![Marketing and Business Goals: A Love Story]()
by Joseph Graves | Dec 12, 2013 | Articles, Marketing
Is your marketing working? Is it bringing in the right customers and helping you achieve your business goals?
If not, why?
From what we’ve seen, many small business people are too busy running their businesses to spend time defining their goals. They come to us and ask for a new a website and help with social media. Then hope this new website and some facebook posts will magically bring in more customers and all will be well.
We think there’s more to it than that.
Yes, we can build a great looking website. We can optimize it for search engines and help get your social media infrastructure in place. But none of it will matter much if it isn’t helping you achieve your real business goals.
This is where Workshed is a little different. We don’t just build websites for the sake of it. A website and social media strategy is an outcome of knowing where you want to go. Before we work with you, we get to know your business on a deep level. Marketing is about communication and we can’t effectively communicate your message to the customer you want without knowing who you are, who they are and where you want to go.
How do we define the goals?
First we ask lots of questions. We try not to take anything for granted. We help our clients develop tangible, quantifiable goals. Then we put it all down in writing along with a plan for achieving them. Once we’re in agreement on the plan and the goals, we’re ready to start creating.
Measure, report, adjust. Rinse and repeat.
With the infrastructure created it’s time to execute. Then we measure, report and adjust. We love data. Digital marketing is awesome because you get incredible real time information. This allows us to quickly assess the effectiveness of each component of our marketing and make necessary adjustments promptly.
By continually measuring, reporting and acting on the data you can hit your business goals.
Ready for your marketing to get together with your business goals?
Contact Us
by Joseph Graves | Oct 8, 2013 | Marketing, Technology, Tools
The Importance of Email Marketing (and how to do it well)
Owning a business and being a parent have a lot in common. Effectively communicating with your children and your clients is essential to maintaining good relationships in both areas. Unfortunately, regular meaningful conversation is often the first casualty when we get busy. An email newsletter is one way to communicate with clients and still get your work done. [Note: We do not recommend sending an email newsletter to your kids]
An email newsletter can be a great addition to your client communication and marketing strategy, provided you follow a few simple guidelines. (more…)
by Joseph Graves | Sep 18, 2013 | Marketing, Tools
How To Add Google Plus To Your Marketing Plan
In our last post we shared how Google+ quietly (subversively) became an essential piece of the smart business’s marketing tool box. Here we’ll give you 3 quick and easy ways to incorporate it into your social media plan and give you a few resources for learning more.
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Get Credit for what you write. The first step toward incorporating Google+ into your marketing plan is to make sure you are getting credit for the content you publish. To do this you have to create a Google+ profile. Details on how and some additional convincing from Copyblogger here.
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Link your blog. Some WordPress frameworks like Thesis integrate Google+ authorship into their theme, but if yours doesn’t, Automattic (the company behind WordPress) just released an update to their popular JetPack plugin that makes it easy. If you are not using WordPress, try this from Google.
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Use it. After you are all set up on Google+ you need to use it. Interact with people in your Circles, post and comment, host a Hangout. Heck you might even find that there is a whole lot more to Google+ than you realized. Did you know you can have an online meeting and share your screen too? More on that from Google here.
Google+ is important, ignore it at your peril. There are lots of things that can be done to improve your search rankings, this is both easy and free.
Need Help?
CONTACT US
by Joseph Graves | Aug 23, 2013 | Marketing
How Google+ killed Facebook
“What?” you ask. “I was just on Facebook this morning, chatting with my 362 friends and updating my status!” There’s no need to grab your phone and sound the alarm. Facebook is still alive and well. So are Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram. “But you said Google+ killed Facebook.” Ok, so maybe it was more like a poke in the eye than murder, nevertheless:
Google+ just might be the most important social network of them all.
Sure, you’ve heard of Google+ and possibly even checked it out. Then, like many other people, you went back to playing Candy Crush on Facebook. Why? Because EVERYONE has a Facebook account, and it was easier to use than Google+. Not only was Facebook more familiar, the first versions of Google+ were wonky (like many early Google releases).
But my Facebook page has 4652 likes!
Admittedly, when I see a Facebook page with 4,652 likes I sometimes think to myself, “WOW! That business is popular!” Popular is great. It can be an important measure of influence, but it’s not necessarily the best one for attracting paying customers. You’ve probably heard that social media is an essential part of marketing for your business. So how is it possible that Google+ could be more important than Facebook? Ask yourself one question (or query if you prefer technospeak). What do you do when you need to search for something? Do you post it on Facebook and wait for your friends to respond? Nope. You G-O-O-G-L-E it.
Google has become a verb.
So here’s the not so well kept secret that you’ve probably never heard and why Google+ is likely more important to your business than Facebook. Google’s search algorithm favors Google+ content. Your Facebook posts aren’t even captured by the Googlebots (Thanks Zuckerberg). Just like the Dad who gets his slacker kid into an Ivy League school, Google LOVES Google+, it’s nepotism at it’s finest. There’s no point in complaining, it’s their search engine, they make the rules. Now that you know the rules, how can you make Google+ part of your marketing strategy?
Find out in the next post.
If you have questions or need to grow your business, contact us; it’s what we do.
Is your marketing working? Is it bringing in the right customers and helping you achieve your business goals?