5 Ways to Get More SEO Bang for your Buck

Every business needs SEO. If you’re a consultant or marketing agency, every single one of your clients is looking for you to get them results. They want to show up in search engine rankings—and not just anywhere, but ranked competitively so they get noticed by new audiences.

As we all know, there are certain steps regarding SEO like creating a website with the proper structure and implementing a content plan. Once you’ve covered the basics, you’ll then take your efforts to the next level so that you can really deliver for your clients.

The five techniques below outline a plan based on what your clients’ already have implemented and what you can do to create more valuable SEO.

  1. Optimize Old Content

Many business owners have produced a great deal of content over the years. If your client has been blogging for 15 years, there’s a ton of valuable content to tap into! The key is to go back and re-optimize older content. Check all links, eliminate outdated resources, and update the content so it’s current and relevant for today’s audience.

  1. Embrace New Formats

Today, content is about so much more than blog posts. And fortunately, a format such as video can help you create exponentially more content in the same amount of time.

  1. Add Video to Your Pages

Speaking of video, if your client doesn’t already have videos on their website, now is the time to include content in this popular format. Not only are people more eager than ever to consume content in video format, video also helps increase your ranking with the search engines.

One of the ranking factors for Google and other search engines is “Dwell Time” which is essentially, how long a visitor stays on a given web page). Longer Dwell Times guide search engines to infer that the content on the given page is relevant to the viewer, which they reward by giving you a boost in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).

  1. Get on Featured on Podcasts

We’ve talked before about the SEO benefits of guest podcasting. Lately, there has been a shift away from guest blogging and towards guest podcasting. Many businesses have launched podcasts, and they’re hungry for relevant guests to fill each episodes. Why not find your client a slot on relevant podcasts?

Guest podcasting is great for several reasons. The time commitment is minimal; in 20 minutes of talking, you can create an entire episode. Plus, since you’re a guest, it’s up to the podcast host to edit the episode and do all of the behind-the-scenes work.

Podcasters are happy to link to your client’s website, ebooks, and other resources. This creates backlinks for their site, which are an important external element in building reputation and SEO. Plus, the podcaster will promote the episode through their networks and channels, bringing additional exposure to your client.

  1. Collaborate with Clients to Produce Content

The final step to boosting your client’s SEO is a bit more involved, but it’s a worthwhile investment. Each month, work with your clients to produce content. This could be a video or podcast interview on your own site, a case study, a co-created survey, or just about anything else you can dream up.

Put together a package of content featuring and partnering with your clients. Through this process, you’ll generate backlinks and great content for both of you. Collaborating with your clients strengthens your relationship with them, plus it can help you close more deals for yourself!

As a marketer, you understand how to nail down the basics of SEO. When you’re ready to take things to the next level, these five steps are a great place to start. For any help, reach out to your trusted team at Dynamic Marketing Consultants today!

Digital Design & Marketing Transformations to Turn Small Businesses into Thriving Brands

It is a curious topic -transforming businesses into brands. Being a brand is something more valuable than being a business, and it takes a far more strategic approach. But is it really worth the effort to build a brand?

Brand vs. Business

A business is merely an entity that offers certain goods or services. In all respects it is a soulless entity, devoid of a voice or character, and focuses on the end result. Customers may buy from a business, but they don’t create an “emotional bond” to it. They are reserved for the brand.

Brands are essentially “perceptions” that have been carefully crafted by marketers and strategists and encourage customers to equate certain emotions and personality traits to the company.

Importance of Branding for Small Businesses

Branding is more important for small companies than for large companies. The benefits of branding are staggering for small companies with limited budgets rather than large investments and cash flows.

Strategic design and digital activity are the two most important tools in your marketing arsenal that can turn you from an SME into a successful and thriving brand.Here are some strategies and steps to make this change a success.

Digital Transformation Strategies:

1. Your Brand Logo and Other Visuals

A logo is the strongest identifier of a brand. In the digital space, brand strategy becomes even more important for a small business trying to develop its brand strategy. It becomes your identifier, which sets you apart from others in your area. If your logo design is representative of a long-range, strategic goal, employees can participate and understand the brand message it expresses.

In properly update your company’s logo, it must be reorganized (to fit various digital platform specifications) and, in some cases, completely re-imagined.

2. Consult an Expert

If the rebranding seems like too much of an undertaking, don’t feel overwhelmed. You are not alone, many SMEs (33%) are far from digitization because they do not know how to do it and do not have the budget to hire in house digital / IT marketing specialists.

