Determining the right digital marketing strategy to connect with your target audience, build your brand and grow your business can be challenging. There are more digital marketing channels than ever before, and not every option will be a good fit to achieve your goals. Without the help of a dedicated marketing strategy consultant, you may struggle to arrive at the right mix of tactics to effectively grow your business.

In addition, many of the marketing strategies you implement will require specialized expertise, both in the planning and execution phases, to achieve the best possible results. Working with a marketing strategy consultant will provide the expertise and specialization necessary to maximize the ROI on your efforts and ensure your marketing budget is being used wisely.

While the benefits of working with a third-party marketing strategy agency may be clear, choosing the right one isn’t always easy. There are many agencies out there vying for your business, and not all of them will be a good fit for what you’re trying to accomplish. Choosing the right marketing strategy consultant is critical to the ongoing growth and success of your business, and you should engage in a thorough evaluation process to ensure you get this important decision right.

The following tips will help you identify the right marketing strategy agency to build your brand, generate quality leads and grow your business.

Define Your Goals

In order to effectively evaluate potential marketing strategy agencies to partner with, you must first have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve. Different agencies will have different strengths and areas of expertise, so you’ll want to choose a marketing strategy consultant that is ideally suited to achieve your specific goals.

Are you looking to generate more qualified leads? Launch a new product line? Increase your ecommerce sales? Overhaul your branding? These goals all require a different approach and expertise. Knowing your goals can help you narrow down your list to the marketing strategy agencies that specialize in what you’re trying to accomplish, and it enables you to identify the success metrics necessary to evaluate their performance.

Set Your Budget

It’s also important to set a budget at the start of your search. Unless your company has unlimited financial resources to throw at your marketing efforts, you’ll need to find an agency that can most efficiently and effectively make use of your available budget to maximize the ROI of your efforts.

Most good marketing strategy agencies should be able to work within your budget and set realistic expectations for what can be accomplished with the resources available to them. They should be able to present a variety of options for how to best use your budget and explain the pros and cons of each strategy. Ultimately, this will help you to better understand what is possible, allowing you to prioritize the strategies that most closely align with your goals.

Create a Short List of Marketing Strategy Consultant Candidates

Once you’ve identified several potential marketing strategy consultants who possess an expertise and specialization that aligns with your goals and offers services that are within your budget, it’s time to narrow your options down. Use the following criteria to determine the best two to three marketing strategy agencies to engage in deeper discussions before making a final decision.

A Customized Approach

Choose a marketing strategy agency who is interested in you and who demonstrates a desire to understand your overarching business goals and your unique situation:

• Are you receiving a boilerplate proposal, or is the agency providing custom recommendations to achieve your specific goals?
• Does the agency introduce new ideas and fresh ways of looking at your situation?
• Is the scope they present focused on your situation and goals or are you getting “we sell this, therefore you need it” type of reasoning?

Does the agency take a professional, solution-oriented approach to this relationship? For example, if your financial planner laid out a plan without first asking questions about your personal and family needs, you would not consider the plan. Your goals and situation are unique. Your partner should continuously seek to understand in order to ensure their solutions align with your needs. Good partners want dialogue to understand what is required, and marketing partners are no exception.

Industry Experience

Industry experience is an important factor to evaluate, as this may be an indicator that they will be a good fit for the needs of your business. Some marketing strategy agencies choose to specialize in certain niche industries. There can be a benefit to working with an agency that has extensive experience working with businesses in your specific industry since they most likely will possess a more sophisticated understanding of what your business does, and the unique factors associated with successfully marketing to your target audience.

However, this industry experience can also be a double-edged sword. Certain industry specific agencies may take a cookie cutter approach to marketing, touting this as a “tried and true method” to achieve results in your industry. The truth is that your business is completely unique, and the best marketing approach for your competitors may not be right for you. Therefore, this industry specialization should be balanced with a willingness to customize your strategy based on the specific goals you’ve established for your business.

Don’t dismiss a potential marketing strategy agency simply because they haven’t worked with other businesses in your industry before. Often, agencies that work with businesses in a wide range of industries have a broad understanding of how different marketing tactics work to achieve specific goals, regardless of the industry.

In fact, working with a partner who can demonstrate experience across a broad array of industries is the most likely to be able to introduce fresh ideas. Many companies have broken through by employing strategies first tested and proven in industries other than their own. An agency with such a portfolio is most likely to connect those dots and present those paths for your consideration.

A good marketing strategy consultant should be able to evaluate your industry, your online presence, your goals, and the efforts used by your competitors to develop an effective strategy that will achieve your desired outcome. Often, working with someone who isn’t laser focused on the specific nuances of your industry will provide a fresh approach that can deliver superior marketing outcomes.

Transparency

Full transparency is essential anytime you’re entering into a new business relationship. It’s critical to your ability to build trust with your new marketing strategy agency. When you engage a potential consultant in an initial discussion, make sure they are completely upfront about every aspect of their recommendations, including the:

• Reasoning behind their approach
• Tools, channels and budget required to implement the strategy
• Expected timeline to develop and implement the strategy
• Metrics necessary to evaluate success
• Realistic expectations for what can be achieved
• Alternative options that may be able to achieve your goals

Lack of transparency during the initial consultation process is one of the biggest red flags you’ll encounter. If you feel like the consultant isn’t being completely open and honest with you from the start, it’s best to eliminate them as a candidate.

