Blog Archives - Page 7 of 8 - Adventure Ad Agency

Old SEO vs. New SEO Infographic

July 22, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Blog, Marketing, Social Media

The Secret To Get To The TOP Of Google’s Results

July 13, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing

In this blog, we will teach you how to get to the top of Google’s results using paid search advertising, which can help your business gain more exposure, more leads, and more conversions.

SEM stands for search engine marketing, which is where you purchase ads from search engines such as Google to gain more website traffic. The most popular paid search advertising method is Google AdWords, which allows you to bid on certain keywords so your ads will show up at the top of certain searches. Google AdWords is effective because it allows you to target your ads, control your costs, measure your success, and manage your campaigns.

Your ads can show on two of Google’s networks, the Search Network or the Display Network. The search network means your ads will show up on the search page, while the display network allows your ads to show on Google’s partner websites. You can put your ads on the Search Network only, the Display Network only, or a combination of both.

With Search Network marketing, your ads will be given a quality score and ad rank. The quality score estimates how effective your ads will be based on the expected clickthrough rate (CTR), ad relevance, and landing page experience. Ad rank determines the order in which your ad shows up on the page.

Because Google AdWords is paid search advertising, you will obviously have to pay for your ads. You have three options for payment on Google AdWords, cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Cost-per-click (CPC) focuses on clicks on your ads and drive traffic to your website. Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) focuses on impressions — the number of times your ad shows — and increases awareness of your brand. This is used on Display Network campaigns only. Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) focuses on conversions — which is when people take a specific action on your website after clicking one of your ads.

Choosing the appropriate keywords is a big part of creating your Google AdWords campaign. When choosing your keywords, it is important to think like a customer, align your keywords with your goals, and reviewing which search terms work best. Exhaustive keyword research and bid optimization designed for high click-through rates at a lower cost-per-inquiry is necessary for a successful Google AdWords campaign.

Once you have created your AdWords campaign, you can measure your success with several tools. Segments allow you to split your data into rows based on the information that matters to you most, such as periods of time, click type, or device. The list below shows you a few of your options if you want to measure your ad’s success based on segments.

Click type: See which clicks resulted in visits to your website
Device: Compare performance across devices
Top vs. Other: Find out where your ad appeared on Google’s search results pages and search partners’ pages
Time: Isolate changes in your performance using the time segment options

You can also measure the success of your campaign by utilizing the top movers report, which lets you see which campaigns have the biggest changes (increases or decreases) in clicks, costs, and conversions, and shows you some possible causes for those changes. The paid and organic report lets you can see how often pages from your website are showing in Google search results, and which queries triggered those results to show on the search results page. Another report, auction insights, compares your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions that you are.

Overall, paid search advertising can help your business get more exposure and generate more leads. If you need additional help, please let us become part of your team and we’ll use our proven approach to provide you with success.

How To Decipher Your Google Analytics Reports

June 29, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Advertising, Blog

When you first see a Google Analytics report, you may be a little overwhelmed. What do all of these charts, numbers, and graphs mean? Google Analytics requires a bit more in-depth analysis than using Facebook or Twitter ads, for example.

Google analytics tracks and reports website traffic. It seems easy enough, but with so many customizable options and various reports it can be confusing. In this blog post, we will break down Google Analytics into an easy to follow how-to guide. We will start by defining digital analytics. Digital analytics is the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your business and competition to drive continual improvement of the online experience for visitors to your website.

The analytics can measure macro conversions and micro conversions. Macro conversions are very important to your business and drive the revenue. For example, if your business goal is to sell a product, a macro conversion would be if someone purchased the product from your website. Micro conversions are also important, but not the driving forces of your business. These help customers move towards macro conversions. If a customer signed up to receive email coupons for your product, this would be considered a micro conversion.

A few other important terms Google Analytics uses are segmentation and context. Segmentation allows you to isolate and analyze subsets of your data. Some subsets Google Analytics offer include traffic sources, date and time, device, marketing channel, geography, and customer characteristics. This helps you isolate certain factors to see who is coming to your website and how they are getting there. Another term is context, which simply means what standard of comparison are you using. You can compare your Google Analytics reports externally to the industry standard or compare them internally to your site’s history.

Google Analytics recommends five steps of measurement planning.

1. Document your business objectives

2. Identify strategies and tactics

3. KPI’s (key performance indicators)

4. Choose segments

5. Choose targets

Google Analytics allows you to set certain goals for your website, including destination, duration, pages per visit, and event. We will go over what each of these means in more detail.

Destination: This means you want your visitors to reach a certain page. If your goal is to sell a product, that page would be an order confirmation page. If your goal is to get visitors to sign up for an e-newsletter, that page would be the “Thank You” page they are taken to after entering their email address.
Duration: This allows you to set a time goal that you want visitors to remain on your page. If you have an informative website where you want visitors to read your page in detail, this may be the appropriate goal for you.
Pages Per Visit: This means you can set a goal of how many pages you want each visitor to view while on your website.
Event: This means visitors did something on your website. For example, an event goal would be getting visitors to play a video or click on a link.

