Category: Marketing

Unlocking the Power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

by adventureadagency, posted in Blog, Marketing

In today’s digital era, search engines have become our go-to solution for finding answers, products, and services. But have you ever wondered how certain websites consistently appear at the top of search engine results? The secret lies in a powerful strategy known as search engine optimization (SEO). In this blog post, we’ll delve into the world of SEO, demystifying its meaning, exploring its importance, and shedding light on the factors that influence search engine rankings.

What is SEO?

SEO, an acronym for search engine optimization, refers to a set of techniques and methodologies employed to improve a website’s visibility and achieve higher rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). The primary objective of SEO is to attract organic traffic, i.e., visitors who find your website through search engines rather than typing the URL directly.

Understanding Organic Traffic

Organic traffic plays a crucial role in driving potential customers to your website. When users search for information or products, search engines aim to deliver the most relevant and authoritative results. By optimizing your website for search engines, you increase your chances of appearing higher in the search results, making it more likely for users to click on your link and visit your site.

The Significance of SEO for Businesses

In today’s highly competitive online landscape, businesses vie for attention and customers. As a result, securing a top position on search engine results can make a significant difference in gaining a competitive edge. Research shows that users often click on the top results, with a majority of clicks going to the first few entries. Therefore, by implementing effective SEO strategies, businesses can increase their visibility, reach a wider audience, and drive more relevant traffic to their websites.

Factors Affecting Search Engine Rankings

Search engines employ complex algorithms to determine the relevance and authority of websites. Understanding the factors that influence search engine rankings is essential for optimizing your website effectively. The “Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors” by Search Engine Land provides a comprehensive overview of these elements:

  1. Content: Quality, relevance, and uniqueness of website content.
  2. Architecture: Website structure, navigation, and accessibility.
  3. HTML: Proper use of title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags.
  4. Trust: Establishing credibility through security, transparency, and user reviews.
  5. Links: Quantity, quality, and relevance of inbound and outbound links.
  6. Personal: Tailoring content to match user intent and preferences.
  7. Social: Leveraging social media signals and engagement.

While it may seem daunting to control all these variables, the key is to focus on enhancing one or two aspects at a time. By consistently optimizing and improving these factors, you can gradually increase your website’s ranking and drive more organic traffic.

Unlocking Business Potential with SEO

The beauty of SEO lies in its cost-effectiveness and long-term benefits. Unlike paid advertising, SEO allows businesses to organically attract visitors without incurring substantial expenses. By investing time and effort in optimizing your website, you can reap the rewards of increased visibility, brand exposure, and ultimately, higher conversion rates.

Conclusion

In the world of online business, SEO plays a pivotal role in driving organic traffic and enhancing website visibility. By understanding the intricacies of search engine optimization and the factors that influence search rankings, businesses can strategically position themselves at the top of search engine results, gaining a competitive advantage. Embracing the power of SEO and continually optimizing your website can unlock new opportunities, expand your reach, and boost your online success.

For further insights into SEO and its importance, be sure to check out our informative infographic on the evolution of SEO, highlighting why this strategy is crucial in today’s digital landscape.

Social Media Planning

Getting the Most from your Social Media Marketing in 5 Easy Steps

by advwpman, posted in Blog, Marketing, Social Media

If you are a business owner or marketing manager, social media can often find itself becoming a low priority item on your busy day to day agenda. There is a misconception that it can be an ad-hock exercise when you have a few minutes of time to spare.

Unfortunately though, if this is your social media approach, you are likely not getting the most out of your marketing as you should be. More importantly, you are also missing out on the opportunity to build brand awareness and engage with customers.

While it can be tricky to know where to start to improve your social media, it is most important that you start some where. Just by being proactive in your planning and strategy, you will see improvement.

If you’re interested in taking your social media marketing to the next level and getting the most out of your efforts, follow our five easy steps to social media success.

1. Integrate your Social Media into your Marketing Plans

Stop thinking about social media as a separate effort from your main marketing mix. No matter how you advertise and market yourself, you need to be cohesive across all channels.

While your twitter brand persona may fun and quirky and your LinkedIn brand persona may be professional, the messages and organization values should be consistent across platform and across digital, social, and traditional advertising channels.

