The creative process can take a long time to cultivate and is heavily dependent on the project’s goals. An idea for a project might be easy to come up with, but the execution can take time. When we think in terms of digital marketing, we might imagine that six months is an eternity. In the grand scheme of things, however, it’s actually a relatively short amount of time to measure success.

Here are some reasons why we at Clix believe that having a long-term plan as part of your creative digital marketing campaign is beneficial and, in the long term, brings success.

“Results” Are Time (and Budget) Dependent

Just as time is a limitation on the amount of work that can be accomplished in a day, so too can the budget determine what kind of creative output occurs. It is short-sighted to think that a carefully thought out marketing campaign will be totally successful if time is not a consideration to see those results.     

And what kind of time period can a business owner expect to see results? As in most aspects of digital marketing, the short answer is “it depends.” What industry are you in? Are your typical customers local or do they come from all across the world? What goals are you aiming for? Are they realistic, or are you expecting too much?

We often tell clients to give their campaign one year and compare the progress of the campaign to when they started. We have seen that there is almost always an increase in leads, improvement in search visibility based on their approved keywords, and better site experience overall.

Not everything will skyrocket during that time; it is likely going to be an incremental change rather than a radical difference. But if realistic expectations and goals are set and our suggestions are taken to heart, the improvements can be striking.

Rankings Are Important, But Not The Only Factor Driving Results

Search engine rankings alone are often seen by our new clients as the most important goal their business can achieve online. They want to outrank competitors on keywords they feel are relevant to their industry.

Many business owners do not realize that inbound marketing is changing every day and the relevancy of “SEO factors” is changing, too. For example, we are seeing more and more emphasis in search engines on local profiles, and we’re seeing mobile usability and load speed as increasingly important. If your local SEO isn’t up to par, or if your website isn’t mobile friendly, your competitors will show up before you do.

However, search engine rankings aren’t the end-all and be-all of success, and a well-designed and well-ranking website might not drive the results you want right away. For one thing, it takes time to get to that place in search engines, but another factor that affects your business growth is what you do on the ground.

Yes, it’s true – your “real world” presence will affect what happens in the digital world!

Here’s an example: You are a flower shop and you hire five employees. Two are full-time and work in customer service, one answers your calls and emails, and the other two help with flower arrangements. You have someone build you a gorgeous website that looks better than all of the other flower shop sites in your area and you begin the wait for the phone to ring.

Business is slow to build and picks up over time. You see more calls and receive more emails. But then you start to read your reviews online and realize with horror that your full-time staff is rude to customers and your flower arrangement team keeps messing up orders. The person you hired to answer your emails isn’t getting back to people on time, causing them to cancel orders before they even start. “How could I have prevented this from happening?” you ask yourself. Your business is literally in jeopardy, a feeling no business owner wants to have.

Believe it or not, inbound marketing could have mitigated this problem! With options like call tracking and recording, plus a vigilant eye on your online reviews, a team like the one we have at Clix can help you make decisions about your business and improve your customer experience. We offer marketing automation to help you follow up on orders, send out surveys, and many other campaigns to streamline your business services.

How Can I See Results Faster?

If a client comes to us and wants to begin driving leads faster, there are some campaigns we can run, but they often involve other services outside of inbound marketing, such as paid media campaigns and the previously mentioned marketing automation. The latter is especially effective if you already have a contact database instead of building one from scratch.

If you’re only interested in inbound marketing and want to see results, many business owners with a local presence begin to see improvements after we have worked on their local listings. And website redesign projects can make a website better from a technical standpoint (as well as from an aesthetic one), giving your site a boost with better optimized content and technical changes.

There are so many ways to impact your digital marketing campaign, but it all boils down to giving the campaign time to show results. Patience and persistence are absolutely necessary, and when you find a digital marketing partner focused on your business growth, there’s no telling what you can accomplish.

If you’re ready to grow your business through the digital marketing mix, contact Clix and learn how our team has helped many businesses see results.

