Webinar: 2022 Planning: How to Develop a Strategy that Aligns with your Business Goals

Webinar: 2022 Planning: How to Develop a Strategy that Aligns with your Business Goals

by | Nov 1, 2021 | &Marketing U, Business & Marketing Strategy, Business Intelligence & Analytics, Events, Insights, Marketing Planning & Execution

Webinar: 2022 Planning: How to Develop a Strategy that Aligns with your Business Goals

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It’s often been said that failing to plan is planning to fail. This adage holds especially true in this current landscape of supply chain issues affecting most every sector, labor shortages, and an ever-changing social media environment.

Watch the 2022 Planning: How to Develop a Strategy that Aligns with your Business Goals Webinar led by Paul Ferguson, Steve Pepe, Tim Walters, Christine Miles, and Rajat Kapur

Watch our webinar to discover planning strategies for the coming year that align with your business goals while learning how to keep an eye on the ever-changing landscape and reinforcing proven business fundamentals.

In this information packed session, our team of experts discussed how to:

  • Discover real pervasive market needs in contrast to ‘one-off’ customer requests that can steal efficiencies in your business.
  • Learn how data can be fully leveraged to be a foundation for modern digital marketing and sales.
  • Garner the power of dynamic websites and the need for SEO that delivers high quality content that provides an influential community for your business.
  • Understand the importance of creating plans for long-term goals while acknowledging intermediate milestones achieved through a number of short-term activities.
  • Revisit the age-old pillars of listening to customers, asking the right questions, and knowing when to scale your team to achieve maximum results.
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About Paul Ferguson

Marketing Director Paul Ferguson helps clients develop fully integrated marketing solutions that make impressions and drive results. Whether it be design-oriented campaigns or digital market execution, Paul skillfully creates strategies to effectively reach client’s desired audiences.

About Steve Pepe

Steven Pepe is a marketing expert who has studied more than 30 audiences over his marketing career. From pumpjacks to ultrasounds, his focus is on communicating value propositions that resonate for the B2B customer. He is the Vice President of Global Marketing for Oliver Healthcare, a leader in packaging for medical devices and pharmaceuticals.

About Tim Walters

Tim Walters is the founder and CEO of BoomCloud Consulting. Through his passion for sales and helping companies grow, he created BoomCloud to provide outsourced sales services for small to mid-sized businesses. His firm is expert in designing sales strategies to help grow, scale, and generate more revenue for their clients. Prior to this, Tim brings 12 years of successful B2B sales experience working for Sabre, IBM, ADP, and Nestle.

About Christine Miles

Christine Miles is the founder and owner of EQuipt, a consulting and training business for medium-sized to Fortune 100 corporations. Considered a world-renowned expert in the field of listening differently, Christine also hosts the number one business radio show on the East Coast, Executive Leaders Radio, and is the author of What Is It Costing You Not to Listen, and the co-author of The Art of the Nudge. Christine is the creator of The Listening PathTM, a game changing approach to transform how people listen, empathize, and understand.

About Rajat Kapur

As the Founder and Managing Director of &Marketing, Raj strives to provide growing businesses of all sizes unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj brings two decades of professional experience in marketing, sales, and strategy development experience spanning B2B and B2C Fortune 50, mid-sized, and startups.

 About &Marketing U

&Marketing U is a modern marketing course for busy solopreneurs and one-person marketing departments. This course provides all of the marketing tools, education, and accountability you need to grow your business, all in one place and for a fraction of the cost of hiring an agency or new employees.

 About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

Google is Phasing Out the Broad Match Modifier Match Type

Google is Phasing Out the Broad Match Modifier Match Type

by | Feb 24, 2021 | Business Intelligence & Analytics, General, Insights

Google is Phasing Out the Broad Match Modifier Match Type

&Marketing, and marketing, outsourced marketing strategy

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Google’s roller coaster ride is at it again! In early February, advertisers opened their email only to be surprised with Google’s latest update. In a bold move, Google Ads is removing one of the most popular keyword match types. Starting now, Google will begin gradually including broad modified match (BMM) type behavior into their new version of phrase match. By July 2021, Google will have finished phasing out the use of the broad match modifier match type, and they will act solely as the new phrase match.

Why is This Change to Google BMM Match Type Important?

