DMG Online Marketing

DMG Online Marketing as a Game Changer

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 16:05:20 +0000

Clutch Recognizes DMG Online Marketing as a Game Changer in the SEO Agency in Canada

The internet has truly opened up a lot of opportunities for companies in this day and age. It ushered in a new era where websites are quickly becoming quintessential to any business regardless of their industry. These sites have become the go-to for creating a presence online. Our team at DMG Online Marketing has been helping these businesses as they try and rank their websites higher in search engines.

We offer digital marketing services that help our clients grow their businesses online and also a full SEO agency. Our mission is to help your business bring the diverse elements of online marketing and integrate them into a process that gets more done in less time. We offer services such as digital marketing, search engine optimization, and many more.

As a matter of fact, we’ve been recently named as a game-changer in the SEO agency in Canada by Clutch. According to their most recent press release, our team is one of the role models in the SEO Agency industry locally. Our service lines, coupled with our passion and dedication for bringing the best solutions for our clients, made it possible for us to stay ahead of the competition.

Clutch is an established platform in the heart of Washington, DC, committed to helping small, mid-market, and enterprise businesses identify and connect with the service providers they need to achieve their goals.

This award is a huge honor for us! We are very proud to be on this list of game-changers in Canada. We are also thankful for our clients and their overwhelming support throughout these years. Here are some of our favorite reviews on Clutch:

“We’re psychologists so while we do get served by our vendors, the relationship with the vendor is way more important. We feel very clearly that when they understand our business better and are able to sort of pre-read some of these conditions, it certainly reflects that. They have worked to grow with us, and have a good understanding of our business.” Peter Comrie, Executive Trainer at a Professional Training and Coaching Agency

“Their customer service was excellent. I appreciated their knowledge of how current trends and standards would positively impact our business.” Stuart McPhail, VP of Sales and Marketing at Prestige Capital Inc.

We are happy to meet you and learn more about your business! Get in touch today and let us know how we can help you reach your goals. As a full service professional seo agency and digital marketing agency, we can help your business increase its digital footprint.

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Post-Pandemic Business Growth – Should Your Business Market Online

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 20:36:13 +0000

In Canada, companies are allotting 61% of the total ad budget for digital marketing in 2020. Understandably so because the internet via any device is the most used media among adults with 5.53 hours of daily engagement.

So, if you want to reach your audience without losing much money, digital seems to be the answer. And that applies to the before, during, and post-pandemic market environment.

Marketing your business online is cheaper than marketing it on traditional platforms. Also, internet marketing generates a higher ROI when done correctly.

For example, for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you make $44 in revenue. And you can enjoy an average of 26% of traffic from Google CPC alone. That may not seem like much but it’s measurable, which is the major problem with traditional media. You can’t measure the latter.

Think about it. Can you write an accurate number of eyeballs your billboards generate? You can give a ballpark, surely, which is how billboard companies decide their fee, but you can’t say anything for sure.

So, when you’re losing money or are on a tight budget because of the failing economy, which one would you choose – one that’s measurable or one that isn’t?

Digital marketing can improve your customer retention rate

In 2019, Keap’s respondents confirmed that keeping customers was their fourth-biggest challenge. Interestingly, it was also their third biggest marketing goal.

So, if that was the case last year when the economy was relatively stable, it’s safe to presume that a poor customer retention rate must worry more businesses in 2020.

You can use online marketing to target specific customer segments and leads, so you can understand the reason for them not coming back.

For instance, a high churn rate is a common problem among SaaS companies that offer free trials. People try the service only to never return. For this reason, it requires email marketers to engage with such customers to create strategies that allow them to reduce anywhere between 60% to 80% churn rate.

This goes to show that once you solve problems, you experience high retention rates, which is only possible through digital marketing’s two-way communication feature.

It’s a way for small businesses to compete with large corporations

Gone are the days when referrals controlled your product’s demand. Nowadays, 78% of internet users prefer doing their own product research before making a buying decision. That’s your cue to shine.

The reason so many businesses love SEO is that it’s one of the few ways they can compete with large businesses that have more resources. Producing good content may be tough, but it isn’t expensive. It’s doable.

