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Choosing a DIY Website Builder vs an Agency

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 14:49:58 GMT

DIY website builders have flourished in popularity over the years, and with good reason. With the increase in applications for new US businesses hitting a 13-year high in 2020 , many new business owners find themselves in need of a quick, digital presence. In addition to the benefits of having an SEO-friendly website , a digital presence gives your customers a place to go to collect information about your services and availability.

The question, then, is how to get a website off the ground quickly. If your hands are full filing for permits, hiring new talent, and sourcing new customers, you might not have time to become an expert in website development and marketing. That’s where two possible solutions come into play: use a DIY website builder or hire a professional web development agency to get you started.

Not sure which option is right for you? Let’s dig in.

The Benefits of a DIY Builder

A DIY web builder allows anyone to build a website from scratch. Without having to know how to code, these helpful tools offer startups, entrepreneurs, and even larger companies the opportunity to personally design and maintain their websites.

These solutions are often very cost-effective, running you only a few dollars per month.
You can launch a website in just a couple of days once you’ve written content and decided on a design direction.
Built-in themes mean you don’t need to be a professional designer to have a sleek, modern-looking website.
The DIY website builder is designed for simplicity, with drag-and-drop functionality and automatic scaling so your site looks great on desktop, mobile, and tablet views.
Many of these builders will have built-in security, hosting, and simple SEO plug-ins, simplifying the process of running a professional, secure website.

The Benefits of an Agency

Working with an agency means you will have a custom, carefully crafted website built by professionals. This option is often best for companies with no marketing experience, who need a lot of customization, or who want to perfect their digital presence to drive leads and sales.

An agency will help you write catchy, sales-driven content for your website.
With a professional eye for design, they can assist with branding suggestions in addition to general design work.
A seamless user experience on your website is key, and they come equipped with the know-how to provide that.
You’ll have the ability to customize both the design of the website and the functionality of the website, including app integrations.
Often, an agency will provide customer support with important, skilled tasks like search engine optimization (SEO) and ongoing content or marketing needs.

How to Make the Decision

To choose between a DIY builder and a professional agency, consider a few core questions:

Do you have the skills necessary to create a professional website with a solid user experience? Customers will make an immediate decision about your company based on what they see on your website. A poorly designed website can cost a fortune in the long run if it drives customers away.
Do you have the funds to hire a professional agency? A DIY builder will, typically, cost substantially less than hiring a team of professionals to write, design, and launch your website.
Do you need a lot of customization? While some DIY builders can handle customization through app integrations or plug-ins, true customization is best done with the help of a professional team. If you plan to drive most of your sales via your website, it might be worth the expense to build a website that answers that call.

Types of Business Automation

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 14:49:56 GMT

Business automation comes in many forms, but regardless of the project, the primary benefit remains the same: to make your life easier. Whether you’re a tiny team looking to reduce workload or a major corporation hoping to standardize workflows, business automation is the answer for many office troubles.

Some reports suggest that managers could get between 8 and 20 hours back if manual data tasks were automated. And while large organizations lead the charge in automation , small businesses benefit just as much. Before we dive into types of automation, let’s look at just a few of the benefits companies see when they implement this time-saving tool at their organizations.

The Benefits of Automation

Saves money. Let’s start with the most obvious benefit of business automation, shall we? Cost-saving measures are top of mind no matter what size company you serve. Reduce operational costs, improve profit margins, and reduce waste when you deploy business automation techniques.

Improves ROI. In addition to the cost-saving benefits of business automation, you’ll find that process standardizations make it easier to accurately report future trends. Likewise, many systems used for business automation offer in-app reporting. Knowing these numbers helps business leaders predict the ROI of a new idea, new venture, new employee, etc.

Gives back “human” time. There are some processes that only a human can master, but if they’re busy personally responding to every form submission, they won’t have time. Automation of basic tasks frees your talent up so they can strategize, network, sell, develop, innovate...whatever it is they do best.

Improved efficiency. Much like cost savings, the improved efficiency provided by business automation is a benefit we cannot overlook. Business automation standardizes processes, reduces the time it takes to complete a project or respond to a customer, and generally reduces errors.

Basic Automation for Small Businesses

While any size company can benefit from automation, not all automation is right for all companies. Small businesses often focus on sales-related automation, and you can automate tasks like:

Lead assignment. If you have a form on your website, you’re collecting leads. Those leads are sent to a sales representative to continue the conversation and, hopefully, close the deal. Inbound lead assignment can be automated so it automatically notifies the sales rep. Without an in-house person waiting to assign the lead, you’ll greatly speed up the time between a lead contacting you and a lead being contacted by a salesperson.
Lead follow-up. Similarly, automation allows small businesses to immediately respond to a prospect filling out a form on your website. Through automation, you can send a pre-written email thanking them for their interest in your company, and then your sales representative can continue the conversation shortly thereafter.
Contact storage and management. A CRM automates contact management, making it easy to seamlessly store, organize, access, and schedule meetings with your company’s contacts.
Invoicing. Collecting payments can be a time-consuming task without automated invoicing functionality. Automate billing and online payments so that the money keeps coming in while you’re out there selling and serving customers.

