Cyberwalker Blog

Is my marketing agency doing a good job?

At Cyberwalker Digital, we  see time and time again, business owners throwing money at marketing agencies without understanding what they’re really paying them for.They understand the importance of having a marketing agency. And, they can see that the marketing agency is doing some work for them because they see things be printed or put online. But, the problem is, they aren’t really sure if any of the strategies are getting them results. If they are getting results, it’s comment that they are not sure where from.

To help you evaluate your marketing strategy and learn how to talk to your marketing agency so you can better direct them to what you want, we’re answering the question:

Is my marketing agency doing a good job?

1. Are they providing you with regular performance assessments that show results? If your marketing agency is doing a good job, they will be able to provide you with regular statistics reports. They should be tracking everything do. The best agencies are continually evaluating their progress and adjusting the strategy to ensure you continue to improve.

Based on the services you’ve hired them for, you’ll want to ask for the following:

  • SEO – Analytics reports that show: How many visitors are coming to your site, how long they are staying on each page, what pages they are viewing, and what keywords are effective
  • Email marketing – They should be showing you: Open rates on emails, percentages of links clicked, and where contacts are entering into your funnels.If they are really good, they will split test emails to help them understand what strategies work best with your target audience.
  • Social Media – Are they evaluating your social media strategy? If they are sharing information on: Number of links clicked, contacts entering into email funnels from social media posts and likes and shares for posts, this is valuable information. Based on this information they should be suggesting ideas for new social media content. Have they given you your Klout score? Is it going up?
  • Print marketing – Corporate cards, postcards, flyers and billboards can be more difficult to track than online marketing tactics. However, they should be following up with you to gather the information that will tell them whether a direct mail piece or billboard brought in potential leads.

2. Are they asking you lots of questions? True marketing experts ask a lot of questions, especially when they first start working with your company. It helps them understand: Who your target market is, how to build an effective strategy, and what you are trying to capture with your brand.

If your marketing agency quietly works away without regular communication and then sends you a bill, consider this a red flag.

3. Are they letting you in on their strategies?  Do you know what your marketing agency is doing for you and how it all works?  It’s okay to ask them question about how they do what they do. If they are reputable, they’ll be willing to share strategies with you and explain how they work.  If you ask them how they do something and you get an answer like “it’s too technical for me to describe it”, get rid of this agency.

4. Are they knowledgable? And are they willing to admit when they don’t know/understand something? Expert marketing agents are highly knowledgeable. If you visit their site and see valuable blog posts and articles, that’s a good sign.

If you find that they are willing to admit to their weaknesses this is also a highly valuable skill. While they are experts, it’s impossible for them to know everything about your business. If they are willing to admit to what they don’t know, and are open to learn, you’ve hired an agency that is committed to producing results.

If you are concerned that you are not getting value for your marketing dollars please email your questions to andy@cyberwalker.com.  We’ll answer your questions for free. As a reputable agency, it’s important to us that we help businesses steer clear of the bad guys in our industry.

SEO keywords for cosmetic surgeons

In today’s digital world, many of your potential patients begin their search for you on the web. They type in specific keywords phrases like “cosmetic surgeons in Fort Lauderdale, FL” to find you, if that is where your practice is located.

And so, if you’ve SEO’d your site properly, potential patients will find YOU at the top of the search rankings. That means, they are likely to visit your site and come to your clinic versus competitors in the area

SEO is the #1 thing you can do to drive new business to your practice. However, it takes knowledge and time to do it effectively.  While you can do it yourself, if you’re not an expert or don’t have have the time, your best bet is to hire a professional agency to do this work for you.

Whichever route you choose it’s important to know a few SEO basics. Here are seven tips that are critical :

SEO keywords for cosmetic surgeons

1) Optimize for local. That means cities, counties and states or provinces that your web site serves by including the add on “in Toronto” or “in Ontario” or “Hollywood, FL” or “Dania Beach”.

2) If you are a national brand be sure to provide regional information, such as store locations, regional offices and the like. People like to deal with local. Support your region reps and drive traffic to them.

3) Think like a searcher and design keyword phrases they may type to find your product or service. Poll your a barista, your neighbours and your likely customers. Taxi drivers, if you sell to consumers, are always good for consumer research.

4) Don’t chase single word keywords unless you are patient and have a huge budget to put behind content development. No content related to that term, no traffic.

5) Google rewards content-rich web sites with high rankings if they generate voluminous and helpful content that demonstrates that the they are the topic expert. This strategy will guarantee that over time you will earn traffic from Google for all kinds of keyword phrases.

6) Research how difficult a keyword phrase is to win. Use a tool like Wordtracker. Don’t chase the  hard to get keywords. Optimize for the low-hanging fruit first then work on moving up the rankings on the more competitive keywords and keyword phrases.

7) A handy free research tool is Google Adwords. It can be used to find related phrases and keywords to the most obvious keywords and keyword phrases. You don’t have to buy ads to use it.

How do I get more people to visit my website?

If your website is not attracting visitors, it’s likely your site does not appear at the top of search engine results. That’s a major problem. If your page does not rank on the first page of Google, Bing, or Yahoo search results, no one knows your site exists. That is unless you have encouraged other websites to link to it through other promotional means.

