In other words, it’s easy to get confused. The reality, though, is that this complexity is intentional. If you’re able to master it, especially as a small to mid-size business, chances are you’re able to vault above your competition. That’s digital marketing expertise as a competitive advantage for you.

Of course, it’s not just about spreading yourself thin, trying to focus on as many traffic and lead-generation tactics as possible. It’s about finding just the right mix of strategy and execution, and just the right channel mix, to maximize your marketing spend and optimize your efforts for business growth.

It’s what we like to call “efficient complexity”.

As we move deeper into 2022, it might be time to rethink your digital marketing efforts. If you follow a model of efficient complexity, you’re on the right path. This short and simple guide will help you get started.

Always Start With Your Ideal Customer

Generating traffic, leads, and customers, all comes down to two things: you have to reach the right people at the right time. So let’s start with who those right people actually are.

In other words, who is your ideal customer? Who would you be over the moon if they signed up and became a customer? Some of that answer is likely to be subjective. But it also pays to analyze what you would currently consider your best customers for commonalities in anything from demographics to behaviors, preferences, and pain points. The more comprehensive, the better.

This step will influence every decision you make in your marketing strategy and execution. The more exact you can be in narrowing down your buyer personas, the better.

How a Content Focus Elevates Your Digital Marketing

Once you know who you’re targeting, the focus becomes creating enough attention-getting and valuable content in your marketing to make them pay attention. There’s a reason for that content focus: whether you’re targeting business customers or consumers, the ROI can be immense. Audiences respond much more to content that focuses on their needs and answers their pain points than typical, old-fashioned, promotional messages.

Focusing on content means taking the next step from truly understanding your ideal customer. Once you understand what makes them tick, a content marketing strategy can help you satisfy those needs.

Establishing Your Website as a Marketing and Lead-Generation Hub

Let’s talk about where that content we just discussed will actually live. Here, consider following a hub-and-spoke type model in which your website hosts all the relevant content, while other marketing channels link to it. Generally speaking, there will be three types of content on your website:

1. Basic and promotional information about your business, brand, and product/service.
2. Value-added content that addresses your audience’s needs without being overly promotional, typically on your blog.
3. Highly valuable content that users can’t find anywhere else. This “gated” content is free but hidden behind a sign-up page.

Gated content can be a research report, whitepaper, webinar, or another form of long-form content. The examples range widely. The goal here is to turn your content into a lead-generating machine by making it valuable enough that your audience actively wants to give you their contact info.

How SEO Can Drive High-Quality, Organic Traffic, and Leads

Let’s take a second to talk about search engine optimization, short SEO. In a world of complexity, this is probably the most complex digital marketing tactic. Done right, it’s also the best.

If you want to make sure that users find you when looking for industry and brand-relevant terms on Google, your entire website needs to be organized for the right keywords. SEO tools for keyword research, web performance, and competitive research enter the equation.

Find out what keywords your audience searches for when their needs for a product or service like yours are highest. Then, optimize your entire website and content strategy around those keywords, adding the value your audience looks for at the time they’re looking for it.

Owning Your Social Media Channels

We could write articles upon articles about social media marketing in 2022. It’s a complex topic, but one with a few core truths. Keep these in mind, and you’re on the path to success.

First, choose your channels wisely. It’s much more important to be on the same channels as your audience as it is to be on as many networks as possible. Second, engagement matters most. Organic posts will only appear in news feeds if your audience likes, comments, and shares them. Plan your social media efforts accordingly.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of a conversation. Answer questions, comments, and even complaints fast and honestly. Social media is at its best when it’s a two-way street, causing your audience to feel more closely connected to your brand.

Online Directories as Important Earned Media

Speaking of conversations: many of us now browse the web with a certain amount of cynicism, looking for independent information rather than blindly trusting brands. Enter online directories, which are tailor-made to compare businesses in a certain industry or niche. Yelp, Angie’s List, WebMD, and Capterra are just a few of the many directories out there.

Owning your presence on these directories is the absolute key to online success. Make sure you know what’s being said about your business and products, and how you can react. Complaints need to be addressed, while praise might need to be amplified. Check directories in your industry at least monthly to stay up to date.

How Does Email Marketing Fit Into the Digital Marketing Equation?

Through all the channels above, leads begin to trickle and flow into your database. That’s when it’s email marketing’s time to shine.

Long hailed as the digital marketing channel with the best ROI, it remains one of the most reliable ways to reach potential customers. Once they enter your lead database, your emails can slowly nurture potential customers towards that final, revenue-growing conversion point.

To get there, your emails should not be overly pushy, and reach your audience at days, times, and frequencies that make sense for them. It also helps to automate your lead nurturing flow, building a natural sequence that begins with a welcome email, adds value by highlighting some of your best and most relevant content, and ends with a gentle nudge towards the sale.

