You may have heard the old adage, “Those that can’t do, teach.” Well, if you have been challenged with the task of promoting training courses online, then you know that statement is almost totally false.

There are plenty of things to “do” when you are trying to support a training course with promotion online.

Organizations around the globe invest over $360 billion annually to level up their workforce in areas such as:

• Alignment
• Analytics and Measurement (click this link to learn more about our Google Analytics services)
• Automation and Robotics
• Compliance
• Content Development
• Employee Safety
• Engineering
• IT and Technical Training
• Leadership
• Performance Management
• Sales
• Strategic Planning

Developments in high-speed internet connectivity worldwide in recent years have also provided training companies with the ability to move their teachings online. Now, in addition to building a connection with people in real life, training courses can be consumed (and re-consumed) by students on demand.

Whether your company is creating a new training course or training is what you’ve done for decades, there has never been a better time to get involved in the knowledge sharing economy.

Below, I’ve compiled 20 digital marketing ideas that are both actionable and effective for you to start promoting training courses.

1. Auditing Templates

There are many ways a company might realize their need for your training solutions. Few of those ways are more effective than by giving them a template to conduct a self-audit. Creating auditing templates for prospective clients in Google Drive, Microsoft Office, or PDF format is an excellent way to:

• Help them discover their pain points
• Introduce your methodology to alleviating those pain points
• Provide natural conversation starters for your business development team

Bonus tip: For promoting training courses, you should be willing to provide these templates at no charge to potential clients. But at the same time, you should also gate these templates behind a registration form to aid your demand generation efforts.

2. Best Practice Guides and Tutorials

Employing content marketing—such as best practice guides or in-depth tutorials—allows you to showcase your organization as a thought leader.

Your potential clients likely have continuing education requirements or newly placed industry standards for which they need certification. A decision maker in HR or some other management role may not be up to speed on the new requirements.

The act of creating content serves as an educational opportunity for these people. To help them get the information they need to keep their people at the top of their craft.

Bonus tip: Embed a lot of share buttons on content like this so it can easily be bookmarked, emailed, exported, printed, or shared on enterprise communication platforms like Slack.

Are you launching a training course but also a provider of a software solution? Need more leads? We’ve got you covered with 14 more ideas just like the one above in this post… 15 Actionable Lead Generation Ideas For Software Companies

3. Blogging As A Tactic For Promoting Training Courses

Companies interested in growing their brand awareness through search engines should be creating at least one new piece of blog content per week. And yes, this applies to any company, regardless of industry.

Companies in the training industry are no different. In fact, regular blogging might be even more critical in the training industry. A higher amount of knowledge sharing should mean a more significant percentage of thought leadership.

Bonus tip: No matter your preferred communication medium, plan on creating a blog post that is at least 300 words in length once every five business days.

4. Case Studies To Promote Training Courses

Whether you provide training services to individuals or groups, what you do has an impact on the people you help level up. Let the results of your work speak for themselves by creating case studies to showcase your greatest successes.

In both personal and corporate training, people want to get the sense that you, specifically, can help them in their “unique situation.” Training companies should focus their case studies around the types of people and companies they want to attract to their business.

Are you a personal development company that wants more married businessmen as clients? Make a case study featuring one!

Do you have a leadership training course for the financial sector? Build a case study featuring employees from any of the “Big 5” accounting firms.

Bonus tip: Want to acquire visits from keyword searches to your case studies? Optimize the title tag, URL slug, and case study title in the following manner. Check out this example data set for this case study from OppenheimerFunds.

• Title: Oppenheimer Training Program: Custom Training To Identify Growth Companies
• URL: /case-studies/oppenheimerfunds/
• Case Study Title: OppenheimerFunds Improves Growth Company Identification By 80% After Training

5. Checklists and Worksheets

Checklists and worksheets are effective marketing assets to create. When they are optimized through SEO or supported through digital advertising, they can also be a high ROI item to drive sales leads into your pipeline.

One thing to remember about creating checklists and worksheets is that they can become outdated over time. This is especially true in industries where standards or regulations evolve over time. Training companies in education, government, healthcare, IT and legal will want to be mindful of this.

Bonus Tip: Create an interactive document that can be bookmarked in a browser and regularly revisited by your users. Is interactivity not possible? Host your checklist or worksheet as a branded Google Sheet for users to copy to their own Google Drive accounts.

6. Competitor Awareness

Whether you want to go toe-to-toe with an industry leader or you want to solidify your brand’s dominance, consider creating content about your competition. This is a high-value SEO and content marketing strategy for your brand if it classifies itself as a “challenger” in your industry.

Create pages of content on your site that either:

• Directly compare your training courses to the market leader and niche brands
• Identify a shortcoming of the services provided by your market leader/niche brands
• Offer an influencer the opportunity to compare you against your competitor as a guest post

Then proceed to highlight the strengths and unique value your training courses offer compared to your competition.

Bonus Tip: To promote training courses, pages like this allow your site to rank organically in keyword searches. You can also run digital advertising campaigns for keywords towards the end of the buyer’s journey like “Dale Carnegie alternatives” and “skillsoft vs mindgym.”

7. Digital Market Development Funds

“Integration and usage of technology in our day-to-day lives is at an all-time high, as we continue to shift to a ubiquitously digital world,” said Brian Fourman of Cooperate Marketing, a marketing agency in Chicago that solves complex problems for OEM’s and major service providers.

Some of the latest research by Nielsen, ComScore and other indicates that Americans spend close to 11 hours a day consuming media and nearly four hours of that consists of some form of digital across any number of platforms.

For marketers that have access to digital Market Development Funds (MDF’s), adopting a digital-first strategy can prove to be highly beneficial. Not only is a portion of your digital campaign already paid for with MDF’s, but when implemented correctly you can hyper-target your intended audience to convey the right message, at the right place, at the right time in a truly engaging and often personalized fashion. Plus, the cost of entry is significantly less than traditional media in which one is often forced to purchase the entire market (DMA).

Digital first strategy allows you to run any number of campaigns simultaneously to fulfill key marketing objectives at each level of the purchase funnel, whether to build brand awareness, familiarity, consideration, and/or to generate leads and convert them into sales. In addition, digital media allows for easy-to-implement message testing (A/B) that can be modified on the fly.

Copious amounts of readily available data further support your customized endeavor and provide quantifiable results that can easily be tracked. By knowing how to interpret and use this data, you can optimize current/future campaign creative to provide truly impactful results that guarantee the greatest ROI.”

8. Email Newsletter Sponsorship

Sponsoring email newsletters is a great way to infiltrate the inboxes of a significant number of highly targeted readers without the need to be CAN-SPAM compliant.

That doesn’t mean this tactic lacks strategic thinking. When you select an email newsletter to sponsor, here are three things to keep in mind:

1. Target professional organizations or networking groups of the industries you help train.
2. Have those organizations prove how engaged their readers are with data. You don’t want to just buy a list!
3. Create an exclusive offer to maximize engagement and conversions with your ad.

Bonus Tip: Support your exclusive offer or sponsorship of an email newsletter by creating a specific landing page for it. Extend the reach of your offer by applying SEO best practices and adding retargeting codes to the page for Bing, Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

9. Expert Roundups

You might be tired of reading “expert roundups”—but your target clients can’t get enough of them. Long list articles of helpful hacks, hints, tips, and tricks exist on nearly every business strategy out there.

Expert roundups—whether published on your site or elsewhere on the web—are a great way to improve the personal brand of your training team members. Additional benefits include:

• Increased thought leadership opportunities for your brand
• Increased visibility for your content on social networks
• Increased traffic and backlinks for expanding your SEO efforts

Bonus Tip: Need to find expert sources for your first roundup besides your own training team? Signup for a journalist/blogger account on Help A Reporter Out (HARO). HARO is a 3x per day newsletter sent to over 800K sources looking for opportunities to get media coverage.

10. Giveaways and Sweepstakes

Who doesn’t like getting something for free?!

When promoting training courses, letting potential students “try before they buy” can be an irresistible way to draw them in. Simply give them access to one session, program, or class at no cost.

Sweepstakes work in a similar fashion. However, instead of giving away your intellectual property, you will be packaging something together to entice future students to give you their contact information.

One disadvantage of this strategy is that you risk receiving a large number of registrants that may not result in quality sales opportunities.

Bonus Tip: Promote your giveaway or sweepstakes in a press release or by providing exclusive demos to bloggers and other online publishers. Don’t forget you can also shamelessly promote training courses in your outreach, too! You can tap into their follower counts and subscribers for leads while also earning high-quality backlinks to your domain.

11. Historical Optimization

Over the last few years, historical optimization has become an incredibly valuable SEO strategy for companies with a large archive of content.

To briefly summarize this tactic, find an old blog post (published six or more months ago) on your site that either:

• Generates a lot of traffic (good idea), or
• Converts (better idea)

Then refresh the content and re-publish it with a more recent date.

Establishing your trainers as thought leaders are critical to your success in promoting training courses. Historical optimization is a great way to get long term value out of content you published long ago.

Bonus tip: Have trainers who used to blog for your organization that are no longer there? Create a general author account on your blog using your company name, like “(Company Name) Team.” Change the author of a post if they are no longer a part of your team to that author.

Historical Optimization helped Corporate Visions improve their lead generation by 37% from SEO.
Learn more here.

12. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has had a ton of hype over the last year, as well as a lot of unwanted attention. Despite that surplus of hype floating around, a dedicated influencer campaign has a lot of potential.

If your company can partner with influencers on social media to increase awareness amongst a large fan base, the CPM can be very effective compared to traditional media buying. Just make sure that any influencer you invest in actually motivates their followers and fans to act.

Creating an exclusive offer for any influencer will be vital to seeing success with a campaign of this type.

Bonus Tip: Check out this comprehensive beginner’s guide to influencer marketing if you want to learn more about how to leverage this for your organization.

13. Infographics To Promote Training Courses

Infographics still have a place in the world of digital marketing, especially since most people still do not enjoy reading online.

If your company conducts its own original research or surveys, share your best statistic or a quotable statement in this visually appealing format. Engagement with your content and the likelihood that your target students remember what you wrote will undoubtedly improve.

Bonus Tip: Create a high-resolution copy of your infographic for companies that want your content as posters for their walls. You could sell them to take advantage of a non-traditional revenue stream or offer the high-res version as a piece of gated content.

14. LinkedIn Advertising

Don’t let LinkedIn Learning’s existence (formerly Lynda.com) scare you from the possibility of leveraging the most extensive professional social network to promote your training courses.

According to a case study from LinkedIn, e-learning solution provider, CrossKnowledge launched display ads, InMail, and sponsored updates for a campaign titled “Bye Bye Boss” in 2015.

The results?

“Benchmark-beating” click-through rates and over 50 leads generated on the campaign microsite.

Bonus Tip: No matter what platform you use for your landing pages, take advantage of LinkedIn AutoFill for your form fields. With the click of a button, visitors can become leads by populating your form with their LinkedIn profile information.

15. Microsite Development

“The use of microsites provides the perfect launchpad for new services,” says Denise DeSimone, Chairperson of C-Leveled, a full-service branding strategy and marketing agency.

Update: On April 21, 2022,
we announced our
acquisition of C-Leveled.

“Microsites are quick and easy to build, so they give you the ability to target particular audiences quickly. In some cases, microsites can be as much as five times more effective in generating leads than traditional campaigns.”

Bonus Tip: Optimize your main site and microsite for similar keywords, and support each site by targeting those keywords in a PPC campaign. Doing this allows presents an opportunity to occupy a minimum of 25% of a search engine results page.

16. Podcast Interviews To Promote Training Courses

Participating in podcast interviews is another opportunity for your talent and training staff to showcase their thought leadership.

But have you ever thought about hosting your own podcast? Podcasts have low production costs and listenership is rising. Plus, podcast listeners have over four times better brand recall on ads than traditional display campaigns.

Bonus Tip: If you host your own show, invite guests on your show who could be potential sales leads. In the training industry, consider hosting executives in HR or with specialization in companies you want as clients.

17. Quora Promoted Answers

Quora Promoted Answers are a relatively new advertising option on this quickly emerging platform.

You can reach a broad group of people on Quora who are researching questions and answers related to your area of expertise with a Promoted Answer.

For training companies who are already familiar with answering questions on Quora, you might not notice anything different in how you find places to share your insights.

