Brand Ranch Media Marketing & Advertising Agency News

Traditional Marketing for Home Services

If you are in the home services industry in Houston Texas, you already know how competitive the market is! Many multi-million-dollar brands of renown have been born in our local Houston Market. You also face challenges from large national companies that have jumped into the sprawling Houston market with their deep pockets of marketing funds. Many of these you may see or hear nearly every day.

With over 6.6 million people in the Houston market, and homes that sprawl across 665 square miles, reaching and influencing the large diverse population at scale is what good traditional marketing is all about. Don’t let the market size daunt you… with a little strategy and planning you can cost effectively build a successful brand name and grow your customer list.

Local Traditional Media Options

Home Services customers interact with many types of traditional media on a daily basis. For example, many homeowners start the day with the local broadcast TV news, then find themselves turning on some music on the car radio to get pumped up for the day as they commute. While sitting in traffic they find themselves checking out the billboards along the highway to the office. After work, homeowners find themselves sorting through print publications and magazines along with the mail in the mailbox when they get back home. Each of these traditional media can be very effective tools in building your brand awareness and activating customers when used appropriately.

Many Houston home services companies have had success cost effectively reaching consumers via broadcast radio thanks in part to the long commute times Houstonians face daily. In 2019 the average commute time one way was 29.5 minutes according to Educated Drive.org. Looking at a two-way trip, that’s almost an hour a day in the car. Despite the significant dip in traffic in 2020 due to the pandemic, Houston still remained one of the worst congested cities in the U.S., coming in at No. 3 behind only New York and Boston, according to recent urban mobility report and the Houston Chronicle. Perhaps because of the sprawling size of city itself and these commute times, local radio stations maintain strong listenership numbers, and commuters have plenty of time to take in billboard messaging.

Consumers working from their home offices often had a renewed focus on their surroundings at home, and they often kept a TV while they worked as well. This change in behavior has been reflected in a significant shift in daytime Broadcast TV and Cable network viewership numbers.

A Few Home Services Media Buying Tips

Before jumping into a media buy, it’s important to understand that targeting makes a world of difference in a huge market like Houston. Be aware of the available targeting methodologies for each type of traditional media, and how you can compare local Houston audiences to both your consumers, and to the audiences you can target across other traditional media types.

Houston is one of the nation’s most diverse markets, not just in ethnicity, but in income levels and home values as well. Audience demographics and measurements fluctuate from program to program and time slot to time slot on both Broadcast TV and Radio. To ensure a cost-effective traditional media buy you need to consider the size of each program’s audience, and who is making up that audience.

Audience data fluctuates frequently, so staying on top of rankings and Nielsen numbers for audience measurements from book to book throughout the year is important. As an example, Houston’s News Radio’s 740 AM KTRH often has a surprisingly strong listenership, similar to total numbers you would find in an FM station. These audience numbers may spike significantly during a political year.

If you’re trying to tell a visual story and stay more local or stay within a more modest media budget, cable providers have the ability to break their audiences up into zones of the city. Again, understanding these geographic zones, and the audience viewing the networks and programs within them is key to ensuring an efficient and cost-effective media buy.

The same is true about billboards and targeted print. TxDOT and census data can add insight to the number of people that drive past a huge billboard, local sign, or that live in that neighborhood you would like to target. There is also available 3^rd party data that can be referenced. Understanding the demographics and target audience you’re trying to influence can help determine both where you’ll find the best marketing performance, as well as which type of messaging and creative you should use to be most effective.

Common Mistakes in Houston Home Services Marketing

With the fast paced, commute heavy lifestyle many Houstonians’ lead, it’s easy to underestimate how many ads a person sees and hears in a day. Frequency matters…Creativity matters…Timing matters… Reaching a Home services consumer when they are receptive and engaged makes a difference. Your marketing should always present your brand uniquely, differentiating your brand and your services from the competition in a way that stands out and will be remembered. Not reaching your target audience frequently enough for your message to take hold across one station or all traditional media, is a common campaign mistake.

At Brand Ranch Media, our team of traditional marketing experts have experience working with home services clients and driving success that is measured in real world leads and bottom-line revenue. We know what it takes to run successful traditional media campaigns of all types, from media planning & buying to producing creative messaging that influences consumers. We grow local brands into market leaders. We would love to chat with you about your home services business and how we can help you take your next steps forward using targeted broadcast TV, radio, cable, billboards and print. Give us a call at 713-309-6380 or send us a message to open a discussion!