The post Why Creative Strategy in Digital Marketing Works Better Long-Term appeared first on Clix.

So how do you know who to trust?

First, you have a face to face meeting with the digital company’s representative. You should get a good feel whether or not this person is sincere and do they understand this business. Sincerity is hard to fake. Knowledge, even harder. Before closing a meeting with a prospective client. I always ask them to ask themselves one question “Am I someone you can feel that you trust?” If the answer is yes, then we move on to the next step “If not you need to find someone that you can.”

Secondly, can the company show you proof of past successes with clients? Not promises – proof. I like to show prospects evidence of success. Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google. We can show you how we’ve obtained that for specific clients. We also have case studies that show real proof of increases in website traffic and rankings as well as conversions. Success in digital marketing is a process. It takes a little time. If someone promised you quick results, that should be a red flag.

Lastly, does this company do business with complete transparency? We provide quarterly reports showing progress in all phases of your campaign as they relate to the goals we set. We track all conversions. We do this with things like call tracking telephone numbers and website form submissions on your website. The tracking number will only show to those that landed on your website by doing a Google/search engine search. This way, our clients know how many forms and calls they received due to our efforts. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s all about clicks. Nobody ever put a click in the bank.

I’ve outlined above the three most important factors when choosing a digital company that you can trust. Clearly, there are others, but if a company can’t pass the test of the big three, then they should not be considered.

I tell my clients often that I may not always tell you what you want to hear – anyone can do that. I will always tell you what you need to hear. I believe this is an integral part of building the trust that leads to a successful business partnership.

Any company can be a vendor. We’re not interested in that. We want to be a true partner. If this sounds appealing to you, contact Clix to discuss how we can make a difference in your business.

The post 3 Traits of Trustworthy Digital Marketing Agencies appeared first on Clix.

Because local SEO is such a crucial element to an overall SEO strategy, it is important to stay on top of the ever changing local search ecosystem and the influence it has on search engines to ensure you are not wasting your time or efforts. The local search ecosystem is the network of directory websites and data aggregators that publish or aggregate local citations across the web. These websites publish citations and also pass their data onto other websites to publish, who then pass their data onto more websites, and the cycle continues to trickle down to smaller and smaller websites.

In the early days of SEO, the local search ecosystem was much larger than it is today. The main focus of a successful local SEO strategy was to create as many citations as possible that include identical name, address, and phone number (NAP) information. It was also easier to “scam the system” by not appropriately representing a business online in hopes of ranking higher in search engine results pages (for instance, keyword stuffing the business name to rank for a certain keyword or not adding a service area to a listing if the business is a service area business).

Although these tactics may have worked in the past, they will not get you very far in today’s local SEO world and could even push your account into penalization on major sites such as Google. The local search ecosystem has shrunk over the past couple years as search engine’s algorithms have evolved to better understand content and citations. Instead of reading hundreds of citations’ NAP information to determine if a business is legitimate, search engines are now able to understand the NAP information and enhanced content of a smaller amount of listings on authoritative sites such as YP.com. Instead of spending time creating hundreds of listings on obscure sites, a local SEO strategy should focus on building out NAP and enhanced listing content on a smaller list of authoritative sites.

Here is an example from the Clix local listings of how a fully built listing might look.

Search engines have also evolved to understand different variations of NAP information. For instance, if Yelp publishes your address as “32 W Broadway Ave” but City Grid publishes it as “32 West Broadway Avenue,” Bing is not going to count it against you when determining your business’s accuracy in their search algorithm. This is important to know because on some sites, such as Google, a business’s address will be abbreviated no matter how you submit it to their system.

Keeping up with the local search ecosystem is an ongoing task. As local SEO grows in importance, Google and Bing are constantly testing new capabilities of their local map pack and the different factors that can affect its results. Staying on top of these updates is crucial, as falling behind could dramatically affect the local visibility of a business.

