Tag: paid search

The Power of Blogging: Elevate Your Business Through Content Marketing

Posted by Anna Cox

Businesses are always exploring effective methods to engage their target audience and promote growth. One such invaluable strategy is content marketing, or blogging. According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Understanding Content Marketing

Content marketing involves crafting and sharing content that resonates with your audience’s interests and needs. This approach not only informs and entertains but also builds trust and fosters lasting relationships. By delivering consistent and relevant content, businesses can position themselves as industry leaders and go-to resources for their audience.

The Significance of Blogging in Content Marketing

Blogging services as a foundational element of content marketing. Here’s why it’s essential for your business:

  1. Enhanced Brand Visibility and Awareness — Regularly publishing blog posts increases your online presence, making it easier for potential customers to find and engage with your brand. Each post acts as a new entry point, expanding your reach and introducing your business to a broader audience.
  2. Establishing Authority and Credibility — By sharing insightful and well-researched content, you position your business as an authority in your field. This not only builds credibility but also instills confidence among your audience, making them more likely to trust your products or services.
  3. Driving Organic Traffic — Search engines favor websites with fresh, relevant content. Blogging allows you to target specific keywords, improving your search engine rankings and driving organic traffic to your site. This increased visibility can lead to higher engagement and conversion rates.
  4. Engaging and Educating Your Audience — Blogs provide a platform to address your audience’s pain points, answer their questions, and offer solutions. This engagement fosters a deeper connection, encouraging readers to return and explore more of your content.
  5. Supporting Other Marketing Efforts — Quality blog content complements other marketing strategies, such as social media marketing and email campaigns. Sharing blog posts on social platforms amplifies reach, while incorporating them into email newsletters keeps your audience informed and engaged.
  6. Generating Leads and Conversions — Strategically crafted blog posts can guide readers through the buyer’s journey. By including compelling calls-to-action and offering valuable resources, blogs can convert readers into leads and, ultimately, loyal customers.

Partner with a Marketing Agency

Collaborating with a professional marketing agency can significantly amplify your blogging and content marketing efforts. Afflecto Media Marketing brings specialized expertise in blogging, SEO Optimization, and content strategy, ensuring your business effectively reaches and engages its target audience.

Why Choose Afflecto?

  1. Expertise in Blogging and Content Creation — Afflecto Media Marketing excels in developing tailored content strategies that resonate with your audience. They can assist in identifying your target demographic, analyzing competitor strategies, and creating comprehensive content calendars to maintain consistency and relevance.
  2. Advanced SEO Optimization Techniques — Understanding the intricacies of SEO is crucial for enhancing online visibility. Afflecto employs advanced SEO techniques, including keyword research, on-page optimization, and backlink strategies, to improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive organic traffic.
  3. Comprehensive Content Marketing Services — Beyond blogging, Afflecto offers a full spectrum of content marketing services, including social media management, email marketing, and analytics. This holistic approach ensures that all aspects of your content strategy work synergistically to achieve your business goals.

Ever thought about what blogging could really do for your business? It’s so much more than just posting content. When done right, blogging helps you connect with your audience on a personal level while positioning you as someone who really knows their stuff.

The best part? Those connections translate into real business growth. By sharing helpful information that your audience actually cares about, you’re building a community of people who keep coming back—and eventually become customers.

If you’re curious about how to make blogging work for your specific situation, we’d love to chat. Afflecto Media Marketing offers free strategy sessions where we can discuss your goals. No pressure, just conversation about possibilities. Drop us a line when you’re ready. We’d love to hear from you!

Driving leads with a smaller budget

Posted by Michael Rose

CASE STUDY

INDUSTRY: Orthodontics
AGENCY SERVICES: Paid Search, Remarketing, and Programmatic Advertising

What do you do when your client says they need to reduce their digital marketing budget, but still get the same results? You pivot and drive even more leads! Being a good marketer requires one to be willing to change directions, adapt, and use data to revise your plans. And that’s just what the Afflecto Media team did when our client made that call. Find out how our team was able to increase leads, drive more new patient starts, and generate more first-time callers than before despite the decreased budget. Keep reading to find out how we accomplished this task.

CLIENT

Orthodontic network in the St. Louis metro area with six offices under three different practice names.

CLIENT CHALLENGE

For nearly two years, our client had been successfully using digital marketing to increase awareness and drive leads for their orthodontic practices. However, after purchasing additional practices to grow their Dental Service Organization they needed to reallocate budgets to fund onboarding the new practices. The reallocation led to a 46% decrease in their digital marketing spend.

AGENCY OBJECTIVE

Afflecto was tasked with continuing to drive new patient leads with a reduced digital advertising budget. Spend less. Drive the same quantity – if not more – leads. Got it!

AGENCY SOLUTION

We opted to reduce awareness tactics in order to focus the majority of the budget on conversion efforts. This didn’t mean removing all awareness advertising. Supporting awareness is crucial to ensure your marketing reaches people throughout their decision-making process. And the decision-making process for dental and orthodontic decisions can take some time. So it was imperative that our client remain top of mind.

