Posts By: Chris Wielinski

Online Marketing Advice for New Business Owners

Posted by & filed under Pay Per Click.

In these technological days, starting a business is easier and easier. Many people are choosing to use the internet, especially social media as a tool to generate income. If you are considering this route, there are a few tricks you should know to help you get off to a good start.

Pay Per Click

Pay per click advertising, also known as PPC, is one of the methods businesses use to drive traffic to their site. Businesses place bids on specific placements with search engines and affiliate websites and then pay a small fee every time their ad is clicked. It is one of the ways businesses drive traffic to their site, but it is also an effective means as over 90% of a customer’s online experience starts with a search engine. A new business should almost always include PPC marketing as a part of their marketing plan. If done correctly, pay per click marketing can get your name and website in front of the right customers, and help bring in dollars, especially in the start-up phase.

Social Media Marketing

Social media ads and posts have become an integral part of marketing. Social media is a great way to build organic traffic for your brand. It is important to have a social media marketing plan in place before you embark on this phase of marketing. You should decide which social media channels you want to create accounts on, what is going to be your personality online, and who is going to manage the accounts. You also need to take some time to research what your competitor’s social media accounts look like. It is important to know how you can differentiate yourself from them.

Marketing Agency or DIY

Deciding if you want to manage your own marketing, or hire a marketing company depends on many different factors. A few of which include your launch budget, overall business budget, earning goals, and overall business goals. For example, if you are a sole proprietorship looking to earn some extra money, the DIY marketing route is probably for you. In that case, organic marketing and social media is your best bet.

Business owners that are looking to grow from a sole proprietorship or that rely heavily on commerce, marketing is a very important part of business development that is not to be ignored. For those entrepreneurs, marketing companies are a great resource. Marketing firms offer a wide array of services to help you launch and maintain a strong presence in your industry.

Starting a business can be a fun and interesting endeavor, especially if it leads to a successful business. Marketing is one of the most important components of starting and maintaining a successful business, it is not to be ignored. Luckily, the internet has made marketing much easier than it used to be. Online marketing has made it so that you can reach and connect with your customer base, no matter where they are in the world.

Using SEO and Social Media Marketing to Enhance Your Business

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

Data from a recent Global Digital Outlook Study in 2017/18 shows that 43% of marketers worldwide are increasing their digital marketing investment efforts. Currently, about 50% are spending half or more of their entire marketing budget on marketing intended for digital platforms. Don’t let your business be left behind by falling prey to the nostalgic pull of outdated marketing strategies. Look around you. Everyone carries a phone nowadays, and the advantages of digital marketing services are vast. Business data suggests this trend will only continue into the future. While there are many approaches to digital marketing, a few methods have proven to be most effective over the past few years. Among them, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing lead the way.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO refers to the process of generating organic traffic on your website based off of the presence of keywords related to your specific industry. Search engines crawl millions of databases to rank a website in your users’ search results, and using SEO services will help your site get the attention it deserves. Keywords can be native within your website or published in site-wide content such as blog posts. The concepts behind good SEO are quite simple, but the execution can be complex. It’s best to hire a high quality SEO company to ensure you’re doing things the right way.

Social Media Marketing

The explosion of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn present an enormous opportunity for digital marketers. Using these platforms is a fun way to engage with your audience and attract new clients. Some of the bedrock social media marketing practices include diversifying your output across many platforms, establishing a consistent brand voice, posting regularly, and interacting with your audience.

Any relevant marketing strategy should follow the public’s lead, capturing prime attention where it is in the present moment, not where it was in the past. While it may be tempting to continue to throw advertising dollars at print and television, the data shows us again and again that digital is the new business terrain. All precious longings for the ‘good ol days’ should be quickly abandoned to make way for newer, more engaging digital marketing services.

Designing an Excellent Organic Marketing Strategy

Posted by & filed under Inbound Marketing.

What is Organic Marketing?

Organic marketing is best defined by what it isn’t. It isn’t paid marketing. Paying for advertisements via Google or Facebook, for instance, are considered non-organic sources of traffic. Organic marketing is making it easy for your customers to find your business naturally. This might occur through a non paid google search via use of SEO best practices, or perhaps it is done on Instagram with the proper use of hashtags. Either way, organic traffic is great because once your organic marketing strategy is in place, it doesn’t cost nearly as much money to generate new leads.