What changes in a Promoted Answer? Two things:

1. The label next to the answer (Promoted By).
2. The name of the person and the business promoting the answer.

Bonus Tip: Has someone unaffiliated with your company answered a question on Quora that helps in promoting training courses offered by your company? Promote that answer instead of yours to get it shown to more people in any feed.

Interested in leveraging Quora for your SEO efforts? Find out if Quora can help your SEO efforts here.

18. Research and Surveys

If you want to make the case for your training solutions to potential clients, there may not be a better way to do that than by conducting research or surveys.

Do your clients have a common pain point they need addressing when they hire you? They probably are not alone.

Survey executives in your industry related to the common pain point your clients have. Then publish the results of your survey in a whitepaper or other type of report.

Then, do a press release about your research (and promoting training courses) and share it with the trade publication media in your industry for increased visibility.

Bonus Tip: Don’t forget to send the report you create to everyone who submits an answer to your survey.

19. Retargeting To Promote Training Courses

It doesn’t matter what you call this—remarketing, cyberstalking—it’s a crawesome (creepy + awesome) marketing tool.

Reach the 99% of visitors to your website that didn’t convert by retargeting them with display ads. You can use this strategy in search engines, display ads, social networks, and mobile apps.

Talk about creepy and awesome!

Bonus tip: If your training solutions require a long sales cycle, make sure you have your audience list set to as long a time period as possible prior to the start of promoting training courses.

20. Webinars To Promote Training Courses

If you are in the training business, then you likely have some comfort with public speaking. Leveraging live, web-based video conferences will be different than being in person with your clients, for sure. But it is a great way to connect with your target audience at scale, at any time they want to consume your training.

Best of all, if you host a webinar, your message can reach an audience of viewers and listeners from all over the world.

Bonus tip: It’s okay to put your webinars behind a gated form, but make sure the video content can be made available on demand. In today’s competitive business climate, you don’t want to make people wait to hear your training when there are others out there.

Key Takeaways on How to Market Training Courses Online

Develop Auditing Templates

Providing self-assessment tools helps potential clients identify their own paint points and training needs, which you are then in prime position to offer to address with your course.

Publish Best Practice Guides and Tutorials

Sharing in-depth content establishes your authority and educates your audience; this also makes them more likely to invest in your training programs.​

Maintain an Active Blog

Blogging regularly is critical in the training industry to improve search engine visibility and to keep your audience engaged with topics that you cover in your courses.​

Create Detailed Case Studies

Showcasing success stories from past clients demonstrates the tangible benefits of your training.

Host Webinars

Webinars enable you to reach people across the globe—plus, they give people a concrete sample of what your training is like.

Final Thoughts On Promoting Training Courses Online

Like many lucrative industries that are both knowledge and skills-based, promoting training courses effectively in today’s marketplace requires agility, consistency, and a little bit of luck.

This is true whether you are looking to go to market with a new training course, or you are part of an established training company looking to elevate your status.

Luckily, no matter what actionable digital marketing strategy you choose to promote your training course, they all can help you accomplish the following:

• Disrupt the market leader who is slow to take action
• Generate leads for your programs and direct sales
• Improve your company’s authority and thought leadership positions in your industry
• Increase awareness of your brand and programs through more web traffic
• Provide instant and long-term value to your most coveted buyers

You already know now is the time to increase your market share of the $360 billion training industry. If you need help from an online marketing agency to decide which strategy is the best to start snagging your share, just contact us.

This article was updated to add additional information on April 14th, 2025.

The post 20 Actionable Digital Marketing Ideas for Promoting Training Courses (Updated 2025) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Questions To Ask When Hiring A Digital Marketing Agency

With the infiltration of AI into all forms of digital marketing, this article has been updated for 2025 to include questions about AI and how a Digital Marketing Agency, like Direct Online Marketing, works with it to help keep a human in the loop so you do not get crushed by Google algorithm updates.

Digital marketing will only become more complex as the landscape changes along with consumer behavior. Thank you for checking out this list of essential questions to ask a digital marketing agency before you set out to hire one.

Businesses that hesitate to adopt modern digital strategies will eventually fail without bringing on the right people to carry them out. For companies that don’t have the resources to expand their internal teams or just need a partner with specific expertise, digital agencies are the perfect solution. Choosing the right agency is nothing short of a monumental task.

By the end of this resource, you should have the answers to the most critical questions to ask a digital marketing agency as you are going through the evaluation process of seeking a new one to help your business grow with confidence.

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Digital marketing is a vast field with countless strategies, concentrations, and nuances. Some of the largest companies on the planet have huge teams of marketers, all of which must be at the top of their game to stay ahead of the latest trends. As each discipline and digital platform evolves, keeping up with it all ends up being extremely taxing for smaller businesses that can’t maintain such large teams.

Acquiring new business online requires having seasoned talent with hands-on knowledge regarding the benefits and strengths of different platforms. Not only that, but these individuals also need to know how to execute. Strategy and consultation are meaningless without the people who can provide results.

Companies that wish to explore new territory or improve performance in a specific area of digital marketing will end up considering whether to hire fresh talent or partner with an online marketing agency. Evaluating the merits of in-house versus outsourced marketing is complicated; there are numerous factors to consider.

However, the fact that agencies leverage a pool of talented workers with diverse experiences means that companies who partner with them have the potential to get the highest return on their investment. Hiring specialists to work in-house usually equates to the cost of hiring an agency and very often even ends up being more expensive. Companies that partner with an agency can take advantage of a whole team of experts for less risk than hiring new internal employees.

How To Find The Best Digital Marketing Agency

Hiring an agency is far from easy, though.  Finding the right fit can be time-consuming and downright frustrating. The agency selection process can feel like an awful chore:

• Some agencies make grand promises on which they can’t
• Some agencies fail to provide substantive proof of how they get
• Some agencies only specialize in extremely niche areas.
• Some agencies have restrictive, long-term contracts.

The above highlight just a few of the challenges in choosing an agency. Ultimately, results are what matter. While there’s no way of telling for sure whether investing with a specific agency will generate a positive return, vetting an agency is extremely important.

Be sure to ask and receive answers to the following questions to ask a digital marketing agency as part of your vetting process.

20 Questions To Ask A Digital Marketing Agency Before You Hire Them

Digital Marketing Agency Question 1. Are My Expectations And Their Promises Realistic?

One of the biggest ways companies set themselves up for failure is when the bar is set beyond realistic heights. Having goals is good, but not when it involves going after the unachievable. When this happens, falling short of that high bar becomes inevitable.

This problem can go both ways. While a company may come to a prospective agency with impossible goals, many agencies make promises they simply can’t keep. It’s best to disqualify any company or agency that guarantees results.

Goals can more realistically be set for tasks pertaining to the quality of services, such as communication and reporting. Pay attention to these kinds of promises. Never be afraid to push to better understand how an agency intends to keep itself accountable with deliverables on a predetermined schedule.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 2. Does The Contract Restrict Me Even When I’m Not Satisfied?

The contract length is something to keep in mind when choosing an agency. A common practice in the agency world is to draft contracts where clients must agree to minimum commitments of anywhere from six months up to a full year. That means that no matter if the agency is doing the work, the client still has to pay. That’s not to say that an agency with a year-long contract doesn’t do good work, but it doesn’t offer a whole lot of flexibility for the client if a marketing campaign goes south.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 3. Do They Provide Unique Or Cookie-Cutter Strategies?

Agencies should have refined processes and procedures that empower them to provide repeatable outcomes. However, every business has unique needs, and formulating a strategy should not rely on a templated approach.

Assuming a company understands its goals, the right agency should be able to tailor a strategy in such a way to satisfy that client’s needs. In a perfect scenario, an agency would build all of its client strategies from the ground up, designing them individually to reach business goals and objectives.

When an agency puts forth a contract, understanding every aspect of it is crucial. Be aware of how long a contract will be and that longer ones are more restrictive. Some agencies offer month-to-month agreements where clients can choose to end the relationship for any reason.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 4. Are They Both Tactical And Strategic?

Strategic planning is meaningless without boots on the ground to get things done. Depending on goals and needs, a company likely doesn’t just need a strategic partner; they also need a tactical one.

The only way to get a  sense of whether an agency can execute is if they provide strategic timelines with deliverables and hard deadlines. While an agency won’t have specifics, make sure to ask about what the timeline will look like.

But the opposite must also be true. An agency that gets itself far too into the weeds, focusing only on tactics won’t get the job done either. The strategy ultimately dictates what tactics to use, and it is possible for an agency to be too tactical. Long-term campaign success requires always having an eye towards the future without getting too caught up in the day-to-day.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 5. How Regular Are Communications?

Marketing success hinges upon routine and free-flowing communication. A disadvantage of outsourcing to an agency is that communication takes longer and can be a bit more difficult.

At a bare minimum, the best agency will always offer recurring meetings and campaign updates, typically weekly. This frequency is a default best practice; clients may, of course, have specific preferences outside of this schedule. A good agency should be flexible enough to provide the amount of communication the client needs to demonstrate campaign health.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 6. Will I Get A Dedicated Point-Of-Contact?

No matter the size of an agency, the answer to this question should always be “yes.” Some agencies are so large that clients have to deal with customer service call centers rather than a dedicated account manager. It’s best to avoid agencies like this. Clients will end up feeling like just another number in a system.

Agencies need to provide that human touch, and an account manager should do exactly that. An account manager—as opposed to a more junior employee— ordinarily serves as the primary point-of-contact, as this person should have a comprehensive understanding of every aspect of the client’s campaign, coordinating with their team members accordingly. Account managers are there to serve. They should make themselves available to answer questions or provide insights with reasonable turnaround times.

Learn How We Have Answered
Many Of These Questions.
Experience The DOM Difference.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 7.  How Important Is Data To Them?

Every marketer should treat performance data like gold. Making decisions in today’s world without relying heavily on data is a mistake. While other factors should also be part of an agency’s decision making, campaigns live and die by data analysis.

Data should inform everything an agency does since it informs what’s going well, where to adjust, and where they need to go in the future.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 8.  How Tech-Savvy Are They?

An important consideration for selecting an agency is how they approach technology adaptation and innovation. Working in digital marketing requires knowledge of complex technology. Which is continually evolving. What may have generated results a decade ago may not be feasible in the present day.

For example, if you are seeking an agency that specializes in paid search, you should ask how they use automation tools and tactics to improve the overall return on investment.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 9.  Can They Help A Business Of My Size? 

Many businesses care about whether an agency has direct experience with helping other companies in their industry. While some industries have specific tactics and strategies that work best, a competent digital agency has experience assimilating data quickly and adjusting to almost any industry and business.

The more important question is whether an agency is the right fit for a business of your size. An agency with mostly enterprise-level clients likely isn’t the best fit for a medium-sized manufacturer. Inversely, an agency that only assists local restaurants likely won’t be a good fit for a corporate franchise business.

Figure out what factors you value most in an agency relationship and choose accordingly.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 10.  Who Will Be Working On My Account?

Because companies pay agencies for their pool of talent, decision-makers have a right to know who works on their account. In addition to having an account manager, many agencies also provide a dedicated secondary or “backup” point-of-contact who has extensive knowledge on the account.

Your primary point-of-contact should have the necessary experience and support from a second person with the experience to fill in knowledge gaps.  Keep in mind that while people leave from time to time,  there shouldn’t be frequent changes in your contact to ensure consistency and maintain a positive long-term relationship. Additionally, you should never get the feeling of a “bait and switch” when your senior contact shortly after switches over to a more green person.

Beyond that, try asking questions about how many team members will work on the account as well as their qualifications. Note that due to the management of workloads,  agencies may not be able to commit a specific person to your account until you commit to partnering with the agency.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 11. What About The Agency’s Corporate Culture?

The core values of an agency foretell the kind of relationship you will have. Generally, consider agencies that are collaborative, innovative, and proactive.  The best agencies really stand out when transparency and accountability are also baked into their corporate culture.

By asking questions about their corporate culture, this should also give some insight into an agency’s hiring process. Since the greatest benefit of partnering with an agency is its team, getting a measure of the agency’s talent is essential. Also, be sure to check out what employees say about working at the agency on sites like Glassdoor.

Learn What Our Team Members Love
About Working At DOM.
Visit Our Careers & Culture Page.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 12. What Areas Do They Cover?

