Marketing Blog

We work with a lot of different size teams for website design, branding, and other projects. The questions we have aren’t about the size of the team that is doing the project. The main questions after a budget is the timeline.

The timeline is a legitimate concern with any project Everyone wants everything done as quickly as possible. The client wants the project complete so they can take advantage of the benefits and the agency wants the project complete so they can bill.

Here is how you can lower the timeline of any project. Get ready. It is some deep stuff.

• Plan
• Anticipate
• Respond
• Decide

That’s it. The big secret.

PARD. You know, like an old-school spaghetti western. Short for “partner”. You get it. Let’s dig in a bit and explain how these can help you with your website design or a marketing project.

The first is Plan. You need to have a plan of what you want to happen. Start with your overall goal and then build milestones that will lead to the success of your plan. Under the milestone,s you need to have the task to meet those milestones to eventually reach your goals.

In order to make the work flow as smooth as possible, I suggest the use of a project management software. We use teamwork. It works for us but there are a great number of project software that you can use. The important part is that everyone needs to use it.

Instead of anyone emailing, texting a project management software keeps everything contained.

Anticipate: You have the plan. Your goals and milestones are all laid out. In order to make the process even more effective, you need to anticipate the next move. For instance, let’s say you are the client and have a task “C” that is next for your marketing company if you anticipate them completing that next step and do what you can to get ready for your next task there will be less downtime.

Respond: This is pretty simple. If someone on the team sends you something you need to respond to it as quickly as possible. I know that sometimes you have to reflect on a question but try to minimize the reflection time as much as possible. The beauty of creating with a CMS is that you can always makes changes after launch.

Decide: You have a decision to make whether you are on the client side or the marketing side. Try to make a quick decision.

If you can’t decide without input call the meeting quickly to decide. If you know that you will have to make decisions, ANTICIPATE them and have set meetings on all of the decision makers calendar. A twice weekly meeting can make the entire process go a lot quicker.

Hours and days can quickly go past if you don’t make a habit of responding promptly.

Want to learn more about creating an effective website? Check out our guide here.

We spoke to a company today about their website needs. It was going well, and eventually, we arrived at the part that everyone loves, budget.

Not many of us can talk to a person about money just a few minutes after we meet them without a bit of discomfort. Here is how the conversation went today.

Me: “So do you have a budget in mind for your website?”

Prospect: “Well, I have done some research, and I think the going rate is between one and two thousand dollars”

Me: Crickets…..

Nah just joking. This is what I said.
Me: Well you can certainly get a website built for that. However, a simple website for us is in the $3,000 range.

Prospect: Crickets….

There are many web design companies in Charlotte that would do our prospects site project for $1,000. So why aren’t we one of them?

For a few reasons, however, the largest one is that we aren’t a site design company. We are a marketing company.

Website design is just a tactic. And tactics are necessary.

But we can’t just “build a website” without doing a lot of other work to make sure it at least has a chance of success. I feel it would be a disservice not to include some of the things we do to win on price. And we don’t want just to churn and burn. We want to keep our clients and become their marketing partner.

I mean what distinguishes a marketing company from a website design company?

Strategy:

The main idea is integrating a series of tactics into a strategy that is defined by your goals.

I love that my major is in integrated marketing. Although when I went to college, social marketing was in its infancy. Even websites were kind of “cutting edge.” However, the principles remain the same.

You aren’t looking for the new hot ”tactic”; you want to have an entire integrated strategy. For instance, we use a lot of inbound marketing strategies that include a lot of tactics for our overall online strategy.

So what defines how you build your online marketing mix? And how does that help you choose between a site designer and a marketing company?

Marketing Mix:

Budget: Pretty easy for the first one, right? For instance, you have the cost of your website, plus yearly upkeep. The budget for your site is going to vary widely. For example from earlier, you can see that some people will build a website for one thousand dollars, but I have been on teams that suggested $90,000 plus sites.

If you just want a simple website with no optimization and you already know exactly what you want (photos and text extra)and just need someone to put it together, go with a designer.

If you want to incorporate more, online advertising, social advertising, blogging, content creation; ETC you need a marketer.

Once you figure out your investment, you can have a better idea of your mix.