So, even if you can’t spend millions of dollars on marketing and advertising, you can improve your organic traffic with SEO and social media advertising while spending less than $5 per day.

That’s a great way to ensure you’re cutting down on your expenses while still having decent brand visibility across all platforms in the post-pandemic market.

You can test the waters with digital marketing

Here’s the problem with sticking to traditional marketing methods. Once you push out a campaign, do it at scale to justify the costs and get better deals on your media plans. It’s a gamble after that.

Obviously, it isn’t always a terrible miss because marketers usually perform a test run on focus groups, but traditional marketing can’t guarantee your results.

Today, close to 5 billion people use the internet and it’s possible to filter them till you’ve narrowed your search down to an accurate buyer persona.

Once that’s done, digital marketing allows you to carry out A/B testing on your actual audience, not just a focus group. Through feedback, data analysis, and behaviour observation, you can improve your marketing activities before launching a full-blown campaign.

By running test campaigns on small groups, not only can you perfect your campaigns but also ensure that your investment generates high ROI.

It’s the only way to target individual buyers

People check their social media immediately after waking up. So, you know exactly where your buyers are. All you have to do is find them.

As mentioned before, online marketing allows you to super-specify your search. But did you know you could individually choose your customers?

There are a bunch of marketing automation tools that help you find your ideal buyer one by one. It isn’t as time-consuming as it sounds because it automates everything. But you can choose whom to sell – a feature that newspapers can’t offer.

A cost-effective way of getting through the pandemic, isn’t it?

Google Analytics and Search Console can help you personalize your campaigns

Speaking of choosing ideal buyers, personalization is yet another benefit of online marketing. From sending customized buyer journey emails to creating online campaigns for, say, ‘30-year-old single mothers,’ you can weed out the deadwood and save a ton of money.

But wait, there’s more.

By using free tools from Google to personalize your marketing activities, you can increase your conversions by 42% spending no more money.

You can use Analytics to find out who’s interested in your products, where they’re spending most of their time on your page, and analyze the heatmap of your website to see what works and what doesn’t.

Through Google Search Console, you can also get a list of the keywords people are using to land on your page and use them to improve your SEO strategy. Kind of like playing by your strengths.

It’s easier to do focused advertising and retargeting online

There’s no way of knowing who interacted with your business offline if you don’t record their personal details. So, you can’t reach out to them when you have something that might interest them.

But when you market your business online, it’s a little different. You can use cookies to get back to your customers not only because you have something for them but also because you want to follow up on them regarding their previous interaction.

Now that the pandemic has made it uneconomical to spend more on finding new buyers, re-targeting can help you find people who are already interested in buying from you.

Besides, it’s much easier and cheaper to sell to a customer who’s already bought from you or has shown interest in your products than to one that’s never even heard from you.

Once again, customer retention is a major benefit of marketing your business online. And when done correctly, internet marketing can prove to be the most cost-effective way of growing and surviving your business in the post-pandemic market.

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How Designers Select a Logo Design Style for a Brand

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 18:49:00 +0000

What’s in a logo design? Surely any logo will do for your brand as long as it’s professional, right?

Well, if that’s what you think, then it’s time to think again. Professional designers put a lot of thought not only into the individual elements of a logo, but into the overall style. Style is an important factor, because if the style of the logo and the brand personality don’t line up, it will end in a disconnect in your branding. And disconnected branding doesn’t do anyone any favors!

Let’s look at four major steps that a graphic designer takes to choose the perfect logo design style for a specific brand.

Step One Logo Design: Define the Brand Identity

Before you can ensure that the brand personality and logo style align, define what the brand’s personality is. If you’re designing a logo for a client, their creative brief should give you the details that you need.

If you’re designing a logo for your own company, however, then the task of defining your brand identity falls on you. Think about the inspiration behind your brand, your goals, and your mission. Picture your brand as a person. What personality traits would it have? What sort of people would it hang out with?

Write these traits down, inspirations, and goals. These are the factors that create the overall personality and identity of your brand.

