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7 Ways Businesses Can Get the Most From Their Digital Marketing Agencies

Are you getting what you really need from your relationship with your digital marketers? Digital marketing agencies exist to make your life easier, but they can do their job best when you’re working together efficiently. And when your digital marketers are working efficiently, they’re a big part of improving your brand reputation and growing your bottom line.

7 Ways to Get the Most From Digital Marketing Agencies

1. Know What You’re Expecting Them to Do

When you sit down to talk to digital marketing agencies, don’t speak in generalities. Having only vague goals, like “get some more social media likes” or being unsure of how your digital goals are related to your long-term business goals, keeps your marketing agency from helping you effectively. As you discuss strategy, expect a good marketing company to ask you specific questions as they nail down exactly what you want them to accomplish.

Some Examples

If one of your goals is to increase the number of followers you have on your social media accounts, good digital marketing agencies will immediately want to know why. Are you hoping to find new customers? Do you want to use social media as a way to deepen your relationship with your existing customers? Are you just trying to increase brand awareness? Your specific goals will determine what your marketing agency can do for you.

Maybe you know you need to be producing more and better blog posts, but again, why? Do you need them to drive traffic to your site? Are you hoping your blog will be a source for lead generation as people sign up for updates? The more specific you can be, the more you empower your digital marketers to generate the results you’re looking for.

2. Be Completely Honest

Good digital marketing agencies have seen it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can’t surprise them with a failed strategy you’re a little embarrassed about or a public relations snafu you’re hoping no one remembers. But if you aren’t upfront from the beginning, you’re really only wasting your own time and money.

Don’t force your digital marketing partner to reinvent the wheel and stumble over marketing techniques that you already know don’t work for you. Be sure they know about any major public relations issues so they can protect you and find ways to bury it so you can move forward. And always be honest about the challenges facing your company.

3. Try Not to Micromanage

Few things are harder on a professional than when someone without much experience insists on grabbing the reins at every turn. You’ve probably experienced this with your own clients or customers, from the person who’s sure their low-resolution image will print perfectly on a giant flyer to the one who wastes half the day of your roofing project telling you how to do your job.

Of course, you should be involved with your digital marketing partner, and at every step, and your needs and goals are paramount. But you’re hiring marketers because they bring expertise to the table that you’re lacking. Let them do the job you’ve hired them to do.

How to Manage Without Micromanaging

Whenever you’re unsure of why your agency is trying a specific approach, don’t hesitate to ask. Great digital marketers can explain their strategies clearly. But remember that they’re professionals who know what they’re doing, and once you have a plan in play, it’s usually best to stick to it unless there’s a compelling reason to divert. Think of your marketing partners as you would a team within your own company. The best team leaders are the ones who clearly lay out the goals, choose the right people for the job, and then inspire and empower them to do what they do best.

4. Be Realistic About What Will Happen

Some digital marketing agencies are quick to make pie-in-the-sky promises about how quickly they can double your revenue or triple the number of Facebook followers you have. If the promises sound too good to be true, they probably are, and the companies who make them tend to view you as just another notch in their belt or number of dollars in the bank.

It takes time to build a great website and make it fully functional. It takes time for Google’s algorithms to notice your changes and give you the bump in rankings you need. It takes time to grab attention on social media. Trust the company that clearly views their relationship with you as a partnership and wants to work with you to steadily grow your business so everyone benefits.

5. Be On Time and Demand the Same of Them

When you’ve got meetings scheduled with your digital marketers, don’t skip them. They’re crucially important, and you shouldn’t work with any agency that doesn’t also treat them that way. But being on time also means producing necessary materials when they’re needed.

Some things the agency wants from you might seem like really low priorities in the bustle of the hectic workday, but those photos or bios of your managers or the graphics of your logo are important. Until you send them to your marketers, you can’t get that change to your website, that press release, or that updated business listing that will improve your brand reputation and generate more leads.

6. Let Them Know When Things Change

Remember that your marketing partners aren’t sharing the office with you. They won’t know you’ve developed a new product or made a major update to one of your services unless you tell them. If you make a new key hire or open a branch office across town, they need to know fast so they can update the necessary business listings as well as your website.

In the digital age, every second counts. If someone else tells a story about you or one of your people before you can get the story out there, then they control the narrative. By keeping your digital marketing partners in the loop, you can stay in control of your image and reputation online.

7. Be Open to Integration

One of the biggest reasons companies struggle to get the online reputation they want or generate the traffic they need is that they’ve siloed all their digital channels instead of treating them as a contiguous whole. While Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and your own website do need different things and require their own strategies, they should be integrated with your business and controlled by one, over-arching strategy.

If that’s been your habit up until now, expect your digital marketers to ask about bringing them all together and incorporating your social media accounts into the very fabric of your business. Be open to this. You probably contacted the agency because you needed help with your digital marketing, so let them bring their expertise to bear.

Get the Most From Your Digital Marketing Agency

At Digital Marketing Collective, we work hard to get to know you so we can all benefit. Our goal is nothing less than helping you grow your business and revenue by using our expertise to take advantage of everything digital marketing can do. Contact Digital Marketing Collective today to get started getting the most from your digital marketing agency.

Get Noticed! The Power of Hiring an Amazing Digital Media Agency

Are you looking to power up your social media presence? Would you like to have the ability to know every time someone mentions your business on the internet? Do you dream of a perfectly designed website that will dazzle your prospects? At DM Collective in Calgary, Alberta, we can give you all of these things and show you the true power of partnering with a digital media agency: more customers.