The BMM match type has been the cornerstone of the account structure for many advertisers, and for some, this is a pretty big deal that will require an account structure overhaul. Instead of focusing on word order combinations, advertisers have been able to use the BMM type to capture traffic with queries containing specific words, but not specific to word order or intent. It has allowed more control over the advertiser’s interpretation of user intent and didn’t rely on Google’s interpretation, which often brought in traffic the advertiser didn’t find relevant. Google is letting us know this change is going to reduce the irrelevant traffic and improve both the user and advertiser experience. They will no longer blindly match a search query to a keyword without consideration of the intent of the search.

To understand this better, let’s take a look at the example below. Of course an advertiser for accounting services isn’t going to want to show “What services do accounting firms offer?” But once the advertiser sees this query, they can add it as a negative keyword and not worry about that search again, while also still capturing impressions for “services for accounting nearby” — which may not have shown with a phrase match type.

So What Does &Marketing Think of This Change?

This will definitely have an impact on how we structure our keywords and accounts, but overall, we are looking forward to the change! While there may be an adjustment period, we are here for it and rolling with the updates. Google is an always-changing goliath, and a successful one at that. Their goal is to deliver relevant search results and ads to their users. If they don’t provide that, people won’t want to use their site or pay for their advertising, and they will lose money.

After this update, Google’s direction is crystal clear. Google is focusing on user intent and website experience. How can we tell?

Here are a few of Google’s biggest and most recent moves:

  1. GA4: the new Google Analytics Property that focuses almost entirely on user engagement on a website.
  2. Removing a large volume of search query visibility, making it more difficult to see what queries were triggering the ads and keywords.
  3. Using the user’s page experience as a stronger part of their ranking algorithms.

While some advertisers are frustrated by this steady loss of granular control, &Marketing is looking forward to helping our clients better understand their customer’s search intent and website performance, which will avoid any negative repercussions with this ever-changing Google Ads landscape.

This may all make you wonder, is it possible that you’re been wasting money on ad spend this entire time? Find out with our no-obligation and free Paid Search Inefficiencies Audit and find out where you’re wasting your ad spend.

Get the Audit
About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

Webinar Recap: 10 Ways Solo Marketers Can Jumpstart their 2021 Marketing

Webinar Recap: 10 Ways Solo Marketers Can Jumpstart their 2021 Marketing

by | Dec 21, 2020 | &Marketing U, Business & Marketing Strategy, Business Intelligence & Analytics, Events, General, Marketing Planning & Execution, Storytelling & Branding

Webinar Recap: 10 Ways Solo Marketers Can Jumpstart their 2021 Marketing

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With the end of the year quickly approaching, it’s time to start planning for 2021. &Marketing U’s team of expert coaches presented a webinar last week, where they shared valuable tips about developing and implementing a marketing program in 2021, specifically for “solo marketer” businesses.

During the webinar, the talked about

  • Clarifying your strategy
  • Developing powerful messaging
  • Optimizing content marketing
  • Implementing simple SEO enhancements
  • Maximizing digital advertising with a small budget
  • Improving your brand’s reputation online
  • The importance of planning

Couldn’t make the live webinar or want to watch it again? No problem! Watch the recording to learn how to set your marketing up for success in 2021.

Watch It Here
About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking in 5 Simple Steps

How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking in 5 Simple Steps

by | Dec 4, 2020 | Business & Marketing Strategy, Business Intelligence & Analytics, Insights, Marketing Planning & Execution

How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking in 5 Simple Steps

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Search engine optimization is an essential aspect of helping your business grow. On average, the first five results on Google receive 67 percent of clicks, so it’s tough to get website traffic when you’re sitting way back on page five. You want your site to be one of the first results a potential customer sees when they perform a search looking for a solution to their problem. Here are five ways to improve your Google search ranking and boost your business growth.

How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking

1. Utilize Tools to Track Your Site Activity

Google has helpful tools that will provide you with insight into how your site is performing. Google Search Console and Google Analytics (don’t miss the brand new GA4) collect your website activity to give you data you can use to improve your SEO. You want to know how many visitors you are bringing in, who they are, and how they engage with your site to determine how to attract more of those visitors and get them to stick around and convert.

