Why Your Business Should Start Using a Live Website Chat

A 2015 study by Zendesk proved the importance of live chat on a website. It found that 92% customers feel satisfied when they use the live chat feature, compared to other communication options like voice (88%), email (85), web form (85%), and social media (Facebook 84%, Twitter 77%).

Why Live Website Chats Work

Instant Help

Most of the time you just want your answer right away. When you send an email to a company it can be frustrating to get an email back saying they will get back to you in 24-48 hours. Live chat this you to speak with someone and get your answer as fast as they can type it. This leads to awesome reviews for your business from your clients.

Lets customers connect with you

It allows the customers speak with you on a more personal level than email. Of course a phone call would be the most personable form of communication with the customer, but phone calls take more effort from the user. A live website chat is the perfect combination of personality and ease of use. It is a real time conversation that can help you build relationships. To add a little bit more persuasion into your head look at these statistics. Live chat is 12% more effective than email and 29% more effective than phone showing the importance of live chat.

Competitive Advantage

According to the study, out of roughly 1,000 websites only 9% had a live chat feature. If your competitor does not have live chat and the customer has to send them an email in which they will respond within 24-48 hours, your company is more convenient to them which may increase your sales.

Increase in Conversion and Sales

Live chat is effective for whatever it is your business is trying to accomplish. A person who uses live chat is three times more likely to make a purchase, according to American Marketing Association. This is highly effective because your sales team or support staff are more able to change the experience for the customer which leads to the opportunity to create more leads.

More Data

Most live chat features ask a question to the customer prior to connecting them to a employee. Fields like ‘Name, Email, Problem’ are filled out and can also be funneled into your CRM or marketing software. All these questions lead to better reports on problems people are having. Live chats give you a direct connection to your users, and help you address the problems they are having in real time. These reports also collect data like how many people have visited your website, how many people have requested chat, how long each chat usually lasts, how many chats are accepted or ignored, and more. This gives you a way to improve your customer experience with actual data.  

Live website chats are quickly gaining in popularity, and users are starting to expect them on a site. The importance of live chat is a long list and we recommend setting up a trial so you can start delighting your website users and building your relationships.

Want to give live chat a try? Click here for a 30 day free trial!

Web development is a unique profession. It requires technical ability, creative prowess, psychological expertise, and superb communication skills. To launch a website that really tells the story of a brand, and gets users to act, you need all of these things. But the most important part of the web design and development process is the communication between the brand and its agency. I’m not talking about responding to emails in a timely manner, or answering the phone at all hours of the night. I’m talking about how an agency gets the right information out of a client, and then takes that information to create something unexpected but also close to perfect.

“This site is so much better than our competition’s.”

“The look and feel of the site is exactly what we were after.”

“I’m thrilled that you were able to pull this off.”

These are all fantastic testimonials from clients. The website project measured up to their expectations, and that’s great. But as web designers and developers, we should be striving for more.

“You took what was in my head before I even knew it was there, and then put it on the screen.”

“You gave us what we didn’t even know we needed when we started this process.”

“I never knew our website could solve these problems we had.”

When we get these types of compliments, we know we really knocked it out of the park. To get to this point, the very first meeting with a client needs to set the stage. There are a few things that need to be present in that first meeting (or meetings) to get there.

Chemistry

Chemistry sort of feels like an arbitrary word for “we like each other,” but it is still important. If you don’t feel a connection with the agency across the table, it’s worth figuring out why. The questions you ask yourself could lead you to another issue that needs to get sorted out before you start working together. I recently spoke with a marketing director about what they look for when they are choosing an agency. “Someone I can see myself having a beer with,” was one of the first things he said. If you don’t have that chemistry, everything that follows could seem a bit forced.

The Right Questions

It’s the agency’s job to ask the right questions when you discuss your website project with them. In my eyes, this is the absolute most important part of my job. In every discovery meeting, I search for the answers that get to the bottom of their needs. My main goal is to uncover a real challenge that they are having, even if they think it’s unsolvable at this moment. It’s more than having your list of questions prepared. It’s reading the client or prospect and getting deeper into things that might seem unrelated to the website.