Midrange Automation for Mid-Sized Businesses

Mid-sized businesses also benefit from the automation used by small businesses--lead capture, emails, invoicing, contact storage--but they frequently go a step further:

Social media. Marketing requires creativity and strategy from human minds, but many of the tasks can and should be automated. Social media scheduling is one of those things. Many mid-sized businesses use automation to share content across social media.
Ongoing marketing messaging. Build complex marketing funnels and ongoing drip campaigns, and you’ll be on your way to a fully realized marketing strategy in no time (even if you have only a small team of professionals creating the content).
Recruitment. Like marketing, HR requires a human hand. However, the process of sourcing and sifting through resumes can be delegated to an AI-enabled, automated program. In addition to giving your HR team some time back, this also lessens the likelihood of biases seeping into your recruitment processes.

Complex Automation for Large-Scale Businesses

Major corporations and larger businesses cannot run without some level of business automation in place. From lead capture to recruitment, most of these companies have already mastered the automation listed above, and now they’re looking toward bigger and more complex projects.

Events and ticketing. Client-facing software, like ordering tickets for a concert or other event, requires a seamless experience...and that’s where automation steps in.
Customer service. Many current consumers prefer to gather their information online rather than over the phone. Chatbots automate this step, making it easier for potential customers to find what they are looking for and greatly reducing the number of people companies need to have on hand to answer simple, repetitive questions.
Lead scoring. Far beyond just a simple marketing funnel, lead scoring is an automated process that tracks your sales prospects online, on your website, and through your email campaigns so you can determine how interested they are in your business. By weighing certain actions (like downloading a whitepaper or filling out a form) with a higher score, your sales team sees a tangible number that helps prioritize which leads to focus their attention on and which need a bit more warming before outreach occurs.

Client onboarding. Similar to marketing automation, onboarding automation helps companies make a good first impression by delivering a series of timed, informative emails after they sign on. It keeps them in the loop on their status and makes your team seem very communicative.

7 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a DIY Website Builder

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 14:49:04 GMT

In their excitement over a new business venture, many professionals are in a rush to get a new website up and running. Existing businesses, too, may see their competitio n polishing their web presences and decide it’s time for a facelift on their own website. In this time of haste, many turn to DIY website builders, which allow just about anyone to create a website without any background in coding. These are great, cost-effective tools, but here are a few questions to consider before moving forward.

Is my branding in place?

First, if you’re going to take on the design of your company’s website, be sure that you have a brand image in place. Most DIY builders make it easy to design a website without much experience, but your website will be representing your company. Logos, colors, and fonts should be standardized, from the sign on your building to your emails to your business cards and, yes, definitely to your website.

Do I have content for the website?

Similar to your brand image, your brand voice is important. Will you be professional and informative? Quirky and conversational? Hip and young? If you’re converting an old website to a new website via a DIY builder, it might just be a matter of refreshing the language and filling in any holes you uncover when giving your website a fresh look. If you are building a website from scratch, consider what your customers want and need to see on your site .

What templates are available to me?

The big benefit of a DIY builder is that you don’t need to be a design expert to put together a really nice looking website. This is because these tools come with pre-built templates that help lay information out in a way that’s pleasing and chic. If possible, view the templates that your prospective DIY builders offer to make sure they include page designs that fit your needs.

How will I handle SEO?

If you’re not an expert in websites or marketing, SEO (search engine optimization) may not be top of mind, but it’s one of the most important parts of your website . Look for a DIY builder that includes at least a basic SEO plugin, which will allow you to nominate specific ke ywords for your pages and set meta descriptions. If that sounds overwhelming, contract with a knowledgeable freelancer to do occasional SEO work on your website.

Is the website builder customizable?

While the easy-to-use templates are one of the biggest draws for DIY website builders, customization is also an important factor to consider. Can your website builder integrate with a pps that offer additional functionality, like forms and automation? Does it offer SEO plugins or the ability to customize your navigation? Can you add a blog ? Once you build a website on a website builder, you have to either stick with its limits or start from scratch when y ou outgrow it, so consider what features you might need in the future when you’re growing like crazy!

How easy is it to edit the content?

A DIY builder won’t do you much good if ongoing maintenance is difficult to manage. Websites require regular updates, not only because businesses evolve but because it’s good for SEO. So, this question is simple: is it easy to use?

How much does it cost and what extra features does it include?

And, finally, the most obvious question: how much does a DIY builder cost? Many of these programs will cost only a few dollars per month, but remember that the l ess you pay, the simpler your website will be. When considering cost, ask yourself what additional features this builder offers. Does it include hosting? Does it offer security protections ? Are there SEO plugins, a responsive design, or social share features?

