Internet Marketing Advice Blog » online marketing

What’s Better, Hiring An Agency or Hiring Internally for Marketing?

ashleyh4 — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:42:12 +0000

I have been asked many times, what is better to do for short-term and long-term marketing strategy efforts for a Startup, hire an agency or hire a marketing staff? My answer is both. Hire an experienced agency to move quickly for developing and executing a marketing strategy, but hire a Marketing Director to manage those efforts of the agency. Once the marketing campaigns have been launched, then methodically work with the Marketing Director to bring in support to manage and optimize the campaigns effectively, as well as, to launch new campaigns .

Agencies are great to help build a marketing strategy quickly and to learn from their efforts , but ultimately, it’s the internal marketing staff of the company that will be the marketing success driver, since they will live and breathe the building of the brand to the target audience.

How to be a Great Marketing Consultant to Your Client

ashleyh4 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:31:24 +0000

You’ve landed the client, signed the contracts, now what? Being a great Marketing Consultant is not only about creating brilliant marketing strategies or creating effective marketing programs that elevates your client’s brand or lead generation efforts, it’s also about becoming their business ‘ best friend’, their confidante, their ally. Building trust with a client is the key factor that will separate the good from the great. Be prepared to be their for your client 24/7, listening to your client, even if it means that you have to be their therapist, and most importantly, respond back to your clients, don’t wait until the next day.

Focus on Marketing Channels that Work, Not the Hype

ashleyh4 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:52:39 +0000

Being a Digital Marketer is not easy and constantly evolving with the addition of new websites trying to vye for your marketing dollars. Stick with what you know that works for your lead generation target goals and don’t get caught up in the hype, but test the new marketing channels with $1,000-$5,000, so you don’t lose out on any potential new lead gen goldmines. For example, Google +, although many critics are calling it a dud, may help for companies looking to improve their SEO by building a brand page within Google +. The Google + Brand pages are integrated with Google Search and will help company ranking in organic, thus helping to generate new targeted leads.

B2B Corporate Websites are Only 2nd to Personal Contacts in New Leads

ashleyh4 — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:44:18 +0000

A recent 2011 Marketing study from Demandbase and Focus has found that Corporate B2B Websites are second only to personal contacts and referrals in generating new leads. Although, B2B marketers feel that the websites do underperform in lead generation and they have to utilize the data analytics more to understand the behavior of the users at the websites to convert more leads. More than 48% of B2B marketers say that they do not know when the online user abandons the site. This is an issue, since almost half of B2B marketers are not optimizing the user traffic correctly to convert. This is money being thrown out the door that could reduce the cost-per-lead with increasing lead conversions and allowing marketers to put more money into campaigns that could garner more lead results.

Based on these results, there seems to be an overall issue that B2B marketers really need to pay more attention to their online user experience trends, since opportunities are being missed for better conversions. Make sure, if you are a B2B marketer, understand how your online users are utilizing the site and don’t rely on your sales team to follow-up. The majority of the marketers that participated in the study agreed that their target audiences do the majority of their research on products and services, before they contact a sales person. By improving the user experience by only 10-20%, could significantly increase your ROI by 5X.

Social Networks and Blogs are Not a Fad with 80% Online Usage

ashleyh4 — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:06:45 +0000

It looks like social networks and blogs are not a fad, as many would have you believe. According to a recent study by Nielsen, 80% of online usage by active Internet consumers is spent on social networks and blogs, such as Facebook and Twitter. 48% of online consumers responded to a retailer’s offer through social networks and more than 60% of active Internet users did their research on a Social Network to learn more about a product and/or brand.

If you’re a Marketer that is not seriously considering a part of your marketing budget to Social Network marketing, you may want to re-think your strategy based on these latest social network findings.

How To Choose a Marketer For Online and Offline

ashleyh4 — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:39:50 +0000

When hiring either a full-time Marketer or Consultant to help grow your business, look to their past successes, but also consider what types of expertise they have. It’s hard to judge Marketers solely on their successes, since many specialize in different channels of marketing and industry. Be wary of any Marketer that says that they can do it all, no marketer can. All marketers have specific specialities because there are so many channels to choose from and it’s hard to do them all. Review a Marketer’s channel experience, if it has been more focused towards the B2C or B2B industries. Most Marketers do prefer one over the other, since B2C marketing tends to focus more on short-term promotionals and B2B tends to focus more on content-driven campaigns (i.e. white papers, case studies, webinars). In the long run, Marketers that choose one type of industry tend to stay with that industry because they are good at driving brand-awareness and traffic to those industries.