Trust

It’s the agency’s responsibility to earn a client’s trust early on in, preferably well before any contract is signed. An agency should never have to twist someone’s arm to get them to sign a contract. The day that contract is signed should feel like a happy moment, because that trust is there. A website project isn’t something you buy off the shelf, so a company really has no idea what they are going to get when a project starts. So they have to have a deep understanding of how the agency works and really why they do what they do, and trust that process for their own brand.

Ownership

When an agency understands the client’s needs, they need to take ownership of the project to get there. The agency’s #1 goal should be seeing that client succeed. And if everything is working the way it should be, this sense of ownership will be automatic.

What will this website cost me? As a digital marketing agency, it’s only natural for this question to appear often in meetings.

Digital agencies each have their own hourly rate. This hourly rate can go anywhere from $150 and up. Ask what the agency’s hourly rate is and you can ballpark what it would cost your company to build a website based on the estimated hours of production provided below.

Digital agencies also have their own website production process. At Schall, a website project is broken down into four main phases:

Shortcuts

• 1. Discovery – 30 hours*
• 2. Creative – 60 hours*
• 3. Development – 60 hours*
• 4. Debugging – 20 hours*

* Final website investments are determined by the size of website, amount of content, functionality, and client goals. The estimated production of hours shared in this article is a ballpark time investment for each phase, based on our own projects.

1. Discovery Phase ( 30 hours* )

1a. Client Interview

In the client interview we’ll uncover current struggles in an organization, go deep into understanding company goals and get a sense of company culture.

1b. User Research

Listening to the user is vital for a successful website as we discover how to improve flaws within a website. The objective is to find a happy medium between company goals and user website satisfaction.

1c. Site Audit / Audience Trend Analysis / Competitor Analysis

It’s always interesting, and sometimes upsetting, to see where a website stands in a Google search in comparison with the competition. With tools such as Raven and HubSpot, we get a gauge on where a client’s website stands. While Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools will help narrow down user trends to exclude any ignored sections that are taking up real estate. This overall analysis lets us start from the ground up, so we’re not basing our website ideas off of what’s already out there.

1d. Personas

After doing research on the client’s target demographic, personas are created. Personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. This allows us to truly have the user in mind, and not just a mysterious group of people in an age group and location.

I found it funny to discover MailChimp’s ideal user. He had all my characteristics and they even named him Fred.
 

Example of Persona used by MailChimp

1e. Content

I’m sure you’ve heard this before and here you’ll read it one more time, “Content is king”. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your website is or how functional it may be if the copy is not speaking the targeted audience’s language. The objective is to obsess over the user to roll out well thought out quality content that brings priceless value to the table always.

1f. Information Architecture / Sitemap

Once all the web content junk has been stripped out, the story of how the user will navigate through the website gets structured. Before even taking this to XMind, a mapping software to graph a website site map, we’ll get the team together, roll out the whiteboard, grab a few stacks of post-its and role play different scenarios on how a user would navigate through this new website to achieve his or her goal.
 

 

1g. Wireframes

You can’t build a house without a blueprint. The wireframe stage is the blueprint for building websites. This is typically a barebones display of boxes for how each page of a website will be laid out. Pencil, a prototyping tool, speeds the process in preparing these website blueprints that are later used in the Creative Phase. Invision, another prototyping tool taken to the next level, gives the ability to make wireframes interactive.
 

2. Creative Phase ( 60 hours* )

2a. Photography / Videography

To create trust through a virtual experience, high quality authentic photography is a must. Compared to stock photography, original photos that are specific to the company, deliver unique emotion and bring more value. A video with great lighting, interesting angles, and a strong story invites the user into a virtual world that’s personalized. Now that technology is improving, we can invite the user into an interactive 360 video and give them a tour of your world from all angles, and they control it from a touch of a mouse to a tilt of a phone.

