Onboarding Stages with a New Client in Digital Marketing
When starting to onboard with a client, it is a must that each member of the team understands the purpose of the digital marketing project.
Everyone needs to have a clear grasp of the goals, along with their respective roles, to achieve success. No one should be left in the dark. Here are five stages on how to smoothly establish momentum when working with a new team.
Review the online assets – Find out what needs to be improved on their website, social media, and other existing digital footprint. Identify what initiative is working and how it can be better. Draft your initial recommendation.
Conduct a kick-off meeting – It is necessary to see the point-of-view of the client and his staff. Align the expectations. As you walk them with your analysis regarding their online presence, try to also listen and dive into their thoughts and business experiences. Understand how they define their achievements and how they manage the challenges. Sift through the pain points. Know who’s doing what. Ask questions.
Present the strategy plan – Be more creative, show more visuals, and lay down the numbers on your deck. Explain the metrics and why it is important. How onpage optimization can help increase website inquiry? Why boosting a post is necessary to get more private messages? Welcome the inputs and tweak the campaign as you see fit.
Create a realistic timeline – Don’t over promise or commit to rank them on search engines in less than a month. Knowing the schedule will guide each one to their deliverables and will also help them be more committed to it. Assign an owner/co-owner of every task. Build on trust.
Depending on the size of the business, you might need to allot additional meeting time per department so you can discuss their assignment in detail. Managing a recruitment agency, for example, I met with the team heads first then the associates per practice areas. It is much easier to get the interest and contribution of the staff when the head has given an approval since some activity may require extra office time.
Writing a blog and pushing their expertise as a resource person equally gives the company and the staff online credibility but of course, quality writing takes a while and allotting extra hours from this task may require approval from the boss. Publishing articles is also ideal for SEO and content marketing campaigns.
Implement the strategy and get everyone moving – results do not happen overnight, there will be hiccups on the process but as long your action is anchored to the plan and timeline then you will remain on track! Having a supportive team means a lot too and a huge factor to a successful campaign—more of this from my last month’s blog.
It is always exciting to begin a new project and keeping the fire has to be strongly maintained.
What Hinders the Success of a Digital Marketing Team?
Digital marketing plan is like a blueprint of your online campaign. It is created so the team can maintain direction, know each other’s role, and keep the goal. It includes a timeline so we know if we are on track and if the identified activities are implemented properly. When things get a little off, you can always go back to the plan and direct it back to the right path.
Reality: No matter how smooth we aim for it to go, there will surely be drawbacks; at most time it is fixable especially if you are working with a Team eager to troubleshoot and repair without a fuzz. (Thankful that I mostly work with a supportive batch!) But we cannot avoid a scenario that can signal real trouble! Major commotion in a project does not only come from software glitch or malfunctioning platform… it is rather the behavior of the people we are working with that can cause a real burnout. Here are some signs that a plan would likely not succeed unless each one sorts the issue as soon as possible.
- Indecisiveness – Cannot keep an eye on one objective and changing directions weekly, even daily. No focus.
The company might have too many overall goals but the Team must identify what to prioritize under the digital marketing scope and given the budget. If you are a new company, awareness must be the main step. Pin the most important and realistic approach. It is not right to build a campaign as you please or instantly imitate what the competitors are doing. All the efforts should be anchored by what you aim to achieve along with proper metrics.
Quick fix: Stick to the plan and don’t be swayed easily.
- Not communicating – Making abrupt changes without advising the team.
Let’s not forget that we are a “team”, regardless of size. Everyone has to move in sync with the known plan and adjustments must be made in alignment with those involved. It is not ideal to alter the content of your homepage without signaling your Web and SEO Team. They made codes and onpage optimization that can affect, worse omit, the company’s SEO approach.
Quick fix: Reach out and be open to the Team. Discuss new ideas without hesitations.
- Not listening – sometimes you wonder why the owner hired a digital marketing team if he will apply his own process and deviate from the plan he took part to create. Trust the expertise of each team member. Listen to their recommendations. Ask questions. Share your thoughts.
Quick fix: Listen to expert.
- Not telling the truth – lay down the cards and let the team know the real standing of the company so everyone can function accordingly.