Again, think about your brand like a person. Is it youthful and fun? Edgy? Traditional? There will probably be a lot of traits to consider, but distill them down to the most important defining terms. That’s the personality of your brand; that’s what your logo should match.

Step Two Logo Design: Research The Competition

The second important step in selecting a design style for your logo is knowing what the competition is doing. Remember, you want your logo to stand out from the crowd, to be memorable, to be instantly recognizable.

If the logo looks too much like an existing company’s logo, it will fail in those goals, even if the style is perfectly matched to the brand identity.

There’s another aspect to this, too: it’s important to recognize any design trends common in your brand’s market or niche. This doesn’t mean that you have to jump on those trends, by any means. But if most of your competition uses blue in their logos, for instance, you can learn a few things from observing that fact.

The popular color may appeal more to your target audience.
It may benefit from traits traditionally assigned to it by the psychology of color.
You may choose a contrasting color to help your brand stand out even more.

The same is true of logo design styles. For instance, certain types of companies have a specific trend in logo styles. Family-style restaurants, as an example, frequently have mascot logos. Businesses that sell handmade goods often have homemade-style, hand-lettered logos. Analyzing the popular trends in styles among your competition can give you better insight into what your audience expects, and how to make your own logo unique.

Step Three Logo Design: Understand Logo Styles

A third vital step in selecting a logo design is to make sure you’re well-educated on unique styles, what they inherently mean, and how they are commonly used.

Here’s a basic rundown.

Lettermarks or monograms. These are typography-based logos that typically use the initial letters of a company, often from one to four letters. It breaks longer brand names down into simplicity, so it’s great for brands with names that are complicated, wordy, or difficult to spell or pronounce. You’ll see a lot of these in bigger corporations, like HBO and IBM.
These are the names of the company used as logos. Like lettermarks, they’re heavily based on their typography, so may use unusual or unique fonts to stand out. But it’s important that the typography is legible, or the effect will be lost. Google and Visa are examples of this type of logo. This is a good choice if you have a new company that wants to make its name widely recognized.
These are graphic-based logos that aren’t tied to a specific real-life image; in other words, they’re abstract. Think the Nike swoosh. These are good choices to illustrate brands that celebrate creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.
These are graphic-based logos, using graphics that allude to the company name, purpose, or personality. Think of Apple or Target as examples. This type of logo can be more difficult to pull off if you have a brand-new brand without any name recognition.
This type of logo uses a character to create empathy between the brand and the consumer. As mentioned above, mascots are frequently found in the restaurant industry, as well as in sports teams. Think Wendy’s Wendy, KFC’s Colonel Sanders, and Planter’s Mr. Peanut. This is an ideal logotype for brands that cater to children and families.
Combination mark. Perhaps the most commonly used variant, a combination mark uses both a graphic or icon and typography, combining the pictorial image with the lettering that spells out the name of the brand. Perfect for new companies who are building up their reputations, and easy to adapt later on if the brand becomes popular enough to not need the combination mark.

Connecting The Logo Design Style To The Brand Identity

Once you’ve got all this information under your belt, it’s time to start putting it together. Analyze the brand personality, competition, and trends. Compare it to the types of logos, what they’re suited for, and how they can be used.

Each brand will need a unique solution; there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to appropriate, effective branding. That’s why knowing the brand backwards and forwards is really the paramount factor when it comes to choosing the logo style.

It doesn’t matter how amazing your logo design is — if the style just doesn’t fit the brand, it won’t be effective. But that doesn’t mean that only one style will fit the brand, either.

Design experts often recommend doing multiple variants on a logo design, in order to make sure that you end up with the best version. That means that you can play around with different design styles as you work on crafting your perfect brand logo.

A good graphic designer will follow these four steps to choose a design style for any given brand. But ultimately, the details of the logo, and its effectiveness, really depends on the brand itself.

Author Biography

Betty Shane works as a professional blogger for multiple websites. Her work as a freelance content writers allows her to explore diverse topics including but not limited to digital marketing, business and design.

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Email Marketing Automation, 4 Quick and Easy for Ecommerce

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 16:04:46 +0000

Email Marketing Automation

Email marketing automation is the bread and butter of a lot of businesses in e-commerce. Its results speak for itself, which is why a lot of people invest time and money just to learn how to use these marketing strategies.