Beyond that, traffic that is generated from organic marketing tends to close at a much higher rate. Statistically, inbound SEO leads will close at an average rate of 15%, whereas outbound leads from direct mail, PPC advertising, or other sources close at around 2%. That’s not a typo, it’s actually standard performance in many PPC campaigns. Beyond the close rate, there are a number of other advantages to developing a great social media and SEO strategy for your business. As more and more shopping is done online, having an organic marketing strategy is essential.

Top Tips for a Successful Organic Marketing Strategy

Pay Attention to SEO Titles: Though you may not be able to judge a book by its cover, that doesn’t stop people from doing so. Same goes for SEO titles. Strong titles for content generate clicks. Be sure that the most important keywords are included first in the title, followed by the next most important, and then the brand name should follow. Titles should generally only be 50 or so characters long and MUST be relevant to the content on the page. If you aren’t sure what keywords are most important for your SEO strategy, we would be happy to do a keyword analysis with you to find the optimal key terms for your business.

Implement Tracking and A/B Test: This is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of generating organic traffic via SEO and social media. In order to know if something you are doing is working, it is imperative that you identify the end result you are trying to achieve, and all of the steps along the way. Then find ways to track each o those steps. How many new visitors did your new article generate? Where did those visitors go after they finished reading the article? How many joined your mailing list? How many purchased a product? These are all vital pieces of information that you need to know. With information, you can also A/B test to find the most effective ways to market to your organic audience.

Optimize Social Media Platforms: Not every social media platform is needed for every business. Start by identifying where your ideal customers spend their time. Is it Instagram? Snapchat? LinkedIn? Where will they be most receptive to seeing your brand? Then, make sure your social presence on those platforms is optimized to generate new traffic and sales. A few key things to remember on social media: Have an easy to remember handle, recognizable photo or brand logo, and a trackable link back to your website.

Use “Evergreen” Content: As often as possible, post content that will stay relevant forever. For example, a review of the iPhone 3 is something that nobody cares about anymore. It is dead content. However posting an article about how to use an iPhone camera is great, because even as Apple comes out with new iPhones, the camera feature will remain relatively untouched. Keep content relevant and post content that will stay relevant for a long, long time.

Managing all aspects of an organic online marketing campaign can be time-consuming. There are so many facets that if you haven’t been specializing in the area, it can be easy to miss key aspects to generate leads. This is where most businesses give up on organic online marketing – because they aren’t aware of current best practices. Let us handle your SEO services and other online marketing strategies. This will let you focus on the things that are most important to keeping your business healthy and growing.

Five Reasons to Use a Digital Marketing Service

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

If you are in the marketing business, you know very well that every single day the competition is getting stronger. Success is always a matter of combining your efforts and your budget but also making sure that your online marketing strategy is effective. Here are five reasons why your online marketing strategy should include a digital marketing service.

1. Stay Competitive

It is imperative to not only be up-to-date with your competition these days. Even better, you want to be ahead of the curve. Using a digital market service will keep you relevant and keep you in touch with what your competitors are doing. 

2. Utilize Social Media

Marketing through social media is one of the best ways to benefit from your online marketing strategy. For instance, it has been proven that businesses who publish blog posts have an increase in traffic on their websites. Those businesses that do not publish a blog post at least once a month fall behind the competition of companies that publish monthly blog posts totally totaling 16 or more. Those companies have nearly 3.5 times more traffic on their site, compared to the competition. Social media is a great way to promote your blog posts and increase your reach. So, a digital marketing service that can execute a social media marketing plan for you will yield results.

3. Benefit from Experience 

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, is there? Choosing a digital marketing service to help with your business makes a lot of sense. The expertise that a digital marketing service can bring to you as a business owner will prevent you from repeating mistakes others have made in the past and free you up to move forward with a content strategy that is much more profitable.

4. Exclusively Designed for You

A digital marketing service will look at your entire vision for your business and work with that, incorporating it into your marketing strategy. From web design services to visual assets, and more, a digital marketing service will provide you with a customized management strategy.

