use of the term family continues to rise, and more companies are creating a group of closely connected community members.

A Worry-Free Branding Strategy

Do you think that branding is important, but you’re not sure where to get started? Maybe you don’t want to go through the whole process on your own.

Instead of trying to figure out everything on your own and executing your plan on your own, let us help you. Contact us today to learn how we can help you put together a branding strategy that works for your business and market.

branding

The value of good writing goes unnoticed until it doesn’t. In other words, you could read a million perfect memos and never really pay attention to the writing. Once that horrible memo is sent out, though, you can’t take it back.

Bad writing is as embarrassing as it is difficult to follow. It doesn’t stop there, though.

Good copywriting can have invisible effects that ripple all throughout your business. We’ll talk more about that idea in this article, hopefully giving you a greater appreciation for the copywriter in your office.

The Importance of Good Copywriting

Our example of the memo might be a little bit dated. Today, most copywriters write web content that exists on your business’ website or social media pages.

You may think that you have the skills needed to create all of your web content. You very well may have those skills, but are you sure? You could be just like the person who thinks they’re really good at karaoke but clearly isn’t.

Good copy can be convincing, enticing, and set up a positive image for your company. Back in the day, a copywriter would pair with someone in design or illustration to complete the final document to be published.

Now copywriters are expected to have a knowledge of graphic design and web software that can help them make a page look excellent without the help of another professional.

We’re going to break down the value of copywriters into two categories. First, we’ll discuss the benefit that these people can have for your business. Second, we’ll go over the difference between good and bad writing.

What Good Copywriters Can Do

As things in the business world continue to shift online, more and more writing will need to be done. Everything from regular, quality blog content to product descriptions and web copy will be things that you need more and more.

If you look at a high-end company with a good website, you’ll notice that it feels different than your average stop online. In many cases, websites seem hacky, shoddily thrown together and not trustworthy.

Those sites that don’t immediately gain our trust are ones that are significantly less likely for us to make purchases on. A part of that impression is due to good web design, but the other end is the copy.

If you’re reading the front page of a site and there’s a typo, what does that say about the quality of the site? How about in blog posts? Product descriptions?

The reality is that if you notice an error in copywriting, you’re going to have a lower opinion of the website that you’re on. Further, you’ll have a lower opinion of the product or service on that website.

Narrative and Skill

Think about that hastily written, poorly thrown together blog post that you read last week. You had to sift through the text, trying to get what you needed and get out without having to read the whole thing.

The writing was uninterested, you weren’t looking forward to the end of the post, and you certainly didn’t follow any links back to the site’s other pages. That sounds like web copy written by an unskilled writer.

A good blog post will be composed of a solid framework and compelling ideas. A good writer will catch your attention, push the idea forward and convince the reader to do more research or visit the site at the end of a post.

Additionally, they’ll have solid insights into the thing they’re writing about. One quality of a good copywriter is the ability to research and translate information quickly, even if they have never learned about that topic before.

That means having enough information to fill the page with relevant comments without a lot of fluff. Fluff is pretty much the sentence that repeats itself. A lot of writers get redundant when they’re trying to fill space.

Good copy is absent of fluff and only contains relevant information.

SEO Knowledge

Another characteristic of a modern copywriter is a decent knowledge of search engine optimization. Search engines are essential gatekeepers for your web content and users. If you can make a page look good in the eyes of the all-seeing search engine, you’re going to see the benefits in your pocketbook.

But search engines are fickle, picky things. They use algorithms with over 200 search factors to determine which sites land at the top of a search. Things like link development, keyword optimization, content creation, and 197 more elements contribute to whether or not you’ll show up in a search.

Instead of shooting in the dark with your optimization, try to team up with a copywriter who understands SEO to a degree. Even if you aren’t yet producing blog content to optimize, you will be soon.

Ultimately, Results Speak for Themselves

At the end of the day, you’re going to stick with a writer who actually has an impact on the success of your business. Not only will your business benefit from a writer who presents a great image, but you’ll also experience direct results from those blog posts and copy that makes conversions.

When you can see direct sales coming from a compelling call to action at the end of a blog post, you can be confident that you’ve chosen the right copywriter. Poor writers don’t see those kinds of results.

Keeping a person engaged through the entirety of an article is a difficult thing to do, and compelling a reader to make a purchase is even harder.

Want to Boost Your Web Presence?

The value of good copywriting is hard to understate. There are a lot of elements to a website, though. Things like marketing and great design need to come into play before anyone even visits your page.

Dealing with web traffic and graphic design is difficult when you’re coming at it with limited knowledge. If you’re looking to make waves online with a great website, contact us to see how working with professionals can benefit your site.

Digital ad revenue reached nearly $100 billion last year.

If you’re wondering why, it’s because digital advertising works. Even though tradition formats are still seeing use, the digital world is where it is at for businesses big and small.

But knowing exactly how digital advertising can help you is important. And if you don’t know how it can help, then you might use it for the wrong reasons.

Lucky for you, this article is going to break down exactly how you can use it to your advantage. After reading, you should be ready to be an advertising expert.

Read on to learn more!

Low-Cost Advertising

Nothing is more interesting to a savvy business owner than getting what you want for a low cost. Surprisingly enough, digital advertising is one of those types of things.

In fact, quite a bit of digital advertising is free. From SEO to social media marketing, you can draw in leads for little to no money.

Of course, you might want to spend some extra cash to learn how to do it well. You don’t want to waste your time and energy on something that might not work. There are plenty of SEO and digital marketing experts that will be happy to help you.

There are also some tools that cost quite a bit of money. But if you choose to work with an expert, they will already have these tools.

When you do spend money on digital advertising, chances are you still won’t be spending as much as you would with traditional advertising. Some types of advertising only make you pay for leads you do get, and others cost less than $100 for advertising to thousands.

Can TV do that? It sure can’t.

The low-cost benefit isn’t just nice for your wallet. It also means there’s plenty of room for trial and error. In traditional advertising, this would cost you way too much money, but digital advertising lets you fail and find out what works best for your business.