The good news is that there are many design and marketing agencies that provide consulting services for a fee that can support your digital transformation and digital marketing needs.

3. Design a Website

For small businesses, investing in a website can be a difference between success and failure. A website is your digital store, which is always open. It works and gives to its customers even when you sleep, on vacation or with friends and family. It works tirelessly and intelligently. It provides you with important data, generates leads for you, and ensures that your small business budget can be expensive, but the benefit eliminates all costs.

The strategic design of a website is an extension of your brand, which is always associated with the brand and communicates your brand’s message from each page to each interaction point and is presented in the color, font, design and even navigation of your website.

4. Set Up Company Social Media Profiles

Once you create your website, start a thoughtful ad campaign, and regularly publish to your blog, it’s time to get involved in the area where all the conversations take place -social media.

For most of the consumer market (Millennials and Generation Z) social media platforms are their second home. To reach them, you must market where they tend to spend their time. According to 82% of marketers who work with small businesses, social media is the most important aspect of their business.

So, do some data mining and prioritize the social media channels where most of your target audience is hanging out. Then define your social network profile based on the information in the data. The most popular social media channels for most market segments are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter and each one’s target demographic is different and used for different purposes by its audience.

5. Start Email Marketing

To make the most of your digital transformation and consolidate your brand message, you must use email marketing to reach parts of your target market that you may not have reached before.

According to statistics, 81% of small businesses successfully trust email as their primary customer channel. 80% of SMEs use email marketing to retain existing customers and see them as the main driver for these two purposes.

So, there you have what turns a small business into a successful, thriving brand. It’s not too simple or complicated.There are experts available who can iron-out the most complex areas of it for you.

At Dynamic Marketing Consultants, we have a team of marketing experts who have the tools to handle these efforts while you manage your business growth. If you’re ready to set your business up for success, please reach out today to get started.

Smart Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Starting a business can be difficult. It is common for new and small business owners to find themselves in the marketing role and quickly becoming overwhelmed. But don’t worry, we’re here to help you! The basics concepts of marketing are important to every small business owner. These are not marketing costs, they are investments, and it is essential to know where to start. If you can do that, you area step ahead.

Why Marketing Is Worth the Expense

When it comes to understanding the importance of the marketing and the role it plays in the development of the business, it becomes clear why marketing should be viewed as a worthy investment. Marketing is essential to attract the attention of potential customers and clients, increase the demand for goods or services and target these potential customers. Marketing affects your sales, prices, advertising and advertising policies. When you understand the importance of marketing, you can use it to promote the ongoing transition of your services and products to the customers. This is important in making your small business successful.

Understanding Market Research

Through market research, you can determine how your product or service will adapt to different demographic characteristics. Using this information, you can determine which segment of customers is interested in a product and service, and ultimately who is likely to make a purchase from you. You can use market research to gain specific information from potential customers, such as age group, gender, location, and income level, which you should use to guide your marketing message. With the help of market research, you can create marketing plans for your small business that arenot only effective but also cost-efficient. Market research gives you the information you need in a marketing context. Market research purchases target behaviours and habits that you focus on in practice, and ultimately saves you money by avoiding costly marketing mistakes.

Creating a Marketing Budget

Determining how much of your resources you should allocate to marketing within your company can be one of the biggest challenges for businesses. It can also be a major factor that can make or break a business.

Learn From Others

Small business marketing can sometimes be a challenge. Especially in rough economic times. However, many companies are successfully using new technologies to market their small businesses. These strategies can include social media marketing, online marketing, traditional marketing and even direct mail.

Often, small business owners don’t trust their marketing plan. This happens for many reasons and can lead to frustration or giving up. Reach out to our team of marketing consultants today and learn how to grow your business and reach your ideal clients.

 

 

Online Reviews – The digital way to make or break your business

In today’s digital world, online reviews can make or break a business pretty quickly, so handling them with care is super important. Online reviews are one of the most turned to avenues when deciding to do business with a company or not, judging on good reviews, bad reviews, lack of reviews or even how you respond to reviews. In this episode, Devin Herz shares his insights on how best to respond to online reviews and how to leverage even the not so flattering ones with a positive spin to help influence the minds of future customers or clients. Right off the bat, Devin takes note of how one of the habits from Stephen Covey can teach us a lot in how to first approach every online review. Devin also reveals a quick pro tip on soliciting the very best online reviews from your customers and how to leverage them to your business’s advantage.