2b. Moodboard

The moodboard process helps cut through the noise and organize thoughts. Many times this is where the best ideas are born. The beauty about this process is that a team doesn’t have their hands tied and inspiration becomes limitless. In the past, we would cut out pieces of a magazine and physically paste our inspirations onto a large blank poster to share thoughts to a client. A display of different colors and font types would also join the party. Times have changed and this is a process that can be done virtually and collaboratively with Boards by Invision.

2c. User Experience Design

Websites are evolving and UX plays a large role in this evolution. The UX focus is having a deep understanding of how the user thinks, lives and speaks. What type of blog articles does a user read, what type of devices do they use and how they use them. A study on user actions and gestures goes a long way. No longer are the days of creating a pretty button for the sake of it. What is the purpose of that button? What task does this button fulfill and does it bring value to the user? A website today should be a list of tasks that solves problems.

2d. User Interface Design

The fun begins in the user interface design process. Many times it is tempting to jump right into Photoshop or Sketch and have your ideas run free. This process is where the actual website design takes place. All web elements from the Discovery and Creative Phase up to this point gets implemented into this website design. These web elements are building blocks. If any of them are missing, your stack of blocks will fall.

2e. Prototyping

Not too long ago, our Creative Phase presentation with clients was a show and tell of static web design layouts. We would share all versions; desktop, tablet and smartphone layouts in this presentation. Now, our prototyping stage is interactive. All static website layouts are brought to life using Invision. This gives our clients the opportunity to experience and actually see how the website is going to perform with a touch or hover action. The outcome of the presentation is less of an explanation of what’s being accomplished with the new layout, and more of a participation from the client in how to improve the overall website experience.
 

3. Development Phase ( 60 hours* )

3a. Content Management System

Gone are days of static websites. Once the Creative Phase has been approved, website designs are stripped and built on a content management system. This way the website is manageable in-house by the marketing team. Amongst many, WordPress and HubSpot CMS are two industry leading platforms that standout to be user-friendly with powerful content marketing capabilities.

3b. Functionality

Common website functionalities can be online forms to increase sales, email signups to build a subscriber list or special shipping options for eCommerce websites. Each organization has unique challenges and goals. Web functionalities are built to satisfy the purposes of the website.

3c. 3rd Party Integrations

Newsletter integrations will capture emails into your favorite email platform; MailChimp or Constant Contact. Google Maps Integrations will let your user have easy access to finding you online. Inbound Marketing Software integrations, like HubSpot, will monitor your marketing efforts in one sales tool platform. All necessary integrations are done during this process.

3d. Responsive

A mobile experience is unique from a desktop experience. For this reason, a mobile design is created with unique navigations, menus, and content for optimal conversions when accessed through a mobile device. This responsive design then goes through a testing process and is opened on smartphones and tablets. The number of online visitors accessing a website from a mobile device is increasing rapidly, so mobile user experience is more important than ever.

4. Debugging Phase ( 20 hours* )

4a. Cross-Browser Compatibility

There are several preferences when it comes to web browsers; Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari to name a few. Each have different rules, especially Internet Explorer. The website is tested on the top browsers preferred by current visitors to make sure the website experience is smooth across the board.

4b. User Testing

A group of people are asked to participate to access the website. This last step is performed on both desktop and mobile. This is an opportunity to correct any flaws of the overall website experience and to study how the visitor interacts with the website from start to finish.

4c. Web Server Optimization

The website is optimized to reach it’s maximum efficiency. Code is compressed to improve load performance for desktop and mobile. Content Delivery Networks ensure users can load the website quickly. All images are losslessly compressed to enhance performance.

Client Relationship and Project Management. ( 20 Hours* )

Meetings / Travel

There are a number of meetings that take place during each phase. In some cases there is travel involved, other times it’s a phone or web meeting. This is all time that is taken into account with each project.

