​Small businesses, be warned! Two of the most important tools in your online marketing toolbox sound very similar but they are two VERY DIFFERENT tools. It's time to break down their differences and pick the right choice for you and your company.

Happy New Year Everyone! We hope you had a wonderful holiday with your loved ones, and you're just as excited as we are to jump into 2020! One of the biggest things we were focusing on before the holidays set in was the challenges, changes, and inconsistencies of online marketing across many social media platforms. If you spend as much time as we do studying and working with advertising on places like Facebook and Instagram, you are very familiar with the fact that it changes constantly. It's hard to keep up with each change and how it affects your advertisements daily. These advertisement tools can determine your business growth and popularity online, so if you don't understand the changes in trends or are unfamiliar with the tools available to you, you could be in serious trouble. One of the biggest things we have been digging into is Geofencing and Geotargeting. This behind the scenes marketing tool can make or break an advertisement campaign without even trying. The names look so familiar, they much basically be the same thing right? Wrong! Although they are connected, you need to understand their main differences. When you understand the differences, you will be able to choose which option is best for your company. The best choice will help you gain more customers, followers, and supporters. First off, let's get down to the definitions.

GEOFENCING: Geofencing is when you draw an actual virtual fence with a predetermined chosen radius. This is used to target and connect specific people in a certain area to your advertisement. It is known to be more accurate than geotargeting. It uses GPS to make sure the audience you have targeted is being tracked and followed based on the coordinates of where they are in that exact moment they're online. When this chosen group of people is online, geofencing collects data and studies how long this chosen group of customers stays within the virtual fence and if and when they come back. This tool helps improve the engagement of local customers for your company and it can help attract customers away from your competition. The disadvantage of geofencing is that it can only target audiences based on physical location. Hand-picking demographics and certain groups of people based on anything besides location have nothing to do with who sees your geofencing advertisement.

Who is the best for? If you are interested in advertising to populations of all interests and ages in your local area, then it is a perfect tool for your company.

GEOTARGETING: This tool is very similar to Geofencing at its base. It does draw the same invisible fence, BUT demographics are included in its makeup. You create your virtual fence, and then you pick who exactly (based on age, interest, gender, etc.) will see your ad.  One of the main disadvantages is that you have to open up your advertisement geographic to a much larger area. You are being very specific about the type of people you want to see this add within a particular area So, to get as much of a result as you would with geofencing, the location needs to be larger to attract the same number of people in a geofencing situation.

Who is this best for? If you are interested in advertising to a very specific group of people inside a certain demographic or niche, then this is a perfect option for your company.

Spend time studying both options. I have just given you the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to using these tools, and there is a lot to dig into when choosing which to use. Understand how each could affect your company for the better or worse. Spend time understanding the consumers you have and those you're trying to attract. This might be the perfect opportunity to step back and define your company and who you want to serve. If you have the time and the means, experiment with both and see which outcome is best. But make sure to decide on one in the end, stick with it, and plan your advertising campaign accordingly. The work put into this decision could lead to a more dedicated consumer base and a fast conversion rate. All of us social media people love to see those numbers jump high and jump quick!

Here is to an exciting 2020, we can't wait to build a better business world with you one day at a time!

When we last left our marketing/business plan for 2020, we had partially set up our daily goals by calculating our close rate. Don’t forget at anytime, if you start feeling overwhelmed, I can always meet with you in person or over the phone and answer any questions you have!

Phone: 843-469-0216
Email: sslappey@creativeconsulting.marketing

Today we are talking about your Impression Conversion Rate or your ICR.  ICR is the amount of people that you have to talk to, have to see your business, or have to be told about your business to want to gain more information. 

In online marketing this is mainly used to denote the amount of people that have to see your ad or post before clicking on it to want to learn more about your business. Marketing professionals have to also factor in click through rates and other percentages before they can figure out the exact impression conversion rate, but for the sake of this lesson we are trying to figure out the overall ICR - so don’t worry about that until you call us for help on next week’s lesson.

