Social Media Archives | Brand Ranch Media

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!

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!

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.

2022 Marketing Goals and Resolutions

Happy New Year, folks! For many, a new year is a time for new beginnings and a chance to start things off on the right foot. A “resolution” is a firm decision to do or not to do something. Last year, we shared a few marketing goals and resolutions to practice in 2021. In today’s discussion, we will outline some new marketing initiatives that every company should definitely do in 2022.

Teach First, Sell Later

The marketing playing field is changing as are the rules of the game. Consumers don’t want to be sold a bill of goods but rather they want a more personalized experience where they can have their needs met. Brands need to take a “teach, don’t sell” approach to marketing and effectively communicate their value to the consumer. This can be effectively achieved by becoming a resource for the customer as a provider of expert knowledge related to the goods and services provided. For example, an HVAC company could create a video about tips on changing home air filters and promote it though social media and YouTube. Avoid pitching a product or service and instead, show how it benefits a customer utilizing a compelling story.

Invest in CTV and Video Content

Digital video content is becoming much more relevant with increasing usage and viewership on multiple platforms including ad-based connected TV (CTV) streaming services such as Hulu, YouTube, and Paramount+ as well as on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In addition, video and animated ads are replacing static image display ads that show on websites and smartphone apps as users are more likely to interact with eye-catching content. Brands should invest in the creation and placement of quality video content on CTV and social media. The videos should tell a story that is relatable to the intended audience. Advertising messages must shift to storytelling in order to gain and keep the attention of an already over-stimulated viewer population. Consumers are bombarded non-stop, all day with an assortment of messaging in our hyper-digital world. To win their attention, video content must be compelling, creative, and relatable. A great example is Progressive Insurance and their latest video campaign featuring “Dr. Rick” who consults adults in their 30s and 40s on how to not become like their parents in everyday life situations.

Use First-Party Data

We’ve discussed this topic in the past and must reiterate that brands MUST start to utilize first-party data collection to use in their digital ad targeting. Six months ago, Apple updated its operating system causing the targeting abilities of advertisers to decline. In the time since, the decrease in user insights has become largely apparent. Companies must learn to utilize their contact and customer lists for different marketing goals on digital ad platforms such as search engines and social media. Retargeting customers is a great way for brands to keep reaching an audience that they know has already purchased their product or service. Companies can utilize different messaging based on the goal of each campaign whether it’s driving sales of every-day goods or the purchase of a maintenance plan on a newly purchased HVAC system.

As a full-service marketing agency, Brand Ranch Media develops and manages diverse marketing strategies that can propel your business into solid year-over-year revenue growth. Our experienced marketing experts bring diverse skillsets and understand all components of successful marketing campaigns. There is always time to adjust your marketing goals and that’s where we come in! Call us at 713-309-6380 or contact us to discuss!

Human to Human: How to Personalize Your Marketing

Consumers are getting personal! And they want businesses to treat them like people, too. Personalizing your marketing strategies will go a long way in connecting your business to your customer. We are social animals and need to feel connected to each other. According to Salesforce data, an average of 84% of consumers say being treated like a person is key to winning their business. And over 95% say that they will stay loyal to a company that they trust. Relationships are key to winning and maintaining customers, especially in this day and time where a lot of marketing is done by machines or artificial intelligence. By using the tools available to us today, you can tailor your marketing to reach consumers on a more personal level by leveraging information that is uniquely relevant to them. It’s important to make a strong first impression and follow through with personalized notifications and messaging to make the entire interaction with your ad a personal experience for the consumer. Salesforce suggests there are some important questions you need to ask when preparing your marketing campaign to make sure it focuses on the person you are trying to reach.

Instead of “what do we want to show”, ask “what do they want to see?”
Instead of “what do we want to sell”, ask “how can we show value?”
Ask “what makes us better than everyone else?”
Ask “how will this make our customer feel?”