Target Your Messaging

When you place an advertisement on TV, who sees it?

Well, whoever is watching TV at that time sees it of course. But if they change channels or just happen not to be watching, chances are you’re wasting your money.

With digital advertising, you can target directly to people interested in your product. This means that none of your ad spend goes to waste.

For example, let’s say you sell handmade furniture in the San Diego area. You can actually buy a Google ad that will show up when people in the San Diego area search for handmade furniture.

You can also use social media to target to the exact people who would are interested in your business. If you run a San Diego coffee shop that caters towards 20-year-olds interested in gourmet coffee, you could run a Facebook ad that shows up on that exact person’s feed.

Facebook tracks demographics, likes, and online behavior to make sure that you get in contact with the people you want to speak to. No traditional ads offer this kind of direct marketing.

Analytics Are Awesome

When you’re advertising in the traditional sense, you don’t get to see how people take your ad. You might get a little bit of information about how much your sales increase, but you don’t get any hard facts.

Instead, all you’re left with is guessing whether or not something worked.

This is not true for the digital advertising world. You can see exactly how people interacted with your advertising. Everything from clicks to time spent reading will tell you how your audience likes your ad.

This is helpful because it tells you what to do next time. If you find that no one is clicking on your PPC campaign, you might want to consider moving on to social media ads or content marketing. Or it may be as simple as changing your keywords.

Whatever the case is, you’ll be able to optimize your future campaigns with statistics from past ones. You can also give use analytics to optimize your messaging mid-campaign.

Digital Advertising Is Instantaneous

With digital advertising, it doesn’t take days or weeks to start marketing your product or service. It takes just a few minutes to get started.

As long as you know what you want, you can set up a digital marketing campaign with ease. No more discussions with ad reps or trying to fit into a times slot. The digital market is always ready.

It’s an Emerging Landscape

The biggest hangup people have with digital marketing is that they don’t understand it. It can be complex at first, but after some time, you should have it down pat. And this is an exciting concept.

Digital marketing will always be changing, but if you’re able to get on the horse now, it will be that much easier to stay on. Think about how different the landscape could be 10 years from now!

As digital advertising continues to improve, you’ll see your business grow with it. And as more and more people get used to digital advertising, the more you’ll be able to market to your target audience.

Plus, think about your competition. Are they already on the digital advertising bandwagon? If not, you still have some time left, but they might be starting soon.

Are they already? Then they might have a serious head start on you, an this could cause your business to suffer.

Whatever the case, getting used to digital advertising will give you a leg up on your competition.

Ready to Use Digital Advertising?

There’s no doubt that digital advertising is an effective form of reaching potential customers. And with these benefits in mind, you should be ready to start doing it yourself.

Getting started with digital advertising is easy, but doing it on your own can be hard. If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place. Get in contact with us to learn more.

You know that creating a strong branding strategy is just as crucial as making superior products or offering the most efficient and effective services possible. 

You want to make sure that the content you create, no matter its goal, is consistent with who you are as a company. 

But when it comes to understanding how to actually find your brand voice? 

You’re just not sure where you should start. 

Brand marketing and development is just too important to get wrong. Keep on reading this post to create a consistent, strong, and engaging brand voice for your company.

1. Remember Why You Started

The first step in developing your brand voice? 

Remember why you started your company in the first place. Don’t be afraid to get personal and show some vulnerability here. After all, your target market wants to connect with your story.

They want to feel like you get where they’re coming from, and that you’re willing to be upfront and honest with them. 

Maybe you started your restaurant in memory of your late father, who could cook traditional dishes from his home country that made you feel like you were thousands of miles away. 

Perhaps you got into the chemical storage business after learning about the human and environmental impact of chemical spills. 

Maybe your company addresses a niche market that’s close to your heart, or even that you’re a part of — like working mothers, millennial social media users, or adults over 60 with disposable income. 

Remember: your branding starts with your story. To make it a good one, you can’t be afraid of showing your cards. 

2. Know What Sets You Apart

The next phase of brand development is considering what makes you different than your competitors. 

After all, the reality is that, no matter how much you’d like to be, you’re far from the only game in town. So, what do you have to offer that they don’t? 

Are you serving a different market? Addressing a pain point that your competitor has ignored? Improving on the ordering process in some way? Creating an entirely new product that will save your target market time? Offering automation? Personalization? More choice? 

You get the idea. 

Another reason why you started your company was that you felt that you had more to offer than your competitors did. You knew you could do it better. You saw a gap they refused to fill. 

Use your branding strategy to prove it. 

3. Understand Who You’re Speaking To

Next, consider the types of people who are the most likely to buy your products or use your services. 

In other words?

You need to take the time to clearly define your market. 

Know their pain points, their age demographic, which social media platforms they prefer, the industries that they work in, and pretty much everything you can possibly find out about them. 

The best way to get to know your target market? 

Engage with them directly. 

Create polls that help you to understand what they’re looking for and respond to. Connect with them in the comments sections of your blog posts and on social media. Film a live video where they have the chance to ask you questions. 

After all, building a brand is all about making sure you meet the needs of your market. You’ll need to be as specific as possible to create content that resonates with them. 

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Stand for Something

We understand that having an opinion as a brand can often feel like a big risk. 

It seems like every other day, you read about a new controversy in the press where a brand has put its foot in its mouth. 

There’s a difference, however, between being willfully ignorant and out-of-touch and having a strong opinion about something. 

Remember that your brand, your products, and the services you offer are never going to be able to please everybody — and that’s just not a realistic goal. Instead, it’s about making sure that your branding resonates with your market. 

You don’t need to tweet out an “official statement” on every crisis or headline. 

Instead, it’s about standing up for your values — because more likely than not, they’re the same ones that your target market holds. 

5. Speak Your Language 

Remember that part of building a brand is creating your own lingo and language. 