Leveraging Data to Optimize Your Digital Marketing Over Time

Finally, let’s talk about data. Every single marketing tactic you leverage online, from your website to social media and email, comes with analytics that can tell you how successful your efforts are. Marketers who can use that data will gain a crucial leg up on others that play in the same space.

Through your analytics, you can determine which of your channels perform the best, and push more money into them. You can analyze which content generates the most leads, or which products tend to result in the most positive results. You can even A/B test your creative to see which visuals and text most closely match audience expectations.

Over time, that data helps you optimize your digital marketing efforts, building a strategy that keeps self-improving to continue driving more leads and revenue.

Ready for a Chat?

From establishing your ideal customer to using your data for ongoing and strategic improvement, you can effectively improve your efficiency over time. But yes, that process is still complex. Fortunately, you’re not on your own. Contact AdEdge to learn more about how we can help you improve your digital marketing and improve the return on your digital marketing investment in 2022 and beyond.

The post Why do I need to focus on so many different digital marketing strategies? appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

Consequently, they don’t realize the adverse effect negative reviews and discussions have on their image. Negative online reviews water down a brand’s lead generation efforts, brand image, and consumer trust.

Statistics show that the average consumer reads approximately 10 online reviews before deciding whether to engage with a business or not. That brings in the question and importance of reputation management. Before delving into that, what is reputation management, and how does it affect lead generation?

What is Online Reputation Management?

Online reputation management is one of the best ways to generate quality leads for your business. With a positive brand reputation, it’s easy for your business to establish authority, build customer loyalty, and ultimately drive sales and growth.

The strategy combines public relations, search engine optimization, and marketing to create a positive image. The process entails monitoring an online reputation and developing the right system to find content that drives people to your brand when looking for it online.

In a digital world where conversations happen 24/7, your business must have a consistent social media presence, online review sites, blogs, and search engines. It will establish itself as an authority in the industry.

The purpose of reputation management is to help your business create a balance and solve misleading information. Proper reputation management should leave your target audience with a positive image of your business and what you do.

While there are many channels to help you achieve online reputation management, the four main pillars are:

• Paid media: This strategy gives you direct control of placement on paid channels like social media ads, Google Ads, and sponsored posts.
• Owned media: These platforms are entirely under your control. The strategy entails creating high-quality blog and website content to help improve your pages’ ranking for the most significant impact on your brand’s perception.
• Shared media: These platforms enable you to engage customers and prospects directly. For example, one negative comment on Facebook about your brand can harm your brand reputation. A quick, transparent answer is all you might need to prevent a negative windfall.
• Earned media: Your business should prioritize earned media as people trust the platforms more. Managing your brand reputation here can significantly impact brand perception and business growth.

Importance of Online Reputation Management

Your brand’s online reputation is everything. Regardless of your business type or industry, people will talk about you online. While you can’t control what they say or think, you can control what they see, which influences how they think.

Your Brand Reputation Affects Sales and Marketing

Reputation management is at the center of sales and marketing. That is to say that it would be an uphill task to sell to people who think negatively about or don’t trust your brand. Good reputation management helps you clear the way for positive messages that influence your lead generation efforts. The more your audience thinks highly of you, the better the conversion rates.

Online Reputation Affects Business Survival

Enron disappeared into thin air in the wake of a corruption scandal and the public relations backlash that followed. Other business giants like United Airlines, Wells Fargo, and BP survived various reputation blow-ups, but this wasn’t without serious repercussions.

These examples show how a single badly handed situation can quickly drive a company to closure or bankruptcy. Online communication platforms make a reputation delicate, which is why you should prioritize it.

Customers Cancel a Purchase Decision When There is a Reputation Issue

87% of shoppers will reverse a purchasing decision if they see a negative comment online about a brand or product. It’s no surprise that businesses invest thousands of dollars monthly in improving their reputation. If your business knew it would prevent a devastating crisis, it would also be willing to pay the price to maintain a positive reputation.

Can You Handle Your Brand’s Reputation Management on Your Own?

You may be able to implement some online reputation management strategies on your own, but how much time and resources would you need for that?

As a small business owner, you have various other responsibilities to attend to and probably not much time left for this demanding strategy. It calls for monitoring online reviews and creating positive content while generating and managing new reviews.

That is when you realize that you’d do better by hiring reputation management services. A well-established reputation management company has the skills, resources, and it needs to handle all the time to handle all reputation issues you may not have time for. These include:

• Negative news articles
• Negative online images
• Wikipedia
• Blog posts
• Ripoff reports and scam sites
• Review sites
• Social media

Each of these platforms calls for constant monitoring, given that search results can create a lasting impact for years. A single negative reputation blow-up can gnaw on people’s minds and the search index for such a long time that it almost becomes the truth. That’s where the science and art of reputation management come in to help you save your business.

