After reading this Linked post by Eli Schwartz, a very well-respected and well-known SEO expert, about how to appear in Google AI Overviews, the above slogan came to me. I wanted to give credit where credit is due and share how I was inspired. It all makes great sense and is in keeping with what we, as a fellow SEO expert, has been sharing in recent months, i.e., if you want a search engine to declare you as the best, or indicate less directly that your organization is the best or one of the best in its field and geography by mentioning your organization’s name or sharing a link back to your site (known as a citation), then your organization has to earn that “best” title.
Why I’ve Got The Experience and Knowledge To Speak To What Makes An Organization An Outstanding One
Having worked since I was a teenager and until my mid-50’s for employers (and served in a number of manager and director roles), and now, for the past 12 years run a marketing agency that has successfully served more than 150 clients and received public-facing accolades (reviews), compliments and appreciation from clients, I believe I’ve got the background and experience to speak to what makes an organization stand out from competitors, and therefore, be considered “the best.” You can learn more about my corporate marketing and marketing agency background on my Our Principal and History website page.
As a life-long marketer I feel so strongly about how many of the attributes below influence an organization’s success that I’ve written about many of the below in past blog posts!
What Does It Take For Your Organization To Be The “Best” In Your Industry and Geography?
Treat your employees well.
Offer them opportunities to learn and take on new and larger roles.
Take the time to listen to and consider employee’s ideas to improve work productivity or process, or the products and services you offer.
Offer tangible and intangible benefits that they value and/or need.
Celebrate personal and organizational milestones and successes.
Offer financial incentives where, if the company does well, the employee does well.
Deliver exceptional, world-class service each and every day at every point of contact (EPOC) with customers. As a marketing professional with more than 35 years of experience I know first-hand how important good customer service is to success. Not only when it comes to assisting customers/clients of your organizations, but handling inquiries and leads that come into your organization respectfully, effectively, and on a timely basis!
Offer solid, reliable products and services that meet client expectations and needs at a reasonable, fair price.
Always keep an eye on business and daily life changes and how they impact your clients — whether they be businesses or consumers — and how you can make their lives easier or respond to a challenge they are facing.
Always be evolving and considering what new innovative product or service you can offer.
Educate. Educate. Educate — make sure staff and leaders have time to stay in the know on industry changes and national, regional, and local happenings and anything else that could negatively or positively impact how they and your business does their work or the products and services you offer. Ensure they can learn from both internal and external experts. To support all of this, designate times of the week as meeting-free and learning time!
Encourage out-of-the box thinking by all staff and leaders!
Show both your clients and customers appreciation regularly. A small “thank you” goes a long way!
I’ll likely add new features and characteristics to the above list as they strike me, but I think any organization that achieves the aforementioned will succeed at being top in their field, in their particular geography!
So many fellow marketing professionals are talking about the value of storytelling these days, and that got me thinking about what story of my own vs. my clients’ that I could tell that might help or inspire others.
In recent months, I’ve taken a step backward on both the professional and personal fronts with the ultimate goal of improving my work-related productivity and my health.
What Tool Can Help Improve A Marketing Professional’s Productivity?
Over the last two or so months, I’ve spent a very large number of hours creating monthly marketing dashboards/reports for each of my ongoing/monthly clients in a new tool. Well, new to me, not new to marketing agencies and consultants. It was a huge investment of time, and there was a big learning curve — and I used ChatGPT along the way when I needed help with challenges I ran into along the way. But, I’m pleased and proud to share that I successfully migrated the aforementioned clients away from manually populated KPI Google sheets and Word docs to monthly reports on Google Looker Studio.
Accomplishing the above meant I had to allow myself to live with the discomfort that other client and administrative work was piling up. But, I was eventually able to catch back up on the piled-up work and sacrificing the short-term for the long-term has already allowed me and my clients to reap the following benefits of my taking time to learn and implement reports on Google Looker Studio:
I can focus less on manually entering data in KPI sheets and Word documents and focus more on the data itself and what the auto-populated reports are showing/indicating
I have more free work/personal time and work/life balance, which means I’m less stressed and my brain is fresher and has more energy for being creative and strategic
I can present results visually vs. just in table or paragraph format, so that clients can easily understand their monthly results and metrics
The sum of all of it is this. I have struggled with severe digestive issues for 12 years now, and there have been days and times — a number of them — where I literally cried about my situation and felt I just couldn’t handle/deal with it anymore. But I am a fighter, and I’ve always picked myself back up somehow, while trying to lift up others too.