What Is a Digital Media Agency?

In short, a digital media agency is your greatest ally when it comes to attracting new prospects. It is a company that specializes in understanding the most effective ways to market a business online. Part of the work of a digital media agency includes doing research and keeping up-to-date on the ever-changing landscape of technology and social media. Believe us, this task is a full-time job, and not one many business owners want to take on in addition to running their company.

Using its research and experience, a digital media agency can create a customized digital marketing strategy for you that will have you advertising on the platforms where you are most likely to reach people who want your services. It can design content for your website and social media that will appeal to your prospects. Importantly, it can work with the logic of search engines so that when people Google your services, your listings appear on the first page of the results.

Today, agencies that specialize in digital media provide the following services:

  • Website design
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Social media management
  • Reputation management
  • Web analytics
  • Digital advertising including Pay Per Click (PPC) listings
  • Listings for your business in popular online directories
  • Targeted email campaigns
  • Content management
  • Blog posts

The Power of Digital Marketing

The Numbers Tell All

Today, there are over 3 billion social media users. 78% of mobile searches for a business result in a sale. 88% of consumers choose a business based on its online reviews. These are just a few examples of the data that highlights the fact that digital marketing offers a huge growth opportunity for your business.

You Don’t Want to Miss Out

Falling behind on your digital marketing game is like saying goodbye to customers before they even reach your doors. Most people use search engines to find their goods and services. If they don’t locate your business, they will end up on someone else’s website and take their business to the competition. The visibility of your website and other listings in local search results is essential to your ability to attract customers.

New prospects are out there proactively looking for your services, but you need to have an online presence to get noticed. Once they have found you, you need to impress them with attractive visuals and engaging content to win their business.

8 Ways Partnering With a Digital Media Agency Can Help Grow Your Business

1. It Will Help You Attract New Leads

With all the ways to measure success on the internet these days, from the number of followers you have to your ranking in online directories, it is easy to forget that the whole point of building an online presence is to make more sales. An agency that specializes in digital media can help you develop your online presence strategically, so that the money and time you invest result in dollars, not just likes and comments.

2. It Will Increase Your Online Visibility

There are several ways in which a digital media agency can make your business more visible online. First, if you don’t already have a website and profiles on the key social media platforms, it can help you create them. Second, it can identify which online directories people look through when they need your services. Third, it can boost your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Having high SEO means that search engines will display your business on the first page of results when people search for relevant terms.

3. It Can Help You Make a Good First Impression

Most prospects will take a good look at your website, your social media, and your online reviews long before they meet you or visit your physical place of business. You wouldn’t leave your storefront unkempt, and it’s equally important to maintain an attractive presence online.

4. It Can Improve the Aesthetics of Your Digital Marketing

Part of making a good first impression includes using high-quality visuals and a pleasing layout for your website and your social media profiles. If you are not a design expert, no worries! Your agency can help you with the aesthetic component of your marketing.

5. It Can Help You Create Attractive, Relevant Content

Beyond aesthetics, the content you post needs to be interesting, entertaining, informative, and relevant to the needs of your prospects. Content can be anything from a Youtube video in which you explain your expertise to an Instagram photo of your team conducting business to a blog post in which you discuss a trending topic in your industry. Your agency can help you strategize what content to post and where to post it.

6. It Can Help You Understand and Manage Your Brand’s Reputation

Reputation management refers to being aware of how your brand is perceived and taking actions to ensure that prospects see it in a positive light. Your agency can help you track when and where your business is mentioned anywhere on the internet. It can also give you notifications about online reviews, so that you can respond to them as soon as possible.

For more information on reputation management, check out our blog post below:
https://dmclocal.com/what-is-brand-reputation-protection-6-things-you-need-to-know/

7. It Can Identify Tools to Help You Understand Where Your Marketing Efforts Are Paying Off

One of the best things the internet has to offer your business is consumer data. By using web analytics, a digital media agency can help you identify which demographics are most likely to buy your services. From there, you can target these demographics in your campaigns.

As your marketing efforts develop, your agency can help you track how many people responded to your listings, and which campaigns led to the most sales. With this information, you can tweak your strategy to be even more effective.

8. It Can Help You Communicate With Customers Over Channels They Prefer

Reaching out to customers in certain ways can be awkward. For example, most people don’t want to be interrupted by a phone call during dinner. In the digital age, many people prefer to communicate over online channels, such as Facebook Messenger and email. Your agency can help you design effective email campaigns that will promote your services. It can also help you use the most popular apps to enrich your current business relationships.

For more information on the benefits of working with an agency that specializes in digital media, read our blog post here:
https://dmclocal.com/5-things-you-should-be-able-to-expect-from-a-full-service-digital-marketing-agency/

Partnering for Powerful Growth

A digital media agency is a great resource when it comes to outsourcing your marketing in a way that will be cost-effective and extremely successful. We can help you take advantage of all the potential the internet has to offer. Contact DM Collective in Calgary, Alberta, for more information on our services. We look forward to making your business shine online.