You need to understand the company’s needs and objectives. If the idea is to partner with someone to fill those gaps, focus on the areas that matter most. Some agencies specialize in one area or have a team that covers many. For example, a company may think they only need help with an SEO site migration, but fail to consider the need for ongoing SEO work.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 13. How Exactly Do They Generate Results?

Not every agency will have the same approach for a given marketing area. The best ones have carefully created their own process to account for every single step of the way, including potential bumps in the road.

Selecting an agency is also tough because oftentimes decision-makers don’t know enough about a subject to ask the right questions. Perhaps a company does great work with content marketing but doesn’t have detailed SEO experience. Agencies who provide insights into their processes will always be the best choice.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 14. Are They A Partner Or A Provider?

Companies should only seek agencies that act as an extension of their marketing team. An agency must deliver results, but they should also be proactive in improving the overall client relationship and the quality of their results.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 15. Are They Transparent?

In addition to regular communication,  choosing the right agency should also involve considering if they’re accountable and transparent. Results speak for themselves, and agencies need to be upfront at all times. A competent agency will know when to admit failure, and they will also know how to right the ship.

Companies hire agencies to get things done. A lack of clarity and honesty is a recipe for disaster.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 16. What Credentials Do They Have?

Certifications and accreditations are essential indicators of an agency’s quality. These credentials must be bestowed by a reputable third-party to vouch for the work of a given agency. Some credentials even have different tiers to consider. Let’s say a company wants an agency that knows Google Ads inside and out. Their best bet would likely be to go with one that’s a member of the Top 200 Premier Google Partner program, an elite group of the best digital agencies that specialize in Google Ads.

Learn more about our team, credentials, and qualifications here.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 17. Do They Have Case Studies Demonstrating Their Work?

Case studies communicate past success. They are summaries of challenges faced and solutions found. Reading over these pieces of content should grant a sense of the types of companies they help as well as what tactics generated such good results.

Steer clear of agencies that don’t have several compelling case studies to their name.

Check out a selection of our marketing campaign case studies here.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 18. Do They Have Testimonials?

Testimonials say an awful lot about an agency. In particular, client testimonials that use branding and a direct quote from an actual person are huge credibility signals. These clients are so confident in the results of the agency that they put their name on it.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 19. What Do Their Online Reviews Look Like?

Although similar to testimonials, online reviews are another significant credibility signal to examine. Testimonials usually require the agency to reach out to the client for a direct request, whereas clients can submit online reviews at their leisure.

Even if an agency has a high review score, be sure to read both positive and negative reviews to identify common threads across them. On top of the usual review aggregators like Google and Yelp, be sure also to check out agency-specific review platforms like Clutch.

One corollary of this item is the measurement of customer satisfaction.

Two industry standards for this measurement are Net Promoter Score (NPS) and SurveyMonkey’s global benchmark score. One thing to note about benchmarks is that they can vary widely among industries. For example, educational institutions tend to average an NPS of 71, while healthcare companies are lucky to get much higher than 27.  

NPS is calculated using a simple survey question: how satisfied are you with the service you received? More detailed surveys are also available, but all it takes to create a reliable baseline is that one question, answered on a scale of 1 to 10. It is a fast, simple way to gather customer data. According to Retently.com, Digital Marketing Agencies average an NPS of around 61. 

The other primary benchmark is calculated by surveys provided by SurveyMonkey, the leading provider of information-gathering services across many different business sectors. To calculate a SurveyMonkey Global Benchmark for each question, the company adds up individual scores to generate an average across all surveys. A digital marketing agency average at 44. 

Digital Marketing Agency Question 20. Do they use AI to generate content or optimizations?

In 2025, virtually all digital marketing agencies integrate AI tools into their content creation and optimization processes. AI assists with tasks such as generating drafts, analyzing data, and identifying trends to improve efficiency and performance. However, while AI provides immense value, it is crucial that agencies maintain a human in the loop to ensure content aligns with a brand’s voice, remains unique, and meets Google’s ever-evolving quality standards. Human editing plays a vital role in reviewing and refining AI-generated content to add authority, creativity, and personalization. This safeguards against penalties from search engine algorithms that prioritize originality and user relevance. When discussing AI use with a prospective agency, confirm that their approach involves both leveraging AI for efficiency and retaining human oversight to ensure top-tier, authoritative results.

Digital Marketing Agency Question 21. What About Pricing?

Companies should only seek agencies that act as an extension of their marketing team. An agency must deliver results, but they should also be proactive in improving the overall client relationship and the quality of their results.

21 Questions To Ask A Digital Marketing Agency: 4 Key Takeaways

Gathering as much information as possible about an agency will go a long way towards finding the best fit. Finding the right questions to ask a digital marketing agency may feel challenging; make no mistake. But in the end, any company can select a great agency provided that they always consider:

• The value of an agency is in its talent
• Regular communication is key
• Execution trumps good strategy
• Credibility is extremely important

Video: SEO or PPC?

Looking For The Best Digital Marketing Agency?

Ready to learn more about Direct Online Marketing and how our digital marketing agency can help your company grow confidently online? Contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation with one of our digital marketing experts.
Take a moment to read why we are The Best Digital Marketing Agency For B2B Businesses.

Oh… and if you do contact us, feel free to pick from this list (or add to it) if you have any questions to ask a digital marketing agency.

The post 21 Essential Questions To Ask When Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency (Updated For 2025) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

But that wasn’t always the case. The metaverse as a concept is as old as computers, but the word–and some would argue, its aspirational form–began with Neal Stephenson’s classic novel, Snowcrash.

• Introduction
• The Problems With Marketing in the Metaverse
• There Isn’t Actually a Metaverse Yet
• The Internet We Have, Not the Internet We Want
• Which Garden Will You Water?
• The Metaverses of 2024
• For Most of Us, We’re Just Not There Yet

Stephenson imagined that we would all be strapping on virtual reality gear and having all sorts of fun in an interactive, 3d landscape where anything was possible. Not just fun, either–business, too, with companies and businesses using virtual storefronts to entice their metaversal customers. 

Marketing in the metaverse was as wild as the artist’s imaginations, with flying, neon ads, and chatbots that could walk up to you and start a conversation.

Not bad for 1992, when the internet still had a capital I and was only known to a few thousand geeks, government employees, and science fiction fans. 

Smash cut to 2024: Two of the biggest, most influential technology companies in the history of the world have gambled a whole lot that you and I will one day soon do exactly what Snowcrash promised, and conduct real business in the simulated reality of a metaverse. Apple released the Vision Pro a scant couple of years after Facebook changed its whole name to Meta, and we’re off to the races. 

This whole thing has marketers wondering if this is the next big thing and, if so, should they be planning on moving some or any of their marketing budget to it?

Should we be buying ads in the metaverse? 

Should we be optimizing our websites for 3D? 

Let’s get into it.

The Problems With Marketing in the Metaverse

Before we even get to what kinds of marketing you should be doing right now for the metaverse, we should talk about the issues you’ll be facing before you even get to the point of buying ads or optimizing your pages. 

Problem #1: There Isn’t Actually a Metaverse (Yet)

This is the number one issue that we have to contend with, and it’s kind of an important one. There is no metaverse, at least not really. 

So the instant answer to the question: should I be marketing for the metaverse is a flat no. 

There’s nothing to market for! It would be like asking if you should be marketing for the moon colonies. Sort of. 

There are experiences that feel like the metaverse as it was described in Snowcrash. 

You can buy a Quest and log in to a VR Chat that has 3d avatars from all over the world interacting with each other. There are games you can play, and experiences you can have, all through some fancy 3d goggles. 

But not if they’re made by different companies. 

The Internet We Have, Not the Internet We Want

The metaverse is an aspiration, one that is understandable from the point of view of a writer in the early 90s. 

We thought the internet was going to be the easy integration of a vast network of interconnected, decentralized devices that were beholden to no government and no single vision. We had big dreams for an egalitarian web of people all over the world able to talk to each other and share information. 

But that’s not the internet we have in 2024. Instead of a decentralized network, we have huge nodes with big bottlenecks. Entire nations with billions of citizens have erected firewalls between them and the rest of the world. Companies have their own sandboxes and don’t play nice with each other. 

Have you tried sending a text from an iPhone to a Samsung? 

Which Garden Will You Water? 

We have a few walled gardens owned by a few big companies and we have to play by their rules. 

Until there is one single metaverse (which doesn’t seem likely), you get to pick the metaverse to market in. 

Luckily, each of the metaverses represents a different target market because, after all, there are flesh and blood people behind every one of those avatars. Let’s look at some numbers. 

• 200,000 – How many people bought Apple Vision Pro at launch
• 6 Million – How many active users of the Quest line of products in a single month (in October 2022)
• $38.6 billion – how much the AR/VR industry will be worth in 2024
• 10.77% – projected annual growth of the AR/VR market
• 1.7 Billion – number of projected AR users in 2024

The Metaverses of 2024

Okay, so we’ve acknowledged it’s not one harmonious metaverse yet – more like a bunch of competing islands.  But some islands have more inhabitants than others.  

Let’s look at the major players, where their strengths lie, and the kind of audiences you’ll find within:

• Meta (formerly Facebook): Horizon Worlds & More
  • The big gorilla in the room. Meta has immense resources, but their rollout of Horizon Worlds has been… rocky. Graphics are often compared to early-2000s games, raising questions about mainstream appeal.
  • Strength: Sheer numbers. Meta’s reach is still massive, making it the ‘safe bet’ if you aim for broad demographics instead of niche audiences.
  • Who you’ll find: A wide mix, but skews older than some rivals due to existing Facebook user base.
• Decentraland
  • Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Decentraland is big on user-generated content and ownership. Think of it as buying digital land and building whatever you like. 
  • Strength: Freedom and potential for true ‘digital landlords’. If your brand is about customization or user participation, this is the sandbox you might want to play in.
  • Who you’ll find: Tech-savvy early adopters, investors, crypto crowd. Not yet for the mass market.
• Roblox
  • Often mistaken for a single game, Roblox is actually a massive platform for user-created experiences. It exploded during the pandemic and maintains popularity.
  • Strength: Dominates the younger demographic. If your brand caters to teens or even pre-teens, Roblox is worth serious consideration.
  • Who you’ll find: Kids, young adults – it’s a hyperactive, virtual playground.
• The Sandbox
  • Similar philosophy to Decentraland, but leans more towards gaming experiences and recognizable brands partnering up.
  • Strength: High-profile collaborations (Snoop Dogg in 2021) maybe get media buzz, offering access to an engaged audience.
  • Who you’ll find: Trend-conscious, those into pop culture moments, and again, a younger demographic.
• Niche & Emerging Platforms
  • It’s a land rush out there! Smaller metaverses focused on specific interests – music, fitness, professional networking – are popping up all the time.
  • Strength: Hyper-targeted audience, potential for low-competition environments if it aligns perfectly with your brand.
  • Who you’ll find: Depends entirely on the platform. Do your research to ensure a good fit.

A Note on Apple Vision Pro

Apple, as usual, plays by its own rules. 

There’s no dedicated Apple “metaverse”, but the Vision Pro headset focuses on Mixed Reality (MR). This blends digital elements with the real world. This is less about chat rooms, and more about overlaying shopping info onto a physical supermarket. 

Marketing applications are still developing.

For Most of Us, We’re Just Not There Yet

It’s in the nature of digital marketers to be curious about the future. Some of that curiosity comes from fomo–nobody wants to venture into a new platform or market with exciting ideas and plans to find that their competition is already there. 

For those of us old enough to remember when we suddenly had to have a website on something called the world wide web–and figure out how to advertise on it–we never want to be left behind.

Unless your brand is marketing specifically to the NFT or crypto crowd, or you’re making games for the Meta platform, your marketing budget is better spent somewhere else. 

To put it simply, if your audience isn’t either VR gamers or crypto folks, then the digital channels you’re used to are still the best bets for a solid return on investment. 

If you’d like to know how, specifically, a digital marketing agency can help you spend those marketing dollars in ways that can make a significant impact on your business’s bottom line, then you should give us a jingle. We’ve helped hundreds of clients get pretty great results and we’d love to help you, too. 

Contact us today for a free consultation and let’s see what we can do.

