What do they do? And is your company missing out?
Put briefly an SEO Company is employed to develop, implement and manage marketing “campaigns.”
First, let me clarify what is meant by a marketing campaign, it sounds fancy, but it is simply another word for a plan. A plan that usually involves a suite of different digital mediums like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the internet.
Digital Marketing companies develop specific “campaigns” or projects that target and attract prospective clients who are looking for services in your industry. Digital Marketing does including advertising; however, it is only a part of the campaign. Modern digital marketing involves more than placing ads online (and through google), managing social media and writing website content.
Let’s cover the development of a marketing campaign and how they aim to help a company. A digital marketing company should (not all do) meet with you and learn about how your business works, the products or services you sell, your business goals and which audience you would like to reach.
All this information is funneled into a marketing and SEO campaign specific to your business. They will take into consideration your target audience, and it should be designed based on how young or old the target audience is, the industry and how customers search (Google, industry specific directories, social media, etc.).
Now for the implementation. Once all the above factors are injecting into a plan, they need to be put into place. Let’s start with the basics, building a company website that is easy to navigate, hopefully, mobile friendly and informative and easy to read.
This is the first step, and next will be social media, of course depending on your company’s industry however usually most will need a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. which will link to your website. Your website and social media should have regular updates, which advertise products, showcase special offers and if feasible, include regular informative blogs and industry tips which will attract prospective clients to your site.
Even if it is to view a blog or article, you have increased your online traffic and exposed them to your services and or products which they may now or in the future purchase, recommend and anything else that can benefit your company. Now for Google, an important tool for most searching, and I don’t know about you, but when you search the top of the page or at most to the bottom of the first page is as far as you go. To get your company on the top or even onto the first page – well your search engine and marketing company will need to pay Google to advertise and will use a handful of behind the scene tools like keywords, Meta Data, picture tags and cooler technical tricks. I’ll let them explain.
The management of a campaign is the most technical by far. I will briefly skim over the handy tricks (not dodgy) that digital marketing companies use to check the progress of your campaign. Some tools can track how many people visit your website, how far they click into pages, how long they spend on your site and if you choose phone call analysis a marketing company can even assess customer service and how services are promoted and quoted to clients.
I have left out one of the most popular forms of digital marketing, and I assume most people use a Google search or the equivalent to the search for services or information am I right? Well, Google has its tools to keep up with web traffic specific to not only your website but your industry.
This gives the digital marketing company a great indication of how your business’s website and advertising campaign is doing compared to other companies. Google does a lot cooler stuff but let’s just leave it here.
Is your company missing out?
Unless you are happy with what you have, may it be paper adverts in the local paper, billboards, branding on your car, mailbox drops or by the good old method of word of mouth recommendations you may not think you are missing out.
However, times are changing, and the internet is dominating, with not only the young using the internet to search for services and research, but also the older generation has also embraced the internet and how shopping around for services can save money.
And this is exactly what digital marketing is one way or another trying to do, attract prospective clients when they are searching for information on a topic or are searching for a service.
For digital marketing managers and digital marketing companies, please excuse this very brief and simplified explanation of digital marketing streams and campaigns. We are only covering the basics here.
Wrap up
So now you know what digital marketing is in some shape or form and how it can help your business now if you have decided that digital marketing is something you want to use to promote your services now to choose a digital marketing company.
Unfortunately, they are not all the same, and I’m not going to go into the specifics. There is an easy way of assessing the “one package suits all” marketing companies to the “client centred” marketing companies.
The first and most telling sign is that the marketing company will want to meet with you (in person!!!) and learn about your business, how it works, your target audience and your company’s goals. Even if the marketing company has other clients in the same field, every company is different, and if they are taking the time to meet with you, they truly understand this.
Now, that’s the biggest one who will cross off a lot of companies. From here things can get tricky. And if you don’t know much about digital marketing you should probably go and see a digital marketing company that is happy to explain step by step how your money is being divided up into different streams of marketing (e.g. how much is spent on Google ads, content writing, website management costs). Usually, digital marketing companies will charge month by month.
However, most can be flexible. Most will have contracts which state that you will commit to 12 months or 24 months and what and how they are committing to do to market your company.
There it is. A brief and hopefully informative run down on digital marketing companies, what they do, how they do it and how it can help your business thrive and increase your brand’s coverage and of course increase revenue.
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