10 Characteristics of a Top-Tier Marketing Agency

Marketing is an important aspect of business development. Unless you run a monopolistic business, you are likely to need the services of a marketing agency sooner or later. Due to the demand for marketing services, there are hundreds if not thousands of marketing agencies ready and willing to create awareness for your brand. However, as with many things in life, marketing agencies are not created equal. While some are good at what they do, others promise what they cannot deliver. To help you identify a top-tier marketing agency, here are 10 characteristics to look out for:

10 Characteristics of a Top-Tier Marketing Agency

1. Good Communication

You cannot convince people to buy a product or a service without strong communication skills. Whether it is through traditional or digital marketing, good communication enables you to present your business to potential customers in an appealing and convincing manner. A top-tier marketing agency communicates its ideas coherently to you and to your target audience. If you find yourself struggling to understand the message coming from the agency, that might be a red flag you should not ignore.

2. Great Staff

A top-tier marketing company should have a team of enthusiastic and passionate personnel. Team members should be proficient in several areas and should work together like a well-oiled machine in complementary roles. Each member should be confident in the skills and abilities of the other members. For example, if you are talking to the company’s designer, he or she must be confident in the company’s copywriter’ s ability to deliver a compelling piece of writing to match a good art. The staff of a good agency should be proficient in sales, creative designs, copywriting, data analysis and more.

3. Problem-Solving Skills

Almost every marketing campaign faces some challenges during the planning process or during implementation. While some of these challenges are expected, others arise out of the blue. The mark of a top-tier marketing company is not its ability to avoid such challenges, but rather its ingenuity in overcoming challenges as they arise without compromising on quality or missing agreed deadlines. An average marketing company tries as much as possible to avoid difficulties, and when this fails, their campaigns are most likely to stall and eventually fail.

4. Creativity

Creativity is a major characteristic of top-tier marketing firms. Marketers who are good at their jobs often color outside the lines and are always bursting with fresh ideas. They are willing and ready to push the boundaries to deliver a marketing campaign that makes your brand stand out among your competitors. When not setting the trends, a good marketing firm is always alert to emerging trends and adjusts accordingly to match the demands of the market.

You do not want to spend your money on an agency that is always playing catch up. If their ideas do not impress you, it is unlikely they will impress your target audience.

5. Good Executors

In addition to being creative, a top-tier marketing agency should also be a great executor. Having creative ideas on paper and in presentations will not do much for your brand if the agency cannot implement them. A top-notch marketing firm has tried-and-true systems to help them execute the ideas they present to their clients during a pitch. They also ensure that the execution of these ideas happen within the agreed timeframe.

A poorly executed marketing campaign can ruin the good reputation of your brand. For example, a marketing firm can use influencers whose personalities, values and ideologies contradict those represented by your brand. This is likely to draw negative attention and reflects badly on your brand.

6. Data-Driven

Men lie; women lie; but numbers never do. Any marketing agency worth its name must use big data to run its marketing campaign. Data allows you to target specific audiences that are likely to spend their money on your product or service. Mastery of data enables a marketing firm to understand your target audience, which helps them tailor relevant marketing campaigns.

 Data analysis also allows a marketing company to measure the effectiveness and success of their strategies by establishing sales conversion generated from their campaigns. Data also helps you to strengthen your brand by showing you all the areas that need improvements.

7. Strong Online Presence

You cannot rely on a marketing agency that does not market itself. The website and social media pages of top-notch marketing firms are always up to date. They also rank higher on search engines and have a huge social media impact. A significantly high number of followers across various social media platforms is a good indication of a reliable marketing company. Another thing that separates a top-tier marketing agency from its peers is the ability to influence trending topics on social media platforms.

8. Focus on Story-Telling and Content Creation

Everyone loves a good story. A good story becomes a great story when told in an appealing, exciting and captivating manner. Effective and successful marketing campaigns rely heavily on good content creation. A top-tier marketing firm invests in experienced content creators who come up with catchy premium content that helps your brand to attract, convert, and retain customers. Story-telling humanizes your brand giving it a unique personality that your customers can identify with.

Relevant content presented appealingly gives you a competitive edge over your competitors. The content should change at each stage of marketing and on each social media platform to remain relevant.

9. Continuous Learners

The marketing industry is always evolving and advancing. What works today might not work tomorrow. Top-tier marketing firms spend a significant amount of resources in professional development for their staff. Marketing professional spend money and time reading, researching, networking ad learning new skills. There is always something new to learn. Marketing firms that are continuous learners stay ahead of their competition by offering their clients access to the latest and most effective innovations to drive their businesses forward.

10. Transparency

Business is all about money. Some marketing agencies have been in the spotlight for various reasons, including outsourcing important tasks to cheap contractors, offering kickbacks to media companies and engaging in fraudulent advertising. After dealing with such agencies, a brand rarely gets value for their money and sometimes ends up with a negative public image. A top-tier marketing firm promotes transparency in the following ways:

  • They show interest in your goals and expectations
  • They give you a clear and brief contract that clearly outlines the terms and agreements
  • They are open about their strategies and tactics
  • They work towards your long-term goals instead of offering you quick fixes

Work With the Best

Effective marketing campaigns will boost traffic and improve your sales. While you may be a great entrepreneur, marketing might not be your strong suit, or you just might not have time to run a business and handle marketing at the same time. We’ve compiled a list of some characteristics to look out for before settling on a marketing agency that will drive your business forward. When you want to work with a company that has all these characteristics and more, contact DM Collective in Calgary, Alberta for top-tier marketing services.

5 Things You Should Be Able to Expect From a Full Service Digital Marketing Agency

Technology has become the heart of the modern business world, and it is important for every company to have a healthy online presence. Nothing evolves faster than technology, and with new strategies, social platforms, and advertising techniques emerging every day, it is very difficult for a business owner to keep up. A strong partnership with a full service digital marketing agency is as important to a business as the professionals they rely on for legal or accounting advice. In this article, we will discuss five things you can expect from your full service digital marketing agency.