I have seen a large number of functional/natural nutritionists and consultants, and gastroenterologists over the years, and tried countless recommendations to try to improve or eliminate my severe digestive symptoms.
For the second time over the last 12 years, I recently underwent a SIBO breath test, which required a limited diet leading up to, and 12 hours of fasting before, the test. The last time I had one, nothing helpful/conclusive came out of it, but this time my results indicated I have both what’s known as SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and IMO (intestinal methanogen overgrowth).
The above can be treated, and possibly cured, by one or several courses of one or two antibiotics or thru many-months-long herbal supplement treatment. Because I believe the straw that broke the camel’s back related to my digestive issues was being put on a very powerful antibiotic after a surgical wound got infected in 2014 — killing off good bacteria in the gut and allowing bad bacteria to multiply — I decided to go the natural route in treating my SIBO and IMO. I’ve read that, often, the antibiotic approach is not effective and the bad bacteria and archaea return. But, the natural route has it’s challenges too, as I’m discovering already, including:
the supplements are expensive, only certain ones really work, and many, if not all, need to be taken in high dosages to be effective
you need 3 types of supplements or supplement groups: 1) one(s) that reduce inflammation, 2) one(s) that kill off the “bad guys” causing “die-off,” and 3) one(s) that improve motility and gut transit time
side effects of some of these supplements include nausea, burning, stomach pain/cramps, dizziness, and other unpleasant symptoms (including some of the symptoms I already had from having SIBO/IMO)
It’s the last bullet item directly above that really hammers home why I included the work I’m doing to address my health challenge in this blog post about “taking a step backward, to take a step forward.” Because, ultimately, I may need to feel worse on the digestive front for a few weeks (I just started my supplements on 3/27/26) in order to ultimately feel better!
We hope that whether it pertains to your professional life or your personal life, you’ll be both willing and able to take some steps back that will ultimately move you forward! And, we’d love to hear all about the steps back and the steps forward!
Speaking Of Steps, Be Sure To Check Out Our Blog Posts About Walking!
As we explained in this previous blog post about the mistake most people make when they manually conduct an SEO audit, your organization is better off hiring an SEO expert to conduct an audit, so that the results you get are unbiased. For most businesses/organizations, i.e., ones that have both a website and a Google My Business Profile, an SEO audit will provide information related to both your website and your Google My Business Profile, since Google may serve up either in search results (and as of the date of this post, the traditional Google search engine is still the one most used by search tool users, followed by YouTube, and ChatGPT.)
Peeling Back An Onion Skin To See What Lies Beneath
Listed below is the information you can glean from having an SEO company or digital marketing agency, like ours, conduct an SEO audit for you:
what external websites and certain other digital properties (not owned by your organization/business) have links on them to your website, and therefore, are providing “referral” traffic via backlinks to your site — these may include other websites or discussion-forums like Reddit
does your website and/or Google My Business Profile rank differently in Google in a particular geography for a particular keyword (search term), based on the device used by the searcher, i.e., mobile phone vs. desktop/laptop
what keywords your website and Google My Business Profile are ranking best for on Google and in what geographies
whether your Google My Business Profile or your website is being served up higher in search results in certain geographies for certain search terms — this will help you determine whether or not you should be putting more energy into getting your Google My Business Profile ranking better (you always want that to be served up for “near me” searches) and/or your website ranking better (ideally this would rank better for non-near-me terms)
missed SEO opportunities — these include best practices which haven’t been implemented by your organization, such as writing and entering SEO page title and meta description tags on your website platform/CMS for every page and post on your website, and writing an entering image alt-tags
mistakes/issues/challenges with your website that are likely causing it to be served up less than it could/should be in relevant geographies for relevant search terms, such as slow site load speed or broken links on your website
what are the top 10-20 search keywords that Google is serving your website up most for
how many individuals are clicking on a link in your Google My Business Profile to arrive at your website
what are the most-viewed pages of your website
what pages of your website are being served up the highest in search results by Google
what marketing activities/vehicles are driving website traffic and what percentage of your overall website traffic is coming from AI or traditional search tools
what geographies/locations are your website visitors coming from
what devices do people use most to access your website, i.e., laptop/desktop vs. mobile
If my memory serves me correctly, I’ve written about the second “new beginning” that September offers each of us each year on my own blog or that of a client. I love the fact that September provides a second start to any year and a chance to begin any kind of project you’d been hoping to get to earlier in the year, and to revisit goals — whether they be personal- or work-related ones. There’s still four full months to accomplish something you’ve always wanted to, or at least make a lot of headway toward achieving that accomplishment, so let’s agree to not start thinking another year is already behind us!