It’s not about using buzzwords that your competitors drop into product descriptions and blog posts to cover up the fact that they don’t know what they’re talking about. 

Instead, it’s about knowing the kind of tone and language that your target market responds to, and the kind that’s consistent with who you are as a brand. 

Creating a lingo also helps to improve your brand recognition. When someone starts to read something you’ve written, they should know it’s from your brand by the end of the first paragraph. 

Need More Help Developing Your Brand Voice?

We hope that this post has helped you to realize that good branding doesn’t have to be complicated. 

Instead, it’s all about storytelling, clear market definition, and knowing what makes your company the best in your field. 

We invite you to check out some of our work to understand how we’ve created a brand voice for some of our top clients in the past. 

We look forward to being able to offer you the same level of excellent service. 

Whether you need help with branding, social media, copywriting, or something else, get in touch with us to ensure that all of your digital marketing needs are met. 

By Lane Harbin | Guest Writer

As an email marketer, you know that email database decay is an unavoidable part of your job description. This is why you likely spend a significant amount of time on growing your email list. However, building your list doesn’t have to be such a challenge. You don’t need to work hard—you just need to work smart. With the right planning and implementation of the various ways you can grow your email list, you will definitely see results. Here are three of the best strategies for you.

1. Encourage Existing Subscribers To Share Your Content

Social media is a useful tool you should leverage to grow your email list. Encourage your subscribers to share your newsletters and promotions on their social media pages. This way, you can achieve two goals at once. Some ways you can urge your subscribers to share your email content include:

Adding A Personal Touch To Your Email

Every day, people receive tons of emails from various brands. It’s virtually a guarantee that they don’t open every single one. If you want them to open yours and increase the chances of your content being shared, you have to make sure that your message is unique, attention-grabbing, and tailored to the needs of the reader. This is where you need to take advantage of your segmentation and personalization know-how.

Analyze your email list and create a segment that consists of your most loyal customers. They are the subscribers who regularly purchase from you. These subscribers are obviously happy with your brand, which means they are more inclined to share your content to on their social media pages.

You can also segment your email list based on demographic information, such as their gender and location. You can then send personalized content to each of these segments.

If you want to get more subscriber data, make certain tweaks to your sign-up form. Depending on your type of business, your products and services, and the customers you have, you can ask for details about your potential subscribers’ age, the kind of work they do or the industry they belong to, their job level, and so on.

Focusing On Simplicity

Cramming two or more types of content in one email and including several call-to-action buttons can be confusing to your subscribers. The best way to compel your subscribers to take the intended action (sharing your content), use only one piece of content along with a single CTA.

You should also eliminate distractions in the email and keep the design of your email as clean as possible. Doing so will make it easier for your subscribers to remember the purpose of the email.

Optimizing For Mobile

A majority of your subscribers are likely reading your emails on their mobile device, so it’s a must that your emails are mobile-friendly. Social media buttons should be highly visible even on mobile for your users to easily tap them and share your content.

Email Forwarding

There should also be an email forwarding option within your email. At the end of the email copy, you can add a short snippet that explains the benefits of sharing your content. As an alternative, you can create email templates that include a send-to form. All a subscriber has to do is enter a friend’s email and hit the send button.

2. Launch A Referral Contest

Online contests generate traffic, and the tech industry is one of the top three industries that uses them as an audience-building strategy. Most companies run contests on social media, but you can also use this tactic on your email campaigns.

Entice your existing subscribers to refer their friends, family members, and colleagues by running an email contest. Prizes can range from a 10% discount on their next purchase for every valid referral to unlimited access to your content downloads (ebooks, whitepapers, exclusive videos, etc.).

You can also apply a tiered system for your prizes. For example, in addition to a 10% discount for every referral, the prize can be a 55% discount on their next purchase for five valid and successful referrals.

To maximize your contest’s reach, combine your contest strategy with the first strategy mentioned in this article. For subscribers to be able to enter your contest, they should first share your contest on at least one of their social media pages.

Don’t just think about your existing subscribers, though—make it worthwhile for the referrals as well. If you provided a 10% discount to a referrer, the referral should get the same discount. This expands your subscriber base and boosts your conversion rates at the same time.

There is no limit to what you can give to both your existing and new subscribers in terms of prizes. Remember: your contest, your rules. So don’t be afraid to be as creative as you want. The more fun and advantageous your contest is to your customers, the more subscribers you will acquire.

3. Share Valuable And Relevant Information

Sending out targeted messages to every segment in your list makes the content more relevant—and therefore compelling—to subscribers in those segments. This naturally makes them feel more inclined to share your content with others.

Take this scenario: you have a new product that resolves the concerns of the previous model. For a limited time only, your subscribers have the opportunity to purchase the product with a hefty discount.

The resolution of your customer’s pain points, coupled with the sense of urgency and the incentive of a big discount, is the perfect combination to encourage your subscribers to buy your product and provide you with referrals at the same time.

Can’t think of other types of content you can send? Here are some ideas.

Events

Asking your subscribers to attend events such as a product launch is a great way to gain more subscribers. Tell your subscribers to bring a “plus one” to increase attendance.

Fundraising And Charitable Initiatives

Being charitable is not only good for the people you would be helping, it’s also good for business. Customers love it when brands support good causes, so give your subscribers a chance to help out by making sure you share information about fundraisers and other charitable events.

Company News And Updates

Customers like being updated on brands that they follow, so always share significant news or changes in your company.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that because of email database decay, growing your email list requires constant effort. In order to build and maintain a list of engaged and loyal subscribers, you need to continuously, create content that is relevant and informative, encourage the sharing of this content, and find new ways to entice people to follow your brand. If you follow these aforementioned tips, then you’ll have a much smoother road ahead.

About The Author
Lane Harbin is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at Campaign Monitor, an easy-to-use email marketing platform that empowers marketers to send targeted campaigns that grow their business. When she’s not geeking out over email marketing, she enjoys binge-listening to podcasts, catching up on the latest tech news, and constantly rearranging her living room.