5 Services of a Full Service Digital Marketing Agency

Making a business decision is easy when you only have a handful of options to choose from. In the old days of marketing, businesses could choose between print, television, or radio advertising. Today, however, there are so many advertising options that the choice can become paralyzing. Digital marketing goes beyond advertising and engages concepts like customer engagement, brand loyalty, online reputation management, and more. If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to get lost in the woods and spend far more time and energy on digital marketing than you will ever recuperate from the results of your expense and labor.

A full service digital marketing agency is your guide to the confusing landscape of online marketing. They make it their job to keep up with the newest innovations and trends, so you don’t have to do inefficient, time-consuming research. They know how to manage your online presence using proven methods that will save you money and get results. Your full service digital marketing agency partners with you and gives you the means to achieve your objectives with the best return on your marketing investment. Here are some ways they can help.

1. Reputation Management

In the modern marketplace, it’s critical to pay attention to what customers and the general public are saying about your brand. A viral news story can create tremendous exposure, which can have a tremendous effect on a company.

However, a negative viral news story can cause irreparable damage. It is important for all businesses to take an interest in what is being said online so they can boost positive stories and smooth out negative ones. How a business interacts with customers online can quickly turn a negative press event into a positive one.

Businesses must also endeavor to have a strong, positive presence on review sites and in search engines. Recent studies have shown that customers perceive online reviews with nearly the same confidence as they perceive personal recommendations. It is important for every brand to have a presence where potential customers are looking, and to ensure that all the information listed about their business is accurate and fair. Click here for more information on an effective online reputation management strategy.

2. Brand Exposure

Traditional marketing always operated on the philosophy of achieving the highest visibility possible. However, that concept is expensive and outdated. Digital marketing understands that overall visibility isn’t as important as ensuring your brand has a good presence in the places where potential customers or clients are most likely to conglomerate.

Digital marketing is able to design their strategies for brand exposure with surgical precision by using the tremendous amount of customer data that is available. This results in exposure that is more effective and less expensive.

3. Dashboard Reporting

One of the main problems businesses have with their digital marketing strategy is simply getting organized. Even a basic digital marketing strategy requires the use of multiple social media platforms, all of which require their own passwords. Although different platforms are often similar, many of them have slightly different mechanisms and features that can take time to master. The availability and quality of analytical reports also fluctuate over different platforms.

A successful digital marketing strategy needs to have a maximum amount of impact with a minimal time obligation. Another problem with business social media accounts is that they can sap productivity by pulling your employees away from business-related tasks. With a full service digital marketing agency, you will be able to combine all the aspects of your digital marketing strategy under a single dashboard that will give you a comprehensive, instant snapshot from the moment you log in. You can also elect to have actionable reports sent as emails or text messages.

4. Results-Driven Strategies

Intuition is a powerful factor in business, but there is no substitute for hard data. Most people are aware of the analytical tools that are available through social media and advertising platforms, but it takes an expert to harness the full power of all that data.

A full service digital marketing agency will show you how to use smart tools to evaluate the effectiveness of all your marketing campaigns. Not only will you be able to asses the campaigns themselves—you’ll be able to separate and pay attention to individual components of each campaign.

It is tempting to stick with a strategy that has proven to be effective in the past, but with results-driven strategies, you can refine and improve every component of everything you do. You’ll be able to make decisions based on how people truly responded to your campaigns instead of relying on third-party assessments or interpretations. The more you study and get to know your customer base through analytical data, the more you can refine your company to provide the services that are most in-demand.

5. One on One Consulting

One common complaint about the technological age is that although it is more convenient, it has become far more impersonal. A superior full service digital marketing agency will pride itself on superior communication and be available for one-on-one consulting. You should think of your digital marketing agency as a partner that will help you achieve the overall objectives of your company. It is important to establish a strong relationship from the beginning with a good communication structure and a clear concept of purpose.

Some components of your digital marketing strategy need to be shared with everyone who is an employee of your brand. Always remember that any online interaction involving an individual who represents your company will contribute to the online perception of your brand. It is important that everyone who represents your brand understands expected conduct for both professional and personal online conduct. Click here to learn more about the benefits of local support from your digital marketing agency.

Efficient, Inexpensive, and Effective Digital Marketing

An online presence is no longer enough to be competitive in the ever-evolving modern business world. If you don’t ensure that your brand or business has a healthy presence on the right platforms, then the money you spend on marketing could result in a sunken cost. A full service digital marketing agency can dedicate all its resources to staying up to date with current technological and marketing trends to ensure that your business is taking advantage of the most effective strategies available.

Full service digital marketing agencies take the guesswork out of marketing and allow you to focus on the considerable obligations of running a successful business. With a superior return on investment, and access to a team of professionals with your best interests in mind, a full service digital marketing agency is the key to earning and maintaining a strong market share for your brand. Contact DM Collective to discuss how partnering with a full service digital marketing agency can propel your brand to greater profitability.

What Is Brand Reputation Protection? 6 Things You Need to Know

The internet can be a battleground, and your business needs a superhero to protect it against inaccurate information, competitors, and other nefarious forces. In a bygone era, you could rely on a commitment to good business practices to ensure a positive relationship with the public. In the modern digital marketplace, it is important to implement a variety of strategies for brand reputation protection.