Credibility

Choosing a marketing strategy agency to work with is an important decision. Ideally, this will be a long-term partnership that will help you achieve sustained growth and profitability for years to come. Getting this decision right the first time will help you avoid the inevitable delays in progress that typically occur if you have to pivot and start the process over with a new agency in a year or two. Therefore, you’ll want to vet the agency’s credibility and experience prior to including them on your short list.

There are several ways you can evaluate their credibility:

• Look at their website – This is one of the easiest and most important ways to evaluate a marketing strategy agency. Since helping you build a strong online presence will be one of their most important jobs, seeing how effectively they market themselves online will give you a good sense of what you can expect. Evaluate the following factors:
  • Website design – Is their website design modern and professional? Does it contain clear, compelling calls to action (CTAs) that make it easier to generate leads?
  • Search engine results – Does the agency’s website appear high in Google search results? This will indicate that they have a strong SEO background and should give you greater confidence that they can achieve strong SEO results for you.
  • Branding and messaging – Do they convey a strong, cohesive brand throughout their website and social media profiles? Are the brand logos, colors, imagery and typography consistent? Does their messaging effectively and consistently convey their brand across all channels?
• Review their portfolio – Most agencies will post a portfolio with examples of their recent projects. This is a great way to get a sense of the quality of work they produce. If the agency doesn’t have portfolio pieces on their website, ask them to send you a few to review.
• Read client testimonials – Most marketing strategy agencies include some testimonials on their website. Read through these to get a sense of what other clients have to say about working with them.
• Read client reviews – Look at review sites such as Clutch, Google and Yelp. Does the agency consistently have good reviews on these sites? What are clients saying in these reviews, and do they seem authentic?

Check References

Once you’ve narrowed down your short list, ask the agency to provide you with a few references from former or existing clients that you can speak with. Checking references is an important step that will give you peace of mind that you’re choosing a quality marketing strategy agency. If you find some red flags in your conversations with these references, you can eliminate that particular candidate before spending a significant amount of time reviewing specific proposals.

Request Detailed Recommendations

Marketing can be a bit of a rabbit hole. There are so many approaches you can take to this important aspect of running your business, and it’s important to be aligned with your agency on the specific marketing strategy services that they recommend.

Before choosing your dedicated partner, ask each of the agencies on your short list to provide you with detailed recommendations of the specific marketing strategy services they believe will deliver your desired results. Ideally, these recommendations should be made as part of a conversation that provides greater context to help you understand the reasoning behind the recommendations being made.

During this conversation, you should also have the opportunity to ask any questions you may have regarding the approach being recommended. If you’re unable to receive comprehensive answers to your questions, it’s generally a sign the agency may not be the right fit for your needs.

Assess the Agency’s Ability to Deliver Your Desired Results

While your marketing strategy consultant should be expected to help you dream and ideate, the reality is that ideas are easier to produce than results. At the end of the day, the results achieved are the true measure of the success of your marketing efforts. Therefore, your best choice is likely a partner who can demonstrate live, actual results.

When you defined your goals, you should have identified specific success metrics that would help you evaluate the performance of the marketing agency implementing your campaign. Ask the agency to send you specific examples of the results they’ve achieved with campaigns they’ve run for clients receiving similar services contained in your recommendations. Examine the performance data in these reports carefully to make sure they can demonstrate a track record of success that is similar to the KPI results you’re looking to achieve.

Webolutions Can Develop a Marketing Strategy That Grows Your Business

The complex, ever evolving nature of marketing makes it very challenging to develop the right strategy on your own. If you’re ready to work with a dedicated marketing strategy consultant who can help you build your brand, generate more leads and grow your business, Webolutions can help.

As Denver’s leading marketing strategy agency since 1994, we’ve worked with businesses of all sizes in a wide range of industries. During this time, we’ve developed a strong track record of success – and we have both the hard data and industry accolades to prove it.

At Webolutions, we take a data-driven, holistic approach to developing your marketing strategy. We’ll customize our recommendations based on the specifics of your industry, the factors impacting your market, and the value you bring to your customers/clients. This ensures your plan leverages the methods and channels that will most effectively achieve your goals.

Our transformational Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach to marketing strategy and implementation has been designed to grow your business faster, smarter and easier. With this unique approach, we’ll help you achieve highly competitive differentiation by conveying your purpose, core values, mission, specific set of strengths and unique culture to your audience. By defining your true value and establishing what makes your business special, we can deliver the results necessary to position you for success for years to come.

In addition, our team includes some of the most highly experienced digital marketing professionals in the industry. With broad areas of expertise in just about every subspecialty of digital marketing, we have the chops to implement any strategy at the highest levels, and we provide you with robust performance intelligence data that lets you evaluate the success of our efforts.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Webolutions provides marketing strategy services to clients nationwide from our offices in Denver, Colorado.

