How to Effectively Work With Marketing Agencies

Marketing agencies play a crucial role in helping businesses of all sizes grow and succeed. Whether you are a startup or an established company, working with a marketing agency can help you reach your target audience, increase brand awareness, and boost your sales and revenue.

However, working effectively with marketing agencies requires a certain level of understanding and collaboration. In this article, we will share some tips on how to effectively work with marketing agencies like RBK Advertising + Design and others, so that you can achieve your marketing goals and maximize your return on investment.

Define Your Goals and Expectations

Before you start working with a marketing agency, it is important to define your marketing goals and expectations. What do you want to achieve with your marketing efforts?

Do you want to increase your website traffic, generate more leads, or boost your social media presence? By having clear goals and expectations, you can better communicate your needs and objectives to your marketing agency.

Choose the Right Agency

When choosing a marketing agency, you should consider their experience, expertise, and reputation. Look for agencies that have worked with businesses similar to yours and have a proven track record of success, such as a Tourism marketing agency. 

You should also consider their communication style and responsiveness, as well as their pricing and contract terms.

Communicate Regularly

Effective communication is key to a successful working relationship with a marketing agency. You should establish regular check-ins and update meetings with your agency, to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that your marketing efforts are aligned with your goals and expectations. Be open and honest with your agency about your feedback and concerns, and encourage them to do the same.

Be Open to Feedback and Ideas

Marketing agencies are experts in their field, and they can bring valuable insights and ideas to your marketing strategy. Be open to their feedback and suggestions, and trust their expertise and experience. 

Collaborate with your agency to brainstorm new ideas and solutions, and be willing to try new approaches and tactics.

Measure Your Results

To determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, you should measure your results regularly. Work with your agency to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics for success and track your progress over time. 

Use this data to refine your marketing strategy and make informed decisions about your future marketing efforts.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, working effectively with marketing agencies requires a collaborative and communicative approach. By defining your goals and expectations, choosing the right agency, communicating regularly, being open to feedback and ideas, and measuring your results, you can build a strong and successful working relationship with your marketing agency and achieve your marketing goals.

5 Ways Your Can Be More Effective in Marketing to Customers

The success of your business depends on how many customers know you are open and how they can find you. If your customers can't find you then you won't be in business very long. But if you have proper advertising, a business can become known to the community and have many satisfied customers.

Here are a few ideas to use in making the public aware of your business and how you may serve them.

Newspapers 

Look into the advertising rates for your local newspaper. Even though many people use the Internet to do their searching for goods and services, newspapers are still an option. Newspapers are still a good way to let your customers learn about you. An ad large enough to catch the eye of your customers can be somewhat pricey but you can negotiate a better price for a continual advertising campaign.

If an ad is to pricey for your budget, start out with classified ads because they are less money and you can run it for a longer period of time. 

Don't ignore newspapers as a good way to advertise. Also be imaginative in your campaign by contacting a reporter whose beat is related to your business. A interesting news story with your business prominently written about is a cheap way to get new customers.

Radio Stations

Contact your local radio station. Surprisingly, radio stations are an efficient way to advertise. They are affordable and can reach many people looking to find your goods and services.

Stations are flexible and can design a plan for any budget. After arranging a budget, the radio station can schedule your ad at specific times through the day to focus on the most listeners. Of course, the times when most listeners are listening, those times will have premium costs. So it is possible to start with a small budget and still reach your target audience.

Local Television

Like radio stations you can also create a campaign to stay within a budget. Using local television stations can be the quickest way to get the most exposure for your business. These stations have advertising departments that can assist you with finding the target audience you desire. Striking a balance between commercial length and time of day the commercial airs, can help you stay within your advertising budget. 

You may think starting out with only a few air plays of your commercial a month will not be effective but studies have shown local television is the most efficient use of a businesses advertising dollars.

Billboards

You have seen the billboards on the side of the road. For local advertising these are great. 24/7 these billboards are working to show the community your goods and services. Billboards can also be targeted by choosing the ones that are on major highways and locations in town. 

The better locations have higher rates but they reach more customers. Unlike broad advertising media, like TV and Radio, billboards can focus on specific parts of the city. You can target specific income groups or geographical locations with billboards, depending on the advertising location.

