4 Advantages of Working with a small Digital Marketing Agency

Running a business and want to improve your digital visibility? But you’ve no clue how to work social media, no idea what search engine optimization is and are clueless at running ads, and you don’t have the time to learn how to master these skills? This is where our digital marketing expertise comes into play! The time has come to get outside help, to outsource and get assistance with digital marketing for your business. Now comes the fork in the road where you need to choose who to entrust your time, money and digital forefront to.

There are many options you can take in terms of freelancers, hiring someone to work directly for you, or a digital marketing agency. If you’ve narrowed it down to an agency, we’re here to advise you on why choosing a smaller, boutique agency is a better direction to take rather than a large corporate agency. People often think about investing their trust in large corporations, since they must be proclaimed and successful for a reason, and while yes, this is a fair point, large agencies may have grown for a reason, but now that they’ve scaled to such a large perimeter, means that they in fact have less time for clients and have become impersonal with them. Smaller companies like Evolution Digital offer one on one personal experiences.

We’re small but mighty and have been helping businesses with their digital needs for over 20 years. We have the knowledge and experience as well as the time and attentiveness your business needs.

1. ACCESSIBLE, FLEXIBLE, RESPONSIVE

One of the main advantages to a boutique agency is how accessible they can be. With huge corporations, it can be tough to even initiate contact, to even organise a meeting with them to join their client list. On the other hand, smaller digital marketing agencies, like Evolution Digital, are great because we’re only a simple phone call away, are ready and are excited to help you and your business. We can be flexible with our time, quick with responses to queries and efficient with implementing campaigns. Smaller companies can implement changes you need quicker, with their advantage of a shorter chain of command, employees have the flexibility and power to assist, make decisions and communicate directly with clients. In a larger business, all changes need to go through a lot of red tape before changes, no matter how small, can be made.

2. ATTENTIVE & INVESTED

Bigger companies can have hundreds and hundreds of clients that need looking after, which often forces them to provide their clientele with the bare minimum level of work. Their goal is to often get exactly what work needs to be done that’s necessary, they can’t afford to offer extra time and attention to your business because there are so many more that need their attention, many of which may have more urgent queries than yours. They need to spread themselves thinly, to give all their clients the necessary attention, but rarely more. Boutique businesses pride themselves on offering a service that goes above and beyond what is expected. We invest time and care into each of our clients and know the business intimately. We can listen to your needs and offer a personal experience, never rushing you out the door or off the phone. Basically; we care.

3.     CUSTOM, FRESH IDEAS

Bigger companies often don’t have the time to be creative with their work, the level of work they need to do for each of their many clients can frequently lead to standard, unoriginal, template content. A huge advantage to smaller companies is that we have the flexibility, time and understanding of each client of our clients that we can offer customized, unique, fresh ideas and content. With a smaller agency, you’ll be working with a team of much more skilled people, specialised in their field. A smaller team to fill means you’ll be getting the best of the best, you’ll also mostly be dealing with the same account manager for your time with the agency, whereas in larger companies your account can be passed around often. Having the same team working on your business means the people working on your account are highly familiarised with your account, and understand your business. 

4.     BETTER PRICING OPTIONS

Smaller companies have a smaller circle of more hands-on experienced workers, this and other pricing factors contribute to the company having less expenses and less overhead. This can allow for lower pricing options for digital services that are in fact of higher standard than that of a large corporate agency who will charge a much higher fee. If you have a lower budget to allocate, it’s better to choose a smaller agency who have not only lower fees, but more effective and personalised strategies, offering you a one on one experience with a team willing to go above and beyond your price tag.

We hope we helped guide your decision and while we may seem biased, all the above are valid points on why it’s better to go with a digital marketing agency that can provide for your needs and give you the attention you deserve. Don’t forget, the best gifts come in small packages…

Voice activated search refers to the action of using speech recognition technology to execute searches and ask questions by speaking into a device rather than typing out a query. The standard person can type around 38-40 words per minute, but can speak roughly 110-150 words per minute. It’s 3.75x quicker to talk than it is to type out text. So, it comes as  no surprise, that currently, while everything is being made quicker and faster, that people want to receive information and complete interactions as fast as possible. This means no more wasted time on typing and texting and more quick enquiries via speech. 

Voice technology has been around for a while but the last few years have shown a major influx in technological developments and voice search is in turn currently booming. More and more people are investing in the trendiest technology ergo; voice tech.  You may already be operating with voice assistance in the form of Siri, Google Home, Alexa and Amazon Echo. These are just the beginning of a voice tech uprising. What does this have to say for SEO and digital marketing? Not only must you optimize your business as usual but you need to have an operational strategy for voice search so your business appears for that sizeable portion of people who use it. Read on to find out why and how to optimize for voice search. 

 Why  should I include voice search as part of my SEO marketing strategy?           