An example of this happened recently when Google started testing a more thorough verification process in San Diego for local service area business industries that typically have a lot of spam in the local search ecosystem (plumbers and locksmiths). After this new verification process was implemented, 89% of listings in the plumbing and locksmith industry on Google were removed from the local search results.

Suffice to say, it is critical to stay informed on the latest local search updates. If this SEO strategy is neglected, it could mean lower rankings or even penalization from a search engine. For more on how to stay on top of these updates and increase your local online visibility, contact us today.

The post The Ever Changing Local Search Ecosystem appeared first on Clix.

Creative and logical design will not directly affect your Google Ranking in a technical sense. Creative design is not built for Google – it is built for the user (AKA your client or customer). The ranking increases are a byproduct of having a user-friendly design and functionality. Since the Panda update in 2011, user metrics have become a very important factor in digital marketing.

With that said, I think we need to explore what Google is and how it is supposed to work.

Google, in essence, was created to help users find websites they deem useful or informative. The results that appear on screen after a search query are determined by an algorithm devised by Google to mimic what they think a user wants or, more often than not, by user proximity or previous user history/experience. This algorithm is organic, ever advancing as marketers(and users) become more savvy and obviously to help Google’s business model.

A good analogy is to think of SEO initiatives as advertisements for a retail store and your website as a salesperson or the store’s layout. The advertisements get the person to the store. The layout of the store can affect shopping patterns with the salesperson answering questions and, ultimately, making the sale.

OK, that is neat and all, but how will design effect my Google rankings?

To quote Moz:

“When a search engine delivers a page of results to you, it can measure the success of the rankings by observing how you engage with those results. If you click the first link, then immediately hit the back button to try the second link, this indicates that you were not satisfied with the first result. Search engines seek the “long click” – where users click a result without immediately returning to the search page to try again. Taken in aggregate over millions and millions of queries each day, the engines build up a good pool of data to judge the quality of their results.”

SEO tactics and clean development can only take a website so far. When all of these optimization tools are sharpened, we turn to content and personal interaction with the site. So we know that Google’s algorithm can be directly affectedby how a user interacts with your website. Generally, when a person is an interested party, they interact with the website more (exploring multiple pages and more time spent on site can have a direct effect on Google’s ranking system).

Within this user visit, you have two major aspects that contribute to personal interaction: User Experience(UX) and User Interface(UI). These two facets of design often blend together, in unison, to help a user find what he or she is looking for (or maybe discover new services products, or ideas).

So, What is User Experience & User Interface?

User Experience, or UX, is the overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.

User Interface, or UI is the means by which the user and a computer system interact, in particular the use of input devices and software.

So basically, UI is how a person interacts with the website, and UX is how that interaction makes the user feel. Common sense tells us that a slick, easy, and fun interface often leads to a better experience. This experience is monitored by Google, giving better designs a rankings or results bump.

The post The Importance of Creativity & Design on Google Rankings appeared first on Clix.

A question we often have to address here at Clix relates to if a client owns his or her website. No matter the industry, identifying website ownership, the significance of it, and where Clix comes into play are important factors.

Not sure if you own your domain? WHOIS allows for you to search your company’s website and look for elements that would be indicative that you own your website. Although true ownership circumstances can vary, whether you’re listed on the contact information and whether you have access to the domain’s registrar account are typical indicators. Overall, by understanding your website ownership, Clix can get a better picture of priority items when crafting your custom digital marketing campaign.

Your website domain is a significant asset to your company as a whole. Oftentimes a client may work with a company who builds and manages websites for a specific industry – for example, a chiropractor or law firm. Although the company “specializes” in one field, it does not mean you are getting top-of-the-line service and custom content specific to your business.

Although you may think that your site is rich in content and informational for users, be careful. At times, a company may use duplicate content across the board for those businesses in the same industry. Therefore, what you believe to be a solid section of content on your site, could also appear on a competitor’s site, or elsewhere on the Internet. Thus, you are not providing visitors a unique, rich experience that accurately depicts your brand.

