Friday 29 August 2014

How an Interactive Marketing Agency Can Help

Every company needs solid marketing. It's how potential customers find out about your business. But it's also how they become excited about it and even motivated to buy. Decades ago, there was only one type of company when you needed help running ads. Now, however, one of the best choices you can make is considering interactive marketing agencies. Want to know why? Keep reading.
                                        




An Interactive Marketing Agency vs. the Traditional Kind

You may be wondering what the difference is between an interactive marketing agency and the traditional type you're probably more familiar with. Both share many things in common and, actually, most of the traditional versions have some kind of interactive facet to them nowadays, if they're smart.
The main difference is that interactive agencies tend to put their focus solely on the Internet. This is especially true of social media. Traditional ad agencies usually focus on print, radio and television ads for marketing purposes. Interactive agencies also support a number of other methods like:
• CDs
• DVDs
• RSS feeds
• Email marketing
• Online videos
• Podcasts
• Apps
• Games
They rarely, if ever, cross over into traditional channels.
While some traditional firms have evolved into interactive ones, many interactive firms actually started as web design companies. Over time, they simply kept adding services to their line because traditional firms didn't know how to handle them. A lot of traditional firms even outsourced their customers' needs to web design companies that eventually became interactive agencies.
The cool thing about an interactive marketing agency that started as a web design firm is that they have a unique understanding of how the Internet works. Many of these agencies are specialists in search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO). Even today, their traditional rivals may still be catching up in a lot of these areas.

Some of the major services these agencies provide include:

Increased Sales

Interactive agencies aren't just interacting with your audience, they're studying them. They're also writing the kind of copy that turns interested buyers into satisfied customers. Plus, unlike traditional marketing through the TV or radio, interactive solutions generally give the viewer the ability to make a purchase on the spot.
Reputation Management
One important area an interactive marketing agency may specialize in is known as reputation management. We all know that our reputations are important, but this is especially true in business. Sometimes, it's the only thing separating you from your competition. So many companies work hard to keep theirs pristine.
Unfortunately, that can be fairly difficult thanks to the Internet. If someone writes negatively about your company and gets those comments ranked high enough in Google, your business will most likely take a hit.
However, thanks to an interactive marketing agency with an intricate knowledge of SEO and SEM, that page can soon start to lose rank and eventually its potency altogether.

Reputation management can also mean that the agency monitors social media on your behalf to keep an ear out for any conversations about you or your company. Aside from reporting back, they can also work to ensure there are plenty of positive opinions being expressed on various platforms. Also, if a conversation is centered on a customer's complaint, they can alert the client to reach out to that person and smooth things over.

Feedback

As you've probably guessed, interactive marketing agencies also specialize in customer feedback. Unlike ads in a magazine or on a billboard, they have the technology and expertise to monitor what's really engaging and make necessary changes on your behalf.

Interactive Marketers

Interactive marketing agencies will typically employ a wide range of specialists. This will differ somewhat depending on the industry they specialize in, but most will have some variation of :
• Graphic designers
• Web designers
• Multimedia specialists
• Copywriters
• Social media manager
• SEO specialist

With the right collection of the above, Chicago interactive marketing agency can accomplish all kinds of things on the Internet. Some, however, may only have a few people, but because of their specialties and the industry they serve, that's good enough.

While you may not have the budget for an agency's help at the moment, keep the above in mind in case that changes. An interactive marketing agency can help get your company the exposure it needs in some pretty incredible ways.

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Friday 8 August 2014

2 Types of Services a Search Marketing Agency Will Provide You With

Marketing your business out there is obviously very important for its growth, but before you run into hiring the first professionals you find, you may want to get acquainted with some basic notions and with the things a marketing agency can provide you with. For instance, given the fact that the Internet is a huge part of everybody’s lives nowadays, you may want to find out what a search marketing agency is and which those types of services are that it can provide you with.

Many times, people mistakenly believe that an Internet marketing agency and a search marketing agency are one and the same thing, but there is a slight difference between the two of them. An Internet marketing agency will provide you with a very wide variety of Internet marketing-related services, among which there will also be search engine marketing. In addition to that though, there will be other types of campaigns involved as well (such as email marketing campaigns, and so on).
If you want to find out which are the most important types of services a search marketing agency will be able to provide you with, then you should definitely read on.

Search Engine Optimization

Again, some people believe that SEM (search engine marketing) is one and the same thing as SEO (search engine optimization), but there is yet another slight difference between the two of them. Put shortly, SEM usually includes SEO, but SEO does not include SEM.