Whether you’re looking for a DIY builder that meets your needs or an agency to build a custom website for you, The Creative Freeway is your solution. Let’s discuss your needs today!

Landing Page vs Website: Which Does My Business Need?

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 07:10:55 GMT

If you’re new to website creation or marketing in general, you may be a bit overwhelmed by all the jargon. What’s a bounce rate, where does organic traffic come from, how does navigation impact user experience, where can I find my meta descriptions? While The Creative Freeway is available to answer all of these questions for you and more, let’s step back and cover the basics: landing page vs website. What’s the difference?

Landing Page vs Website: The Basics

A landing page is part of a website. Several landing pages make up a website. A website is made up of landing pages.

A website is your overall web presence. It’s a bunch of interconnected pages that outline the mission of your business, the products/services you offer, your blog, your “contact us” page, and more. If your website URL is www.TheCreativeFreeway.com then your website is everything user can find when they click that link.

A landing page is each of those parts individually. Your “About Us” page is one landing page. Your “Contact Us” page is another landing page. You may give each of your services their own landing page, or you might choose to describe all of your services on one landing page.

Landing Page vs Website: Which Do I Need?

The simple answer to this question is that you need both. Every company benefits from a digital presence, and your website is the face of your digital presence. It’s the location that your customers and prospects go to get important company information, to peruse product details, and to get in touch with you.

If you don’t have a website, then it’s time to construct at least a basic site. The first page your users see when clicking on your website is the homepage. Your homepage is basically the front door to your site, and it offers customers an overview of who you are, what you offer, and why they want it. Your homepage should encourage website visitors to stick around. If laid out well, your homepage helps visitors keep reading by moving deeper into your site—-to your landing pages. Other than a homepage, a basic website structure might include an About Us page that outlines your mission and your team, a Services page (or pages) that describe the uses and benefits of your product/service, a Contact Us page that allows them to find out more information or to buy your service, and a blog, which is great for SEO and for providing timely, relevant content to your potential customers. Each of these are individual landing pages, and their sum total is your website.

If you already have a website, though, and you’re launching a new product for your company or want to add information to your website, then you likely need a landing page added to your website rather than a whole new website. A landing page offers in-depth information about a particular facet of your company: they can describe the mission behind your business, they can offer information about a new deal you’re running, they can highlight the advantages of your particular product, and a whole lot more!

How Can I Build a Website?

Step one, if you don’t already have a website, is to register your domain with a secure hosting company . After that, there are website builders that allow people with no coding experience to build a website using drag-and-drop functionality. But website building can be a time-consuming practice, and without expertise, you may unknowingly make choices that stop buyers from learning more about your company. A sleek, modern, intuitive design is important to today’s buyers. Consider working with a marketing agency (like us!) who can build a website that attracts buyers, is SEO-friendly, and that you’ll be proud to display.

How to Design a Good Logo: 3 Questions to Ask

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 07:08:48 GMT

A good logo is the backbone of your company in many ways. It is the core of your brand identity. It’s the representation of your name, your values, your product, your team, and so much more. You and your customers will be looking at this logo on collateral, emails, websites, and swag for years to come. So, figuring out how to design a good logo is key.

Worse, a bad logo can do more than just send the wrong message about your company. If designed poorly, it can be difficult to read and difficult to incorporate into designs, making it a nightmare to work with in the long run. Before you start to pick out colors and fonts, ask yourself these three questions.

What Impression Do You Want Your Logo to Leave?

Like every marketing decision you make, branding is all about the audience you are trying to reach. If your target audience is senior citizens, you’ll design a logo that looks drastically different than one trying to attract the attention of HR professionals or medical students. Your overall buyer persona impacts logo design, so you have to ask yourself how you want your buyer to feel about your brand. Are you trying to inspire confidence, adventure, and an off-the-beaten path image? Or are you more focused on trustworthiness, sensibility, and stability? Maybe you’re fun, a little spontaneous, and a touch nostalgic? Create an emotional profile of your logo, and then research the colors, fonts, and styles that give those impressions. Years of research and expertise have gone into color theory to get you started!

How Many Versions of Your Logo Do You Need?

When you’re just starting to learn how to design a good logo, you may be singularly focused on one, solid design. While you don’t want to dilute your brand by creating disparate versions, you do need to consider how your logo will be used now and in the future. Use Disney as an example—most people will recognize the full Walt Disney logo with the castle, but they’ll also recognize the swoopy “Disney” name, and more granularity, even children know the distinctive “D” that means Disney. A good logo is scalable—that means it can be recognized by its distinctive parts (like knowing the Nike swoosh without the name “Nike” attached to it). In the future, it makes branding easier because you can use simpler or more elaborate versions depending on the space available.

Can You Create a Logo on Your Own?

Designers go to school for years to learn how to design a good logo. If you’re on a tight budget, you may be thinking about drawing up a logo design on your own. You do know your company best, and your insight is needed, but it might be best to leave good logo design to the professionals. Graphic designers understand the inherent and perceived meaning behind color and font choices (to keep it simple) better than the average person. Remember, your logo is the face of your company for years or decades to come, so investing the money to work with a professional logo design company or a marketing agency that offers logo design might be best.