Your social media strategy should not be separate from your advertising or marketing strategy. Instead, your business marketing strategy should guide your social media planning. When you plan an advertising campaign, it should be a focus in traditional advertising as well as social.

2. Perform a Social Media Audit.

Once you’ve begun thinking about social media as a part of your larger business strategy, it is important to take a hard, honest look at your platforms. Ask yourself …

  1. How does reality compare to my expectations?
  2. Am I communicating the values of my business consistently, accurately, and to the best of my ability?
  3. Am I engaging with my audience in an informative and helpful manner (not just trying to sell products/services)?
  4. Are my brand messages consistent across platforms?
  5. Have I developed different personas for each platform? If yes, are these the correct personas?

While this is not an entire list of questions, it is a good starting point. The best way to get a thorough and accurate assessment of your social media platforms is to perform a social media audit.

Quite simply, this is a formal process where you document the status of each of your platforms. After the analysis, you can step back, see what is missing or doesn’t align, and then adjust from there. Hootsuite has a fantastic free guide and template you can use for your social media audit.

3. Understand your Audience

Your marketing messages should be directly informed by the audience on the platform you are using. For example, radio ads and television ads are extremely different. This is for obvious reasons as on television you can see the advertisement and on the radio you can only hear voices.

While the difference between social media platforms is not as extreme, it would still be wrong to assume your messaging should be the same on each platform. The platforms are different and so are the audiences.

Understanding your audience on each platform is key to success. The best way to do this – spend the time researching.

Check out these amazing resources from Hootsuite:

From this demographic information, you can make informed and educated decisions about content, timing, and more. This brings me to the question – does what I post actually matter?

4. Build an Editorial Calendar

Yes! What you post absolutely matters. Often, this is how you can tell an ad-hock social media plan from an informed planned one. While it is important to be timely and post relevant interesting content, it is also important to be prepared.

One of the best ways to stay on top of your social media planning is to build an editorial calendar. This is a tool to organize your content and plan out what, when, and how you will post to the various platforms you choose.

When we handle a client’s social media, we start with an editorial calendar. This allows us to plan out how often we want to post and ideal times to post, but it also ensures we take the time to think through what we are posting.

Not only does this allow for collaboration with the client, it also allows us to stay on top of sticking to consistent brand messaging. Because we aren’t rushed to post, we have time to think through different brand personas and communicate differently on different platforms to different audiences.

There are many different ways to build an editorial calendar, but yours should be design in a way that is best for your business. Here is one source that provides a free template as a starting point.

5. Measure it. Strive for Excellence.

Social media is both an art and a science. Because of the digital world we live in, marketing managers and business owners have access to lots and lots of data. We can see massive amounts of information. However, this can be a blessing or a curse.

It is easy to get overwhelmed with all of the information and not do anything with it. However, you are then missing out on useful information that can take your social media planning to the next level.

There is no one size fits all way to view your data and analytics, but finding what is best for you and your business is critical. Hootsuite provides tons of resources on how to look at your analytics, including this free guide.

Last but not least, if you make it through all five of these steps, keep going. Never stop evaluating through audits, staying up on the latest audience trends, utilizing an editorial calendar or planning system, and measuring your success. However, if you do only one think, start thinking about your social media as a part of your whole marketing strategy. You will start building more value from your efforts immediately.

For more information on how to drive value for your business through marketing and advertising, explore our blog, contact us here or call us at 1-864-400-9920.

LinkedIn Strategy

Boosting your Brand with LinkedIn: Debunking Common Myths

by advwpman, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social Media

LinkedIn is an incredible tool for individuals to connect with other professionals, to hunt for a new job, or to stay tuned to the latest news in the industry. However, often people forget that LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for advertising and building your business’s brand. 

If LinkedIn isn’t at least a part of your marketing and social media strategy, you are likely missing a bid opportunity to reach potential clients in a brand safe social media channel.

You may have avoided focusing your social media strategy on LinkedIn for a number of valid reasons. It may make sense for your business to spend your resources and time on something else. You may flat out think LinkedIn isn’t important. 

On the other hand though, there are a number of times where businesses ignore LinkedIn for reasons that are wrong. As a result, we are taking a deeper look at some of the common myths we hear from clients about LinkedIn.

