How to Make a Strong Digital Start in 2020

 

Fast Out of the Gate: How to Make a Strong Digital Start in 2020

by Chris Glazer

When I was in business school, I was introduced to many impactful minds of past and present business leaders. Somehow, the quote that stuck the most is from perhaps the oldest modern business leader, Peter Drucker, known as the father of modern management. 

He wrote, 

Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.” Peter Drucker, Father of Modern Management

This insight has stuck with me for the past several years, in part, because it is quite simple, but also because it rings true with every company I have encountered. Working in a marketing agency, I come across countless organizations- from B2B technology firms to large e-commerce companies to small local service companies. These businesses differ vastly in specialization, focusing on selling their SaaS product, golf clubs, air filters, pest control, or popcorn, but they all have a few things in common: they have a vision for what makes them different from their competition and they have innovation that makes them special. However, they also typically struggle to properly market themselves in the vast digital landscape we find ourselves in. Marketing has evolved significantly over the past few decades, and there are now so many ways a business needs to market themselves that it can become dizzying.  

The difference between a great idea and a great business is marketing. It is said that Thomas Edison, who invented some of the most important inventions in the 20th century, was a terrible businessman and never made much money from his inventions. In this day in age, the struggle for businesses remains the same: how do we market ourselves correctly and create loyal customers? 

How can you push the envelope in 2020? Focus on marketing. Read on as we explore.

Focus on Finding the Right Ways to Reach your Customers

Every business needs marketing, but with so many techniques and channels, where should the focus be? The quick answer is that it depends on your business, as there is no one channel or technique to successfully market your business. You must analyze which channels are most profitable for you and test different marketing channels. If you are not engaging in digital marketing online, your first goal for 2020 should be building a digital marketing plan- because your competition most certainly is. For some companies, the tried and true mailer is still the most important marketing technique. Likewise, other companies successfully use cold calling to reach its customers. However, almost all companies can benefit from digital marketing online, but don’t take my word for it- just see what your competition is doing. The following are three of the most important channels for online marketing that all companies should be testing, analyzing the ROI for, and building new strategies for in 2020. 

Social Media in 2020

Social media can be an important part of your digital marketing mix, but don’t expect your organic social to do much for you. Most companies need to make sure their profiles are built out and appear professional on major social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram), but unless you have already built up a giant following, spending too much time on organic social can be a waste of time and money. To reach the audience you need on social media, expect to spend money on paid social. You also need to pay attention to which social media channels you are investing in and test to figure out where you get the most engagement for your money. This helps ensure you are reaching the audience you need to reach. Social media should also be thought of as top-of-funnel, meaning building awareness to your brand. Social media typically does not yield strong conversion rates, but some business types are able to do it quite successfully.  

# 1 Social Media Tip for 2020 from Apogee

Pay to play in the spaces that matter most to potential customers. Social media is at its most powerful at the brand level, introducing new audiences across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and TikTok to the products and services provided by your business. This introduction cannot be made without using the advertising systems in these channels. 

To acquire new audiences for your brand, craft audience targeting around your topics of expertise and their interest in those topics. Serve those audiences with short, easy to consume video content formatted for mobile. And then retarget engaged users to guide them along the customer journey. 

Using social media advertising in this way creates highly qualified audiences at a much lower cost for audience acquisition than depending on paid search alone. Michelle Stinson Ross, Senior Social Media Strategist

Paid Search, Google Shopping, and Display in 2020

Paid search can be a highly effective way to reach your customers. In 2020, most people use Google (and other search engines) to find what they are looking for. If you are selling a product, you need to be on Google paid search, Google Shopping, and be remarketing with display ads. Be careful of overusing display, however, as we can all get sucked into the pure volume of traffic without doing a full ROI analysis. Display is cheap, but the traffic is typically poor quality. Within paid search, shopping, and display, there are many different targeting tactics and campaign types. Make sure you are endlessly testing and analyzing your results to maintain as high an ROI as possible. 

For companies that are not directly selling a product online, or who are selling a low-cost product, paid search should be used more sparingly. It is increasingly expensive, particularly in competitive spaces, so make sure you are running a professionally managed, granular account. For some companies, paid search will not yield the results they are looking for. It should always be tested as a channel to possibly break into, but if you aren’t doing paid search already, make sure the person who is running it knows what they are doing and that you have a significant budget (and patience) for such a test. 