Key Takeaways

• The “Metaverse” is Still Fragmented: There’s no single, unified metaverse in 2024. Think of them as competing islands, each with its own rules and audience demographics.
• Target Audience is Paramount: Understanding who is already actively using each metaverse platform is crucial for deciding if it’s worth your marketing investment.
• Mainstream Appeal is Limited (For Now): While VR/AR tech is growing, most consumers aren’t yet engaging with the metaverse on a daily basis. This means your current marketing channels likely have better ROI.
• Innovation & Experimentation Have Value: Even if large-scale metaverse campaigns aren’t wise yet, smaller experiments can help brands stay ahead of the curve. This is especially true for those catering to young, tech-savvy audiences.
• It’s Not “If”, But “When”: The metaverse, or something like it, will likely become more integral to our digital lives. Keeping an eye on its development and understanding its potential is a smart long-term strategy.
• Traditional Digital Marketing Still Reigns: Investing in proven channels like search, social, and content marketing will likely yield the best returns for most businesses in 2024.

The post Should I Be Including the Metaverse in My Digital Marketing Plan? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Could creatives soon be competing with machines for jobs? 

It’s certainly possible, but before any (more) fear is elicited, let’s break down what exactly AI-generated images are and how they are made. 

What Exactly are AI-generated Images?

Put simply, AI-generated images are images that are created entirely by an algorithm, without any input from a human artist. The possibilities for this technology are vast, and it has the potential to revolutionize creative services completely. 

This algorithm is trained on a dataset of images, and then it uses that training to generate new images that are similar in style and content to the images in the dataset. 

The algorithm can generate anything from realistic photographs to abstract designs, and it can even create entirely new images that have never been seen before.

The more detailed and specific the original prompt, the more likely the algorithm will be able to successfully generate a slew of images based on the information.

How Quickly are AI-generated Images Created?

One of the most interesting things about AI-generated images is that they can be produced at a speed and scale that would be impossible for a human artist. With traditional art, it can take hours, days, or even weeks to create a single piece. 

With AI-generated images, however, an entire collection of images can be produced in a matter of seconds. This speed and scalability have the potential to completely transform the creative services industry.

Common Concerns Surrounding AI Creative Services

Much like other industries currently being impacted by AI trends, the creative field is no different. Graphic designers, developers, and artists of all kinds have concerns about the impact that AI-generated images will have on the industry. 

Putting Artists Out Of Work

One of the biggest concerns is that it will put traditional artists out of work. After all, if a machine can create images faster and more efficiently than a human artist, why would anyone hire a human artist in the first place?

While it’s true that AI-generated images have the potential to replace some types of artistic work, it’s important to remember that there are some things that machines simply can’t do. 

For example, machines don’t have emotions or life experiences, and they can’t create art that is deeply personal or reflective of the human condition. There’s real power in passion, which leads to the notion that there will always be a place for human artists in the industry, even as AI-generated images become more prevalent.

Copyright Infringement

There is also a general cause for concern when it comes to copyright infringement. It may be impossible to tell where inspiration or reference is coming from with AI-generated images being pulled from every edge of the web, which could make usage guidelines rather hazy going forward.

This directly plays into the looming issue of information interpretation. How AI algorithms interpret an image prompt is almost certainly going to be different from what the human mind can envision. 

With a few general searches, there seems to be a clear lack of realism in many of the AI-generated options. Many have clear imperfections or unrealistic styles that folks working in the creative field can easily spot, further emphasizing the battle between quantity and efficiency against quality. 

Lack of Diversity

This also leads to the concern that AI-generated images could make the industry less diverse. If the majority of images are generated by machines, there’s a risk that all images will start to look the same. This could result in a lack of diversity in the industry, as well as a loss of creativity and innovation.

The Positive Outlook on AI Creative Services

On the contrary, there’s also the potential for AI-generated images to make the industry more diverse. For example, AI could be used to create images that are more inclusive and representative of different cultures, races, and backgrounds. 

Additionally, AI-generated images could be used to create images that are more accessible to people with disabilities, such as images with audio descriptions or images that are designed to be viewed by people with color blindness. 

Many of these image styles are currently lacking when it comes to widely available stock assets that already dominate the web. 

Think about all of the off-the-wall requests that would have taken hours to manipulate different stock photos to get the request just right that could now be at the disposal of AI. It’s true that these could become an extension to stock assets and give creatives an endless library to play with, but at what cost?

Are AI-generated Images Free?

While many companies offer a few free credits for AI-generated images, once these credits run out many companies will attempt to capitalize on subscription-based services. 

OpenAI’s AI-generated image platform, DALL•E, includes 15 free credits upon account creation. This system is still not perfect and oftentimes crashes mid-search due to server errors, but produces some decent options in the grand scheme.

Adobe is also Beta-testing its new AI-generation platform, Adobe Firefly. The Firefly Beta is currently only accessible to approved creatives with active Adobe subscriptions.

The Future for AI Creative Services is Now

Adobe plans to take its AI capabilities to even bigger heights as well, with ideas in place that could transform the efficiency and overall framework of the creative field.

Adobe is exploring the following capabilities with Adobe Firefly:

• Text to image (AI-image generation)*
• Text effects*
• Recoloring vectors
• Inpainting
• Personalized images
• Text to vector
• Extending image aspect ratios
• 3D to image
• Text to pattern
• Text to brush
• Text to template
• Sketch to Image

* available with the Beta version

Fortunately for us, our team has already been approved to test Adobe Firefly (Beta) and is actively exploring its capabilities and offerings. 

As a matter of fact, the images featured throughout this post were all generated with Adobe Firefly… with some human manipulation, of course.

Overall, it’s clear that AI-generated images have the potential to completely transform the creative services industry. The concerns about the impact that this technology could have on traditional artists and the creative process are very real, but it’s important to remember that no matter how advanced the technology becomes, there will always be a place for human creativity and imagination.

It’s important to note that the AI trend is not limited to creative services. Direct Online Marketing provides AI Marketing Services as Ai continues to change what the Internet looks like and how we interact with it.

Read more about how AI is impacting other industries below.

• How To Optimize Your Website For ChatGPT
• Will AI Replace Copywriters?

The post Revolutionizing Creativity: How AI is Transforming the Landscape of Creative Services appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

First things first: taking on a company rebrand is not a small endeavor. If your rebrand is going to be successful, then it’s going to require a significant investment of your time and resources—money, brainpower, and everything in between.

If you speed through the rebranding process or cut corners, you run the very real risk of damaging your brand image and reputation, rather than improving it. That is exactly the opposite of what you want to achieve. So, it makes sense to arm yourself with as much information as possible before starting down the path of rebranding.

Let’s make sure you’re fully informed on the rebranding process, and what it will all mean, so you’ll know you’re doing it for the right reasons—as well as putting your time, resources, and money to their best use throughout the project. If you’re fully committed to getting it right, a successful rebrand will give you a high return on investment and a boost to your company image and reputation.

What Exactly Is A Business Rebrand?

Rebranding can be defined as “the process of giving a product or organization a new image or look in order to make it more successful or attractive to prospective customers.”

And while that is all significant to the process (and a super technical definition), rebranding isn’t just about changing the logo, the color scheme, or the visual identity of a business. That is all part of the process, and there is so much more. This is a unique opportunity to re-evaluate (or newly establish) a company’s values and ethos. Then that understanding can be applied to develop an entire story and create a cohesive brand that works in harmony with everything a business is and stands for.

Considering where a business has come from, where it is currently, where it is headed, and where it has the potential to go, and then applying all of that to a new brand identity, provides an authentic picture of the company to customers, employees, and stakeholders.

Why Would You Rebrand Your Business?

There are many reasons for taking on a rebranding effort for your business. Some main reasons include:

• Your business has changed focus or direction
• Your business’s existing brand looks outdated or unprofessional
• You need to differentiate your business from the competition
• You need to appeal to a new or different customer demographic or audience
• You need to rebuild a reputation or create distance from past issues
• You want to remarket your business by showcasing a new ethos or new set of values
• Your business has experienced rapid expansion or undergone mergers

There are two types of rebranding. The first is proactive branding. This is where a company recognizes that rebranding will create an opportunity for growth or the ability to tap into new markets or niches.

Reactive branding is where the existing brand is redundant and needs to be updated and changed. This could be for a number of reasons; mergers and acquisitions, new or updated products or services, or the need to rebuild a damaged reputation.

Rebranding vs. Brand Refresh

First, you’ll need to decide whether your business needs a complete rebrand, or if you can get by with a brand refresh. Rebranding is a significant investment, so take the time upfront to consider which would work best for you, and which will have the best long-term results.

A brand refresh is just a polishing that updates, or refreshes, your existing brand elements. This is building on the foundation of what you already have established, so you’ll need to be confident that your existing brand resonates with your audiences, portrays an accurate representation of your business, and is strong enough to withstand the refresh.

A complete rebrand is much more involved. In this case, while you don’t want to lose sight of your entire brand identity or completely rid yourself of what keeps your customers coming back, it’s a serious upgrade and a major change to your company’s status quo. This is an opportunity for a fresh start that reinvigorates your business, establishes a new, fresh, and modern direction, and lets new and existing target audiences know that you care about what motivates them, and the images and messages your company is sharing.

Which one do you need? To read more about both and determine the best fit for your business, Read Rebrand or Brand Refresh? Which is Better for Your Business?

When Is Rebranding A Good Idea?

If you find yourself frequently thinking about rebranding, and considering all of the advantages it can bring, let us be the ones to tell you that it might be time to just go for it.

Consider This:

• Are you embarrassed by your company’s current branding or imagery? Do you hesitate to hand out business cards or refer people to your company’s website?
• When you look at your current branding, do you feel like it’s out of touch and outdated? If you’re still using Comic Sans on any marketing materials, deploy the branding experts ASAP.
• Are you looking to attract new customers and ensure your business stands out from the competition
• Do you want to attract fresh, dynamic talent to work for your business?
• If your answer to any or all of these questions is “yes,” it’s probably time to upgrade your business’s brand.

To understand more about the right time to rebrand, read When is the Best Time to Rebrand Your Business?

How Much Will Rebranding Cost?

Rebranding is an investment. This is not a bottom-of-the-barrel solution to your business’s problems, so it’s important that you’re mindful of this when you’re deciding how much time, money, and resources to put into a rebrand.

If you get a rebrand wrong, fixing it will cost much more in the long run than ensuring you are devoting the right amount of resources to get it right the first time.

A Solid Rebranding Strategy Will Always Contain The Following:

• Deep-dive – Researching everything about your business’s history.
• Ideation and brainstorming – Big concepts and big ideas.
• Brand strategy and roadmap creation – Cultivating messaging, positioning, and campaign objectives.
• Creative work – Turning ideas into reality.
• Copywriting – Putting the high-level messaging into carefully crafted content.

Now you can see there is a high level of work and detail that is required to carry out a rebrand successfully. The size and scope of your business will also impact your budget, as well as your reach.

Keep in mind that you are expecting a high-quality outcome as a result of this process, so the investment you put in will greatly increase the returns.

How To Successfully Rebrand

Rebranding is a journey toward discovering the meaning behind your business, and how to accurately portray that to your audiences. There are many factors you’ll need to consider when carrying out a successful rebranding. Missing one of them out could mean that the process doesn’t go as planned or doesn’t have as big of an impact as you desired.

What To Consider Before Rebranding

• A successful rebrand will resonate with and reflect your customers. It is essential to consider their needs and what they are looking for.
• Take a deep look at your reasoning for rebranding, then consider the risks and how you will minimize them.
• Everyone needs to be on board with the rebrand. Ensure you have essential buy-in from your staff and stakeholders.
• Be open to new ideas. A fresh perspective from someone else can help you see things in a new light.
• Scrutinize your existing brand and decide what works and what doesn’t.
• Decide your expected outcome and what the roadmap looks to get to that point.
• Find the right partner to enhance and expand on your creativity and execute the mission.

For more things to consider before rebranding, read 3 Important Things to Consider Before Rebranding Your Business.

Where To Start – Step-By-Step Rebranding Strategy

Now that you have laid the foundation for your rebrand, it’s time to start the process.

• Audit – Review your current brand performance. This includes marketing, positioning, perception, and business goals.
• Research – This is an in-depth analysis of the industry landscape, including competitors and consumer research.
• Ideation – Generating ideas for brand messages, visual symbolism, and business collateral.
• Strategy – Aligning marketing channels, technology, and collateral alongside your business objectives to create a cohesive strategy.
• Creative – Design and development of brand collateral, digital platforms.
• Deploy – Delivery and launch of your new brand.