Pamphlets and Coupons

Direct mail, pamphlet, and coupons have been around for a long time and still produce effective results for local companies. You may can find in your mailbox an envelope containing a variety of 10 to 20 coupons from your local businesses and even some national businesses. 

The reason you receive these is that advertisers find this type of advertising very effective. As we have discussed before about target advertising, this technique can be very effective. With direct mail of your pamphlets and coupons you can target by income, disposable income, location to the business or a any other specifics target you need. 

Pamphlets that describe or sell your businesses services are highly effective because first you have targeted the specific type of customer and their attention is focused on the pamphlet from your company. Pamphlet delivery can be effective in marketing to new customers. You need to make an impression on the customers and help them make the decision to use your service. Including a money off coupon can be a very effective enticement.

The number one reason a business fails is from lack of proper advertising. Not connecting with your customers will doom any business. It's your job as the business owner to determine the type of advertising and marketing your business requires.

Get Noticed in 2014 - 4 Marketing Techniques to Try in the Coming Year

Running a business is a rewarding venture, but it is also one that poses new challenges each day. Even companies with undeniably intelligent business plans, high-quality products and competitive prices can find it difficult to stay ahead. One of the biggest challenges for businesses is simply getting noticed. In a crowded marketplace — particularly one in which technological advances have lowered the barrier to entry — it can be quite difficult to produce a steady stream of interest. 

Get Social

If you're not already embracing multiple social media platforms, now is the time to do so. Different demographic groups use different platforms, so concentrating all of your efforts on just one site means you will risk missing out on a large chunk of potential consumers. Social media offers an attractive option because you can reach an audience whether they are at home or mobile, and it doesn't cost anything to send out messages. Additionally, it is easy for people to copy your messages and pass them on, allowing you to expand your audience effortlessly.

Promotional Products

Getting your name out is essential if you want to keep expanding your business. And, just as in movies and television, product placement can be a very effective strategy for doing so. Getting custom-made promotional products, such as promotional zipper pulls or custom carabiners by HALO will dramatically increase exposure to your brand, which is crucial if you want it to become a household name. These small, utilitarian products are items that customers can use every day, encouraging repeat exposure. Promotional products are inexpensive to make but can make a significant impression on your target audience, making them a great marketing investment. These promotional products can be imprinted with your company’s logo and contact details so every time they are used by current and potential customers, you gain marketing exposure.

Get Involved

Don't be afraid to think outside of the box when it comes to marketing; you don't have to restrict yourself to traditional advertisements or commercials. You can also get exposure for your business by volunteering in the community or sponsoring an event related to your products or services. These strategies can help you gain vast new audiences and have your business be seen in a positive light.

Get Personal

People are more likely to interact with and support a brand with personality, so make sure your target audience knows that there are people behind the products. Starting a blog can help you show your human side and will also give people more insight into how your business operates and witness your passions. Getting on the same level as your audience will make your business more appealing so that consumers see you, not a faceless corporation.

Cutting through the barrage of marketing messages that consumers receive every day is no easy task, and it requires strategic planning. Luckily, altering your approach to marketing is much easier than changing a product's design or chain of distribution. If you want to get noticed in 2014, consider adopting some of these marketing techniques that will get you noticed in your chosen field.

Setting Your Business’s Marketing Budget

While marketing may not be the lifeblood of a running business, it certainly does keep an organization’s lifeblood flowing. From letting customers know about new products and services to gaining new revenue streams and continually refreshing interest, marketing and advertising have a very important role to play when it comes to staying in the black.

But how important is marketing — not in an ideological way, but in dollars and cents? How much should a business allocate to marketing, and how is a company supposed to arrive at that figure? If times are lean, and you’re more worried about how you’re supposed to afford to print postage, should you still pump money into advertising, or is it wiser to let your marketing dollars fall to the wayside? Here is a quick look at how to set and spend a marketing budget, as well as a pitch for why you need to do it even when you think you can’t afford it.

How to Set a Marketing Budget

A general rule of thumb for most businesses is that they should allocate and spend about 5 percent of their operating budget on marketing and advertising in order to maintain their current level of business. If you want to grow your market share or you have a new product to introduce, however, that figure should jump to at least 8 percent, because pushing past the inertia of what people already know about you can take some added effort.