As a business owner, you know you need to “build your brand.” You also need to get your company’s name in front of more people so they know what you do.

Are those the same thing? Is there any difference between your brand and your company?

The truth is there is a lot to your company besides your brand. However, it’s unquestionable that your branding is the most public face of your business.

Here’s what you need to know about your brand vs company, and how to handle both!

Your Company: The People Who Work With You

Your company is much more than an image or a brand. In fact, it’s made up of people. The simplest way to think of your company is as the collection of people that work with you.

In a small company, this is the group of people that helps ensure your primary product or service is delivered on-time with top quality.

In a larger company, there may be several products and thousands of employees. You have people in accounting, marketing, customer service, sales, management, human resources, and much more.

In fact, one of the biggest differences between a company and a brand is that some companies manage multiple brands. For instance, Proctor & Gamble is one company, but it encompasses dozens of brands from Tide Detergent to Pepto Bismol.

A Brand: The Public Face of a Product or Service

When you think of “The Golden Arches,” you know it’s McDonald’s. It’s part of their brand. A brand is the way the company puts forward its product or service to make it recognizable.

Before anyone chooses to buy something, they have to decide not to buy other options. The answer to “Why would someone pick you over a competitor” is a key component of your brand.

Domino’s stood out and became known as the brand that would get you a pizza quickly. Over time, the brand became tarnished and was associated with tasteless, low-quality food. To save the brand, Domino’s had to reinvent itself and create new corporate branding.

Companies pour millions of dollars into building and protecting their brands. How can you build a great brand for your company? Here are some ideas.

Building a Positive Brand Image for Your Product

A lot of marketers spend a lot of time being clever. They try to come up with a tagline or jingle or an ad campaign that will give consumers a reason to remember them.

However, that’s not the primary method of building a positive brand. The biggest thing you want to do to build a company brand is set yourself apart from competitors and deliver an incredible customer experience.

Setting Your Product Apart

Why should people choose you instead of your competitor? A major part of how to brand a product is communicating your value to a potential customer.

For instance, Coca-Cola commercials focus on young people having a great time. The corporate brand message is, “This drink will make your life fun.” Red Bull focuses on energy with their motto “Red Bull gives you wings.”

Of course, there are other products that make these promises, but focusing on a specific value that you deliver is the first step to creating a brand. Remember, you want something simple and easy to remember. Give potential customers a reason to try you out.

Delivering a Great Customer Experience

Once someone tries your product or service, it’s vital to wow them. You should have high-quality offerings that deliver on the promises made in your branding.

Not only should your products be top-notch, but the customer service experience should also be extremely high-quality as well. If someone decides to call your restaurant to order pizza, for instance, and an employee is rude, they may never contact your store again.

If someone has questions about your SaaS product, and your customer service is not knowledgeable or they can’t figure out how to contact someone, they will move on to an easier-to-use option.

Make sure your employees, at every level, understand the role they play in creating and building your brand.

Overcoming a Negative Brand Image

Not everyone will have a great experience with your company – it just isn’t possible. Whether an employee had an off day or a customer is just hard to please, someone will be upset.

Sometimes these are one-off experiences and you don’t have to worry about the impact to your brand. Other times, as with Domino’s, your quality has really gone downhill and you need to make a recovery.

Domino’s took the bull by the horns, running ads that showed customer comments regarding their low-quality pizza. The CEO was on the commercial, taking responsibility and vowing to make it different.

The result? Domino’s once again has a good reputation, and share prices have gone from $8.76 per share to over $245 today.

You may not be able to overcome a bad brand image on your own. You may need a professional marketing firm to help you manage your reputation, respond to online mentions, and craft a strategy to turn your brand around.

Brand vs Company: Final Thoughts

In the end, a company is the people who work with you and a brand is the public face of your products or services. Some large companies have multiple brands.

However, knowing the difference between a brand vs company isn’t the end of the story. It’s important to build and manage your brand over time.

Are you looking for help creating a strong brand for your products and services? We’d love to help. Contact us for more information today!

We know that the phrase “content is king” has become a cliche in business and marketing companies. But there’s a reason why content has become so important for modern marketing and business development.

Online ads that are written just the right way can help you attract new customers. Having the right content on your website can help improve your rankings in search engines.

Do you want to create effective content for your business? You’ve come to the right place. When you follow our copywriting tips you’ll be creating content that produces results.

7 Essential Copywriting Tips

You may not have aced English or know much about writing copy, but we can give you the advice you need to create compelling copy for your business.

Having a consistent voice and established brand can help your marketing efforts, but creating an effective message will always involve copywriting skills. If you’re ready to give a copywriting boost to your important campaigns, follow these tips.

1. Always State Your Value

You’re far from the only business trying to get the attention of people on your website. There are tons of other businesses people could buy from, that’s why you need to show your value and why you’re better than the rest up front.

Take time to think about your unique selling proposition (also known as USP) that sets you apart from the competition. Essentially, take time to ask yourself why someone should choose you over your dozens of competitors.

Do you use high-quality materials to make your product? That claim should be in almost every ad, blog article, and social media post you create.

Are your prices affordable? Mention it in your copy in a distinct, clear, and easy to understand way.

You may have one significant USP you want to highlight, or you could have several. Regardless of where you land, you’ll be able to create compelling copy as long as your USP is involved.

2. Avoid Hyperbole

When people write marketing copy, it can be easy to exaggerate some of your claims.

Writing a sentence that states that your business helps hundreds of customers in your county may sound like a great statement, but it can come off as vague and nebulous to readers.

Let’s face it, if you’re a small business with one location it’s going to be hard for people to believe that you literally help hundreds of customers every year.

When you’re writing your copy try to be as specific as possible and don’t make outrageous claims.

Instead of saying you serve hundreds of happy customers, focus on a specific number or take the focus somewhere else. Talk about the quality of your services or the satisfaction of your customers.