Focus On Value and Relationships

Don’t assume people care about you or your product! When you focus more on value and relationships, you begin to recognize how your products fit into the lifestyle of your customer. Knowing your audience can help you tailor your marketing efforts to fit their interests, lifestyle, family situation, socioeconomic status, etc. And when you can tap into their trust sensors and understand the emotional impact of your marketing efforts, then you connect the human value. When your customers know you value their business, the relationship will naturally grow.

Marketing to Emotions

Marketing to emotions must be realistic! For instance, when you see ads with people working out – they’re always smiling. That’s not exactly how it works in real life! People working out usually aren’t smiling. The six primary emotions are love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, and fear. When planning a campaign, stop and ask how your ad might make your customer feel or what it might make them believe about your company and/or product.

Audio can affect emotions too! In a recent article, Spotify and Neuro-Insight studies show that sound can impact our brain by effecting the emotional, memory, and engagement centers. Using four metrics, Spotify explains that through Engagement (relatability & relevance), Emotional Intensity (emotions), Long-Term Memory (memories, feelings, and themes), and Long-Term Memory for Details (specific message), we can create a pretty good picture of how the consumer will connect with the ad and remember it.

Make your Social Content Personal

Most of us share content on social media daily. Is your social media content more personal or more social? Get Response explains LinkedIn data shows how content with a quote will yield a higher click through rate by approximately 30%. LinkedIn also studied social posts comparing images with people vs. objects and the images with people had higher CTR and conversion rates!

*LinkedIn Marketing Solutions/Orbit Media

Keeping your message consistent and authentic can build your brand and increase visibility.

Know Your Audience

Marketing campaigns usually put groups of people into one large demographic (i.e. W 18-34). However, the interests, motivations, and lifestyle within that group could be very different! An 18–20-year-old woman may be single, enjoys going out with friends and partying, and is probably on a fairly tight budget. A woman 30-34 is most likely married, probably with kids, doesn’t go out partying much, and has a little more wiggle room in her budget. Knowing your audience and marketing to those who will find value in your service is key to a successful campaign. People may live in the same city, work in the same industry, or be the same age and/or gender, but that doesn’t mean they will all be interested in the same things.

Tell A Story

Finally, you can make your campaign more memorable by telling a story! People may not always understand your ideas or know all about your product, but they will remember a story – which ties back to the emotions we talked about earlier. Telling your story can take the consumer from the world that is to the world that could be with your brand tying the two together.

Personalizing your marketing strategies will help your customers feel more connected to you and your business. It doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive – it just has to be real.

Achieve your marketing goals and increase brand awareness by personalizing your advertising efforts and focusing on value and relationships.

At Brand Ranch Media, we love helping clients just like you come up with creative ways to utilize available tools to meet your marketing goals. To speak with an expert, give us a call at 713-309-6380 or send us a message on our website.

Marketing Trends in 2022

It’s that time of year again. The final three months of the year are marked with back-to-back-to-back holiday celebrations and most companies already have their holiday marketing plans set. Business owners and marketing professionals alike start setting up marketing initiatives and budgets for the new year. At the end of 2020, we made a few prophetic insights into marketing trends to expect during their 2021 campaigns. Now, we shuffle and flip our tarot cards of advertising and read into the marketing trends to look for in 2022.

Digital marketing automation will continue to evolve.

Google has slowly introduced automated ads into their search and display ad types. These responsive ads take different ad copy and creative input in the platform by the advertiser and use machine learning to show the best performing combinations of the ad assets available to users based on the individual’s preferences. Budget strategies have also become fully automated and are aimed to get the best results based on the goal of each campaign within specific budget parameters. Other digital ad platforms such as Microsoft Ads, Facebook, and LinkedIn utilize similar automation concepts. Expect to see marketing automation continue to improve with new features and better results allowing marketers to focus on other ad management aspects while the automated systems provide support in some of the ad optimization work.

Google’s search algorithms will continue to get smarter which will change website SEO.