Ready to get serious about your digital marketing strategy and your brand? The marketing experts at The Creative Freeway are available to chat!

How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Startup: 5 Simple Steps

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 07:06:48 GMT

Planning and a solid strategy got you to this point: you created the product or service for your startup. You got the framework of your business in place. You’re up and running. Now it’s time to get customers—which means it’s time to create a marketing plan.

Just like the first steps of your business, a simple marketing plan requires a solid strategy. Before you investigate marketing technology, outline your ideal social media campaign, or put money behind advertising, you need to consider these five things.

How to Create a Marketing Plan

Outline your buyers. Before you begin to craft any messaging or consider which marketing channels to focus on, you need to document your buyers. “Buyers,” plural, because your goal here is to mine the nuances of your potential customers. If you sell handcrafted yoga mats, you may have an image in your mind of your buyer. But are there unexpected use cases for your product that opens up your audience? Can your yoga mats be marketed to seniors for some reason? What do your buyers care about? Where are they spending their time online and in the real world? What specific problems are you solving? Hypothesizing what your ideal buyers look like will help create a simple marketing plan framework. (And then, as we’ll cover later, you’ll adjust.)

Get on the same page about your goals. Whether you’re a one-person team at your startup or you have colleagues, the next step is to clearly document your marketing goals. When you create a marketing plan, are you focused on brand awareness? Lead generation? Sales via an e-commerce platform ?

For example, do website views matter more to you than social media interaction? If the early stages of your marketing plan are dedicated to brand awareness because you want to build a lifestyle brand, then you might care about social media interaction more because it will broaden your reach .

Decide—and document—why you are marketing. It’s okay to have more than one goal, but in order to determine the ROI of your simple marketing plan efforts, you need to know what you’re measuring. If you funnel time and resources into brand awareness, it might not result in direct sales right away. If you focus on direct sales, you may make a handful of conversions, but your email list/follower count/number of customers may remain low.

Invest in digital marketing strategies. When determining how to create a marketing plan for your startup, you may be tempted to jump immediately to marketing ideas. The steps outlined above are important stops, but when it is time to choose the right channels for your audience, keep in mind that we live in a digital world. There might be some industries that still benefit from paper flyers and billboards, but digital marketing strategies will have the best ROI for most companies.

Digital marketing—things like a solid website, SEO, social media, blogs, white papers, webinars, and email marketing—are comparatively inexpensive to produce, they can be updated to remain evergreen, and they offer more KPIs than non-digital channels. You don’t know how many people saw your billboard, but you do know how many people saw your advertisement on Facebook.

Utilize measurement tools. So, with that in mind, when creating your simple marketing plan, build in some post-campaign strategies to measure your success. Set up Google Analytics to measure your website traffic and other key metrics. Track the progression of your social media accounts using the built-in analytics on those platforms. Find out the average open rates, click rates, and bounce rates for email campaigns in your industry.

Adjust. Finally, once you’ve initiated a campaign and collected metrics on its performance, you need to be willing to adjust. When you create a marketing plan, you must learn from it. Are you finding that your social media posts are really resonating with 60-year-old men when you thought your target buyer was a 25-year-old woman? You may have an avenue to investigate there. Did you spend hours putting together a beautiful email campaign that was only opened by 3% of your email list? Take a look at your subject lines, sender reputation, and send times first.

Finally, if you’re not sure how to create a marketing plan for your startup, consider working with a marketing agency. Founders and employees of a startup often have their hands full with the day-to-day processes of a running a new business, but a marketing agency can step in and offer expertise that will really make your new company soar.

Small Business Marketing Ideas: 4 Tools to Invest In

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 07:04:26 GMT

After a late-night research session, you’ve come up with a list of the small business marketing ideas that are going to skyrocket sales and make you a household name. You’re ready to take Google by storm, to be the most-followed influencer on Instagram, and to create a wow! website that converts.

The next morning, you remember that you have big ambition, but you’re a compact team. That’s okay! Small business and startup marketing have a whole host of tools available to make your job easier (and some of them are free). Here’s a few to get you started.

1. An SEO Tool

You’ll hear us mention SEO in just about every tips and tricks blog we write . Small business website design and search engine optimization often go overlooked, but they can be the key to unlocking more customers and more exposure. If you’re trying to optimize your website, you need an SEO tool.

Google Search Console is Google’s SEO tool—and it’s free. You’ll see keyword ranking, search volume, your click-through-rate on the keywords you appear on Google for, and more. If you’re looking to put a little money behind SEO, look into tools like SEMrush, which offer content suggestions and technical SEO improvements.

2. A Social Media Scheduler

No small business marketing ideas blog would be complete without a recommendation to use social media to your advantage. It’s a free resource outside of the time necessary to run the social media profiles, and if it’s done well it can put your company in front of hundreds or thousands of interested prospects.