The post How to Choose a Marketing Strategy Consultant appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

I had the great pleasure of being invited to a friend’s birthday party last month. And as a good friend, I’ll do my best to protect the innocent by not revealing his or her age. The spot to celebrate the youth of my friend was a little restaurant in Boulder called Frasca Food and Wine. As much as I’d like to think of myself as a food critic, I am definitely not a food critic. I’d spend the majority of the time explaining dishes as “amazing” or “ridiculous” and the ever popular, “It tasted awesome.” I do not possess the proper vernacular to do great food justice the way a good food critic does. I’ll just stick to working on Internet marketing plans at a leading Denver Internet marketing company. Quick background on Frasca: it is consistently named as one of Colorado’s best restaurants every year, and winner of the 2013 James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine Program. Bridge all those accolades with the 2008 Best Chef in the Southwest award winner and you have a great restaurant. The food was mind-blowingly good. So amazing that you should go tonight – you’ll thank me tomorrow. However, as I stated above, this is not a food critique. What really made Frasca unique was the two hour experience I received at co-owner Bobby Stuckey’s restaurant.

As soon as you walk into Frasca you can see the Italian influences: music, artwork, decanters full of wine occupying a table in the middle of the restaurant. Frasca looks small on the outside, but the atmosphere is big on the inside. Once we were seated at our table, Bobby greeted us there with a complimentary glass of wine to cleanse our palette. Bobby also took this opportunity to tell us about Frasca and its influences. We immediately felt right at home. After our wine, we were greeted by Rose, our server for the night. Rose not only told us about the menu, she sold it to us. Every plate was explained in the perfect amount of detail. The hardest part of the night was picking a course. As we settled in with our dinner decisions, we were greeted by Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson, the world class chef of Frasca. He welcomed us with his positive energy and talked to us about Frasca and how much the restaurant meant to him and his family. Then he moved on to the next table and the table after that. How many times have you been to a restaurant and the chef came out to talk to you? Unless you found a bug in your soup, I can almost guarantee that it has never happened. After our meal, our table was invited to tour the kitchen. I felt like I was in the movie Goodfellas; minus the mob ties, 50s music and explosions. The tour was fantastic. After our tour, we had to make the difficult decision to leave Frasca. However, the staff gave us some complimentary bread for the ride home. This was probably due to that fact that we ate a combined 17 loafs during dinner.

My experience at Frasca was unlike any restaurant experience I have ever had. The guests at our table felt like we were a part of the Frasca family. Our server, Rose, knew all of our names by the time our entrées came to the table. Bobby and Lachlan made us understand how much they appreciated us coming in to their restaurant. We left with gifts, full (but not too full) stomachs and the best dining experience in Colorado, period. Thank you to Bobby, Lachlan, Rose and the entire staff at Frasca. You’ve made this integrated marketing manager/part-time food critic very happy.

How to use this Information
How do you want your customers to remember their time in your business?  Have you thought about creating an amazing experience but are not sure where to start? You don’t have to own an exclusive restaurant to provide a memorable customer experience. Webolutions can help you plan an unforgettable experience for your business. Call us today at 303-300-2640 to learn more about how our Denver marketing experts can help you design an integrated experiential marketing program that will give you a competitive advantage.

If you are creating amazing experiences for your employees and your customers, please share how you are doing this in the comments area below.

The post The Best Dining Experience in Colorado appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Luxury buyers are used to being treated to over-the-top brand experiences every day. In their travel, shopping, dining and more we have devised methods of regaling the luxury buyer that amaze and delight. At Webolutions, a leading Denver marketing agency, we believe that amazing customer experiences shouldn’t be just for the rich and famous. We help companies of all types—from broadband internet service providers to CPAs, wow their customers with unexpected experiences that drive loyalty and referral.

That being said, there is a lot for the rest of us to learn from the brand experience delivered by some top luxury car sellers. People spending over $50K on a new vehicle have certain expectations for the car buying experience and no one understands their buyer better than the folks at BMW. Makers of the Ultimate Driving Machine, BMW targets upscale buyers who really enjoy the driving experience. These are not just guys who want a fancy car, but they are the types who talk torque, acceleration speeds, and mountain road handling. They also tend to be avid travelers.  Put all those together and what you get is the BMW Welt experience. Buyers can order a custom-built BMW from anywhere in the world and travel to Munich to take possession of their new vehicle at the BMW Welt facility. Talk about a second to none car buying experience! However, in the event of an accident during your travels, it’s wise to have the contact information for a truck accident attorney Orange County to help navigate any legal challenges that may arise.

Completed in 2007, BMW Welt is an architectural marvel which houses a museum, exhibition space, restaurants and more.  It is connected to the original BMW factory where tours are held daily. International customers who have ordered BMW’s for import arrive at BMW Welt and are greeted by a personal concierge.  They begin with a tour of the factory and museum and are then treated to an excellent buffet lunch.  After lunch they get an in depth briefing on the features and inner workings of the vehicle they have purchased and are taken to the staging area where their car is waiting under a spotlight, slowly rotating on a large turntable.  They are given the keys to their gleaming new car on a silver keychain that has been custom engraved with their initials.  After inspecting their new purchase with the concierge, they are invited to get inside and let the driving begin.  To exit the giant BMW Welt facility, they are first allowed to take a victory lap around the interior before descending a long ramp to the outside.