Best Practices for Home Services SEO

Competition for home services SEO is extremely high. There are many home services companies in large-urban marketplaces – some locally owned and some nationally. Regardless of the number of markets a business serves or where their owners are located, if a home services company doesn’t have a solid local SEO strategy, they are guaranteed to lose potential leads. It’s important for home services company owners to understand the basic components of a quality SEO strategy when choosing to work with an SEO agency as opposed to hiring an in-house SEO manager.

Google My Business Page and Optimization

The most important component of a successful home services SEO campaign is an optimized Google My Business listing. These free listings not only provide general business information to potential customers, but they will also trigger Google Maps impressions, provide customers with a forum to leave reviews, and help with the performance of Google Ads campaigns. However, it’s important to understand that a listing must be optimized in order to work to the advantage of a business. Leaving listings incomplete or not taking advantage of every available listing feature will put a business at a disadvantage compared to competitors that have fully optimized listings.

On-page SEO

Home services business owners don’t have to look much further than their own website when assessing potential SEO shortcomings. Website audits should be performed on a regular basis to ensure any SEO issues are not overlooked, but rather addressed before they result in undesirable organic rankings on search engines. These audits will point out issues with title tags, page descriptions, broken links, images, unnecessary or broken code, site speed, and other critical site errors. In order to remediate these issues, your SEO agency will need a skilled website developer in addition to a knowledgeable SEO specialist.

Content Marketing

Engaging website content is an important element to a successful SEO campaign. Original, new content in the form of blog articles should be crafted and added to a home services website on a regular basis. Topics should center around services, tips, seasonality, and the business’s involvement in the local community. Research should be conducted by the content marketers to ensure that the topic is aligned with both business goals and local search trends. Articles should be shared on social media platforms to reach its target audience and page followers.

Social Media Accounts and SEO

All home services businesses should have accounts on the various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Other platforms to consider are Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. Social media accounts allow businesses to engage with their followers through content posts and provides additional backlinks to its website – a valuable component of SEO.

We hope you can use the information provided in this article to help you select not only a quality SEO agency, but one that has experience with home services SEO. We typically don’t “toot our own horn”, but Brand Ranch Media might be the agency you are looking for!

Our SEO experts have a vast amount of experience working with home services clients and know what it takes to run successful SEO campaigns. We would love to chat with you about your home services business and how we can bring you long-term ROI through SEO. Give us a call at 713-309-6380 or send us a message to open a discussion!

Paid Social Media for Home Services

In our last blog, we discussed how digital marketing campaigns can benefit a home services business. As we continue to deep dive into advertising strategies for home services, let’s look at another piece of the digital marketing pie, paid social media. Advertising has thrived on social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. If your business does not already utilize social media, you should strongly consider doing so. There is a lot of planning that involved in running successful paid social media campaigns. Today, we are going to break it down for you and answer some questions such as “why it is important”, “how to get started”, and “what are some common mistakes”.

The Importance of Paid Social Media

Social Media is an essential part of business strategy for companies of every size. Traditional advertising such as tv or radio can be very costly upfront. Paid social media is another form of digital advertising that is an inexpensive way to spread brand awareness, target your audience, drive traffic, and bring conversions. In addition, it is much easier to determine what’s working in your advertising efforts with the data you receive from social media campaigns.

Where to Get Started

In order to run an effective social media campaign, you need to determine the campaign objective, target audience, and budget. The objective is your campaign’s goal and how you will measure its success. Objectives of a paid social media strategy include brand awareness, consideration, or conversions. Once you’ve settled on the goal of your campaign, you should determine the target audience. The audience should be tailored based on the message of your campaign. In other words, you will want to be sure that the message of your campaign “speaks” to your specific audience and compels them to take a specific action (your campaigns’ objective). Finally, you will want to select a budget that will be adequate enough to achieve your campaign goal based on the size of your target audience.

Common Mistakes

Your digital campaign efforts need to be balanced in order to achieve your business’s target growth. Campaigns do not necessarily need to target leads and conversions. Prior to making a purchase decision, your customer needs to become aware of your brand, gain interest in your services, and see how your company is better than the competition. An unbalanced advertising effort can often lead to money out of your pockets instead of a positive return on your investment.

Another costly social media advertising mistake can be ending campaigns or making campaign changes without allowing them adequate time to perform. Ads run off of algorithms that require time for them to optimize. They need a few weeks to go through a learning period during which time the algorithm will determine how to best serve the ad to the individuals who are more likely to interact with it. If ad changes are made too often without allowing them to go through learning or optimization, performance can suffer.

Popular home services CRM, Service Titan details the complexity of social media in their blog saying, “One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when devising a social media plan is assuming that it will be quick and easy. Signing up may be quick and easy, but maintaining a robust, engaging social media presence is time consuming and requires thought and consideration.”