Better yet? With a social media scheduler, the time necessary to run social media profiles is drastically reduced. These tools consolidate social media scheduling, so you can load all of your social posts for the week or the month in, choose which days and times you want to send the posts, and then it takes over from there. Your social media accounts will remain fresh and up to date, while you focus on more pressing matters. Look at tools like HootSuite, Buffer, and CoSchedule.

3. Google Analytics

Small business website design strategies only go so far . Once you have a beautiful website, you need to know whether people are visiting it. Google Analytics steps in to offer all of the analytics a startup marketing team could need: website users, organic traffic vs direct traffic vs referral traffic, time on page, bounce rates, and more. Bonus: it’s free, too!

Google Analytics offers a real-time look at how your website is performing. If you’re searching for small business marketing ideas, then it’s clear you care about using marketing tips to bring in new business. Google Analytics will tell you whether your efforts are working. Use the intelligence offered by this platform to determine if visitors are finding your website via Google or typing your URL in directly (organic vs direct), if your website is maintaining your users’ interest (time on page), if your homepage is causing people to X-out immediately (bounce rate), and so much more. It’s a data trove.

4. An Email Marketing Platform

Much like a social media scheduler, an email marketing platform makes small business and startup marketing easier. Email marketing builds a strong brand and a strong customer relationship. If you are creating the emails ahead of time and letting the email marketing platform do the job of sending at the designated date/time, then it’s not a time-intensive process, which makes for great ROI.

There are a ton of email marketing platforms available, and they all come with unique benefits and price points. Look for one that offers drag-and-drop designs, the ability to segment your send lists (so you can send different messaging to customers and prospects, for example), and one that will manage your unsubscribes for you. That last point is one the greatest benefits of an email marketing platform: data privacy is a hot topic right now, and you can get in hot water if you continue to email someone who doesn’t want to hear from you anymore. Look into platforms like Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, and Constant Contact

Small business marketing ideas are available by the hundreds, but executing some of these startup marketing tips can be difficult if you don’t have a dedicated marketing team. Choosing a few robust tools can go a long way in supporting your marketing efforts.

And, you can always choose to work with a marketing agency like The Creative Freeway for marketing strategies, small business website design, content creation, and more!

Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses: 4 Dos and 4 Don’ts

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 07:02:29 GMT

Regardless of your company’s size, marketing is a task on everyone’s to-do list. Deciding when and where to invest that money, though, is more difficult if you’re a startup or small business, working with a limited team and a limited budget. Marketing strategies for small businesses might look a little different than those for the Fortune 500, but if you focus on the best marketing tips for small businesses and avoid the classic pitfalls, you’ll start to reap the benefits.

To get the most ROI on your marketing efforts, focus on digital marketing opportunities. They’re comparatively low-cost, and they’re often the most evergreen. A printed flyer will become outdated, but a well-designed and well-optimized website keeps you top-of-mind and top-of-Google for years to come.

Do: Invest Time in Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is at the top of the marketing strategies for small businesses list (literally!). SEO doesn’t have to cost a fortune—a lot of the work is just making informed decisions about what words to use on your website and where to put them. For that reason, SEO is a valuable tool. It also has a big reward: your website in front of more eyes. If you choose to do your SEO work in-house, you’ll need a keyword research tool, and you’ll have to spend some time learning how to search for keywords and where to put them. Or, marketing companies for small businesses can take this task on for you.

Don’t: Skimp on Your Website Design

Your website is the face of your company. If it looks thrown together, your potential buyer won’t trust your service or product. That’s why one of the best marketing tips for small businesses is to invest in a solid, well-designed website . Experts go to school for years to master design and user experience, so if your nephew put your website together in a weekend, it might be time to revisit and refresh. Your website should be on trend, easy to navigate, and—most importantly—chock full of information. Customers no longer want to chat on the phone to get their questions answered; they go to your website to learn what service/product you provide, how that service/product works, and how to reach out for more information.

Do: Add a Blog to Your Website

A regularly updated blog is a great addition to your website, and it’s one of the marketing strategies for small businesses that can quickly have a positive impact. First, it connects those first two points: SEO and a solid website design. A blog offers more space for you to add relevant keywords to your website, and Google will rank you higher in their search results if your website is updated often (so blogging weekly or monthly is key). A blog also allows you to sneakily plug your product; publish an article about the six most popular wedding colors, and you can slide in your event planning business to attract new customers.

Don’t: Try to Do It All Yourself

And finally, one of the best marketing tips for small businesses is to recognize when you need outside help. Most startups and growing companies already have teams stretched to capacity, so adding a skilled project like marketing to the mix might be overwhelming. Instead, outsource . Marketing companies for small businesses are adept at putting together affordable packages, so you can find something that fits your budget. They’ll have on-staff experts to handle website design, logo creation , blogging, SEO, email campaigns, and more—so your company will look like it has a 10-person marketing team, but you can keep focused on what you’re passionate about.