Importance of Owning your Website

At first, you may think duplicate content is not a significant issue. However, your site can end up not ranking as well if the same copy appears in multiple areas. We know you take pride in your reputation and products/services. Therefore, a simple name swap in the content along with the copy and paste treatment is not what you want to happen to your company.

Are you curious if you have duplicate content on your site? A simple content evaluation may shed light on the state of your online presence.

I own my domain name. Does that mean I own my content?

When the time comes for you to leave the chiropractic specific web/marketing company, you will most likely have to work from the ground up to rebuild the content on your site. Some companies leave the partnership with a marketing firm owning their domain, while others do not. Regardless of that factor, if you provider “wrote” the content for your site, you most likely you do not own the content.

As you can tell, working industry specific companies claiming to specialize in a certain area can be a slippery slope. What once seemed like a fast way to get your website up and running could quickly turn into a nightmare. Overall, owning your content and domain are important factors related to your website.

Why should I partner with Clix?

At Clix, we want to be your digital marketing partner through the entire process. If you do not currently own your domain, we can work with you and your provider(s). From there, our team of strategists will create a custom plan that is tailored to the individual needs of your business.

One area we typically begin to address and plan out at the beginning is duplicate content. Our team will work to create not only user-friendly content, but also develop information that is applicable and relevant to users. Supplying your audience with unique content that they are looking for will help contribute to their overall view of your business and experience on your site. We constantly evaluate website performance in a variety of areas to help you ultimately reach your goals.

For more information on how to improve your website with Clix, contact us today to help us better understand your needs and goals as a business.

The post Do You Own or Lease Your Website? appeared first on Clix.

The flexibility we have at Clix allows us to adapt to these ongoing changes and have open lines of communication with our clients, keeping them in the loop. This is what makes Clix unique in the market. We are not a vendor – we are a partner.

Digital marketing is essential for businesses today. The days of relying on a printed directories, billboards, and other dated means of promoting your business are long gone. Every day, more and more people are utilizing the power of the Internet to get their questions answered, so it’s important that your business be a resource for this inquiries. That’s what we do here at Clix. We focus our efforts on ensuring that your website is that resource.

Depending on the nature of your business, there are so many ways to effectively advertise and marketing your business online. There’s SEO, SEM, social media, e-mail marketing, pay per click, etc…. where do you begin? What’s the best option?

It can be difficult, if not impossible, to decide where to go if you decide to start these efforts on your own or hire a catch-all company that doesn’t have strategy at the core of what it does. We can help you navigate through the clutter that is “online advertising” and offer a solution that best fits the needs of your business. Plus, since the Internet is ever-changing, having a team that can adjust plans and shift quickly when software changes and Google algorithm updates impact our efforts is a real bonus to our clients.

These long-term efforts can have a tremendous impact on the bottom line. Our clients who commit to the process have seen a profound return on investment over time. And that is key to what we do. Looking at your digital marketing as a long-term plan allows us to have the flexibility to make strategic decisions that can not only adapt to change but are robust enough to withstand it. There is no “silver-bullet” when it comes to online advertising. Google is getting smarter every day. Thus, your website must be technically sound, cater to your audience, and be a valuable resource in the market place. That’s what we do here at Clix.

If you’re looking for a truly adaptable partnership that can make a measurable impact on your business, using creative strategy and reporting along the way, contact us to learn how we can help.

The post What Does Adaptability Mean in Digital Marketing? appeared first on Clix.

Our business development team understands that in order to grow your business, it is our job at Clix to understand the human side of the work you do. We get to know your leadership team and learn what drives you. Our team discusses your products or services and what makes you stand out from the crowd. We want to know your goals and are willing to adapt to the changes in your goals over time, often adjusting our strategy when necessary. Using digital marketing and the various tools and software available to us, we create strategy that focuses on what our partners need and want from their business.