#1 Paid Search Tip for 2020 from Apogee

Many advertisers we see do not have extensive extension options built into their ads. Having multiple extensions at the account and/or campaign level can really bolster up an ad. The extensions we most often see in accounts are callout extensions since they require the least information/time. Having sitelink extensions helps lead the customer to a more specific page so they are more likely to spend time/convert. Call extensions are great if you have a sales team built out and are able to direct calls efficiently. Review and location extensions can especially help when a customer may be in a hurry to find an item or fulfill a need.

Going into 2020, customers will continue to want efficiency in their quest for goods and services. Having extensions helps you by bolstering your ads in size and accuracy but also helps the customer see when you offer exactly what they want. Lena Sidhu, Senior Paid Search Strategist

SEO in 2020

Search engine optimization is a marketing technique that is crucial to most companies, and yet, it is typically the most neglected channel. Why is this? The answer is two-fold: it is difficult to understand, and it takes time to see results. Companies do not want to be patient, with board members and CEO’s demanding instant results, but strong SEO work often yields the highest ROI over time. If you don’t have a specific SEO strategy in place, 2020 is the perfect time to start. SEO includes three main tactics: technical SEO, on-page or content SEO, and off-page SEO. All are important. 

  • Technical SEO is the practice of ensuring that Google (and other search engines) can properly understand your website and, in turn, serve your webpages as results in their Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This is of the utmost importance, because if Google cannot understand your website, it doesn’t matter how good your content is. 
  • On-page or content SEO is a process of understanding what keywords users are typing into search engines and optimizing your web pages so they properly target these queries. 
  • Off-page SEO is a practice of building links from other websites back to your website. This tells Google that others find your content important. 

All three tactics are important, but you need to make sure that the person or agency who runs your SEO is competent enough to keep up with Google’s constantly changing search algorithm. 

#1 SEO Tip for 2020 from Apogee

Companies need to spend more time talking about what they do in natural language. 

We can’t rely on keywords as a data source alone and need to focus on true questions people have about products/services that the company offers. Search is changing and queries need to be answered in plain english, hindi, spanish or what have you. 

According to Google’s recent update “small tables end” = “small end tables” = “good end tables for my living room” this is not new per say, but Google has announced they’ve gotten better at assessing content for natural language and human readability. We have seen sites that do this well gain more traction and sites that do this poorly start to lose rankings in recent months.  Brent Schiffman, Senior Search Engine Optimization Strategist

 

Most of All, Don’t Give Up

Marketing can be frustrating. You can try multiple practitioners, agencies, and tactics but still not get the results you need. It is important to remember, however, what Peter Drucker said. All too often, I see when a company begins to struggle, the first budget that is slashed is marketing. The instinct makes sense from a human psychological standpoint, but ultimately, it is the opposite move to get your company back on track.  

Our capabilities in digital marketing include organic and paid search, local SEO, social media marketing, content strategy and development, and influencer marketing. We have proven results over 20 years across a broad range of businesses. Our difference is in our proven capabilities, industry thought leadership and client focus.   

We know the way is not always clear. Don’t brave the digital marketing world by yourself. Connect with us and let us join you in developing your digital footprint.

 

Chris Glazer is the Senior Director of Client Operations at Apogee Results. He helps clients grow. His responsibilities include sales, managing and growing high-priority clients, and acting as an operational leader for the company. He strives to look at the whole picture of a business and use marketing to help companies achieve their goals.

To get updated information about the team at Apogee Results, please follow us on your favorite social media channels.

2019 Award Winning Agency

2019 Award Winning Work

 

by Michelle Stinson Ross

 

 

During the fall conference season, Apogee Results was honored with the recognition of our industry peers for a sample of the work we do all year long for our clients. On October 9, 2019 the outstanding local campaign we created on behalf of The Bug Master was named the Best Local Campaign of 2019 for the US Search Awards.

Our CEO, Bill Leake, and I had the privilege of traveling to Las Vegas to represent the agency team and The Bug Master for this prestigious award for digital marketing in the United States. 

Erika Tapie, an SEO Associate here at Apogee Results, was also named a finalist for the Young Search Professional of the Year.

Over the years we have provided internship and training opportunities to young professionals starting out in their marketing careers. Erika Tapie has demonstrated an outstanding level of progress in less than a year. We are incredibly pleased with how Erika has taken the opportunities here at Apogee Results and become an accomplished SEO Specialist on her own.