A reputation management company will analyze the damage, if any, to help your company regain control and create a recovery roadmap. When looking for such a company, consider how much experience it has in the field. You also must identify its areas of specialization in reputation management. Review its testimonials and reputation and establish if it delivers exceptional customer service.

Partnering with AdEdge Digital Marketing for Reputation Management

Online reputation management services give your brand a voice and an opportunity for your customers to hear you online.

Reputation managers address complaints, track potential issues, remove harmful comments, and provide strategic guidance on managing your business online. They also engage your audience by participating in online discussions about your brand.

At AdEdge Digital Marketing, we want to help you manage your online reputation so that you can focus on other crucial aspects of your business.

Our motivation is your success based on high-ROI internet marketing. Contact us today to schedule an initial consultation on trustworthy reputation management services.

The post When Should You Consider Reputation Management Services? appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

The post Does web design affect SEO? appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

As privacy increasingly comes into play with Apple’s iOS 14.5 update and Google’s planned removal of third-party cookies by 2024, how’s one to personalize ads and messages without all this data? You can’t …but at least everyone’s in the same boat. Successful campaigns will utilize copy and creative that’s more broadly appealing. Instead of relying on data to pinpoint messages to a micro-targeted audience, utilize high-quality, high-frequency ads with natural content. Drive more visitors to your website and retarget them with specific ads based on their post-click activity.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the name of the game. Convert website visitors at higher rates by engaging with them, identifying their needs, capturing leads, and optimizing for conversions. Adapt to this change better than your competitors and you’ll turn this threat into an opportunity to win.

SEO dominance is (should be) the holy grail in any search engine marketing strategy.

It’s a long-term commitment, often taking a year or more which is why short-sighted organizations looking exclusively at ROAS and ROI will always lose at this game. “It’s been three months, and this isn’t working”, I hear often from such organizations. And they quit, putting themselves in the wake of smarter competitors. With Google’s latest algorithm release, Core Web Vitals, load speed time is critical. Organizations that sacrifice animations, pop-ups, plug-ins, carousels, and other slow-loading bits in favor of faster load-speed times will win. Because what good are all these bells n’ whistles if you’re at the bottom of the page?

Google’s recent updates also favors natural language and a positive user experience. Don’t just “sell, sell, sell”, provide useful content that your visitors will take time to consume and enjoy. Google likes this and will reward you for it.

Not sure if SEO is worth the investment? Consider that the top organic spot on the SERP gets you 10x more clicks than the bottom spot and organic listings above the fold deliver 4x more clicks than their paid search counterparts. For the mathematically inclined, let’s say you’re running a paid search campaign and paying $10 per click for the keyword “Best Widget”. If that term drives 100 clicks per month, that’s $1,000 to Google. If you run an SEO campaign that successfully gets “Best Widget” above the fold, that organic listing should drive 400 visits per month …$4,000 worth of paid search ads. Long story short, make SEO a priority in 2022.

Are you an SMB with a limited marketing budget? Focus on what’s great and test what’s new.

With the growing number of digital channels on which to advertise, as an SMB, you need to be careful not to spread yourselves too thin. Yes, appearing across multiple advertising platforms has a multiplying effect on both building brand and increasing the perception of your leadership within your space. But if you can’t reach everyone in your market with the frequency necessary to make an impact, consolidate your efforts to the few top-performing channels. By the way, this doesn’t mean focusing exclusively on tactics that are driving leads and sales. Branding is critical for your long-term success. To measure the success of a branding effort, look for low cost per impression and high post-click engagement.

In addition to the best, test into the newest channels of marketing. So many organizations still have no presence on YouTube, the second most popular search engine in the world. Powered by Google, there is a wide range of deep targeting tactics you can use on YouTube to reach your exact audience. You can target by search history, website visits (retargeting), you can even reach people on your CRM list. Consider TikTok too, a newcomer to digital advertising. High supply and low demand of advertising space in new platforms like this makes this a must test. And let’s not forget the “cool factor” of being on TikTok.

Here at AdEdge, we love digital marketing and we’re happy to help. Request your free consultation or a free digital marketing health checkup for your organization.

The post Big Digital Marketing Ideas and Advice for 2022 appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

There was a time when local businesses had storefronts and e-commerce had websites. But now, that line is so well-blended that local stores have websites built specifically to cater to local customers. Everything is done online and your website, instead of replacing it has become an extension of your physical storefront. Your website is the online venue that customers visit before, after, and in-between their visits to your physical venue. This of course applies to businesses that will never have a bricks-and-mortar location, like many B2B services today.

To draw the most digital foot traffic, you need to optimize for local search. This means boosting your local SEO so that local customers can find your site. Part of this involves customizing your website to the tastes and buying patterns of the local population, to the extent that’s at play. Fortunately, it’s not as hard as it sounds. There are dozens of ways to locally optimize your site and implementing each one further increases your chances of reaching more local clients and customers.

Let’s dive into the most effective local SEO techniques.