What Is Brand Reputation Protection?

It has never been easier for a business to target and interact directly with potential customers. Gone are the days of the anonymous comments box where businesses could receive suggestions and complaints out of public view. Today, customers use social media to offer praise or vent their displeasure.

The unwritten rule is that even if customers leave a complaint on their personal social media account, they secretly expect the brand will hear their objection and respond accordingly. This unvoiced expectation creates a need for all businesses to implement an online reputation management strategy.

Brand reputation protection allows business owners to monitor the online discussion over their service, brand, or product. All businesses hope to be the focus of a positive viral media story, which can provide a staggering level of brand visibility. However, it is equally important to protect against negative viral media attention that can cause irreparable brand damage. Brand reputation protection gives business owners the power to influence the online discussion about their brand and provide course corrections when necessary.

6 Things to Know

1. It Should Prevent Inaccurate Listings

One of the first things you need to ensure is that any online listings that reference your brand have accurate information. It is easy to ensure the listings are accurate on pages you control.

However, there are many listings that harvest and copy information from third party sites. If these listings are inaccurate, or your business hours change, they could lead to customer frustration. Frustrated customers often leave negative reviews, which can severely damage your online reputation.

Digital reputation experts use smart tools to scour the internet in search of incomplete or inaccurate data. With the regular demands of a business, you don’t have time to search the internet for listings to verify their accuracy. Smart tools help provide business owners with the peace of mind that they will not be subject to a negative online response because of an inaccurate third party listing that they didn’t even know existed.

2. It Involves Cultivating Positive Reviews

Recent studies have concluded that potential customers give nearly the same credibility to online reviews as they do to recommendations from friends and acquaintances. Many people search for a business and make their final choice based on the star rating and the number of reviews that turn up in the search. Therefore, it is important for all brands to develop a positive presence on review sites.

One star reviews can be very damaging to your brand’s online presence, but there are some things businesses can do to minimize the negative effect. Businesses can request the removal of obviously illegitimate reviews, but this can be a time-consuming process. A better response is to bury negative reviews with promotions that lead to a proliferation of positive reviews. Your digital marketing expert can help ensure that all review pages have positive reviews that will help make your business a more attractive choice for potential customers.

3. It Uses Smart Tools

A single person, or even a team of people, cannot monitor the whole Internet in search of conversations that relate to your brand. Scrolling through thousands of pages of data would be time consuming and inefficient. However, it’s very important that you know what is being said about your brand so that you can respond appropriately and make sure the conversation remains positive.

Modern smart tools can effectively monitor the internet and provide you with simple, actionable reports to a single dashboard, email, or even text messages. The sooner you respond to a trending issue, the better chance you have of converting a potentially negative discussion into something positive for your business. Time is critical for brand reputation protection, and you should consider every mention of your brand as an opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to superior customer service.

4. It Involves Proper Training for Employees

Things can get out of control quickly on the internet, and it’s important that everyone involved with your business has a strong foundation in professional online etiquette. All businesses should regard online interactions with the same importance and with the same expectations for professionalism that they have for employee interactions with customers in their place of business.

Every employee represents your business and has an influence on the online perception of your brand. This applies both to your employees when they are interacting with the public from a business social media account and when they make posts on their private social media pages. Your digital marketing expert can help you design and implement workshops so you and all your employees know expectations for online interactions that will protect your brand’s reputation.

5. You Must Keep Up-to-Date With New Trends

Brand reputation protection is as important to your business as your legal or accounting team. You don’t have to be a digital marketing expert to understand that technology evolves quickly. Marketing tactics that were effective as little as six months ago become obsolete and represent a sunk cost if your business cannot adapt and implement new strategies. Keeping up to date with modern techniques, tools, and methods is a full-time job that requires the diligence of an expert.

Many businesses attempt to handle their brand reputation protection in house, but this is an inefficient and ineffective strategy. Employees do not have time to research digital marketing trends and implement them while they perform their other duties. The result is that your business will be slow to learn and implement new strategies. Building a relationship with a professional digital marketing team helps ensure you will have access to the most dynamic strategies.

6. It’s the Best Return on Your Investment

Brand reputation management is like a shield that helps ensure your business will not be caught off guard by a negative viral media story. The information you receive from your brand reputation practices can also be used to magnify the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.

The more you know about how potential clients respond to your services and your advertisements, the more you can adapt your business to suit the needs of your clients. With targeted marketing and smart tools, you can apply statistical analysis to ensure you get the most out of every marketing dollar you spend.

Take Control of Your Brand

The internet evolves fast, and if you don’t have a knowledgeable expert on your side, you and your business can quickly fall behind. The internet has enormous power both to elevate your business to new levels of profitability, or to bring it crashing down.

Disregarding brand reputation protection can also leave you vulnerable to smear campaigns from unscrupulous competitors. In the lawless wasteland of the internet, it’s important to have a protector on your side. Contact the experts at DM Collective today to discover how to take your brand to the next level.

Edmonton Marketing: 6 Trends for 2020

The marketing world moves faster every year, bringing new trends with each change of the calendar. If you’re part of the digital marketplace, you’re one of countless businesses competing for space in an evolving battleground. Many companies are turning to full-service digital marketing agencies to handle their online presence. We’re DM Collective, a digital marketing collective based in Calgary and serving the Alberta metro area.

How We Can Help

We specialize in services including SEO, web design, digital advertising, social media management, and developing a comprehensive online presence.