If you want to attract more people to your website, and ensure those people are the right candidates for your target market, below are some immediate actions you should take to improve your situation. We answer the common question: How do I get more people to visit my website? Read on for some great advice on digital marketing tactics.

How do I get more people to visit my website?

1. Build Content. Building a content-rich site is the single most important thing you can do.  Search engines send out web robots that crawl web pages looking at content. Keywords in the site content get indexed by the search engines and if the search engine calculates that your website is a good match, the gets listed on the first or second page of search results for that keyword phrase. Search engines use these phrases to pull up sites when a person does a search.

For example, a person searching for a digital marketing agency in Tampa, FL, will type in the phrase “Digital marketing agency Tampa, FL”. If there is content on your site that has this phrase and there is not too much competition, chances are your site will appear in the search results. The search engines also look at similar words and proximity to other words that suggest context. 

The word “nesting” next to the word “birds”, suggests the content might be related to wildlife whereas nesting near to the word “trimester” would tell the search engine that the page is about parenthood and pregnancy.

Your chances of being pulled up in a search are very much lower if you don’t have quality content on your site and that it is added to often.

2. Refresh your content regularly. It’s highly important you continue to add new content to your site on a regular basis. Google rewards sites that refresh their content ongoingly.  Also, if site visitors can rely on great information that’s updated frequently when they visit your site, it will get them to return.

Don’t set up a content-rich site once and let it sit.  You should be writing at least 2-4 articles per month, and more if you can manage it. The more you write the more success you’ll achieve.  If you don’t have time to do it yourself, hire an agency or professional copywriter to do it for you.

3. SEO or Search Engine Optimization If you are not SEOing your site, you are missing out on an opportunity to attract ridiculous amounts of business. And the leads you generate from SEO are warm leads. So, when you put your efforts into SEO, you don’t have to prospect or cold call.  It’s much easier to grow your business. People will be calling you.

At CWD, 70% of our business comes through SEO. We get calls on a regular basis from people in our target markets.

You can hire a professional to do SEO for you, or if you have the time to dedicate to learning the process, you can do it yourself.

4. Social media. Learn how to use social media effectively to find an audience and share your content. There are rules to social media and if you know how to them you can use it to your advantage.

If you post links to the great content you generate on a regular basis, you’ll bring the people who follow you on social media, to your web site. Give this stuff away for free with no strings attached.

Use social media to post or tweet other people’s stuff. Let them know you’re doing that. They will be inclined to share your stuff with their list. This is an easy way to reach more people. Search engines also pay attention to your web site’s social feeds, so this activity helps SEO.

5. Learn how to write great sales copy. Knowing how to sell through writing is a powerful tool to have. On the web you don’t get a chance to talk to people directly. Your copy speaks for you. If you have incredible copy on a landing page or on a Google Ad, that directs people to your site,  people won’t be able to ignore you. They will click your ad links.

Learn how to write sales copy yourself. If you don’t have the time hire an agency or freelance copywriter.

Should I spend more money on digital or print marketing?

The rise of the consumer internet and social media has turned marketing into a digitally-run world. This has made it easier for companies to test ideas to see what works.  Engagement levels can easily be obtained from things like number of “Likes” on Facebook, or links clicked in an email.

Perhaps, this is why at CWD we’ve seen first hand that many businesses today spend approx. 70-80% of their marketing budget on digital mediums versus traditional print.

If you’re unclear as to where to spend your marketing dollars, we’ve answered the common question:

Should I spend more money on digital or print marketing?

Should I spend more on digital or print marketing?

Digital Marketing: 5 Reasons to invest in digital marketing

1) You can widen your reach . One post on social media, one email sent, and/or one blog post SEO’d, can reach more people in less time than what’s possible with print methods.

Not only that, people who would not otherwise find you from things like an article or from a postcard, can find you on the web. If you use tactics like SEO you can target the right audience. You can use search engines, like Google, to bring people to you. And research shows that warm leads are far better than cold leads.

You  reach people all over the world. If you do business at a national or international level, you can interact with potential clients without physically being where they are.

2) You can track everything you do. Digital marketing tactics are more easily tracked than print, in most cases. You can see who is coming from where and who is clicking on what. Then, based on engagement levels, you can tweak your strategy.

Print marketing can be difficult to track. How many people a day see your billboard. Out of those people how many call you?  Do you know? How many read your article? You can guess, but you don’t always know for sure.

3) You can automate systems. Sales expert, Frank Kern, says a sale only happens when a potential customer is ready to buy. They will go to you to buy if you position yourself correctly.

Using digital marketing tools, such as email marketing, you can make sure that they come to you at the right time for them. You can set up automated systems of emails that alert you to a contact’s engagement levels. The moment a contact shows they are ready to purchase, your system will send them an offer. This is how you make money in your sleep!

With automated systems you can also maintain a better level of customer service. You can automate follow up sequences.

Some great tools for automation: Infusionsoft for email marketing and Hootsuite for social media posting.