Whether you’re just getting started on marketing automation or you’re already an expert on this field, here are 4 essential tips you need to remember to help boost your sales.

1. Customized subscription forms will always be needed.

Subscriptions, subscriptions, and more subscriptions come with well-placed forms where customers can sign up and subscribe to your email list. Even something as simple as a one-item form asking for their email can work.

Customizations also help reel in subscribers. It’s a lot easier to get customers to subscribe if they’re interested in what they’re seeing. Make as many customized subscription forms and landing pages as needed. For every target market you have, you should at least have one landing page and subscription form customized just for them.

Email automation works best when you have a sizeable number of subscribers so don’t forget to use every possibility to earn a new subscriber.

2. Automated messages for milestones bring subscribers closer to the brand.

Have you earned a new subscriber? Automate the message welcoming them to your list! Someone finally made their first purchase? Automate that again! A subscriber made a mistake of clicking unsubscribe? Automate that and add a feedback form!

The smallest things like a customer’s first year with your brand can always help make the brand feel closer to the customers. You don’t even have to remember when all of these happen since email automation will do it for you.

Milestones will always be appreciated by subscribers, and automation can help you celebrate individual milestones with your customers.

3. Reminders and other notifications bring in conversions.

Sometimes all it takes is a little nudge or reminder to get customers to finally decide to purchase that thing that has been in their cart for months. Promos and other discounts are also some of the most anticipated notifications for customers.

Both of these scenarios result into actual sales conversions, but they happen because of automated messages that remind customers. Whether it is an abandoned cart or an upcoming sale, make sure to automate these events get more opportunities for sales conversions.

4. Planning ahead for email campaigns can boost results.

Timing will always play a big part in marketing. However, it’s one of those things that email automation can’t just decide for you. Here’s where man and machine become one to bring the best solution possible.

You have to plan ahead of the competition and know when the campaigns should be set in motion. Once everything is set, you can leave all the work to your automation tool. There is really no other way to put it but to remember that in the end, you’ll still have to plan campaigns. Automation only does the hands-on work of sending emails, but the brains have to come from you.

Conclusion

Those are the 4 quick tips to help your email marketing automation strategy. If you have questions or have other tools that you would like to share post in the comments below.

With email marketing still one of the best ways to connect with businesses, a good strategy of email marketing automation will help you grow and build your business. A good read and guides can also be found over at Campaign Monitor.

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Leading Digital Marketing Agency, DMG Online Marketing Joins Clutch as a Leader in Canada

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 19:12:39 +0000

Leading Digital Marketing Agency!

At DMG Online Marketing, we create memorable experiences by enabling different forms of interaction between brands and their audiences. Our compact team of two expert marketers, headquartered in Calgary, Canada, focuses digital strategy, SEO, web design, content marketing and more. Our dedication to giving our clients the best results and our commitment to always provide quality services has given us the opportunity to be featured as one of the leading digital marketing agencies in 2019, according to Clutch!

Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews platform in the heart of Washington, D.C., works to find the most efficient software, consultants, and agencies around the world in order to connect businesses with the right partners. In order to do this, they conduct interviews with former clients and they perform extensive research on each company’s industry expertise to make sure they’re identifying truly the best agencies globally. Based on their findings, we’re incredibly proud that DMG Online Marketing has received high marks across the board, and we’re a 5-Star agency on their platform.

We are beyond thrilled with our first review on Clutch. Take a look:

Our strong worth ethic and devotion to helping businesses thrive online have also earned us some recognition on Clutch’s two sister sites, The Manifest and Visual Objects. The Manifest, which is another platform that offers buyers guidance in selecting an ideal business partner, has us listed amongst the best SEO consultants in Calgary. On Visual Objects, where buyers can see visual examples of our work via an online portfolio, we’re featured as a leading digital marketing company in 2019.

We are extremely grateful to the Clutch team for regarding us as a leading digital marketing agency and to our clients for sharing their experiences. We are looking forward to growing our presence on Clutch! If you are a client and would like to help check out our review on Clutch and if you like to post one as well.