5 Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses & Startups

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 07:00:32 GMT

If you’re a small team, investing time and money into marketing seems daunting. Which marketing channels will show the best return on investment? Which marketing ideas for small businesses are worth the money? Should I prioritize website design for my small business? Doesn’t marketing take a lot of time? Doesn’t marketing take a lot of skill?

Marketing looks different for every industry and every individual company because you’re responding to different customer needs. There are core pillars of marketing, though, that you can focus on to get started.

Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses:

Prioritize great content. When marketing your company, focus on one simple goal above all else: provide your potential customers with valuable information. Teach them something. What that looks like will vary depending on what service you offer.

A misstep many make is focusing entirely on the benefits their company, their service, or their product provides. While that information is important, it’s not going to draw new eyes to your company’s website. Instead, use your time to write blogs that teach your customers something. When potential customers have a question that’s related to your industry, you want them to go to your website to find the answer. Even if you run a website that sells nail polish, you can offer tips and tricks for at-home manicures or a look at nail polish trends across the world. You’re the expert on your industry, so this marketing idea for small businesses is simple to implement and very beneficial in the long run.

Spend time on SEO. Great content goes hand-in-hand with SEO. You might be tempted to skimp on SEO because it’s one of the more difficult marketing ideas for small businesses—it does take time and skill. Focusing on a few key elements of search engine optimization can go a long way , or you can work with a marketing agency that will take on this important task for you.

A quick primer: SEO is “search engine optimization.” It is making your website friendly for search engines like Google, so that when your buyers search for words related to your service, your company’s website is one of the first results they see. 75% of Google searchers don’t look past the first page of results, so showing up on the first page is important.

Prioritize a few keywords to begin with and remember that you need to consider how people are searching for your product. If you’re a towing company, you want Google to display your company when users search for phrases like “tow companies near me,” “towing service,” and “cheap car towing in Milwaukee” (or wherever you’re located!). We’ve put together a quick guide on SEO that might help.

Grow your social media following with a contest. Social media is one of the best marketing ideas for small businesses because it’s a free resource. It doesn’t cost your company anything to have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Your social media profile is another place for your customers to find information about your company, and it’s another place for you to provide them with great content. The blog you wrote about nail polish trends teaches your customers about something and it helps improve your SEO—now you can share it on your Facebook profile to attract new followers and to improve post engagement (which gets your company in front of new eyes).

Consider working with another company to grow your social media following. You can do this by deploying a popular contest format:

1. Partner with a complementary service. If you sell nail polish, think about partnering with a makeup brand or other self-care product.

2. Both of you post (a few times) that you’re running a contest.

3. Tell your followers to follow both your company and your partner company and to tag 3 friends in the comment section.

4. Each person they tag is an entry in your contest.

5. At the end of the contest, you’ll choose one comment at random to receive a gift certificate or one of your products.

(Be sure to check contest laws in your state!)

Create a robust email strategy. Email isn’t the right channel for every type of company, but it does work for most. First, you’ll need to choose an email marketing platform that’s easy to use and that helps you manage unsubscribes (you don’t want to email people who don’t want to hear from you). Look at platforms like Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, and Constant Contact.

Follow the same guidelines above for your email messages: provide great content. Emails will go unread and unsubscribed if you only email “my product is great!” Instead, use your emails to send blogs, to provide discounts, and to teach your readers something. Provide value, and they’ll open your emails. Once you have their trust, you can slip in some “my product is great!” language.

Partner with a small business marketing agency. Finally, the best marketing idea for small businesses is working with an expert. You can absolutely initiate some of these on your own, but bringing in a marketing agency will make it easier if you don’t have the time or resources. The right marketing agency will work with you to create a plan that’s affordable and sized properly for your brand and your expectations.

Small Business SEO: A Primer for 2021

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 06:46:30 GMT

Search engine optimization (or “SEO”) is one of the most impactful digital marketing strategies any company can invest in. Whether you’re looking for small business SEO strategies or advice to improve the ranking of your multimillion-dollar enterprise, optimizing for Google is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires consistent, regular work to achieve and then maintain a first-page ranking.

Why should a first-page ranking matter in your small business SEO plan? Regardless of what service or product you sell, your buyer is most likely searching for it on Google, and SEO helps you get in front of those customers. Several studies have found that only 25% of users click to the second page of search results—so optimizing your site to appear on the first page of the search engine results page (or “SERP”) is key to reaching those important buyers.

Small Business SEO Strategies

1. Understand your customers.

Having a solid grasp on your customer base is step one. It gives you a starting point in your marketing strategy to begin creating the list of keywords you want to begin targeting. To create that list, you need to know how your customers will search for your product or service on Google. Let’s say you offer electrician services, and you’re able to replace damaged outlets in someone’s home. Electricians might call outlets “receptacles” when talking to each other—but your average buyer isn’t going to search “receptacle replacement.” Use a keyword tool (or search for SEO companies who can do this research for you) to uncover the right words and phrases to use. Both a keyword tool and an affordable SEO service for small businesses will be able to tell you how many people search for those terms on Google each week.