4)  You can spend less and generate more leads.  You could spend $5,000-$10,000 on a fancy billboard that you don’t know is effective or $500 per month on a sure fire way, like SEO, to grow your business.

SEO can range from $500-$2,000 per month based on number of keywords. And that can amount to thousands of leads for your business over time.

Advertising on social media is free if o do it yourself. If you hire a professional, who understands strategy and lead generation (highly recommended), you only need to spend anywhere from $250-$750/month, based on your needs.

5) You can easily and inexpensively test and tweak your strategies.  One of the major advantages of digital marketing is your ability to test different ideas to see what is the most effective. It’s easy to do these without spending thousands of dollars. When you print a direct mail flyer, for example, you invest a great deal of money in a medium that you can’t modify. If you are not happy with the results, you have to spend much more money to make changes, and sometimes you may even need to get a loan.

Print marketing: 3 Instances where print marketing is still effective

1) You want to connect on a more personal level. A handwritten card goes a long way in an era where the Internet and email reign supreme.  It can help you stand out from your competitors. It’s also a nice way to thank someone for their business and make them feel appreciated.

2) You want to make an impact.  Direct mail gets peoples’ attention when properly executed. However, direct mail can be easily get brushed aside by the receiver, so it’s important to involve strategy with what you send out.

Master copywriting guru, John Carlton, suggests crazy tactics such as sending a dollar bill that can be seen through the window of an envelop along with your message. This entices the recipients and says: “You need to open this”. Other tactics involve blending in with other mail by writing a deeply personal and touching letter that simply can’t be avoided.

3) You are targeting a local market. If you run a housekeeping business in a residential area, a print advertisement in a local newspaper, for example, is not a bad idea.

At the end of the day, the leaders in marketing and sales always say: Diversify. Use many different streams of marketing. Track everything, so you can monitor your performance. When you know what is most effective, you can put more effort and more money into it.

If you’d like us to do a FREE site audit, so you know  what you are doing well and where you can improve your digital strategy, CLICK HERE.

Websites for cosmetic surgeons: Advice from digital experts

If you want to run a successful cosmetic surgery practice and win the majority of the local business, a strong web site is crucial.

At CWD, we don’t say this is true of all businesses. We’ve worked for clients in other industries who’ve been quite successful generating leads with a content-rich site that wasn’t so pretty. But for cosmetic surgeons – doctors in the business of aesthetics -having a great web site will help you build credibility.

As a cosmetic surgeon, you should have a site that is both visually appealing and has informative content. These two elements will help you maximize the leads you generate from the web.

Having a strong web site, that is updated weekly with informative content, and SEO’d so people can find you, is one of the easiest ways to grow your business. It also requires only an upfront investment and then minimal effort each week to keep it running.

Websites for cosmetic surgeons: Advice from digital experts

Websites for cosmetic surgeons: Advice from digital experts

Many patients begin their search for a cosmetic surgeon on the web. To find an area surgeon, they’ll do a local search on Google, Bing or Yahoo, using keyword phrases like “Cosmetic surgeon in Tampa” to find you.

Here is what you should know about the typical patient who finds you from a web search:

#1 – They won’t even look at your site if it’s not on the first page of search rankings. Most of the time, the person will only evaluate cosmetic surgeons who appear on the first page of Google. Quite often they only look at the first five sites that appear in the search rankings.

If your site appears at the top of search engine ranking , it’s immediate validation for your business. It means that:

  1. People can find you easily, because
  2. Lots of people visit your site, and
  3. You are popular
  4. Since, you’re so popular you’re probably a good surgeon. It’s likely they will reach out to you for an initial consultation.

If you do a search right now  using keywords you think potential patients would use to find you and your site does not appear at the top of the list, you need to SEO your site.

SEO is one of the most important things you can do to grow your business. At CWD, 70% of the business we generate are people who find us on the web (because we have SEO’d to ensure they find us). They call us. We don’t have to go hunting for them.

#2 – If your site appears on the first page of search results there two things  you need to make sure you have in place, so you can stand out from the competition. If you do happen to appear in the top 1-5 rankings (or at least on the first page) chances are you will beat out the competition if you have:

  1. A visually appealing site
  2. A site with great content that is updated regularly

What’s important to consider, is that in most cases a nice looking site with informative content that is updated regularly will do better than an extremely fancy site with minimal content.

#3 – For a cosmetic surgeon, a highly informative content-centric site is essential. Potential clients don’t know about your field. So, it’s important that you do a good job to share your knowledge with them in an easy-to-understand manner.

A content-centric site sends these messages to a potential patient of yours:

  1. You are an expert in your field
  2. You are trustworthy
  3. You know what you are talking about
  4. Customer service and their personal experience with your business is of high importance to you

You should also include a capture box on your site. It’s a way for you to obtain the site visitor’s contact information. This way, you can reach out to them via email and build a relationship.

If you’d like a FREE site audit within 24-hours  so you can get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of your web site, CLICK HERE.

Websites for cosmetic surgeons: Advice from digital experts

SEO keywords for cosmetic surgeons

SEO keywords for cosmetic surgeons in Fort Lauderdale, FL are important to learn about. If you follow some basic rules you’ll rank higher on search engines and attract more business in your target market.

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