• Stats Speak For Themselves 

If you’ve been keeping up with digital marketing news and statistics, you’ll have noticed the major influx in the use of voice assisted searches. 2019 closed out with 59% of people using mobile for search queries and 48% are using voice for web search.  55% of teenagers and 44% of adults are using voice assistants for sourcing information and so it’s clear to see the invasion of speech based queries in day to day life, and the decline in text based enquiries. Stay up to date and build your content and information as voice friendly, because these statistics will most likely only increase. 

*statistics pulled from Adobe survey data and Microsoft report.

• Improves Customer Experience

Ensuring you provide a pleasant customer experience is vital in creating a good relationship with your audience. Guaranteeing that your business is findable and the information that shows up when using voice search is important in building trust and professionalism in your business. Including a voice search plan under your digital marketing strategy is not just about keeping up with the times but also about providing an effective and modified experience for every customer. Voice based interaction such as voice notes are also becoming increasingly popular so take this into account when interacting with customers. 

• Drives Traffic

Voice assistants on mobile often offer websites to view when assisting the user with a query, and allows them to click on this website for further information; this in turn will create conversions and bring your site to the attention of a whole new audience. The more people you reach via voice optimisation creates more traffic to your website, especially if you are the only one amongst your competitors who has optimised, then you’ll show up ahead of others. 

• Be Ahead Of The Game

Contemplate the competitors within your area/field of work/business. If they have optimized for voice search and you have not, then this is a large quantity of potential customers lost to the competition. And if you observe the situation vice versa, your site or business could be the one appearing for those who use voice search and in turn, take business from opponents. It’s easy to see how this is a great opportunity to capitalise on voice searchers and be a step ahead in your digital marketing game. 

How To Optimise For Voice Search

• Adapt Content To Spoken Keywords

When we search via text, on a desktop or mobile, we search only a few keywords to save effort to find results ASAP. Voice search works differently in the fact that we can literally ask our virtual assistant a question in the same way we would ask a friend. For example, if we were looking for a restaurant open nearby, we would type “restaurant near me”, but using voice search we’d speak into our phone something like “what restaurants are open near me” or if looking for new shoes one may type “Nike runner’s men’s” but would speak the question like “where can I find Nike runners”. Voice search uses more natural, colloquial language with longer queries and includes question words. You need to understand exactly what your customers are looking for and how they are asking for it in order to include the necessary keywords within your content.

• Top Result/ An Effective Featured Snippet

Showing up on page one of a search result may have worked in the past, since people can still see these results if they’ve typed in their query, can scroll through the page and so possibly see your content. With voice assistants often only relaying the top result to the customer, it’s more important than ever to get those rankings up. Ensure your featured snippet is effective in gripping the listener and gives them the push to physically click into your content, successfully completing conversions.  

• Locality / local search

For businesses with a physical location, it’s important to ensure you optimize for voice search since a large percent of voice searches are location related queries. Make sure you claim your business via google my business and if you have multiple locations ensure you optimize for locality. Ensure your opening hours and street addresses are correct to avoid misinformation that can turn a customer away from your business. This is a common mistake made with optimizing for voice search and can attach an aura of untrustworthiness to your business.  

• Mobile Friendly 

Ensuring your content is voice friendly massively intertwines with it being mobile friendly. Considering that most web searchers use mobile devices as their go-to for information, it only makes sense they’ll soon be using voice tech if they’re not already. 

It’s safe to say that this trend is only speeding up and so now is the time to optimize your business for voice search and make the necessary changes to your SEO strategy to do so. 

As 2019 has come to a close, now is the time to begin exploring the new, up-and-coming trends that 2020 is bringing to light in every aspect of digital marketing, one of these being our topic for today; Email Marketing. It’s easy to get discouraged with email marketing when the data is often reflecting that subscribers rarely open these emails, could be seldom interacting and it can feel that they don’t even want to be receiving these emails. The fact of the matter is, while you have subscribers; there’s an opportunity for something effective. You simply need to know what to do and put in the effort to achieve more opens. People are constantly checking their emails. People of all ages have email accounts, teenagers in school who had to create an email to sign up for social media or grown business men and women using email as a form of necessary communication. The point is; email marketing has the potential for major reach. But you need to keep up with trends and know what no longer works and what does. From the fact that the everyday email user now mostly uses their mobile device to keep up with notifications to the fact that there are artificial intelligences available to cater to email needs with automated and personalised emails. Read on to find out about the top 4 trends to be mindful of in your 2020 email marketing strategy.

Time To Go Mobile

Not only are businesses simply optimizing emails for mobile devices but now is the time that they are in fact prioritizing the mobile display. In a day and age where the majority of society has a mobile device with their email attached, email marketing is more effective than ever. With a steady stream of notifications popping up on our screens, emails are constantly being seen, whether they’re opened or not, they are at the very least being glanced at. This creates the need for optimization in terms of the specific tactics required to grab your readers’ attention. With the level of time we spend on our mobile phones, it only makes sense that everything is going mobile, and so should your email marketing strategy. This means thin column displays, short, effective headings and subject lines to get your point across and much more. 