If you are launching an app and you are aware of the glitch, then tell it to the team. Don’t go around the bush and make sure to present the real hurdles so they would know how to tackle the situation. If you aim to immediately release the next version in three months then the team must know the schedule.
Quick fix: No sugar coating.
- Rushing – not following the timeline. Digital marketing is not magic, you have to work and wait and analyze and tweak the strategy and obviously, it can’t be done in a snap. You have given the list of keywords last week and you wish to rank today, wake up.
Quick fix: Respect the timeline.
Another red signal— those procrastinating the tasks and functioning in pessimistic mood. The quick fix is to do it according to timeline and maintain positive attitude. If you don’t get “send message” to your Facebook campaign, no need to be harsh. Review the targeting and creative strategy, adjust according to the data gathered.
We cannot be in control of algorithm changes, privacy restrictions affecting results of reporting, or even faulty dashboard update but we can always manage on how we deal with the challenges on and off line. Make real goals. Keep the cool. Stay committed. Move on. Learn. Work happy.
The Impact of Digital Marketing on Your Business
What validates the real success of a digital marketing campaign? Your online marketing consultant gave you an update that your top keywords are now on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) position #1 and #2 and that your Facebook advertisement got 30 messages for a small budget of Php1000. This is good news and your Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is achieved!
Yes, that phase of work is well done but that’s not the end of the task; you need to align these milestones to your business goals.
Being number #1 on SERP means a lot for your SEO team! Months of optimizing your website and sifting through the net for quality backlinks have paid off! Google and other search engines crawled your page and found it relevant to be ranked as #1 among hundred of sites vying for the same keywords. This will result to more organic visits and you can see the data as it happens in real-time for free through Google Analytics. More people will go to you—check your contents, read your company information, and take action (call, request a demo, subscribe to your newsletter, and/or send a message). You should have some promising leads!
What if you have more visits but got higher bounce rate (it is the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave without going to other pages)? Your Digital Marketing team can say we are #1 on SERP but what you must ask next is, how does it improve our business?
If you are #1 on SERP with keywords not being used by your target audience and if you are getting a lot of visits but no one is doing your desired action then you are not maximizing the effort.
Same goes to your Facebook campaign. Receiving an increase number of “quality” messages must be your advertising goal. What is 30 inquiries if you did not convert or if they are only spammy? You should drive more leads then translate it to higher sales and not more messages with no conversion.
Online marketing and sales department must work hand-in-hand to reach the business goals. It is like a choreographed dance and every step must be synced with each other.
How do you plan to execute your online marketing campaign? What signals its effectivity in relation to your company’s target? Let’s talk.
5 Mindsets When Reaching Out to Your Audience
There are many digital marketing tools available, most offer huge assistance to push our online strategies while others appear complicated than it should be. Be wise in picking what’s best for your company so you don’t have to spend so much time (and money) familiarizing the dashboard. Yes, there are many platforms made-ready to amplify your brand but don’t drown too much on the technical jargons or the need to join the bandwagon. Sometimes what works is the authentic and simple means to communicate. Don’t forget these human ways of reaching out to your audience.
- Build on trust – No false claims. No over the top promises. No hazy deal. Follow agreed deadlines. Offer and deliver what you can—no excuses. When trust is present in any transaction, clients can even recommend your service to others and become repeat customers.
- Converse naturally – Create a clear picture of your audience and keep this in mind in making advertising materials and content plan. Do not alienate them. Resist saying too much without being understood.
- Strengthen reputation – Be the go-to expert in your industry. Provide relevant advice based on your experience. Be open to learn and be willing to share your knowledge. Attend trainings. Speak or write; join an activity related to your business.
- Offer help – Yes, the main agenda of all this is to sell BUT it cannot be the only reason of your operation. Give aid. Make the lives of your customers easy. Find a way to solve their problems directly or indirectly related to your product.
- Be present – Respond promptly (and politely) to messages regardless of what gateway they got in touch (phone call, e-mail, messenger, website). Stay consistent when it comes to your social media posting schedules.