Beyond those general rules, here are four other methods you can employ when devising your marketing financial plan:

• Utilize a fixed percentage of sales. Take last year’s gross sales or the average sales from the last few years, and allocate a percentage based on those numbers. Five percent is a good amount, but some businesses only spend around 2 percent. The advantages of this technique are that it’s stable and doesn’t try to predict the future, but focusing too much on the past can keep you from being aggressive, and sales are not always directly related to advertising alone, which means your figures may not totally line up.
• Keep up with the Joneses. This method employs doing what your competitors are doing. Whatever the industry marketing expenditures average is, adopt it. It’s easy and predictable, but looking at everyone around you can keep you from effectively increasing your market share.
• Take a task-based approach. Set specific marketing goals, and outline the tasks you’ll have to do to reach them. Then, determine your budget based on how much it will cost to perform those tasks. This method is accurate, but if it fails, it’s probably going to be costly.
• Go all in. If you have a strong stomach for risk, and you want your business to grow quickly, set aside a minimum amount of money with which to do business and put the rest in your marketing budget. Because it’s aggressive, this type of marketing can gain leaps and bounds over a more passive approach, but it’s risky. You’re liable to spend yourself out of business.

How to Spend a Marketing Budget

In order to properly spend the money you’ve set aside on marketing, you need to have a plan. From utilizing social media to television, direct mail and other campaigns, your money needs to be spent with wisdom and intention. Outline the avenues you’ll use, and then, get started. Once you know where your money is going, keep track of whether the expenditures are actually meeting your goals. If you need to adjust or change, do so. A marketing plan needn’t be fixed. Knowing whether or not your money is achieving your marketing goals is much more important than sticking to your plan or sticking to your budget. Compare quarters and campaigns. Analyze sales data and expenditures. Be patient, and be open to things that do and don’t work, and above all, make sure that your plan and its execution are in keeping with who you are and hope to be as a business.

Regardless of the type of business you run, you need people to know about the goods and services you provide so they’re able to purchase them. Even in lean times, you need to treat your marketing budget as a non-negotiable expense, because without awareness, you won’t have customers. Staying in business, remaining competitive, gaining market share — a good marketing plan with a solid and reliable budget will help you achieve these things and more, but you have to do it consistently.

About the Author: Jerry Jacobs is a contributing blogger and freelance marketer.

6 Cheap and Creative Ways to Effectively Advertise Your Business

In today's digital age, business owners must reconsider their marketing strategies to ensure that they are effectively targeting the best market for their products and services. Technology has created a variety of different ways that businesses can reach out to potential customers, but this variety of different choices can often obscure the choices that will truly yield results and a return on investment. Thus, consider the following inexpensive and innovative ways you can spread the word about your company, all of which you can try without fear of losing a great deal of money.

Blog Online

Establishing an online blog in your line of business is a great way to position yourself as an expert while promoting your company. Add a blog to your website or join Bloggit.com or Blogger.com to start a separate blog. Discuss problems addressed by your goods or services, and readers will remember your company when a need arises. The key with blogging is to not advertise your product. Yes, you can talk a bit about your products, but you usually want to talk about general topics within your industry. By doing this, you will get a greater number of followers, which increases your ranking in search engines and introduces your website to a greater number of people.

Be Interviewed

Offer interviews on relevant subjects to local radios, newspapers, and Internet communications. For example, if you sell gardening tools, offer an interview in February or March about spring planting. Listeners and readers will appreciate the free advice and consider you an expert when they need additional gardening help. If you are unable to find local opportunities for offering interviews, you might want to consider starting up your own podcast or starting a YouTube channel that contains videos that address relevant topics and issues.

Write Articles

Offer op ed pieces to community newspapers or magazines, or submit an article to the trade publication associated with your company's industry. In marketing your knowledge and skills, others will appreciate your expertise and contact you with future business needs, such as a financial adviser for someone who is planning for retirement. Also, consider writing articles for other blogs, since this might give you valuable links back to your website and blog.

Give Donations

When possible, donate equipment, expertise, or services to individuals or programs who can benefit. Contribute to special holiday collections for the needy. Participate in volunteer programs. Sponsor children's educational initiatives. Giving back to the community will not only make you feel good, but it can also help others consider your business in a favorable light.