Since I own and run a digital marketing agency, the fall and early winter work goals I’m going to discuss below are marketing-related, but obviously, your work goals could pertain to any area of your organization, such as employee satisfaction and retention, new technology implementation, or expense reduction.
Marketing Goals For Q3 & Q4
Here’s some marketing goals you might want to complete in September, October, November, or December:
Dip your toes in the Reddit (or other discussion-forum waters) since search engines are serving up discussion threads more & more because of their Q & A format. If you’re not ready to start a discussion, weigh in on appropriate discussions without being too self-promoting!
Start collecting content for an Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), or an enhanced FAQ on your website if you already have an FAQ, by creating a shared document that your team can add to as they continue to be asked the same questions from customers or prospective customers.
Once you have sufficient content, create an FAQ page on your site and load the FAQ content.
Run, or hire a marketing consultant to run, website diagnostics reports, so you can identify and address both website features and factors that might be causing search engines to not want to serve up your website in target-audience’s search results, as well as missed SEO opportunities.
Set up the Google accounts discussed in our previous blog post, If you don’t already have them, to position yourself both to be able to better understand what marketing activities are and aren’t working for you, but also to support your target audiences finding you when they complete a “near me”/local Google search.
Since everything one does in life ends up positively or negatively impacting their mental and/or physical health, every personal goal ultimately is a wellbeing/wellness/health goal. For example, if you enroll in a class this fall or winter, it may cause you to gain knowledge to support a professional goal, but it also will likely make you feel more optimistic and improve your emotional wellbeing.
As I shared in this blog post about why I’ll always feel like a cancer (sarcoma) patient, I deal with chronic digestive issues on a daily basis because of past cancer treatment. I also have had chronic neck muscle mobility and pain issues since my late 20’s. Unfortunately, the neck trouble all started when I was working as a research associate at Fidelity Investments and going to graduate school at Boston University at night. I used to regularly carry a heavy bookbag of notebooks and books on the T (subway) to and from the University for many years. Post graduation, and ever since then, I’ve suffered from neck troubles.
I’ve already taken steps this summer, and plan to continue them thru the rest of Q3 & Q4, to improve the above two situations by:
Working with a nutritionist who has personal experience with the digestive issues from which I suffer. By working with me to introduce new foods and to keep a food diary, we’ve been able to identify which foods do and don’t improve my unpleasant digestive symptoms, and I’m feeling so much better. Hooray! Shout out to Dear Nutrition!
Starting PT for my neck and being very focused on my posture as I work at my computer — keeping an eye out for “forward head” and taking computer breaks once in a while to loosen myself up. I’ve got my trusted companion, Truly (see image below), who sits on my desk, to remind me to sit properly while typing or reading on my computer! Thank you, Truly! And, thanks to the physical therapists at South Shore Health Physical Therapy for your great advice & support!
Degas Ballerina Statue That Provides Reminder About The Need to Maintain Good Posture While On Computer!
In addition to the above, I’m using the hashtag #SeptemberStrong with friends and family to encourage them to stay well and for us to cheer each other on, and I’m identifying situations and people that are unnecessarily and excessively anxiety-producing (in some cases, toxic) and steering clear of them!
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!
Some SEO experts are saying identifying and focusing on ranking for keywords, i.e., high-volume appropriate search terms your organization wants to be found for in search engines in relevant geographies, isn’t as critical to SEO success as it used to be. In keeping with our recent blog post about SEO (search engine optimization) still being relevant, keyword research is still quite relevant to both for-profits’ and non-profits’ success.
Keyword Research Is Not All About SEO, It’s Also About Your Marketing and Business Strategy
Even if keywords were no longer important to SEO, keyword research still allows you to determine:
What products and services target audiences are searching on which can help an organization to decide to eliminate products or services or add new ones
The volume of individuals who are searching in an organization’s market area (geography) to help inform whether push or pull marketing is warranted
If you regularly read our digital marketing blog, you know that I blog most frequently about two topics about which I’m particularly passionate — SEO (search engine optimization) and walking. It’s been a while since we put up a brand new walking-related post. But, as we write and post this, it’s Veterans Day, and unlike most Mondays, I was able to squeeze in a walk today during business hours. Usually, Mondays are our SEO consulting firm’s busiest day of the week because our search-engine-optimization and other-digital-marketing clients come back on the communications grid after being away from their offices over the weekend and/or we’ve got a bunch of work-related e-mails to respond to that came in over the weekend. But, with it being a federal holiday, it’s been far calmer on the e-communications front. The only e-mails we are getting today are from fellow marketing consultants! So, it felt right and perfect to squeeze in a mid-afternoon walk on a sixty-something-degree November day!