Erika is now taking the leadership role for all editorial review of content written in the shop. She is also now the lead writer on several projects and guides tactical SEO writing through strategic implementation.

With The Bug Master in particular, she started out providing content guidelines based on the query and intent research. From January to June of 2019 she has written all of the content published on behalf of The Bug Master and works directly with the client on topic ideation and seasonal timing. She has become the client’s resource for further strategy steps.

As an agency, it is an honor to work with such an accomplished young marketer and a pleasure to see those accomplishments recognized in the industry she represents.

US Search Awards 2019 on Wednesday, October 10th, 2019 at the Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV. Photographed by Adam Shane of CorporatePhotographers.com on a Nikon D5.

When we first wrote this case study back in July, we were just in the beginning stages of some truly outstanding results.

In December of 2018, we saw an increase of 33.21% in year over year sessions. From this point forward, our gains became increasingly dramatic. Here is the growth in sessions over the last 3 months (June is just through the 26th)
● April: 66.16% increase
● May: 74.18% increase
● June (through the 26th): 98.10% increase

That was just the beginning of the story

The area highlighted in yellow represents the growth from the previous graph. If you would like to learn more about the strategy and methodology of this winning case study, please view – Content and Local SEO for the Win

 

Michelle Stinson Ross is Apogee’s internal marketing strategist. She is responsible for growing our website, blog, social marketing, industry thought leadership and advertising footprints. She is also a key consultant to the internal team and the clients.

Michelle has written about digital marketing for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, and Forbes. She is national industry conference speaker for SMX, Pubcon, Digital Summit.

To get updated information about the team at Apogee Results, please follow us on your favorite social media channels.

Apogee Results Honored in 2019

 

Apogee Results Honored in 2019

US Search Awards

The US Search Awards is regarded as the premiere celebration of SEO, PPC and content marketing in the US and celebrates and rewards the expertise, talent and achievements of the search industry. Launched in October of 2013, the awards attract hundreds of entries from the leading search and digital agencies from across North America and to those based elsewhere around the globe who are delivering work for the US market.

Apogee Results has the honor of being among the award nominees for Best Local Campaign for our ongoing work with Austin-based The Bug Master.

Recognition for the Best Local Campaign of 2019 is based around a specific geographical location that has delivered outstanding results or visibility in search engines. Entries which have shown how to capitalize on the changing search landscape and implement localized strategies that have driven tangible results make up the short list for this category of the US Search Awards.

 

YOUNG SEARCH PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR

Every year the US Search Awards recognizes the search professionals under 25 working in the US search industry who are achieving great results and leading the industry at a young age.

This year our own Erika Tapie is among a list of outstanding young SEOs.

Erika Tapie – Young Search Professional Nominee

Erika recently graduated from Sam Houston State University with a degree in Mass Communication and began working for Apogee Results in late 2018. New to the industry, Erika is a current SEO Associate that helps clients by providing effective SEO services and content writing. She is also the lead SEO content writer for The Bug Master nominated for the 2019 US Search Awards Best Local Campaign.

Erika played soccer for 16 years, enjoys trying new food, going on hikes, dad jokes, attending music concerts, and playing with her pups.

Stay tuned in for our next blog posting to find out the final results! Awards will be announced on Wednesday, October 9, 2019, at the SLS Resort in Las Vegas.

SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it. Their purpose is to provide a foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships, fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating research, and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing.

2019 SEMPO Global Awards

Best SEO Campaign

This award recognizes exceptional integration efforts between organic search engine optimization and using a variety of both online and offline activity through continuous improvement of technical elements, on-page content and off-page factors. Our comprehensive technical and content work on the behalf of Datical was awarded Best SEO Campaign of 2019 by SEMPO.

We will soon publish the case study related to this industry honor.

 
To get updated information about the team at Apogee Results, please follow us on your favorite social media channels.

Launching a Growth-Ready Business

Launching a Growth-Ready Business

by Kyle Nations

Bill Leake, founder and CEO of Apogee Results, joins the conversation on the Angel Investor’s Network podcast with host Laura Rubinstein, of Social Buzz Club. During this episode of the podcast, Bill shares his personal insights and experiences as an entrepreneur, business founder, and digital marketer. He also explains how his marketing agency is becoming an incubator for start-ups in their Venture Studio. The full interview is embedded here and show highlights follow.

Some early marketing lessons from Bill’s career as a McKinsey Consultant were: 1) the power of brand, and 2) the value of pattern recognition.