5. Effective Use of Resources

There are new advances being made in technology practically every day. A good professional digital marketing service will have the most up-to-date and effective tools to provide a marketing strategy that will get you a great return on your investment. Let’s face it, it is virtually impossible to stay on top of every new resource, especially when you are running a company. Or there may be a very effective resource in existence that you are not utilizing. However, a good digital marketing service will make using all resources a top priority. Ultimately, this approach may increase your profits, but you may also save time and money during the process.

Hiring a really is a very effective way to put your business model and business strategy in the hands of professionals. Much more than a website design company, businesses that offer a digital marketing service now provide many different types of professional services that all tie together to make your business more successful.

3 Signs It’s Time To Hire A Marketing Agency

Posted by & filed under Inbound Marketing.

When CEOs and business owners get overwhelmed by their workload over time, they often put other priorities like marketing on the back burner. Unfortunately, putting marketing on the table only results in decreased profitability and unmet goals.

If you’ve been struggling to keep up with your company’s marketing and you’ve been falling behind, it may be time to invest in a full service marketing agency. But, if you’re unsure, here are a few signs when it’s time to make that outsourcing decision.

  1. Your in-house team is as overwhelmed as you are. Overworked and overwhelmed employees is a problem not just because it increases your turnover rate but also because it stretches their talents and limits their productivity. Stress can manifest itself as underwhelming performances and half-hearted decision making. By transferring some of your in-house team’s responsibility to a marketing agency, you increase your team’s productivity and reduce stress for everyone.
  2. You can’t tell what’s working and what isn’t. It’s vital that your business is able to analyze your strengths and weaknesses as a company so you can achieve your goals. If you’re unable to figure out why you’re not maximizing your ROI or what inbound marketing initiative is best to drive leads, a marketing agency can find those answers for you.
  3. Your competitors use marketing agencies. Marketing agencies give you a leg up by taking some of the weight of responsibility off your shoulders and more hands on deck. When your competitor has a marketing agency and you don’t, it could cause your business to fall behind. New people bring fresh perspectives, especially when they’re working from the outside. Just be sure that the marketing agency you choose to hire understands your needs as a business and your company culture. You may be outsourcing your agency, but it’s important that you work together as a business partnership.

Ready to hire a full service marketing agency?

Google receives more than 100 billion searches every month. Without the proper content and marketing strategies, the customers making those searches won’t find your company’s website. That’s where Think Cre8tive comes in.

Think Cre8tive is a full service marketing agency that offers SEO services, PPC advertising, social media marketing, and web design all in one place. For more information about our services, contact Think Cre8tive today.

Your Crucial Questions About Keywords, Answered

Posted by & filed under Search Engine Optimization.

It’s common to see online articles talking about the death of keywords and how digital marketing is shifting away from the keyword-focused world of SEO. But keywords are still an important part of growing your company’s organic traffic.

Although SEO is slowly turning toward long-form keywords with the popularity of AI assistants, mastering keywords can still help your business’ content strategy if you use them correctly. That said, here are some of your most pressing questions about keywords and content strategy answered.

What are keywords in SEO?

SEO keywords don’t just refer to the words you type into a search engine. They also describe what a specific piece of content is about. Keywords are what allows search engines to rank your content properly and online users to find the answers to questions they have.

It’s important to remember that the power of the keyword isn’t in the word itself but in the context it’s used. This helps search engines deliver good content to online users and avoid keyword-stuffed nonsense.

What does keyword difficulty mean?

Keyword difficulty may sound like it refers to the complexity of the keyword used. But it actually refers to the keyword’s competitiveness. It’s also a measure of how challenging it is for a business to rank for that specific keyword.

Your domain authority and paid search volume factor both contribute to keyword difficulty. It’s easier to rank for a specific keyword if that keyword has a lower keyword difficulty. This is one of the reasons why it’s easier to rank for a keyword with a specific location (e.g. “cat food in Spokane”) than it is to rank for just the keyword (“cat food”).

How do I find the right keywords?

It can be a process to find the right keywords for your business. Start by clearly defining your target audience and then narrow your focus. Look into the competitiveness of specific keywords you would want to rank for.

From there, it’s all about collecting data, analyzing your results, and repeating as necessary. If you’re not competing as much as you’d like to for a specific keyword, consider switching marketing strategies or changing the keyword.