Our past social media advertising and digital display efforts had increased brand awareness for all ortho practices and resulted in an increase of 41% (on average) new website visitors. With demand and attention for these practices established, we knew that a continuity approach to brand awareness would be enough to sustain brand recognition. This allowed us to allocate more dollars to conversion tactics.

Even with these changes to the media plan, additional tweaks were necessary to ensure we reached our lead goals. We knew continuing to use Google Ads and Website Remarketing was the way to go, but how could we rethink our approach? We shifted our strategy to hone in on people who had a higher propensity to convert sooner rather than later.

A NEW SEARCH ADVERTISING STRATEGY

This meant fine tuning our Search targeting to focus only on people making a decision about ortho treatment now; and excluding those who were considering future treatment options. To do this we honed in on the top ten long-tail keywords. These type of keywords are more specific, less competitive, and attract a smaller, super relevant audience. They were the keywords that not only drive a lot of leads, but the ones that turn into new patient starts. They were not necessarily the least expensive, but they were the most effective.

If you can convert higher priced keywords more than the less expensive ones you tend to spend less overall for the same amount of – sometimes more – conversions. Or, in this case new patient starts.

We also focused on website visitors who did not make an appointment or call. Since they had demonstrated a high level of intent it was likely they’d remain interested for the foreseeable future. And convert to new patient starts faster than other groups. These people saw our remarketing ads – both digital display and video – while online. The Afflecto team as able to remarket to this audience using their excusive programmatic partner.

THE RESULT

After six months of the new digital plan being in place we were able to drive more leads with a smaller budget for all orthodontic offices. They also increased new patient starts and first-time callers. Sometimes less can be more.

Digital marketing case study resulted in 63% increase in new patient starts

The year-over-year starts for all six offices were positive with an average of 63% increase in new patients at each location.

The new plan increased calls from an average of 385 per office to 675 calls per office. Additionally, there was a 89% increase in first-time callers to all offices.

Online ‘Contact Form’ submissions from their websites increased 13% (on average) across all six offices.

Contact Afflecto

Interested in driving leads with a smaller budget? Maybe you want to fine-tune your digital marketing plan? Afflecto has extensive experience with developing strategy and running successful digital campaigns. Our experienced team would love to talk to you about your business goals. Let’s chat! Contact Afflecto Media Marketing today.

6 Reasons Why You Should Bid on Your Branded Search Term

Posted by Michael Rose

Why Bidding on Branded Search Terms is a Best Practice

There are many reasons to bid on your branded search terms and we consistently get the question “Are you sure we need to?” Yes! Why should you spend money to bid on your branded terms? Consumers know your brand, right? And if someone is looking for your brand your information will show up regardless of if you pay for ads or not, right? Wrong! Read on to find out six reasons why Afflecto Media Marketing believes bidding on branded search is the right move for your PPC spend.

1. PROTECT YOUR BRAND:

It is important to always protect your branded terms if you are running any other type of advertising to ensure that your site is coming up first when consumers search for your brand after hearing/seeing another ad. When you pay for radio or TV advertising consumer’s path to conversion often includes a follow-up search online. You need to be the first in both paid and organic results, not your competitors. Otherwise, you are paying to drive exposure for your competitors. Even if you are a generous person, you probably don’t want competitors capitalizing on your investment.

2. OWN THE FIRST PAGE:

Well, we can’t guarantee this, but bidding on branded terms, combined with excellent SEO can make it possible. At the very least, dominate the SERP (search engine results page) with your paid and organic listings. Giving consumers more ways to click to your brand increases the likelihood that they will click. This works the same way that having more links in an email increases the chances of a higher click rate. Giving users multiple ways to click on your brand increases the likelihood they’ll click to your site. People like options, which leads us to our next point…

3. CREATE CONFIDENCE AND CREDIBILITY:

When your site appears in both paid and organic results it adds credibility to your site. It means you are for real. The more users see your brand on that SERP – paid and organically – increases their confidence in your brand. And bonus, this usually results in higher visits to the site organically as well.

4. PROTECT YOUR BRAND FROM COMPETITORS:

If any of your competitors are savvy marketers they are likely bidding on your branded terms. That means users searching for your company will likely be presented with an ad or two from your competitor(s). Translation: your competitors might be detouring your consumers to their website…and possibly winning them over. When bidding on branded terms search engines give you more authority and that factors into your result rank…often putting you ahead of your competitors even if they are bidding on your search terms.

Paid Search Opportunity Example
Example of search results when brand isn’t bidding on their branded terms

5. EASY ON YOUR WALLET:

Looking for magical search terms that have high volume and don’t cost a ton? They’re right under your nose! Branded search terms tend to be the least expensive because of the authority they carry. Don’t just stick with your name – be sure to use products, services and even your own URL. These terms tend to have the highest click-thru rates and carry a very strong quality score.

6. CONTROL YOUR MESSAGE:

You can’t control what shows up in organic results, but you can control what you use in paid ads. Get clever and test a variety of options to see what works best.

At the end of the day, each search account is different and we encourage all of our clients to test, test, test. We think that supporting brand terms is a good practice, but not a rule. Find what works for your brand and go with that. Or, call us and we’ll figure it out for you!