End in Mind

Goals: While high-end website designers (for instance our 90k friends) did focus on our goals, many designers are just churning and turning. You want to define your goals. In fact, we have an entire download on how to make your goals (SMART).
For instance, is one of your goals to have people find your site who may not know about your particular company? You may need to include search engine optimization.

Understanding: We have a business background so we want to understand your company so we can market it better. What is your unique selling proposition? Why do your customers pick you over your competitors?

Extras, Done Right

SEO: Do you just want a site that looks nice when people type your name and location into Google or do you want a portal where people can find you online? This is going to change whether you hire a marketing firm vs. a website designer.

Imagery: Do you want video or photography? Many marketing agencies have experience in videography and photography and might even have someone on staff that can help.

This makes the creation easier (and cheaper). Also, the marketer already knows a lot about your company. They can ensure they get the photos they need and the video that fits with your business’s personality.

Copywriting: Do you think that you have polished copy that is ready to represent your business? If not you might want to either hire a copywriter or work with a marketing company. Many marketers have writing background and can help turn your text into just what your customers want to hear.

My point of most of this is that website designers are just what they say they are, designers. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. However, if you need a bit more, you might want to contact a marketing company.

Need a way to easily compare creative companies? Get our fee comparison tool here.

Recently we spoke to a company that was considering adding a marketing associate to their team. I am all in favor of hiring more marketing people, believe me.

However, in this case, this company, let’s call them “Company A,” they already had a full -time marketing associate and a marketing coordinator.

So I was a bit confused. I asked why they weren’t promoting their current marketing associate to a leadership role and then adding another associate.

They felt that their marketing associate was not ready to be promoted and they had enough work (maybe) for another person. I asked if they had considered outsourcing the work. They said they had never really thought about it.

I run into companies all the time that have strong ideas about what they outsource vs. what they keep in-house. I believe that you have to challenge your assumptions on occasion to grow. There are some things I don’t outsource and a some that I do. My theory is that if someone else can do it better (and maybe cheaper) and I can spend more time on what makes me money I outsource.

Here are the reasons I told, “Company A” they should definitely not outsource to a fractional marketing director. If they answered “yes” to any of them and they should hire internally.

• You already have a full-time marketing director
• You want to build your internal team of marketers for other reasons
• You feel the tasks can only be done internally

The answer to all of these was “No.”

Their concern was that if they hire internally, they get 40 hours a week vs. whatever they have to pay to outsource. That is fair, so I suggested we run some numbers.

The Numbers

The base salary for a marketing associate in Charlotte NC (the location of this company) is right at $50,000. Because of benefits, taxes, etc. it is more realistic to say that we need to add 1.25 to 1.4 of salary. That is before space for your employee, technology expenses; such as a laptop, phone allowance, all that fun stuff.

Maybe let’s say conservatively 1.4x etc. So with a marketing associate salary of 50K x 1.4, you are looking at a nice round $70K for your new associate.

Bear in mind this is ensuring that you find a great employee on the first run, recruiting is not cheap. 

Now let’s look at the other side. Let’s say that your hourly rate for a fractional marketing director is $95 an hour. Not the highest in Charlotte NC, but probably not the lowest either.

$70,000/95 is 736 hours. Your full-time employee would work 2,080 hours. Minus, of course, let’s say, three weeks of vacation and sick time. So really 1960 hours for your FTE.

Well, 1960 is a lot more hours than our 736 hours that we got for the same price for our fractional marketing director. In fact, it is 1,224 hours more.

That’s a pretty big difference.

My question is, do you think your employees are working 100% of the time that you are paying them? I have to admit even though I was a very dedicated employee I answered phone calls from my wife, online banking and even played some office fantasy football……and of course March Madness….

The only time that we bill is when we are performing work for our client. In fact, we go as far as to break it down to quarter hours. We even have timers that ensure that when we stop working, we stop billing.

So back to our theoretical FTE. Let’s say maybe you lose an hour a day from your full-time employees. So let’s take our 49 weeks of work minus one hour a day. We lose about 245 hours to bring us to 1,715.

How much of that time is tied up in non-productive work? I am not saying busy work, but just something that might not be the best use of their time Possibly random projects or tasks that don’t necessarily relate to marketing directly. Perhaps filling out expense reports or organizing a company outing. Or like me at one job, consulting with one of our divisions about the paint color in their lobby.