Search engine optimization is that web marketing strategy that helps a website becomes more visible to the search engines. When a website is visible out there, it will be posted within the first page of results on Google, Bing and other search engines. Consequently, more people will click on it and there is a better chance that you will be able to convert these random visitors in actual customers or clients for the products or services your business can offer.

SEO usually involves creating content that is built around some carefully chosen keywords and that is useful for the readers. This way, readers will engage and search engines will see this as a big plus for your website, pushing it forward in their results lists.

In addition to content creation, there are some other things related to SEO as well. Creating back links, for example, is one of them and sometimes social media marketing overlaps over SEO as well, but it does not necessarily have to be so.

As a recap, here are some of the most commonly encountered SEO techniques out there:

•    Creating engaging content
•    Creating content that is useful
•    Creating content that is built around certain keywords
•    Creating back links from other websites
•    Creating a social media marketing campaign to go along with the SEO campaign

Paid Campaigns

In addition to SEO, a Search marketing agency can provide you with many other types of services, among which you will also find paid campaigns (such as AdWords, and so on). These campaigns can be difficult to understand by a beginner, but in reality they can be very useful when there is a pro to deal with them the right way.

The entire field of marketing can sometimes be confusing for some of the people out there, but once you will learn its ropes you will also learn to love its diversity and even more importantly, the fact that it can truly change the face of your business.

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Friday 1 August 2014

Do You Need an Email Marketing Agency?

If you’re in the world of ecommerce or your brick-and-mortar store could just use a little more exposure, consider what an email marketing firm could do for you. The following should help you decide if their services are what you need.

What Is Email Marketing?

Before considering whether or not you need an email marketing agency, let’s first take a look at what they do. In simplest terms, email marketing happens whenever a company sends out a commercial message via email. These messages are generally requests for business, sales letters, solicitations, or just advertisements. Basically, the idea is that they’re using email to help market their company, bring in revenue, increase brand recognition, or inspire customer loyalty.

There are a number of benefits an email marketing agency touts for their services. Email marketing is:

•Affordable: you’re not spending tons of money on the traditional version by purchasing paper, ink, stamps, and envelopes.

•Efficient: everyone has at least one email box these days. Not everyone gives their post box the time of day.

•Customizable: your email can contain anything from simple text to images to videos or, of course, all three. There are also ways to make it so that your message is addressed to someone by name.

•Targetable: with email lists, you can send one version of a message to one segment of your market and another to a different demographic altogether. You can’t do this with TV advertisements and even online ads make this difficult.

Different Versions

While we touched on what an email marketing agency can do via emails, there are also a number of specific types of emails worth mentioning. One of the most popular is a simple welcome message. If someone signs up for a membership to your website, you probably want to send them an email to thank them and introducing them to what you have to offer.

Another popular option you’ll see an email marketing agency offer is an announcement message. If your business just opened or hit some kind of milestone, you should definitely do some PR via email to let everyone know. The same goes for a new product or service you may have just started offering.

Newsletters are also a common choice. These can include all kinds of information about products and services, the company itself, the industry you’re in, etc.

Technological Benefits

To a degree, a lot of the above are things that you could probably do on your own. Obviously, you wouldn’t have much issue sending out a newsletter every month to a number of people.

However, an email marketing agency has access to technology most people don’t. For example, they can leverage software that tracks how many people actually opened the email they sent. When you’re sending a mass email out to thousands of people, this is quite the advantage. It allows them to revise the email and produce a better version next time.

They can also use similar analytics to track how many people clicked on a certain link embedded in the email. So if you’re using email marketing to drive customers to a landing page or get them to your latest blog post, they’ll know if this is working or not.

Why an Agency?
Still, you may be thinking that a lot of these benefits are things you could either pull off yourself or get close enough to and save money. Well, there are still probably a few things an agency can do that you can’t.

For one thing, their bread and butter is writing a quality message. You can pay them to write these on your behalf. If your emails aren’t converting, an agency can probably help there.

Another huge advantage is that most email marketing agencies can offer industry-specific lists. If you’re selling a new kind of energy drink, you obviously want people who drink them. The right email marketing agency for you would be one that has a list of emails of people who fit this description. These lists can easily number in the thousands; that’s going to be a pretty tough service to duplicate on your own.

An Chicago email marketing agency definitely isn’t for everyone, but they’re worth keeping on your radar. If you do decide to use one, keep in mind the above information and take your time picking the right option.

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