Build Your Location into Your Site Design

First, make sure your location is an integral part of the website. This is done in three ways. First, place your address in the footer – content that appears at the bottom of every page. Many brands place their full address (or multiple addresses) and even a map widget to help locals find their store easily from any website page.

Second, add something about your location and community connection on your home page. As a local business, you have everything to gain by spotlighting your location and community involvement.

Third, be sure to list the areas you serve on the homepage, product/service pages, and most importantly, the Contact Us page. Mentioning your address and locality several times throughout the website creates hooks for web crawlers and lets customers know they’re in the right place.

Creation of Local Content

Content marketing is king right now, so weaving local SEO into every aspect of your website content is a must-do. It’s easy to make your website a treasure trove of local mentions to draw in customers from neighborhoods around your business.

Mention your town, region, and surrounding areas in your page and blog content. Comment on local neighborhoods and landmarks, to the extent it’s relevant to your copy. Mention your town and nearby towns that are within your service area.

Next, work local events and details into your content. Write seasonal content that mentions any local holiday events. Publish articles about your company’s involvement in community events. Make a connection to your city or town part of your content strategy.

Optimize Your Site Using SEO Tools

For on-site optimization, include your city and state within metadata of key pages, especially your home page, landing page and Contact Us pages. Make sure you include your company name and the basics of your product or service offerings. Throw in a unique value proposition but keep it natural and free of pushy sales language. Title tags should be written in a similar manner and should include your city and state when it’s possible to do so in a natural way. Don’t stuff location-based keywords into your website as this doesn’t read well and is a Google no-no.

Create a page for your city and for every location where you do business.

Google My Business/Google Maps

If you don’t have a Google My Business (GMB) listing which is Google’s business-facing service for Google Maps, that’s job #1 in order to rank locally. It’s easy, just request it from Google. If you can’t find an exact match for your industry, don’t sweat it, just pick something close. Make sure all the info in your GMB listing is correct and exactly reflects the same information elsewhere on your website and other sites. Did you know that you can narrow your geographic reach and appear to local-only searches? Make sure your geo-targeting settings are set up to correctly reflect your service area. Doing all the right things here will give you the best shot at ranking within Google’s Local Pack – the three sites featured in Google Maps for local searches.

Get Listed in Online Business Directories

Join local business associations and get listed in online directories. Online directories create one more point of contact and often provide a valuable back-link from an external website back to your site. Online directories are another way that local customers look for businesses to shop with and they are how local businesses seek out potential business partners. Make sure your contact information in these directories is an exact match to the information found in your GMB listing and website.

And don’t forget your social media accounts. As with online directories, make sure to include the same contact information on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. that is on your website and elsewhere.

Make Use of Your Data

Finally, make use of your data. On-site data, marketing data, sales data, analytics data, and even local weather and traffic data can all play a role in optimizing your business with local residents. Track your online traffic and your real-world foot traffic if you have a physical location.

Fine-tune and improve your local website optimization with every conclusion you draw from your data and your site will continue to gain momentum with your local customer base.

Local SEO in 2022 

Want more local traffic in 2022? Focus on local SEO strategy to significantly improve your exposure in the search engines and increase the number of local, relevant prospects visiting the website.

AdEdge Digital Marketing is a Google Partner Agency with over 15 years of experience in helping clients achieve their sales goals with website optimization and other high-performance digital marketing tactics. Feel free to Contact Us or call 203-682-4585 with any questions about local SEO. Ask us about a free digital marketing evaluation for your company.

The post What are the best ways to locally optimize my site? appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

Businesses of all sizes and niches struggle to drive traffic to their sites, so you’re not alone. A 2020 Content Marketing Institute survey found that 63 percent of content experts face hurdles in finding the right experts for content strategy, one of the leading site traffic drivers.

Between creating social media posts, writing new blog posts, and creating a robust email marketing campaign, it can be challenging to look back to see the things that drive traffic to your website and those that don’t. But despite the hurdles, it’s still doable.

This comprehensive guide takes you through the value of quality site traffic and the steps to grow your traffic, generate quality leads, and improve your bottom line.

The Value of Quality Website Traffic

Apart from familiarizing potential clients with your business, your website should allow new visitors into your funnel and convert them into clients.

This way, your site traffic becomes a crucial business growth indicator and driver. It can help you:

• View your marketing strategy’s effectiveness
• Gather audience insights for critical decisions
• Enhance your search engine credibility and rankings
• Generate quality leads, boost conversions, and expand your client base

Yet you must drive digital traffic to your site the right way and focus on quality traffic to enjoy the benefits.

Site traffic improves your rank and ultimately generates more traffic, but this improvement should align with an increase in engagement. Otherwise, you aren’t targeting the right traffic.

You can optimize your site for conversion in many ways, but you must begin with attracting the right website visitors. Your overall objective is to drive more qualified individuals highly likely to become leads and customers.