Lastly, review if the Marketer is hands-on with their campaigns or have focused more on developing overall strategy. Marketers that have focused on strategy are great in larger organizations that can support their marketing efforts, but rarely do well in Start-ups or mid-level growth companies because they become frustrated by lack of resources. If your company is a small company, try and find a Marketer that has strategy experience, but has executed their campaigns, as well.

Top 10 Signs You Have a Bad Agency

ashleyh4 — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:02:08 +0000

I have been in marketing for over 20 years on both the client-side and agency-side and it’s not until recently that I have had the pleasure to meet a truly bad Marketing and Design agency, so I thought for this blog post, that I would use David Letterman’s Top 10 List as an example of, ‘Top 10 Signs that You Have a Bad Agency’.

Top 10 Signs You Have a Bad Agency:
10. The owner of the agency yells at you
9. Your agency doesn’t return your phone calls or emails, after you have given them a deposit to start work
8. Your agency wants more money…. just because
7. Your website design comps that you signed-off on to move forward with the agency, mysteriously does not look at all like the design comp, when it’s completed and programmed to go live
6. Your agency misses the due date of your website being completed
5. Your agency pushes back the due date without asking
4. Your agency takes you out to dinner, but expenses it to you
3. Your agency removes items that you approved in the original documentation and does not notify you
2. Your agency forgets your company’s name in the PR materials and press releases that they’ve released to the PR wires
1. The agency’s mantra is… The Customer is Always Wrong!

Good luck!

B2B Marketers Should Develop Business Apps for Android and Apple Platforms

ashleyh4 — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:19:25 +0000

It’s time for B2B products, software, and services companies to really start pushing to build for the Apple and Android markets, or face the consequences of your company falling behind your competitors. More than 54% of iPad and other tablet users are business travelers, and according to Nielsen’s recent research, desktop and laptop usage is down, since tablets are being used more in place of the these bigger machines.

Get ahead of the curve now!

Use Email Marketing and Social Media Together to Build Online Communities

ashleyh4 — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:42:05 +0000

B2B or B2C marketers should build their company’s online communities by creating targeted email blasts to the company’s customer and potential customer database. Create a theme, such as ‘We’re Listening’ to get your customers to tell honest stories of their experiences with the company, whether positive or negative. For any positive stories, use them in future newsletters or on the company’s website to show the community experience, which creates a positive halo effect that the company is a ‘people-type of company’.

For any negative stories, address them immediately and take action in whatever channel the communication came through, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or LinkedIn, so customers will believe that the company cares about them. Don’t make a mistake like what BP did when the oil spill occured last year, when they waited so long to address all of the negative comments on Twitter. If BP would have addressed the comments immediately, the image of the company probably would have been a lot different, as we know it now.

By addressing customer concerns will make your customers long-term advocates of the company and attract new customers based on the positive experiences of the current customers.

Marketing Company Domain Names and Urls – Uppercase, Lowercase or Mixed Text in the Urls?

ashleyh4 — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:29:22 +0000

There has been a lot of misunderstanding on how to handle company urls, when displaying them in marketing collateral, such as print, television, and on the web. I have had clients ask me, ‘If it’s better to display urls in all lowercase, all uppercase or a mix of letters in the text?’ The rule of thumb that I tell all of my clients is, how would you normally write it in a sentence? How does your company name or logo appear on marketing collateral ?

Technically, domain names are not case-sensitive, so it does not matter, how you display your domain name or url in collateral, except for how you may want your target audience to remember your domain name. Western society reads from left to write and phonetically, so you want your target audience to remember your url phonetically. For example, PocketLegends.com, Amazon.com, MySpace.com, and GoDaddy.com all display their names in marketing collateral with a mix of upper and lowercase letters in the url.

There is one caveat, for secondary pages or tracking urls after the .com, such as ‘www.AshleyHartMarketing.com/promotion1′, you may want to defer to using all lowercase letters for your text. If your web host for your website is using Linux or Unix as the servers, they are case-sensitive and if you market your url in uppercase text in your marketing collateral, users will not find the page. The only time that it may work to have uppercase or mixed letters in the url, after the .com, is if your website is being hosted by a Windows server. Although, I wouldn’t recommend to do so, even if you have a Windows server to use the uppercase or mixed letters in the text at all, in case you decide to move servers later.