The human side of business not only needs a dynamic team to work as your marketing partner, but a willing and open minded client that understands the expectations we have in place for them. We thrive on communication and make the best progress on campaigns where there is a collaborative creative process. We love coming up with creative solutions, and we’re most successful when our clients are engaged in the ongoing process of improving their campaign. At Clix, we are ready and willing to listen to the concerns you have about the progress of your campaign.

The benefits of collaboration go beyond the business itself. As your business grows, the employees and families who have contributed to your success also see the ways in which their success is affected. Communities can benefit from the human side of business growth because companies can better contribute and give back to them not only through jobs, but through charity events and fundraising sponsorships.

Digital marketing offers up your business to potential growth you may not have envisioned. You might find yourself having to hire more people to keep up with the number of leads you get per day because your local citations have been standardized and the content on your website is a robust resource. You may find customers tell you the information you provide on your social media platforms enticed them to call, or the follow up emails you are sending through marketing automation provided them customer service no one else has. And to think this can all begins with simply becoming a partner with a robust, adaptable, and knowledgeable digital marketing partner.

If you have a desire to make your business better through tapping into the potential that digital marketing provides, you can go far. But you also need the right partner who will be transparent and honest with you along the way. Clix is that partner and has the track record to prove it. If you have questions about any of the services we offer, don’t hesitate to reach out.

The post The Human Side of Business Development appeared first on Clix.

Digital marketing offers a number of solutions for getting honest, constructive customer feedback. Through a variety of channels such as automation marketing and a focus on local citations, you can use the tools and software digital marketing offers to collect and analyze evaluations of the services or products you provide.

Automation Marketing and Customer Feedback

One of the most clear-cut ways to use digital marketing to benefit your business, automation marketing, allows you to create campaigns that drive engagement and feedback from customers. Campaigns might be focused on surveys to gauge customer satisfaction, or even something as simple as an automated follow up to an opened promotional email can help you determine whether or not your marketing efforts are paying off.

But automation does not exist in a vacuum, and neither do any of your other marketing efforts. An effective automation marketing campaign still relies on high quality customer service from your team, such as personal phone calls to customers or email checkins to touch base when appropriate.

Your automation campaigns are also an opportunity to increase usage of your website, using blogs, website pages, and other digital resources to benefit your customers, giving them the right information they need to make decisions.

Customer Service Software

When people think about digital marketing, they might not realize they can use tools like tracking numbers to not only record their own business calls, but to make more informed decisions about what their staff are doing on the front lines. Using call recording can open up a lot of avenues for internal improvement and allow business owners to hear the questions their customers ask in real time.

At Clix, we have had clients use call recordings to make informed decisions about their staffing and better serve customers’ needs in the office. We also take a proactive approach and give recommendations following our call reports in order to continue to be an active partner in your business success.

Form fills also provide our clients insight into the information customers are seeking. More often than not, having a report of the number of form fills and quality of leads helps our clients determine new information about customers they might have thought about or make adjustments to their website copy in order to move their campaign along. Plus, unlike having an email address on your website – an email address that could be in many other places or handed out by customers via word of mouth – a lead from a form fill can be directly correlated to the success of your digital marketing campaign.

Website Content and Customer Participation

Many businesses may not realize the kind of resources available to them to make their customer service even better, but using your website and other avenues for sharing your content can make a difference. From regular blogs and news updates, to using video and social media to drive engagement to your website, a robust website can set you apart from competitors in big ways.

If you’re ready to use digital marketing to gain customer feedback and grow your business, contact us today!

The post How to Use Digital Marketing to Get Customer Feedback appeared first on Clix.

The other realm of strategy, the more abstract side that opens you up and enhances your ability to practice those more tangible forms of strategy, involves the personal relationship and partnership you work to develop with your clients.

Account Management, Strategy, & Partnership

One way that true partnership has been defined is having the other party’s absolute best interest in mind, knowing what they want and need, and providing the best option for achieving those wants and needs. So no matter what the industry, in order to be a true partner in business, you must be allowed to get to know that business in-depth, uncovering what really makes that business tick.

