Let’s face it, the world of AI/answer engine search is still rapidly evolving, and fellow marketing and SEO experts and I will still need to keep an extremely close eye on it, and test various tactics related to organizations (we work with or for) appearing on AI engines. But, in the meantime, if I had to suggest four steps/tactics to take now while we continue to monitor how businesses and organizations are impacted by the growing use of AI search/answer engines like ChatGPT (and I do regularly suggest the following to clients), the steps and tactics to support your organization mentioned or being cited in ChatGPT and other AI engines, would include the below. As you’ll see, we’ve already shared and explained these tactics/steps in distinct blog posts dedicated specifically to the step/tactic.
I’ve attended a decent number of webinars about AI search and how to get your organization’s name or a link back to your website (citation) to be shared by an answer engine in response to a topic-relevant user’s prompt. To-date I’ve heard the following list of key tactics mentioned related to how to get your organization’s name or page served up by answer engines like ChatGPT:
What Types Of Organizations Benefit The Most From Appearing In Answer Engines/AI Search Engines?
For bigger brands who offer services and products throughout the whole U.S., or even the world, it makes great sense to want your organization’s name and links back to your website to appear in answer engine results related to relevant-topic searches. But for organizations who only offer services or products locally, i.e., in one city or town, in one state, or in one region (such as New England), there will likely be far less value to your organization to your organization from being found on answer engines than there would be for a national or international organization. Why? Because many individuals entering prompts into an answer engine just want their question answered. They aren’t looking to buy a product or pay for a service. And, the answer engines are more concerned about serving up content that easily/readily answers the question, regardless of the geography of the content producer or of the individual who is looking to get their question asked or answered. Unless, of course, the searcher/prompter includes their geography in the prompt, such as a prompt like “who’s the best digital marketing agency in Braintree MA.”
The Big Mistake That Organizations Who Need To Rank Locally Are Making Related To AI Search
Let’s face it, smaller, local organizations have far smaller budgets than a national brand like Progressive Insurance. They also have far smaller marketing teams. When they put the majority of their marketing dollars and energy into producing content that will be found in AI tools like Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT, they are missing out on other opportunities which might better help them be found locally, since, as we shared above, many individuals to whom their website content or name will be served up by answer engines won’t be in their geography.
What Are Some Marketing Tactics That Help Organizations Be Found Locally?
Google Search Ads – where you’ve selected a geography appropriate for your business
Display Advertising – Google, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), other social media advertising – again, where you’ve selected a geography appropriate for your business
Community Event Participation and Sponsorships – in communities your organization serves
Social Media Strategy and Posting – like with AI/answer engine search – you can reach local individuals and businesses who follow you this way, but there’s always some “waste,” where you are reaching individuals who can/will never become a client or customer because of geography or for other reasons
Optimizing Your Google My Business Profile — this is your best opportunity to be found locally and have your organization served up for “near me” terms
Writing a guest blog post for another local organization who serves your geography and/or requesting a backlink from their website to your website
Because we believe “traditional,” i.e., non-digital media and marketing is not dead, and often has a strong place in an integrated marketing plan, we’ve been recommending print advertising to clients, as appropriate, and helping to launch and monitor print campaigns.
What Is a Print Campaign?
Normally, when someone refers to a “print campaign,” they are referring to one or both of the following:
An advertisement that appears in a printed newspaper in one or more spots within an edition, and in one or more editions of the newspaper
An advertisement that appears in a printed magazine in one or more spots within an edition, and in one or more editions of the magazine
Keep in mind that often media/publications that offer print advertising will also share your ads in a digital version of the publication on their website, but that is not always the case. So, this blog post is focused on making sure hard copy/printed publication advertising is both effective and measurable.
How Do You Ensure A Print Campaign Is Effective?
Choose newspapers and magazines that your target audiences are likely to read
Include calls-to-action like “schedule a free consultation today.”
Don’t have too many competing messages or make the ad too cluttered
Use fonts appropriately — make sure there’s a hierarchy, so that the most important ad messages/ad content are in larger fonts
Provide several means for the ad viewer to get in touch with you, such as: a QR code that goes to the ad landing page (this is discussed below), the spelled-out URL of ad landing page like https://allintheresults/seospecial, a phone #, and if appropriate, an e-mail address. Never assume everyone wants to do business with you electronically or digitally. Always provide options for those who are less technologically savvy or who don’t like to use technology.
How Can You Track Print Campaign Results?