Maybe another 10 hours a week? So we are down to 1,225 total hours. And that is still 489 hours over our fractional marketing director at 736.

And that breaks down only 9.9 hours a week. So strictly by the math maybe it doesn’t make any sense. However there is one other consideration.

Value of a fractional marketing director

The main aspect I think a fractional marketing director brings to the table is that they have a bit more insight from the jump than a marketing associate. They bring more value.

I have been a marketing associate, coordinator and director. I believe that the experience adds value. For instance, you can’t compare the time your CFO works vs. the hours that a second-year accountant works.

I don’t know what “Company A” will decide, and frankly it is immaterial for this discussion. What is important is that you think about what marketing resources you do in-house and what you outsource.

And if it makes sense to hire a FTE where you could get more value from other sources.

If you want to talk about how a fractional marketing director might work for your company give us a shout at 366 marketing.

On-page SEO is one of the easiest parts of your SEO strategy to nail. However, because of the ease, it can be easy to ignore.

First of all, what is SEO? It stands for Search Engine Optimization. We, marketers, love our abbreviations. SEO is an important part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.

For instance, when you put a search term in Google the algorithm is deciding what you want based on the words that you’ve entered. If your page pops up first for a search, you can bet you nailed your on-page SEO.

Proper on-page SEO is valuable because it lets you effectively tell the search engines about your page. It also works to help draw people to your site.

Here is the first few things to focus on to have proper page specific SEO.
Your first job is to pick your key phrase. This is the key to all of your on-page SEO. For instance, we want a page to show up first for “SEO company Charlotte NC.”

We use Hubspot for our keyword planning, but if you want a free option, you can use Google Keyword tool. Now enter in your possible keywords and decide on the best one for you.

There will probably be variations that you might choose. For example instead of “SEO company Charlotte NC.” “SEO Marketing Charlotte, NC.”

How do you know which variation of your keyword to chose? Well, the easiest keywords to rank for first are called “long-tail keywords.” If you look at the key phrase, we picked “SEO company Charlotte NC.”

We are not trying to rank for “SEO.” Firstly, it would be exceedingly difficult. Secondly, most of our clients are going to be in the Charlotte area or at least in North and South Carolina.

A good long-tail keyword strategy is to take the key phrase you want to rank for “SEO company” in this case. And then add a geographic area Charlotte, NC.

You can rank keyword effectiveness by a few factors.

Monthly searches: This tells you how often someone uses a key phrase to search online. Don’t be frightened by a “low” number here (this typically is less than 10). Also, bear in mind that it is harder to rank for a higher searched term.

Difficulty: This is pretty easy to figure out. “Difficulty” is how tough Google thinks that it is to rank for this keyword.

For the first few times you work on a ranking campaign, I would suggest going for phrases with less than a 20 of difficulty for the first stab. Our phrase of “SEO company Charlotte NC” has a difficulty of 21 and a search of 170.

Not too bad if we can rank for it in the top 10 and preferably top 3. Preferably number one. The difference between the click a number one ranked site gets besides a number two is pretty dramatic. The first result gets about 33% of the traffic and the second gets about 18%. That is a huge drop-off.

Next step:

Test your key phrase: Put your key phrase in a search engine and see what comes up. Is it results that you would expect to see? Would your website work for this result? If not, you might want to rethink your key phrase or hone it a bit. If your site is very different from the other results, there is a chance Google could penalize you.

Interested in learning more about inbound marketing and SEO? Sign up for our blog and receive weekly tips about all things marketing. And you will get the continuation on this topic coming soon!

Most marketing videos have a pretty standard format. With more and more videos being produced and put online, how can you stand out?

The key is to have a video marketing premise that is unique.

We have mentioned before the last thing that we need is another staid commercial that introduces a company’s CEO. Not to say that you can’t introduce the CEO, but don’t have them in a chair in a boardroom staring at the camera.

Think of it this way. When there were only three channels in the 1950’s, anything produced that showed a modicum of talent was a hit. Now compare that to today. Some of the best shows are on AMC, HBO, and Netflix. There is a ton of competition. The way to survive is to have excellent programming. Similar to online video. Do you know that there are currently more than 400 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute? That is a ton of noise that you have to fight through. However, a good premise (and a few other things) can help you cut through and meet the goals of your video.