How to Grow Your Website Traffic Immediately

Different strategies can help you increase visitors to your site. The following are the most effective:

Leverage Video Content

Creating video content for your audiences can impact your site traffic substantially. In a Wyzowl survey, 86 percent of marketing experts acknowledge increasing their website traffic through video content. According to a Cisco whitepaper forecast, 82 percent of all IP traffic (consumer and business) would comprise video IP traffic by 2022.

So, create a YouTube channel where you post intriguing regarding your products and informative tutorials on using them. Make sure you link your site content to relevant YouTube videos.

Content Creation

Creating content through blogging is an effective way to attract the right customers. Informative blogs help you cast your net on an expansive audience group, labeling you as an industry expert and credible source of valuable insights.

You have to create content that attracts the ideal visitors to achieve the best results. Here’s how to create great content:

• Identify your perfect customer – Knowing your audience lets you publish content that attracts them to your site naturally.
• SEO research – Learn what your target audience searches for on the web to provide content that answers their needs.
• Create a draft – Draft a post that addresses searchers’ questions while using interesting angles to stand out.
• Publishing – Publish the post and optimize the content using SEO tools.
• Promote – Market your posts on email newsletters and social media to generate traffic.

Identifying your Target Customer Profiles

You must understand your audience to effectively address their desires, interests, struggles, objectives, and pain points. It’s the best way to create content that speaks your potential customer’s language and generates more clicks.

Here are the tools and tactics for in-depth audience insights:

• Market research through analyzing social and search data, reviewing competitor analytics, and working with focus groups and research consultants
• Surveying your current customers about their experience and any areas that need improvement
• Conducting context-specific polls and surveys on different website pages
• Discussions with your support team to learn your audience’s problems
• Checking out Google analytics

Email Marketing

This approach uses your current customers and readers to generate site traffic. In a recent HubSpot report, about 80 percent of marketers acknowledged increasing their website engagement and traffic at the end of 2020 after implementing an email marketing strategy.

Create a prospective leads’ list to include in your funnel and send appropriate email marketing content. Share newsletters, product launch information, your latest offers, and more. Remember not to spam your audience and clients with emails as they can unsubscribe.

Optimize Older Content

Optimization involves updating older content to target the current customer, generate traffic, and convert leads.

The years-old blogs must be optimized to generate significant organic traffic, increase your social media followers and blog subscribers, and add value to your repository of old posts. You’ll use the content creation procedure to determine what you need to add, remove, or update in the older content.

Learn to Use SEO Tools

Understanding ESO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Analytics will help you create a targeted content strategy to drive more digital traffic to your site.

You’ll analyze and learn what’s working and what isn’t and develop valuable content ideas.

Improve your Keyword Game

SEO can immensely grow your website traffic, but the old-school strategies are no longer effective. Google’s Hummingbird algorithm came with new rules. Instead of checking keywords, the search engine now understands topics. That’s why you must learn to use LSI keywords.

In essence, these are phrases or words related to your target keyword, and you can use tools like LSI Graph to find them. The more terms you include in your content, the more relevant your post seems to the topic. As such, your content will stand out.

Utilize Online Directories

Online directories are valuable website traffic builders for brick-and-mortar stores. Search engines use local content, links, social profile pages, and citations to gather local search information and provide relevant results based on the user’s location.

Tools like Moz Local and Google My Business can help you manage your citations and directory listings to make your business stand out in local searches.

Use your data

Analyzing your business data from different sources lets you understand the content your audience prefers. For instance, top-performing pages allow you to learn their interests, referral traffic shows the origin of site visitors, and keywords reveal the most common search terms. When you combine these insights, you’ll create a strong user persona to define your current strategy.

Get Professional Help to Boost Traffic to Your Site

The above strategies grant an edge in the highly competitive digital space. But an experienced digital marketing expert will give you an upper hand, helping you achieve your goals faster without making common mistakes or using tools that would harm your traffic.

That’s precisely what AdEdge Digital Marketing offers.

We are a Google Partner Agency and can help you develop and manage effective digital marketing campaigns to grow your site traffic and grow your business. To learn more about driving traffic to your website now, Contact Us or call us at 203-682-4585

The post How Can I Drive More Digital Traffic to My Site Immediately? appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

How To Choose A Marketing Agency

How to choose the right marketing agency is less about what you think you need, but more about educating yourself on what options are available. If you ask your agency how media buying can fit into your creative strategy and the answer is ‘we don’t do media buying and that doesn’t fit with your marketing strategy’ that’s a big red flag. Your agency or consultant should educate you as to what media buying is and what abilities it can bring to the table. Education is the key to making informed decisions.

Here is an outline to learn more about different types of agencies and how to choose the right marketing agency for your company.