As mentioned above, ideally, if you are running a print campaign you would have a devoted landing page specific to the print ad in-question, and if the print ad is running in more than one vehicle, distinct landing pages for each of the vehicles the ad will run in. You can use the identical landing page for both a newspaper and a magazine you plan to run an ad in. Just create the website page under one of the URLs you plan to use in a specific publication, and then, copy the page and assign it to a distinct URL for each vehicle. Distinct page URLs will help you, the advertiser/marketer, to determine which ads are driving traffic to the website (just use Google Analytics to check on page URL views).
Whether they be phone, e-mail, or inquiry form submissions, in advance of the print campaign dropping, let appropriate internal staff know about the nature and timing of the campaign and ask them to record how inquirers learned about you. You can also add that question to your online inquiry form. Many marketers/advertisers include a drop-down menu (containing various marketing vehicles) on their inquiry form from which inquirers can choose “how they learned about you.”
Conclusions About Print Advertising
If you’re going to spend the time and $$ executing print ad campaigns, be sure that:
The ads themselves are effective and are geared toward generating leads, sales, and engagements for your organization as discussed above.
Ensure you put the right tracking mechanisms in place before you launch the print ad campaign, so you can evaluate the ROI of the campaign.
Need Help Creating, Executing, and Evaluating A Print Campaign?
We agree with the wisdom of many marketing experts when it comes to whether or not businesses and organizations should spend less money and time on marketing during uncertain economic times — times when their customers want or need to spend less. And, that wisdom is that, in most cases, spending less money and time on marketing is only going to worsen your organization’s product sales/engagements for services when times get hard financially.
We mentioned “in most cases,” because in the situation where your organization offers a very high-ticket item that would be considered a huge luxury to MOST potential buyers, it would seem wise to cut back your spending on marketing because of the unlikelihood of clients making a purchase until the economy feels less uncertain. Still, you definitely will want to maintain some kind of marketing presence, even if it’s just continuing to post to social media, so people don’t forget about your brand and your products and services, and keep them on their “for-when-the-economy-improves” wish list.
But, getting back to the “wisdom” outlined in the first paragraph of this post, let’s first set the stage before we do. A period of economic decline could mean your consumer clients have been laid off, or if they are business owners who purchase business (B2B) services and products from you, their business may be taking a financial hit. Or, it could simply mean your customers are afraid of what the economic future holds, and believe it’s important that they are careful about spending. All of the aforementioned means that target audiences are likely spending money most on services and products they really need vs. something that might feel like a luxury, feel unnecessary, and/or feel like it could wait.
So, How Should I Spend Money On Marketing When The Economy Is Bad?
Whether yours is the type of product or service that people find or on which they get educated thru push and/or pull marketing, it’s really important you continue to maintain a presence so potential clients can find you or learn about you.
In fact, instead of cutting back on marketing efforts, you may actually want and need to spend more than you had been spending to be found by and/or to educate the right people that your product or service exists. In fact, today (5/12/25), Our Principal shared the above information on LinkedIn “Not liking what I’m seeing on the #GoogleAds/ #SEM / #paidsearch front for some of my clients right now (last 6 weeks), but much of it is what it is. It appears these two factors are currently at play for many Google Ads advertisers: 1) fewer people searching on relevant terms (relevant product and service terms in relevant geographies) — likely due to all our #economicuncertainty and #economicvolatility and people’s fears about spending money now (whether they be consumer or businesses) and 2) new advertisers creating and running #searchcampaigns because their own business volume is off and they are testing/trying Google Ads as a way to circumvent the drop in business/leads/inquiries, etc.”
Regardless of whether your organization plans to continue to spend the same amount of money and time on marketing, or decides to spend more money or less money, you still want to spend your time, energy and money wisely. Regardless of the direction in which you plan to take your organizations marketing, we recommend you go thru the following data analysis exercise to ensure you’re making the right move/to inform your next move.
Step 1: Employ Google Analytics To See Which Marketing Activities Have Driven The Most Traffic to Your Website In The Last 6 Months
If you spent a lot of time on sending out e-newsletters/e-mail to grow your business and/or on a social media expert to post to social media on your organization’s behalf, and Google Analytics is not showing a lot of traffic coming to the website via those defined Google Analytics channels, then, when marketing money is tight, that’s a place to cut back and consider investing in other marketing activities that HAVE driven a lot of traffic. You get the picture.