There are other tools available that will help you track your site’s progress against your competitors. Find the ones that will work best for you and keep an eye on your site’s performance. We recommend Uber Suggest and SEMRush (both have free tools). If you notice that your site is not performing as well as you’d like, you can use these tools to start troubleshooting possible SEO problems.

2. Check Your Site’s Structure

There are certain links you should look for in your website’s structure. Double-check that all pages on your website are in HTTPS. Search engines prefer HTTPS pages over HTTP for security reasons, and if you are still using the latter, it could cause you to fall out of Google’s good graces.

You’ll also need to find and fix any crawl errors — you can use some of the tools we mentioned above to help identify these. Crawl errors occur when a search engine’s bot cannot access a page. Ensure that all of the links on your site lead to actual pages and make sure to have a customized 404 page that will still send visitors where you want them to go if they stumble onto a bad link.

Once you have ensured that all of the pages on your site are active and available, you can create a sitemap. A sitemap is essentially a list of the pages on your site. You can submit it to Google to improve your search engine ranking.

3. Create Good Content

While there are ways to improve your SEO without changing your content, a surefire method is creating high quality content. Create content for actual humans with a search engine in mind, not the other way around. 

You should know what your audience is looking for so you can answer the questions they are asking. Are they looking for a certain product or service? Do they need assistance with an issue? Whatever it is they are looking to find, you want to provide it for them — just like we wrote this article for you. 

Content naturally will become out of date as time passes. Stay on top of your content to increase your site’s traffic. Search engines prefer accurate and timely information, and they could pass up your site in favor of one with more current content.

Along with updating information, you should also remove anything that does not add value. Perform a content audit and get rid of any irrelevant content that you find. You want your audience to enjoy visiting and interacting with your site, and part of that is ensuring that your content is worthwhile. Google is incredibly smart and learns what your site is about so it can recommend it to others. If you have irrelevant content that could prevent Google from figuring out what topic your company is an expert in, they won’t recommend you.

4. Utilize Keywords & Incorporate Them Into Your Page Titles and Descriptions

Keywords are an essential part of SEO. When searching for specific terms, engines will match sites with those same keywords. With the right keywords, you can make sure that users find your site as a straightforward and clear solution to the problem  they are searching to solve.

Identify your key terms. These are your most searched keywords, and their use can help your site rank highly. Additionally, you want to find your long-tail keywords. They deliver a higher conversion rate, but they can be more challenging to work into your site’s content as they are not searched as often.

An effective way to look at where you can improve your keywords is by creating a keyword map. It can help you find where you need to add, optimize, or change content to fit more keywords.

5. Check Your Site’s Performance

There are a few different aspects of performance you should check to make sure your website is functioning properly and meeting Google’s standards. 

  • Ensure that Google Search Console has indexed your site (you should already have this tool from back in step 1). If not, it will not show up as a result at all, meaning no amount of SEO improvement will help because Google doesn’t recognize you. You can also check for site duplicates. If more than one version of your site is indexed, your data can become split across them.
  • Check your site’s speed. Pages that do not load within a few seconds are usually abandoned, and Google will track when users leave your site quickly. Keep visitors on your site by ensuring it has a fast loading speed.
  • Make sure that your site is mobile-friendly. Nowadays, Google factors in how your site looks and feels on mobile when considering site ranking. Even if they did not, you want visitors to be able to access your site on different devices.
  • Review your Google Analytics data often. Monitoring your goal completions, traffic, and more popular pages will help you understand what kind of content is performing well and what you should adjust, remove, or add.

Final Thoughts

Search engine optimization is an important part of driving traffic to your business’s website. The higher you rank, the more visitors will be able to find you With these five tips, you can easily improve your Google search ranking, enhance your SEO, and bring in more customers. 

Data is one of the key components to optimizing your website for Google, and there are an infinite number of dashboards, programs, and tools to help you sift through and interpret data. With the right strategies and tools, you can transform into actionable insights that serve as your marketing roadmap. Download our Business Intelligence eBook to learn more about this process and how it can help you grow your business.