In June 2021, Google released an algorithm update it calls, “MUM”. MUM has the ability to translate user searches into different languages as well as go beyond providing results that only answer the original search query. One practical use is utilizing search when in different countries. An English-speaking user on vacation in Italy might want to find fun places to visit in Rome. MUM will bring up local results and translate them from Italian into English so that the user receives localized web results rather than results from an English-language website. MUM can also serve web results that go beyond the initial search query. Using the same travel scenario, when the user is planning a trip, they usually have many questions such as air travel, where to stay, things to do, and how to get around. The MUM update seeks to show results that can answer all of these related questions through only one query. The bottom line for content creators is that keyword placement within content is going to become less and less relevant while focusing on providing well-rounded, quality, and informative content is going to be much more sustainable in the long run.

Image optimization is going to become more vital for SEO.

Image optimization has evolved. Not only do images need to have a descriptive file name and a descriptive alt img tag, they also should be uploaded to websites using proper image formatting and file sizes. Without proper image formatting, websites can load much more slowly which can cause ranking issues. Some companies may have to go back and reformat their website images in order to keep SEO compliant. It might be an expensive process but well worth it considering the amount of business you may lose because of a slow-loading website and a drop in search engine rankings.

Core Web Vitals will find a happy medium.

Launched this past Summer, though announced in 2020, Google provided ample time for website owners to prepare for their Core Web Vitals update. The update added some additional ranking factors to the search algorithm regarding website performance related to site speed in three categories: loading, interactivity, and visual stability. Google also provided a tool to indicate and troubleshoot Core Web Vitals issues through its Chrome Browser called, “Lighthouse”. Our experience working with optimizing for Core Web Vitals and utilizing Lighthouse has shown that the ranking signal is evolving and will likely continue to do so until Google finds a happy medium on just how much ranks will be affected.

Small and medium-sized businesses will invest more into First-Party Data collection and usage.

This one is not only a prediction but also a suggestion. With the almost near extinction of 3^rd party cookie tracking, it is going to be much more difficult (if not nearly impossible) to retarget website visitors in digital marketing campaigns. Facebook’s ads platform is even saying don’t bother with trying to retarget, and if you do, don’t expect to gather very accurate results data (but more on that next). Instead, focusing on collecting first-party data from users is the best method for targeting audiences specifically interested in the services a business provides. The easiest way to start a first-party marketing list is to download and format your customer list so that you can upload to various marketing platforms. There are many different target audiences you can create using this list. If you haven’t already worked this strategy into your marketing plans, do so now.

Facebook ads tracking will get better in a world without third-party cookies.

With the rollouts of iOS14.5 and iOS15 this year, Apple has officially changed the digital advertising game revolving around 3^rd party cookie tracking. With this type of cookie tracking eliminated on iOS devices (or rather, the ability to opt out of this method of tracking), Facebook has been racing to figure out alternative tracking methods to keep their revenue stream, Facebook Ads, relevant and effective. Working within Facebook’s Marketing Expert program, we gain first-hand, direct access to the newest updates within Facebooks ad platform. Thus far, Facebook has done a good job adapting to a cookie-less world and they will continue to improve upon their systems moving forward.

Advertising spend on connected TV will increase.

The 2020 pandemic helped cause a shift in consumer behavior. One of those shifts was viewership of ad supported YouTube video content. Stuck at home, many viewers switched from the smaller phone and tablet versions and started to watch videos on connected TVs. More than half of all YouTube viewers now watch YouTube on TV screens. The cost of advertising on YouTube is much cheaper than cable or broadcast TV and you can still reach a massive audience with better targeting capabilities. Advertising on connected TV is a great marketing strategy that businesses should not ignore.

Email marketing strategy will need to evolve.

Changes in cookie-based tracking has also brought upon changes in the way that email platforms will allow reporting data. Email providers will no longer allow for email marketing platforms to utilize custom tracking code to record click data that occurs within the email itself. Marketers will have to become more creative in bringing users to their website through emails in order to record activity data. Expect marketing emails to be a little more vague while they try to lure you to learn more on their website.