Looking for digital marketing services for your business?

It’s important to use the right keywords to boost organic traffic in your online marketing. Approximately 93% of all online experiences begin with search engines, which means the keywords you use have a direct impact on the success of your business.

The good news is the digital marketing services of Think Cre8tive can help. Think Cre8tive is a digital marketing agency and SEO company that offers a variety of services to boost your company’s SEO, web design, and social media marketing ads. To learn more about how our digital marketing services can help with your online marketing goals, contact Think Cre8tive today.

Top Ways to Build Organic Traffic Online

Posted by & filed under Inbound Marketing.

One of the functions of websites is to drive traffic to your services or products. In addition to providing information about your business or products, it ideally also entices potential customers to try it out for themselves. Hopefully, that traffic then converts into sales. However, one of the challenges for every business is figuring out how to build organic traffic online. We’ll break down some of the best ways to make this happen for your business in this article. The more traffic you get, the higher the chance that a percentage of those will convert into sales. For example, if say, 1% of your traffic turns into a sale, having 100,000 visitors to your site is way better than 1,000. So let’s jump into the wide world of figuring out how to build organic traffic online and bolster your business’s online presence. 

What Is Organic Traffic Exactly? 

There are two main types of “traffic” in the online world. One is paid traffic, which stems from visits to a site because of advertisements that the business pays for. Organic traffic is essentially “free” — people come to your site because they’ve done an online search for a specific set of keywords that directs them to your site. There’s no third-party referral via advertisements. 

Organic traffic is important because it gives you more control. Paid advertisements are an important piece of the pie, certainly, but by establishing a strong flow of organic traffic, you know that people coming to your website are doing so because of the keywords that have led them to you — keywords that describe your business, products, or services. It’s an important part of branding your business. 

How Do I Build Organic Traffic Online? 

One of the most important ways that you can boost organic traffic is by making good quality content and publishing it regularly. For example, businesses that release 16 or more blog posts a month see almost four times the traffic compared to companies who do four or fewer monthly posts. 

Social media is also an important aspect. It can really help to get your business out there, and with over 70% of adults using Facebook (according to the Pew Research Center), this is a step you can’t afford to miss. Indeed, 70% of online referrals are generated from what’s called “dark” social networking (that is, one user sharing with another), through messaging apps, e-mails, and private browsing. You want to take advantage of that and provide shareable links and interesting content to promote your brand. 

Being smart about your keywords is also important. When you’re building your content, you want to be sure to include keywords that are more geographically specific to your area and what you’re trying to promote. 

Paying attention to content marketing, making good relationships within the online community of your industry, and staying up to date on trends (and adjusting accordingly) can all also be key when it comes to starting to build organic traffic online. 

How Else Can I Strengthen My Business’s Online Presence? 

If this all sounds a bit daunting — or you’ve started to build, but aren’t sure where to go from here — contacting a digital marketing agency or full service marketing agency isn’t a bad idea. They can help with specific areas like SEO services or social media marketing, but can also help develop a more comprehensive plan for your business going forward. 

Having a good website is also important, so if you’re looking to revamp or update, hiring web design services can give your online profile a nice boost. Online users do judge a book by its cover, so to speak, so if your website is clunky to use or outdated, they’re much more likely to go elsewhere for the same information — something you don’t want! 

In our digital age, having a healthy online presence is crucial when it comes to building a customer base, maintaining it, and growing it. Seek out a marketing firm that can help you expand and deliver with confidence.

Fast Facts: Digital Marketing

Posted by & filed under Inbound Marketing.

So you’ve built a website. Now what? Digital marketing requires much more to drive your business than putting a website online. The most challenging part is to build organic traffic online and ensure that the right eyes get to your website. This requires significant search engine visibility. Driving targeted traffic to your website and developing custom strategies derived from extensive experience are important ways to build your business and build organic traffic online that your full-service marketing agency can provide. Not familiar with the world of digital marketing, search engine marketing, or social media targeting? Let’s take a spin around some important facts.