Project Management

To keep the client in the loop, a project management software is used called Basecamp. The client is notified when they have homework, and they can dive into the software to learn about where the website is in the process and what work is being put in.

Website Training

When a website is launched, there is also a training session scheduled. Anyone who has a responsibility to update the new website is invited to attend, and they all learn the process from start to finish.
 
There are many steps to go through when building a website, some of which often go unseen. Each phase needs the other ones in order to shape the best possible product and to generate great results.

Yes, WordPress and HubSpot do work well together. No, you don’t have to choose between them.

There are a lot of reasons an organization chooses to have their website on WordPress and, by demand, most of the websites we build here at Schall Creative run on the popular platform. Since it’s so widely used, it’s easy to find support for a WordPress site via a web developer or simply by visiting WordPress forums and searching for a solution. Most importantly, it’s easy for our clients to make simple updates to their website on their own when they use WordPress.

HubSpot is a platform that focuses on inbound marketing and tracking results. When an organization is ready for their website to start doing work, (not just looking pretty) we find that HubSpot is the way to go.

Here are some great ways WordPress and HubSpot work together:

1. Install the HubSpot Tracking Code

The HubSpot Tracking Code will connect your WordPress website and start sending online traffic information to HubSpot. The code collects data from your WordPress site and sends it to your HubSpot account. You’ll be able to view your website traffic and page performance of every page regardless of if it lives in HubSpot or WordPress.

2.) Embed HubSpot CTAs on your WordPress website

Once you have a well thought out copy and creative to use as your Call to Action, bring it into HubSpot to track its performance and embed it into your blog articles and/or web pages.

Every CTA has an embed code so it can live externally.

3.) Generate leads by using custom flyout HubSpot forms

If you have an offer you’d like to share with your website visitors, you have the ability to create and customize a HubSpot form that can live on your WordPress website. Add a little Javascript and your HubSpot form can slide onto your blog article or website page after a certain timeframe or scroll position. All of the form submissions go directly into your HubSpot contacts database so they’re segmented and enrolled in workflows however you’d like them to be.

For those that are not currently using HubSpot but are curious on how inbound could work for your industry, try downloading the HubSpot All-In-One Marketing plugin. This is a free WordPress plugin that helps you generate leads and gives you great insight after a visitor has filled out a form. It’s a great way to get started collecting leads and using a CRM for free. This tool allows you to dip your toe into inbound marketing so you can learn if it’s right for you.

4.) Build your list of subscribers with pop-up HubSpot forms

The more you write great copy, the more you’ll have the opportunity to build your list of readers. You can take advantage of this traffic and have them subscribe to your email list. In our experience what has worked are pop-up messages that speak to your reader has humanly possible.

The way we’ve manipulated this was a custom HubSpot form with just an email request with an engaging one liner. This pop-up message is then integrated into blog posts or pages by using the WordPress Popup plugin that was later customized to our needs. Again, all these form submissions are dumped into our HubSpot contacts, and they’re already segmented by which blog they subscribed to. So there is literally no work involved for us–they’re all set up to receive our next email.

5.) Use HubSpot Contact Forms and embed them in your WordPress site

Another great tactic, if not the best tactic, is creating a HubSpot Contact Form and embedding it in your WordPress Contact Us section. When we get a form submission on this page, we know that the lead is at the bottom of the funnel, and closest to “ready to buy.” By using HubSpot, we are able to have an instant notification sent to us so we can follow up with a phone call right away.

This setup has been our most successful approach thus far as we’re able to gauge immediately where our visitors are at in the buying process.

If you need help customizing your HubSpot forms so they match the look and feel of your website, we can help with that. Click here and shoot us a message!

6.) Optimize your blog articles with Yoast and HubSpot Page Performance

The Yoast WordPress Plugin has been around for quite some and it is extremely helpful. The company is constantly updating the plugin and adding new features to improve search results for your WordPress site. I highly recommend it. It will display a guideline on how to improve your blog post and website pages to help you perform better on search results.