Brand Ranch Media is Houston’s most experienced home services marketing agency. We have helped countless home services providers grow their businesses exponentially, consistently driving record-high revenues for our business partners. Get on the path of exponential growth today. Call us at 713-309-6380 or reach out via contact form and let us know how we can help you!

Best Home Services SEM and PPC Strategies

After providing an overview of home services marketing tactics in our last article, it’s time to dig a little deeper and talk some specifics regarding some of the best home services SEM and PPC strategies. One of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for a home services business are digital marketing campaigns. Digital campaigns allow you to reach a highly specific targeted audience at a cost point that it much less expensive than traditional marketing channels such as radio, TV, and print. In addition, it’s much easier to track the overall success and performance of digital marketing campaigns versus its traditional counterparts. Digital marketing encompasses a broad range of different marketing channels. Today, we want to hyperfocus on search engines and how a home services business can utilize search engine marketing (SEM) to reach its target customers with highly focused messaging that will convert at a high rate, low-cost ratio.

Is it SEM or PPC?

If you’re a home services business owner, you are likely familiar with one of the following marketing terms: search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click marketing (PPC). Essentially, they refer to the same thing (though, not exactly). SEM implies paid advertising tactics done via a search engine such as Google or Microsoft (Bing). PPC is an SEM tactic where you, quite literally, pay for each click your ad receives. Not all SEM is PPC as there are multiple ad types and different bidding strategies you can choose that don’t charge you for each individual click. When working with a digital marketing professional, they will ultimately make the best decision as far as what bidding strategy to utilize based on the goal of the individual campaign. However, arguably the most effective search engine ad type is a search ad, which happens to follow the pay-per-click model.

What are Search Ads?

If you’re a home services provider and you want to reach potential customers at the exact time they are searching for your service type online, then you need to invest in a search ad marketing strategy. Search ads are highly effective because the customer is actively looking for a specific product or service in the exact moment when the search occurs. In addition, the buyer is typically in the mid to late funnel stages of the buying process and therefore search ads tend to have higher conversion rates for qualified leads. When users search online for a service, search ads will appear on the SERP (search engine results page) as some of the first results (see image).

The main components of a search ad are headlines and a description. Headlines should consist of the main product/service that you are advertising as well as short, supporting phrases that would entice users to click the ad. The description should include verbiage to further support the services provided. Additional components of a search ad are called “extensions”. Different types of extensions can be included with a search ad and provide unique bits of information including, but not limited to, a phone number, sitelinks to different web pages, service types, locations served, deals, short callouts, and more. Since the goal of the search ad is to get the user to perform some sort of measurable action, the ad copy and extensions are quite important and should be optimized over time for best performance. Since search ads tend to target customers at later stages in the marketing funnel, another digital ad type can be utilized to reach more early-stage buyers: display ads.

What are Display Ads?

Display ads provide visually appealing ad content (shown below) to users who have shown online signals of actively researching specific products or services, however, they can also raise brand awareness for users that may have interests in related products or services.

A home service provider can also use display ads to retarget previous customers or website visitors which helps keep them top of mind and consistently in front of previously engaged audiences. Since they can reach buyers in different stages of the buying process, display ads should be designed with specific messaging intended for each specific audience. Depending on the messaging, when users click the ad, the landing page content should closely match to maximize the desired outcome.

Landing Pages and Digital Ads

No matter what type of digital ad you are running, the landing page (the web page where users will land upon clicking an ad) plays a pivotal role as to whether the potential customer will take the desired action towards converting into an actual lead. Like ads, a landing page should entice users into taking a pre-defined action. For home services, these action types are typically customer contact via phone calls or a form fill. The messaging on a landing page should closely align with the messaging of the ad so that when users click the ad, the landing page further supports everything that the ad claims. In addition, the page content should minimize any doubts a potential customer may have, convincing them that they should definitely use your services. Finally, there should be a clear call-to-action on how the customer can contact you to schedule service. Combined with compelling ads, this landing page formula will help drive leads. Landing pages should be optimized over time to find the highest converting content.

If you’re a home services business owner, having a great digital marketing team is going to be crucial for your success. Whether the strategy is PPC only or a more balanced SEM approach, you will want those who are experienced in home services marketing to drive your strategy and execute the plan.

Brand Ranch Media is Houston’s most experienced home services marketing agency. We have helped countless home services providers grow their businesses exponentially, consistently driving record-high revenues for our business partners. Get on the path of exponential growth today. Call us at 713-309-6380 or send us a contact form and let us know how we can help you!