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5 Cliche’ SEO Practices You Must Stop Doing

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 20:12:09 +0000

Search engine optimization or SEO is about rendering your site more friendly to search engines and automated systems that crawl and recognize content throughout the web. As far as we have come in how we approach our interactions with the Internet, traditional (and far less efficient) SEO is something that’s still being done.

For some site owners, SEO practices haven’t changed since the early 2000s, when most site coding was manual. Technology has changed, and as technology changes, so do we have to adapt by changing how we approach it.

Here are five common cliché SEO practices that some site designers have a hard time letting go of

Content, Content, and the Same Content

In the olden days, it was once true that putting out more meant that you got more back. Sites would often have very similar, if not identical, content across multiple pages and even in various places on the same page. Not only is this cliché and confusing to users, but search engines have also gotten wise to this SEO practice and exclude duplicated information.

Search algorithms are more advanced than they have ever been. The key to working with search engines to make your site friendly is not to duplicate content if at all possible and to clearly differentiate each page to avoid them being categorized for sameness.

Form Follows Function

The more you learn about SEO practices, the more you’ll hear the phrase, “content is king.” It can be true in multiple ways. No matter the way it’s meant, the content directly controls a site’s popularity and rank.

Where the cliche enters the scene, though, is in sites where function takes precedence over form. Most of the time, when you hear that content is king, it’s referring to the need for quality content to attract and retain site visitors. Unfortunately, some site designers have not taken this modern tip and instead prioritize function without caring much about how it looks or whether it’s readable. As a result, you have a mess of a page that includes a lot of keywords and links, which today, is not search engine-friendly.

Page Rank Is Not Number One

Search algorithms are amazingly complicated. Google, for instance, has stated that its systems measure over 200 different metrics on a site to accurately categorize its content. The traditional thinking is that a site’s page rank directly influences traffic and site popularity. While it’s an important factor, other best practices shouldn’t be ignored.

The focus on page rank alone has become cliché. Searching is a major way that traffic comes to a site, but it is not the only factor. Search engine teams emphasize the attention to return on investment, analytics, relevancy, and inbound link cultivation. Take it from Google, the most major of players in the search engine industry, that there’s a lot more to it than just appearing on the first page of search results.

Keyword Padding

Lots of people spend lots of time generating and brainstorming lots of keywords. The cliché and traditional practice of trying to think of every possible keyword for which a user might search are thankfully going away, albeit gradually.

A better keywording practice for site designers will not be to load up each page with the same slew of slightly different keywords, but instead, focus individual pages on individual keywords. Search engines will take the site as a whole, gather all of its keywords, and then will rank a particular page higher based on the quality of its content.

Buying Links Can Cost More than Money

SEO sometimes gets a bad reputation based on the cliché and unethical SEO practices in which some site owners engage. These SEO practices are cynical and even a bit predatory. Companies exist (and cater to site designers in particular) that provide the ability to, in very short order, link to a site hundreds or thousands of times. This linking immediately causes traffic to spike, with the intent of having the traffic spike drive up the page rank.

Irregular link activity is actually a status that a search engine can assign to a site. This status, when given to a site by a search engine, will prevent any uptick in page rank due to a large influx of links to a site. This means that search engines have essentially gotten wise to the practice of buying links and take measures to compensate for these cliché SEO practices.

The world changes, and we must change with it. Captured here are the few old-timer SEO practices that remain and have become a bit cliché, but keep researching, reading, and keeping up with trends. There are lots of amazing resources out there and affordable SEO services for small business, make sure you stay up-to-date with the best and most search engines accepted practices.

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Savvy Ways to Spend Your Additional Marketing Budget

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 14:00:00 +0000

You’ve found yourself at the end of your fiscal year with a big problem you weren’t expecting throughout the entire year, but that remains a problem.

Maybe a project fell through? Maybe budgets adjusted because of good company performance or other resources were allocated to your team.

Regardless, the fact remains that you have some leftover marketing budget. The good thing about this issue is that now you have more resources to work with toward your marketing efforts. The bad thing is that you’ve got a very limited time in which to use this budget, after which it may not be allocated again next year.