Everything about the BMW Welt experience has been developed to build on the BMW owner’s love of driving and to create lifelong brand advocates.  The experience is unique, rewarding and, in fact, a great deal.  If an American car-buyer chooses to buy direct from Germany, they can expect to save about 7% or somewhere between $3,500 and $7,000 on their new car.  In addition, most buyers combine the pick up with a European vacation and are able to save on car rental by driving their own vehicle instead.  When it’s time to come home, they can choose from any of eight different drop-off points at airports throughout Germany, France, the UK and more.  After dropping off their new vehicle, shipping back home takes 2-3 months and frequent status is provided during that time to keep abreast of the progress.  To learn more about the BMW experience go to www.BMW-Welt.com.

Closer to home, luxury car dealers are also stepping up how to enhance the end-to-end customer experience, and not just limiting it the car buying experience itself. The new Kuni Lexus dealership that opened in Greenwood Village in May offers style, comfort, entertainment and technology to visitors whether they are there to purchase a new vehicle or get their current car serviced. The giant facility includes a library with multiple iPads for guest use, a 1917 billiards table, a theater for watching movies, multiple outdoor patio spaces and two large coffee bars. There are amusements for guests of all ages—in fact, on a recent visit I witnessed a mother who was having trouble convincing her children that it was time to go once her car service had been completed, because they were having so much fun. In addition to being a beautiful and relaxing environment, the new dealership is virtually paperless, using Apple technology to complete the transaction paper work and delivering all documentation to buyers electronically.

How to use this Information
If you’re running a business, would you say you provide an “over-the-top” customer experience?  The most economical way to market your business is for your current customers to do it for you through word-of-mouth referrals. Why did I write about BMW and Kuni Lexus today? Not because I own luxury cars, but because I have friends who were so impressed by their experiences with these companies that they just can’t stop talking about them.  No matter what type of business you are in, there are surely opportunities to delight your customers in ways that will get them talking about you.  Webolutions is focused on helping businesses build experiential marketing examples that drive loyalty and referral.  If you need help designing memorable customer experiences for your business, call us today at 303.300.2640.

Do you have a great customer experience story to share? If so, please comment below.

The post The Ultimate Car Buying Experience appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Remember a time you couldn’t stop talking about a place to your friends? I once had a dentist whose hands were so tiny, she could work miracles and you hardly knew it was happening. I told everyone I knew that I’d found the key to painless dentistry, and those friends that visited her showered me with thanks.

I realize that small hands isn’t exactly a change most dentists can easily make to create more buzz around their practice, but every business needs to think about the experiences they create for their customers each day and determine if they are the type that will get people talking.

Of course, customer experiences can be both good and bad, so businesses need to look across every customer touch point to determine if they are creating conversation. Over the holidays, like millions of other Americans, I did a lot of my shopping online. The downside, of course, is that not every online purchase turns out exactly as expected. I purchased $175 on clothing at one particular online store which all turned out to be too big. When I returned it (albeit just after the 30-day window) they wouldn’t refund my money and offered me instead a merchandise credit with a rather short timeframe for purchase. This isn’t the first time I’ve had issues with this particular company, but I can assure you it will be the last. With service-oriented competitors like Nordstom and Zappos out there, why would I do business with a company seemingly hell-bent on making my life difficult? They have definitely created conversation, because I’ve told at least four friends about the experience and urged them not to buy from this company. That’s relatively mild since statistics show that the average person will share a bad customer experience with ten people while only sharing an extraordinary experience with one or two.

So, let’s figure out what it takes to do extraordinary experience marketing. At Webolutions, we advise our clients to consider the N.U.D.E. model, but not the “nude” you might be thinking about. In our vernacular, N.U.D.E. stands for:

• Novelty: Is the experience surprisingly different in an enjoyable way?
• Utility: Are you conveying a breadth of services that would be of interest to my circle of acquaintances?
• Dependability: Is the experience consistent every time?
• Economy: Is the value I receive from the experience worth what I pay?

Let’s look at some examples. Imagine a pizza delivery experience so cool, that folks in Denver are buzzing about a restaurant in Dubai. Now that’s the power of experience marketing. Red Tomato pizza went beyond the ordinary refrigerator magnet employed throughout the pizza delivery trade by creating a VIP magnet with a built-in, wi-fi based one-button ordering application so that when their customers feel the urge for pizza, they just go to the fridge and press the button. Take a look.

Now you don’t have to go halfway around the world to find good examples of experience marketing. One restaurant I visited during Denver’s recent $52.80 Restaurant Week has placed their full wine list on iPads so that diners can access more background information on each wine before making their selection. It was both useful and fun, and our wine was delicious!

But great experience marketing doesn’t have to require investments in expensive technology. Let’s go back to the dentist. On a recent visit, the receptionist greeted me by name when I walked in the door and told me how funny and bright she thinks my sons are (they had both been in a few weeks earlier). While in the chair for a cleaning, I was asked what music I preferred and if I wanted a hand massage—WOW, the gold standard used to be a free toothbrush!