Home Services Marketing in Houston

There are many different advertising platforms and strategies one can use for home services marketing. Brand Ranch Media has proven that a balanced advertising plan can lead to great success in the home services industry. It is important to utilize both traditional and modern marketing methods. We use omni-channel strategies to provide consumers with a seamless experience across multiple channels. Staying consistent across channels will take customers through a high-quality experience. You may be reading this article because you want to generate outbound and inbound leads for your home services business. Let’s take a bird’s eye view at some of the different ways to advertise for home services companies.

Traditional Advertising vs Digital Marketing

Traditional advertising is served on different platforms such as print, radio, TV, and streaming. This method of advertising is great for brand recognition and can help to get the message about your products or services to your target consumer. We will do a deeper dive into traditional advertising later in this blog series, but for now, let’s discuss one of the difficult aspects of traditional marketing: tracking its success.

Return on Investment (ROI) is one way that an advertising agency, such as Brand Ranch Media, measures the success of marketing campaigns. It tends to be more difficult to track the ROI of traditional advertising campaigns because the attribution is sometimes clouded. For example, a radio ad for lawn maintenance plays. The listener drives home and looks at the current state of their yard. She decides she needs the service, searches the company’s name online, and calls the phone number listed on their website. The call is attributed to an organic search result instead of the original advertising source, a radio ad. Therefore, the radio ad is less likely to receive credit for this lead.

In contrast, digital marketing is served across the internet on various platforms including websites, search engines, social media, and email. Over the past few decades, digital marketing platforms have evolved and improved the way advertising professionals can market home services. Using digital platforms, we can better target a specific audience, optimize the performance of campaigns, and track campaign success by using website and performance analytics. The ability to attribute a conversion goal or purchase directly from a digital ad source makes it much easier to determine the ROI of a digital campaign over a traditional advertising campaign.

Digital Marketing Strategies

There are multiple digital marketing platforms and strategies advertising professionals use in the home services industry. Each of them works together and complements each other, ultimately driving the most amount of leads possible. We will discuss this at greater length later in this blog series but here are some quick insights into each method.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy designed to increase the volume of website visitors by improving a website’s positioning in an unpaid (or “organic”) way on search engines. This is performed through a combination of keyword usage throughout a website, content optimization, and website best practices. However, SEO is much easier said than done and can be quite time consuming.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM, commonly known as PPC), allows marketers to target people who fall within a typical customer profile based on a combination of demographics, interests, and in-market audience segments. Campaigns utilize different types of ads including search, display, and video. SEM is a great way to reach people who are searching online for home services providers.

Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, can be utilized by marketers through paid and organic approaches. By using paid advertising on social media, advertising agencies can use targeting capabilities to reach extremely specific audiences. This puts your ads in front of people that are likely to need your services (homeowners in your target demographic, for example). Social media campaigns can also help further your reach and broaden your audience. Additionally, utilizing organic social media is a great way for you to work on brand recognition while humanizing your business. It’s a place to showcase examples of your work, who you are, and could even stir up conversation or “engagement” around your business. Users can also write genuine testimonials about the services they received. Ultimately, an active social media page can generate more traffic and result in more leads for your business.

Home Services Marketing with an Experienced Ad Agency

It’s important for your brand to use best practices to comply with industry standards. As marketing platforms continuously modernize, it’s important to keep in mind the standards your business needs to maintain to keep up with changes. Advertising agencies make themselves industry experts to keep up with the trends that are everchanging. Keeping up to date on trends in the market and the industry itself will significantly impact your results for the better.

One example of how an experienced agency can help is by utilizing home services software tools such as a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). By utilizing a customer’s existing CRM, we can work together to track leads, customer acquisition, sales, types of services performed and more – all for the benefit of improving marketing campaigns. By tracking leads all the way through to a completed sale, we can capture which ads drive the greatest revenue to maximize profit. Then, we are able to focus advertising efforts on the most successful platforms. This will help maximize ROI!

Additionally, using an omni-channel marketing strategy can optimize the customer experience. This marketing strategy provides users across multiple marketing channels with a consistent brand experience. It is meant to be a seamless transition for your customer as they navigate your brand from channel to channel. Staying consistent across channels will provide your customers with a cohesive experience that will help conversions.

At Brand Ranch Media, we have a wealth of experience in the home services marketing industry. Our experienced team will lead you in the right direction. We will customize your marketing plan, budget allocations, and strategies for growth and performance. Our goal is to help you expand your business. Some of the different types of home services providers we have worked closely with include Exterior Cleaning, Electricians, HVAC, Pool Cleaning, Pest Control, Plumbers, Concrete Services, Lawn Care, Landscape Design, and Cleaning Services.