In our case, we do not have our blog posts live in HubSpot. Our blog posts live in WordPress. There are certain features we are not taking advantage of, such as Smart Content, but we still use their Page Performance Tool to make sure all our posts are working to their best ability. Every so often, we’ll check out our blog posts within Page Performance and make the suggested optimization updates. Everything is laid out on one page so we can clearly see which posts need attention.

WordPress and HubSpot compliment each other well. You don’t have to choose between the two.

If a user doesn’t relate to your web copy, they tune it out. Plain and simple. They’ll easily ignore your homepage copy and just look around for what they need. Or worse, they’ll hit the back button and find something they can relate with.

 
The best thing you can do when writing for your website is to stop thinking about yourself and what you need to say. Start thinking about your potential buyers and what they need to hear in order to make a decision to connect with you.
 
Too many companies think that using big words and corporate speak will make them look more important, and really it just confuses people.
 

Avoid this:

Company ABC is the leading interactive implementors of B2C infrastructures. They enthusiastically enable value-added outsourcing and dramatically utilize value-added functionalities.
 

Keep it simple

One of the biggest challenges I find my clients have with writing is that they struggle to keep it brief. They are so afraid of leaving something out. You need to understand that the buyer’s journey will take more than a visit to your home page, and too much info will end their journey right then and there. Find the text that connects with your user and prompts them to learn more.
 
Here are some great examples of writing for web:
 

Flyingcarpettheatre.com

 
Here’s a subject that seems like it would be complicated to put into words. With the help of some awesome imagery they have managed to keep it in two lines. They even go further and use icons and a “formula” to dive even deeper into the value that they are offering.
 

Woodpecker.co

 
A great example of a website that speaks directly to the user, one on one. They have really recognized the main problem that their target personas have, and they are letting them know that they had that problem too. Oh, and they created a solution for it.
 

Headsupguys.ca

 
Another complicated topic that can get clouded with too much verbiage very easily. I’m sure there could be a wealth of information once you dig deeper into this website, but the home page tells you what it is without scaring you off.
 

Something to try

When you’re writing copy your homepage copy and having trouble coming up with a description of your company, try asking your clients for help. Pick up the phone and ask your favorite customer what you do for them. Then, ask them why that helps them in their business or life. What is the problem that you solve for them? How do they talk about you in their own words? Use their feedback as a starting point to getting to the copy that your target personas can really relate with.
 

In Part 2, Online Patient Forms: How Email Notifications Help Save Time, we went over testing tips when setting up an email and spoke about a few pointers on static and dynamic subject lines.
 
In this article I’d like to share how we helped our client improve their medical practice productivity and increase their bottom line.

The Problem

At the beginning, it was exciting for the practice to receive email notifications of new patients filling out their online form. With every patient that was going online to complete their forms, precious time in the office was spared. This new patient form email would simply be printed, filed, and then used by the doctor at the time of the appointment.
 
The problem was the email print out had a different layout and the doctor wasn’t used to it. He would go to the page to find out vital information and he would have trouble finding it. The new online forms were causing different frustrations and time sucks in the office.

The Solution

We took a look at what the printed forms looked like, and replicated it for the populated online form.
 
We took the information submitted by the new patient form and had the email notification attach a PDF. This PDF was designed with exactly the same layout of what the doctor was accustomed to, and it was then populated with the new patient form information submitted from their website. This entire process is auto-generated every time an online visitor submits the new patient form.
 
Now when an administrator prints the new patient form email attachment, the doctor can find the information where he’s used to looking for it.

The Outcome

• An efficient online patient conversion from the website
• Patients are attended quicker
• The administrative process at the practice saves time and money
• Most importantly, the practice attends happier patients and more of them
 
How have you improved your medical practice productivity? Share at the comments!