Step 2: Employ Google Analytics Data Or Other Available Analytics Tools To See What Marketing Activities Are Converting
In addition to reviewing website traffic acquisition data, even more importantly, you’ll want to look at which marketing activities are “converting,” the best, i.e., causing site visitors to take a desired action on your website such as completing an inquiry form or using a phone # or e-mail address on your site to inquire or purchase something. Check out our previous blog post about conversion generation, plus, follow the steps below to assess whether or not various marketing activities are converting.
Use Events Information In Google Analytics To See What Marketing Channels Are Generating The Events That Are Most Valuable To You
Access the “Events” report in Google Analytics, then, add a dimension such as “first user Google Ads ad group name (if you want to get really granular and look at a specific marketing vehicle and drill down on it),” or more general ones like “first user campaign,” or “first user source/medium” to allow you to see all the broader categories of marketing vehicles that are generating conversions vs. getting as specific about certain ones, and the type of conversions those vehicles are generating.
See print screens below which show where and how to access such data in Google Analytics. In the case where you want to look at “first user source/medium” or “first user campaign” to get a big-picture vs. granular information about a specific form of marketing or advertising, like Google Ads, after selecting “Traffic Source,” select “Cross Channel” and, then, you can choose “first user source/medium” or “first user campaign” from Google Analytics’ list. (Important Note: keep in mind that you may be able to get such conversion data from another marketing analytics tool or platform, including advertising ones, such as CallRail or social media platforms.)
Once you’ve generated your list of events at the marketing vehicle level you want to look at, if you have a large number of events or conversions a website visitor can complete on your site, you may want to use the search tool, as shown below, to search on the conversions that are most important to you, such as phone calls. This will streamline your analysis and make it easier for you to assess conversion results.
In keeping with step 1 above where we suggested focusing your marketing time and energy, during difficult economic times, on those activities that are driving traffic to your website, related to step 2 and analyzing conversion results, you’ll want to focus your marketing efforts on activities that are generating your most important conversions like inquiries and actual sales.
It’s important that you complete both the above step 1 and step 2 analyses because, while a certain marketing activity may drive a lot of traffic to your website, if it’s not “converting,” you’ll likely want to spend more time and energy on the activities that are “converting.” Each organization and business is different, and particularly if your product or service has a long sales cycle, and therefore, people do a lot of research and thinking before they purchase it, creating awareness thru website traffic can still be beneficial. So, you really need to consider your organization’s particular situation when drawing a conclusion about your marketing dollars and time. But, ultimately, at a minimum, your marketing activities during uncertain economic should drive website traffic, and ideally, conversions as well.
Don’t Rule Out New Marketing Vehicles During Uncertain Economic Times
We’d be remiss if we didn’t share that, if the above analyses don’t indicate you’re seeing desirable website traffic and conversion results from your existing marketing activities to inform a marketing strategy for our current economic times, maybe it’s time you consider a pilot or test of one or several new marketing vehicles. There could be a vehicle out there that would be just what you need to drive website traffic or conversions during a challenging financial time. We’re more than happy to help you figure that piece out!
As we mentioned in our blog post about our digital marketing agency and SEO company celebrating our 11-year anniversary, recently we’ve been testing more print advertising and Google Display advertising for clients. Sometimes, your organization and/or your marketing consultant or agency either doesn’t have enough experience employing certain types of advertising or marketing, or they don’t have enough experience employing certain types of advertising or marketing related to your organization’s particular industry, challenges, and opportunities.
The above-mentioned scenario means the only way to know for sure whether or not a particular marketing vehicle or marketing activity might generate great awareness, leads, sales, or engagement for services for your organization is to test that vehicle — run a pilot campaign using that particular vehicle and see what results reveal.
Recently, we’ve been working with a client in the food space that offers a food-related service vs. offering a food product that you can buy at the grocery store. They were already running Google Search ads that were served up to individuals specifically looking for their particular service. We suggested they also:
employ Google Display advertising and have image/display ads served up to people reading about relevant topics as well as people to people who had researched relevant topics in the past and/or had bought products/services similar to theirs in the past.
Evaluating A New Marketing Activity: What Does A Conversion Cost You?
While both of the new campaigns had strong click-thru rates, and the Google Display ads had an extremely low cost-per-click, when we did a really deep dive to determine which, if either, of the two new campaigns were generating conversions, i.e., calls, submitted inquiry forms, etc., we determined that the Display ads were NOT generating conversions — ultimately, making the cost-per-conversion crazy high for the Display ads, even though they had a very favorable cost-per-click.