Maintain one voice as you present your product or service. Make use of online marketing platforms and integrate your overall plan-of-action without losing the essence of your main goal.
Go Local with Your Digital Marketing Strategy
When you have a local business and your goal is to amplify your product or service to the community, you can implement the following approach to your digital marketing initiative. This does not require a strong technical expertise and proper attitude plays a huge role. You have to be patient, consistent, resilient, and always eager to learn. Good, effective results in digital marketing is not an over night gig. It is always correct to have the urge to begin a campaign—polish, run, evaluate then tweak as needed based on existing data. You must start today even if the tasks appear mundane (and at time really slow and repetitive if internet connection is bad).
- Own Your Google My Business – claim and verify your profile. This is one of the first touch points with your customers. When they search for your company name or related keywords in Google, it is important to provide them with the right information and drive their interest to engage with you—go to your website, make a call, find you in the map.
- Join Facebook/LinkedIn Groups – Find a buoyant local industry groups and be an active member. Provide value by sharing quality posts or giving well-thought answers to valid questions; this effort can put your expertise forward.
- Create Directory Listing Profile – Find quality listing websites and create an account. You don’t have to update as often like the efforts required with social media but you need to be properly presented there. Include a catchy profile, add your website and contact details, and back it up with nice photos. Give it a month or two and you will see traffic data coming from these listings from Google Analytics and Search Console.
- Boost on Facebook – Depending on your budget and audience, run a geographically targeted advertisement and support it with specific modifiers related to your brand (what’s their age bracket? Interest? Job?) Note that running a paid promotion is not just limited on Facebook but it is one of the most affordable means to advertise versus other platforms.
- Connect with Niche Influencers and Industry Experts – Send them your product and request them to review it. Conduct an interview. Sponsor a post or a blog. You will be surprised to meet a lot who will not charge a big amount for the featured contents as long as they are happy with the product.
- Capture Local News Blogs and Forums – You don’t have to be everywhere but just in those sites that makes sense to your business; websites where your audience are present—commenting or even asking questions. Reddit and Quora has a solid community worth joining.
Other than reaching out to your local target audience, this proposed strategy can equally benefit your SEO campaign. Just send me a message if you have questions on how to carry out any of the given activity.
Checklist Before You Accept Your New Website
Make sure that your website is on the right shape when it is turned over to you. I’ve seen and helped some company owners who are disenchanted with the kind of website handed back to them by their web developer/designer. There are a lot of excellent website creators but there remain a few who deliver horrendous result way beyond the agreed timeline. They drown the clients with unnecessary technical jargons pushing them away to have revisions.
Web developer is usually more expensive than web designer. To simplify, the first makes code from scratch while the latter is like a graphic artist that beautifies the page. If your goal is creating simple sites to display your services without a need to code for e-commerce or app usage, for example, then getting a web designer should be okay. Luckily, there are Content Management System (CMS) that is so easy to use like WordPress and Wix. CMS have themes ready to be applied and web designers can produce pretty pages without writing codes.
Before hiring a website team, don’t hesitate to request and identify the following aspects:
Portfolio – authentic rockstars would be proud of their craft and will not refuse to show sample work in reason of confidentiality or busy schedules.
Scope – Ask in detail the task lists. What’s the maximum pages? Will the contents (text and images) come from you or from them? Will they apply basic SEO? Will the website turnover include a live training?
Good to discuss here the expectations of both sides; share your pegs and what do you like to achieve by launching a (new) website. You must also not hesitate to ask questions on the process.
People – Know the people you are working with. Will you talk straight with the developer, or will they have an account manager? For sure, you can skip this part if hiring a freelancer but make sure communication gateway is clear.
Communication – Will they answer a call in the morning via Viber? Can they reply to email within 24 hours? Good to have this stipulated in the agreement as well.
Timeline – Don’t jump into a contract without knowing the schedule. When will they start the preparation? When will they start the migration? When will you go live? How long will they troubleshoot? Sometimes delay happens when there are glitches on the site but doing a troubleshoot should not go more than two weeks.
The moment you get an access to your website, take a look at the following checklist before you proceed with the sign-off:
Proofread your site. Avoid typo and grammar error as it diminishes the professional value of your online presence.