 

  • Google receives over 100 billion searches each month. That’s billion with a “B.”
  • Approximately 53% of marketing professionals point to blog content creation as their number one inbound marketing priority.
  • Almost all (94%) of B2B (business to business) marketing professionals utilize the social media platform LinkedIn as a significant part of their content marketing strategy.
  • A July 2015 study by Moz and BuzzSumo found that long-form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives a higher number of shares and links than other types of content.
  • Companies that use a strong keyword in their business name rank 1.5 spots higher than those with weak or no keywords in their name.
  • Companies that publish sixteen or more blog posts per month receive nearly 3.5 times more customer traffic to their website than companies that publish a maximum of four monthly posts.
  • Approximately 75% of SEO occurs off-page and 25% occurs on-page.
  • SEO (inbound) leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail efforts or print advertising programs) have a 1.7% close rate.
  • Approximately seven out of ten of the links search users (your potential customers) click on are organic.
  • According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 72% of adult internet users use Facebook on a regular basis.
  • The Social Media Marketing Industry Report discovered that nearly two-thirds of marketing professionals cited Facebook as the most important social media platform for social media marketing programs.
  • According to the 2017/18 Global Digital Outlook Study, about 43% of marketing professionals worldwide are ramping up their investment in digital marketing. Nearly 50% are already spending at least half of their entire marketing budget on digital marketing efforts.
  • A report from SalesForce Marketing Cloud noted that 83% of customers “love” or “like” when a company responds to them on social media.

 

Contact your full-service marketing agency to help you build organic traffic online and bring your business to the next level.

6 Reasons Your Business Can Benefit From Using an SEO Agency

Posted by & filed under Search Engine Optimization.

By now, most business managers and owners know a lot about search engine optimization (SEO). Not everyone understands the reasons they can benefit from hiring an external SEO marketing firm or why any advertising agency they consider hiring needs to have a lot of experience in this area. Here are some reasons to work with an SEO company:

  1. Good SEO makes a great addition to your website. Your website is there to help you get more clients and customers. With the proper SEO, you will attract more people to your site. Moreover, if you are using the right keywords, the people who visit your site will be more likely to benefit from your products or services. That means, they will be more likely to become actual customers or clients. The right SEO can give you a higher conversion rate so more of the people who visit your website will also buy from you.
  2. Decent search engine marketing will help you get your website rankings up. By far, Google is the most used search engine out there. It has been reported that they process more than 100 billion searches every month. Most people never scroll past the first page of their search results. Therefore if you want to attract more people to your page, you need to get as close to the top of the search. The right advertising agency with the right SEO experience can help you a lot in this area.
  3. When you hire SEO companies, you get professionals with a lot of experience in this area. When it comes to SEO, it is important to use the right keywords and use them correctly. An advertising agency hires people with the right training and a lot of experience creating content that uses all of the right SEO strategies. These people can also do a lot to improve your web design. They can take out a lot of the guesswork about using the right keywords and putting in the right links. For instance, they can help by using links to other parts of your website, which can keep people on your site longer. This is very important when it comes to making more sales.
  4. You will see the results. When you are working with an advertising agency with SEO experience, you will see results soon after their strategy is put in place. You are an expert in the goods or service you provide. Your SEO team members are experts in creating great SEO plans. They can help you optimize your website to get the most people to see what you have to offer. They will work with you to learn about your business, your goals, and how to best achieve them.
  5. You can focus on your strengths. As was mentioned, SEO professionals at your advertising agency are experts at SEO strategy. When people who do not have much experience in this area take it upon themselves to devise their own strategy, the result can be a muddy mess. Also, all the time you are spending on your SEO work is the time that you are not spending on your business. If you hire an outside company, you can leave the SEO work to people who have been trained in this area and who have a lot of experience. That way, you get the SEO results you want without sacrificing the quality of the products and services you offer.
  6. When you work with an advertising agency with SEO experience, they can help you in other areas. They can help you craft and implement strategies for your online marketing campaigns such as direct mail plans. They can help you create visually stimulating promotional materials. They can work with you on your plan to deal with traditional media. They can also help you produce YouTube videos and make the most of all of your social media channels.

It is easy for a lot of business owners and managers to try to handle SEO, press relations, and online marketing on their own. This costs more money because it takes more time. When you hire an advertising agency with SEO experience, they can get the job done for less money.