7 Types Of Marketing Agencies

Full-Service Agency

A full-service advertising agency offers a comprehensive range of marketing and advertising services for any business. This typically includes strategic planning, content creation, web design and development, SEO, social media management, TV and radio ads, and paid search ads. A full-service agency is a one-stop-shop for all your marketing and advertising needs. The value of working with a full-service agency is that it limits the needs for coordinating between partners and vendors. Because full-service agencies do it all, they could make your choice of marketing agency very simple. However, hiring a full-service agency that does everything may rob you of a skillset a specialist may bring to the table. Interview a few agencies, gather some information and vet your current agency to see if they are offering you the best strategy.

Digital Agency

A digital advertising agency specializes in online campaigns. Execution of a digital-first marketing strategy will most definitely include SEO, social media marketing, website design and development, lead generation, email marketing, and marketing automation. Digital agencies generate more leads for clients through their website and create more awareness online.

Social Media Agency

A social media agency focuses solely on social media. However, content creation for specific audiences can be a very in-depth process of coordinating video production, copywriting, and photographers. Once curated content is chosen for an ad campaign, it must be optimized. These teams create targeted ad campaigns behind social content will be a large part of their process. They will typically charge a budget for ad spend on top of a retainer. Social media agencies are a good fit for companies that sell specific product lines, such as headphones.

Public Relations (PR) Agency

Public relations, or PR, agencies improve and manage the public image of a company and its employees. Often used by enterprise companies and CEOs, PR agencies get their clients featured in the news, on industry websites, and talked about in the community. Their efforts are typically broken down into paid and earned media. Paid media is buying air time, sponsored content opportunities, or ad placement. Earned media is thought leadership, SEO, social media, and bolsters online reputation. PR agencies are best for companies or individuals that want to improve their public image.

Branding Agency

Usually, these teams conduct thorough market research and analysis to better understand company positioning, branding agencies offer a range of services including logo design, brand name development, creative production, and signage. Because of their ability to differentiate brands consider branding agencies when rebranding your company. Branding agency teams develop how a current brand is perceived in the market and provide the research your team needs to make informed business decisions.

Creative Agency

Creative agencies develop the design, graphics, and copywriting of a brand. They specialize in logo design, print marketing, letterheads, billboards, and business cards. These types of agencies make companies look a specific way and stand out in the marketplace. If you hire a creative agency it should never be short on new ideas and ways to promote your service or product.

Media buying agency

Media buying agencies focus on media planning and media buying, typically focusing on specific channels. Developing target audiences over time, media buying agencies hone in on specific customers by using targeting capabilities. The targeting criteria varies per platform and are provided by third-party websites such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Although these agencies are effective on their own, they deliver the most positive results when paired with creative agencies.

How To Choose The Right Marketing Agency

Choose the right one, or combination of marketing agencies to generate leads and influence how your brand is perceived. Marketing changes fast, make sure the firm you hire isn’t stuck in a mindset of the past. Test them to ensure they are familiar enough with today’s evolving marketing landscape. 

Transparency is key. It is your right as a client to demand accurate and up to date reporting. These numbers will give you an accurate depiction of how your campaigns are performing.

A Marketing Consultant can create a stellar marketing strategy, tie all of these offerings together, bringing in appropriate specialists where needed. Coordinating between trusted agencies is ultimately a job for a trusted member of your team.

The post How To Choose A Marketing Agency appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

To start, all display ads go through a display ad network to reach customers. The top display ad networks are Google, Facebook, and Twitter. You choose what demographics or other targeting criteria you want your audience to consist of and they take it from there. They serve your ads to users who fit that description. Those users can then click on your ad and (hopefully) convert into a paying customer.

Types Of Display Advertising

There are several types of display ads, however static, rich media, video, and interstitial ads are predominantly used by marketers.

Static – Static ads are hyperlinked, image-based ads that clearly stand out on any webpage. Often called banner ads, this format is a good place to start for branding and product placement.

Rich Media – Rich media is one type of display ad that involves using interactive elements such as video, audio, and clickable elements to make the advertisement more engaging.

Video – When comparing cost, video ads are slightly more expensive but provide a whole different experience that can definitely be worth the additional ad spend. Platforms like YouTube and Instagram have made it extremely convenient for marketers to deliver video ads and attract a lot of attention to their products or services.

Interstitial – Interstitial ads load as a separate webpage or window before you are directed to the original page you wanted to visit. They take up the entire screen and often require being closed by the users in order to continue.

Your company can take advantage of these display ad types and see which works best for your product or service with display advertising. If you came to this page for a definition then you can stop reading, but if you want to know how to start using display advertising for your company, that’s what this entire page is for.

How To Create Display Ads That Convert

If you’re beyond definitions and want to dive right in and start designing your display ads, start with these steps:

Follow Best Practices For Landing Pages

Yes, the first thing to focus on is not the ad itself. Make sure your landing page is optimized for conversion. The landing page should be where you drive traffic from an ad, and please don’t make it the homepage! A landing page should be specific to your product and offer an easy way for people to convert. Have a clear call to action (CTA) and follow these best practices:

• Build a responsive and mobile-friendly page
• Keep it simple, anything that is too intricate will be distracting
• Make sure it includes company branding
• Include company awards, certifications, testimonials or other signals that encourage trust in your brand
• Use a CTA that stands out on the page

By following the best practices, you will have an attractive and optimized landing page for your audience.