Let’s look at 14 innovative and savvy ways to spend your additional marketing budget.

1. Generate Content

Foremost, the content question requires an answer. If your queue of content is looking a little light, perhaps it might be time to invest some of your extra budget in ensuring that you’ll be publishing content on your site’s blog for months to come. It’s not an expensive line item, and it looks impressive to have custom (and organic and dynamic) content on your site.

2. Promote That Content

All social media platforms are doing it these days as an alternative to traditional marketing. Promoted content appears in line with other social media content. This integrates the advertising experience within the established user interface and doesn’t require them to look in a dedicated advertising area of the social media platform. Promoted or sponsored content is a great way to get noticed.

3. Hire Bloggers

Going one step further than generating content in-house or promoting social media content, maybe it’s time to take some of that excess budget and invest it, not in generating content for the company, but in generating reputation. Entire blogging communities exist who are for hire to the right advertiser match. Hired bloggers will create buzz without your company’s name attached to the byline.

4. Physical Infrastructure

This one is scalable. Upgrade your office’s internal profile by purchasing some (probably) much-needed infrastructure. This can mean anything, and anything helps, as long as it’s purchased intelligently. Could be time for new and faster CD burners, comfy office chairs, a second monitor for all employees, or a redesigned floor plan aimed at better productivity.

5. Electronic Infrastructure

How do you manage files, either internally or externally? Once you’ve got a bit of extra money, it may be time to look at whether your electronic infrastructure is up to snuff. Perhaps it’s time to invest in a collaborative writing software suite or a document management system. Or externally focusing your interests could be a redesign of your company’s website.

6. Mobile Infrastructure

Extra budgets are great for ensuring your staff has the equipment it needs to work smarter on the go. Does each member of the staff have an updated smartphone? Are those smartphones paid for by the company? If we answer all those questions with a yes already, then maybe it’s time to think about developing or investing in an app for those phones.

7. Some New Market Research

You spend all year investing your marketing budget in reaching out to customers, but when was the last time you looked into what the market wanted? Or, better yet, when was the last time you had an outside, impartial, firm look into your target audience? Take some of your excess budget and put it into market research that can drive your decision-making for years to come.

8. Logistics

There are so many logistical things a marketing department can do to better prepare itself for eventualities or the unforeseen. Backup batteries, office supplies, off-site data storage, records retention – the list goes on and on, and each item in the list enhances and facilitates the work by the marketing team.

9. Photography

A picture is worth a thousand words, and lots of pictures are worth lots of words. Photography and photographers are more affordable than ever before in any area. Take that money and hire a photographer for some new staff headshots, formal product or office photographs, or stock photography. We can use all for a variety of purposes.

10. Software Upgrades

Your staff will be hindered and less than ideally productive without even realizing it. Using older versions of software packages, like Adobe or Microsoft Office, can seem familiar and adequate, and often are. But it’s equally likely that spending a bit of extra money to invest in updated software solutions may be the key needed to unlock new levels of creativity.

11. Staff Incentives

Sock some of that money away for a different use. We could spend extra budget on developing a merit- and performance-based incentive program for your employees centered on an end-of-year bonus that rewarded employees for jobs well done.

12. Develop Your Staff Part 1: Education

Continuing education continues throughout our lives. With a little extra money, your company might be in a good position to target some (or all if you’re lucky) employees for further educational opportunities. This can go well beyond the traditional classroom and can extend to professional organizations and certifications.

13. Develop Your Staff Part 2: Conferences

Inspiration can come from anywhere, but inspiration can come far easier when surrounded by like-minded peers. Invest some of your excess budget into creating an experience for your employees by sending them to educational and enriching conferences designed to equip them to meet challenges and innovate.

14. Giving Back

The community itself is always in need of funds and is a great place to donate any unallocated funds. The opportunities are many, whether your company provides a purely monetary donation, a matching grant for volunteer hours, or a donation in the form of goods. Not only is the service a reward, but it also enhances your company’s image, and events bring employees together in ways that no work function ever could.

That’s it. You should have some idea by now of how to spend that extra marketing budget, or if not, we’ve at least put you in the right direction. Finding additional unallocated marketing resources is a good problem to have!