How to Use This Information

Conduct an honest mental evaluation of the experience you are creating for your customers. Think about the different stages of your interactions with them. Are you creating an overall experience that they would be excited to tell five other people about? Remember that just delivering a good quality product or service, as your customer expects, is not creating an experience. You have to move well beyond their expectations. Imagine what you can do to enhance the experience before, during and after each interaction for your customers.

Whatever you choose, make sure your customers can depend on it each and every time by training all your team on the customer experience you wish to create and helping them understand their role in making it happen.

If you are creating amazing experiences in your business, please share how you are doing this in the comments area below. If you would like to learn more about how Webolutions can help you design an experience marketing program that will give you a competitive advantage, give us a call at 303-300-2640.

The post Creating an Experience Worth Talking About appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

We work with our clients at Webolutions to develop a unique and engaging customer experience that will set them apart from their competition. This focus on experience marketing elevates our clients’ messages beyond more common commodity, product and service messages.

A tagline or slogan can be a powerful marketing asset when it concisely conveys the experience of doing business with your brand. Here are some examples of current taglines in the marketplace:

“It’s Amazing What Soup Can Do.” (Campbell’s Soup). This tagline tries to mix experience (amazing) with product (soup) but misses the mark because it’s too vague. Can soup do my taxes? Can soup win the Boston Marathon? How about making soup that tastes amazing? While a taste focused message would be a step down into a product message, it would have more impact than the current slogan.

“Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet.”(Whole Foods).This tagline from Whole Foods focuses on a bigger vision beyond the fruits, veggies and other health food products available for purchase in their stores. Whole Foods does a great job of living this brand through its efforts in food sourcing, support of local farmers and creating a list of unacceptable ingredients for products it will carry in stores. The majority of its website is devoted to education through blog content, recipes and community involvement instead of selling product.

“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” (State Farm Insurance). This tagline/jingle from 1971 (written by Barry Manilow, by the way) continues to demonstrate the power of emphasizing the experience of doing business with State Farm over the feature and benefits of different insurance policies. This line clearly communicates the feelings policyholders can expect to experience when they choose State Farm.

“The Happiest Place on Earth.” (Disneyland). While it may sometimes be difficult to see past all of the merchandise and other stuff that comes out of the Walt Disney Company, it’s hard to find a better example of a company that is devoted to living their brand than through Disneyland. Disney has specific vocabulary (park visitors are “guests,” employees are “cast members” and the waiting area for attractions are called “scene ones.”) to set them apart. They even have a whole program devoted to efficiently parking cars to make a better first impression for guests. Disneyland lives its tagline of being “the Happiest Place on Earth.”

“Just Do It” and “To Bring Inspiration and Innovation to Every Athlete in the World. If You Have a Body, You Are an Athlete.” (Nike). While Nike’s “Just Do It” tagline has become one of the world’s most well-known slogans, I thought Nike’s formal mission statement was also worth including in this post. The mission statement is a great combination of experience first (inspiration) and service (innovation). It is a clear stake in the ground that outlines internal culture in a way that is focused on customer experience.

How to Use This Information
Take a look at any taglines for your business. Do they focus on product, service or experience? Are they clear and concise? If you ask ten people what message they get from your tagline, do they get the same main idea?

If you would like to learn more about how Webolutions can help you clarify your brand with our Market Positioning Action Plan, give us a call at or contact us online today.

The post What Does Your Tagline Say About Your Business? appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Branding Strategy

As a full-service Denver Digital Marketing Agency, Webolutions frequently works with clients to review all of the different ways their brand connects with clients, and find ways to turn those touch points into memorable experiences.

When does the experience of your brand begin? If you own a restaurant, it would be easy to say the experience of your establishment begins when your guests open the front door and ends when they pay their check. In the current marketplace, it’s important to think bigger than that to set yourself apart from all of the other choice that are available today.

A vacation to a Disney theme park is a high point in an experience that often has been going on for years before a family arrives at their destination. Disney fans are part of an ongoing Disney experience thanks to the movies, retail stores, live performances, TV commercials and hundreds of other touch points that continue to tell the story.

You don’t have to have the marketing budget of a Disney-sized organization to start to make a bigger impact on your clients.  There are a number of easy things you can implement to broaden the experience people have with your brand.

Here are some ways to get started:

Make follow up calls. When is the last time you followed up with a recent client to see how they are doing? And I am not talking about a routine survey that everyone gets. Block out some time to send a birthday card or call and ask the question “How are things going?” Extra effort like this is often all it takes to stand out from your competition. Communicating that you value your clients is a simple way to create a bond that a 10% discount from a competitor will never break.

Improve business development with eNewsletters. Webolutions generates a great deal of new business from our ongoing eNewsletter. It may take a few years for a subscriber to get to point that they need our services, but when they do, the eNewsletter is often key factor in prompting them to call.