3. Back Up Your Statements

Do you feel like you have something important to stay and want to avoid hyperbole? When you focus on facts and statistics to back up your claims, you’ll write effective copy.

Don’t lead statements with heavy statistics and studies. Making a statement and backing it up with facts is much more effective.

4. Be Direct

When people are reading marketing copy, they’re not going to spend a lot of time dwelling on the message. They’re going to want clear and direct action to take.

As an example, let’s say you’re writing copy to encourage people to sign up for your company’s newsletter.

Indirect: If you have a moment, please take some time to sign up for our newsletter with your e-mail address.

Direct: Add your email address and click subscribe.

Don’t beat around the bush when you’re trying to get people to take specific and clear action. Say exactly what you want to say when you’re writing copy, and you’ll notice more of a response from people.

5. Be Brief

Being direct with your intentions is important, and being brief is the flip side of the same coin.

You don’t have a lot of time to capture the attention of readers regardless of what platform you’re writing for. You want to make your point as fast as possible.

Keep your sentences short, and don’t write in long blocks of text. Make your content easy to read and scannable so anyone can get your message.

6. Remember AIDA

Do you want to write compelling copy that can get you the results you need? Always remember to keep AIDA in mind:

A: Attention

Grab people’s attention with a catchy headline or engaging opening sentence. Some people find that asking readers a question can help keep people interested in reading.

I: Interest

Now that you have the reader’s attention, it’s time to find something to grab their interest. Let readers know how your product can help solve your most pressing pain-points.

D: Desire

Stoke their desire for what you’re selling by promoting the benefits of your product or service.

A: Action

Give readers a call to action that makes them do something that benefits you. They could download important sales documents, fill out a form, or call a sales representative.

Keeping these important focuses in mind can help you produce great content for ad campaigns, social posts, and website updates.

7. Keep It Conversational

One of the best copywriting tips you can follow is to keep your writing as natural and conversational as possible.

Think about your own personal preferences.

Would you want to spend time reading long research papers, or would you prefer to read something that’s written to be as simple and easy to interpret as possible?

Avoid jargon as much as possible. Don’t write anything that someone outside of your industry wouldn’t be able to understand. Make your writing easy to understand, and keep it conversational to help keep a good flow.

Beyond Copywriting

You have some excellent copywriting tips that can help you improve any marketing initiatives you have. Now it’s time to think of other ways to help your business.

Be sure to contact us with any copywriting or marketing questions you have. We’re always happy to help businesses find their voice and marketing strengths.

Our blog can give you plenty of insight into how you can use marketing to grow your business. Read our post on how creativity can help boost your next marketing campaign.

Digital marketing isn’t just about dropping a tweet or sending an email.

Understanding how you can attract and communicate with customers, clients, audiences involves staying ahead of new and exciting technological developments in the industry.

But are you too busy running your business to know what the latest digital marketing trends are?

If you are, don’t worry–here are the top 5 trends in digital marketing to look out for this year.

1. Chatbots and AI Are Going Mainstream

You could spend every hour of your working day answering questions for your customers, but is that a good use of your time? If you’re hiring agents to do it for you, is that budget is well spent?

Thanks to the expected growth in the use of chatbots, there’s an alternative. The market for chatbots is estimated to reach around $1.25 billion within six years, growing by nearly 25% in that time.

But why are chatbots growing in popularity? What is it about AI like this that businesses are so interested in?

It’s all down to time and labor costs.

These artificial bots will answer customer questions for you, 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week. They can also upsell products for you, as well as deal with any customer complaints (depending on their complexity).

As AI technology has grown, chatbots have begun to sound more like real human beings, too. Your customers are more likely to be satisfied with the responses the chatbot provides, making them a risk-free addition to your business operations.

2. Live Video Marketing Will Become Even Important

The market for advertisers has moved increasingly toward mobile users over the last few years, with over 50% of ad revenue being generated from devices like smartphones and tablets.

For this revenue stream to adapt, new ways to advertise to mobile users have had to be generated. One such revenue stream that’s going to get even bigger is live video marketing.

It’s all down to how youth audiences are viewing their content.

A survey found that 80% of consumers would prefer to watch a live video from a brand or advertiser than read through a blog. Time is short, and video content can be more easily consumed than text.

Live video can be streamed on existing social media platforms, or through emerging platforms like Twitch, the service for gamers.

3. Increased Opportunities for Influencer Marketing

Live video marketing, like any sort of digital marketing tactic, has to have an audience willing to consume the content. It isn’t easy building that kind of user base, however.

Our advice? Cheat. You don’t need to build up your own audience (at least at first) if you can spread your message by using influencer marketing.

Influencers are authentic, trusted, and with an audience willing to absorb and support their message, whether it’s what to wear, what to play, or what to buy.

There’s going to be increased opportunities for you to take advantage of influencers like these in your target niche.

Getting an endorsement from influencers, using marketing channels like Instagram, can help you increase profits as well as develop your own audience if that’s your objective.

4. More Advertising Through Smart Speakers and Voice Searches

Alexa, is it time to start focusing on smart searches as a marketing tactic?

There are now an estimated one billion or more voice searches, either by smartphone or smart speaker, every single month. That’s why you should be focusing on building your ad revenue through voice searches, but how can you go about doing that?

Your website’s SEO will be a great help here. Long-tail keywords in your site content, for example in the form of a question, can be picked up by voice search AI and spoken back to potential new customers.

5. Newer Social Media Platforms Will Become More Important

Just like MySpace and Bebo died early deaths in the battle for social media supremacy, newer social media platforms look to usurp the main players as we move.

While Facebook and Twitter still remain popular, that popularity is waning, thanks to scandals like data breaches and politicized content.

Newer platforms, like Instagram or Twitch, aren’t immune to some of these problems,  but they’re growing–fast. Instagram, for instance, is expected to add almost 150 million more users.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, social media is still going to be a significantly important part of your digital strategy. It may simply mean that you need to focus on other platforms this year.