2021 Digital Marketing Predictions: Update

In early December of 2020 we made some bold (but calculated) predictions for future marketing trends as well as set forth some marketing goals and resolutions that advertisers should focus on in 2021. With all the challenges that 2020 brought to the marketplace, businesses were forced to adapt to the changes in order to stay afloat. Consumer behavior also shifted and marketing strategies that once worked had to be adjusted to cater to the evolving customer.

As a recap, here are some of the trends and goals that we predicted would be major focuses of brands both large and small:

Trend 1: Companies will continue to improve their customer’s digital buying experience.
Trend 2: SEO will continue to stay relevant.
Goal 1: Focus on mobile site speed.
Goal 2: Focus on SEO to help fill the funnel for longer sales cycles.
Goal 3: Adopt a winning social strategy.

Fast-forward to six months later and we are nearing the halfway point for 2021! It feels as though this year has been shot out of a cannon and refuses to slow down. It’s been reported that consumer confidence in the US sharply increased in April after the previous increase in March indicating that consumer attitude, buying intentions, and fiscal expectations have reached pre-pandemic levels. Marketers seem to be taking note. In a worldwide survey conducted in March 2021 by research firm, Ascend2, marketing professionals were asked, “Which areas of the digital customer experience will you focus most on improving in the year ahead?” The top three responses were website optimization, social media, and personalization all reporting at about 45% for each response.

Overall, brand marketers want to improve customer experience through website optimization by making it easier for customers to purchase products using mobile devices, adding more ways for customers to reach a sales representative directly on the digital platform, and adding more content that helps the customer to make more informed buying decisions. Increasing the speed of a mobile website will not only improve the customer experience but it will also help with Google index rankings and eliminate a reason why a customer might leave the website and opt for a competitor. Adding content that answers common customer questions will help fill the sales funnel, especially for goods and services with longer sales cycles.

Marketers also want to focus on the social media experience of their customers. This can be achieved through personalized messaging, ad content, and providing multiple ways for customers to interact with the business without having to leave the social media platform. Facebook has pioneered social media advertising and has brought the same technology to Instagram. By personalizing the messaging and content of an ad, marketers can “speak” to consumers depending on where they fit into the sales funnel. Customers can also directly interact with businesses via Facebook Messenger Ads which can also help the business to pre-qualify shoppers through automated messaging options. With the changes released in the most recent update to iOS14, tracking user behavior offsite is going to be very difficult for social media apps such as Facebook. If marketers can interact with customers while offering seamless ways to conduct transactions directly on the social media platform, ROI (return on investment) will be much easier to prove.

So, how did our predictions hold up? We think very well.

A marketing team with the foresight to predict future behaviors and trends in the market is an invaluable asset to any business. At Brand Ranch Media, our experience and expertise in the broad spectrum of advertising can help position your business towards increased revenue while placing your brand in front of customers that have the highest intent to purchase. Give us a call at 713-309-6380 or send us a message to discuss how we can help drive your business to success!

2021 Marketing Goals and Resolutions

Stick a fork in 2020. It’s not only done – it’s overcooked. As we gear up to ring in the new year, marketers are reflecting on the past year, what worked, and changes to make moving forward. In our last article we discussed marketing trends that we expect to see in 2021. For today’s topic, we will set forth some marketing goals and resolutions that every advertiser should strive towards next year.

Mobile Site Speed

Google’s core algorithm update will go into effect early in 2021 with a focus on website speed as a ranking factor. Google will also index websites based solely on their mobile version. As more users turn to mobile as their device of choice when searching the internet, Google wants to make sure that they continue to provide the most relevant content that provides a great user experience. Fast mobile websites that provide great content will be rewarded with better rankings. Marketers and brands must ensure that the websites they promote provide the most optimal mobile user experience. There are many auditing tools available to help identify site speed and mobile usability issues. Doubling down on mobile, Google will also only index mobile websites. Any outdated websites that are not mobile-friendly will not be included in Google’s index and will therefore become completely obscure. Make sure that your website is fully optimized towards these very important ranking factors in 2021.