Demonstrate Skills

If you have a skill that others might value, whether or not it is company-related, share it with the public. Libraries, schools, and certain social service organizations appreciate those who are willing to share their knowledge and experience to help others. For example, if you own a restaurant, you may want to teach a nutrition class or workshop at a high school or college, or perhaps to a group of low-income residents at a housing development. They will recognize you as someone who cares and be likely to do business with you in the future when possible.

Join Organizations

Become a member of the chamber of commerce and other civic groups. Network with members to learn more about their services and how your business might complement their enterprises. Ask them, where should I advertise my business? Networking is often the best way to get new customers and valuable referrals, and it is completely free and relatively easy in most cases.

The above methods can help your business get noticed. Start growing your company innovatively.

Printing Press: What Kinds of Advertising Will Work for Your Business?

To run a successful business, you need to be able to reach your customers. The easiest way to do so is through advertising. However, not every advertising strategy is suited to the needs of every business. When you need to get more out about your company it is time to start thinking about your target consumer. Below is an over-view of a few of the different kinds of advertising that can benefit different kinds of businesses.

Viral Advertising

This is perhaps the newest form of advertising available to businesses. Viral advertising implements the internet and social media to promote products and services. When an ad goes viral, it quickly spreads throughout social media, or receives a large number of hits on sites like YouTube. Viral marketing operates a lot like word of mouth. Due to this, it is extremely difficult to predict whether or not ad based content will take off. Still, this may be a great avenue for promoting things like movies and videogames aimed at younger demographics that feed off of internet word of mouth.

The Mail

Another common marketing strategy is direct mail. The concept for this type of marketing is very simple, ads are placed directly into the mail boxes of consumers, and it is then hoped that they will read these ads and respond to them. A successful direct mail campaign requires a bit of strategy since people tend to throw away junk mail, including coupons. Direct mail works best with local businesses such as restaurants, dry cleaners, car washes and the like. Research your consumer demographic and find out if they would be likely to respond to direct mail.

Billboards

Another option that many businesses choose is billboards. Today, billboards come in the form of the more traditional printed, or painted variety as well as electronic billboards that can be programmed with multiple ads. These advertisements are great for targeting a wide array of consumers that commute on a specific roadway. Billboards can benefit many different businesses. They can direct customers to local businesses, as well as advertise new products being offered by national chains. They are even great for advertising things that radio and TV advertising tend to ignore, such as local healthcare providers. A billboard about the struggles of drug abuse can be used as part of an addiction treatment marketing strategy for a local addiction treatment center.

There are now many advertising strategies to choose form. Some are newer than others. If you own a business, carefully choose a marketing strategy that is best suited to both your company as well as the customers you are trying to reach.

Making it Work: How a Small Business Can Become Bigger

Most small business owners dream of expanding their business and turning their small business into a big one. However, dreams alone won’t transform your company. Business owners need to take action to continue to grow their business and to be ready when an opportunity presents itself to expand. Here are some tips to try when creating more growth in your business. 

Organic Growth

Most businesses will grow naturally over time due to marketing and advertising efforts reaching new customers and existing customers, and by spreading the word about the business. This organic growth is important, as some existing customers will leave over time for a variety of reasons. This means that a business that is not expanding its customer base continually, will not only fail to expand, but it will actually contract. Business owners need to carefully balance their time between maintaining existing customers, and reaching new ones in order to allow a business to grow over time. 

Financial Stability

For a business to grow, it must be financially stable. Though this can be a difficult task in the first few years that a business is in operation, even the youngest business can begin to build financial strength. A small cash reserve is a great place for a small business to start. This reserve can start small, and grow over time to meet any emergency expenses that a business may face. In addition, a business should foster relationships with financial institutions and other lenders. By having both cash and credit available, a business can confidently grow through the expansion of operations and the acquisition of competitors. 

Modern Technology

In many ways, modern technology has revolutionized small business. While a business can still benefit from the services of professionals, many tasks that business owners had to hire out in the past can be performed in-house. For example, business owners may choose to design and operate their own website to conduct business online. Products such as Domo BI dashbaords can help a business owner and other key employees to have fast access to important business measurements. This will aid in efficiently running the business. By using current technology, a business can work more efficiently and with a higher level of profitability. Find out more about new technologies and try to use each one to the company's advantage. Find out who common customers are and what type of advertising they will respond to. Where the ads are online will matter in how well the are received. Creating more customers through advertising is an age old method and will guarantee business growth.