The first step with anything marketing is to set your goals. What do you want to accomplish? For instance, in a recent video, we wanted to introduce the team of a civil construction company in South Carolina. Our goals were to present them as the fun, hard-working people they are.

And of course, we didn’t want to do anything boring. So we knew that we wanted it to be fun.

One of the problems that we had was that they were busy with a bunch of different projects. That’s when we had our Eureka moment.

Let’s use the problem “the principles are so busy” and make it our premise for the movie. We set up the shoot as a Mission Impossible style. The title slide introduces our premise: Our mission is to get video footage….However, we have to make sure that we don’t interrupt the very busy crew… Let’s Go.

We filmed at a few different sites, and we used both a ground camera and a drone. We interspersed the footage of the video crew “searching” for the principals and incidentally showcased a lot of their work.

When the video crew finds our “targets” we swoop down with the drone to get shots, and we intersperse with the shots on the ground.

Oh and of course the music underlay was a driving beat that sounded exactly like a real action thriller would.

Another marketing video that we did for 366 Marketing also had a fun premise. It was that I was trying to prove to people that they needed to look at marketing from a different angle. Not to do the old marketing standbys and expect to make it work. To prove it I would live in my kid’s tree house, ignoring a better option, living in the real house.

We set it up as a British mockumentary. All of the family got into the idea and played parts. It was a lot of fun and got a ton of views, which was the goal. It was very much a “share our brand” video. We want to demonstrate that we can have fun and meet goals.

By the way, if you check out the image you can see that the post on Facebook had 829 views 191 likes and 91 shares.

That blows away our traditional post.

So what are the lessons to pull out of our video shoot?

• Set goals
• Have fun!
• Find a unique premise
• Look to feature movies or tv for inspiration
• Use what you have

I hope this article helps you find a premise for your video that cuts through the noise. If you need help with your video marketing in the Charlotte area, or anywhere in the US, please let us know. You can also get our free e-book, A Complete Guide to Video Marketing, here.

I was perusing my email the other day and noticed that there was an offer from Great Wolf Lodge. If you don’t know, Great Wolf is a chain of indoor water parks attached to a hotel. My family, especially the kids, love it.

We have spent the last few of my daughters birthdays there. And while it is not inexpensive, it is easier for sanity reasons to celebrate a birthday there instead of at the house with a screaming group of children. I prefer the screaming kids are not in the property where I live and work.

Anyway, back to the email. The email in big letters read “Limited Time: Book Now and Save!!”. You have probably gotten emails that are very similar to this from other companies. The kicker was in the next line Limited Availability!So even though we recently went to GW, I am now considering it.

So what were the goals of the marketer?

Number one was for me to see the email.
Number two was to get me to read the email.
Number three was for me to consider going.
Number four was to get me to book a stay.

They accomplished pretty much all of them with the idea of scarcity. I know what Great Wolf Lodge is. I know that my family enjoys it, so I am already sold on the notion. However, instead of just going a couple of times a year now, they have me thinking about increasing my spend by 50% WITH JUST ONE EMAIL!

How powerful is that?

You have probably heard of the idea of scarcity. We want what we can’t have or what only a few have access to.

Sometimes simply because it is a challenge.

One of our oldest blogs is entitled “The Velvet Rope,” it is basically about scarcity and combined with status. We want to be the ones in the VIP lounge, right? There are only a few seats there, and those people have “status”. We want to attain that for ourselves.

So how can you use the idea of scarcity in your business? Well if you sell a product or offer a service, you can do what G.W. did in this email. You can provide a discount tied to a time period. Or you can offer limited amounts of coupons for the deal.

Or offer both for an even more compelling offer.

Now let’s say you don’t necessarily want to give a discount. Perhaps you can offer a limited amount of seats at your next webinar. Or a limited time offer on a white paper that you plan to charge for in the future.

If you have a subscription base, you can offer a limited time for free, perhaps the first month.

The key is to build an offer that triggers FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out and scarcity and even status. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to book a trip to the water park.

Want more ideas on how to get more leads. Get our ebook on 30 Greatest Leads Tips, Trick and Ideas.