Wake Up Your Sleeping Clients with A Reactivation Campaign

You took the time, effort,and resources to obtain each of your clients. How many of them are currently sitting stagnant in your database? Using a reactivation campaign is a cost-effective way to “wake” your clients up who have been “hitting snooze” on your services or product offerings.

When it comes to reactivation campaigns, it’s important to keep in mind your target audience and your goals. Your campaign could be direct mail or via email. Both are effective and engaging, although here are DMC, we know from experience how direct mail truly leaves a lasting impression.

Whether it be someone who previously engaged, expressed interest,or purchased from you, it’s important to think about enticing offers and promotions that will incentivize them to follow through now. You know they’re interested in what your business provides since they opted in. Don’t just tell your clients what you can do for them, show them you understand their needs and tailor the messaging to that. In our experience, we’ve found it is most effective to test offers to see which gets your clients to convert.

Here are a few of our latest reactivation campaigns:

If you’re ready to re-engage your clients with a reactivation campaign, contact our team today. We’ll help you create a unique marketing sequence that will have your clients picking up the phone!

Business Branding Tips

Oftentimes, business owners believe that branding is simply your logo and the design of your marketing materials. In reality, branding is so much more. Here at Dynamic Marketing Consultants, we’ve seen the power of branding and how it can transform a business. Branding is an intricate part of your marketing strategy that should always stay top of mind.

Here are some insider tips to help you effectively brand your business:

More Than Just a Logo

While a logo and business card may be the foundation of the brand of your business, branding is much more than just design. Branding encompasses everything from the environment of your business, the culture of your team, and the feeling that you evoke from your clients. It is the overall sentiment your client feels when they speak to your team,receive your marketing materials,or visit your website and social media.

How to Get Started Branding Your Business

While it may be overwhelming to think about branding your business, the most important thing to keep in mind your target audience and their needs. You want to make sure your brand is resonating with them; everything from the look and feel of your business, your marketing materials to your physical business location. It should all be consistent, fresh,and current. It should be clear what your business is offering and exemplify just how it will help your client. When you are aware of your audience’s needs, it will help your business evolve and stay relevant.

As you sit down to plan your marketing goals and strategy, always keep your brand in mind. Be sure that it shines through in everything you (and your team) does!

If you have questions on branding and where to get started, we’re happy to help. Schedule a complimentary one-on-one assessment with Devin to see how DMC can help brand your business!

Partnering for Success

At DMC, we provide our clients with a myriad of online marketing services. We aspire to be a one-stop marketing shop for any business looking to grow and attract new clients. That said, as much as we’d like to be able to handle every one of our client’s needs, we know we can’t be masters at everything. Over the years,we’ve learned the importance of building business alliances and partnering with others to help our clients achieve their goals.

Have you heard the saying, “two heads are better than one”? When you partner with a complementary business who can support your client’s goals, it’s a win-win situation for all involved.

Collaboration is key. Working with a partner(s)allows you to brainstorm and innovate on projects in a way you may not have been able to do before. Ideally, partnerships will open the door to products, resources, and contacts not currently obtainable to your business.

When you form strategic partnerships, it’s important all businesses involved are on board. Commitment, communication,and focus are necessary in order to achieve the desired goal for the client.

Case in Point

We just had a call yesterday with a PR company that works with one of our clients. We don’t specialize in PR and the PR company doesn’t do all the unique marketing thatDMC is known for. So now we have an opportunity to work together for our client, support each other’s efforts in online marketing and offline marketing, and hopefully see more success for everyone involved.

AND, as it happened, last fall we were able to get our client featured in a top industry publication because of a personal connection one of our staff has with the publication’s U.S. correspondent.When we mentioned that, the PR company owner also knew that correspondent!

It’s a small world and if we handle ourselves professionally then our sphere of influence will grow to include other intelligent, hard working professionals with expertise that we can add to and benefit from.

The bottom line, for us at DMC, is that it’s all about the client! If we need to find a solution outside of our expertise, we’re happy to make connections with those who can help get the job done because when our client wins –we all win.