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11 Ways to Completely Revamp Your Marketing

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 14:00:00 +0000

Are you looking for ways of changing up your marketing campaigns? Sometimes, change is good, and it can make your ads look fresh and new. While you shouldn’t completely revamp your marketing on a whim, it is something necessary to step and back see if you could take things in a different direction. Here are 11 ways you can completely revamp your marketing.

Revamp Your Marketing

1. Change up your company’s branding.

This means change your logo, your slogan, your colors… anything that is associated with your company’s brand. You probably don’t want to change everything, but if you’ve used the same logo for 50 years, it might be time for something a little different or more current.

2. Get a spokesperson.

A spokesperson, whether it’s a real person or an animated character, it can bring new life to your services or products. A spokesperson brings with him or her a unique personality that can redefine how your business is seen by the general public. Just remember that a spokesperson with a negative reputation will also affect your business, so choose carefully.

3. Change your medium.

If you’ve always done print ads, consider doing television, radio, or going online. A change, even if it’s just for one ad, can make you think about your marketing in a completely new way.

4. Work with an advertising company or consultant.

Bringing in an outside point of view can help you see where your marketing can be changed. People outside of your company may see places for improvement that you can’t, or they might have ideas you would never have come up with.

5. Market the value of your product, not its features.

Most people immediately start pointing out the amazing features of a product but think instead of showing your customers the value of buying that product. It makes the message much more personal.

6. Invoke pop culture.

Think about what’s trendy and what’s popular. You don’t have to completely incorporate these things into your marketing, but look to them for inspiration. Just remember to be flexible because what’s trendy today will be forgotten tomorrow.

7. Talk about your company’s “why.”

Why are you in business? Some people would say to make money, but often, it’s more than that. Is there a particular group of people you want to provide a service to? Talk about your company’s big picture, your passions, and your goals.

8. Go big.

Instead of promoting each product or service separately or in its own advertising campaign, consider consolidating all of your marketing and simply advertise your business. These types of ads are a great place to include the company’s “why” statement.

9. Go small.

On the other hand, if you’ve mainly promoted your business as a whole, maybe it’s time to try marketing campaigns more tightly focused on particular products or services. This is especially helpful if you’ve just launched something new.

10. Make a minimalist ad.

Even if you don’t use it, creating an ad with just the bare necessities can help you see what’s truly necessary when marketing your product.

11. Let your creative side out.

When putting together marketing campaigns, most people look at what other businesses are doing or what’s been proven to work in the past. But what if you didn’t? What if you simply did what you thought was the best way to market the product? It might turn out to be a failure, of course. It’s risky to go with something completely different and untested, but there are times when it actually pays off. Sometimes, these crazy, creative marketing ideas are the best ones.

What have you tried to put some spark back into your marketing?

The post 11 Ways to Completely Revamp Your Marketing appeared first on DMG Online Marketing.

5 Real-Life Lessons About Search Engine Optimization

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:13:16 +0000

Search Engine Optimization—those three words, often abbreviated to three letters SEO, can strike fear into the hearts of web designers everywhere. So much relies on having amazing SEO—without significant keywords and other SEO-related things, no one can find your website. But use the wrong ones in the wrong way, and you’ll run afoul of Google’s algorithms. So what can you do? You can start by learning these five real-life lessons about search engine optimization. They may help you avoid the insanity that often comes with trying to get your site optimized.

Search Engine Optimization Life Lessons

1. Practice Makes Perfect

Novice designers set up their keywords and other SEO tags and meta descriptions, then walk away never to look at it again. But SEO doesn’t work like that. Instead, you’ve got to track each keyword, evaluate how well it’s working, and decide if it needs replacing. You may also have to do a significant SEO rework after a new Google algorithm comes out. You have to keep at it because no one’s SEO is ever absolutely perfect.

2. There’s Always Something New to Learn

SEO—in fact, almost everything connected with online marketing—is still evolving and growing. Even though it seems like everyone is now online, the truth is that most people have had internet access for less than 20 years. The world of SEO has changed a lot in those two decades, and it may change a lot more before it finally settles into a set of best practices. For you this means you have to research continually and learn about new techniques.