Download eBook
About Dexter Burgess

Marketing Manager Dexter Burgess takes the lead on implementing new tactics and promoting change through data-driven strategies. Dex works hard at client relations through consistent communication and positive feedback, never settling until the customer is understood and happy.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

What You Need to Know About the New Google Analytics 4

What You Need to Know About the New Google Analytics 4

by | Nov 10, 2020 | Business Intelligence & Analytics, Insights

What You Need to Know About the New Google Analytics 4

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Google recently released Google Analytics 4 (GA4), the next iteration of Google’s powerful analytics and measurement tool. GA4 adds machine learning capabilities, tracks users across devices, and provides more granular data controls. These adjustments are sure to empower users with the ability to gather more audience based data so they can make more informed and strategic business and marketing decisions.

What is Google Analytics 4?

The latest iteration of Google’s web analytics platform, previously known as Google Web & app and now dubbed Google Analytics 4, is now available for anyone to start using— for free! The new property type includes expanded predictive insights, deeper integration with Google Ads, cross-device measurement capabilities and more granular data controls.

Key Features

       A lot is new in Google Analytics 4, but we’ve highlighted a few of the key features that will benefit your brand and your marketing the most as you plan your strategy for the new year.

    • More granular data by way of “events.” These events can now be identified by actions as scroll starts and stops as well as clicks and conversions. You can also segment these events even further by audience, device, location, etc.
    • Codeless event tracking. In the past, Event tracking setup required custom code to be set on pages, with buttons that required a web developer to apply. Now you can open your website within Google’s window and tag events directly.
    • Deeper audiences integration with Google Ads. Get you more insights into who is interacting with your ads.Reports on actions from YouTube. Views and engagement that occur in-app as well as on the web version of YouTube are now able to be reported through GA4.
    • Customer lifecycle-framed reporting. This will allow you to see all aspects of the customer journey, such as what channels are driving new customers and how overall engagement and retention is performing.
    • More connection. Connect your mobile and web application data alongside your website data.

    Why Google Analytics 4 is important for your business

    Google Analytics 4 will be the default option when you set up a new property within your analytics. The previous iteration, Universal Analytics, will continue to remain available, but Google recommends site owners set up both property types and run them in parallel. New feature development will be focused on GA4.

    The new Google Analytics 4 property provides a more complete cross-channel view of the customer lifecycle, allowing you to see which channels work together to help you meet your goals and puts that information to use through predictive marketing features. This equips marketers with more information and efficient ways to act on those insights. The more detailed reporting on scrolls and clicks on pages will help businesses of all sizes easily identify weak points in their website so they know where to focus their efforts first to test new ideas and improve conversion rates and performance.

    Companies that have apps, those who do not have an on-site or on-demand contractor who is a web developer, and eCommerce businesses are among those who will benefit most from Google Analytics 4. But if you use analytics (hint: you all should be!) and are wondering when you should switch over to GA4, the answer is now. If you haven’t been collecting data in your website, it’s just like the best time to plant a tree. You should have done it 20 years ago, but there’s no time like the present to get started.

    How to Set Up Google Analytics 4

    Setup is relatively easy. Simply go to your site’s current Analytics and click on the “gear” icon in the lower left hand corner of the page. This will open the Admin panel. In the middle view, under “Property” you’ll see an option to “Upgrade to GA4.” Click that and follow the prompts in the setup wizard provides. Please note that you’ll be required to add a bit of code to your site, similar to Google Tag Manager.

    google analytics 4 upgrade

    Long story short, Google Analytics 4 will provide you with more data and information about how your audience is interacting on your site or app, which is crucial to have in order to experience real growth. Though we are probably still two years away from full integration of GA4, it’s important to set up your property so you can begin generating data that can further your strategy and decision making in ways that the traditional Google Analytics just can’t do.

    Got a question about GA4 or need help in setting it up? We’d love to help! Just fill out the form below.

    Using data will truly transform your marketing results. Want to learn exactly how? Download our eBook, “5 Ways Business Intelligence & Analytics Will Revolutionize Your Marketing Strategy.”

    Download eBook
    About Paul Ferguson

    As a Marketing Director at &Marketing, Paul Ferguson uses his 16 years of B2B marketing experience to help clients develop fully integrated marketing solutions that make impressions and drive results. Whether it be design-oriented campaigns or digital market execution, Paul skillfully creates strategies backed by data, to effectively reach client’s desired audiences. 