Create hashtags for events & seminars. If you have an event or a seminar/webinar, create a hashtag and encourage everyone to use it in their social media posts. This allows attendees to connect with each other and also creates a crowd-sourced record of event highlights. The annual South by Southwest conferences in Austin, Texas uses the hashtag #SXSW and it is active year-round, for musicians, filmmakers and tech pros on Twitter.

Turn the shipping department into the gift department. If your business involves sending physical goods through the mail, what can you do to make receiving your stuff a great experience? Turn your package into a gift. Include a handwritten thank you note next to each client’s order. Include a postcard that explains more about the design and history of items that have been purchased. Add a business card with the address of your social media site of choice and encourage your new customer to leave a review or share a photo of their fantastic new purchase with their friends.

If you would like to brainstorm ways to create more impactful experiences to build your brand, please give us a call at 303-300-2640.

What are you doing to make the experience of your brand stand out from the marketplace? Share your successes in the comments.

The post Broaden Your Brand Experience appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Helping our clients create memorable experience marketing programs is an important part the work we do at Webolutions every day. While many only think of experience marketing when discussing a tradeshow or a seminar, there are many opportunities in your normal business processes to design experiences that will set you apart from your competitors.

The recent book, The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, recounts the innovative approach used in the early 1900s to build a new product called Pepsodent into one of the world’s most recognized brands.

Unlike today, most Americans didn’t brush their teeth on a regular basis when Pepsodent was created. Pepsodent was effective in changing this and creating a habit because the recipe included citric acid and mint oil. This combination unintentionally created a “tingle” that gave users a feeling that they missed if they didn’t brush their teeth each night. The “tingle” gave customers a tangible indication that the product was working to clean their teeth.

Another great example of an experience that gives customers feedback and the experience that things are working, is the dense foam most shampoos produce when you wash your hair. The foam is created when surfactants and foaming agents mix with air to produce all those wonderful bubbles. But all that lather is not needed to get your hair clean. The suds are there to give customers an indication that the shampoo is doing its job.

Think about the different experiences your company provides and design each interaction to give your clients an indication of the value you provide and that things are working.

Digital experience:

A great example of this approach is to make sure any forms on your website have a response page that pops up after a user fills out the form. Use this opportunity to let a user know they have successfully filled out the form, that the information has been received and you’ve provided a timeframe for when they can expect someone from your company to follow up. If you asked for their name in the form, you can even use that data to customize the message on the response page.

Product experience:

While it is easy to site Apple as a product design leader, the designers in Cuppertino continue to take the experience of buying an Apple product a step beyond their competition with an obsessive focus on the packaging for each device. The forthcoming book Inside Apple, by Adam Lashinsky, describes the extensive process designers at the tech giant go through to create a great experience when a new Apple customer took their device home and opened the packaging. Jonathan Ive, the lead designer during Steve Jobs’ tenure at the company and current Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, feels that “packaging can be theater, it can create a story.” Well-designed packaging reinforces and can even amplify the perceived value of the product it contains.

Customer experience:

Webolutions take great pride in creating a unique and memorable experience for every guest who comes to our office for a visit. Webolutions guests can expect to receive a welcome email the day before their appointment with our guest menu and directions. Guests can take advantage of massage chairs, enjoy freshly prepared snacks and custom-made coffee drinks that turn a normal meeting into a highlight of their week.

Webolutions worked with a Georgia client in the IT industry to create a great experience for their IT clients at the end of a project. The main contact for our client will receive a freshly prepared peach pie at the end of the project implementation to say thanks and as an expression of Southern hospitality.

How to Use This Information
Review the normal process of doing business with your customers and look for ways to turn an average website form, product box or visit to your office into an experience that elevates your brand above your competition.

Whether it’s Apple, Ritz Carlton, Virgin or Southwest Air, look for other companies having success creating memorable experiences. Pick a role model that resonates with you and see how you elevate your normal business interactions into something special.

If you would like to learn more about how Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency can help you design a marketing strategy that will give you a competitive advantage, give us a call at 303-300-2640 or contact us online today.

The post Digital Marketing Agency Insight: Design Smart Feedback to Show Value to Clients appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

A. R. Wilfley & Sons, Inc. has provided innovative centrifugal pump solutions since 1919. Wilfley’s robust pumps can be found in a number of different industries including mining, food & beverage and chemical processing. Their pumps are sold and supported by local reps globally. They provide the most proactive centrifugal pump solutions in the world.

A.R.Wilfley attended the MINexpo in Las Vegas, NV in September 2012. MINexpo is the biggest tradeshow in the mining industry. Wilfley tasked Webolutions with designing a booth experience to stand out in a crowded field and create a memorable experience for show attendees.

