Frequently Asked Marketing Questions

Scroll down to get answers to your most frequently asked marketing questions, including branding, content, SEO, social media and photography.

Content Marketing is a long-term strategy focused on building strong relationships with your target audiences by consistently providing them with high-quality content that is centered around their story and need.

Content marketing is an excellent way to capture the attention of your audience and yield a great return even on a small investment. It is also an excellent opportunity to promote yourself (and your business) without selling yourself and often exposes your business to new prospects and a larger audience base you may not have known was there.

Content marketing is a single tactic, while inbound marketing is a complete methodology that focuses on drawing in customers with many traffic sources. Content marketing is just a piece of the many parts that make up Inbound Marketing. Some of the other pieces include SEO, Lead Nurturing, Analytics, etc. Inbound marketing is a comprehensive approach to attracting, qualifying, nurturing, closing, and delighting customers.

This answer could warrant it’s own blog post (don’t worry, we’ve already addressed it right here). To summarize our key steps they would be as follows: 1) State Your purpose and Goals 2) Get to Know Your Audience 3) Choose Content Management Tools 4) Construct Your Content 5) Find the Right Keywords 6) Build Your Content Calendar , and finally 7) Create and Share Your First Piece of Content.

Content marketing has a number of great benefits including: increased Google search rankings, increased sales, more “automated” sales process, amplified brand awareness, amplified credibility of your business, compounding ROI, increased social media following, greater visibility to your website, and more targeted audience communication.

Brand identity is a collection of all the elements that a business creates to portray the right image to its customer. In other words, identity is made up of what your brand says, your values, how you communicate your product/service, and what you want people to feel when they interact with it.

Taglines are not for everyone. They can quickly fall flat when they aren’t well thought through or just happy words that corporations toss together. However, in some cases, they serve a greater purpose. They can be used to explain what a poorly name or unknown company does, communicate a major difference or value, or act as a motivational factor for employees as well as consumers (think of Nike’s “Just Do It”). All that being said, no company NEEDS a tagline as long as messaging and branding is well executed.

Branding is important because it makes a memorable impression on customers and allows them to know what to expect from your company. It is a way of distinguishing yourself from the competitors and clarifying what it is you offer that makes you the better choice.

Branding is one of the most critical aspects of business strategy and provides a sustainable competitive advantage by being able to differentiate its products and services from those of its competitors’. Branding is the process of quantifying the value and authenticity of an organization, product, or service. It is a clear set of characteristics, benefits, and attributes that define a particular brand.

Branding is important for a small business as it improves recognition, creates trust, supports advertising, builds financial value, inspires employees, and builds new customers.

The most important components of a strong brand include messaging that has a clear: 1)“why” 2) brand promise 3) target market 4) branding & design consistency, and 5) marketing strategy.

The frequency of blog posts depends on what’s best for your business. Smaller businesses have found success posting one to four times a month, while larger companies can push out daily and, sometimes, multiple daily posts. The key is planned consistency and not overwhelming your resources.

The types of content you’ll want to create will again depend on the type of business you have along with the types of consumers you’re encountering. Businesses in certain industries like healthcare would do best to post articles with supported medical documentation for both providers (and patients, in fact) to read, while an office supplies store might be more successful in posting back to school tips or social media posts that highlight fun projects people have created using their supplies. Knowing what’s best takes a bit of research to see what others in the industry are doing (or aren’t doing).

Ideally someone with decent writing skills and the time to research for their content. Any number of people can take on the skill of creating content. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or lacking people resources, Keyhole Marketing might be a good writing resource for you to consider.

This largely boils down to a resource allotment for how much your business can sustain. While it’s not necessary to create content all hours of the day, it is important to be consistent in your creation. If your business can handle 3 or more posts a week, great. If not, aiming for a weekly post is wise.