What does it mean to have a successful website? In the past, having a website that worked and looked good may have been all a company was really looking for. But in 2015 a website can and should do much more. A company needs to set standards for what their website strategy will do and how it will affect their business.
 

The success of a website depends on your measurement for that success. This means you need to set some goals. These goals should be Smart, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. You need to set some SMART Goals.

 
Of course, you can set some more specific goals for things like organic traffic, social media reach, or average visit duration, but the three main metrics you want to look at when setting SMART Goals are traffic, leads and sales.
 
Start by looking at your current position. What’s your website’s current traffic? How many inbound leads are you getting right now? How many sales are you closing from inbound leads?
 
HubSpot has a great tool where you can set your SMART goals right on your dashboard. When you input your numbers, it compares your goals to the median and top 25% of HubSpot users.
 

 
Here are a few more helpful statistics you may want to take a look at to help you in this process. Of course these stats were gathered from a wide range of businesses and industries, so be sure to take that into account.
 
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. (Search Engine Journal)
• Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Demand Metric)
• Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Gleanster Research)
 
If you haven’t been collecting data up until this point, you’ll need to make sure your goals make sense when compared to how you currently bring in business. Once you have a few months of analytics, you can make some changes to your goals.
 
Your SMART Goals can and will change over time, but it’s important to always have them and to keep improving. Successful inbound marketing takes a lot of work, and it does take time. Having and hitting your SMART goals will help keep you motivated.
 

In business, when you meet someone in person you can use your judgement to decide if you trust them. When you visit a website, on the other hand, it can be sometimes challenging to feel that same type of trust.
 
The goal of a website might be to create awareness, be descriptive and to sell a product or service. But what is it exactly that makes an online visitor reach out to you, become a donor or convert into a customer? How do you create a website that people trust?
 
Here are 5 website features that people trust:

1.) Valuable Quality Content

A well put together article that solves a problem for your audience will always be memorable, especially if that article saved that person time and money. It creates credibility, it makes a person feel attended and can resonate to such a degree that they feel the need to share it. The ultimate power of quality content, especially if it brings value to your audience, is that it remains online until you remove it. 5 years can go by and it will still be helping someone solve a problem. Being a problem-solver makes your website trustworthy.

2.) Personalized Photography That Shares Emotion

Quality commercial photography plays a large role in creating trust in a virtual experience. Choosing between stock photography and commercial photography that is tailored to your business makes a huge difference. Images that share how you do business and how you interact with your clients gives your first time online visitors an idea what to expect. By sharing faces of the staff and images of your facility, creates a peace of mind before setting foot into your place of business. Especially if someone is coming from a distance. But the real magic happens when images share personality, culture and emotion.

3.) Videography with an Exceptional Storyboard

There isn’t a better way to welcome your visitors into your world than through video. Video gives organizations the opportunity to introduce themselves to the public. It also gives the opportunity to take an online experience to the next level by sharing expression, a way of (business) life, and the ability to find out if there’s a good fit or not. A well done video with an exceptional storyboard can become memorable. It can lock your audience’s attention immediately and has the ability to give you a head start with trust.

4.) Social Media that Shares Company Culture and Thought Leadership

Nowadays, many professionals go through company social media channels such as; LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, to discover a type of mindset. A typical audience behavior would be to check if a business is active on social media and if so, what type of information are they sharing and do they know their stuff? These social media channels give the opportunity for organizations to become thought leaders in their industry. This ability of sharing knowledge or culture creates credibility and adds more trust to the pile.

5.) A Beautiful Website Design

Regardless of all marketing investments, your audience will end up on your website. A well designed website is a tremendous factor in building trust, especially for new business. A website today needs to deliver an effortless user-friendly experience from a desktop to a mobile device. Information needs to be extremely easy to find and the flow of the site has to be welcoming. A structure of quality copy, colors, spacing, typography, icons, photography, and video must live in flawless harmony. Last, in order to stand out from the rest, there needs to be a defined style that’s true to the brand.
 