While there is more to growing a business than fostering organic growth, building financial stability and using the best technology, these are three important areas for a business owner to focus. By working to grow a business, and being prepared for expansion, a business owner can position his or her small business for big things in the future. This ways you can be sure your company will grow in the right ways and become bigger than ever.

5 Great Ways Pinterest Can Improve Your Career

One of the key elements of building your own career is to start connecting with people, start advertising your skills and to make a good impression to others. The social media is one of the medium that is most commonly used for advertising. This advertising scheme using the social media network is not only exclusive for internet marketers but also to professional individuals as well. Using the social media can become a powerful tool that you can use in helping to boost your career and doing the same is not merely limited in advertising your career through text but through images as well. 

Pinterest makes it possible for any professional to improve their career by using its platform for advertising their work, more primarily their skills in designing and other visual portfolio. Pinterest is a social media network which unique feature is the virtual pin board that allows people to pin or post images which is an opportunity to promote the visual presentation of your brand, career or profession. If you aim to promote your career using Pinterest, here are 5 great ways to help you take the right directions. 

1. Showcase your specialty or professional industry

Using Pinterest is a great opportunity to show enticing images that will showcase your specialty or professional career. If you are a professional wedding organizer for instance, you can certainly post the images of the events to which you organized and pin them on your virtual board for everyone to see. If you are a chef, you can take a picture of your master recipes and make people start liking your mouth watering menus. Web designers can post the websites that they have designed while artists could also pin the photos of their masterpieces of artwork. Because photos are worth a thousand words, you can always showcase your brand and specialization that is within your profession in order to boost your career using Pinterest and make your specialty known to the public. 

2. Highlight your customers with due recognition

Pinterest (Photo credit: stevegarfield)

Pinterest can help boost your career when you try to recognize your customers in your Pinterest account. Try to recognize your loyal customers by pinning their photos, their website or anything related to them that will give due recognition for contracting your services. This way, you are building your customers’ loyalty and make them repeat buyers or customers in the future. Customers always like the feeling of being recognized, therefore you should exert effort to make them feel important and appreciated and they will likely patronize your services which is a step of building your career reputation. 

3. Use Pinterest to hunt for a job

You can use Pinterest to promote your portfolio and professional career in landing your dream job. By creating your own personal brand that will highlight your accomplishments and creations by showcasing them on your pin board. Choose the most appropriate videos, photos and articles to pin on your Pinterest pin board that will highlight your skills and talents. You can use this as a reference to support your professional career in order to land your dream job. If you are fortunate enough, someone may find your Pinterest profile very interesting and might offer you a job that fits your qualifications. 

4. Make your Pinterest board a good resource for similar career industry

 (Photo credit: colleengreene)

Users of Pinterest can pin images or re-pin the other user’s photos or pinned items on their own virtual pin board. You can start improving your career and allow it to gain a momentum by working out to make your own pin board a resource of information that is related to your line of profession. You can always be on search for related news and updates about your professional career and provide that valuable information to your own pin board for others to find and re-pin on their pin board as well. You gain more popularity for people who belong to the same work industry as yours and you can start building your own professional brand and career by becoming an authority about your specific career field. 

5. Connect with other Pinterest users who belong to a similar profession as yours

You need to stay connected with people who have the same profession as yours. The more people you can get to become your own network of friends, the more exposure your Pinterest profile gets. As you use your Pinterest account as an extension of your portfolio to showcase your skills and talents, the more people will likely start noticing you. It is essential to be able to connect with professionals who could give you tips on how to prosper in your career and who may be able to vouch for you with a good word of recommendation. Pinterest is a good place to start making friends with people who share the same interest as yours and to professionals who are already successful in similar career industry as yours.

About the Author:

The guest post is written by Mackenzie, finance and business writer and guest blogger for 4 years already. She is proficient at webdesign, internet marketing and guest blogging. She runs the website  Accountancy Services and she loves covering the articles on various blog sites.