The Edmonton marketing world in 2020 is a competitive place, and every business needs a detailed strategy to stand out. DM Collective in Calgary, Alberta is ready to deliver digital marketing services for your company. Read on to discover everything you need to know about the top Edmonton marketing trends of 2020.

Edmonton Marketing: 6 Trends for 2020

Greater Advertiser Targeting

The days of putting out a large blast of ads hoping to get views on a popular social media platform are behind you thanks to advertising micro-targeting. Studies show that most people disregard ads that aren’t relevant to their interests, so companies are getting better at researching their target audience.

Once a business knows who is most likely to be interested in their product, they know where to advertise and what approach to take. One of the most effective advertising techniques is to not let your audience know they’re seeing an ad.

How It Works

People search out great content on the internet, and many of the most effective ads are designed to look like content. Sponsored articles on blogs relevant to your customer base’s interests are a great way to raise awareness and attention.

Studies show that while a majority of readers ignore ads, tailored messages and relevant content boost purchase rates to over one-third. Algorithms are making it easier to ensure your customer base only sees the ads they’re likely to act on.

Automation Is the Future

Great customer service used to mean having on-staff agents for interaction with potential and existing customers, fielding questions and responding to complaints. This was effective, but not time and cost-efficient for growing companies. That’s why many companies in the Edmonton marketing field are turning to chatbots and other automated systems.

How They Work

Chatbots are pre-programmed software with hundreds of answers to commonly asked questions for your business. Studies show that most customer service queries fall in a few categories, making it easy to process and resolve many questions without the help of a human behind the computer screen.

For questions without a response in the chatbot, the program will refer the person to call back during business hours or connect them to someone on staff.

The ideal chatbot is courteous but businesslike, cutting down on the chatter and awkwardness that can sometimes come with talking to a customer service representative. They can also be programmed in multiple languages to account for the market’s growing diversity.

The Growing Mobile Marketplace

Many older companies started their digital marketing strategy when the desktop was king and are finding themselves left behind due to an old website. Over half of customers now surf the internet and make their purchases on mobile devices, making a mobile-friendly website essential. Part of any 2020 digital marketing strategy should include making sure all parts of your website are mobile-friendly.

What It Involves

A mobile-friendly website should have easy-to-read text with buttons that are responsive and set apart from other functions. The landing page should have minimal features and guide people visually to the points you want them to focus on. This includes the purchase link and any other key content or informational links.

Many companies are also communicating more through mobile. If you have a private messaging system for customer service, many companies are using WhatsApp, WeChat, or Facebook Messenger for easy communication.

Personalization Is Key

Using algorithms to study the behavior of potential customers is a popular and occasionally controversial technique to target likely buyers. The centralization of internet use among a network of major websites owned by tech conglomerates allows companies to collect data on those customers’ search history and social media activity.

This allows major ad networks like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to create personalized advertising outputs for each of their visitors. While some platforms have courted controversy for selling user data to outside customers, the majority use this technique effectively to advertise partner products to interested parties.

How It Works

A popular example is showing advertising for attractions in a certain city after a visitor has searched for hotels in that area. Rolling out an ad campaign with Twitter or Google is worth the investment because, thanks to their algorithm, you get thousands of tailored ad campaigns.

Changes In SEO

Search engine optimization is one of the oldest techniques in digital marketing, but it’s evolved significantly since the early days that focused on keyword use. Combining search engine data with individual customer profiles allows the algorithms to boost results for websites that viewers are likely to be most interested in.

Microtargeting is a way to let more than one site get the benefit of being the top hit. Google and other search engines have become savvier at separating real search engine optimization from attempts to game the system. That’s why it’s especially important for clients in the Edmonton marketing field to have a solid strategy. Many agencies boast of their SEO strategy, but too many still rely on discredited techniques that could get your ranking penalized by Google.

Transparency and Trust

Customers are becoming savvier by the day, and one of the biggest things they’re demanding from tech companies is greater disclosure on how their data is used. It’s easy for a company to switch things up after a failed marketing pitch, but it’s less easy to rebuild trust.

That’s why the most effective digital marketing companies are being more upfront with their strategy and how they approach customers. Having a full-service digital marketing agency like DM Collective handling your strategy is a good move because you have experts in digital ethics at your disposal.

How It Works

When you work with us, you get access to a full suite of the top statistical tools and you have the authority to decide what is released to the public. Greater communication with the public about your marketing strategy makes it easy to establish your core values with the customer and open yourself up to constructive suggestions.

Let DM Collective Conquer the Edmonton Marketing Field for Your Company

Staying current in the fast-paced world of Edmonton marketing is critical to keeping ahead of your competition. No matter what field of business you’re in, you’re competing for a slot in the crowded digital marketplace and one smart move can send you to the head of the pack. That’s why many top businesses are turning to the experts in the field.

Contact us at DM Collective in Calgary, Alberta today. We’re serving clients in the Alberta metro area and beyond with full-service digital marketing support, including one-on-one consulting and a centralized dashboard for all your functions.

The 5 Most Common Mistakes People Make in Choosing Local Digital Marketing Agencies

Growing your business in the digital age means partnering with the right marketing company. You need to work with local digital marketing agencies who understand the Calgary area, how to appeal to your target demographic, and what local events and life rhythms will affect your business. At the same time, you don’t want to make a mistake in choosing a partner.