To read more on starting your rebrand, read How to Kickoff Your Rebrand on the Right Foot.

Rebranding Research

You need to perform comprehensive research, otherwise, you’re just shooting in the dark. Your research will underline all of your reasons for rebranding, and will help you form the strategy you need to carry it all out.

By gathering intel on your customer base and their needs, you can easily identify your ideal customers and retain your existing ones. And getting the low-down on your competitors lets you understand why people choose them over you.

Some good ways to carry out the necessary research include:

• Gather internal data from your own business
• Carry out customer surveys
• Hold workshops and focus groups
• Obtain social media intelligence

Detailed research will help you build your brand strategy and execute it successfully.

For more information on researching, read Rebranding Research: Explore the Landscape and Develop a Strategy

Give Your Brand A Story

Storytelling is called an art for a reason. A great story captivates and inspires people, especially if it is told with authenticity and passion.

Stories surround us, from books and movies, or conversation we have with friends and family members. Stories bring ideas to life and have a lasting impact.

Your brand story sends a powerful message to your audience. It needs to be genuine and authentic, to convey and inspire emotion, and it needs to reflect the heart of your business.

Here’s How You Can Start Building Your Brand Story:

• Get to know your target audience. What are their values? What attracts them to a product or service? You should be able to visualize and describe them clearly.
• Define your core message. What overall message are you trying to convey through your story?
• Inspire emotion. What verbal and visual elements will you use to inspire the desired reaction from your audience?
• Reveal your personality. Your story needs to be personable and relatable to drive authenticity.
• Keep it simple. Try not to bombard the audience with mixed messages or an overly complicated narrative. Keep it concise and straightforward.

For more on how to tell a great brand story, read How to Give Your Brand a Powerful Story

Rebranding Tip — Involve Your Employees And Customers

Involve your employees and customers in the rebranding process, sooner rather than later.

No one knows your company better than you do but your employees are there for a reason, and they have valuable insight that can help guide the rebrand. Find out why they love to work for you, what they love about the company, and what could use improvement. They are the best way to gain a comprehensive insight on how your company values are perceived internally and how they might be getting pushed out externally.

Gather employees from all areas of the business and assign them to be your “brand champions.” Their job is to help you maintain brand consistency and relevance as well as getting buy-in from their colleagues.

Customers are your company’s life-blood, so find out what makes them loyal to you instead of your competitors. Discover what aspects of your existing brand resonate with them and use that information to improve.

Talk to them about how they feel your products or services can be improved and build those improvements into your brand strategy.

For more great tips, read Best Practices for a Successful Rebranding Campaign

Assess The Risks

No investment is completely without risk and of course, rebranding does carry a few risks of its own. But you can take steps to mitigate them or eliminate them entirely.

Some Of The Main Risks Associated With A Rebrand Are:

• Losing or alienating existing customers: By engaging your customers during the rebranding process, you can understand what they need and want from it. Listen to them and act on their feedback to ensure you maintain their loyalty. Many of us remember the unfortunate situation Weight Watchers found itself in a few years back when the brand changed its name to “WW.” None of us want to put our businesses in a similar situation with the customers we’ve worked so hard to win.
• Lacking transferability: Your rebrand might look great on paper but how does it transfer to other mediums? Television, social media, websites, video, and national advertisement campaigns all need to carry the new brand look, so you need to consider how it will transfer to these other areas.
• Breaking your web assets: We’ve mentioned this before, but it’s really important, so we’re going over it again. Moving over to a new domain and website is a big job, but customers still need to be able to find you. Ensure that all re-direct links work and take people to the right area. It’s also worth having a web page explaining your rebrand and why you did it.
• Forgetting about marketing: You’ve invested in the rebrand but have you thought about how you’re going to launch or market it? Set aside a budget for marketing your exciting new brand or it may not make the impact you want.

To read more about rebranding risk assessment, read Avoid These Common Rebranding Risks.

Potential ROI

When you rebrand, you can reap rewards that will give you a major return on investment. By getting it right the first time, there are many things you can look forward to including:

• Increased brand awareness (or brand recognition)
• Increased sales
• Increased loyalty
• Increased market share
• Lower expenses
• Higher staff retention

With all that in mind, you can’t afford not to rebrand.

To read more about the ROI of rebranding, read Rebranding ROI: Why It’s Worth the Investment.

Rebranding And SEO

SEO (search engine optimization services) is a big beast to tackle and very easy to get wrong, so it’s worth taking the time to learn how it works.

Even if you plan on hiring an SEO expert to do it all for you, it’s still important for you to understand SEO at a basic level. This will enable you to perform a few checks, maintain your website, and keep it running at an optimum level of visibility in internet searches.

Some Tasks To Help You Achieve Great SEO Are:

• Look at your website structure and simplify it. The more complex the layout, the harder it is for SEO to work.
• Keep your hierarchy (how a person moves through your website) simple and plan it early on.
• Invest in great content that keeps people engaged.
• Speed up your page loading times.
• Optimize your website for mobile phone browsers.
• Frequently review and update your site.

If you’re changing your domain name as part of the rebrand, ensure your mapping and re-routing is completed fully. If it isn’t, it will result in broken links and dead pages, which will frustrate your customers, and possibly cause you to lose them.

To read more about rebranding SEO, read How to Improve Your Website’s SEO During Rebranding.

How To Ensure Longevity

Taking the rebranding plunge is a big step. But now you know the resources and investment required to carry it out. Before you go, make sure you note one more vital aspect of a rebrand that must not be overlooked: ensuring your brand has longevity.

• Get it right: You need to craft a brand identity that stands the test of time. That’s why it’s so important to get this right the first time around. Too many changes or constantly going through the rebranding process will confuse your customers and make them question your authenticity.
• Forecast changes: Your business plans will always take forecasts into account, so it’s crucial that your brand does too. How is your business projected to change in the future? Will your brand stay true to these changes?
• Stakeholder input: Your stakeholders and customers are at the heart of what you do. It is important to take their ideas and feedback to heart while ensure you are able to differentiate between what is and is not helpful feedback.
• Brand consistency: Make sure you have a process to ensure branding is consistent across all aspects and areas of your business. Over time, staff and plans change. An established process will enable your brand strategy to stay on track and maintain consistency.

How To Choose A Rebranding Agency

Not all rebranding agencies are created equal. Choosing the right one can seem like a daunting process. Finding an agency that ticks all the boxes can be a project in itself.

You’re going to be working closely with your rebranding partner, so it’s absolutely essential that you pick one that you’re 100% comfortable with.

Here Are A Few Ways To Help The Process Along:

• Research the options and make a shortlist. Agency websites will be a great place to start.
• Review an agency’s case studies for quality of work, such as the successful rebrands we’ve carried out here at C-leveled.
• Don’t be driven only by price.
• After making contact, think about the rapport and ease of conversation. Do you feel you’re being listened to and respected? Do you like the agency’s attitude and approach to work?
• Keep a close eye on response times to calls and emails.
• Ask relevant and meaningful questions that allow you to gain a full insight into their working practices and ethos.

For more on choosing the right agency, read How to Choose the Right Rebranding Partner.

Conclusion

By now, you should have a solid overview of what a rebrand is and what it entails. By diving deeper and learning more about each area of rebranding, you can build a comprehensive strategy that will help you carry out a successful project.

Rebranding is a big decision, but this should also be an exciting time for your business. It’s your chance to take what you, your customers, and your stakeholders love about your company and transform it into an authentic and powerful message for a brighter future. Perhaps the biggest piece of advice we can give you is to enjoy and relish the process. Make this a labor of love. That way, your brand will become an accurate reflection of what you and your business stand for.

Interesting in having a conversation with an agency based in the United States so you can navigate your rebranding process with confidence? Contact us to schedule a consultation.

The post Rebranding Guide: How to Navigate the Rebranding Process appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Marketing masters leverage blogging, SEO, branding, and design to captivate their audience and put themselves miles ahead of the competition. But harnessing the many hands of marketing takes a little time and a lot of support. Chances are, you do everything you can to magnify your marketing and stretch its positive effects on your business. However, if your company isn’t in the business of marketing, you might not have the luxury of having a full-fledged marketing team in-house.

Your Marketing Manager might be killing it with your social media strategy, SEO, and keeping up with the company blog, but what happens when you’re ready to take your marketing efforts to the next level? This talented employee is already doing the job of three people! So it might be a bit of a stretch to assume they have the bandwidth and skills to build a new website, shoot and edit a new promo video, design an updated company logo, and so on, so forth.

When you’re daydreaming of keeping up the marketing momentum and continuing to soar in your brand awareness efforts, that dream can suddenly lead to a rude awakening when you realize the lack of marketing bandwidth available within your organization.

It is at this very moment you might consider investigating outsourced marketing services. As you should! No matter which business function or department you’re looking to outsource (marketing, IT, accounting, etc.), getting more hands-on-deck allows your internal employees to continue focusing on what they do best. All the while avoiding the pressure of being stretched too thin. You can also leverage a wider pool of incredible talent and skillsets when it comes to:

• Social Media
• Content Marketing
• Advertising
• Email Marketing
• Paid Ads
• Messaging/Branding
• Graphic Design
• Web Design
• UI/UX Design
• SEO
• Web Development
• HubSpot
• Business Strategy

Let Us Get To Work For You

What Is Outsourced Marketing?

Our workloads are ever-evolving, and there are times when we can barely keep our heads above water. Outsourced marketing is one of the smartest ways companies can expand the temporary marketing power they have under the hood. For instance, if your company only has two graphic designers working on multiple projects that require a hefty illustration workload, you could take on outside help without having to hire another permanent graphic designer. Additionally, outsourced marketing can add some much-needed skills to your teams. None of us are good at everything. So, hiring an outside agency to provide expertise in a particular marketing niche is one of the best ways to get stellar deliverables in front of your clients or customers. Outsourced marketing broadens your horizons. And it allows you to seek more opportunities with a greater project scope. Companies today are adapting to new workflows and a unique talent pool. Luckily our new ways of working have made it easier than ever to hire outside of our companies in a growing pool of freelance, contract, and agency talent. Most simply put, outsourced marketing provides the advantage of temporary and expert help when it comes to working on a variety of difficult marketing tasks.

Why Consider Outsourced Marketing?

Outsourcing marketing efforts is one of the best ways to reduce burnout while helping to maintain an intensely focused workforce. It can bring in knowledgeable new talent to provide fresh insight into your marketing efforts with more specialized experience. If your staff is struggling to service accounts during high-volume seasons, it may be the best idea to start looking for partnerships with marketing agencies that specialize in providing top-notch overflow help. This could be a much more cost-efficient option than taking on more permanent salaried positions.

In-house vs. Outsourced Marketing: Pros and Cons

What are some of the benefits and disadvantages of outsourced marketing? We’ve highlighted some of the main advantages and pain points we’ve experienced ourselves and have heard from our clients over the years.

Pros:

• Can provide specialized and dedicated relief to certain areas of your marketing plan
• Less overhead expenses and baggage than hiring more full-time employees
• Offers the increased flexibility of by-project personnel with fresh insights
• Provides calculated, expert help when you need it, with no strings attached

Cons:

• The marketing agency doesn’t understand your culture or brand as well as a full-time employee. However, with branding guides and project briefs, you can communicate your company message well.
• It can be expensive to hire a reputable marketing agency — expert help comes at a premium. But it is much less expensive than burning out your existing teams and hiring new talent on staff.

Is Outsourcing Just Working with an Advertising Agency?

Outsourced marketing isn’t just a fancy term for hiring an ad agency to take care of the creative customer-facing workload. Although marketing and advertising share a few services like graphic design and copywriting, they are different in a few major ways. Advertising agencies are very good at creating advertisements, jingles, copy, and other creative deliverables. However, they can’t provide the same benefits as a full-service marketing agency. Marketing agencies specializing in outsourced work, like Direct Online Marketing, can deploy specialists to work on email campaigns, paid ads, SEO strategy, web design, and the nitty-gritty details that advertising pros won’t touch. Marketing agencies go beyond providing the loose assets that are a part of marketing campaigns. They build strategies, monitor data, code websites, manage outcomes, and much more.

When is the Best Time to Outsource Your Marketing?