Specific Project Goals & Challenges

• Raise awareness of the Wilfley name among the mining industry
• Announce the 2013 introduction Wilfley’ s new line of EMW™ pumps to the industry
• Generate a list of qualified contacts to expand the Wilfley sales pipeline

Solutions Provided by Webolutions

To maximize the ROI of the investment Wilfley made in exhibiting at this event and to create an amazing experience consistent with their brand, the following solutions were implemented:

• Webolutions worked with the leadership of Wilfley to more clearly define their overall brand.  We clearly defined statements pinpointing the following areas:
  • A 5-7 word statement defining their product or service offering
  • A 5-7 work statement defining their primary core value
  • A 5-7 word statement defining the overall experience hopes to have through all interactions with their clients, reps, team members and yes even visitors to their tradeshow booth
• Of the six basic emotions that people are able to have (love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear), we worked with Wilfley to identify the related feelings they want people to have when they interact with their brand.  The results were:
  • Amazement
  • Relief
  • Optimism
  • Contentment
  • Pride

We completed a strategic experience planning exercise to address key factors about the event. You can see some of the items in this checklist at our recent blog post Creating a Client Experience Checklist . Then, using this information, together we created a unique experience for this event:

•  Wilfley engineers created a see-through demonstration pump to allow visitors to see and experience the company’s unique dynamic seal technology. This is one factor which helps to differentiate Wilfley pumps in the marketplace.
• The design of the booth was deliberately very clean and modern to allow visitors to focus on the company’s offerings.  Most booths are very cluttered.
• The graphics in the booth focused on Wilfley’s  local presence and support on an international level for the clients they serve.
• A custom-printed insert was created to allow visitors to better understand the company’s values and the experience that their clients have in doing business with them. This greatly expanded their messaging depth to reflect their complete brand and not just that they have great products.
• A “Take The Wilfley Challenge” submission contest was designed to encourage visitors to actively engage with Wilfley sales representatives. Participants in the Wilfley Challenge were invited to outline their most difficult problem and challenge Wilfley to solve their unmet need. If the Wilfley team was unable to design a solution for participants, they would treat the challenger and 10 people in their office to lunch. Visitors could complete this form at the booth or via a specially designed landing page which was assessible via the scan of a QR code.
• Pre-event emails were sent out to Wilfley’s contacts inviting them to stop by their booth. This not only created a more engaged brand for the company with those attending this major event, but it also conveyed this message to everyone on their contact list who was not planning on attending.
• Each day, qualified leads were identified at the show, contact information and notes were entered into a database, and that night each person received a personalized follow-up email from the director of sales & marketing.

Going forward they will continue to engage the contacts made at this event and develop tools to ensure that they become active members of our community.

How to Use This Information
If you have an upcoming event (tradeshow or other important interactive opportunity) and you would like to create a more dynamic overall experience that conveys your brand with impact and increases your results, please feel free to contact Webolutions at 303-300-2640 for a complimentary initial consultation.

The post The A.R Wilfley Tradeshow Experience appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

For most companies, the short-term goal of most advertising is to purchase leads. Clicks do not equal leads.

Large companies and known brands use advertising for awareness; for these campaigns, impressions and clicks remain relevant metrics. Most companies, however, should be interested in clicks only as a means to acquire leads. These leads should be fed into a system that creates conversions.

For ecommerce websites, conversions are purchases. For more consultative sales industries–marketing agencies, for example–advertising conversion, is achieved when a qualified prospect is contacted. This can be via the completion of a web form or submission of an email address or phone number. If by any of these definitions, companies convert website visitors but fail to generate ROI  from social media or any advertising campaigns, adjustments must be made either to the sales process or on the front-end with ad targeting.

Targeting is possibly the most interesting aspect of social media advertising. While behavioral targeting is available elsewhere in the digital world, only advertising on social media provides the ability to strategically and instantaneously appeal to self-identified people interested in relevant offerings within a moment of heightened interest.

This article provides some fundamentals about advertising on social media networks Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Twitter Advertising
While Twitter does have an advertising system, its model and price point render it relevant for larger players only. Twitter’s advertising program requires a $15,000 minimum initial buy which covers $5,000 in advertising spend for three months. The cornerstone of the offering is placement on each Twitter user’s home page in the “trending topics” section.

Even then, the target audience is one that is Twitter-savvy, which limits the potential audience considerably regardless of industry. For companies just getting started in social media advertising, Twitter is not the venue. Facebook is.

Facebook Advertising
As with all things social media marketing in 2012, there is Facebook and then there is everything else. Until recently, Facebook ads were entirely housed within Facebook. In late June, 2012, Facebook ads started to show on Zynga.com, Facebook’s stand-alone gaming website. Industry analysts believe this is a precursor to Facebook ads being visible to Internet users via an ad network which operates outside of Facebook. For now, however, Facebook continues to function largely as a closed network. This means ads placed within Facebook are seen only within Facebook.

Facebook advertisements allow advertisers to choose the landing page—the web page to which a click goes through. Historically, conversion rates increase when Facebook ads click through to a Facebook page rather than taking the user out of the network. This spawned the practice of “like-gating,” wherein Facebook advertisers drive clicks to a custom “app,” or landing page on the advertiser’s Facebook Company Page. “Like-gating” pages usually offer a free premium—a downloadable white paper, for example—in exchange for an email address. The page design also usually encourages the visitor to “Like” the Page, though this is not required because to do so is outside Facebook’s rules for advertisers.

Facebook ads can be targeted by:
–    Geography, down to the zip code.
–    Age
–    Gender
–    Interests, both broad and precise.