Myth 1: My customers aren’t on the platform.

For business-to-business sales, the benefits may seem obvious. LinkedIn is known as the number one social network for lead generation. According to Forbes, an “estimated 40 million business decision makers (i.e. the people who seal the deals and sign the contracts) spend their time on LinkedIn.” 

Additionally, Omnicore reports that … 

  • It is the #1 channel B2B marketers use to distribute content at 94%.
  • It makes up more than 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites & blogs.
  • 91% of marketing executives list LinkedIn as the top place to find quality content.
  • 92% of B2B marketers include the platform in their digital marketing mix.

However, if you aren’t a business-to-business focused company, you may be rolling your eyes at the idea of LinkedIn helping you reach your target audience. However, professionals are people too, and LinkedIn has a massive general consumer audience with money to spend.

In fact, more than half of LinkedIn’s audience has a college degree and forty-nine percent make more than $75,000 per year. To learn more about this platforms unique demographics, check out Omnicore’s full report or see the list below:

Myth 2: LinkedIn is just for career milestones and announcements.

LinkedIn has become a thriving community for professionals and businesses to share content including industry perspectives, blogs and more. This content is not just about celebrating a year at company ABC or announcing a new hire. 

In fact, “more than 100,000 organic articles are published weekly on LinkedIn, many of which are written by top-level executives at brands around the world,” according to Buffer. AdWeek even wrote a feature on how LinkedIn has become a hot social network.

If your business writes blogs posts, it is worth the extra effort to post these to your profile. Even that small thing is better than nothing and can bring users back to your website.

Myth 3: LinkedIn may build my brand, but it won’t lead to actual sales or profit.

Did you know that LinkedIn has three times better conversion rates than Facebook or Twitter? From that perspective, it is important to balance your social media strategy and not just stick to one platform.

One of the key benefits of the platform is that there is arguably less bombarding a user or potential customer or client when using the platform. The platform has been established as a brand safe and professional environment. This means that content viewed here will more likely be consumed by an attentive and engaged audience.

Start building your brand!

LinkedIn is a free, powerful tool you can start using right now to advertising and build your brand. You can explore the paid advertising options. However, simply building an active online presence for your business will have a big impact. There is a large audience of engaged consumers and business decision makers ready to spend money on your products and services. You just have to take the time to show them who you are.

If you’d like to learn more about Adventure Ad Agency social media strategies, contact us here or call us at 1-864-400-9920. To learn more about the latest advertising trends and strategies, check out more of our blog.

Advertising Agency

Small Agency Versus Large Agency: Is AAA is right for you?

by advwpman, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing

You may have heard the phrase bigger is better, but in fact, bigger is NOT always better. Depending on your business, a personalized experience with a smaller advertising agency may better fit your businesses needs than a large agency.

As a business owner or as a decision-maker for your company, it can be challenging to determine whether a small agency or a big agency is right for you. You are faced with making so many complex decisions in the day-to-day of your business that worrying about your advertising may be the last thing on your mind. It can be particularly challenging is marketing and advertising is very different from your core business. 

To help you make the decision about whether or not to choose a small agency like Adventure Ad Agency to manage your advertising or to take the leap to a bigger agency, we have compiled a list of a few of the biggest differences between small and large agencies.

Small Agency Versus Large Agency

Personalization. Flexibility. Innovation.

First, one of the biggest and most obvious benefits of a small agency is the personal touch and customization that naturally emerges. At AAA, we are able to give a high quality, hands-on experience for our clients. 

Because the people meeting and working with the clients are the same people working on the advertising materials and campaigns, the results of our work tend to both be more inline with client expectations and to perform more successfully than they otherwise may have. 

Additionally, this close relationship with our clients allows us to better understand their business. This enables us to better market their specific brand identity and value proposition, as well as allows us to better anticipate their needs. 

Small agencies, like Adventure Ad Agency, are constantly thinking of new ways to help their clients. Since small agencies are not as constrained as big agencies, they have more flexibility to innovate and think outside the box for their clients.

Resources. Connections. Diversity.