A great website goal to aim for is to create trust through a virtual experience. I hope these five features can take you there.
 

Attention online publishers! If you are linking to a source within your content you need to make sure said source opens in a new tab. No excuses. Here’s why:
 
Think about the experience of a reader. They are really into reading your article when you reference a video you watched that has another example of what you’re writing about. Now, they’re really into this topic, so of course they want to watch that same video that helped inspire you to write about it. So they click, and they watch the video. Three minutes later, the video is over and they’re satisfied. They close the tab and think about getting back to your original article. But the article is gone. Now, if they want to get it back they can go into their history and look for “recently closed tabs.” But this adds another step to the process, and they are a tiny bit frustrated that you didn’t make sure that link opened in a new tab. So they go back to twitter and carry on with their procrastination.
 
Unless the main goal of your article was to get people to view the video you linked to, you’ve failed.
 
If you made sure the link opened in a new tab, the user would have watched the video, hit ctrl-W to close the tab, and finished your article. At the bottom of your article a place for them to convert into a subscriber, and they do. If this is your goal, then you’ve succeeded. You did a great job paying attention to the details.
 
If you are adding a link through the code view of your website, you need to add target=“_blank” to your code. After your link, and before the tag closes. If will look something like this:

<a href=”thisisalinkyouwanttoreference.com” target=”blank”>This is your link text.</a>

If you’re adding a link in WordPress, they have a handy dandy check box that says, “Open link in a new window/tab.” Just check that off and you’re all set.
 
I tend to have a link open in a new tab about 85% of the time. If it’s a link that is the next step of the journey I want to take them on, like a call to action, then I’ll have it open in the same tab. If the link is inside your content (like a word in a paragraph) it should ALWAYS open in a new tab. If it’s a button or a graphic that you want them to click on once they are ready, and they will have no reason of returning, then you can just have it replace that page.
 
It’s all about paying attention to how the user will consume your content, and making sure all the details work towards your goal.
 

There are lots of different types of marketing agencies out there. And they all have different skill sets. The world of marketing can also be hard to understand for someone outside of it, and a company having a bad experience with a marketing agency is unfortunately not uncommon. But in order to survive in the business world, you can’t sit on the sidelines and never work with another marketing agency. Here’s how to bounce back and find a marketing agency you can trust.

Talk about it

When you are looking into working with a new agency, make sure to talk openly about what went wrong with your previous marketing agency or web development firm. Whatever the situation may have been, make sure the new agency understands where they would need to focus on to avoid the same issues.
 
Once the new agency understands what went wrong, ask them how they would avoid similar problems. Have them give you examples of how they overcome the same types of issues with their current clients.
 

Take Baby Steps

Try starting out with smaller project to test the waters. This way both parties get a feel of how each other works. Is the agency attentive? Do they meet deadlines and do they roll out efficient, quality work?
 
Let’s face it. Even though there is a great connection at the beginning between both parties, you need to understand if everyone can work well together. And, as an agency, we need to understand if the client likes how we work.
 
As digital marketers, we constantly talk about how there needs to be “the right fit” to do business.  The truth is, we don’t know if business relationship is “the right fit” until after the first project.
 
It’s difficult to build trust with a new digital marketing agency or website development firm but if you do your research, always have clear communication and take baby steps, it’s easier to establish a base without getting disappointed.
 
Have you had a bad experience with a previous agency or web development shop? What helped you or your company decide to work with the new agency?

When it comes to marketing, there are no one-size-fits-all strategies. Every strategy needs to be customized depending on the goals and needs of the company. Just like the strategy, a company’s marketing budget also needs to be highly customized.

Marketing budgets tend to be somewhere between 2% and 20% of gross annual revenue. That’s a big range. How does a company decide on their number? Here are some things to take into account when developing a marketing budget.

