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Author: Shawn Kelly

  • Why Branding Is Vital in Your Marketing Campaigns

    Branding and marketing are terms often associated with each other. Though they’re not synonymous, they should be harmonious. Your brand is what you market. The colors, logos, voice, tone, and so much more dictate how you should market your products or services and ultimately show the world (or a tiny segment of it) exactly who you are.

    But wait a moment…what does that even mean?

    Let’s break it down with Merriam-Webster:

    Brand vs. marketing graphic for Search Influence blog post

    As a New Orleans native, I like to think of a brand as the roux of a delicious marketing gumbo. Your branding, much like the roux, is the foundation and soul you put into your overall marketing campaigns. Without it, you’re simply not going to get the results you were hoping for.

    Your branding encompasses who you are as a company and what your customers see. Your culture, core principles, values, and ideas are the foundation of your brand, along with the way you present your company visually. An effective marketing plan will take who you are as a company and personify that as a character who is able to interact and relate to your customers. While your campaigns will have many objectives and goals, the overall structure, tone, and theme of these efforts should be consistent and more importantly, recognizable.

    So with that being said, what makes your company unique? What truly sets you apart, or how do you want to set yourself apart from the competition? Your brand is your company personified, so get creative! You may be incredibly focused on your commitment to quality, customer service, or your community. Customer loyalty may be an issue you need to improve, so build your brand around that key metric. While a marketing plan can exist separately from your values, the most successful campaigns will include your key strengths in the eyes of your current customers and broadcast them to your potential target base.

    Man screaming into megaphone about branding

    So We Got Branding Down…What Next?

    The connection between your brand and your marketing lies within the confines of what will have the biggest impact on the most important part of any campaign:

    Elvis dancing with conversions written in red

    Conversions!

    Getting potential customers to take action and engage with your business is critical. Marketing plans based on Google keywords and Facebook data alone won’t pack the punch needed to grab the attention of a market that is perpetually bombarded with the messaging of your competitors. Simply put, thoughtful and effective branding helps produce engaging content. In a world where the average consumer reads 11.4 pieces of content before making a decision, content reigns supreme in this crazy, competitive battle for attention.

    When your branding is developed and reinforced over time, you can use this foundation to create content that educates customers about your products or services, differentiates you from competitors, and influences your perceived value in the eyes of your customers. This brand-rich content should be utilized in every holistic approach of the digital marketing campaigns you create. (Or we create for you!)

    Gale Henry portrait photo for Search Influence blog

    Don’t Stop Now!

    You got the brand down, and people are converting, but you can’t stop there. This is an ongoing, endless ride, my friend. Between the continual upkeep of your search engine optimization, email marketing, content marketing, social media, and paid advertising, branding never stops! Your customers are hungry for more information from you, so it’s time to put on your thinking cap and start a blog. You can use blogs to demonstrate your industry expertise and meaningfully connect with your audience. It can also help establish your company’s authority in the eyes of search engines to increase your rankings in search results.

    The combined efforts of your marketing and branding can create a powerful message to the customers that you already have the ones you need to target to keep growing. A comprehensive marketing plan will bring in new business, while your branding and customer service will ensure their satisfaction and loyalty.

    Interested in learning more about how your brand is perceived online and how to build a successful campaign around it? Start a conversation with us today! As you can see, we’ve been doing this for a while…

    Old time-y photo of Search Influencer founders Will and Angie Scott

    Images

    Camera

    Megaphone

    Elvis

    Gale Henry

  • Taking the IDK & WTH Out of Texting With Teens – Shawn Kelly From Search Influence on WWL

    Shawn Kelly, Sales Manager at Search Influence, helped WWL crack a difficult (but v important) code—teen textspeak. With two teenage daughters, he’s had to adapt his keyboard fast. Watch now for tips about:  

    • Keeping up with ever-changing text acronyms
    • Establishing open, honest communication with your teen
    • What it means when someone wishes you a “hmg”

    Text acronyms seem to change (almost) as quickly as teens type. At Search Influence, we may not all be fluent in textspeak, but we’re always up-to-date with digital marketing and SEO strategies. Learn more about our digital marketing services and how we can help your business get found online. Contact a strategist today to get started.