5 Mistakes People Make When Choosing Local Digital Marketing Agencies

Going Local Just for the Sake of Local

You should be choosing a local company, but you shouldn’t choose one only because they’re local. With local digital marketing agencies you get easy face-to-face interactions and prioritised help, and you never have to worry about being farmed out to people on the other side of the globe with no idea of the challenges your operation faces.

But being local isn’t enough. You still need to consider a company’s marketing skill, whether or not they can offer you full service or only work with one aspect of digital marketing, and their ability to work well with your people.

Failing to Do Your Research

Look at case studies. Consider Google ratings. Ask the hard questions about the process they’ll use, how they communicate, what they do when something doesn’t seem to work, and what metrics they’ll be using to track results.

It should go without saying, but don’t forget to check out the company’s website and blog as well as their social media presence. If they’re not doing an effective job at marketing themselves, will they be able to market you?

Falling for Pie-in-the-Sky Offers

Your great-great-grandmother probably said this, and it’s very true: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Great digital marketing companies become the best by hard work. They master the key fundamentals, keep up on the latest changes, and put enormous effort into strategy and execution. They’re experts at what they do: just like you.

If a digital marketing company is advertising some kind of secret, proprietary tactic guaranteed to get you instant results, that’s your cue to look elsewhere. A digital marketing company should be able to explain clearly what they’re going to do without prevaricating, making wild promises, or talking in meaningless generalities.

Looking at Only One Measure of Success

Effective digital marketing is about more than just SEO. It’s also email marketing, quality content and blogging, search and display advertising, web development, producing quality videos, social media management, and taking advantage of mobile marketing. Digital marketing has many complicated, inter-connected fields, and your digital marketing partner has to be able to help you with all of them.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you’ve got one thing nailed that you just need an expert to help you with one or two things. Look for a marketing partner with expertise in all areas of online marketing. Your whole marketing effort needs to be tightly integrated. Messages, videos, email offers, ads, and announcements should all be coordinated, themed, timed and released at the perfect moment.

Making It All About Money

It needs to be said: effective digital marketing isn’t cheap. It takes serious effort, concentrated attention, and learned expertise. Just as in your industry, none of that comes without effort. In some ways, you will always get what you pay for.

At the same time, the most expensive agency isn’t necessarily the best, either. To find the right agency, you have to prioritise something other than money. Take budget into account, but not at the expense of expertise, skill, and strategy.

Make the Right Choice

Work with your local Calgary-area digital marketing experts; experts with a variety of expertise in all aspects of digital marketing. Reach out to Digital Marketing Collective and get Calgary’s premier digital marketing company to work for you today.

5 No-Fuss Ways to Get the Most Out of Local Digital Marketing Agencies in 2020

Digital marketing has remarkable power to determine your brand equity, get your values out there in the public eye, and boost your bottom line. The trick is getting the most out of your relationship with your local digital marketing agencies; and in 2020 that means understanding what digital marketing can do and what you want for your partnership.

What Digital Marketing Is All About

If your company has been around for a while, you could be forgiven for dismissing digital marketing as something that’s only necessary for e-commerce or new brands. The reality is that digital marketing is essential for every business in the 21st-century.

The first PC was introduced to the world in 1981, and it didn’t take long for businesses to see that the personal computer offered important ways to connect with consumers. By the 1990s, the search engine had starting to influence how people looked for a business and evaluated before they bought.

Today there’s so much information available online that consumers generally don’t make a buying decision until they’ve perused the Internet. And while they’re online, they’re generally giving as much weight to online reviews as they would to recommendations or warnings from friends and family. Local digital marketing agencies help you take advantage of the situation while avoiding the pitfalls that can come when consumers have access to so much information and almost anyone can put almost anything into the online space.

Get the Most From Local Digital Marketing Agencies

Talk

Your digital marketing agency can only help you solidify your brand reputation and build brand equity if you have a good sense of who you are and where you want to go. When you talk to your local marketing agency, go beyond the generalities. Every business wants to be at the top of search results, but not every business has a strong sense of their brand value and promise and the way effective digital marketing can use this to influence your relationship with consumers.

Listen

Local digital marketing agencies hire the best. They proactively look for people with expertise in building brands across all the various digital spaces and who know what locals are looking for. A great agency will have experts in e-mail marketing, display advertising, blogging, SEO, mobile marketing and more. If you’ve got access to expertise, why not use it?

Move to Mobile

People are using their mobile for everything these days, from keeping receipts to writing emails to researching brands before they buy. The modern business has to be mobile-forward. To get the most from your local digital marketing agency, it’s important you understand the power of mobile and intentionally discuss how to leverage that power to your advantage.

Understand Your Audience

Digital marketing in the 21st century can’t be general or unfocused. Consumers want a connection with their brands. They want to know your company promise and buy where business values align with their own. You’ll get the most from your digital marketing partner if you have a strong sense of your target customer so your marketing efforts zero in effectively.

Know What You Want

Perhaps the most powerful thing in digital media is the call to action. Through your call to action, you communicate to potential consumers what it is you want them to do. This might be to buy, to reach out, to join a mailing list, or even to watch a video: but if you know exactly what you want people to do when they hear your brand name or visit your website, you empower your digital marketing agency to help you achieve success.

Work With the Best

You want to be the company people in the Calgary area turn to, so why not work with the region’s leading local digital marketing agency? Call Digital Marketing Collective today and see where we can take your brand tomorrow.