Organize and Analyze

First, you want to take a look at your efforts so far. Figure out what percentage you spent on marketing in the past few years. Has that number stayed steady, increased or decreased? What has been the outcome and how does it correlate with your sales numbers? If you’re able to track the performance of specific campaigns, that’s great. If not, then start tracking. The best data you can look at when planning is your own.

Time

You also want to take into account how much time you and your staff has spent on marketing. You may only be paying a couple bucks a month on email marketing, but maybe it takes a staff person 10 hours to create and send an email campaign, and another 2 to analyze and report on it. If that’s something you would like to take off of your staff’s plate and outsource, make sure you take that into account when developing a marketing budget.

Goals

Make sure you have clear, time oriented goals. If you just want to grow, that’s not enough. Everyone wants to grow. How much are you going to grow by? What does your growth plan look like for the next 12 months, and how much money and time are you going to put in to get there? What is your ideal return on investment?
 
Once you have your numbers set, the next step is to find a marketing company that you can trust, and share these numbers with them. If they are the ones coming up with the marketing plan, they need to know your goals and your budget. This isn’t only so they can come up with the best plan, but also so they can measure their efforts effectively. When you outsource your marketing, the relationship should be transparent on both sides. You will need to share your vision with your marketing team, so make sure you are comfortable with them at the get-go.

There’s a common situation that tends to happen when organizations are ready to make a change with their marketing efforts. It could be that the year is ending and it’s time to reevaluate those numbers. You’ll want to figure out if your marketing dollars were well spent and what the outcome was. What channels were most productive and which ones failed miserably? How do we exclude the noise and determine a strategy that will give us efficient results? What would it take to achieve those results?

When we first sit down with a VP of Marketing or Marketing Manager, our questions are centered around the organization’s goals. If the person in charge of marketing is not included in company goal discussions and are not prepared to answer these types of questions, we will assign them homework so that we can discover together if their organization is ready to hire a digital marketing agency like us. 

If you have been given the task of hiring a digital marketing agency for your company or organization, discuss these things with your CEO first. Marketing is not just arts and crafts, so don’t be afraid to get that CEO involved.

Contractor or Partner

When thinking about hiring a marketing agency, does the organization need a contractor or a partner? Are you explaining your goals and challenges, and counting on an agency to get you there? Or do you know exactly what needs to get done and you just need someone to execute.

CEO Vision

The marketing team needs to have a clear idea of what the CEO envisions for the company. What would their ideal marketing partner do for them? If you don’t know this, you run the risk of allocating a lot of time and effort vetting out a company that the CEO doesn’t want to partner with.

Budget

Some organizations will tell their marketing team to go out and get a bunch of quotes. But you want to make sure you know your ballpark before you contact an agency. Some questions to ask your CEO would be; How much did we allocate to marketing last year and to which channels did that investment go? Are we looking to cut expenses or become more aggressive? What amount of sales are we looking to bring in from our website or inbound marketing campaign? These are key questions that will save everyone time.

Timeline

It is helpful to know what the CEO expects in regards to timeline. For some organizations there is an urgency to go live due to upcoming events or recent changes. Others just want to make sure it’s done right. A clear understanding when a project should start and when it should launch is vital.

Expectations

Last but not least, what are the CEO expectations for the hired marketing efforts. You would be surprised that by the time the meeting takes place, no one in the room has a clear focused answer on what the organization is looking to achieve. You could be aiming for retention, increasing traffic, more leads, higher conversion rates, better qualified leads, brand recognition, more sales, or all of the above. What percentage does the organization want to increase these by? Make sure this discussion takes place with your CEO. This way your future marketing partner gets a gauge on how aggressive they would need to be to meet the demands in the ideal timeframe.
 
Before you schedule your first meeting with a marketing agency, make sure you have these things ironed out. A qualified agency shouldn’t be giving you a proposal unless they know the answers to these questions.

Not only is it important to have a nice looking and informative website, but you need to have an effective website strategy to go with it. In this series of blog posts I’ll be going over what a great website strategy looks like with some tips and tactics that will get you there.

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