At the same time, large agencies have many benefits as well. Most notably, large agencies have more resources than small agencies. However, that is not to say that small agencies do not have a fair amount of resources. The main difference is small agencies will rely more on partnerships with freelancers whereas large agencies have most everything they need in-house from photographers to graphic designers.

In general, large agencies simply have more people, more money, and more connections. For example, if you are looking for endorsements from professional athletes or partnerships with the hottest celebrity, large agencies are the best fit for your business. Expensive and high profile strategies like this do not tend to be the focus of small to medium sized agencies.

Finally, with more people and more resources can come more creativity and diversity. Small agencies can provide consistent, dynamic and both diverse and creative advertising for your business. However, it is not as easy to find a small agency that can provide that year after year. We are constantly working to stay on top of the latest trends and to innovate for clients. Bigger agencies though, with their greater resources, larger talent pool, and bigger staff, often can easily bring more diversity and more options to the table.

Is AAA right for your business?

We would love to help every client who walks through our door, but we also understand that a small agency may not be the best fit for every business. It’s not about size. Adventure Ad Agency works with small businesses to large corporate organizations.

It’s about your business needs, your culture, and your style of doing business. 

Adventure Ad Agency is right for your business if you …

  1. Want a hands-on relationship with your agency
  2. Are a small business or a large organization
  3. Require flexibility and value customization of your advertising strategy
  4. Are looking for out-of-the-box ideas that deliver high ROI
  5. Want no worry, full service management for all advertising OR want help with a particular project or campaign

If you’d like to learn more about if Adventure Ad Agency is right for your business, contact us here or call us at 1-864-400-9920. To learn more about the latest advertising trends and strategies, check out more of our blog.

Still unsure about whether a big or small agency is right for you? Keep investigating and don’t settle for a “lukewarm” advertising strategy. Don’t just take our advice. Ask your peers and business partners how they feel about their agency situation. Check out this great Forbes article on choosing an agency! And if you choose an agency and discover it’s not the best fit, do not be afraid to make a change.

Is your Advertising Campaign Holiday Ready?

by advwpman, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media

‘The Holiday Season’ is the most wonderful time of the year! Halloween is just around the corner. Subsequently, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays are following close behind. In fact, before you realize it, the busiest time of year will be here. Are you ready?

How is your holiday advertising campaign? Is your business prepared and ready for the holidays? As a matter of fact, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been marked on the calendars as the official beginning of the holiday rush.

Do you want your business to ring with jingle bells and whistles? Keep reading this blog to see a list of tips on things to consider when jump starting your advertising campaign into this year’s holiday season. The following tips will give you an idea on how to promote your sales, and how to prepare for the best time of the year, for your business!

Tips on how to plan your Holiday Advertising Campaign

1. Start planning early
2. Research what your competition is doing
3. Offer specials and discounts
4. Stay focused on what works
5. Offer customer loyalty programs and specials
6. Keep your website and social media updated
7. Use a Geo Fencing strategy
8. Compete and drive customers to your business using TV, radio, and other media

Here is another article on some holiday tips to consider. If you would like more information on how to drive customers to your business, contact Adventure Ad Agency by clicking on this link.

Do you Know the Different Types of Local Advertising?

by advwpman, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media

Most of us have reviewed an advertisement on TV, billboard, social media, or a local magazine and never thought about all of the different types of advertisers or the different types of local advertising. For one thing, most of us didn’t really know that there were various forms of local advertisers and local advertising. We just saw, read, or heard the message that was in front of us at the time.

What are the different forms of advertisements, types of local advertisers, and types of local advertising? In this blog we will go over all of the types of advertisements, local advertisers, and the different types of local advertising.
First, let’s go over the different forms of advertisements and latest trends….

What are the different forms of advertisements?

  • Television and Radio Advertisements are both traditional forms of media advertising
  • Brochures, magazines, and newspaper advertisement media are also a traditional form of advertising
  • Direct marketing, Geo fencing, guerrilla advertising, social media, and product placement are all modern forms of advertisements.

What are the different forms of local advertisers?

  • Dealers of local franchisees
  • Retailers who sell brand merchandise, such as grocery stores and department stores
  • Specialty business that sells services such as banks, insurance, florist, bakers, repair stores, music stores, and more
  • Government and nonprofit organizations

What are the different types of local advertising?