Don’t Get Out Of SEO Shape. Stay SEO Strong!
In addition to being able to walk today, from a time and workload perspective, I needed to walk. I’d been under-the-weather for about a week with a bad head cold, and I hadn’t gotten my almost-daily walk in since I became sick. That meant, I was a little bit out of shape and I walked slightly slower than usual and was able to walk less far. Like walking, whether it be related to my own business or a client’s, I’ve found it best to keep up with SEO regularly. How? By, at least twice-a-month, putting up fresh content — whether that be in the form of a blog post, new question and answer for an existing FAQ, or some other kind of updated/new content from which target audiences would benefit.
The more you stick to a schedule and stay in SEO shape, the easier it seems to be to stay on that path, and keep producing effective content that addresses the needs of your audience, i.e., helpful content. Plus, if you keep doing the aforementioned, the less likely your organization’s will slide significantly backwards in search-engine results, and the less you’ll need to invest a large chunk of time all at once to try to regain the ground you lost on the SEO front.
In addition to consistency, as we shared in this past blog post about what exercise of any kind/exercise in general has in common with SEO, search-engine optimization success requires patience. You’re not going to be able to walk or run at your desired pace from the get-go, i.e., when you first start a walking or running program. And, you’re not going to be able to go the distance you want either. You’ve got to stay patient, while continuing to move forward and achieve small successes.
Our Boston SEO Company/SEO Consulting Firm Is Here To Help!
Our team of SEO consultants is here to take your SEO journey with you every step of the way! In fact, we’ll document results to remind you where you came from, what you’ve accomplished, and what goals you should be setting next and suggested tactics to achieve them. Reach out today for a complimentary SEO discussion today!
Because one of the services my agency offers is PR — and we’ve had some decent success obtaining meaningful media coverage for some of our for-profit and non-profit clients (as documented in our Public Relations Portfolio) — of course, we reached out to The Patriot Ledger to see if they wanted to do a “then and now” story about our South Shore organization since they covered our story nine years back. We’re still awaiting news, literally and figuratively on that one, but we figured why not go ahead and share a similar version of that story on our blog using the highlights we shared with them? So, here goes…
I prefer to refer to my business as a digital marketing agency vs. a marketing consultancy because we do as much as hands-on work as we do developing & recommending marketing strategies.
Our story actually began with me launching my own WordPress website without the help of anyone else, and my officially hanging my digital marketing agency’s shingle via that site. And, if I knew as much as I know about WordPress and website development now as I knew then, I would have originally launched my site with WordPress.org (the platform that it’s on now) vs. WordPress.org, so I could use the many great WordPress plug-ins from the get-go! Or, I might also have considered Joomla instead, but owning a business and getting it right is all about the journey. And, you can’t learn what you need to learn without making a few mistakes and getting your hands dirty, right?
What’s been particularly challenging as an organization who helps others with their own marketing is, sometimes, as I’ve been known to share, “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes.” That means often we are so busy helping our clients with their marketing, we don’t have time for our own. The aforementioned said, we make every effort to have our firm’s own marketing activities (such as our website and social media profiles) serve as a shining example of how to maintain a strong online presence, and it’s great that we’ve been able to use our own business to test and try out various marketing activities — therefore, serve as a bit of a guinea pig — before we test or try something brand new with clients.
I believe and hope my story can motivate and inspire others considering opening their own business. Before, or right after I launched my business, I was told by one individual who works with entrepreneurs that 80% of female marketing consultants fail. I refused to be a statistic, and regularly told myself that during the first 5 years, which were the hardest. It takes a good five years to get the word out there and have business come to you organically/naturally thru referrals, leads, and recommendations from others — made by former co-workers and clients, existing clients, other marketing consultants and agencies, and other organizations who serve the same vertical/target audiences whom you serve.