3. What was Once Good is now Bad

Along those same lines, you’ll find some SEO techniques that were once considered the most useful are now not only recognized as a waste of time, they are now sometimes also penalized. Keywords, for example, now need to be used very strategically instead of occurring in every other sentence. Links built into your website can’t come from just anywhere; they need to come from related, high-quality sites. Google and other search engines will penalize any site that continues to use practices that have been declared underhanded or sneaky, so you have to keep on top of these changes.

4. Everything can be Optimized

Don’t think you can stop at keywords in your content and a few meta tags in your webpage description. Everything these days can be used in your optimization. Have images? Be sure your alt tags include keywords! Need to add a video? Give it a caption with a keyword or two. Remember that search engines can’t “see” anything that’s not coding or text, so you’ve got to be sure to label videos, images, widgets, Flash content, and anything else.

5. Is Your Site Useful to Humans?

Finally, here’s the biggest and most important life lesson of all. Make sure you don’t get so wrapped up in SEO that you forget to make your website useful to the human visitors you’re trying to attract! Don’t go overboard with keywords or content that’s just there to add a few more tags. Don’t spend hours on the SEO but only a few minutes on the actual content, which is what’s going to bring people to the site.

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Marketing Trends We’ve Seen So Far

matt@damangmedia.com (dmgonlineadmin) — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 16:36:00 +0000

So far this year we saw a number of new and continuing marketing trends. A few of these marketing trends solidified themselves while others emerged and took the place of older trends that faded away due to being ineffective or outdated. Here are some of the biggest trends of so far in 2015 and what they did to the marketing industry.

Marketing Trends Halfway of 2015

Content is King

Thanks in part to Google and some of its updated algorithms, content is more important than ever. This past year saw more and more websites get on board with this idea. Instead of focusing on SEO tricks, people are now placing more value on what the website is actually conveying to people. Do visitors to the site find it helpful? Does the content answer any questions or give visitors the information they want? If it doesn’t, all the SEO in the world won’t get people to come back. Content that’s fresh, unique, and relevant is much more important now than keywords and meta tags are.

Location is Important

Using geotags and GPS, advertisers can now deliver content aimed at people who live in a specific location. This does two things. First, businesses in the area can now more efficiently target those who are more likely to visit their location. Putting ads online that are seen by people in Chicago does nothing to help a business in Florida, but with geotargeting, that’s no longer an issue. The second thing this does help the user. Now when people see ads online or on their smartphones, they’re for businesses that are actually relevant to them. People are much more likely to pay attention to ads for businesses in their area.

Combining Marketing Avenues

People love videos. People love social media. People love using mobile sites. These things were all true in 2014, so the trend of 2015 has been combining them. Nowhere is this more evident than in the creation of Vine, a website that allows users to create short, six-second videos and share them on social media. Facebook has jumped on board, too, with the addition of videos to their Instagram service. The days of tweeting a picture of that delicious pie are over—now people are making vines of taking the first bite.

Smaller and Smaller Tech

While not purely a marketing trend, the trend of wearing technology like Fitbits and Google Glass is about to explode. Marketing experts are already using geotargeting to send local ads to people’s smartphones, but soon they’ll be able to do much more. Google Glass will be able to tell when someone is indoors or outside, looking at products and more. Ads could be targeted to the specific street someone’s walking on. The trend this year may not be in producing those ads just yet, but many marketing companies are certainly preparing for it.

Ads for Each Industry

Industry-specific advertising has been around for several years, but it’s becoming more and more popular. Price Listing Ads are used by many retailers to provide more informative and helpful ads to customers. Google is working on new Hotel Price Ads for the travel and lodging industry. It’s very likely that more of these industry-specific ads will appear over the next several years.

Branding

Finally, branding has continued to be a major trend in marketing. Companies strive to have a specific brand that ties together all of their marketing. The company’s logo, name, color scheme, and more come together to create a cohesive, easily recognizable brand that can be used across campaigns. There’s nothing from the past year that shows branding is going to slow down anytime soon.

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