  • Why You Should Consider Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency

    As 2018 comes to a close, now is the perfect time for business owners and stakeholders to reflect on the year that they’ve had, evaluate the current state of their firms, and develop solid business resolutions for a productive 2019. We often speak with businesses that are trying to decide between utilizing their in-house staff for digital marketing or hiring an external agency. The post will discuss the factors you should consider when making this choice. Regardless of the current state of your marketing, you should develop a plan that will help you strategically allocate your resources to set your business up for success in 2019.

    Experience

    Marketing is an investment, often a significant one. Spend your dollars wisely and entrust them to someone who has experience generating results. Marketing agencies, whether they work within one industry or a range of markets, should have several case studies detailing their experience with businesses similar to yours and the returns they have been able to achieve. Because your business can approach digital marketing through a myriad of strategies and platforms (Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search Ads, Google Display Ads, Social Media, Content Marketing, etc.), you need to find an agency that can detail how they plan to accomplish your stated goals via the numerous outlets they have at their disposal. An agency should be able to speak to the certifications of their team within each of these platforms, previous campaigns they have run, and their overall digital marketing expertise to help you to feel confident in moving forward. Though you or members of your team may have had some success running a Paid Search campaign in the past, did that campaign perform to its true potential? Which previous campaigns can you compare that to? Digital marketing agencies have historical data and industry benchmarks, as well as teams of strategists, to steer campaigns in the right direction. While a member on your staff may be a self-proclaimed Facebook expert, does that qualify them as someone you would trust to develop an engaging social media campaign across several platforms with custom graphics and promoted posts? Though your in-house marketing team may have some digital marketing experience, do they have the time to navigate the continuous algorithm updates that Google makes throughout the year? An agency’s experience should demonstrate their ability to provide direction to your marketing and, most importantly, a return on your investment.

    Cost

    As with any decision, cost will be an integral factor. Depending on your goals, a holistic marketing campaign may be more expensive than expected. Conversely, doing it yourself, or doing nothing at all, may already be costing you more than you think. A well-designed strategy executed by experienced marketers should pay for itself while also allowing you and your team to save time. Even if you have an in-house marketing team, and many of our current clients do, a digital marketing agency can augment their efforts, increasing your reach and efficiency. Additionally, by having an agency, you will be able to tap into their established tools and reporting. Are you thinking about moving forward with a digital marketing agency but are still worried that the cost will be prohibitive? Share your concerns with the agency you are considering. They should be transparent about their pricing and explain the scope of the campaign they are pitching, as well as the strategies they plan to employ. You can also ask if it is possible to begin your partnership as a piloted effort, in which the agency will be able to earn additional business by effectively performing a portion of the work you are looking to accomplish. We have experienced this situation several times. Though our aim is to develop a comprehensive strategy to reach our clients’ goals as quickly as possible, we have plenty of experience starting off with a slice of a company’s marketing budget and then using the quality of our work and results to prove that they have partnered with the right firm.
    31 questions to ask a marketing agency

    Voice

    Another potential issue that business owners and key stakeholders mention is that they doubt an external agency’s ability to properly capture the voice and culture of their organization. The process of finding a digital marketing agency should provide an opportunity to get an outsider’s opinion of how clearly you’re projecting your voice online. The agency you choose to partner with can help you find or refine your voice and maintain consistency in your messaging. One of the benefits of a relationship with a respectable agency is the amount of time they will spend consulting you during the initial outreach and objective setting process. Most agencies will invest a significant amount of time getting to know your organization and analyzing existing messaging to ensure that your voice is effectively captured and presented. Additionally, you should always be able to review and edit materials they create on your behalf. No one knows your business the way that you do, but through the steps listed above, the right agency can surprise you with how quickly they grasp and effectively market the culture you have created.

    Tracking

    31 Questions Checklist square imageEffective and easily digestible analytics and lead tracking, along with the ability to show a return on investment, are the best reasons for you to consider hiring an agency. You should expect any digital marketing firm you work with to provide comprehensive reporting that offers insights into the impact of their campaigns. This is no place for ambiguity, and the right agency will effectively demonstrate “where the rubber meets the road” on an ongoing basis. Effective reporting allows your agency to effectively hold itself accountable to reaching the goals you agreed upon.

    After considering the four factors discussed above, you and your team should reflect on the performance of your current digital marketing strategy and feel more confident in moving forward with an agency in 2019. Since 2006, Search Influence has helped hundreds of clients improve their presence online. If you still have any questions about how partnering with a digital marketing agency can help your business grow, fill out our form for a free marketing analysis or call us at (504) 322-3828.

    Images:

    Goal setting

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    Tracking