My philosophy and dreams when I started my business have remained pretty constant and I’m pleased to report I’ve followed them. I’m particularly proud that I’ve been able to continue to offer what I believe, based on research, are very reasonable rates to small for-profit and non-profit organizations. Due to my years of experience and expertise, clients have access to the same level of knowledge and skills that they’d have access to via a larger marketing agency, but at much lower rates than what a larger agency might offer. And, because we have significant experience in both traditional marketing AND digital marketing, we can offer the majority of services a larger, full-service agency can.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned that I’d love to share with others starting a business is this: don’t think of others in your space as competitors. Think of them as collaborators – people who serve the same target audiences who may need your services.
Our Impact: Local (South Shore of Boston), National, and International
I’ve helped a number of young adults who grew up on the South Shore, or elsewhere in MA, get hands-on experience that they were able to parlay into a post-graduation job elsewhere.
Related to the above, I’ve had the great fun and pleasure of working with my nephews, my brother, my brother-in-law, and my late sister-in-law on various client projects.
I’ve also met with a number of college or graduate school students looking to pick my brain about careers in marketing and learn from me – including one in my neighborhood who found me thru a Google search! Yes, because early on I recognized I needed to create a Google My Business Profile for my own business to be found by local, relevant searchers and this is something I regularly help my clients with now!
I’ve given a large number of pro bono hours to nonprofits as part of a totally free consulting/volunteer situation or discussion, or as part of their paid arrangement with me. I’ve had a number of very interesting local nonprofit clients, including ones in the faith-based space, arts and music space, ones serving vulnerable populations, ones serving individuals with special needs, and one providing financially challenged teens the opportunity to serve vulnerable teens abroad, and more! Some have an international impact.
One of my specialties is helping nonprofits apply for a Google Nonprofit Ad Grant. I, then, often stay on and manage the Grant for them – $120,000 in free Google Search advertising annually. I can explain more.
I also have a number of for-profit clients on the South Shore, but my client base is national and I have had clients in New Orleans, CA, Texas, and more!
I’ve served over 120 for-profit and non-profit organizations in the 10 years I’ve been running my digital marketing agency/SEO company.
I had no idea when I launched my business that I would become an expert in something that I only had very little knowledge of at the time when I launched my business – search engine optimization (SEO). Many of my referrals for or sub-contracted work come from other agencies, marketing consultants, and website designers who need to pull someone into their client work/project who knows how to get websites and Google My Business Profiles ranking well in Google via organic and paid search (Google Ads) SEO activities. I’ve become a self-taught SEO expert and very proud of it. I just read and watched everything I could get my hands on, took Google Ads certification classes, and attended free webinars. I still do that daily as Google’s Search Engine will be switching to an AI one, and I’m already helping my clients be proactive about that and prep for it (Google SGE).
As indicated above, while I do sub-contracted or referred work for other agencies, marketing consultants, and website designers, many of my clients are my own clients, and I usually have a plate of about 12 – 15 clients for whom I’m doing ongoing, digital marketing work for on a monthly basis, plus also juggling several one-off/one-time clients at the same time. At any given point in time, I’m normally doing work for about 17 – 25 clients with the help of some fabulous interns and associates, as they were/are available.
I’ve given a number of free workshops for SCORE and other organizations serving entrepreneurs, and I’m a SCORE volunteer and have provided tons of free advice to entrepreneurs by meeting with them on a complimentary basis. And, related to all of this, I’ve had a blast partnering with fellow marketing experts to give presentations that address multiple marketing areas of expertise! Thank you! You know who you are!
I’m a data geek and SEO geek and proud of it. I’m a huge data slicer and dicer and that’s what separates me from a lot of others in my space. I always say I won’t encourage clients to start or continue with marketing activities that don’t make sense for them based on what data is showing. I consider myself to be my clients’ accountability partner, and I’m not afraid to give tough love when I need to. I’m not afraid to voice a different opinion than other marketers. If I think something isn’t going to work, or isn’t working, I speak up.
I’m also proud that my marketing agency survived our recent COVID-19 pandemic and was extremely proactive about providing helpful insights from the very start of the pandemic for marketers to appropriately respond to the pandemic/pivot, such as these blog posts about using paid ads during the pandemic and how to make sure your social media presence wasn’t offensive and was relevant.
I give back significantly to the community. I was involved with the Braintree Relay For Life Committee for a while, and now, I do a number of charity walks in addition to all the other beneficial work I mentioned above.