Examples of precise interest are, “#Social media,” and, “#Marketing.” Facebook associates the “#” symbol with someone who has indicated to Facebook specific marketing or social media interests. She may like Webolutions’ Facebook Page, for example, or be tagged in a photo on the Page for Social Marketing for Business – Join the Conversation! It is not necessary to add the hashtag; Facebook’s advertising tool is quite intuitive and adds it automatically. It also suggests additional targeting options.

A broad interest (“Marketing,” “Social media” – no hashtag) will target Facebook users who have simply indicated in their profile that either of those topics is an “Interest.” A wide variety avails and the interface is slightly different.

Advertisers can use either or both. Conversions increase with more precise targeting; a larger audience size is reached through broad targeting. The goals and ROI measurements of your social media marketing campaign will dictate which is best.

–    Connections – Companies advertising on Facebook can choose to show their ads only to people who already “Like” their Facebook Page or, more commonly, those who do not. There are additional personal connection-related targeting options.
–    Facebook Advanced Targeting Options allow advertisers to target ad placement based on Relationship Status and “Interested In (All, Men, Women),” languages spoken, education level and workplace.

When launching a new campaign, best practice is to create multiple ads and run them simultaneously. The most effective means of testing ads on Facebook is to use the same copy with different pictures or, alternatively, the same picture with different copy.

For example, a Facebook ad campaign targeting women might use three advertisements. The picture for one might prominently feature an older woman, another a younger woman and another a male. Click through rates and conversions will reveal which audience is being most effectively targeted; conversion rates which is actually most interested in the offering. This information can be used to emphasize certain advertisements in the immediate term and, more importantly, used in future considerations for all marketing.

Another easy social media optimization opportunity is “Show Social Activity About.” Checking this box generates text below the ad showing which of the targeted user’s connections have had recent interactions with the advertiser’s Facebook Page. This visual association with a known person greatly increases recognition and the likelihood the desired action will be taken.

Facebook also offers “Sponsored Stories,” which provide constant promotion opportunities for companies posting good content on a regular basis. Options for these promotions include:

–    Generic references
–    “Check ins,” which could be useful for brick-and-mortar businesses such as retail establishments whose clientele use Facebook and who can craft a promotion and achive ROI around using Facebook’s “check in” function—not to be confused with Foursquare’s “check in” function, which is in no way associated with advertising on Facebook.

Targeting options for Sponsored Stories are nearly identical with one exception: Objective.

The “Objective” for a Sponsored Stories campaign can be set to, “Show this to people who are most likely to:
–    Like my page
–    Click on my…Sponsored Story

For most companies, Webolutions recommends the latter because it is more tangible, track-able and relevant to the goal of the campaign–conversions. The alternative, impressions, are for large, established brands on the level of Starbuck’s and IKEA for whom impressions is a pertinent ROI metric.

Clicks on Sponsored Stories open the page or wall post being promoted. There is no choice of landing page.

Advertising on LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s audience is smaller (160 million compared to Facebook’s 900 million) and time on the network pales in comparison to the Facebook juggernaut. LinkedIn advertising is more expensive than Facebook. Higher price point placements available to larger clients are featured prominently on the right side of the page.

More ad inventory in more affordable placements is available to small and medium businesses. These are seen in text banners across the top of the home page and in various display placements throughout the website. These are more affordable, but clicks are few.

LinkedIn provides targeting by:
–    Geography, down to the metro area. Example: Greater Denver Area
–    Company, by name of company or category of company. Within category, one can select industry (example: Media) and sub category (example: online media). The advertisements can also be targeted by company size.
–    Job Title, by specific job title or Job function and/or seniority. (Example: Marketing, Director.)
–    School
–    Skills
–    Group. This is probably the most intriguing of LinkedIn’s targeting criteria. If a company has built community around its brand via engagement within certain LinkedIn Groups—participating in discussions, providing valuable responses to serious inquiries—an advertisement to those groups is more likely to generate clicks.
–    Gender
–    Age: 18 and up

LinkedIn ads are visible via the LinkedIn Audience Network, which is simply a connection to the Google double click Ad Exchange ad network. This means LinkedIn ads can be seen outside of LinkedIn if advertisers choose, which they should.

An image can and should accompany LinkedIn ads. The approach should be the same as outlined above for Facebook.

Expectations
Compared to search engine marketing pay per click campaigns, click through rates for social media advertising are low, but—especially with Facebook—they are less expensive on a per click basis, easier to manage and can be more effectively targeted by most businesses.

The maximum life of a social media advertisement is three weeks. This should be incorporated into any promotion plan or campaign that includes social media advertising.

Everything with social media is “now,” and so it is with advertising on social media networks. Campaign management and optimization is hands-on and time-intensive.

How to Use This Information
One of the most important metrics in social media marketing is “reach,” or the number of people who have the potential to see your message. At any stage of any company’s social media presence, the ongoing acquisition of Likes and Followers is an important goal. While content and engagement are the long-term keys to success, advertising offers arguably the best complement.

Advertising on social media can favorably impact the ROI of all time and efforts spent on social media marketing.

The post Guide to Advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.