Go where your audiences are. If more and more users in your target audience are using Instagram, for instance, pivot your focus there.

Not convinced your business needs social media? Then take a look at why we think your business can’t survive without it.

Don’t Forget These Digital Marketing Trends

These digital marketing trends offer a taste of the future for marketing, and the business world more widely.

AI is taking hold, which is why chatbots are becoming a great way to build customer rapport with your customers without the cost of labor. New tech, like smart speakers and live video, offers new digital marketing tools to explore.

Combined with an increased focus on influencer marketing in newer forms of social media, you’ve got plenty to work with if you’re developing your digital marketing strategy for the next year.

Want to bring in some professional help? If you’re based in San Diego, leave us a message and we’ll get in touch to discuss how we can refine your digital strategy for the better.

In 2021, the millennial generation had the most buying power of any generation in the United States. As a brand, being able to attract millennial consumers is an essential element for long-term success.

Millennials are specific when it comes to what they want from brands. Traditional marketing efforts or having the lowest prices is not enough to win over customers from the millennial generation. They expect more out of the businesses where they are going to spend their money.

Knowing how to market to millennials is an art, but there are a few key ways that you can get your brand on board. You need to start by understanding what millennials want, and then go from there.

Below, we’re sharing a few key tips on millennial marketing that you can incorporate into your marketing strategy. Read on to learn more, so you can start attracting these valuable consumers for your brand.

1. Be Authentic

Millennials grew up in the Internet age, where it was easy for anyone to curate a perfect vision of themselves based on what content they chose to share. Now, as in-demand consumers, millennials are starting to rebel against that. They don’t want their brands to be perfect. They want their brands to be real.

As a brand try to perfect millennial marketing, that means you make your company’s values very clear for your consumer. You need to say what you mean and mean what you say if you want your share of the millennial dollar.

Of course, authenticity means something different to every brand, depending on what your product or service is. If you are a food or cosmetic company, it could mean explaining your ingredients in plain English. If you are a clothing company, it could mean being upfront about where your product is manufactured.

It could also mean owning your mistakes, if and when you make them, in a genuine way. Millennials are willing to forgive brands that have made missteps, so long as they trust that the effort to improve is genuine.

2. Give Them Individualized Attention

There has been a lot written about the unique characteristics of the millennial generation. And while there may be some generalizations that hold true, millennials identify as individuals first and foremost.

If you want to know how to market to millennials effectively, you have to recognize that there is no “one size fits all” type of strategy. Millennials want to believe that the products they buy or the services they use were designed specifically with them in mind. It doesn’t have to be true, but you have to make them believe it is.

That could mean launching an ad campaign with several different elements, each of which could appeal to a different personality. It could mean offering several versions of the same product that could appeal to everyone from first time users to experts.

Even though you are trying to market to an entire generation of buyers, you never want your marketing campaign to make them feel as though they are just one of the masses.

3. Take Advantage of Social Media

In 2018, there were more than 76 million millennials using at least one social networking platform in the United States. That’s a lot of potential consumers. If you aren’t using your brand’s social media platforms to the best of your ability, you could missing out on a lot of their spending money.

Having a social media presence isn’t just about maintaining a company Facebook page or Twitter feed, although that is part of it. Many millennial consumers use social media sites to leave comments or ask questions for brands, so you do need to be monitoring your pages regularly and responding to consumers’ posts.

Marketing to millennials is also about creating moments that they will want to capture and share with their friends on their own social media platforms. You need to give them something flashy and visually appealing that they’ll feel compelled to share with others.

If you have a physical location, think about the design of your space. What aesthetic elements can you incorporate that will entice millennials to come in and take a photo and tag their location for their friends and followers to see?

Even if you don’t have a physical space, that kind of thinking can be applied to product packaging or even customer service. Anything can be an “Instagrammable” moment or worthy of a tweet, so long as it’s unique and exceptional.

4. Have an Opinion

Millennials are typically very politically and socially active. They want to feel good about the purchases they make, which often means aligning themselves with brands whose values reflect their own.

As a company trying to appeal to as many people as possible, this can sometimes feel like a risky step to take. Depending on the type of business you are in, it may not make sense to be overt about your political leanings or to be public with social commentary.

There are more subtle ways to show millennials that are you a socially conscious company. It can be as simple as posting about your company’s eco-friendly initiatives, or sharing photos from the corporate volunteer day.

If you do feel comfortable taking a company stance on important political and social issues, you should expect pushback from some. You may end up isolating one group of potential consumers. In the long run, though, it could be well worth it to attract millennial consumers who will remain loyal to your brand.

Want to Learn More about What Millennials Want?

Trying to market to millennials can be tricky, because millennials demand a lot from the brands they choose to frequent. Their decisions are based in emotion, but at the same time they are very smart consumers who will take the time to do thorough research on a brand.

Figuring out what millennials want is worth it though. Millennials are very loyal consumers, and once they find a brand they love, they have lots of ways to spread it via word of mouth. Without millennial consumers, you may not be able to achieve long-term success.

For more tips on crafting a marketing strategy for your company, please contact us at any time. Did we mention that we are recognized as a top Ad Agency on DesignRush. https://www.designrush.com/agency/ad-agencies

Compared to only 5% in 2005, these days 7 in 10 Americans are active on social media. 

If your small business in San Diego does not have the social media attention it needs, you could be missing out on sales. 

Although promoting on social media might seem scary, with only a few tips you can begin to see the difference. 

We put together some pro social networking tips to help you make it happen.

1. Start by Laying Out the Objectives

As a small business in San Diego, your social media success in the local market depends on how well you promote your accounts. 

Before you start a social media campaign to create more awareness, you need to have a strong plan, set goals, and objectives. If you don’t know what your ultimate goal is, then you won’t know how to get there.

Setting a plan from the start will also allow you to measure how successful said plan is. In case it doesn’t work as you expect it, you can go ahead and change it. 