Check each CTA button and hyperlink if working and if it is anchor to the right page.
Photos are not distorted on web and mobile.
Since most traffic comes from mobile, make sure that yours is friendly. Go to this site and find out: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
You can report it back to your web team to make sure they improve the result. Same goes for page speed.
Slow website is not good. Your site visitors (humans and bots) are not very patient to wait for your contents to load. It should be on the good mark based on this test: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
It may take a while before your new website is crawled by Googe-bots. There is no schedule as to when it will visit but give it about two weeks to one month then try this on the search box, type: site:mywebsite.com
Search Engine Results Page (SERP) should generate for you the index pages (this means the pages from your website that it sees).
Another way to make sure it is crawlable is via robots.txt. Try this, type: www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt
You should see something like this:
User-agent: *
Allow: /
“User-agent” means search engine robots.
“Allow: /” means you permit the user agent or the bots to crawl your website.
You can revert back to your web team if you see “Disallow: /”, they should be able to fix it quickly. Note that it is okay disallow archive folders or membership private pages.
When your package includes basic SEO, they should be able to sync your site to Google Analytics and Webmaster plus creating meta descriptions based on your identified keywords.
Some on the list may sound complicated but you need to establish an open working relationship with your web team so they can guide you every step of the way.
Your Next Digital Marketing Content Strategy
New year is a great start to restructure your business with an improved content strategy. Your social media posts, website narration, blogs, infographics, and videos must be integrated to deliver one voice while following well-thought digital marketing objectives. When you have team members with varying ideas, it helps to drive them back to the defined strategy and align their thoughts to a single goal. This way, content creation comes polish in terms of tone and integrated in manner of presentation. It avoids disconnection as the message reach the audience.
• Create contents with a clear purpose in mind – avoid the rush and take time to know the “why” of your campaign. Draft your own content strategy.
• Know your audience by heart – create a picture of who you are talking when writing a post or making a video. Who will read and watch these materials?
• Maintain one brand identity across platforms – Don’t alienate your clients. Whatever gateway (site, social, app, even print materials) they visit, they should see a same brand.
• Incorporate keywords to your copy – What words and phrases are used by your customers to find you.
• Keep the flow simple – Simplicity is the essence nowadays. Make your message quick and easy to understand.
• Offer real value – Be the expert and go-to person. It’s not just selling all the time, offer solution to the problem.
• Organized your distribution – remain consistent and declutter your campaigns.
• Monitor your reach – you will never know if you are winning unless you measure. There are free platforms like google analytics that can track activities of your website. Identify your benchmark, compare and analyze so your campaign continues to improve.
Your Team’s time and effort can be saved if all these pointers are applied to your next content strategy. If you have questions on how to implement a specific item on the list, just send me a message and I’ll be happy to discuss.
10 Website Tweaks to Boost SEO
Eye on these hacks to make sure that your website appears good looking to the bots of search engines and make it friendly for human visitors as well.
- Use your keywords at the above-the-fold page of your site and within the stretch of your first paragraph.
- Rename your images based on your brand name and identified keywords. Example, file name “logo-version 1.jpg” to “my-company-name-logo.jpg”.
- Create a Google My Business account, link your website, and verify. Information here is vital especially when people start to Google you.
- Align with your web developer and alert them that your page must be within the good speed and must be mobile friendly. Google offers a free tool to identify these factors.
I initially wrote a blog giving tips to business owners and marketing team before proceeding with the sign-off. This is important to make sure that the website handed to you is at the right shape.
5. Avoid 404 or page not found. All your sites intended to be seen by Google should not be empty. There are sites that you don’t want Google to see like the archives or test pages, apply “no index” at the backend or via robots.txt file. Your web/SEO team should be able to assist you in this step.
6. Install Google Analytics and Search Console to monitor the activity of your site.
7. Draft your blog pipeline and commit to write an article every other week or at least once a month depending on your human resource. Your blogs must cover your keywords immediately at the title part and content must look professional to amplify your expertise.
8. Create a meta title and meta description per page the right way. Imagine writing a unique advertising campaign when doing so and each page of your site must be catchy and unique.