    About Dexter Burgess

    Marketing Manager Dexter Burgess takes the lead on implementing new tactics and promoting change through data-driven strategies. Dex works hard at client relations through consistent communication and positive feedback, never settling until the customer is understood and happy.

    About &Marketing

    &Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

    Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?

    We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.

    Do Reviews Affect Local SEO?

    Do Reviews Affect Local SEO?

    by | Oct 7, 2020 | Business Intelligence & Analytics, Insights

    Do Reviews Affect Local SEO?

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    Do reviews help drive traffic to your site and increase local SEO results? A simple and important question. The short answer: Yes, they do.

    For a longer explanation how, keep reading…

    As a local business, you are always looking for ways to reach customers in their moment of need and win their business (and money).

    Whether you place a funny sign outside your shop, offer free events at night, or give away puppies – you are ultimately looking for a way to increase foot traffic in your store – and the internet is no different.
    People know reviews help influence customers when they are looking at your listening but that is a very small piece of the overall picture and how they help your business.

    According to Moz’s 2020 Local SEO Industry Report, “Across the board, marketers agree that reviews impact Google’s local rankings.” They go on to explain that “reviews shape reputation, impact conversions, and drive both customer service and sales.”

    As a business looking to not only survive, but THRIVE in 2020 reviews are “a force that cannot be ignored when crafting a modern local strategy.” Besides the obvious advantages a positive image/reputation provides, there are legitimate and trackable effects that reviews have on your business as well.

    1. Reviews increase CTR on your website, which in turn helps increase your SEO rankings

    In a study performed by Yotpo they compared a local businesses’ online presence over a controlled period of time.

    The first time period the business averaged around 5,500 organic pageviews/month. The second period of time the business averaged around 8,000 organic page views a month!
    The only difference they made?

    Adding Customer reviews onto the business Google Listing.

    2. Customer Reviews Increase Page Rankings through social validation

    The internet is saturated and it can be difficult for a small business to stand out and claim space online. One way to dominate your local SEO results though is by growing your customer reviews.

    As Leverage Marketing explains, “Online customer reviews can be a strong signal to search engines that communicates trustworthiness and authority. In an era in which competition has gotten tougher for small businesses on the web, managing online reviews is a way to differentiate your business and raise your visibility in the search results”

    3. Keywords in your Customer Reviews Drive SEO

    We all know to monitor our keywords on our website to help drive traffic, but did you know that the keywords in your customer reviews affect your Local SEO results?

    No, you cannot control what your customers write in their reviews – but you can control if you comment and thank them! And when you’re responding to those reviews, you can control the keywords that YOU use.

    4. Google rewards for Social Validation

    Google places more value in what your customers are saying than what you say. Just as we listen to other people’s opinions, so does Google.

    For example, if you have a headline on your main page that reads “Best Roofer in PA” that’s great. But Google probably isn’t going to show you first when someone searches for roofers. But, imagine you have 5 customer reviews that say you are “the best roofer in PA”— now that is influence.

    Google scrolls those reviews for keywords and puts more weight on them when determining your ranking for SEO results.

    So, do reviews affect local SEO?

    What does this all really mean?

    Every year Google and other sites place more emphasis on customer reviews. Advertising and marketing is changing and it looks like the new strategy of social validation is here to stay.

    Growing your reviews doesn’t have to be hard and does not mean extra work for you. Our team is here to help you with positive reviews that affect your local SEO!

    About the Author

    Chelsea Craig, founder of Rhino Reviews, works with businesses to protect their online reputation by growing and leveraging their online customer reviews. They offer the only fully managed review generation and reputation management program on the market. Every client receives a unique strategy based on their current reputation, where they wish to go, and headwinds they might encounter. They work to improve both the external (Google, Yelp, FB, etc) as well as internal (Glassdoor, Indeed) reputation and take businesses from a reactive to a proactive position.

    Chelsea has worked with over 80 businesses in all industries, including luxury construction, digital, energy, property management, healthcare, retail, hospitality, and education, to help build or repair their online reputation. She is both Google and Reputation Management certified and is a coach for Mike Volkin’s Masterclass, teaching how to leverage testimonials to accelerate your business growth. She has also had the opportunity to be a guest on a variety of shows discussing industry changes, small business strategy, and how to build your reputation in the digital space.

    About &Marketing

    &Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.