Use A Compelling Design

Just like your landing page, using a simple and attractive design for your display ads should be a focus for your ad campaign. Too much information can be overwhelming too. Keeping it simple with some clear copy and basic visuals can effectively tell the customer what you sell and why they should be interested.

Create A Clear Message And Offer

Honing a clear message and attractive offer for your audience should be identifiable in about 3-seconds. A glance. If you don’t grab someone’s attention within that time frame you run the risk of losing their interest. Brainstorm various options before deciding on your messaging and offer. Most times, creating multiple ad variants and testing which is best creates the best ads.

Use Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising can help your business advertise to the people that matter most to your company. Programmatic offers immediate value for any display ad strategy because it utilizes user data like demographics, topics of interest, and age to deliver relevant ads.

Creating ads for display is one thing, but the experimenting and careful planning behind successful campaigns takes time. If you want to learn more about the process reach out to an AdEdge Team member today at info@adedgemarketing.com.

How To Measure Display Advertising Performance

The story is always in the numbers. No matter what kind of campaign you decide to run, continuing to do so will be determined by its performance. When you take a proactive approach to campaign monitoring, you can improve your strategy on an ongoing basis.

Impressions – An Impression is the number of times an ad is served to a user during its placement. Every time an ad is loaded and displayed on a webpage or mobile app, it counts as an impression. This metric is important when analyzing your campaign metrics. If your impressions are very high or increasing and your conversion rate is low or decreasing, you may want to reconsider your display ad management plan.

Click Through Rate – Click Through Rate is a crucial indicator of engagement as it indicates the number of people who have clicked on your ad. It is the ratio of impressions to clicks. If your ad receives 1,000 impressions and 200 clicks, the click-through rate is 10%.

Conversion Rate – A conversion is the most important metric because a conversion is the main objective of running ads. A conversion takes place when a person clicks through to your landing page and performs a definitive action such as downloading your app, signing up for a newsletter, or buying a product.

These key performance metrics are generated by the ad you choose and your target audience. 

How To Choose A Display Advertising Target Audience

There are many elements to the best targeting audience for your ads. Getting there is a process. But it can be so worth it. Perfecting a targeting audience takes time and careful planning.

Define Your Demographic – Segmenting audiences based on information like age, gender, or interests can benefit any campaign.

Identify Target Keywords – Reaching the target demographic based on selected keywords that relate to your product or service. The display ad network will match the keywords you choose with words/phrases present on the sites where your ad will be displayed.

Double-Down On Topic – Choosing a group of websites that fit a specific category will greatly focus your ads towards people within that niche. Sometimes display ad networks provide categories broken down by business type or you can upload custom audiences.

Develop The Ideal Placement – Choosing the best placement is a process that always evolves. But you should be asking the question – where would the most influential place be to see my ad? If you’re targeting customers of a specific vacuum brand, you can display the ads on articles related to that model, or even on a product review page.

Ads Based On Interest – Google collects data on its users’ behavior, and depending on what users are searching for, you can run display ads that resonate with specific interest groups. For instance, a grill enthusiast may be researching spatulas, grill baskets, etc. Interest-based display ad targeting will place your ad on all of these relevant web pages.

Retarget Based On Past Behavior – Also referred to as retargeting, this display ad targeting feature lets you target users who have already visited your website. This process reinforces brand impact and recall.

AdEdge’s Strategies Incorporate Display Advertising

If you have struggled with where to start or with other elements of an effective display advertising strategy, our team of experts is working on more content for you! Reach out to ask any additional questions at AdEdge at (203) 682-4585 or email us at info@adedgemarketing.com. Have you found other best practices that were not mentioned work well for you? Let us know!

The post What Is Display Advertising? appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

SEO Starts With On-Site Optimization

Before we hop right into some best practices, the better place to start is in website infrastructure. Some of you might cringe and think about complex coding. Nope.

When building a house, do you start with the roof or the windows because they look good? No, you start with the foundation. Building a website that is an effective marketing machine starts with the infrastructure. 

Having a blog is vital to a successful SEO strategy. It contains content that can be created easily and often. It is also one of the most effective SEO best practices. Blog posts allow you to share your knowledge not just with your industry but the entire online world. Finding inspiration on how to create content specifically for your audience can be difficult without a solid strategy – so we created an SEO guide for you. Ultimately, your content should position your brand as an expert in your industry.