The answer to this question will be different for every company. If your teams have too much on their plates and are struggling to meet project deadlines, it could be time to consider outsourcing a particular task to a marketing agency. Here are some other key indicators that could mean it’s time to hire some outside marketing muscle:

• Your in-house marketing team doesn’t have experience in a niche specialty such as web development or email marketing.

• Your marketing team isn’t able to keep up with the workflow during a particularly busy season.

• You want to hire on a contract basis for projects to keep your company as lean as possible.

However, outsourced marketing can also help keep a consistent marketing effort year-round for companies with smaller in-house teams. The flexibility of outsourcing is one of its key benefits.

What Projects Call for Outsourced Marketing?

When your marketing team has too much work to handle reasonably, it’s time to seek out targeted relief. If you have team members working long hours on SEO and content marketing, but they don’t have the bandwidth to write a series of blogs, it’s time to outsource a content team. The same could be said for website design, UX overhauls, or almost any other time and labor-intensive project. If you aren’t seeing the kind of results you like from a project, it could also be time to hire expert marketing help from the outside. Maybe your staff doesn’t have a decade of SEO experience, and that’s okay. You can hire an outside SEO master that can show them a thing or two while boosting ROI for your business.

Is Outsourcing Cost-Effective?

Outsourcing is not only a smart play when your teams are backed up — it’s a cost-effective solution that you can use to free up your MVPs. Often, marketing agencies will package services in a way that will reduce your costs and provide a more holistic solution. This is a great way to avoid charges for any add-on items that quickly stack up. Of course, you will have a variety of cost options when it comes to choosing a marketing service. You will want to choose a company that provides quality results at the lowest possible price point, but this can be tricky. Not every outfit will be able to handle your project. Chances are, if you are the marketing department for a high-profile tech company, a small-time agency won’t cut it—as much as they would love the opportunity. It’s all about the balance of marketing aptitude and cost savings. Direct Online Marketing has some of the brightest minds in marketing working to bring you marketing solutions. We have competitive pricing for any project and work with you to provide the best mix of time and budget.

Doing Your Research on Outsourced Marketing Providers

It’s important to do your research on outsourced marketing providers to find the best fit. It’s ideal to find an agency that has worked with similar companies in your industry as they will understand some of your unique problems. Perhaps the biggest drawback to outsourced marketing is a lack of product or service understanding. You will want to make sure that if they don’t already have a rock-solid understanding of what you do, they will study up on what your company offers.

• Online searches will be able to tell you a lot about an agency. Their website should be clean, modern, and most importantly, it should include case studies and a portfolio of past experience that should impress you. However, if you are looking for a quick project fix, you might just need an individual freelance marketer.
• Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful marketing tools there is. When marketing agencies do a good (or bad) job, word gets out. Ask around for recommendations from your peers. Chances are they will be able to provide you with help they’ve used in a pinch when it comes to copywriting, graphic and web design, or any other services.
• Social media and review sites like Clutch will sometimes give you a great lead on an outsourced marketing agency. Also, it’s possible someone has already tried to reach out to you via LinkedIn or email with their services! Now could be the time to revisit your inbox to take an agency up on an offer.

Don’t make the mistake of going with the first outfit you find, unless they really are the best fit. The only way to be sure is to consult with a few companies and ensure you get the best deal when it comes to a balance of price, time commitment, and experience.

How Will You Know Good Marketing Help When You See It?

When you know, you know. Good marketing help will fight for your business and show you all the ways that they align with your project. They have all the credentials, experience, and knowledge to run with a briefing and provide excellent deliverables. A good marketing agency will have a portfolio handy of case studies that show how they helped companies like yours in the past, the end results and ROI.

What Should You Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Agency?

You should look for a marketing agency that can provide specialized services that will help you finish marketing projects as soon as possible. Often, marketing departments will come to an agency with a tight deadline. A good agency will be able to take on the project quickly and get deliverables to you as soon as possible. Turnaround times are a big part of projects. There are always drafts and redrafts and edits that need to take place to ensure a finely finished product. You should ensure that the agency you are looking at can work within your time constraints. Of course, you may need to pay a premium for a bump up on their priority list, but that can be expected.

Keeping An Eye On ROI

ROI is one of the biggest terms in marketing. Word coming from above always wants to hear about return on investment. Outsourced marketing teams can provide a better ROI while keeping costs low and providing more insight and expertise than your in-house teams originally had. An outsourced marketing team shouldn’t only be able to provide you with the results you need, they should be able to measure them and give you numbers that reflect the value of your decision. At Direct Online Marketing, we carefully measure project ROI so you can see your results in hard data and plain English. Once you find the stellar ROIs that we offer our clients, we are certain you will come to us again when your projects demand it.

Final Thoughts

Outsourced marketing can be the perfect way to free up your in-house marketing teams to perform at their peak. It is a cost-effective strategy to improve your workload while bringing extra expertise onboard to provide their secret sauce. There are a huge number of projects that are ideal for seeking outsourced marketing. If you have a large marketing department or a small in-house team, outsourced marketing can help you deliver better results faster and more cheaply than hiring on more permanent staff.

Everything You Need To Know About Strategic Marketing

Download Direct Online Marketing’s free guide full of expert, insider advice on everything you need to know about strategic marketing. Use our insight to plan for success and create a lasting impression on your audience.

Download The Ebook

The post Your Guide To Outsourced Marketing appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

The Consumer Experience Will Continue Rising in Importance

As consumers continue to grow more aware (and tired!) of traditional marketing tactics, their experience has surpassed price and product as the key brand differentiators. They are now focused on the experience a brand offers. This growing emphasis on consumer experience means that buyers are willing to pay more for a better and customized buying journey. Research shows that an overwhelming majority (86%) of consumers would pay more for a brand that offers them an engaging, quality experience.

Ignoring a more personalized user experience can lead to increased consumer frustration and an overall decrease in brand reputation. 92% of consumers are only willing to give two to three chances to a brand before they completely abandon it because of poor customer experience.

Brands need to invest in enhancing the level of consumer experience they offer if they expect to succeed in their objectives.

Purpose Driven Brands Will Remain Popular

Brands that exist for the sole purpose of maximizing their profits are not going to be successful in convincing customers to keep buying from them. Modern-day consumers want to buy from brands that resonate with the same values they stand for.

For instance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown to be an important buying factor; according to a recent study, 65% of consumers want to buy from brands that promote sustainability.

Consumers feel strong emotional connections with and are proud to be associated with purpose-driven brands. That’s why 88% of consumers are willing to buy a new product when launched by a purpose-driven brand.

To connect with consumers, you must define and align your purpose with your target audiences’ values.

Enhanced Customer Service Will Become the Expectation

With companies becoming more customer-centric, they are expected to continue improving their services in the future as well. This includes improving customer response times, considering users prefer instant answers.

Nearly 78% of customers buy from companies that are quick to respond to their queries and concerns, and that are authentic in their approach. This not only shows that your brand is eager to help your customers but also helps build trust and loyalty.

Additionally, studies have found out that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it costs to keep an existing one. And so, tactics such as chatbot greetings on your website or social channels is an excellent opportunity to connect with your customers, engage with them, and keep them happy.

Creating a responsive, genuine customer experience through efficient customer service is a key approach to connecting with and keeping your consumers.

Artificial Intelligence Will Gain Momentum

A 2018 Salesforce Marketing Report predicted that 79% of marketers would prefer using AI by 2020.

AI-based software provides a competitive edge in many ways; it reduces costs, saves time, generates higher ROI, and personalizes the consumer experience.

Since AI can analyze vast amounts of data and find correlation amongst a diverse group of audiences, businesses can reach their target audience more effectively. Predictive analysis is another way marketers can benefit from AI. It helps make sense of past trends, such as the purchase history of your customers and enables you to design your future marketing strategy based on that data.

Building Communities Through Social Media Marketing

There are about 3.4 billion social media users around the world – that equals about 45% of the world’s population. Brands have a tremendous opportunity to engage with consumers and build real communities through social media.

Using influencers is one way to help your brand marketing. Statistics show that Instagram has the highest engagement rate with influencer profiles. Capitalizing on the popularity of micro-influencers, instead of celebrity endorsements, can help you gain a cost-effective and more genuine connection with consumers.  Ready to put these trends into action? At Direct Online Marketing, we help businesses create comprehensive strategic marketing plans that help guide better business decisions, and just plain better business. Let’s talk.

The post Your 2023 Approach to Strategic Marketing appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Want to see a list of major retailers and their operating hours for Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2022? Click here.

Because of this major shift in retail to being closed on Thanksgiving and focusing more on driving sales online, specialty online retailers with a sophisticated digital advertising strategy have a unique opportunity this year to increase online sales and “compete against the big guys.”

Are you ready to make your holiday marketing campaigns this year your best ever? Great, let’s crush it!

Not exactly sure where to get started? Do you expect that once again Black Friday isn’t going to look the same as it has in previous years and want to make the most of your digital marketing efforts for your online store?

If yes, you may want to check out our Black Friday marketing ideas webinar on-demand.

What Black Friday Marketing Ideas Should You Expect In This Webinar?

Areas covered include:

• Free listings on Google Shopping and Microsoft Bing Shopping
• Removing friction from the online checkout process
• Setting up your retargeting campaigns for success NOW
• Optimizing product and category pages at scale
• Enticing people to buy with promotions
• Analyzing audience data to better plan your campaigns
• Leveraging Google’s new 0% commission Buy on Google marketplace
• Adjusting campaigns on the fly throughout the day (and the entire holiday season) to maximize ROAS

Want more? If you check the box for a 1-on-1 when you register to watch the webinar, a strategist will arrange a 15-minute call to discuss how you’re currently marketing and identify opportunities to optimize your efforts.

Click here to watch the Black Friday webinar on-demand!

The post How to DOMinate Black Friday Marketing appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Below you will find a nice even dozen of our favorite holiday marketing ideas for 2022. Consider these our free gifts to you in an effort to make this wonderful time of the year the most successful for your business.

Offer Some Limited Time Holiday Deals (Even If You’re In B2B)

Although Black Friday is looking less and less like the insane rugby scrum of years past, it is still “a thing” after the world of retail essentially canceled it in 2020 at the height of the global pandemic.

If there’s one thing we associate with Black Friday, it’s getting those amazing deals.

You might think this kind of strategy only makes sense with retail, but it can work for B2B marketing, too. Don’t forget that even though your office may be closed for the holidays, there are many companies that are open during the holidays because they are serving those who are traveling or taking time off. Aside from traditional consumer retail, other industries that regularly operate during holiday time periods include:

• Convenience Stores
• Emergency Healthcare
• Entertainment Venues (think movie theaters, sports arenas, etc.)
• Hospitals
• Hospitality
• Pharmacies
• Restaurants
• Travel and Transportation

For a few standout holiday marketing ideas, you could offer a discounted rate for one of the services you offer tailored to these specific industries. Or a coupon code that accomplishes the same thing. Just remember to make these offers redemptive. Instead of simply giving the deal away, offer it in exchange for completing a contact form, or gate it off with a form to capture some basic information.

If you identify these markets as high relevance for your products and services, prospective clients working during holidays will likely interested in your discounted services.

That’s what we call some “solid leads,” what about you?

Need to DOMinate Black Friday?
Watch This Webinar On-Demand.
Achieve Your Goals!

Setup A Google Performance Max Campaign

If you have an e-commerce site, there is no reason not to run Google Shopping ads. As far as holiday marketing ideas go, Google Shopping should be your bread and butter if you rely on digital channels to generate direct response sales.

However, in today’s modern digital advertising landscape, there is only one way to get your ads showing in Google Shopping… setup a Performance Max ad campaign in Google.

One of the things we’ve always liked the most about Google Shopping is that the ads are a combination of text search and visual ads. The user sees a picture of the item and also relevant information pulled from your feed by Google.

When it comes to setting up a Performance Max campaign so that your ads can be seen in Google Shopping, we are taking a more cautious approach. Instead of telling you to go all in on Performance Max, we strongly suggest running it with a “test and see” mindset.

If this is the first time you are hearing about Performance Max, or simply want to learn more about the basics of Performance Max campaigns before deciding to go all-in on them for your 2022 holiday campaigns, learn more by pressing play on the video below.

Like we said above, you should be taking a “test and see” approach to Performance Max campaigns. So, while you can still have some type of manual control over where your products are being shown, we recommend you continue to use it.

Along with that, if your feed is optimized, Google will be able to automatically pull information such as free shipping and place it in your Product Ads.