There are three main types of reports offered on Google Analytics – audience reports, acquisition reports, and behavior reports.

Audience Report: reveals characteristics about users
- Helps you better understand user behavior
- Gives you access to geographic data
- Allows you to view mobile data to your site
Acquisition Report: compares the marketing channels
- Lets you understand the different traffic sources to your site
- Helps you find and analyze your marketing campaigns
Behavior Report: reveals how users interact with your website
- Helps identify popular content on your site
- Analyzes how visitors move through your site
- Analyzes site search data

In conclusion, using analytics will allow you to understand and connect with your current clients. This will help you to identify the best marketing strategies to reach new customers and retain existing ones. By knowing where your audience comes from and what they like, you can create content personalized for your target audience. The continual use of analytics provides constant improvement of the online experience and acquisition of new clients.

10 Things Every Marketing Plan Should Have

June 22, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing

The first step in developing any marketing strategy is to start with a plan. Developing a plan for your marketing strategy may seem overwhelming. Plans can range from super simple to extremely advanced and complex. However, all marketing plans, big or small, have a few things in common. We will go over ten necessary elements that all marketing plans must contain in order to be successful.

1. The Product

Possibly the most important aspect of your marketing plan is the product. What makes your product superior to others in your industry? Why would someone choose you over someone else? Find what makes your product unique and go with it. Emphasize what you can offer that others can’t.

2. The Research

Okay, so now you know why your product is the best, but whose going to buy it? You need to conduct market research to analyze buying trends in your industry. Collect, organize, and analyze data regarding the demographics of customers, your competition, current sales in your industry, suppliers, and market patterns. This valuable knowledge can help you successfully market to the right people in the right ways.

3. Define

Once you understand the market, you need to define the target audience. Instead of trying to please everybody, zone in on a specific group of people who will be more likely to purchase your product. Describe you ideal customer in detail. Be sure to get more specific than women in their 30s-60s. Really dig deep to decide who your ideal customer will be.

4. Goals

Don’t just keep your goals in your head. Writing them down can help you more clearly define them and set realistic, but ambitious goals. Write full sentences that state what you want to accomplish in your business overall and through your marketing strategy specifically. You can break up your goals into specific mission statements, and it may be helpful to make them quantifiable. For example, a mission statement could be to gain two new clients a month.

5. The Medium

Where is you marketing strategy going to take place? Will your company benefit most from social media or a more traditional approach? Think about which mediums appeal to your target audience and how your product will best be displayed.

6. The Promotion

Putting your product on social media or on television is not enough; you must also promote it. Promotion could be consistent branding on social media, events, giveaways, etc. There is no right or wrong way to promote your product. You just need to make sure you are consistent with your brand and reaching the right audience.

7. The Positioning

Where your product will be positioned in the market? You must decide if you are going to be top-of-the-line or if you want to seem more casual and appeal to the masses. Decide a position for your product and make all of your advertisements surround it.

8. The Schedule

Once you have all of your ideas mapped out, you need to place them on a schedule. Keep the schedule brief and organized, as it will likely need to be changed frequently. Having a schedule can help you keep yourself on track and better monitor how your strategies are doing.

9. The Budget

Of course, in running any business budget is important. See what strategies you can afford and which may be better saved for a later date.

10. The Analytics

How are you going to monitor your results? You need to ensure you can test and analyze to identify the strategies that are working. You can use tools such as surveys, database management tools, and number of engagements to measure your success.

Now you are ready to begin your marketing plan! Be sure to consistently compare your actual marketing strategy to your plan and make sure you are reaching your goals.

Adding Current Events To Your Marketing Tool Belt

June 15, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Blog, Marketing, Social Media

As a business owner you should always try to stay on top of industry events, but you should be sure to keep up with current events as well. Marketing with current events can be a great way to engage customers and help them get to know your brand. Social media offers the perfect fun, informal platform to create ad campaigns for your business using current events. We’re going to use this blog post to tell you why and how you should add current events to your marketing tool belt.

So the first thing you may be asking is why current events; they have nothing to do with my business. The reason you should add current events to your marketing tool belt is because they get people talking. Remember the white and gold dress that went viral (or black and blue dress if you’re crazy!)? People couldn’t stop sharing it on Facebook and talking about it on Twitter. Why not use this viral trend to gain more exposure for your business? Dunkin’ Donuts had a great example of incorporating the dress into their social media campaign. You too can incorporate the event into your ad to show customers you are fun and want to engage them.

