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Author: Sam Merritt

  • How to Drive Better Results with a Stronger Agency Relationship

    Key Insights

    • Define and communicate your goals.
    • Designate a decision maker and stakeholders.
    • Make time for your agency.
    • Be open to sharing your business results.
    • Provide feedback to your agency partners.

    A great relationship and a solid rapport with your agency lays the groundwork for excellent results and ideal collaboration throughout the lifespan of your campaigns. With open lines of communication, your agency can better customize your user experience to you and your campaign goals. If you’ve built a strong relationship with your agency, you’re likely to feel more in the loop with goal setting and goal achievement.

    This post will cover some ground rules for building stronger relationships with your agency and explain how a strong relationship can influence campaign results.

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    What You Should Expect from Your Agency

    When you first hire an agency, setting ground rules or expectations and knowing everyone’s roles and involvement is crucial to having a great partnership.

    An agency should assign you one point of contact versus having you track down the right graphic designer, website developer, or content editor. Your account manager should work as a liaison to agency teams that support all facets of your campaigns and maintain responsibility for all communication. Additionally, your account manager should be knowledgeable of campaign optimizations and, ultimately, campaign results.

    The account manager should set a monthly meeting cadence, with a bare minimum of one monthly reporting meeting per month. In the infancy of a campaign, bi-weekly check-ins are recommended so you can make refinements to the quality of the leads your marketing agency generates. Forbes suggests that ongoing communication helps both the client and agency ensure the opportunity for success while strengthening the relationship. In meetings, the account manager should report and discuss the following:

    • Campaign results & progress (both good and bad)
    • Upcoming optimizations and tactics
    • Needs for photo and video assets to support optimizations

    The account manager should be able to thumb through your current assets and make suggestions on whether or not your assets are usable. If they are unusable, they might pair you with one of their preferred photography or videography vendors. Additionally, they should request insight into how their campaigns are affecting your bottom line and business.

    In order to make sure they positively affect your bottom line, your marketing agency should work with you to define:

    • Clear key performance indicators (KPIs)
    • This includes primary KPIs and secondary KPIs

    KPIs should be defined and established at the start of any new campaign. Your goals should stay central to all conversations since these goals will indicate the success of your campaign. If your ongoing discussions with your agency do not include goals or KPIs, inquire how your agency is measuring success for the campaigns they manage.

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    Define & Communicate Your Goals

    It’s crucial that a business defines and communicates its goals to their agency so there’s transparency and no room to question what you define as success. Your agency needs to know the end goal for your campaign in order to achieve those results.

    When your agency asks you about goal setting, start by thinking about how you’d define success. Ask yourself:

    • Is it a certain revenue number?
    • A certain number of sold tickets or appointment bookings?
    • Improvement in targeted keywords?
    • Increased website visits?

    If this is data you haven’t been tracking for past campaigns, your agency should have a model that will prompt you and your team to make some assumptions. These models should help you set targets or estimate certain metrics, such as the number of leads or the conversion rate.

    Designate a Decision Maker and Stakeholders

    Having too many cooks in the kitchen is never a good thing—and not ideal for your agency relationship. You must determine who will be involved with the agency, both directly and indirectly. Clearly defining one central point of contact to interact with your account manager daily makes communication run smoothly for both teams.

    Having the ability to make quick and accurate decisions ensures your agency achieves success faster. When considering the best point-of-contact for your account managers, you want to ensure that this person has decision-making power. A lack of autonomy could delay projects for days or even weeks until the point-of-contact can bubble up requests for approval to the top person with decision-making power.

    Make Time

    During and after choosing roles and delegates for your agency partnership, ensure your team dedicates adequate time for managing and maintaining an A+ relationship with your agency.

    At the very minimum, your agency will ask you to join monthly reporting meetings, bi-weekly performance reviews, and respond to emails with feedback to information that needs your approval, including:

    • Content marketing
    • Blogs
    • Ad copy
    • Graphics
    • Videos
    • Other assets crucial to the success of your campaigns

    Your agency will want your opinion on creative and feedback on performance in the infancy of your campaigns because this essential feedback can influence the success of your campaigns. Once you are comfortable with your agency and feel like they act as an extension of your team, you may feel comfortable auto-approving creative assets—which then takes a load off your plate!