2. Create a Plan for Each Social Media Platform

There are plenty of social media platforms to choose from. And as a small business in San Diego, you want to take advantage of all of the ones that make sense for your business. 

If you plan to use multiple platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, then you need to have a plan set for each one. 

Remember that each platform serves a different purpose so you can’t for one plan to work in all of them. Think about it as creating multiple mini-plans for each of your accounts. 

3. Select Carefully What You’ll Share

What you post on social media can make or break a business. Before you start posting, decide carefully what you want to share. Ask your team to come up with content ideas that will be relevant, entertaining, and helpful to your audience.

If you what you want to post is neither of those, then you should consider scratching it and starting over.

4. Consistency is Key 

For a small business in San Diego, it’s important to stay on people’s radars. If you only pop on their feeds once a week, chances are you’re not going to create the impression you want. 

Decide how often you want to post on each social media platform. Twitter, for example, moves quite fast, so the chances of people seeing your tweet are slimmer. You might want to consider posting a couple times a day if that makes the most sense.

Facebook and Instagram don’t move as fast, but you should still keep it consistent.

Take advantage of a social media planning schedule so you stay on track of your posting.  

5. Try Posting More Images 

In order to make your business in San Diego really shine on social media, you should take advantage of posting more images. 

While it’s important to also post quality content such as articles and blog posts, or even video, images tend to be more successful.

For example, 35% of images on Twitter get Retweets. That is compared to 19% of quotes and 28% of videos.

Images can also be shared by users across multiple channels.

6. Try a Social Media Management Tool

Small businesses in San Diego will benefit from having a social media management tool to help them out in their efforts. 

When you’re using multiple channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook it might be difficult to give each one the attention it needs. 

Social media management tools make it easier for a business to manage all their different accounts. A management tool makes it easy for a business to:

• Collaborate with the entire team
• Schedule all posts in advance
• Publish across all social media platforms
• Take a look at all the feeds in one place
• Look at the results of your efforts

There are many social media management tools to choose from depending on your business goals and your budget.

7. Listen to Your Customers Before Promoting

Before you start promoting your business on social media, listen to what your customers are saying. 

It will help you in your efforts if you can give your customers exactly what they want. They will appreciate the fact that you have been paying attention to what they’re saying rather than just promoting your business.

8. Find a Way to Measure Your Efforts

You can’t call a social media marketing strategy successful unless you can see the results. Before you let your social media efforts go to waste, you need to find a way to track your metrics.

At the very least you want to measure the following:

• Likes, comments, and mentions
• The reach and engagement on Facebook
• Impressions on Twitter
• Clicks and interactions on LinkedIn

Pay attention to these numbers on a weekly basis and discuss with your team. Each quarter take a look at the overall results to see how you did. 

9. Join Similar Communities

When you’re trying to make your business grow in a place like San Diego, it might help your social media efforts if you join local online communities.

Reach out to influencers in the area and look for ways to collaborate. Also look for other local businesses that are not competitors and interact with them. You might even want to join Facebook groups if it makes sense. 

10. Have a Contest 

If you spend time on social media, you must have seen some business or influencers having giveaways. This is a great way to draw attention to your business.

Consider having a giveaway or a contest and gear it only towards your customers in San Diego. Offer to give them a product or service they really want. 

This will make your audience more engaged in your social media accounts. They will most likely spread the word and you will get more followers. 

Pro Social Networking Tips in San Diego

Use these pro social networking tips and you will begin to see how your small business in San Diego catches the attention of customers. 

Need a little boost with your social media efforts? Let MAD Group help you. Contact us for a consultation and see what we’re all about. 

As a responsible business owner, you know how important marketing is to sell your products or services. It’s one thing to have something consumers really need or want. The question, though, is whether or not they know of your actual business.

That’s where marketing comes into play. Marketing and sales have been practiced as long as trading itself. Over time, marketing strategies have developed into complex plans, but they work.

If you are looking to develop real profits from your startup business, you need to make the most of marketing avenues available to you. A big part of any successful marketing strategy is a well-developed brand. Your business’s brand is essentially your business’s personality.

Statistics show that consistent brand presentation increases a business’s revenue up to 23%. Continue reading to learn all about the proven advantages of branding your business could be experiencing. Don’t get left behind in today’s market.

1. Express Your Business’s Values and Personality

Perhaps you’re first starting out with your startup business. That’s okay because branding is a part of your fundamental business identity. It’s a necessary step in figuring out your long-term vision and goals.

By establishing your business’s brand, your new employees will benefit from its definition, too. No matter if your brand is casual or more sophisticated, your employees will follow suit. In many ways, a well-developed brand inspires their loyalty.

2. Long-Term Advantages of Branding

You need to start thinking of branding as an investment in your business’s future. A well-established brand is important in a long-term business plan.

You need to be able to trust in your consumer base to keep you going. In return, they need to be able to trust in the consistency of your brand. Sure, it might cost some initial finances, but in the long run, your growing presence will be well worth it.

3. Inspire and Maintain Customer Loyalty

As mentioned above, a solid brand can go a long way in inspiring loyalty. Both your employees and your customers need to know who exactly they’re working with. Your business’s brand is the best way to let everyone know you can be trusted in more ways than one.

Your brand’s personality is going to attract customers who have similar taste. This is good news for anyone who fears their business’s brand might be too “out there.” As long as you present a genuine and consistent branding strategy, your likeminded customers will stick around for a long time.

4. Branding Can Affect Your Social Media Presence

It’s no secret that everyone these days is connected to a digital device at one point or another. Technology and the Internet reign supreme over our daily lives. In many cases, your customers are going to first experience your brand through social media networks.

That can be a great opportunity for your brand, though. The fact of the matter is that your business can’t succeed without social media in today’s modern marketplace. The digital world is simply too impactful to overlook, and your brand will heavily affect how successful your online presence is.

5. A Good Brand Makes a Good Online Reputation

Speaking of your business’s online presence, it’s something you should take seriously. A consistent brand is the best way to prove to your consumer base that you can be trusted to fulfill their needs.