Brand

Brand is meaningful, always. Direct response marketers underestimate the power of brand, sometimes thinking anything can be sold if it is sold effectively. However, building a brand, (particularly if you are a small business) is not just helpful, it’s critical. Brand is very powerful, and if you can articulate your brand identity from Day 1, it can be extremely helpful in opening doors and helping achieving scale. People will call you back if they recognize your brand. People will respond favorably to you if they like your brand. People are more inclined to do business with a brand that has invested in building trust and relationships.

Pattern Recognition

Pattern recognition is a helpful tool as well. If you are talking to someone about their business and trying to learn more, you can take shortcuts to understanding their assumptions and how their business model works, by drawing from your own experience and looking for the similarities and patterns you have seen before, perhaps in different or unrelated businesses. Essentially it is applying your collective experience to a business problem by looking for similarities and patterns in operating assumptions, models and outcomes, from other businesses. It allows you to test hypotheses much faster – it saves time, and time can be more valuable than money.

Love What You Do

Bill says, that at this point in his professional life, what he loves most is the ability to gather the top marketing talent not just in Austin or Texas, but in the US to work with every day. The team of people at Apogee consistently cultivate a good mix of creative and communications skills, and quantitative ability. For example, our strategists need to know “how to test” and “what to test.” Top shelf digital marketing talent does not have just an agency profile, nor are they purely engineers. They are a hybrid.

Building Business for Our Clients

Although the details of building business through digital marketing vary by market segment, it all starts with “who is the customer?” It’s imperative to understand your customer and how digital helps that customer along the journey. To do this, it is critical to be voracious about data collection and leveraging that data. Marrying customer/audience data with advertising creative and content messaging is the “secret sauce” of digital marketing. That “secret sauce” impacts the types of human behavior you can initiate. Be intentional, not just getting the right message for the right customer, but also knowing the right message for each customer in terms of where they are in the journey. Account based marketing, retargeting ads to a list, is a specific example of that “secret sauce.” In this use case, we are targeting those who have expressed interest and are already having conversations with sales to get customers all the way to the finish line. Influencer marketing is another flavor, so to speak, of account based marketing. If you are trying to reach the masses with your message, it is important to reach the press, online publications. and niche bloggers too. Influencer marketing is the cheapest and best way to do this in the digital world. But whether you’re encouraging potential customers along the path to a sale or engaging the help of influencers, segmentation and targeting are the most important activities in digital marketing.

Venture Studio

Rather than focusing on growth at Apogee Results, Bill is more interested in optimizing his business to help launch more successful growth-ready businesses. When we look at the Austin based start-up community, we see a lot of companies that are great at developing products and services, but counting on inexpensive and inexperienced marketing and sales teams to take those products and services to new customers. Building a product is not as expensive as it once was, especially in the digital world. What once took 7 figures to create, can now be done in the range of $50k to $250K. Where most companies fail is not product development but getting that product to market. The knowledge base and experienced marketing talent cultivated at Apogee Results in many cases is more valuable that additional venture capital funds.

What Should Be Invested in Marketing

If you are a start-up what should you be spending on marketing? It is not the traditional 8-10% of revenue – that is an old-school rule of thumb. It’s more like 40% of revenue or more for early stage companies. If you are a start-up, and if you are trying to get the word out and you don’t have channels and don’t have viral you need to be prepared to lose money for a couple of years. Ad agencies understand and focus on paid media. PR firms focus on earned media. If your content/product/service is good, you should do both. You can increase the odds of success and get more people to link back to your business using paid media and realize a good return. If you do well with the earned visibility, pour some paid on it.

Your Baby Is Ugly

For new ventures, it is important to know if “your baby is ugly.” Don’t just evaluate the product and the market for it, also evaluate the process necessary to complete a sale and get it into the hands of customers. Consider the following:

  • Is there a market need of more than ‘one’ for your product?
  • Is the market large enough to sustain growth?
  • Have you tested your product – not just the idea of your product, but have you tested adoption at all levels?
  • Do you have the right skills, but also the passion for it?
  • Do you know what you don’t know?
  • Do you know how to find out what you don’t know?
  • Do you have the right investment partners and plan?
  • Do you understand the competition?

If you would like to learn more about Apogee Results can help you build your business, please visit our Marketing Consulting page or fill out the contact form here in the blog post.