Are we glad we tested both of the new types of campaigns? Certainly. The client is still somewhat in start-up mode, and is still testing and trying a number of marketing vehicles and activities to determine what will work best for them as far as lead- and sales-generation goes. And, we wouldn’t have learned the Display ads wouldn’t be effective if we haven’t tried. We spent short money and only ran the campaign for about six weeks. Our money and time investment wasn’t huge, and we learned this type of ad doesn’t make sense from an ROI standpoint — too many people clicking on ads because of the “curiosity factor,” likely, because the ads were food-related and images included in them were enticing and inviting.
We’ll continue to run the other new Google campaign — the Search one — because it is generating conversions, and we’ll keep an eye on the cost-per-conversion to determine if we should continue to run it, but the ads have only been running for 2 months and we need more time to get a sense of the advertising ROI.
Need Help Testing A Particular Marketing Vehicle Or Activity?
As a Greater Boston digital marketing agency and SEO company, we’ve implemented and executed countless online and traditional marketing activities to drive traffic to our clients’ websites, particularly online advertising campaigns that include Google Ads search advertising. Since we’ve already outlined in a former blog post what makes for an effective landing page (and what a landing page is to begin with), we won’t repeat that information here. Instead, we want to focus on why what we consider to be a “self-serving” landing page can hurt your organization.
Why You Shouldn’t Make Your Website Landing Page All About You
As we’ve explained in a number of past blog posts, in the marketing and marketing-activity-results-tracking world, a “conversion,” is a desired/desirable action that a website visitor takes on your website. A website visitor conversion could be:
Signing up for your e-newsletter
Clicking on social media icons that link to your various social media profiles to visit them
Completing an inquiry or contact form
Clicking on a hyperlinked e-mail address to send you an e-mail
Clicking on a hyperlinked phone number to call you
Downloading a white paper or a pdf housed on your website
Purchasing a product, service, or solution, including tickets to an event
Providing an e-mail address, via a gatekeeper type system, in order to download a document housed on your site, or to complete some other activity
We think you get the picture!
A mistake we often see marketers/advertisers make, though, is focusing too hard/much on the actions that THEY want visitors to take on their website, i.e., the actions THEY consider desirable vs. focusing on the actions that visitors may want to take and the tasks they hope and want to complete when they visit a website that offers the products, services, and solutions you do.
What The “Bounce Rate” Can Tell You About Your Landing Page
GA4 Google Analytics allows organizations to view the “engagement rate” for all your website pages and posts, including your landing pages (even if those are hidden from the navigation that the general public sees, and are only used in conjunction with specific marketing activities/campaigns). The inverse of a website page’s engagement rate is known as the “bounce rate,” and that can be calculated by subtracting the engagement rate from 100% (if a page’s engagement rate is 60%, then the bounce rate is 40%).
If a large percentage of visitors “bounce” from a website page or post, it means many prospective customers or customers left your website from that particular page or post without interacting in any way with the page or post (e.g., scrolling down on it, clicking on links/calls-to-actions/call-out buttons contained on it to visit other pages of the site, starting or completing a form contained on the page or post, etc.). The higher the bounce rate is, the less likely the page satisfies the needs of various visitors to complete desired tasks/take beneficial actions on your site — tasks and actions that are of importance to THEM vs. YOU.
How To Lower Your Landing Page Bounce Rate
Granted there will likely be some overlap between the actions A VISITOR might hope and want to take on your site and the ones YOU hope and want them to take on your site, but you and/or your team should go thru the following exercise to make sure your visitors’ needs are met more often than your own, and that they are a priority.
Make a grid, such as the one shown below, that lists all the tasks that you want visitors to complete on your site, as well as the tasks you believe visitors want to complete on your site. Really think hard and try to walk in target audiences’ shoes! Keep in mind that many individuals already receive e-mails from countless organizations on a daily basis, and many are reluctant to have their name added to another e-mail list. They know what will likely follow is a stream of e-mails to sell them the product, service, or solution they were investigating on your website, or ones asking for a donation, etc. Will you cause them to “bounce,” and lose them altogether as a potential customer because you kept certain content “gated,” or your marketing activity took them to a landing page that only allowed them to visit that particular page of your website vs. quickly/easily visit other pages of your site?
Review the grid you created and highlight those activities that you believe would be considered desirable/beneficial to both parties, i.e., your organization AND website visitors. Functionality should then be created/installed and included on your landing page to allow for completion of those tasks.