However, knowing a business on that level goes way beyond simple access to data or analytics, the number of leads they’re getting, and where they’re coming from. It’s only once you’ve learned things like a business’ internal processes, departments they invest in, plans and goals for the future, and things of that nature you can call on expertise to find the best way to evolve and grow it.

For instance, if you’re a dentist and you want to expand the number of patients you serve, your digital partner should have a thorough understanding of the demographics in that region and what it takes to reach them. Perhaps your new patient efforts will mean a combination of a paid media campaign and new website content, or social media strategy may be a better fit to capitalize on your existing audience and their networks. An account manager facilitates the creation of projects with other people working on your projects and continues to report on the impact your campaign has had on the website leads, incoming calls, and other measurable growth we can track in the digital space.

But in order for a business to let you in on that intimate of a level, you have to prove you have their best interest in mind, develop that trust, and foster that strong relationship. To do so, you have to know when to listen and when to advise, be proactive and swiftly reactive when situations arise, and always be transparent and set correct expectations.

The bulk of strategy for an Account Manager, in essence, is actually in building that authentic relationship with transparency as its foundation. When you can be completely transparent with your partner, and they with you, you can really learn about their business in-depth, call on your expertise to develop the most effective strategy, then go to your team to execute that strategy. Only when all of these components are working together do you have the opportunity to be the best partner possible and ultimately grow your partner’s business in a profound way.

If you’re interested in learning how our digital marketing strategy can impact your business, contact us today!

The post The Role of Account Manager in Strategy appeared first on Clix.

The idea of content explores not just web pages, but graphics, calls to action, resource pages, and anything that is considered part of the written word. Video, too, falls in this category in that it presents information in a user-friendly format. However, depending on when it was created, video can become outdated in a short amount of time in the same way that content eventually has its limitations.

Performing an audit on your website not only helps you find areas of weakness, but it allows you to uncover outdated information.

What Goes Into a Content Audit?

On the surface, a content audit uncovers the following:

• Outdated, useless information – Do you have resources that you haven’t updated in years? Do you offer information about a topic that isn’t relevant to your industry anymore? It’s time to scrap it and start providing helpful content.
• Legacy products/services – Maybe you used to offer products or services in the early stages of your business that don’t exist anymore. If your website has content about these items as if they are part of your current business, then that is a red flag.
• Doorway pages – In general, Google does not favor “landing pages” with no connection to other areas of your site. Creating these is an outdated tactic for SEO purposes that can inhibit your site’s experience.
• Live subdomains, forums, staging sites, etc. – Although reviewing the more technical elements of your site may not fall under the same realm of promotional words you use to describe and sell products or services, they still present a problem. Not only can these elements affect your overall website health and usability, but if these unused parts of your site are live to the public, you might provide conflicting information to users.

Overall, a content audit weeds out useless items that Google could potentially use to affect rankings and traffic. It is in your best interest to have solid, helpful content – good content – that users want and need to make effective decisions about the products or services you offer.

What Makes “Good Content?”

In general, the point of what is written on your site should be to build it out as authoritative and useful for those looking for what you offer. While this list is not exhaustive, some of the elements of good content include:

• Service pages of at least 500 words in length. Aim for 1,000 words. Many other pages that are well-built and formatted can have varying length depending on the needs of the user and the content.
• Insert keywords/phrases naturally, about two or three times per page.
• Stay focused, but don’t feel like you have to repeat yourself.
• Remember that at least half of all your visitors will be viewing your website on a tablet or smartphone. This will affect how you format your content.
  Include graphics, headers, buttons, etc. to break up the content as needed.

When a content audit is performed, you’ll uncover not only the weak points, but the technical elements of your site that should not be ignored. Some of the elements may include updating the on page SEO, changing graphics, or updating your layout to make the page even better. You may even need to refresh your site’s look overall to achieve your goals, depending on what your Internet marketing requires!

Content audits are valuable and should be part of every company’s inbound marketing strategy.

The post Why Content Audits are Valuable appeared first on Clix.