Dynamic Marketing 101: Digital Advertising

In part two of our blog series, we’re going to take a look at digital advertising. There’s no denying the fact that the world has been rapidly making the shift to digital. Between mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and more, people of all ages are consuming more digital content on a daily basis than ever before. From a business perspective, this means that marketing strategies need to adapt to this new way of life, and fast! Digital advertising is the marketing tool your company needs to be using no matter what service or product you offer.

Digital advertising is the new norm and if you’re not already practicing it, it’s absolutely time to start. It’s the fastest growing marketing channel and it’s not going to slow down any time soon. Before we look at the benefits of digital advertising, let’s take a moment to discuss the key forms of it at present:

  • websites and SEO content
  • blogs
  • internet banner ads
  • online video content
  • pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
  • email marketing
  • social media marketing (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
  • mobile marketing (SMS, MMS, etc.)

There are endless opportunities when it comes to advertising your brand in the digital realm.

Digital advertising has a lot to offer to advertisers. For starters, it’s infinitely more affordable than traditional marketing methods. Digital advertising is targeted, meaning each ad you create will always only be seen by qualified prospects and targeted audience members. You can target by geographic location, demographics, interests, and more. One huge benefit of digital is the ease in which results can be tracked and monitored. Instead of conducting expensive customer research, you can now quickly and easily view your response rates and measure the success of your digital ad campaign in real-time.

The bottom line is that the digital age is here to stay, and the team at DMC is fully taking advantage of all the benefits it has to offer. We have years of experience in implementing successful digital advertising methods. If your business could use assistance in developing your digital advertising strategy to bring in more revenue and customers, don’t hesitate to contact us! And stay tuned, next month we’ll be diving into the discussion of direct mail in the current business climate.

Do Results = Happiness? OR Does Happiness = Results?

Every company wants their people to do well and enjoy their work.

And we believe everyone should work hard in order to be happy, right?

But could we be thinking about things backwards?

Check out this fast-paced and very funny talk, where psychologist Shawn Achor argues that, actually, happiness inspires us to be more productive.

Shawn actually spent 12 years at Harvard studying happiness and it’s amazing how simple it is to impact your results in business and life in general, simply by being happy.

It’s only about 12 minutes long, but it really hits home and is a great reminder that we all have the ability to impact our results with our attitude. Watch this Video and explore your Marketing Ideas with Online Marketing experts.

Here’s to your success…and happiness!

Devin A. Herz

The 1 Habit That Could Save Your Business From Downturn

Why is it that some service-based businesses never slow down while others seem to have peaks and valleys throughout the year?

Of course, there are seasonal businesses like lawn mowing or snow plowing, but those aren’t the ones I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the businesses that have HUGE potential pools of prospects like carpenters, restaurants, coaches, computer repair, travel agents, even accountants, and dentists.

A seemingly endless list of industries, really. It’s the businesses that wait until their sales slow down to increase (or in some cases start) their marketing efforts.

Let me be clear…

Marketing should not be looked at as an annual event or a one-time thing!

“Hmmmm, our sales are down so we better do some marketing.”

Followed shortly thereafter by “wow, we’ve got so many sales going on that there’s no time to do any kind of marketing.”

No, No, No!

Systematic and consistent marketing is the ONLY habit that can deliver consistent results.

And that’s why it’s such a MUST to build into your routine no matter what phase you are in with your business.

Start small if you have to.

It’s kind of like doing your taxes…

If you can do it yourself, great!

When it gets harder to take time away from closing sales and following up on leads, hire it out!

Much like dentistry, marketing is NOT an area where you want to apply the ‘ole “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Waiting for your sales system to break and then trying to fix it is a huge no-no.

Good marketing initiatives take time to develop and implement.

You need to make staying on top of your marketing efforts a habit AND a priority

So the business doesn’t break!

Use the momentum from your sales to keep your marketing going, which perpetuates the cycle.

In fact, you can virtually eliminate the need to worry where your next sale is coming from by implementing systematic marketing using direct mail, e-mail campaigns, flyers, or even door hangers.

There are so many strategies out there to consider, but one thing is for sure…

No good marketing strategy involves doing something once and waiting for the phone to ring or the sales to drop off before starting the next effort.

I can’t emphasize this enough. Make your marketing a habit!

Ok, stepping off my marketing soapbox now.

But before I do…

Do me a favor please and let me know about your marketing habits.

If marketing is a habit for you, what are you doing to make it a habit?

If you are struggling to make marketing a habit, what’s stopping you?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this and, quite frankly, geek out over it in a big way.

Here’s to your habitual success!

-Devin