Another element of your site should be an area on your website for resources. Long-form content (white papers, webinars, ebooks, guides, etc.) lives here. This content is your main source of conversions. You should feel comfortable in asking visitors to these pages for an email address. That also means that the content should be exceptionally helpful. Including promotional materials or news about yourself in this area is bad form – steer away from that. Including educational, non-promotional content is the way to go.

Here Are Best Practices For Any SEO Strategy

1. Keep Your Titles Under 60 Characters

Keeping your blog post titles short will ensure the entire title appears in search results.

2. Add Compelling Meta Description (Under 160 Characters)

The description under the clickable title is called the meta description or page description. These descriptions directly influence your click-through rate. Since it’s the second thing people will be reading, consider meta descriptions a broader description of what the content has to offer.

3. Identify Relevant Keywords For Your Company

Your prospects are looking for solutions to problems they are having with their business. Helping them often comes in the form of education and more specifically being there when they ask questions. Most of the time, people type their questions into search engines. So be sure to learn how to do keyword research.

Sharing A Blog For The Best Results

Ensuring that your blog can be shared will help your marketing efforts. This will help create backlinks. A backlink is an incoming hyperlink from one web page to another website.

If you share your blog and others find it useful enough to link to it on their blog this increases your ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). A SERP is basically what shows up when you ask a search engine something.

We wrote another blog post about how to optimize your LinkedIn Profile. One part of improving your profile is to publish content. By identifying relevant groups and sharing your content there, you are releasing your content to a much larger audience (than just the followers of your company page).

Guest blogging can also improve your searchability and relevancy in the topics you cover. However, you will do yourself a disservice if you post your guest blog on low-quality or irrelevant blogs. Your domain and page authority will plummet. Keep it relevant. Keep it genuine.

Pitching well-known publishers in your industry is a great way to enhance the reach of the content you create. Go for it!

SEO Best Practices For The Long Term

Too often, firms abandon their strategies for various reasons. Adjust along the way. Alter what or how you deliver content. But please don’t completely abandon your strategy.

Come to grips with the fact you may not see the immediate results you expect from an SEO project. That’s OK. Just change elements of the strategy and keep moving. As your strategy evolves so will your SEO best practices. We created an SEO To-Do List adhering to best practice guidelines.

If you have struggled with where to start or with other elements of an effective SEO strategy, we wrote the blog for you! Reach out to ask any additional questions at AdEdge at (203) 682-4585 or email us at info@adedgemarketing.com. Have you found that other best practices work well for you?

The post The Best SEO Practices To Start With appeared first on AdEdge Online Marketing.

You can use the profile strength meter to determine whether you’ve provided enough information and the right kind. In fact, check the meter sporadically throughout updating your profile to be sure.

Optimizing LinkedIn Search Results

Always keep Search Engine Optimization top of mind when editing your profile. You should update this information as soon as possible, but if that isn’t enough convincing here’s one of our earlier posts on How To Leverage SEO During A Crisis. To start, you are not a number. Having a LinkedIn profile URL that is something like https://www.linkedin.com/in/989898989/ does not help you or your brand in search. When actively managing your professional brand on LinkedIn, creating a personal profile URL is a highly effective way to help search engines pick up your profile easily. 

Claim A Unique URL For Your LinkedIn Profile

Make sure your profile shows up the right way and your personal brand is positioned well online. ‘Marketing Manager’ can be a pretty broad job title. Are you a Content Creator, Brand Strategist, and Operations Manager as well? You can use this opportunity to put those in your headline.

Update Your LinkedIn Headline With The Text Box Editor

Double-check the effectiveness of when you make changes to your profile when comparing against what search terms you are showing up for. If you are showing up for something irrelevant, try changing your summary or headline information.

Summarize Your Strengths With Skills

When trying to improve your LinkedIn profile strength, don’t forget about writing a succinct and to the point summary about yourself. LinkedIn published some that really stand out and we like them, too. A list of relevant skills on your profile helps you showcase your abilities to other members, like your colleagues and recruiters. It helps others understand your strengths. Once you add your skills, your connections can endorse them. If someone endorses your skills, it will increase the likelihood of you and your brand being discovered.

Not all skills are considered equally, though. There is a feature to show your expertise in a skill by passing an assessment. Some folks may say that they can do something on LinkedIn, but how qualified are they? Pass these assessments to position yourself as an expert in your field.

Don’t shy away from asking for recommendations. It can build not only your personal reputation but even the reputation of your team and company as a whole.

Manage Your Profile Privacy Settings

Lastly, to effectively manage your professional brand on LinkedIn you can use the same editing process to change information on your profile, upload portfolio projects, and request/give recommendations. Editing your privacy settings gives you full control over your LinkedIn account. Make sure your account is discoverable in search. Your customized profile will help members on LinkedIn understand your professional personality.

In the coming weeks, the AdEdge Team will be releasing our findings on a wide array of marketing topics and answering many more of your questions. If you have any questions or want to learn more about our process reach out to info@adedgemarketing.com.

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