    Provide Assets

    As previously mentioned, assets can potentially make and break your campaigns. In the startup phase of campaigns, you must provide high-quality assets to ensure the success of your campaigns. These requests might be as simple as logins to your website, CRM systems, or third-party listings such as Yelp, Bing, and Google My Business. This request might also include creative assets such as:

    • Images
    • Videos
    • Logos

    These assets often aid campaigns such a Google and Facebook Display. Therefore, we must use professional, high-quality assets. High-quality assets can help cement the trustworthiness of your brand and products. It’s logical to assume that users might be hesitant to buy from a brand using low-quality assets in their ad campaigns. If you are in a position where you don’t own high-quality video and image assets, you should be upfront with your agency and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Your marketing agency should be able to aid with getting new creative, whether that be leading the charge on a logo / creative overhaul or simply matching you with the right photographer or videographer in your market. Creative assets are so important that it’s always worth investing in five-star creative before launching any campaign.

    Be Open to Sharing Your Business Results

    As you form your relationship with your marketing agency, you should consider them an extension of your current internal team. You want to establish this comfort level so you feel good about sharing business results with your agency.

    Being transparent about your agency’s revenue is the bare minimum of information you should provide. This level of transparency helps your agency understand and calculate your return on investment. Your marketing agency should want to influence your bottom line and cannot know how they affect your bottom line without full transparency.

    Provide Feedback to Your Agency partners

    Ultimately, the best thing you can do to ensure your agency gives you top-notch service is to provide your marketing agency with feedback. A good agency will want to hear the good AND the bad to cater to their relationship and to meet your wants and needs. Your agency should solicit feedback about the following:

    • Quality of completed work or deliverables
    • Feedback on the quality of campaign leads generated
    • Any satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your existing relationship

    An agency is not able to make any changes without feedback from you. Per the American Marketing Association, ​​one of the most complex relationships in our industry is the client and agency partnership—so establishing a good cadence for feedback should be at the top of your priorities!

    If you follow the above six ground rules, you should have a successful agency relationship that feels like a match made in heaven. Remember that transparency and openness on both sides are crucial to achieving both teams’ desired results.

    For more info on our consulting services, contact the experts at Search Influence.

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  • 6 Messaging Adjustments to Remain Relevant During COVID-19

    As digital marketers, a global crisis like COVID-19 (also known as the coronavirus) can affect all aspects of your digital campaigns, from advertising spend to messaging. The faster you can pivot, the better for your business and for your consumer.

    Although there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to handling each campaign or client, here are six key ground rules to follow to stay relevant in the midst of any crisis.

    Graphic showing growing cases of COVID-19

    Align with Local and Federal Agencies and Authorities

    Ensure your marketing aligns with federal and local mandates and encourages safe and approved behavior. Marketing messages out-of-step with government recommendations may come off as insensitive or even be interpreted as malicious.

    • Verify that your marketing campaigns do not call for behavior that puts your clients or potential customers at legal risk or in danger. If so, put a pause on that campaign until the crisis is over.
    • Sign up for alerts to stay up-to-date on all federal and local decisions, since circumstances change daily (and even hourly.) This will allow you to update your marketing to keep them timely.
    • Use local and federal officials as your guide as to when you can resume paused marketing efforts.

    Update Messaging for Closures

    During a crisis, it’s likely that some businesses will have to shut down or limit their operations.

    • Pause marketing that encourages any immediate action that they cannot task. For example, if you work in the museum, zoo, or tourism industries, preserve resources by pausing any marketing that encourages visits to your attractions.
    • If customers already purchased tickets to your attractions for specific dates, provide messaging about how you will honor those existing tickets on future dates.
    • Promote opening dates only when you have a clear picture of when your attractions can reopen.

    Review All Creative

    While maintaining business and bringing in revenue is important during difficult and uncertain times, make sure your marketing is in tune with the current climate.

    • Review all of your copy to ensure the tone reflects current sensitivities and realities.
    • Consider local context when rewriting copy. Are customers and audiences in your market more or less sensitive to the portrayal of a particular issue?
    • Scrutinize your visuals to ensure they reflect current sensitivities. As governments have instituted social distancing guidelines, pay careful attention to creative that depicts interactions such as hand shakes, hugs, and close groups.
    • Constantly reassess campaigns. What felt comfortable to say or portray two weeks ago may no longer feel appropriate.