2. Understand the technical part of SEO.

Keyword optimization should be a primary focus of your small business SEO strategy, but technical SEO is also important. Technical SEO refers to the mechanics of your website that impact your Google ranking. First, you want a simple website structure that Google can “crawl” easily; when Google indexes webpages, it scans your website and maps out the structure. It’s making sure your website is easy to navigate because it wants users to be able to find what they’re looking for. Other common pain points for technical SEO include your page load speed, broken links on your landing pages, and duplicate content. Remedy each of these.

3. Understand where keywords matter.

Once you’ve done your keyword research, it’s time to start optimizing your landing pages. There is no simple rule for how often to use a keyword on a page (otherwise known as “keyword density”). As a general rule, depending on the length of the webpage, most marketers will recommend using your focus keyword five times. Where you put those keywords is important. Make sure your primary keyword appears at the beginning of your title, in your sub headers, in your meta description, and then evenly distributed in your body content.

4. Understand that you can’t “keyword stuff.”

If you’re new to small business SEO strategies , you might be tempted to include the keyword all over the page. Google knows this trick, and it knows you’re trying to game the system. Referred to as “keyword stuffing,” the practice of oversaturating a landing page with keywords is penalized. Don’t do this! Instead, write naturally and find logical places to include your keywords. As Google gets smarter, it’s becoming more aware of natural language vs stilted, keyword-dense web copy.

5. Understand that it takes time.

More than anything else, whether you’re doing this on your own or you’re hunting down affordable SEO services for small businesses like yours, know that SEO takes time. As mentioned earlier, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. While a few key fixes can have a quick impact, SEO requires regular attention. Google’s algorithm changes constantly. Google also rewards consistent content updates (that’s why blogging often is a good idea). Updating your existing content tells Google you’re keeping relevant, fresh information on your site—and that’s what it wants to serve its users.

If you’re new to SEO, it can seem daunting to take on such an important task on your own. That’s where SEO companies step in. The Creative Freeway offers affordable SEO services for small businesses . Let’s talk about your needs, and we can help you reach your first-page-of-Google dreams!

Why Is Social Media Marketing Important?: Strategies for Beginners

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 06:46:30 GMT

Do you find yourself wondering “why is social media marketing important?” Even if your business doesn’t seem like a prime candidate for social media, social websites are a vibrant part of the digital world. Don’t think of this task as a burden—recognize that it’s an opportunity to tell your story, to connect with your audience, and to remain relevant.

Below, we’ll cover what social media marketing is, why social media marketing is important, and social media marketing strategies you can deploy right now.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is, simply, using social media platforms to build your brand, connect with your audience, increase web traffic, and drive sales (if that’s your goal). It’s part of your digital marketing strategy . Like your website, your social media profiles are part of your digital brand, and they offer your users or customers another place to find information. They also offer you another place to sell your services/product.

There are tons of social media sites right now, but the big ones (at the moment) are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat. We’ll cover a couple of social media marketing strategies down below.

Why Is Social Media Marketing Important?

Social media marketing is important for tons of reasons! First, it helps improve your brand awareness. Buyers of all ages and demographics spend hours per day on the most popular social media sites, so having a presence on these platforms puts you in front of them. It also offers an avenue for you to connect with your existing customers—answering questions and updating them on new services.

Next, you can use social media marketing strategies to expand your audience. We tell social platforms like Facebook and Instagram tons of personal information. In addition to our external profiles, these sites are compiling data on our buying habits, our interests, and our demographics. You can use this information to target users who are more likely to be interested in your product or service.

Social media marketing is also very cost effective. If you opt to just run a regular profile rather than advertising, social media is a free digital marketing channel (other than the manpower necessary to run the accounts). With just a few professional-looking graphics and the content you’re already using on your website anyway, you can begin engaging with your existing and new audiences.

What Social Media Marketing Strategies Work?

1. Choose the right social media platforms. While it’s important to have profiles on a couple of social channels, you don’t want to spread your social media marketing strategies too thin. If you’re not able to produce quality video content, then you don’t need a YouTube page or a TikTok account. If you’re in a highly visual industry, then you need to use Instagram’s photo-forward interface to your advantage. Go where your audience is. If you’re not selling business services, skip LinkedIn. If your primary buyer is a 45-year-old housewife, you probably don’t need to spend time on Snapchat.

2. Reuse, reuse, reuse. Social media marketing is cost effective because you can repurpose the content you already have. Think of your social media profiles as a place to amplify the work you’ve already done. Consider turning customer testimonials into graphics to share on Instagram or pulling a quotation from a recent blog to promote your “5 eco-friendly cleaning products” blog on Twitter.