If you are looking for Home Services Marketing, Brand Ranch Media develops and manages marketing strategies that will lead your business to the success you are worthy of. Our experienced marketing experts bring diverse skillsets and understand all components of successful marketing campaigns. Call us at 713-309-6380 or contact us to discuss how we can grow your business together!

Top Digital Marketing Agency in Houston

Digital Marketing Consulting in Houston

Digital Marketing can be extremely overwhelming. It’s a lot to keep track of! Ads are not just something you can “turn on.” Digital Marketing is multi-faceted and complex. The Digital Marketing space is ever-changing and with constant growth comes new platforms, best practices, and an insane number of trends. If all this seems like a lot, you’ve come to the right place. Brand Ranch Media is here to help you understand the ins and outs of digital marketing and how it specifically ties into your industry. Whether it’s awareness, revenue, or loyalty you are after, we take a strategic approach to getting you there.

How does Digital Marketing apply to your Business?

Let’s say you’ve bought a billboard on a prime location of I-45 where there always seems to be a surge of traffic. The billboard does what it should and provokes the thought of a consumer needing your product or service. When the person pulls up their phone to search, enters your company’s name, there are ten other companies listed above yours in their search results.

If you were to think back to all the times you have Googled something, when is the last time you went to the second page to find specifically what you were looking for? For most people, they click on the first few links. Now your lead (revenue) has gone to your biggest competitor (the company that put time into a comprehensive digital marketing strategy).

This is where we come in!

Digital Marketing is Dynamic, Complex, and Ever-Changing

The goal is to put a great ad in front of people who need your business. It’s easy to say, “I want more leads”. However, let’s talk about the magic that happens behind the scenes to get you there.

You can’t just start running a Search ad, for example. Things like branding, strategy, and a detailed plan need to be established first. There’s a method to the madness. Here’s a first look at where to get started. Research is so important and often overlooked. Customer behavior and demographics, market research, and competitor strategy need to be fully reviewed to create a successful advertising campaign.

Staying on top of trends can be daunting and time-consuming. It’s imperative to know what works, what doesn’t work, what is new and evolving, and how it can give you a competitive advantage.

As Digital Marketing popularity continues to skyrocket, we have seen an influx of ads everywhere we look. Consumers are leery about spending their money. An offer is not enough to close the deal. They want a personalized approach for their needs to be met.

Lots of planning goes into a successful campaign. There needs to be a deep dive into your business goals and what you want your campaign strategy to look like. Once your plan has been established, applying those goals and strategies to your creative process is essential. This will come in the form of branding, tone, voice, etc. It is also critical to understand customer behavior.

In a sea of ads, you must stand out or the viewer’s eyes will continue to gloss over and keep scrolling. A creative team that knows what they’re doing is crucial. Every ad platform is ever-changing. Having a team that is up to date on best practices for each platform is essential to your success rate.

The success of any campaign is dependent on the ability to target the right audience. With proper execution, ads can target very detailed audiences based on demographics, interests, locations, types of products and services they are currently in-market for, and websites or topics they have previously browsed.

It’s important to measure the success rate of your ads to ensure a high return on investment. Using the right media platforms and performing ongoing data analysis is pivotal to your campaigns overall. It is also important to utilize tracking software to monitor where your leads come from, qualify them, and measure your return on ad spend.

What are the benefits of hiring an Advertising Agency?

Your business is your baby. Don’t be risky with it. If you put all your eggs in one basket, there is risk involved. You need experts who are deliberate with your ad dollars. When hiring an ad agency, such as Brand Ranch Media, we create cohesive ad campaigns across platforms to maximize your return on investment. This will bring in leads, revenue, and growth for your business.

Agencies have in-depth experience across all digital platforms. There are many platforms to consider. Business owners wonder whether to place ads on Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Meta (Facebook), Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, to name a few. There are also a multitude of different ad types to consider. The decision on where to place the ads and what ad types to use depends on the budget, campaign goals, and the best strategy to help achieve those goals. You will need to work with a partner who can create a comprehensive and cohesive campaign that will consider Local SEO, Conversion Rate Optimization, Website SEO, and various digital ad platforms and formats to best suite your business needs.

Another consideration is to look for a partner that has experience across various industries. At Brand Ranch Media, we have experience working with HVAC, a multitude of Home Services Companies, Healthcare, Law Firms, Government Agencies, Automotive Companies, Real Estate Firms, and Political Organizations just to name a few. You will want to select a partner who understands the challenges and ins and outs of your industry as well as your business.

If you are curious about a digital marketing consulting agency who can help you create a winning digital marketing strategy, we can help. Don’t have the time or expertise to figure all of this out on your own? Contact us today at 713-309-6380 or send us your information via our contact form.

