What are the best practices that I can do as an owner to enhance what is being done by a marketing agency?
When you are the professional in your industry, it makes sense to outsource some of the aspects of your professional services business that you are not familiar with, or don’t have the time to do yourself. Hiring a digital marketing agency is a great idea. They can theoretically do everything for you and you don’t even have to think about it. But there are a few things that you can do internally to make both the process and the outcome more beneficial.
See the latest episode of our Marketing of the Minds series and get some tips when working with a marketing agency.
What does my marketing agency want from me?
There are 2 main things you can help your marketing agency with to compliment, accent or amplify what they are capable of doing.
First and foremost, think of yourself as a pseudo team member. You should be there to provide information that will assist the growth of your professional services business. There are three types of information you could be providing your marketing agency on a regular basis to help in the promotion of your company.
- Any events coming up
- Changes happening with your company and/or the industry
- Updates to the day to day workings of your business
These details can come in different forms. You could send written text by shooting an email with all of the information.
You can share pictures or images. These can be graphics related to your industry or as simple as cell phone images that you captured. Are you having an event? Snap some pictures and quickly send them over.
Last but definitely not least is video. We know how much video is booming right now and integrating it into your marketing is super important.
Now that you have provided this information to your marketing agency, what are they doing to do with it?
There are so many ways to use text, photos and video in the marketing world. The great thing is that one piece of media can be used in multiple areas. A few of which are:
Did you know that Google controls about 92% of all online searches? Now that may seem insane, but it’s because they are getting that result from multiple entities. Google images, Youtube, Google maps and Google search all make up that 92%. So, when a piece of content gets distributed in multiple forms of media, with the correct SEO in place, to a variety of platforms they have a higher chance of showing up in online searches!
They’ve done the work, now what?
The second thing that you can do to help out your digital marketing agency is by engaging on social media. It sounds like sucha simple task, but with great reward. When content is being pushed out to your different platforms you have a great chance of getting comments and even direct messages from your followers. If those go unanswered with no engagement from your business, you can quickly lose the interest of that potential customer. A quick answer to the question, or follow-up to the comment can be a great way to engage with your audience.
How do we get more reviews on Google?
Did you know that Google is not the only place that consumers look for customer reviews? They are also turning to Facebook on a regular basis. These two platforms are the primary places potential customers are looking to, so that may be where you want to spend your efforts.
Now that you know where to focus, how are you going to grow your list of testimonials?
Have you heard the terms Causation and Correlation? Knowing the difference between the two is favorable in helping your business grow. Does a good review being left cause your business to perform great customer service? Or does great customer service correlate to your customers leaving a rave review?
Do You Want To Rank Higher In Google Maps?
You’ve created a great experience, now what?
If you start with the behavior that will lead to wonderful reviews, we can help you with the rest!
76% of people say that they would leave a review for you if they were simply asked. Having heard that stat, the no-brainer would be to ask your customers to leave a review. Have you had someone call and tell you how much they loved their experience? After thanking them for letting you know, ask them to go leave a review and tell everyone else about their experience.
Don’t be afraid to coach or give guidance on leaving a review. Something more than “I had a great experience” holds more weight than a longer and more heart felt review. Mentions of names or details of the experience can resonate with those reading the testimonial.
Did you know that there is such a thing as “Google Local Guide”? These are people who leave frequent reviews on google of their encounter. There are different levels, from one to ten, and once they reach a level seven their review has more weight compared to others.
It is important to know that all platforms take what is said in the review into account in ratings, so the more complex and detailed the review the more weight it holds.
How can we stand out from our competitors?
We know that you are great at what you do, but you probably aren’t the only one. There’s many other people in the same field as you, and the probability is high that you are not the only one in the area either. So how do you make your business stand out in a sea of your competitors?
How are you being disruptive?
We realize that the word disruptive can have a negative connotation to it, but we say it to mean what are you doing differently? What are you doing that others aren’t? What is garnering more attention? There’s many ways that you can be disruptive in the community, and we’ve got a couple of tips for you to accomplish that!
You know more than the average Joe about your field of work, so share that knowledge. Answer common questions that the community has and put it in terms that the everyday man can understand.
I once saw an accounting company who does “Two Minute Monday ” where they create a video where they share a piece of quick information. This one in particular was a change in a tax code. They started out by reading word for word what the change was. After, he broke it down into layman’s terms so that the everyday person could understand what it was saying. It was a quick two minute video that they sent out to their email contacts, but had a couple hundred thousand views within a month because it was pretty helpful.
It doesn’t matter if the viewer is a current customer or not, giving them information from the expert (you) gains their trust which can in turn steer them towards being a future customer.
This is a simple way to differentiate yourself from your competition.
We have seen evidence over the last 14 years that those who create a great FAQ page on their website is almost always the second most visited page, after the homepage. Collecting about 20 of the most commonly asked questions that you hear and writing out answers for them can not only create content, but show you are willing to educate your customers.
After you have written out your FAQ, create a single video for each one. Then use that video and share it on your social channels, make a Google My Business post with it, put it with your FAQ page and create a whole blog post about that one question while sharing the video. Maximize the amount of exposure you can get from one question and one video!
Make your consumers say “Hey, that guy really knows his stuff”!
If you’d like to get some additional help and guidance, check out our latest podcast on how to stand out from the crowd of competitors. Be sure to contact us today for your complimentary digital marketing consultation.
Why Should You Apply To Be On Marketing Of The Minds?
Contact Arcane Marketing For More Marketing Insights
We have a lot of really helpful information that we’d like to share with you. All you need to do is reach out.