3. Provide valuable content. Would you follow a company’s Facebook page if they only posted variations of “we’re the best handyman company in the business!”? Instead, focus on providing value to your followers. If you offer in-home construction services, write a blog about the “5 ways to remodel your kitchen on a budget” or create a video demonstrating how to safely use a circular saw. You will gain followers interested in construction projects or DIY tips, and you’ll be first in mind if they have a project that they need your help with.

4. Know when to post. Ideal posting times and days will vary depending on which industry you’re in. If you’re posting DIY videos like the example above, you might consider lunch hours in your time zone and later in the evening after your target buyers’ kids have gone to bed. If you’re selling business services on LinkedIn, you’ll get attention during business hours.

5. Choose a social media management tool. Social media marketing strategies are also cost effective because, once you’ve created the content, they can run themselves. Rather than having to remember to post every day, you can use a tool like HootSuite or Buffer to schedule posts in advance.

6. Pay attention to analytics. Finally, once you’ve implemented your social media marketing strategies, you need to make sure it’s working. All platforms will offer some analytics to get you started. These analytics will tell you how well your posts are performing, including how many people have viewed your post (often called “impressions”), how often they like or comment on it (this is your “engagement rate”), and whether you’re gaining new followers. Use this information to determine what your audience wants—do your DIY videos perform better than your how-to blogs? Use this information to A/B test, which is basically forming a hypothesis and then using the numbers to prove or disprove your theory. If you think your posts will perform better at 7 PM than they are at 11:30 AM, you can use the analytics to test that out.

Now that you know the answers to your pressing questions—what is social media marketing and why is social media marketing important—you’re ready to create vibrant, engaging social media profiles that best represent your company. Deploy these social media marketing strategies, and if you’re looking for a more robust marketing plan, remember The Creative Freeway .

How to Create a Blog for Your Startup

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 06:46:30 GMT

If you’re starting a business, you may know that you need to blog...but you’re not sure why. How to create a blog and what to blog about are both linked to why to start a blog. In addition to offering you a place to talk about the benefits of your product or service, a blog is an excellent SEO tool . It provides regular, keyword-dense updates to your website, which help your site perform better on Google. Better Google performance means increased traffic, which means more eyes on your service or product.

So, you know you want to start a blog. Now let’s discuss how to create a blog and what to blog about.

How To Create a Blog: The Basic Steps

The first step is to choose a blogging platform. If you already have a website, you’ll need to check what capabilities your CMS (content management system) has for blogging. WordPress is often the go-to system for blogging because it was originally created to be a blogging platform. WordPress is also natively geared toward search engine optimization, so it makes SEO easy once you’ve started your blog. If you’re looking for how to create a WordPress blog, there are tons of resources out there.

If you don’t have a website yet, you’ll need to register a domain with a domain registration service and find a secure hosting website. A service like WevrWeb provides domain registration, secure hosting, and incredible customer service.

What to Blog About: Create Relevant Content

Now that you know how to create a blog, and why a blog is important to your startup, it’s time to decide what to blog about. It’s time to build your content calendar.

The most important rule of thumb: create relevant content. Your blogs should provide information about topics your target audience cares about, and those topics should be related to the overall messaging of your website (otherwise Google will penalize you on the search engine results page). Blogs are great tools for improved SEO , so use that to your advantage.

Let’s say you’re a wellness company focused on selling virtual exercise classes. You know that your target audience is probably interested in exercise techniques, healthy food, and meditation. This is a great start, and with a little bit of keyword research, you can build out three months of blog topics. Here’s what you’d do:

1. Type your first topic, “exercise,” into a keyword tool like WordTracker or SEMrush. This will give you an idea of how many people are searching for this topic, and the other keywords they’re searching that are similar.

2. Use this first search to dive deeper to more specific topics. If you just write toward the word “exercise,” you’re competing with a lot of other websites for that keyword. But, from our first search, we can see that a lot of people search, more specifically, for “plank exercise.” This keyword is more specific, and it will be easier to rank for it on Google.

3. Build out a couple of topics based on this interest. Blogs that answer questions and listicle-style articles are big hits. So, you might write a blog covering the topic “How do plank exercises help my body?” and also plan one titled “3 variations of the classic plank exercise.” (Quick tip: a lot of keyword tools will offer you a few suggestion for questions people are searching for about your keyword! You can write a blog answering that exact question.)

4. Use the keyword tool to research other topics you think you might want to cover—like somatic movement or exercises you can do at your desk—and choose the keywords people are searching for to best benefit your SEO.

5. Repeat with other topics of interest, like healthy recipes and meditation, and soon you’ll have a whole list of SEO-friendly topics to cover.

When to Bring in a Professional

Getting a new blog up can be a large task, especially if you’re a small team. Rather than learning how to create a blog on your own, consider working with a marketing agency that can design your blog and manage the content writing on your behalf. You’ll reap all of the benefits of having a search engine optimized blog without having to sacrifice the time necessary to create one. The Creative Freeway is available to discuss your needs today !