  • Product advertising that promotes a certain product or service
  • Classified advertising that is used in newspapers and buyer and seller publications
  • Institutional Advertising promotes an idea of the company that markets a product and service
  • Regular Price-line Advertising keeps the consumer informed about its service or merchandise
  • Sale advertising that places two or more items on sale
  • Clearance advertising a form of advertising used to clear out old inventory so that new inventory can be moved in its place

If you are considering advertising for your business read this article for more information about advertising, and contact our office today about how we can help you with your advertising needs.

Stay calm!

Is Your Presentation Ready for Your Public Speaking Event?

by advwpman, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media

Did you know that public speaking dates as far back as the Egyptian days? The most popular forms of speaking date back to ancient Greece and Roman days, where a style of speaking called Rhetoric was formed. Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates were the three main players in those speaking days, but have developed a skill that would be taught in schools for centuries to come. None the less, public speaking is very important in today’s working world, which is why many universities require all students to take a public speaking class.

Most of us would rather pull a tooth than to stand in front of an audience and speak. Furthermore, in most business environments speaking during presentations is a normal everyday occurrence. In most cases, the average presentation requires a speaker, and a Powerpoint presentation.

When preparing for your speech and or presentation, here are some things that you will want to know…

What type of speech are you going to use for your public speaking event or presentation?

4 Types of Speeches

Ceremonial Speaking: Ceremonial speeches are common at weddings, funerals, office parties, and graduations. Ceremonial speakers typically have a personal connection with his or her audience and will often include a toast.

Informative Speaking: Informative speaking is the process of informing one’s audience on the topic and subject discussion. This type of speech is used to relay information to the audience, rather than to persuade or demonstrate to the listeners.

Demonstrative Speaking: These types of speech require the speaker to demonstrate and describe a process while speaking to the audience. While using action to explain a process, the speaker can educate his or her audience on how to cook, fish, or use a product.

Persuasive Speaking: Persuasive speaking is the most glamorous style of speaking because it is typically used by lawyers and presidents. The persuasive speech is to persuade the audience to believe or become emotionally involved about the speaker’s viewpoints. This type of speech is used in advertising as well, where the advertiser tries to persuade its audience to buy a product or service.

Now that we have learned about the four different types of public speaking, below are some tips on how to prepare for your presentation…

1. Learn about your audience
2. Choose your speech
3. Practice your speech, and know your subject
4. Create powerful Powerpoint slides using the 10/20/30 rule
5. Add visuals and audio to your slides if needed

For more information on preparing for your next presentation read this article. Contact us today on how we can help you succeed by clicking on this link.

Messages

Is your Brand Message sticking?

by advwpman, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media

We all have listened to a song on the radio that has played over and over in our heads all day repeating the same message over and over again. When this occurs it is often called an ‘Ear worm’, also known as a ‘Brain worm’.

If you are a business owner, wouldn’t it be nice to have an ‘Ad worm’ stick into your target consumer’s brain for the day? To be exact, communicating the main takeaway of your business’s message is important, only you don’t want to lose your audience’s attention. Furthermore, changing up your brand message while sticking to the main ideas, is better than using repetitive messages.

Every business should learn the four sources of brand messaging, in order to create brand coherence to their target audience.

Let’s take a broader look into the four sources of brand messaging below…

What is the difference between Planned and Unplanned messages?

Planned

A planned message is usually delivered through mass media, and is one of the most traditional forms of brand messaging. Ideally, this form of brand messaging uses advertising, promotional materials, publicity releases, and more. Ironically, even though this form of messaging does not always have the greatest impact, it does allow a business to control how the message is placed.

Unplanned

A celebrity’s name and personality is their brand, and often celebrities feel as if bad publicity is good publicity. Despite the status, celebrities generally believe that any type of news keep their name in to the media. Unfortunately, gossip and bad word of mouth reviews are often uncontrollable. These types of messages are what we call unplanned.

What is the difference between a Service Message and a Product Message?

Service

The service message should include all details about your business’s services, and how a consumer will benefit from them. In a competitive business world, it is imperative that your service message explain the business’s core competency over its competition. Most important, explaining the service’s quality and how a consumer will benefit by using the service, will help give you a competitive edge.