Across all industries in the US, the ICR is 2.35% which means to get one person to actually pay attention to your business you have to get in front of 43 people. Now again, let me be clear that DOES NOT MEAN that if your social media ad has 43 impressions that you should have gotten a phone call. Once click through rates are added in, it is more likely to be around 4,300 impressions but like I said this isn’t about marketing yet. This is about you. 

So to finish out our example from before, if your goal is to get one new client a week. You need to set up four meetings. To set up those four meetings you will need to get in front of 172 new people per week. So, drum roll please……..

This means working Monday through Friday that you need to talk to a total of 35 new people every day about your business. Please note this is the amount based on the example above not what you or your company should do. Your numbers should be different based on your goals from the previous lesson.

“Stephen, that isn’t possible. There is no way with everything else I have to do each day that I can talk to that many people per day.”

 I completely understand but don’t worry, you don’t have to do this alone. You do however have a choice to make. Either you are going to do it by yourself and you may need to readjust your goal (see I told you last week) or you will have to sit down with a marketing firm (I know a great one you can contact by clicking here) and decide what you will be responsible for bringing in and what your marketing should be helping to bring in.

Please also understand that this doesn’t just mean your online marketing but all of your business’ marketing.

Pretty simple right? Fantastic! As long as you're still with me, tune in next week as we take your and your marketing’s daily goal and create a daily actionable plan to achieve that goal.

As always this has been Stephen Slappey, owner of Creative Consulting. The #1 Marketing Firm for Graphic Design, Social Media, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization. Have a great day! 

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Now when we last left our marketing/business plan for 2020, we had set our ( most likely going to be changed) yearly goal. We identified our busiest and slowest seasons, used math (sorry for putting you through that), and broke our yearly goal up into monthly goals based on the ebbs and flows of our year. We then left it off by breaking our goal even further down from a monthly goal to a weekly goal. Everything fresh in your mind? Great! Let’s move on to the next part. 
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Don’t forget at anytime, if you start feeling overwhelmed, I can always meet with you in person or over the phone and answer any questions you have!
You can contact me via:
Phone: 843-469-0216
Email: Sslappey@creativeconsulting.marketing

Your daily goal should encompass everything that you (key word # 1) AND your marketing (key word #2) should be trying to reach together (key word # 3) to make sure that statistically you are doing everything you need to so you can reach your weekly, monthly, and yearly goal. So how do we know what our daily goal should be? Well, first we need to understand what our close rate and impression conversion rate is. For this year, both of these percentages will most likely be guesses, as you won’t have the hard data that you need to accurately plan. In the last part of this series I will outline the important information that you need to record. Not just personally but to hold your marketing firm accountable for their part as well. For today we are going to touch on the first part, the close rate.

For those of you not in sales, your close rate is the amount of meetings you have to go to before you close a new client. You may hear people boast about excessively high close rates but don’t worry, this isn’t about raising your close rate, it is about understanding it. If your close rate is lower, then you think it should be, however, let me give you a little pick me up.
 
A lion, one of the world’s most amazing predators and touted as the world’s best hunter, has a close rate of 25% so if you have better than that good for you! Hopefully you know where I am going with this. Your daily goal must factor into all of the meetings you are going  to have before you actually close a sale. So, as an example, let’s say your weekly goal is one new client a week. If you are using the close rate of a lion of 25%, you have to attend four meetings a week to reach your goal.

Now we are done right? Not quite - because now you have to decipher and understand impression conversion rate. But that is for next week.

Pretty simple right? Fantastic! As long as you're still with me, tune in next week as we take you and your marketing’s daily goal to the next stage as we discuss your ICR or your Impression Conversion Rate. As always this has been Stephen Slappey, owner of Creative Consulting. The #1 Marketing Firm for Graphic Design, Social Media, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization. Have a great day!