Does Website Speed Affect SEO?

If you’re a business owner, chief marketing officer, website designer or developer, or have a general interest in learning more about how website speed affects SEO – this article is for you! It’s crucial to understand how website speed plays a role in SEO. Without a firm understanding of the ways in which different website elements affect site speed, stakeholders are at risk of inadvertently causing more headaches down the road with decreased site performance and costly adjustments.

If you haven’t already guessed, the quick answer as to whether website speed affects SEO is, “Yes!”. To understand how it affects SEO, let’s set the stage using a real-life scenario.

Mistakes Were Made

XYZ Company hired a web design team to build them a new website to replace their old, outdated one. The site will feature the business’s services and will facilitate lead generation through calls-to-action such as forms fills and phone calls. XYZ Company has some great new video and image assets they want to utilize on the site to help drive sales. The owners of the XYZ Company want something flashy! They have had their current website for almost 8 years and are eager for a drastic change. They want the site to be way cooler and more awesome than any of their competitors’.

The design team gets to work and are excited to show off their skills. They create a visually amazing website using video content, imagery, and flashy design elements. The XYZ Company owners are blown away at how great the site looks! With their vision achieved through a cool looking website design, they see dollar signs ahead and forecast great sales numbers for the first year with the new site.

Once the site goes live, the marketing team starts to run paid search, email marketing, and content marketing campaigns. They team up with a local TV station to run a few commercial spots on cable. All these efforts are expected to bring a ton of visitor traffic to their website. After the first year, however, sales numbers fall WAY short of company goals.

How could this have happened?

Hiring the Experts

XYZ Company hires a marketing consultant (ahem…. Brand Ranch Media, maybe???) to help pinpoint what went wrong and provide them with the steps needed to fix any marketing-related issues they may have overlooked during the past year. After running a full analysis, the consultant presents the following:

Mobile Website Bounce Rate is 90%
87% of Google Ads traffic is on mobile devices
Organic Traffic is only 15% of total web traffic
The website only ranks organically for its own brand name and close variants
Average page load speed is 25 seconds on mobile devices and 15 seconds on desktops

Each of these performance indicators illustrate a clear problem with website speed!

The consultant then makes the following recommendations:

Our research and reports show that slow page load speeds can be improved by:

Utilizing next generation image files
Consolidating and eliminating unnecessary JavaScript and CSS
Limiting the number of scripts that must fire before the page becomes fully interactive
Utilize a 3^rd party website to host video files

Fixing these issues have their associated costs. Combined with the costs associated with the flashy website design/build, a years’ worth of marketing costs, and the analysis to find the cause of the failed marketing initiatives as well as the solution – not understanding how website speed affects SEO can cost a company hundreds of thousands over the course of a year!

So, how does website speed affect SEO?

In our example above, the different elements of XYZ’s flashy new website caused the site to load extremely slow. When a website takes a long time to load, the overall perception of the quality of the website by search engines decreases. The search engine wants to provide its users with the best quality results and the best quality websites. When a website has slow load times, the search engine perceives this as a quality issue related to user experience and will therefore rank the website much lower in comparison to others within the same industry and geographic location. A similar ranking system applies for search engine ads. Essentially, if a website is slow to load, a visitor is more likely to exit out of the website upon entry rather than wait until it completely loads. Therefore, when approaching a web project, you should design for aesthetics but develop for performance. You really can’t afford to learn this lesson the hard way, like XYZ Company did.

Don’t be like XYZ. Call Brand Ranch Media before you get involved in a costly web design and marketing plan. We design and build with performance and conversions top of mind. If you’ve already made a costly mistake, don’t be embarrassed. We can help steer you back in the right direction! Hit us up at 713-309-6380 or send us your information via our contact form.

Best Practices for Social Media Posts

Spring is in the air! It’s the season of new beginnings, and maybe a good time to renew some of your marketing efforts! Do you have a strong social media presence? If not, keep reading. And even if you do, the information below could help you with some decisions about supplementing your paid social media efforts with regular, intentional, organic social media posts to bring your customers even closer to your brand.

Connect with Social Media Posts

Regularly posting to social media keeps your message in front of your customers and allows them to gain more trust in your business. Consistency is key! Organic posts of relevant content to your social media apps will increase your community of loyal followers and allow customers to interact with your brand. Once a customer is a follower on social media, it is important to show them your business is happy and healthy with regularly scheduled posts. While paid ads are also a great marketing strategy, it is always a good idea to supplement your paid efforts with organic posts. If your page is filled with sales-heavy messaging, the consumer may gloss over your posts while scrolling. Posting content that differs from ads are crucial for viewer retention. Happy holiday posts, current events or posts trending within your demographic will help your company’s brand awareness and help bring traffic to your site!