Then, review the activities which you believe are more valued by visitors (less preferable to your organization), and consider for which of those actions you’d be willing to provide functionality on your site for visitors to complete them. A great example, is requiring individuals to reach out to schedule an appointment to get pricing information. Even if your pricing is customer-specific/customized, many prospective clients may be reluctant to reach out, particularly if they aren’t in a financial position to invest in your product or service immediately. Think about what/how much downfall there would be to providing visitor functionality to get an estimate/access pricing information, and whether you’d be better off keeping visitors happy and on your website longer, or better off letting them bounce. Only you will know the answer to the aforementioned and the implications of trade-offs.
Ultimately, the more the scale swings in the favor of your website visitor vs. your organization when it comes to desirable action-taking, the more your organization will likely be to succeed at providing a great user experience, ranking better in search engines, and ultimately driving sales from satisfied visitors who were able to obtain the information, and complete the tasks they wanted, without being on the receiving end of what might be perceived as too “hard of a sell” by your organization or a too “self-serving” website.
Get Complimentary Advice On Landing Pages From Online Advertising Experts
As we’ve shared in other blog posts, we don’t love the use of the phrase “traditional marketing” to refer to activities that marketing teams at organizations, and advertising agencies, employed prior to the arrival of the internet and the digital marketing tactics made possible by it, but it’s become a tradition now to use the word “traditional,” and it’s something we don’t see changing. As we just alluded to, digital marketing activities are those that require the internet for execution and/or present information in a digital fashion or on some form of digital media.
Per our blog post heading, the aim of this discussion is to provide some insight on the difference between traditional and digital marketing and when to use each form. Most organizations will benefit from employing a combination of traditional and digital marketing for the reasons outlined below.
What Is Digital Marketing?
As we expressed above, digital marketing activities are those that require the internet or other digital technology/platforms for execution. Unlike traditional marketing opportunities that are all about putting the idea of your products, services, and solutions in the heads of individuals who might be a good fit for them, many digital marketing activities, such as organic search/SEO, paid search advertising, and social media posting are focused on getting information in front of individuals who are actively searching for your particular organization and/or the products, services and solutions you provide. Digital marketing activities include:
E-mail marketing – sending an e-mail/e-blast to existing clients, or to prospective customers who meet your target-audience criteria, e.g., meet certain age, geography, income, gender, job title, industry, or other demographics.
Display advertising/social media advertising – this includes running paid ads that are served up by a social media platform, such as Instagram or Facebook (you can buy ads on the two aforementioned platforms together) to people meeting the targeting requirements you set, such as those outlined above for e-mail marketing; plus, Google Ads offers display (image) advertising to allow you to reach individuals whose behaviors, interests, and demographics make them a good fit for your products and services.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – employing free/unpaid/organic tactics such as optimizing behind-the-scenes meta/SEO post and page title tags to ensure your website and Google My Business Profile rank as well as possible in Google and other search-engine results for relevant searches conducted by your target audiences.
Paid search advertising – think Google Ads or Bing Ads – these are ads that are served up a the top of search results for search terms used by target audiences that are relevant to the products, services, and solutions an organization offers. This former blog post addresses when it makes senses to employ paid search/paid SEO tactics.
Banner advertising – this is advertising that is bought from an external website that serves the same target audience your organization wants to reach.
Other – the above list is not exhaustive, but highlights the most common forms of digital marketing. Other examples of digital marketing include, but are not limited to, digital billboards or transit posters, and ads that run on a TV-type monitor at transit stations, such as subway stations.
Broadcast Advertising – radio and TV (network and cable — of course now, you can also run advertising on streaming channels and stations)
Print Advertising – magazine, newspapers, and other print publications
Direct Mail – a postcard or letter is mailed to a purchased or existing list of current or prospective clients
When the list is purchased, the names and addresses you obtain would meet certain criteria that you specify, like geography, age, gender, income, job title, industry, etc.
Outdoors Advertising – billboards (static poster, and now digital options as well)
Transit Advertising – posters and signage (static, and now digital options as well) that appear inside a bus, train, or subway car, or on train, bus, or subway platforms. You can also “wrap” a bus or train, or a bus stop kiosk, with your branding.
Mall or movie theater advertising – posters and signage (static, and now digital options as well) that are placed throughout mall corridors or advertising that appears at the beginning of a movie while one is waiting for a movie to start.
Event Attendance/Tabling – the aforementioned could refer to having a table at a community or some other event where prospective customers can walk up to your table to obtain information about your organization and your products and services.
Tradeshow Attendance/Booth – the aforementioned is all about setting up a booth at a trade show which is expected to draw your target audience, and sharing information about your products and services with booth visitors.