    Promote Digital Consultations

    If you are a doctor, lawyer or in another progressional service, your customers may still need your expertise during COVID-19 and other crises, even if your offices remain closed to the public. If you are able to make the switch to digital consultations, focus your marketing on promoting these services.

    • Shift all marketing calls-to-action from “Schedule a Consultation” to “Schedule a Virtual Consultation.” Not only does this set the expectation of how and where you will fulfill your services, but it also indicates that you are abiding by all local and federal mandates.

    Maintain Awareness Through Virtual Content

    Stay engaged with your audience and maintain brand awareness by offering fun and/or useful online content. Your audience, especially caregivers of young children, are looking for ways to keep their children entertaining while still being safe.

    • Consider virtual tours If you are in the museum, zoo, or tourism industries.
    • Offer downloadable entertainment, such as coloring sheets, crossword puzzles, or at-home scavenger hunts.

    Consider Optics When It’s Time to Transition

    There will eventually be a light at the end of the tunnel. Make a plan to slowly transition back to your campaigns that were running before the crisis hit.

      • Review all of your campaigns before relaunching and be sure to add in any new, relevant information that might have to come to light during the crisis.
      • Refresh your creative messages to articulate the mood of the current climate, post crisis.

    Unsure where to begin? Take advantage of a free consulting session with one of our strategists today!

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  • Which Social Media Platforms Should Insurance Companies Use?

    In a world where a new social media platform gets launched every other week, it can be difficult to know which platforms to embrace and which ones to ignore. This can be particularly difficult when trying to identify the platforms your audience is already on. As a rule of thumb, you should try to be active on the platforms that matter to your clients. However, as I am sure you know, this is not realistic for everyone, especially a small team or a one-person operation. As an insurance provider, here are the top social media platforms you should be focusing on. A carefully crafted strategy for each platform can boost both brand awareness and lead generation.

    Facebook

    We’ll start with the big one, Facebook. According to Statista there are 2.32 billion active users on Facebook as of 2019, meaning your audience is probably on this platform. If you don’t already have a free Facebook Business page, this is where you should start. You want your Facebook Business page to be in line with the messaging that you’ve established with your current branding. Once your Facebook Business page is set up and optimized, you‘re ready to start sharing content with potential clients.

    When writing posts for Facebook, you should aim for a mix of promotional posts, informative posts, and engagement posts. You do not want your feed to be purely promotional posts where you’re constantly pushing your products or services. While this is an important aspect of posting on social media, it can get repetitive. Adding in informative posts, such as industry updates, breaking news, and fun facts, or engagement posts, such as polls and questions, can help break up your feed and encourage customer interactions and sharing. Engagement metrics are one factor Facebook considers when prioritizing your content within the newsfeed.

    While having a good organic presence is a great start, it’s not always enough. According to Hubspot, organic post reach has dropped to 6.5%, meaning that the majority of your audience (and even fans of your page) is not seeing your posts. To combat this, you need to have a strategic promotion schedule in which you methodically choose key posts to promote with ad spend behind them. This will help with brand awareness and will likely result in new fans of your Facebook Business page, as long as you’re targeting the right audience.

    YouTube

    Another giant in the field is YouTube. Statista reports there are 1.9 billion active users on the platform. Videos are the most engaging form of social media content, so YouTube is a great place to promote your agency.  

    Some might think of YouTube as a platform exclusively for hair and makeup tutorials; however, it’s a great platform for placing easy-to-digest content in front of potential customers. For example, if you are an insurance provider that provides coverage from multiple insurance companies, then a video that analyzes all of your insurance companies and their plans might be the best and most efficient way to get this information in front of your customer instead of making it a long page of website content. A video is more digestible and you can let your creative juices flow when it comes to the direction of the video.

    By being active on your YouTube channel and posting videos, you can share your content on different social media networks. Hosting videos on YouTube also lets you embed video content on your website or in newsletters. Content on YouTube can be shared easily, which is great for utilizing assets across platforms.

    Twitter

    There are 3.3 billion users on Twitter according to Statista. While Facebook prioritizes what users are seeing, Twitter does not. Newer or smaller business with less engagement might have a better chance of getting in front of their audience or a new audience on Twitter. Twitter is known for being a text-based medium, but don’t limit yourself to just 280 characters. Twitter is also a great space to share videos and infographics that are centered on your top products and services.

    If you’re wondering if Twitter is the right platform for your business, you should know that your target demographic is already there. The mascots of the major insurance providers, Flo (Progressive), the Gecko (Geico), and Mayhem (Allstate), all have their own Twitter accounts. They’re also on pretty much every other social media platform.