Consumers and Your Online Presence

Your online presence is highly important. Often, Social Media profiles are some of the first online destinations a consumer visits when researching a business online. Engaging with your social media audience through organic messaging such as page posts enables a potential customer to relate to your business on a personal level. It is important to keep track of your online ratings as well. If a consumer Google’s your business, what type of reviews are they going to find? According to Brightlocal, 81% of consumers use reviews to evaluate a business, and only 3% say they would consider doing business with a company with a two-star or worse rating. It is also important to respond to online reviews as this promotes a positive brand perception among consumers. Being responsive and punctual can help your review ratings increase in no time.

Combining Paid and Organic Social Media Marketing Efforts

Paid marketing can offer many benefits such as boosting awareness, growing your followers, and reaching your target audience. Organic social media posts can increase engagement with your existing loyal follower base; however, it will not reach a large percentage of your followers simply because it was posted. The more your followers engage with your post, the more of your followers will be served your post. Additionally, if you get a large amount of engagement on a post, it can easily spread outside of your existing follower base. Supplementing your paid efforts with organic posts is a great strategy to attract new customers, while keeping current followers engaged with your brand. Engaging with your audience on a regular basis will increase trust, build confidence, and facilitate longer-lasting relationships. The best organic posts contain anything relevant to your business or brand, that will captivate your audience with creative, attention-grabbing content! So next time you’re writing a new organic post, try asking an open-ended question. It could be about what’s going on in your industry, or even plans for upcoming current events.

Cost Effective Marketing

The nice thing about social media posting is that you don’t need a huge budget! Organic posting is free, and it brings long lasting results if you maintain it. So next time, start up a conversation, ask questions, or simply respond to feedback on your social media profile to start building long-lasting relationships with your customers. It’s a sign you’re an active member and your business is doing well. It’s never too late to start – but if you don’t have a strong social media presence, you will want to start soon. According to Social Media Today, 65 million businesses are active on Facebook and 91% of brands are active on one or more social media platforms.

Plant the seeds today for deep-rooted relationships and long-term results!

Combining paid and organic marketing efforts is the best strategy to maximize your budget. If you are questioning the strategy and performance of your brand’s social media presence, Brand Ranch Media can help by taking the guesswork out and providing data-driven decision-making. Give us a call at 713-309-6380 to discuss or shoot us a message via our contact form today.

Buying Your Brand Keyword: 4 Scenarios to Consider

Are you thinking about buying your brand keyword for a search ad campaign? If you (or the digital marketing agency that manages your ads) is bidding on your brand keyword, you might want to consider if this is a good strategy for your business. What are the benefits of this strategy and are there any potential drawbacks? What is the reasoning as to why you think you should buy your brand keyword? Ok, wait. We’ll help you out! Just keep reading and we will guide you through 4 scenarios when buying your brand keyword might make sense. We will also point out things you should consider before moving forward with this strategy.

A Competitor Is Buying Your Keyword

Many business owners Google their own brand name (sometimes a little too often) to see how they appear in searches. This can be helpful when you have a lot of competition in your market, and it can also let you know if a competitor is bidding on your brand keyword in their search ad campaigns. Google does not allow the use of trademarked brand names in the ad copy of other brand accounts unless prior authorization for use is given by the trademark owner. However, anyone can include competitor brands as keywords in their digital ad campaigns. If a competitor is buying your brand keyword you should probably start to bid heavily on it as well as get a little creative with your ad copy so that your ad stands out above the rest when people search.

You Want to Own the Market

Perhaps competitors are NOT bidding on your brand name, your website has great SEO so it appears at the number one spot on search results pages, but you want to absolutely OWN all branded website traffic and don’t care what it might cost to do so. A brand with deep pockets might consider this an option. Brands on a budget might want to consider holding off on paying for branded clicks.

Your Brand is a New Business

New businesses might want to consider a few different options when trying to decide if paying for branded search traffic is a solid strategy. If your website is properly optimized for local searches, it will bring in branded traffic organically allowing you to focus on paid search keywords for the specific products or services your brand offers. Since all competitors will be bidding on these specific keywords, the average cost for each of them will be much higher and you will want every bit of your budget available to outperform the competition.