PR/Publicity – distributing press releases to gain media coverage of an announcement made by your organization, or pitching your story to media/reporters who serve your target audience in hopes the media/reporter will “cover” your story.
Other – the above list is not exhaustive, but highlights the most common forms of traditional marketing. Other examples of traditional marketing include but are not limited to distribution of branded, promotional items, and lobby merchandising (if your organization has physical locations that customers can visit).
Why Most Organizations Should Employ Both Traditional and Digital Marketing Tactics
As we’ve discussed with many of our clients, some target audience members may not be “online” regularly. Perhaps, their busy personal and work lives just don’t allow for them to be regularly viewing social media posts and profiles, and/or conducting search-engine searches. Or, they may just not like being online.
While, individuals who visit your social media profiles and/or land on your website because they conducted an appropriate search-engine search might be warmer/hotter leads — therefore, they may be more poised to buy your products, or engage you for your services/solutions in the near future — some other target audience members may need some prodding or reminders (delivered to them via traditional media) about your products, services, and solutions.
Sometimes, there’s just not enough people searching regularly related to the products, services, and solutions that your organization offers. Target audiences just don’t know you and/or your products and services exist. All the more reason to employ some traditional marketing tactics.
Free Marketing Brainstorm With Marketing Experts
Our Boston marketing agency has experience related to executing the majority of the digital marketing and traditional marketing tactics above. Unsure which tactics to execute when, or need more detail on what’s involved in executing them, and/or more information on production and media-buy costs?
Regardless of whether your organization is for-profit or non-profit, because it’s highly likely you want target audiences to learn about your mission, products, services, and solutions, and you want to be able track which marketing and communications activities are creating awareness and sales/engagement, you’ll stand to benefit greatly from setting up and using the following four types of free Google accounts:
Google Search Console – this tool serves a couple of purposes. It allows you to see for which search terms Google is most frequently serving up your website. And, then, for which search terms for which Google serves up a listing (which includes a link to your website) are searchers then clicking on the link to visit your site. This free Google tool also lets you see, on average, where in Google Search results listings, a listing with a link to your site appears, and the % of people who click on a listing link when it is served up to them. You can also use your Google Search Console account to submit revised or new blog posts or website pages for indexing/crawling, so that you don’t have to wait for Google to find this new and revised content, and therefore, wait for Google to start serving it up in search results for relevant searches.
Google Tag Manager – this tool allows you to set up tags that track various actions that a website visitor can take on your website. These tags basically “fire” and provide data to and in Google Analytics when visitors take actions like completing and submitting an inquiry form on your website, clicking on a hyperlinked e-mail address or phone number, scheduling an appointment, or purchasing something. Such desired actions by visitors are known as “conversions.” Without the use of a conversion-tracking tool like Google Tag Manager, you’re never going to know what marketing activities are causing website visitors to “convert,” and as a recent article about analyzing digital advertising results from Search Engine Land explains, that’s so important to understanding the effectiveness of various marketing activities and where to spend your marketing time and dollars.
Regardless of the size of your organization, it can be confusing to figure out what type of marketing agency or marketing consultant to hire to help you create awareness, and ultimately cause sales of your products, services, and solutions. The ability to market digitally/electronically — that came with wide-spread adoption of the internet — brought with it the following changes when it came to organizations engaging outside help for their marketing (outsourcing their marketing), whether it be for one-off/one-time work or ongoing work.
How Digital Marketing Leveled The Playing Field For Both Advertisers and Ad Agencies
Organizations who couldn’t afford the high costs associated with producing TV, radio, transit, or outdoors (billboards or other) advertising, found new, more affordable marketing activities were now available to them in the form of social media posting and advertising, tactics that support websites being found on Google and other search engines for desirable search phrases (organic search tactics/SEO tactics), paid search engine ads/marketing (SEM), e-blast and e-mail marketing, and more.
Since many organizations looking for marketing help no longer required the infrastructure and diverse skillsets associated with marketing tactics that involved large production activities and costs, some realized they no longer needed to hire a full-service large advertising agency — think the type of agency featured in the acclaimed TV series, “Mad Men,” or on “BeWitched,” as smaller marketing shops, like ours, could meet their digital marketing needs and/or traditional marketing needs related to activities that don’t require a lot of production, such as Public Relations (PR), or print advertising.