During the holiday shopping season, it is more important than ever to keep your feed as updated as possible. What do you think happens if someone clicks on an ad for a product, only to find out that you are sold out? They go somewhere else.

Don’t miss out on sales because of Google’s machine learning putting your products in front of the wrong buyers or because you have overlooked your feed management.

If you have doubts that your Performance Max campaign is ready for the holiday season – mind if we take a look with a complimentary PPC consultation?

Submit Your Product Feed For Free Clicks

At the beginning of the pandemic, we shared an important update Google made to it’s Shopping platform – online retailers could sell products for free through the platform.

Fast forward more than two years later… and those free to sell options are still available on the platform.

If you haven’t submitted your product feed to Google so that your products can be listed in free “Popular Products” search results like the one shown above – what are you waiting for?

Sure, we know these search results look awfully similar to the Google Shopping ads shown above, so how can you tell the difference?

Simple… shopping listings that are supported with advertising will always be labeled with “Sponsored” or “Ad” in the heading before the actual listing.

If you already use Google Merchant Center or Performance Max, you do not have to change a thing to receive these unpaid clicks. While the amount of impressions your products will receive for unpaid clicks will not be as high as if you were paying per click in Performance Max, this can still be a revenue generating strategy for the holiday shopping season.

Want to review your Merchant Center to see your unpaid clicks?
Learn How Here.

Change Up Your Ad Text

Customers are so used to seeing “50% Off. Order Now!” or “Great Deals!” Instead, show them what they want to see… specifically what it is you can offer them this holiday season.

So, be creative with your marketing campaigns!

If you sell gloves, use some copy that reads, “Baby, it’s Cold Outside! Warm Up with a New Pair of Gloves.”

If you sell products that are irrelevant to the cold season, no worries. You can still find ways to use the season to your advantage and inject a little “holiday spirit” in your campaigns.

Dynamic Search + Shopping = Re$ult$.
Learn How This Online Retailer
Improved Sales 115% During Busy Season.

Embrace Retargeting

When done right, retargeting can take your accounts to the next level when it comes to low-cost conversions.

This is the nice thing about retargeting: based on how your audiences are built, you can segment customers by intent.

If you have an audience for an informational page such as About Us, you know that there is some interest, but the customer is probably not ready to buy yet. You can tailor ads specifically for that audience with messaging to entice them to come back and learn more.

Along with that, if you have an audience for cart abandoners, you know there was intent to buy there – but something changed that. If you create ads that give the customer a reason to come back, you can create conversions from missed opportunities.

Learn more about our retargeting services if this isn’t already a part of your digital advertising plans for the holidays.

Lean On Email, Social, And Automation

Your messaging doesn’t need to slow down too much while you’re sipping eggnog, spinning the dreidel, lighting the candles, prepping for a fast, or ordering Chinese food with your dog.

And you don’t have to be on the stick (or at the keyboard, if you’re not a pilot) prepared to make a correction.

Most people aren’t going to be sitting in front of their computers or visiting their favorite websites for new content during the holidays. Rather, this is a perfect time to engage them where they are: on their phones, scrolling social media, and reading email.

The great news about those avenues is that you can write your social media and email marketing messages early, and then schedule them to roll out at predetermined times.

Just make sure nothing newsworthy happens that might make your subject lines or messaging seem tone-deaf.

Learn more about our social media advertising services if you may need a performance boost in these areas for the holidays.

List Holiday Sales Prominently

No one can participate in your sale if they don’t know it exists. To help boost your 2022 holiday sales, make sure your biggest promotions are front and center.

One of the best ways to do this is by incorporating your sale into your branded color design, using a holiday themed banner or other top-of-page display. This immediately makes the connection between your holiday promotions and the holiday shopping rush. Add a call to action and a link to your perfect gift products, or gift cards, and you’ll be ready to go.

Discounts should also be displayed prominently, especially around top selling products. In addition to displaying discounts on product cards and pages, special Black Friday deals, holiday specials, and gift guide call outs can be displayed both on your product pages and other holiday campaign landing pages.

Make It Easy To Convert

This is a year-round tip, but it’s especially important during the peak of the holiday shopping season.

Make sure each product on your landing page is designed with a clear purchasing path, which can be used on both desktop and mobile devices.

In the simplest instances, you can create a button that adds the product directly to the shopper’s cart. You can also display a sidebar with the current cart contents, allowing customers to see what they’ve chosen, and seamlessly check out when they’re ready.

For all your sales processes, the key is to minimize the steps it takes to purchase. The easier the conversion path, the fewer abandoned carts you’ll see all year.

Optimize Your Pages For Mobile Devices

According to Forbes, holiday spending on mobile reached $88 billion dollars last year. While the pandemic brought a lot of us in front of our bigger screens, mobile sales still increased as the calendar flipped closer to the big holidays.

Suffice it to say if your holiday landing pages aren’t optimized for mobile, you’re losing out on a huge consumer opportunity.

To optimize your seasonal landing pages for mobile:

• Make sure that the buttons are large enough to be seen and interacted with on smaller screens.
• Format holiday banners for mobile devices, keeping text size in mind.
• Don’t overload your mobile landing pages with too much text.
• Ensure that getting from products to checkout is simple, minimizing the number of “touches” between your product and cart pages.

Don’t Forget About Microsoft

Think Google is your only option when it comes to search engine advertising for your holiday marketing campaign? Think again. Microsoft can be one of those great holiday marketing ideas because it is an easy to deploy, high volume secondary platform to use to reach your target audience. Why would you want to pass up 20% of the search market?

Microsoft does not have the reach Google has, but it has an audience that has spending power. Microsoft’s search advertising solutions on Bing and across their entire network are great for reaching those that are not as tech-savvy (*cough* parents and grandparents *cough*) because they are less likely to use a browser, or a search engine, other than what Windows devices provide as the default.

Learn more about our Microsoft Ads account management services if this isn’t already a part of your digital advertising plans for the holidays.

Create A Sense Of Urgency

This is true for all product pages, all the time, but the holiday season is a fantastic time for retail sites because the urgency is already built-in!

What you can do is emphasize the timeliness of your sales on your site, reminding your customers that they need to act now if they want to surprise their special someone on time.

One of the best ways to do this is with the popular holiday countdown timer. You’ll see Amazon do this with their Cyber Monday deals, counting down the hours until each product special is gone forever—and it works.

Display your timer above the fold or along a sidebar, where your customers can easily see how much time they have left, and prepare to watch this be one of those holiday marketing ideas that will automatically push your holiday sails up!

Finally, Don’t Forget To Be Sincere

Your employees love each other, even if they fight like siblings sometimes. Your clients think you’re doing a great job, and you’re thankful for the ability to provide them with goods or services this time of year.

The holidays are also about love, acceptance, and gratitude. Don’t be afraid to show that side of yourself to the people who matter to you. We could all use a little more joy these days.

Don’t shy away from incorporating some of these timeless feelings and emotions that well up in the people who will consume the content you create for your holiday marketing strategy.

You might be surprised how far a little “I appreciate you” or “We understand what you’re going through” messaging can go in spreading more of that holiday cheer.

As the calendar year draws to a close, do you find yourself behind pace with your lead generation or sales goals? Even though the holidays are drawing close, there’s still time to meet, achieve, or exceed your goals. Contact us for a free consultation to learn how our digital marketing services can help you accomplish your best  year yet! 

The post 12 Profitable Holiday Marketing Ideas To Make This Your Best Year Yet appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

That’s why brands must invest considerable time, effort, and resources into creating a solid marketing plan that employs leading tactics to boost business. Strategic marketing can help enterprises of all sizes, and across industries, differentiate themselves from the competition and provide value to their audiences and stakeholders.

Let’s dive into what strategic marketing is, why it’s essential, what trends you need to incorporate, and how strategic marketing benefits businesses (when its executed in the right way!).

CRITICAL COMPONENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIC MARKETING PLAN

An effective strategic marketing plan will create brand awareness, generate leads, and ultimately convert qualified leads into customers. But without the right components, your attempts to boost your business could go bust. That’s why you need to understand and incorporate the essential parts of a practical strategic marketing blueprint. 

• Market Analysis – Collect and analyze data on your previous inbound and outbound (or more conventional) marketing efforts to determine the successes and failures of those strategies.
• Organizational Marketing Goals – Make sure that your strategic marketing plan aligns with your organization’s values so that you can promote a more consistent brand image and voice.
• Target Audience – Your strategy should cater to your exact target audience. Research and create buyer personas to target appropriately, gather feedback, address your ideal customers’ wants, needs, and pain points.
• Advertising Strategy – Understand the right platforms and methods to market your products or services to ensure the maximum effectiveness of your plan.
• Monitoring and Measuring – You have to know if your strategic marketing plan is working. That happens by measuring the results. Monitor KPIs and adjust your approaches when efforts aren’t quite hitting the mark.

INBOUND MARKETING VS. OUTBOUND MARKETING: DETERMINING WHAT WORKS WITH YOUR BRAND

There’s intense competition in the marketplace, and your prospects see thousands of advertising messages every day. It can be difficult for businesses to stand out and get the attention of their target audience – but it isn’t impossible.

Marketers have two distinct pathways through which they can communicate their brand’s message: inbound marketing and outbound marketing.

Outbound marketing is a traditional approach to pushing out your product’s information to prospects, hoping that it will reach the right audience and result in sales. It does not necessarily involve technology, but it strives to create brand awareness in very little time. This might happen through conventional advertising, such as print ads or billboards.

On the other hand, inbound marketing works subtly to gain the interest of a prospect. It educates buyers and provides them value–instead of blatantly promoting products in a sea of messages. This approach prioritizes the customer’s best interests, and businesses use it to build stronger relationships with their existing and prospective customers.

Both approaches have their benefits, but ultimately, you’ll need to choose the best marketing strategy that aligns with your business goals.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ADVERTISING OF YOUR STRATEGIC MARKETING PLAN

A successful strategic marketing plan includes an effective advertising strategy.

Whether you choose to use digital advertising approaches or more conventional advertising, or a blend of both, what matters most is how audiences are most likely to respond.

When creating your brand’s advertising strategy, your company’s values must be kept in mind. If it’s not on brand, your audiences definitely won’t respond. After that, determine your advertising campaign budget, since that directly influences the channels you’ll use to promote your brand.

Additionally, your budget will also determine the frequency of your ads to extract maximum ROI.

The main goal of your advertising strategy should be to gain as much exposure as possible to your target audience. The more potential customers who see your brand’s message, the more leads you will generate.

SHOULD YOU DIY INBOUND MARKETING OF HIRE AN AGENCY?

Businesses are increasingly adopting inbound marketing strategies. But it can be difficult for managers to decide if they should have an in-house inbound marketing team or hire an agency to execute their campaigns.

Our take: You specialize in what you do for a reason. Keep doing what you’re great at and leave your marketing to the experts!

GAME-CHANGING STRATEGIES FOR CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing no longer remains an option for businesses. High-quality, original content has become a necessity for brands that want to thrive in the digital space. Content marketing has the power to increase brand awareness, attract organic traffic to your websites, and generate more leads.

The formula for a successful content marketing campaign is to post quality, consistent content through blogs, articles, social media posts, and videos or podcasts that are niche-specific and targets a distinct audience. Then, your content should be promoted through social media channels, digital advertising, and e-newsletters to make sure it’s being read and seen.

HOW TO CALCULATE THE ROI OF YOUR STRATEGIC MARKETING CAMPAIGN

If you do not measure your ROI, you don’t have a good sense of whether your strategic marketing is working. Start the process by clarifying your goals and streamlining your processes; then ensure a successful implementation and execution of your strategic marketing plan. This process is crucial to evaluate its effectiveness through campaign ROI.

Then, you can evaluate your strategic marketing campaign ROI through a simple formula.

(Sales Growth – Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost = ROI

Add up all the expenditures and revenues for the marketing team, internal expenses, fees, and any other expenses incurred during marketing. Now subtract this number from the sales that occurred due to these marketing efforts.

There are other formulas to calculate marketing ROI. Still, those depend on specific strategic aims of the marketing campaign, such as calculating the increase in sales or determining the value of each customer’s relationship with your business.

GIVE INBOUND MARKETING A CHANCE – HERE’S WHY!

Inbound marketing helps brands enhance their digital footprint by presenting products and services to customers who are already looking for similar offers.