AI / Automation

When people first hear about artificial intelligence, they sometimes get terrified and don’t fully understand what it entails and what it can do for their field of work. In reality it is simply a technological advancement created to, in fact, lessen your workload and assist you. It has been intertwined in our daily lives, with the use of text predictions, Siri, customised ads and product suggestions. These tools are all made possible to use through AI. When it comes to email marketing and AI, we’re referring to features such as smart recipient segmentation, the scheduling of emails, predictive personalisation and customized subject lines and headings. Heading into 2020 it’s important to implement AI and Automation into you

User Generated Content

When we talk about user generated content we’re referring to any type of content that is spurred on or created by the receiver/user. A great way to include this in your email marketing is providing easily navigated feedback modules such as surveys and questionnaires, allowing a place for feedback and reviews. Be mindful to send these at the right time; to subscribers that have already tried or tested your product. For those who haven’t; first encourage them to try with promotional emails that include offers and incentives for taking action. These reviews and results will be the first thing people look at to see whether your product is worth purchasing, creating original content and instantly improving conversion rates.

Interaction and Engagement

Long gone are the days where it’s acceptable to have a do not respond handle as your email address, or an automated response email discouraging engagement. Nowadays it’s clear that you need to nurture your subscribers or subscribers they will no longer be. The more you interact, respond to queries and suggestions, the more loyal your readers will be and the more confidence they will instil in your brand. But no longer is interactivity there for the sole purpose of entertaining your recipients, it’s now becoming apparently functional and is being used to purposefully increase conversion and engagement. Popular interactive email feats include GIFs, videos, simulated buttons with calls to action, animated images and anything that will bring your email to life, making it stand out from the sea of standard uninspiring emails, all the while being mindful to optimize for mobile use! All of this will help your emails remain relevant, prevent unsubscribing, and promote purchases. 

To conclude; email marketing isn’t going anywhere, so optimizing and updating your strategy for 2020 is the best move to make as we enter this new decade. Technical advancements are allowing for the more valuable, efficient use of email marketing and we strongly believe it’s here to stay as one of the most useful forms of marketing and communication. 

I am sure you are well aware of how annoying it can be when your inbox is full of ‘Spammy’ marketing emails from various companies. Let’s be honest most of these E-mails you delete before even opening them, or if they are lucky enough to attract you to open them well…. Let’s just say they end up in the trash pretty soon after. So how can you as an E-Mail marketer ensure that you grab your audience’s attention? To get the most from your audience, you have to put yourself in their shoes and write your emails with them in mind. Think about all of the emails you receive on a daily basis from companies trying to market their products or services to you. If you received a marketing email you had to sign up to receive it, which means at some point you were interested in what they had to offer. So why do you only open some emails and not them all? You’re about to find out. Here’s our top 5 tips to change the game for your email marketing campaigns.

1. Encourage Interaction

Just like social media, Email marketing can be a gateway for meaningful conversations with actual customers who’re interested in what you have to offer. So how can you encourage more interaction?

• Make Sure Your Subject Line Stands Out

Talk to your audience, make your email irresistible compared to everything else in their inbox by using personalisation and automated emails. Services such as MailChimp can help you with this.

• Let Your Personality Shine

If you’re funny be funny, if you like to educate then write in a tone that will inform your audience. The people you are targeting already like what you have to offer and by being yourself and targeting your audience using a style of writing that suits your company you are much more likely to succeed.

2. Stay Away from The Spam Folder

This may seem obvious but many still end up in the Spam folder. The CAN-SPAM act will catch you out if you target anyone who has not opted in to your emails, so be careful how you handle this.

Poor formatting, such as excessive use of capital letters or other Hyperbolic phrases can send you on a one way trip to the spam folder. For more advice on this check out MailChimp’s guide.

3. Include an Easy Way to Unsubscribe

This may seem strange; you may be thinking “Why is he telling me that when it’s hard to have people subscribe in the first place?” Well, if you allow people an easy way to opt out they will feel much less held captive and less likely to mark your email as spam. The CAN-SPAM and GDPR laws also state that this is a must for all marketing emails.

4. Ensure Your Emails Are Responsive

According to Movable Ink’s Q1 2014 US Consumer Device Preference Report 66% of all emails globally were opened on either a smartphone or a tablet. So if your emails are slow and unresponsive on these devices its likely you will lose out on a huge number of potential clicks and probably end up more often in the spam folder.

5. Provide Value

Why should anyone open your emails? What are you doing to make it worth their time? For B2C marketing this may be slightly easier, you might include discounts of offers but for B2B companies what are your doing to give your email audience value? You may want to give away a free E-Book or a Guide. Providing value through email marketing is one of the most important aspects of any successful campaign.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a fantastic tool to generate a stable income of leads for your business when done correctly. If you follow these tips you will most certainly be off to a fantastic start to optimising your email marketing campaign to generate the leads you desire.