SEO or PPC?

Filling the sales funnel is important for every business. In the digital-heavy marketing landscape, it can be tricky to fully understand different tactics, how they work in the sales cycle, and when they are best utilized. Depending on whether you provide B2C or B2B products or services, the sales process may be shorter (B2C) or much longer (B2B). With a shorter sales process, you might find success with more of a focus on PPC ad campaigns and less focus on SEO. You will want to still have great content on your website to help the buyer decide to purchase. In a longer sales cycle, a little more focus on SEO can help at the top of the funnel when buyers are typically in the research phase. They have a need that they must fulfill and are likely wanting to learn more about a solution to their need. At this phase, having content that can answer specific questions that a buyer might ask is very important and can take the form of branded whitepapers, case studies, or blog articles. Quality, robust content on the main product or services pages will also aid in filling the top level of the funnel. Even traditional marketing platforms such as radio and television can be used to help drive direct or branded organic traffic to a website. As buyers get closer to the point of purchase towards the bottom of the funnel, PPC campaigns can be used as a decision-centric marketing tactic designed with calls-to-action that drive potential buyers and convert them into customers. Having a diverse marketing plan will help drive buyer decisions at whatever stage they are at in the sales funnel. Be sure that your marketing plan covers each of these stages in the funnel to ensure success.

A Winning Social Strategy

Social media platform strategy planning should be approached differently in 2021 than is has been over the past few years. In the past, a lot of focus has been based on a social selling strategy where hard sales tactics try to immediately convert the buyer. Ad platforms such as Facebook have also built-in conversion-based tools that focus on driving conversions directly on Facebook so that the buyer doesn’t even have to leave to go to the seller’s website. The social sales tactic slowly saw less conversions in 2020 and moving forward, advertisers will need to shift towards social commerce tactics. Where social selling focuses on the bottom levels of the sales funnel, social commerce focuses on the top level of the funnel and is meant to generate more interest in the brand and build trust with the buyer. The average modern user of social media has grown to distrust ads and advertisers alike, always feeling as though they are being sold something. A softer approach to social advertising will help regain the trust that was lost in 2020 and should focus on top-funnel strategies.

The New Consumer

A new generation of consumers has entered the market and advertisers should pay attention. Generation Z (Gen Z) are a much different type of buyer than the older Millennials (who are now turning 40) and Generation X (who are in their mid-40s and older). What has worked when marketing to Millennials and Generation X will not work with Gen Z. Advertisers will need to adjust their strategies if they want to reach the younger consumers. It is important to note as well that 40% of the consumers in the US fit into the Gen Z category so it is unwise to leave this largely untapped consumer out of your marketing strategy. Marketers and brands should research how Gen Z thinks, how they use the many different technologies available to them, and the best ways they can reach this audience and provide value to their everyday lives. This is a huge opportunity for advertisers that they simply should not ignore.

Share some of your thoughts in the comments section. We would love to hear about your marketing resolutions for 2021. Wishing everyone a great holiday season and a very happy new year!

Marketing Trends in 2021

It’s December 2020 – finally! We are less than a month away before we wave goodbye to this rollercoaster year. While we “deck the halls” and “keep our spirits bright,” we eagerly await 2021 and hope for somewhat of a return to normalcy in the new year. Digital Marketing Agencies, as a whole, actually fared well in the uncertain economy. The Facebook Ad Boycott in June had little effect on Facebook’s bottom line. Overall spending on search advertising didn’t take the hit that was forecasted as retailers turned to more online marketing strategies to make up for lost in-store revenue. Looking through our shades at the hopefully brighter future ahead, we have identified some marketing trends in 2021 that brands and advertisers can expect as we transition into a new calendar year.

No more 3^rd party cookie targeting.