Getting back to whom your organization should consider hiring for ongoing marketing services or one-time/one-off marketing project work/help, here’s one Boston digital marketing agency’s, Boston SEO company’s, and Boston marketing consultant’s thoughts — yeah, we consider ourselves to be all of the aforementioned, and for clients who engage us for non-PR work, we can also be engaged for help with PR since our Principal has a great deal of PR experience.
How To Figure Out What Type Of Marketing Firm To Hire And Questions To Ask
Branding and Design Firm. A firm that refers to themselves as a branding/brand and design firm primarily focuses on helping you figure out the look and feel of your brand, including the logo, colors, and graphic elements that will be associated with your brand. They usually offer website design services, but not always. And, some do offer other digital marketing or traditional marketing services thru collaborations or partnerships with digital marketing agencies, advertising agencies, or marketing consultants, or marketing freelancers. So, if you know you will need particular digital and/or traditional marketing services after working with the branding firm to develop or execute a new brand identify for you, ask in advance if they offer those services, so you will know whether you will have the burden of hunting around after for someone to help with traditional and digital marketing services — particularly to drive traffic to any new site you engage them to design for you.
Digital Marketing Agency. Digital marketing agencies tend to offer both higher-level strategic planning services, as well as hands-on/execution services, related to any marketing tactic that is digital or electronic related, including: e-blast/e-mail strategy and execution services, social media strategy and voice (actually writing and scheduling of social media posts), online advertising (social media/display advertising, Google Ads or other search engine advertising), blog strategy and voice work (actually writing and posting of blogs to your website), and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Most will offer content marketing services as well to help you figure out what content your target audiences are most interested in, and an editorial calendar for serving up such content on your website. Website content writing services likely will be available as well.
Marketing Consultant. In the almost nine years since we launched Results C & R, we’ve met a large number of marketing consultants. The degree to which they offer hands-on/execution work vs. developing high-level strategic plans tends to really vary. Some offer a number of hands-on services, in addition to helping you develop a strategic marketing plan, while others don’t do the actual marketing tactic execution work. If your organization has a number of internal marketing people who can actually oversee or execute the marketing plan developed by a consultant, a marketing consultant may be just what and all that you need.
Public Relations Firm/PR Firm. The focus of public relations firms is to get your organization unpaid-for-advertising/marketing. By helping your organization develop a strategy for causing various reporters and media to cover your story, they help your organization get mentions and attention without the cost of an expensive advertising campaign. PR firms also tend to offer event planning services since an event may be the perfect way to create awareness of your organization and/or create good will among your target audiences. Keep in mind that if you only need help with putting on an event vs. getting regular/ongoing press coverage, you could consider hiring an event planning firm. Many event planning firms also have experience getting media/reporter coverage for an event as well.
In general, the biggest overlap between a digital marketing agency and a Public Relations firm is that they both tend to offer social media services, since social media posts — particularly organic vs. paid/boosted social media posts — can help to generate good will and create awareness of an organization’s products, services, and solutions.
Advertising Agency. Nowadays, when people think of, or decide to hire an advertising agency vs. a digital marketing agency, it’s related to the fact that advertising agencies can pull in the right team members or hire the right contractors for a marketing campaign that requires heavy-duty production. As we mentioned above, scripting and executing a radio, TV (network or cable) or streaming advertisement requires the collaboration of a bunch of individuals with diverse skillsets, the renting of studios and/or locations in which to film, the hiring of “talent” for the broadcast spot — whether it be aired on the radio or TV. Activities like the aforementioned are often the reason why, in our current day and age, an organization would look to hire an advertising agency vs. a digital marketing agency. Although, most advertising agencies offer digital marketing services, in addition to traditional ones.
Web Design/Web Development Firm. Web design and web development firms are exactly what their name indicates — firms who help design and develop websites for clients. Many also offer logo design or other graphic design services because of their web designers’ ability to successfully complete such work. All web design/web development firms DO NOT offer SEO services nor do they always understand SEO, so if you expect or want to receive SEO services as part of your new website launch, be sure to ask any firms you are considering to design and develop your site, what knowledge they have of SEO and/or who they have on their team that has an SEO background. Otherwise, as we explain in this blog post, you’ll end up with a website that is not easily found via search engine searches.
Unfortunately, we regularly interact with prospective clients who had someone develop a beautiful, effective site for them, but the site is not being visited/found by target audiences because SEO tactics weren’t put in place by the web design/web development firm as part of the site development and design engagement.
What Should I Expect To Pay A Marketing Agency Or A Marketing Consultant?