Our Focus On Health & Wellness
If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you’ll know that I’ll throw in a good blog post about walking once in a while. You can use the categories search tool/drop-down menu to search on “walking” to see the various walking topics about which I’ve written.
Since my corporate marketing days, I’ve always loved to share health & wellness tips — whether they be with fellow employees as part of an internal communications role, or with members of a health plan I worked for, and from the get-go with Results Communications & Research, I’ve aimed to inspire those with health (and other challenges) to never give up, and keep fighting via my “Keep Up The Fight” website page. And, I recently put up a new blog post about an invisible disease with which many health warriors who have battled or are battling other forms of illness have to contend.
Our Thank You
My digital marketing agency/SEO company and I would have never made it this far without all the help of great collaborators, cheerleaders (friends, family, my husband Jay, and other fellow small business owners), and most importantly, our clients who looked to us for expert marketing guidance and assistance. We have many clients with whom we’ve served as an outsourced marketing department for years, and we thank you for your faith in us! We’ve so enjoyed being a part of your business family! We also thank those who we haven’t had the opportunity to work with for as long as some of our long-term clients, but have enjoyed or are enjoying being a part of your organization’s success story.
What’s Next
I don’t know what the future holds for Results Communications & Research, but I’m excited about what’s to come! And, I know I will continue to try to give back as much as possible with the platform that this fun, educational, and interesting business provides!
Want To Benefit From The Marketing Services Of A Digital Marketing Agency/SEO With A Long Tenure And Who Gives Back?
Since our blog here at Results C & R focuses on marketing, but still covers one of our passions — walking — once in a while, we’ve been giving some thought to how we can combine two of our favorite topics in one blog post. Therefore, we’ve been noodling what walking and SEO have in common. And, here’s what we’ve come up with.
Staying In Shape and SEO Both Require Consistency
As it should, regularly posting content that is helpful and relevant to the target audiences your organization serves continues to greatly support your website and Google My Business profile being found and ranking well on Google. We recommend putting up new, fresh contentat least twice a month. The aforementioned can take the form of a new blog post, a relevant FAQ, or some other type of website page. You can also support ranking well by simply updating existing content, including blog posts. The same goes for walking, or whatever exercise or athletic activity (or a combination of several) you choose to do to get and stay in shape. Exercising regularly and consistently is the only way to get and stay in shape.
Staying In Shape And SEO Both Require Patience
Unless they have an SEO expert on their internal team who has advised them otherwise, many organizations believe — until they meet with an organization like our Boston SEO company — that after implementing a few on-page and off-page SEO tactics on their website, that their site will immediately start ranking/be found on the first page of Google. As we discuss in this blog post about what to know before you engage someone for SEO services, that’s just not a realistic expectation, particularly if your organization’s marketplace is a very competitive one and you have competitors who effectively employ SEO tactics to support ranking well. It’s a slow, long climb to go from NOT ranking well in search results to ranking on the first two pages of Google for desirable, high-volume terms used by your target audiences to find someone who offers the products, services, and solutions to problems you do, and it requires great patience.
We’ve found the same goes for staying in shape. It takes time to build up stamina to walk or run longer and longer distances, or to walk or run faster. The key to success is to remain patient and slowly increase the distance you walk and the speed/pace at which you walk. The same analogy applies to other forms of exercise, of course!
Our Founder’s Twin, Audrey Snow Barresi, who regularly raises money for various charitable organizations through running and walking in various cause athletic events. She’s a wellness warrior who inspires others to stay well, while giving back big-time!
Staying In Shape And SEO Are Both Life-long Games
Staying in shape and ranking well/being found on Google are both long games, as we explained above, but also life-long games. In addition to it taking you a while to get to where you want to be, if you don’t keep up with your regular, ongoing exercise and continue to implement tactics on your website to support SEO (and particularly the tactic of regularly adding fresh, relevant content to your site), you’re going to eventually forfeit any forward motion/gains you’ve made.
Staying In Shape And SEO Often Require Support From A Partner
Whether it be sticking to an exercise routine or related to obtaining an athletic goal (like completing a marathon), or staying on track with executing SEO best practices; sometimes, you just need an accountability partner to keep you motivated to stay the course.
The team at our Boston SEO company is always here to serve as a cheerleader and accountability partner related to continuing to rank well/be found on Google. But, we’ll also gladly cheer you on related to your walking goals and other health initiatives! So, reach out today or use our calendar app to schedule a complimentary discussion about your challenges and opportunities. We’re “cheer” for you!