Have we convinced you to use current events in your marketing campaign yet? If so, let’s look at some ways you should (and shouldn’t) incorporate them. You can use fun viral trends like the Dunkin’ Donuts example above or you can use real-world events. Take a look at what Gaf Roofing did to get their Instagram followers ready for The Kentucky Derby. This example demonstrates how to tie in unrelated events to your brand.

Another way to use current events marketing is to incorporate “real-time” events. Remember when the lights went out during the 2013 Super Bowl? Oreo was on Twitter incorporating this right away. The difficult part of using this strategy is that you cannot plan in advance. You must think on your feet and work fast to make “real-time” marketing effective.

If you choose to use current events in your marketing campaign, be sure to do your research. There have been too many real-time marketing examples gone wrong that caused public uproar. One of the most notable examples is a DiGiorno Pizza tweet from 2014. The brand decided to hop on a #WhyIStayed bandwagon without realizing the context of the hashtag. The hashtag was referencing women in abusive relationships so clearly DiGiorno’s tweet was not taken well.

The main takeaway when using current events in your marketing campaign is to be current, relevant, and fresh. Make sure you do your research and only advertise tastefully. Be selective in which current events you use and how you use them, but don’t be afraid to get creative. Most of all, have fun with it!

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Website

June 6, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Blog

Most business owners know that in today’s age a website is a must in order to drive traffic to your business. But do you know if you are using your website to its full potential? In today’s blog, we will help you learn how to get the most out of your website.

There are several important aspects to having a successful website. We strongly recommend having a call to action prominently displayed at the top of your home page. A good example of this would be to display your company’s phone number so customers can easily contact you. You should also include any social media links to your company’s Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube page.

Another recommendation is to have a quick contact form where customers can digitally get in touch directly from the home page. Depending on your type of business, a live chat that pops up when customers enter the site may be helpful. We recommend this for any business that customers may have a lot of questions about (attorneys, designers, etc.). Professional photography and a modern, clean design will make your website look professional and credible. We suggest adding candid photography to show the real aspects of your business. A few other things to keep in mind are to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly, has a quick load time, includes your contact information in the footer, and always lead visitors toward conversation.

In addition to the design aspects of your website, the content is also important. You want to have very detailed content on each page. The more keywords, the better! We recommend having about 1,500 words per page. Having a blog will also help you add more content. One blog post per week should suffice in adding more content and creating credibility. In addition to a blog, adding testimonials to the home page and throughout the website can help with the credibility of your business. Your reviews on various review sites (Yelp, Facebook, Google+) are important, and you should feature the best ones on your website.

Now that you know what elements your website needs to contain, we need to go over how people can find your site. Unfortunately, there’s no secret formula to ensure Google will put your site at the top of people’s searches, but there are various factors that you can control to help. The first important aspect of a searchable website is keywords, which are the search terms people use to find your website. After all, what good is a killer website if no one can find it?

Keywords can range from very general to very specific. General terms get a large volume of searches, but may not be exactly who you are trying to target. Specific keywords get less traffic, but it is more likely that these people will find your website helpful. External links will also help your website make it to the top of Google. This is where a blog comes in handy. Linking your blog posts each week to your Facebook will immensely increase your number of external links. You may also want to consider increasing the number of pages on your website. This gives Google more content to sift through. Having a separate page for each service you offer is a quick way to boost your page count, but make sure each page is filled with quality information.

Last but not least, work on getting more reviews! We know this can be daunting for fear of negative reviews, but try to have exceptional customer service to outweigh the negative reviews with the positive ones. Sites with higher and more reviews typically end up at the top of Google’s list.

Utilize these tips to get the most out of your website. If you would like us to analyze your existing website and give you specific suggestions, please contact us today!

How To Optimize Your Facebook Ads

May 18, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Advertising, Blog, Social Media

Advertising on Facebook may seem simple. But are you optimizing your Facebook ads or blindly posting them? In this blog we will help you optimize your ads by teaching you how to define your objective, create an action plan, properly execute that plan, and track your results.

1. Defining your objective

The first step in optimizing your Facebook ads is to define your objective. Your business goals will drive your marketing objectives. Some examples of goals include generating sales, brand awareness, or more engagement. More specifically, if you are looking to get new clients, your goal may be to increase the number of visitors to your website. If your goal is to strengthen brand loyalty, your may want to boost the interactions on your page.

2. Create an action plan

Now that you know what your goal is, you can make a plan. You need to decide how many posts you will do each week, what your message will be, who is your target audience, etc. Unfortunately, there is no cookie-cutter answer to what your plan should be. Each company will have a different action plan depending on your brand and goals. You need to evaluate what your audience will like, if you’re advertising on desktop or mobile, and what mood you want your ad to be.