Why a Calgary Digital Marketing Agency Is Your Best Bet for Local Support

From coordinating the supply chain to keeping projects within budget and keeping up with payroll, your plate is full. Keeping your Calgary business thriving takes constant attention, and it’s easy to let some aspects of marketing fall through the cracks. Hiring a dedicated marketing agency gives you access to the best marketing expertise without the need to hire on yet more full-time staff. That’s great; but which marketing agency should you choose? A local Calgary digital marketing agency, or one of the national or even international marketing services?

The big national companies that have a lot of money make a lot of claims, but in the end, a local agency is your best bet for local support.

Why a Calgary Digital Marketing Agency Is Your Best Bet

You’re Always Talking to Someone Qualified

When a big marketing agency spread across multiple time zones offers “24/7” support, you have reason to be suspicious. In many cases, what they mean by this is that they’ve hired people across the country, and sometimes on the other side of the world, to be available on chat or by phone during working hours in their own time zone. Then, no matter who calls them or from where, there’s someone to answer the phone. But are the people on the phone actually experts with detailed knowledge of your account?

If you happen to call during normal business hours at the main office, there will be someone to talk to, but otherwise, you might be talking to someone who can’t actually give you any personalized help. They can make a note of your issue and make sure someone gets back to you, but in the end, you might be paying extra for a service that doesn’t really exist. In contrast, a local Calgary digital marketing agency keeps the same hours you do, and in the same time zone, and when you call there’s always someone on the other line who knows all about your situation.

You’ll Get Help More Quickly

A big national marketing agency, even if you reach them immediately, may not be able to send someone over right away to discuss your needs or help you change up your strategy. It could take a few days, particularly if you’re a small or medium-sized business. A national agency is going to prioritize their time and effort by who has the biggest account and which clients are in the markets they get the most out of.

Your local marketing agency is committing to thriving in the same community that you work in. That means providing great service to businesses like yours in Calgary. There’s never any reason for them to hesitate to meet and every reason to help you tweak your strategy until you’re perfectly happy with it.

You’ll Work With People in the Know

Every region moves to its own rhythm. There are particular times of the year and certain holidays that are more important to business than another and city-specific events that provide unique challenges or opportunities. A big national marketing agency doesn’t have its finger on the pulse of where you operate.

Your local Calgary digital marketing agency, on the other hand, knows what’s going on where you live. They know when a certain time of year will be more crucial to your business or when a special event is planned. They can help you quickly change up your marketing tactics to maximize opportunities and know when they shouldn’t distract you because you need to focus your attention.

Get the Best in Local Marketing Support

Our local Calgary marketing agency is adaptable and ready to help you thrive in the community we all share. For access to the best in marketing expertise and local support you can count on, contact the Digital Marketing Collective today.

9 Surprising Stats That Will Help You Choose a Digital Marketing Agency in Calgary

Is your business making the most of digital marketing? If you’re not investing much in digital marketing yet or aren’t seeing the results everyone seems to be talking about, the issue could be choosing the right digital marketing agency in Calgary. There are some surprising stats that illustrate just how crucial it is to work with the best.

9 Surprising Stats You Need to Know

1. The Importance of Video

Including a good video on your website landing pages can increase conversions by 86%. That’s an increase worth shooting for; the trick is producing quality, relevant videos that will grab those conversions. You need digital marketers who know your industry, know what will appeal to your local customers, and have the expertise to produce what you need.

2. Conversions vs Outreach

It only costs $1 to convert a customer: the real expense, $92, is in acquiring them. While you do need some help making those conversions happen, where you especially can’t afford to waste money working with anyone less than the best is in outreach.

3. SEO

Did you know that 90% of people who conduct an Internet search haven’t made up their minds before they start? The vast majority of searchers are open to being swayed by your effective digital marketing campaign. Are they?

4. Longtail Keywords

One of the key reasons to find the right digital marketing agency in Calgary is the importance of keywords. Short, generic keywords are almost impossible for a small or medium-sized business to rank for, but longtail keywords are easier. But when 50% of search queries are 4+ words long, do you have the time, expertize, and resources to discover exactly which of these phrases are the right ones?

5. Security

Well over 80% of people will not buy something if they’re on an unsecure website. Not only does your website have to be actually secure; you also have to make that clear to everyone who visits your site.

6. Mobile Users

More than half of smartphone users discover a new company or product when they search with their mobile phones. You want to be one of the first products popping up, but getting into that position takes expert help and professionals dedicating to keeping up with all the changes in search algorithms and SEO in general.

7. The Competition

Your competition is planning on investing more in digital marketing, threatening to leave behind anyone who doesn’t take digital marketing seriously enough. 61% have made better SEO and a greater organic presence their top marketing priority.

8. Paid vs Organic

Internet consumers are wise to the paid advertisements and don’t trust them. After all, if they wanted to see paid advertisements, they could go a bit early to the movies. When they go online, they’re looking for organic results with trustworthy reviews, and research shows that nearly 80% of searchers will only look at organic results.

9. Beyond Facebook

Facebook is still crucially important, with nearly 2.4 billion active monthly users, but it’s not going to hold its position at the top forever. Only about half of teens are using Facebook these days, and Facebook recently had to admit that around 270 million of its profiles aren’t even real. You need professional marketers who can make the most of Facebook while also helping you broaden your social media presence to other key platforms.

Your Digital Marketing Agency in Calgary

See for yourself the difference an experienced, local digital marketing agency can make for your business and contact DM collective today. We have our fingers on the pulse of the digital landscape and can help you get the results you need.