Utilizing 3^rd party advertising cookies to track user behavior on websites throughout the internet is a practice this is slowly being burned to a crisp and tossed down the disposal. Search engines and device makers have already eliminated or banned 3^rd party cookie tracking or have plans to do so in 2021. Brands that are not properly prepared for this will have a gap in their digital ad audience targeting. It will be important to start implementing data collection tools and methods in order to serve ads to the most engaged users who are likely to convert into a sale.

Google Analytics has a new face.

The future of analytics is now and in the form of Google Analytics 4. GA4 utilizes an event-based tracking method that features AI learning designed to help advertisers make smarter marketing decisions based on specific actions users take when visiting a website. Though not quite 100% fully developed, it’s best to set up and configure a GA4 analytics property along with the global site tag property and configure custom conversion tracking. As 2021 rolls along, we can expect to see more features added to GA4 to make it the analytics powerhouse that it’s promised to become.

Companies will continue to improve their customer’s digital buying experience.

As shoppers were locked out of retail stores in 2020, brands shifted their dollars and strategies towards improving the customer’s online buying experience much sooner than previously forecasted. Improvements to the mobile buying experience were a large focus as well as virtual customer services. It is unknown how long it will take for retail shoppers to feel comfortable in a traditional shopping environment, however we could eventually learn that more and more shoppers actually prefer a digital shopping experience. Amazon is now where more that half of consumers begin their search for products surpassing search engines, retailer websites, and brand websites.

Search Ad spending will continue to increase.

Despite forecasters’ predictions for 2020 search ad spend, the reality is that rather than taking huge losses now and in the foreseeable future, search ad spend will be on par with the original 2021 predictions and actually surpass forecasted estimates in 2022 and beyond. This comes as large retail brands shifted their marketing efforts to enhanced digital strategies during the lockdown caused by the Coronavirus pandemic.

SEO will continue to stay relevant.

Google continues to make core adjustments to their search algorithm and announced in May that the next update was going to focus on page load speed and mobile-friendliness. SEOs will need to adapt to these new guidelines in order to maintain site rankings and competitiveness in the organic search environment. Google tools, such as Lighthouse and Page Speed Insights, will assist in identifying site speed issues. It will be up to the SEOs to make the proper site adjustments. Mobile web experience adjustments will also be worth the investment. Websites will refine their mobile versions to enhance user experience and more sites will invest in development of AMP encoded mobile site versions designed to load faster on mobile platforms. All of these proactive measures will positively contribute to site ranking.

Ad revenues will increase for streaming devices and apps.

As more households cancel their cable services and switch to one of the many streaming options, more ad dollars will be spent trying to target these customers. Devices such as Smart TVs and Chromecast show video advertisements on free streaming apps that provide viewers with television shows and movies. One YouTube ad option (managed through the Google Ads platform) is to target Smart TV screens as well as streaming apps downloaded to those devices. Expect this feature to continue to gain momentum as it provides advertisers a streamlined option to publish video ads without directly going through paid media reps.

Facebook Ads will be limited.

Starting in February of 2021, Facebook will start to limit the number of ads that a page can concurrently run. According to Facebook, “running too many ads at once can hurt performance.” SMBs (small and medium sized businesses) are not likely to see their ad account affected by the limitations, however larger businesses that utilize widespread regional advertising will find themselves having to identify and focus on the most successful types of ads for their business goals.

TikTok Advertising spend will increase.

The newest social media platform has taken the US by storm after already leading Asian countries such as China and India in total downloads and daily users. TikTok has not only attracted the younger generation – it has become popular with those between the ages of 30-50 which opens opportunities for more advertisers to join in on the craze and reach consumers through another medium. TikTok should be included in any brand’s marketing plan in 2021.

Podcasts and Music Streaming Ad revenue will increase.

More people are working from home and companies are offering this option as part of an employment perk. As more people ditch their long commutes to work, they are turning away from traditional radio broadcasts and switching to Podcast programming and streamed music apps. There is a big market for advertising on these platforms as most users opt for free streaming versions that are ad supported.