3. Execute your plan

Once you have your idea developed, you can start creating the ads. However, be weary of Facebook rules when creating your ads. Because images with minimal text are more engaging, Facebook recommends limiting your graphic content to 20% text (including logos). You can check to see if your image meets these requirements using the grid tool. We recommend creating several versions of an ad using various images and layouts. You can test these ads to see which performs best. A great app for ad testing is AdEspresso.

4. Track your results

Facebook will show you how many people your ad reaches. You can also use Facbook Ads Manager to see in more detail how your ads are performing.

Although we can’t write one blanket plan that works for all businesses, we hope these tips help you create a successful ad campaign. Always remember to define your objective, create an action plan, properly execute that plan, and then track your results. If you need help optimizing your Facebook posts, contact us today!

How to Manage Your Marketing Budget

May 16, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Blog, Marketing

It can be difficult to allocate the funds for a proper marketing program. It may seem more logical to spend that money on inventory or product development, but marketing is a very important part of your business model. What good is having an awesome product if no one knows about it?

So now that you understand the importance of having a marketing budget, how much should you allocate for you marketing and advertising needs? This all depends on the size of your business, the industry you’re in, and the stage of business development. You may need to look up the average percentage of sales spent on marketing for businesses in your industry. You can then cater this number based on your business’ individual needs. For example, if your business is just starting out, you will need to spend a bit more on marketing to establish your brand. A general rule for small businesses is to spend between 5-8 percent of revenue on marketing and advertising.

What should be included in your marketing budget? Your marketing budget should cover paid advertising, promotional materials, production costs, and technology costs. Your paid advertising will include any ads you have to pay to run, such as TV, radio, PPC (pay-per-click), banner ads, Facebook boosts, etc. Promotional materials are brochures, flyers, magnets, etc. you would need to have printed to give away. Production costs will be used to pay your advertising coordinator, social media manager, graphic designer, event coordinator, etc. Technology costs will cover your website and any other technologies that help promote your business.

Now that you know how much your budget should be and what you should spend it on, let’s look at how to spend it. You need to have a marketing plan. Your plan should include your goals, how you plan to reach those goals, how you will implement the plan, and how you will track your results. In your plan, you should outline the costs of fulfilling each objective and exactly how you should do it.

This seems a little complicated. We recommend hiring an experienced marketing professional to help you fulfill your marketing needs. It can be confusing to figure out how to correctly budget and implement your budget if you are new to the marketing arena. A marketing consultant can help tailor a plan and budget to your business’ individual needs. This person can also help you to track your results and tailor your actions based on what is effective for your business.

We understand that it can be difficult to know how to reach your marketing goals. Although marketing may not have direct, tangible results like business aspects such as product development, it is a very important aspect of your business strategy. We hope our tips have helped you determine how to plan your marketing budget. If you would like a marketing plan tailored specifically for your business, please feel free to contact us today.

The Worst Marketing Advice We’ve Ever Heard

May 11, 2016 by adventureadagency, posted in Blog, Marketing

In today’s digital age you can find out anything with the click of a button. Anyone can be a content creator, and anyone can find that content. This is great, but it does allow a lot of misleading advice to be published on the Internet. So how are you supposed to distinguish between credible tips and not-so-good advice? To help, we’ve come up with a list of the worst marketing advice we’ve heard and explained why it is not correct.

1. You HAVE to be on every social media platform.

Yes, it’s true that social media is the new age of marketing, but that doesn’t mean your business has to have an account on every single social media platform. In fact, we recommend NOT having an account on every social networking site you can think of. Having too many accounts to keep up with will cause them all to suffer. We recommend having 1-3 great social media platforms that people will want to look at. You can evaluate which platforms your customers are most active on and use those to market your business.

2. Add as many hashtags as you can.

Hashtags are a great way to organize tweets and get your information to show up in searches. However, having too many hashtags can make your tweets look like spam and turn customers off. We recommend keeping your hashtags to two or less per tweet. This will keep your tweets more engaging and credible.

3. Only certain people at your company can create content.

Most companies have a few people designated to the marketing team, but that doesn’t mean that others can’t help out as well! Sometimes an “outsider” can provide the best input or come up with the coolest idea. Just because the guy down the hall is an accountant, doesn’t mean he isn’t creative! Give everyone a chance to create awesome content for your business.

4. Publish content every day.

Publishing content every day will definitely get your content seen, but not in a positive light. Followers do not want to be spammed every day with meaningless posts about your business. Keep the posts to about three per week and make them insightful.

5. Use the same message on all platforms.

If a message works, you should use it consistently on all platforms, right? Wrong! Different platforms target different customers and work differently. Your followers on Twitter may not respond to the imagery as well as your Instagram followers. Your personalized email message may give off a different vibe on Facebook. You have to evaluate each marketing platform and the followers on it separately and craft your message accordingly. Of course, your message should be consistent with your brand, but it can be tailored to fit different audiences.

We hope you’ve learned a little about what marketing advice is good and what is not! Feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions!

Category: Blog