You Recently Rebranded

If your company recently went through a rebrand, especially one where the brand name changed, you might want to consider buying the related keywords for both the new and old brands. Similar to buying keywords for a new business, buying your brand keyword after changing the name of the brand can help supplement branded traffic while search engines “catch up” with the name changes across the internet. In a previous article we wrote about rebranding, we provided a checklist that helps to keep track of the various places across the internet where you will want to make name changes. It can take a few months for search engines to realize that your old brand is now your new brand and buying both keywords can ensure that there is no lapse in online lead generation.

Like any business decision, it’s good practice to consider the pros and cons before moving forward with a plan. Not every situation is the same and when trying to decide upon buying your brand keyword, the answer is, “It depends.” It is best to dive into the data and make educated decisions based on facts rather than emotion and gut feelings.

Choosing and tracking keyword performance during marketing campaigns is crucial for optimal performance. If you are questioning the strategy and performance of your brand’s search campaign, Brand Ranch Media can help by taking the guesswork out and providing data-driven decision-making. Give us a call at 713-309-6380 to discuss or shoot us a message via our contact form today.

How to Rebrand for Growth in 2022: Rebranding Checklist

How to Rebrand - Rebranding Checklist

Could your company benefit from a rebrand? Our team at Brand Ranch Media would like to briefly look at why a rebrand may benefit your company, discuss a few differences in rebranding strategy and approach, as well as share a high-level checklist for some things most companies commonly need to address as they go through the rebranding process.

There are many reasons to make a change to your brand and identity. Have your services or products evolved or changed? Do you have a new mission statement and core values? Maybe you are targeting a different demographic or entering a new market and could simply benefit from a refreshed brand to help stand out from the competition. And of course, there is always the “clean slate” approach to help put a troublesome association or negative past behind you.

Rebranding something as important as your company certainly is not as simple as turning the page and swapping out the name and logo. The timing and adjustments required for rebranding success are unique and varied for every company and situation.

Types of Rebranding

There are three basic types of rebranding used to adjust how people identify or perceive a company or product:

Brand Refresh – Changing minor details such as small aspects of your logo like color hues and fonts.
Partial Rebrand – Creating a new logo and slogan but maintaining the same mission.
Full Rebrand – Everything is new. Nothing is carried over from the past brand. It’s like you’re an entirely different company with a new name, new voice, new fonts, new logo, new jingle, new colors, a new slogan, or mission.

Rebranding Process

The rebranding process needs to be planned and thought out. The initial time investment to analyze your current brand’s space and effectiveness in the marketplace can be what makes your rebranding a success or a flop. Take time to analyze what is and isn’t working for your current brand, as well as what is working for your competitors or within other industries attempting to influence your target consumers. This analysis can help point the way for your rebranding efforts and determine which aspects of your brand need to be adjusted to achieve the greatest success.

It takes time to complete many rebranding tasks and finalize the assets that will make your new brand shine. Set up a timeline or planner that allows you and your team to complete all the needed tasks with an official date to launch the new or refreshed brand.

Look at your business cycle and determine if there is a time where the benefits of a re-invigorated brand will give your company the greatest benefit. Nobody wants to be doing deep market and brand analysis during their busiest time of the year, when their organization should be running at full speed and maximum productivity. If your current brand is facing challenges during the busy season, you may need to complete the rebrand before the season ends. An energized and well-targeted rebranding message can deliver more than just positive brand awareness, it can also lead to a spike in sales which will help maximize revenues for that particular timeframe as well as in the future.

Use the rebrand as an opportunity to build some hype. If your current brand has significant positive recognition and recall, tell the world why you’re making the change. We all grow throughout life, so the story of your brand growth and evolution will help personalize it while helping your audience identify and remember you. It’s perfectly fine to go big and show off why you love your new brand, how your company has evolved, and how that growth helps your consumers and target audience! You’ll also want to let your existing customers know about the change so they don’t have issues contacting you for future business needs.

Rebranding Risks

It’s worth mentioning, there are risks to rebranding as well as risks to not rebrand. There are costs to consider: graphics, audio, signs, and marketing campaigns add up, not to mention the investment of time. Time takes its toll on all things and a brand will not keep its “pop” and fresh look forever. Updating to keep up with the times can help your brand stay relevant and top of mind, however if not executed properly, a failed rebrand attempt could lead to getting lost in the market and outpaced by your competition.

If you’re starting your rebrand journey, here’s a high-level checklist to help you along your path. (Please keep in mind that each rebrand is unique and may have additional steps to consider.)

Click to Download Our Rebranding Checklist for FREE

If you’re ready to turn the page and refresh your brand, tackle a partial rebrand, or strategize for a full rebrand we are here to guide you along the way. Brand Ranch Media has successfully helped many brands evolve and grow. Call us today at 713-309-6380 a reach out via our contact form and we can help ensure your rebrand is a success.