Based, again, on our 9 years of marketing agency and marketing consulting experience at the time of writing this post, we’ve found that, in general, the bigger the agency/marketing shop, the more expensive their hourly rate and marketing project fees are. Why? It mainly comes down to overhead and the costs of maintaining and marketing a larger organization, offering a large number of employees benefits, etc.
If your organization doesn’t expect to need the type of traditional advertising production work outlined above under the “Advertising Agency” section, you’ll very likely fare better financially hiring a smaller digital marketing agency or PR firm or a marketing consultant. Plus, you may end up getting more personal attention than you would with a larger agency. And, most smaller shops can pull in a collaborator, freelancer, or other agency or consultant, as needed.
We’re A Boston Digital Marketing Agency, Boston SEO Company, Boston Marketing Consultant, and Boston PR Firm All In One!
Due to our Principal’s more than 30 years of corporate marketing and consulting experience, we offer all the services called out in the heading directly above! We regularly meet with both start-ups and long-standing organizations — both for-profit and non-profit — for complimentary discussions about their marketing challenges and opportunities, so feel free to use our calendar app to schedule a FREE initial consultation https://calendly.com/gail-moraski.
When I first started drafting this blog post, I thought I’d be mainly talking about traditional marketing and what I miss about it. But, as the post evolved, I realized the traditional marketing tactics/activities were just a piece of something bigger that I miss, sometimes, and that is being aware of, involved with, and/or or having oversight for ALL the marketing activities that a particular brand/organization executes. Often as a consultant, my team and I are working with organizations who have their own internal marketing team, and/or who work with a number of different outsourced marketing vendors or agencies. This means, while we are responsible for one or several pieces of the overall marketing strategic plan – usually digital pieces, we aren’t always aware of, kept informed of, or responsible for other pieces. As you would expect, each and every marketing message or tactic that is put out there in the universe by an organization has an impact – both negative and positive – on the effectiveness of the other marketing tactics.
Regardless of the above, because we strive each and every day to support our clients’ success, and to serve and be viewed as a member of their team, we often make recommendations and suggestions related to overall marketing strategy and various marketing tactics that others are overseeing. Sometimes, we suggest adding a new marketing tactic to the mix, even if we won’t be the ones making it happen, and sometimes, our suggestions are about shaking up how an existing marketing tactic is handled or executed.
Why Every Organization Needs Someone Monitoring and Aware Of All Marketing Tactics
Ultimately, each and every organization needs to have one person – whether it be an outsourced marketing consultant or agency or an in-house marketing director, chief marketing officer, or the business owner themselves – who:
Is aware of and tracking and analyzing the results of each and every marketing activity to ensure that marketing dollars and time are spent on those activities that lead to the greatest awareness, and ultimately highest possible number of conversions, such as sales (product purchase or engagement for services), and inquiries.
Ensures that marketing creative (messaging and design) is consistent across all marketing activities.
What Is Integrated Marketing and Why Is It So Important?
As hinted at above, integrated marketing means that all the marketing tactics you use to promote your organization and create awareness of it are cohesive, and therefore “mirror” each other. All tactics included in a strategic integrated marketing plan/campaign to promote a particular product or service should:
Contain and repeat the same key messages of the campaign
Reflect the same product or service promise and your competitive differentiators
Have a similar appearance as far as logos, design, color, and graphics go
For centuries, those who have succeeded at growing an organization have known that you have to hit the audiences whom you think will be the best target/users of your product or service numerous times to create both awareness and sales. Target audiences need to hear and see the same message multiple times for it to both stick and resonate. If you shake things up too much across your various marketing tactics and vehicles, you’ll miss out on the opportunity to expose your targeted customers to the same messaging and look and feel and you’ll also CONFUSE them.
Help For Creating, Executing, and Implementing An Integrated Marketing Plan and Campaign
At Results Communications & Research, we bring more than 30 years of experience of implementing effective, integrated marketing campaigns, including ones that contain both digital and more traditional tactics such as outdoors (billboards), print, transit, movie, mall and broadcast (radio, TV) advertising. We can help you develop a strategic integrated marketing plan that outlines the various marketing vehicles and tactics we believe you should employ in a particular campaign, based on what we learn of your marketing objectives, challenges, and target audiences. Then, we’ll work with you to ensure proper tracking is in place to track the effectiveness of each of the various marketing tactics to help inform what tactics to employ in future campaigns or reallocate existing campaign $$ and/or pivot mid-campaign, based on what results are showing. So, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We love developing, executing, and analyzing the results of integrated marketing campaigns!