    You Have to Start Somewhere

    In a perfect world, you’d have a healthy presence on every social media network, but being active on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter is a good jumping off point for building a productive social media strategy. As your business grows and you get a handle of the networks you know are suited to your audience, you should expand to other networks, like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. However, be conscious of stretching yourself or your team too thin. Being consistently active on a few social media channels is better than having a sporadic, unplanned presence across every platform. If you’d like more information on leveraging social media to generate more business for your agency, contact our team at Search Influence for a digital marketing analysis.

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  • How to Improve Your SEO in 2019

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    In the world of SEO, it is hard for a small business to know where to start first after your website is built. Especially if, as the business owner, you have no real background as a digital marketer. Most of you are familiar with the famous line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come.” In SEO, this is absolutely NOT true. You can build the flashiest site out there, however, you are going to need to optimize the HECK out of that flashy site before anyone will be coming!

    On-site Content & Metadata

    One thing that certainly has not changed with SEO is the fact that content is still king. On-site content is a great starting off point, especially for a newer small business. As you build your website, you should be crafting content before your site ever launches. A website with little or no content does nothing for your website’s SEO value and delivers a bad user experience. If a user is coming to your site, they are looking for specific information and are likely looking to get a specific question answered. Frequently asked questions are always a great jumping off point for pages of onsite content. Crafting your content around your business’s FAQs will ensure a good user experience, will improve time spent on site and sessions, and will also help you rank for rich snippets within search engines.
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    If you do not consider yourself a “wordsmith” and are going to rely on a third-party marketing team to craft your content for you, then a quick and easy way to get your website off the ground and get SEO-valuable content up is to tackle your metadata. Metadata consists of your title tags and meta descriptions. Your metadata is the first thing that users will be reading in search engines before they click through to your site, and search engine bots will be reading and indexing this content first. By having compelling and relevant metadata, you can quickly start seeing improvements for relevant keywords.

    Off-site Link Building

    Outside of on-site efforts, you also want to be thinking about what you are doing off-site to strengthen your site’s authority. A great way to build your website’s authority is through link-building tactics, which can be accomplished in a multitude of ways. Local directories are a great place to start! As a small business, you will undoubtedly want a strong local presence. It is important that you have a well-optimized listing on local listings such as Google My Business (more to come on this!), Bing, Apple Maps, and Yelp. It is important that your name, address, and phone number are consistent across the board. This builds trust with Google and other search engines. This means anytime your name, address, or phone number is changed, you quickly make moves to get everything updated, even if it’s just a suite number. With all local listings, it is important that you are linking back to your website and staying active on your listings by continuing to add photos and responding to reviews and questions. Once you have tackled local listings, you can continue your link building efforts by looking into general business directories and industry-specific and niche directories.

    Planning materials for SEO strategy at Search Influence in New Orleans, LA

    Google My Business Activity

    As I just teased and previously touched on, not only is it important to have a well-optimized local listing, it is important that you are staying active within your listing, specifically on Google My Business. Regular GMB activity is important. I previously mentioned the importance of adding photos, responding to reviews, and responding to customers questions. This should all be part of your monthly GMB activity. In addition to being able to have a listing, Google My Business also allows you to add posts, where you can highlight an event, product, or an event. It also lets you keep potential customers or steadfast fans of your brand in the loop with all the happenings of your business. These posts also allow a call-to-action to either visit the website or give your business a call. This a perfect way to get in front of potential clients!

    Leverage Site Speed Tools

    New call-to-actionWhether your site is old or new, site speed is just as important. According to Duda, 40 percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. With that said, there is a good chance your site currently takes longer than three seconds to load! Luckily, Google has two different tools, PageSpeed Insights and Think With Google, that can gauge your site’s current speed and make recommendations on how to address and improve it. These tools can help businesses who do not have a current SEO company helping them identify and address site speed issues. Both tools make actionable suggestions on how to improve site speed. You might want to consult a developer or digital marketing agency before moving forward with Google’s recommendations. A lot of the suggestions will require web development expertise.

    These tips are just scratching the surface when it comes to a well-oiled SEO campaign, but it is certainly a great jumping off point for a successful campaign to start your 2019. For more in-depth information, consult a digital marketing specialist here at Search Influence.

     

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