In fact, one study showed that around 58% of American consumers conduct online research of a brand before purchasing from it. If you want people to buy your products or services, don’t forget to prioritize your brand’s digital development.

Don’t forget that customers are always going to follow your every move. They’ll even be checking out any online reviews of your products or services. Don’t lose potential business because you haven’t prioritized a positive experience of your brand.

6. Branding Is How You Interact with Customers

On top of presenting a trustworthy persona online, branding can also help you interact successfully with your customers. Consider the definition of a branding strategy as your business’s personality. That expression can be useful in any customer service interaction your business undertakes.

7. A Well-Developed Brand Helps You Stand Out from Your Competitors

As mentioned above, it’s likely that you aren’t the only business in your area selling your products and services. If you want to stay ahead of your local competitors, you need to ensure your business is making the most of your brand identity.

Having a strong brand personality is the best way to maintain customer loyalty. Plus, it shows that you are unafraid to be genuine, and customers will prove to appreciate that. In comparison to potential competitors, if your brand is more recognizable, you’ll get the extra business in your area.

8. Establishing Your Business’s Identity Could Prove Meaningful

Perhaps one of the most important things to remember about branding is its potential impact. Your business is going to profit from a strong brand, it’s true. Even your employees will benefit from knowing exactly who their company is and where it’s heading.

Don’t forget, though, that understanding your own business’s brand could prove meaningful. It can show you the great qualities of your business that you maybe haven’t considered before. In other words, branding strategies are well worth your investment.

9. An Established Brand Will Stand the Test of Time

These days, it seems as though businesses of all kinds are popping up from out of nowhere. Chances are that there a similar business to yours in your local San Diego area. That’s okay, though, because there’s still a way you can stand out.

Hire the Best Branding Services in San Diego

At this point in the article, you should have a solid understanding of the many advantages of branding. Your business simply can’t thrive these days without it. You need to make the most of your business’s brand by really investing in it.

That’s where we come into play. We want to help your business’s brand grow every step of the way. We encourage you to reach out to us concerning our high-impact branding services you could be profiting from in no time.

Over the past decade, the Internet has become one of the most powerful tools for entrepreneurs.

In fact, there are companies that provide products and services solely over the Internet.

Regardless of what industry you’re in or what you offer your customers, you need to take the Internet seriously when it comes to marketing.

More specifically, you need to take advantage of social media. As of 2021, approximately 77 percent of Americans have a social media profile.

This means that you forego thousands (or even millions) of dollars in business if you don’t up your brand’s social media game.

Not sure where to start? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

Let’s take a look at everything you need to know.

Cost Efficiency

When it comes to marketing your business, using social media is one of the most efficient ways to do it. You can get the full benefits of a social media profile for free on most platforms.

By saving money on marketing through social media, you’ll be able to invest those funds into other aspects of your company, such as equipment, scaling, etc.

But, some platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, allow you to pay money to increase the number of people who see your posts. If you decide to do this, however, you should only put down small amounts of cash at first to see what works and what doesn’t.

With enough research about your target audience, you’ll be able to see exponential returns on the money you put toward social media.

Increased Brand Awareness

Having a business profile for your company on social media does wonders when it comes to increasing your brand awareness.

It offers you a multitude of channels to provide your audience with quality content and ultimately direct them back to your website. But, the awareness doesn’t end with just your audience.

Social media will help you connect with other local businesses in your industry. Many times, other companies will return the favor if you send positivity their way, such as through sharing their posts with your followers.

Furthermore, commenting on their posts or page will allow all of their followers to see your brand. While this doesn’t have any immediate results, it’s an extra step you can take to get your name out there.

Improved SEO

While consistently posting quality content to your brand’s blog is crucial to your digital marketing strategy’s success, it’s not the only factor you need to keep in mind when it comes to SEO.

Sharing your blog’s content across your own social media channels has a positive effect on your SEO ranking due to search engines recognizing shared content as coming from a quality, legitimate source.

Plus, having your content on multiple sites allows you to take up more slots on Google’s search pages when your audience is searching for relevant keywords and phrases.

Audience Engagement

If you’re looking to communicate with your audience, a contact form on your website isn’t the ideal option.

When considering the importance of social media, the level of communication that it provides can’t be overlooked. Direct messages provide a quick way to answer questions or concerns.

Comments that your audience makes can be responded to publicly, which gives you the opportunity to display to your followers that you’re friendly, accessible, and willing to help them with their needs.

You’ll also be able to announce deals, contests, and other important information to your followers on your social media profiles.

Humanization

Most people like to spend money. That is, after all, why consumer spending drives the economy.

But, nobody likes to feel like they are being sold something. The more your business seems like a faceless company looking for cash, the less they will resonate with your brand.

Being active on your social media profiles will go a long way when looking to humanize your business.

Everything from your profile to the content you share to the way you interact with your followers will establish that your company is run by humans who care about their customers.

This will ultimately lead to an increase in…

Brand Loyalty

When people identify with a brand, they’re more likely to make purchases from that brand. You could offer the most efficient product or service in the industry, but if you don’t stand out from your competition, you’ll have a difficult time making sales.

Luckily, social media is a powerful tool when it comes to building brand loyalty. Your followers will have access to promotional offers that only available on your social media profiles, which will help create a community around your brand that your followers can participate in.

Level The Playing Field

Most other companies in your industry are using social media, and all of the top players are.

So, if you want a chance at being a dominating force, you’re going to have to build a social media presence for your brand online.

Since your competition is active on social media, you can also research how they interact with their consumers, when they schedule their posts, and what kind of promotions they offer.

The Importance of Social Media Can’t Be Stressed Enough

So, start incorporating social media into your marketing efforts as soon as possible.

You’ll create a loyal online following that will see your brand for what it is, which will ultimately lead to increased conversions.

If you’d like to learn more about the importance of social media and how it can benefit your company, feel free to get in touch with us and see what we can do for you.