9. Call to action buttons and anchor text must go to the right pages. Social media buttons and other outbound links to open in a new tab.
10. Draft ways to build backlinks. You can start with social, directory listings, and links from your clients, member organizations, and associations.
It is part of my scope as a Digital Marketing Consultant to set-up the SEO campaign of a client’s website and train the marketing team to maintain the strategy; result does not just happen overnight. If you have questions or if you need an expert assistance, just send me a message.
Our Website’s New Design
It has been about seven years when I first launched the “Online Marketing Switch” website and from there, I had the opportunity to work with amazing people. The site has been the voice to share my work portfolio and spread my personal advocacy to help companies in the Philippines and overseas to switch to online marketing as I help them learn the jargons and reap the benefits for their business. My goal is to open the door of digital marketing to clients and allow them to appreciate it, make them be comfortable with the tools, and use it as part of their overall business strategy.
Our old site has been a huge help but it’s time to introduce a new face and apply some major updates at the backend.
Thankful to have worked with a reliable Web Designer, Ryan Laxamana. We collaborated with the first design long ago and now he is doing his magic with the new one. The site is now using a visual designer called Elementor and php move up to 7.4.
As we agreed from our chat last week, the page is still a work-in-progress, but I already love how the new look! Why I’m blogging on it while still on WIP!
Excited to polish the contents and yet to not lose the heart of the site. I think that’s the most important thing in digital marketing—stay focus, be authentic, and remain human. True that we have to adapt at some point to the many changes from voice search to metaverse and we can find ourselves drowning in jargons, but it is a must to swim and stay afloat with what matters. Our audience are human beings with real concerns, go where they are and talk to them as you would to a friend. Only use the technology to know them more, analyze behavior to tweak the approach to the campaigns, and for them to get in touch the easiest way possible.
There will always be changes. A lot of time and energy are required to create social media contents, interpret the analytics, and for us recently, to redesign the website but let’s keep our ground and stay firm with our objective for our clients and customers to learn from us, and trust that we can truly help them. And when they are ready to reach out, we are just a click away.
Are You Ready to Run Your Next Digital Marketing Campaign?
Now that you have a picture of your digital marketing campaign, it is time to roll and implement! We need to make sure that we don’t lose sight of our goals and get lost in the puzzle; losing control can happen easily if our strategy is not rooted at the right spot.
You wish to rank #1 on Google Search as soon as possible but you don’t have an adept SEO Team to do it for you. You aim to increase Facebook fans to 1000 in one week but you have no allotted budget for advertisements. You are so eager to create an industry white paper but you have no qualified researchers and writers on board. All set to send an email campaign but there is no direction on the messaging and no verified addresses on the list.
Simply put, your campaign has to be aligned with an objective, schedule, available human resource and allotted budget.
Objectives
Start with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) objective and build a realistic plan around it.
Say, get at least 5 quality leads every month from the website’s contact form within a sixth-month period.
What are the next steps to achieve the objective?
- Make sure contact form is working and measurable (install Google Analytics to track successful inquiry and check email addresses if sync). Create landing page if needed.
- Run a campaign to drive traffic to the website where the contact form is located.
- Connect with niche influencers to amplify the objective. Have them mention you with URL on their twitter posts, YouTube videos, or blogs.
Timeline
Create a timetable to specify the tasks, example as follows:
- Check and improve contact form
- Assign who will answer the inquiries (and identify internal processes to take place)
- Install Google Analytics
- Create relevant posts
- Run ads (social and search)
- Monitor and report
Human Resource
Take a look at your team if the current pool has expertise or if you need to start recruiting. Will the job require full-time or part time work? Do we have a budget to hire an expert? Delegate who will do what and maintain ownership of each assignment.
Budget
How much are we willing to spend for the campaign? We can’t be too frugal if part of our activities include running ad campaigns on social and search, getting influencers, or if we decide to on-board an industry expert.
Many company owners immediately quit on digital marketing without eyeing on the long-term results and appreciating small wins. If you stop over a minor drawback, then you can lose a big opportunity along the way. There are just so many benefits that we can get from digital marketing if we utilize it properly.