Kyle Nations has a long career in business development and marketing, He brings both big and small company experience to Apogee Results and our clients.  Kyle has undergraduate and graduate degrees in business and two college-age sons he loves to brag about. A lover of sports, he is both participant and spectator and is particularly fond of the water, hiking, and snow skiing. To get updated information about the team at Apogee Results, please follow us on your favorite social media channels.

2018 Award Winning Work

2018 Award Winning Work

by Michelle Stinson Ross

During the fall conference season, Apogee Results was honored with the recognition of our industry peers for a sample of the work we do all year long for our clients. In October of 2018 the fully integrated work we do on behalf of Capson Physicians Insurance was named one of a handful of finalists for both Best Integrated Campaign and Best Use of Content Marketing for the US Search Awards. We are grateful for the recognition and look forward to nominating our clients for marketing excellence again for the 2019 US Search Awards.

In mid November I had the privilege of traveling to New York City to represent the agency team and Capson for the Drum Search Awards USA. The combined work of our SEO, PPC, Content, and Social Media teams was nominated as finalists for Best Integrated Campaign and Best Content Marketing Campaign.

Attendees to the awards show and banquet were greeted outside the Edison Ballroom in the Manhattan Theater Distct by a drum line providing a smooth groove for stolling down the red carpet.

Opportunities to network with fellow nominees began with a cocktail reception followed by a lovely dinner and entertainment provided by an outstanding a capella group.

It is with great pleasure that I can inform you that Apogee Results and Capson Physicians Insurance received the award for Best Content Marketing Campaign. The award was given by a group of digital marketing industry peers based on the demonstration of excellence in clear strategic thinking, clarity and transparency, innovation, effectiveness, and tangible results.

If you would like to learn more about the strategy and methodology of this winning case study, please view – Content Marketing from Zero to 60.

If you would like to learn more about how the Apogee Results team can help your business achieve best in class results in 2019, please fill out the contact form in the sidebar of this page.

Michelle Stinson Ross is Apogee’s internal marketing strategist. She is responsible for growing our website, blog, social marketing, industry thought leadership and advertising footprints. She is also a key consultant to the internal team and the clients.

Michelle has written about digital marketing for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, and Forbes. She is national industry conference speaker for SMX, Pubcon, Digital Summit.

To get updated information about the team at Apogee Results, please follow us on your favorite social media channels.

Apogee Results Nominated for Several Industry Awards

Apogee Results Nominated for Several Industry Awards

US Search Awards

The US Search Awards is regarded as the premiere celebration of SEO, PPC and content marketing in the US and celebrates and rewards the expertise, talent and achievements of the search industry. Launched in October of 2013, the awards attract hundreds of entries from the leading search and digital agencies from across North America and to those based elsewhere around the globe who are delivering work for the US market.

Apogee Results has the honor of being among the award nominees for Best Integrated Campaign and Best Use of Content Marketing.

The Best Integrated Campaign highlights how successful marketing campaigns leverage multiple disciplines over the full customer journey. Whether that is a joined up PPC and SEO campaign to maximize search impact, or some perfectly timed search activity to jump capitalize on reach of TV advertising. The winner of this award demonstrated how innovative, integrated activity lead to outstanding results.

Nominees for Best Use of Content marketing need to demonstrate how links, coverage, social shares and engagement combine with site content to achieve outstanding search results. Only the best examples of content being used for search success will be in with a chance of taking this award.

The winners of the US Search Awards will be presented at a gala dinner  this week on Wednesday, October 17 in Las Vegas.

The Drum Search Awards USA

The Drum Search Awards, established in the US market in 2017, recognize and award the most creative, effective, and innovative search campaigns across PPC and SEO. Organized by The Drum, a marketing communications publication, winners will join an exclusive group of top marketers.

Our submissions, Content Marketing from 0 to 60 and Marketing Integration from 0 to 60, along with our very own Clarissa Fonseca, have all been nominated for this year’s The Drum Search Awards.

The following are the 3 categories Apogee Results have been nominated for; Best Integration Strategy or Campaign, Best Content Marketing Campaign, and Rising SEO Star.

Each campaign will be judged on evidence of the following criteria:

  • Clear strategic thinking
  • Clarity and Transparency
  • Innovation
  • Effectiveness.
  • Tangible results

 

Clarissa Fonseca – Rising SEO Star Nominee

Stay tuned in for our next blog posting to find out the final results! Awards will be announced on November 14, 2018, at the Edison Ballroom in New York City.

To get updated information about the team at Apogee Results, please follow us on your favorite social media channels.