Product

Understanding your target’s thoughts and needs are essential in planning your product message. Before launching your business product, you’ll want to explore target group sessions, and product testers. This will enable your business to gain feedback about how your product message engages with your target audience.

Listed below are five questions that every business should be able to answer before launching a new product…

1. Who is your ideal target market?
2. What problems and concerns do your consumers have?
3. How will you solve your customer’s problems?
4. What are the benefits offered by your product?
5. How is your product better than the competitor’s product?

For more information on Brand Messaging read this article, and check out his link. Our blog also has helpful tips on other ways to enhance your brand.

The Augmented Reality in Augmented Advertising

by adventureadagency, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media

Have you ever shopped online, and wondered how a pair of sunglasses would look with your face’s shape? Wonder no more, because Augmented Reality (AR) has bridged the gap between online shopping and the out-of-store shopper.

Want to know more about this new age method of advertising that is spreading like wild fire? Read below to learn more about the exciting new strategy named, Augmented Advertising.

Augmented Reality (AR) is ‘All the Buzz’ in the world of advertising.

Many of us have played Pokémon Go or have engaged in other types of virtual reality games before. In fact, if you have ever uploaded your picture onto Facebook and virtually tried on lipstick, then you too have participated in Augmented Reality (AR). Although this particular technology has been around for a while, Augmented Reality (AR) is now rapidly becoming a powerful tool for brands to engage with consumers.

Advertisers are now using Augmented Reality (AR) in full force!

Augmented Advertising is often used in many social media platforms, because consumers enjoy participating, along with sharing. Actually,the augmented advertisements are goofy, humorous, and hard to ignore. Furthermore, a lot of technology and sophisticated artificial intelligence was used while creating the ads.

Social media platforms use Augmented Advertisements.

Facebook has jumped on the Augmented Advertising bandwagon, and is now working with businesses to showcase their products on Facebook. By including Augmented Reality (AR) into social media advertisements, consumers can virtually try products with a touch of a button. According to an article written by Anthony Ha, Facebook plans to offer Augmented Advertising to businesses in both Messenger and Instagram.Finally as technology progresses, the average consumer will see more social media platforms that use Augmented Reality (AR) in their advertisements.

If you would like to learn more about Augmented Advertising, click on this  link for more information!

What in the World is Guerilla Marketing?

by adventureadagency, posted in Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media

Most of us at some time or another have sold lemonade as a child or had a yard sale in our front yard. If you are one that did, do you remember the low cost and creative tactics used to attract business?

Without question, your cost to operate your lemonade stand, or yard sale was likely $20.00 or less. However, your sale brought in more money than what you put in to it. This is a great example of Guerilla marketing!

What is Guerilla marketing exactly?

Guerrilla marketing is a high energy, creative marketing strategy that promotes products, services, people and organizations, at a low cost.

Although Guerrilla marketing is highly effective for small businesses, large companies who don’t use traditional advertising channels should also consider Guerrilla marketing. As a matter of fact, it is actually very common for large businesses to use Guerrilla marketing, especially during long-running advertising campaigns.

You may be asking yourself, “Why is this strategy called Guerilla marketing?” To explain, the term ‘Guerilla marketing’ originated by Jay Conrad Levinson, in his 1984 book “Guerilla Advertising.”

More important, the term Guerrilla marketing got its inspiration from a form of warfare, called ‘Guerrilla Warfare.’ Guerrilla warfare strategies included ambush, and elements of surprise. Furthermore, Guerrilla marketing’s main point is to take the consumer by surprise. Consumers should feel positive about the advertised product or service.

In conclusion, most Guerilla marketing activities are done in large populated areas, such as the beach, busy streets, public places, and shopping centers. Some examples of Guerilla marketing are….

  • Sample Distributing
  • PR Stunts
  • Viral Videos
  • Airplane Banners

If you would like some ideas and to learn more about Guerrilla marketing, read this article for more information on how your business can effectively benefit from Guerrilla marketing. Feel free to contact us at Adventure Ad Agency and learn how to use Guerrilla Marketing in your advertising campaign.