This will depend on what you’re creating. If you’re talking about a blog post, it’s wise to have the content be longer than 300 words (for SEO ranking purposes) but no longer than 2,000 words as Google rankings fall sharply. However, if you’re creating a whitepaper for people to submit a contact form and download off your site, it’s perfectly acceptable to have anywhere from 3-15 pages.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is defined by Moz as “the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”

Keywords are topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and/or phrases that searchers enter into search engines that help direct searches to your page, where they will hopefully find the answer to what they’re looking for.

The first and best step to start with is by figuring out the most popular way people search for your business. You can type in a phrase to search engines like “I’m looking for a hotel in Berlin”. The results that pop up might give you a decent idea of the most consistent key words available. There are also a number of online keyword explorers to see what your customers might be looking for. This research might take some time but it will get you on the right path towards then knowing which keywords you can use to optimize your website pages.

Keyword research will ensure you find what you need prior to spitting out a bunch of works you think might work. Here are some recommended steps for performing keyword research:

1. Study your niche or topic
2. Define your goals
3. List out smaller, relevant topics
4. List out seed keywords from those subtopics
5. Use Keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, Moz, Keyword Finder, Soolve, Jaaxy, and more.

SEO tools investigate the potential of Web pages for high placement on search engine ranking pages. They provide information on backlinks and keywords as well as insights into SEO competition on the Internet.

The main difference is that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is focused on optimizing a website in order to get traffic from organic search results. The goal of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is to get traffic and visibility from both organic and paid search.

According to Buffer, Social Media Marketing is “the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analyzing your results, and running social media advertisements.”

The types of channels you want to be on might vary based on your industry but we recommend the following as the most popular channels that yield the greatest return: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Social media advertising is a must if you’re looking to reach a new, targeted audience. With overall organic search down across social platforms, paid social media advertising (paired with the correct social media strategy) is an excellent way to target the right people at the right time.

This varies greatly depending on which channels you’re using. Here are the recommended numbers of times to post per channel:

• Facebook: 1 per day, no more than 2.
• Twitter: Minimum 3 times per day, no more than 30.
• Pinterest: 3 pins per day, no more than 30.
• Instagram: 1 per day, no more than 3.
• LinkedIn: 2 times per week, no more than 1 per day.

A social media strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. It guides your actions and lets you know whether you’re succeeding or failing.

There are all kinds of social media tools ranging from image design to social posting and analytics. Here is a list of some of the top sites being used by top brands:

• BuzzSumo
• Google Trends
• Buffer Publish
• Canva
• Unsplash
• Animoto
• Feedly
• Buffer Reply
• Native Analytics
• Todoist

Successful photographs help prospective clients visualize your product or service in context to them. Photography helps to clarify the message being given, support your brand identity, and capture the attention of your customer.

Stock photos are fine in some cases, but can be severely limited in their scope when it comes to capturing your product/service and, in some cases, your target audience. We would recommend having professional photos taken for your business that match your brand identity and are personal to your team.

Professional photos should start with a good camera – it doesn’t have to be a giant DSLR – but a good camera that can take clear and pointed photos. You’ll also want to rid the background of any “noise” or extra stuff that might take away from the focal point of the image. Finally, focus on the main item or person and make it clear what you are capturing. For instance, if you are trying to promote a new watch brand, the image of the person wearing it should be close and focused on the watch, not the entire outfit.

A number of elements can come together to make for a good photograph but here are the tops characteristics of a good photograph:

• Compelling Composition with the right perspective
• Perfected Timing
• Simple and/or unique Storytelling
• Good Lighting
• Attention to Detail
• Effective Image Processing

Brand photography is a suite of images that represent your business visually, and fit with your visual identity through their use of colors, tone, props, sets and more. These can include photos of you, your team, your products, your process, your space and other things that make your business unique.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with using stock photos, but it is important to know when to use them and when not to use them.

• Pros: Saves you time, versatile in how many image options you have to choose from, flexible to be edited or enhanced, responsive across many devices, and affordable as it doesn’t require you to hire a photographer.
• Cons: Licensing can hold you back from doing certain things with photos you want to use, Un-original as many companies often reuse the same image, and often cliche as they lack originality.