Inbound marketing matters for businesses. Here’s why.

• Inbound Marketing is Cost-Effective. Writing and promoting several SEO-optimized blog posts can be comparatively cheaper than a billboard ad. Research suggests that inbound marketing costs 60% less than outbound marketing methods!
• Inbound Marketing enhances your company’s reputation. Inbound marketing leverages different mediums to educate new and existing customers on why they need your particular product or service.
• Inbound Marketing guides leads through the sales funnel. Inbound marketing can help expedite and simplify the decision-making process for a potential customer, making it easier for them to ‘buy now’ or for you to follow up.
• Inbound Marketing is relevant. Inbound marketing attracts customers by providing them appropriate, timely, relevant, and informative content–rather than bombarding them with unsolicited advertisements.
• Inbound marketing offers better analytics. You can effectively analyze the results of your inbound marketing campaigns and apply that data to help you determine your next strategy.

THE ELEMENTS OF DIGITAL MARKETING

Digital marketing is a form of strategic marketing that helps businesses reach their target audience through mediums that are more effective and impactful than traditional marketing. If your company does not have a digital marketing strategy in place, you are missing out on a broad audience base.

You can take advantage of digital marketing to maximize marketing efforts through the following approaches:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Social media marketing (SMM)
• Mobile marketing
• Pay-per-click advertising

A digital marketing strategy that encompasses some or all of these tactics all is the ultimate way to effectively promote your brand’s products and services to a wide range of audiences.

6 TYPES OF CONTENT TO DRIVE CONVERSIONS

Content marketing is possibly the most effective digital marketing strategy for businesses. There are six main types of content marketing that you can use to engage your targeted audience and boost your brand’s image:

• Blogs
• Videos
• Infographics
• eBooks
• Checklists
• Podcasts (and then consider breaking up podcasts into a series of written articles!)

By using each of these formats, or by repurposing content across these formats in different ways, you can engage leads and boost online activity or sales for your business.

Why SEO and Content Marketing are a Perfect Match

No matter how informative and engaging your blogs are, new customers won’t be able to find you unless your content is ranking on Google. That’s why it is crucial to optimize your content for search engines with appropriate SEO tactics. The only way to attract leads is by leveraging the power of SEO for your website.

SEO and content marketing work hand-in-hand to enhance the effectiveness of your digital market campaigns. Here’s what you can expect.

• Improved user experience – Content that is easy to understand, organized, and SEO-optimized assists in converting quality leads.
• A better understanding of the audience – When you optimize your content for search engines, you are also inevitably understanding how your audience searches for you online. Figure out what pain points you need to target, and you’ll have an extremely effective content marketing campaign.
• Quality content – The combination of powerfully written content and proper SEO can help your audience access content they will appreciate.

While there is no denying the benefits, it is also important to remember that you won’t see the results of your SEO and content integration strategy overnight. Be consistent, continually refine your SEO tactics and content creation, and also keep up-to-date with the latest trends to get the most from this strategy.

HOW CAN INBOUND MARKETING HELP YOUR BUSINESS?

Businesses are deviating from traditional marketing tactics to inbound marketing since it helps them form long-term, mutually-beneficial relationships with their prospects.

But that’s not all–there are numerous benefits of inbound marketing, including:

• Value for money – It is less expensive than other outbound strategies since it requires fewer resources to execute a marketing strategy.
• Better customer relationships – By providing quality content, inbound marketing helps to generate leads that convert to brand advocates.
• Efficient analytics – It helps businesses track their marketing efforts so that they can devise an even better strategy in the future.

Traditional approaches would at-best get them one-off sales, but inbound has the power to deliver loyal, repeat customers.

DIGITAL MARKETING TIPS, TRICKS, AND TRENDS

Digital marketing can be overwhelming for businesses that are turning to it now, after working with more traditional methods for decades. Better late than never, because it is essential to embrace these new tools and strategies if you want to gain an advantage over your competitors.

These are the top digital marketing trends that you can incorporate in your company’s marketing mix.

• Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality – Enable customers to inspect and ‘test-drive’ the product before the actual purchase.
• Voice search optimization – Allow customers user-friendly access to products, services, and your website by speaking into their voice devices.
• Shoppable posts – Help your customers buy a product directly through social media posts featuring the product’s picture, price tag, and a click-through button.

Streamline your digital marketing processes with these tips:

• Produce personalized advertisements – Tailor your ads to align with a defined geographical area, age, sex, and other demographics. Remember, people like to buy when ads are targeted to their specific personality traits or preferences.
• Target Gen Z – Gen Z has the purchasing power and the ability to make your business a success. Show them how your brand aligns with their values!
• Video Integration – Videos relay your brand messages, and they also help you highlight the most promising features in a way that remains etched into the mind of your target consumer.

HOW TO CREATE A BUDGET PLAN FOR STRATEGIC MARKETING

To budget for your strategic marketing efforts, you need to consider all the costs for every marketing effort you plan on implementing. Here are some ways to maximize the budget for your strategic marketing efforts.

• Use social media to streamline your budget – Social media is a cost-effective method of marketing that can add real value to your campaigns, all the while maximizing your budget.
• Recycle your marketing campaigns – Instead of spending money on creating new promotions, you can repurpose your previous successful strategic marketing campaigns. Reuse what worked and add to it for maximum success.
• Use email marketing – Email marketing is more cost-effective and helps generates more ROI than direct mail.
• Encourage word-of-mouth marketing – Encourage your customers to share their love for your brand on social media to create engagement, which attracts new leads.
• Create quality content – To increase your brand’s visibility, you need to create high-quality content through blogs and social media, which costs less than traditional marketing.

TELLING YOUR BRAND STORY THROUGH CONTENT MARKETING

Stories help customers to relate to a brand, and when it comes to strategic marketing, businesses are maximizing on this opportunity to create content marketing campaigns that, ultimately, convert customers.

Content marketing is, by far, the best opportunity to write a captivating brand story that aligns with your customers’ values and touches their lives in meaningful ways.

Leverage different content marketing platforms and keep the following elements in mind when creating an engaging brand story.

• Prioritize audience preferences – Research what your target audience wants to read, and then convey your brand message to solve their problems effectively.
• Purposeful messaging – Your story must have a purpose behind it to show your audience that you value their time and attention.
• Include visual content – People process images faster than text, so by incorporating visual aids in your content marketing strategy, you can increase customer interaction with your brand.
• Incorporate videos – Use videos to tell your brand story and show your customers that are more than a business.
• Deliver authentic content – The digital marketplace is saturated with so many brands, so your business must create trustworthy and reliable marketing messages to reach out to your target audiences.

THE MOST COMMON STRATEGIC MARKETING PROBLEMS–AND THEIR SOLUTIONS

The road to an effective strategic marketing strategy is full of challenges that can derail your efforts if ignored. These marketing problems include generating new leads, limitations of a marketing budget, attracting the wrong customer base, intense competition, or mixing your marketing approach.

But these difficulties can be diminished by precise strategic marketing solutions that involve improving the quality and reach of your content to grow and nurture leads.

It’s also a good idea to use a combination of outbound and inbound marketing campaigns to balance the budget. Creating a specific buyer persona and appealing to the individual needs of a customer will also help you solve these marketing problems.

CREATING A STRATEGIC MARKETING APPROACH FOR 2023

Here are some of the leading strategic marketing trends for 2023!

• Improved customer experiences – Buyers are tired of traditional marketing tactics, which is why they have learned to ignore the never-ending messaging. To gain their attention this year, create more personalized campaigns that deliver high-quality experiences.
• Creating purpose-driven brands – Customers prefer brands that create an emotional connection with them–instead of bombarding them with promotional offers.
• Enhanced customer service – Responsive and efficient customer service will help in attracting and retaining your customers.
• AI integration – Artificial Intelligence provides a competitive edge. It saves costs, time, and generates higher ROI to create better customer experiences.
• Social media communities – Get micro-influencers to work with your brand instead of celebrity endorsements to build a more relatable connection with your customers.

CONVERTING LEADS WITH STRATEGIC MARKETING

Strategic marketing plays a vital role in lead generation and conversions. Getting this right means leveraging social media marketing platforms to engage customers and build your brand’s credibility.

Google Ads is also an excellent way to re-engage visitors by introducing your product ads whenever they search online.

And, another useful tool is email marketing. Email marketing plays a vital role in lead generation and conversion. Send promotional emails with a call-to-action button that appeals to the customer to take immediate action.

KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN CHOOSING THE BEST STRATEGIC MARKETING AGENCY

Many brands are confused about how to choose the best strategic marketing agency. It is essential to understand that the right agency perfectly aligns with the values and culture of your company, and that is crucial for your brand’s success.

Before signing a contract, make sure that you can communicate your goals with them. Furthermore, you must check references provided by other clients they have worked with and assess if they are the right fit for your business and marketing goals.

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN YOUR STRATEGIC MARKETING PLAN

Social media offers an effective platform for brands to build long-term relationships with their customers, enhance their brand’s image, and increase their credibility.

Social media marketing can also increase customer interaction, augmenting the effectiveness of business marketing strategies and boosting sales for a brand.

STRATEGIC MARKETING TRENDS – THE NEXT BIG THING

When it comes to strategic marketing trends, the future belongs to businesses that are invested in creating more personalized and enhanced customer experiences. This should help them establish a genuine connection and reduces client acquisition costs.

Moreover, AI and automation technology will continue to further enhance the marketing tactics this year with increased improvements in customer retention strategy.

CREATING A BALANCE BETWEEN STORY-TELLING AND SEO IN CONTENT MARKETING

By integrating SEO tactics in your content marketing strategy, you get to tell an engaging brand story that is visible to the customers who search for you online. It is imperative to strike a balance between the two to produce an effective and comprehensive content marketing strategy.

Avoid generating content that is keyword-loaded and bland. Instead, tell your brand story in a way that creates an emotional appeal with your customers to give you a competitive edge. Then, your content should reflect the values of the company and leave a lasting impact on customers’ minds.

To make these strategies work, you need to analyze and understand your audience and encourage them to engage with the brand.

DETERMINING YOUR STRATEGIC MARKETING GOALS

The success of a strategic marketing campaign requires achieving essential objectives. Here are some of the top strategic marketing goals to keep in mind.

• Increase in sales – Start working toward an increase in sales by increasing your brand’s credibility.
• Brand awareness – Promote your products and services to create awareness, which will drive more purchases and an increase in sales.
• Customer retention – A loyal customer base buys more from your business than new customers. To expand your business, you must deploy strategies to retain them.
• Web traffic – Increased traffic leads to the increased conversion rate of new leads.
• Conversion rate optimization – Improving the conversion rate through CRO programs help in enhancing a business’s revenue

COMPANIES EXECUTING STRATEGIC MARKETING TRENDS THE RIGHT WAY

Successful businesses utilize multiple marketing platforms to create a solid strategic marketing plan that actually works. Here are some brands that got it right:

• Evernote, by leveraging customer stories as a content marketing strategy to engage with their audiences.
• Nike, by producing motivational videos as part of its strategic marketing plan.
• Ford, by creating opportunities for customer engagement through mobile marketing to increase their conversion rate.
• Pampers, by creating an emotional appeal for its consumer base through social media marketing.

EXPECTATIONS VS. REALITIES IN STRATEGIC MARKETING

Businesses need to realize that not every strategy works for everyone.

Most businesses expect to come up with innovative ideas quickly – they also believe that lead generation can happen automatically when they spread awareness about their products.

What they fail to realize is that no one can reap overnight results with an out-of-the-box idea or by generating vast amounts of content on all marketing platforms. It takes a strategy to ensure the success of a brand or business.

That’s why it is crucial to invest in customer-centric strategic marketing solutions to solve the problems of their businesses.

IN A NUTSHELL

Strategic marketing helps businesses achieve their target revenues by enhancing customer experiences and ensuring consistency in their campaigns.

This definitive guide offers you in-depth guidance on how to wield the power of strategic marketing and use it to reach new audiences and boost your brand’s image.

For more advice on creating an effective strategic marketing plan that gives you a competitive edge, download our free e-book,  Everything You Need to Know About Strategic Marketing. This free resource is full of expert, insider advice on everything you need to know about strategic marketing. Use our insight to plan for success and create a lasting impression on your audience. Download it now or reach out to C-leveled today!

Everything You Need To Know About Strategic Marketing

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