6 Tips for Choosing an Advertising Agency

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Marketing your company is a must if you have any hope for success. Unfortunately, marketing your company effectively can be very time-consuming and can require a significant amount of resources. It’s why many businesses choose to outsource to an advertising agency. There are many reputable agencies out there to choose from; however, there are also plenty of agencies that can do more harm than good. To make sure that the money you spend on an agency will actually translate to real results, use the following tips to hire the right advertising agency:

1. Find an Advertising Agency That Focuses on Cultureadvertising agency

There are a lot of different factors that you should consider when comparing advertising agencies. However, one of the most important ones is the cultural fit. Make sure that the agency you hire shares the same core values as your business. A good agency that shares your values will be more collaborative and innovative. You should be able to get some sense of their culture by observing their work environment as well. If people seem active and cheerful at the same time, it’s a good sign.

2. Consider The Agency’s Talent

Arguably as important as an agency’s culture is their talent. Without talent, their culture will only take you so far. You want to work with an agency that isn’t conservative. This means that they’re not always looking to play it safe. You want an agency that’s ambitious and that is constantly looking to improve its abilities. You’ll also want to make sure that they are technologically literate. Speak with their HR team to learn about the types of people they tend to look for and hire. You should also look at their turnover rate. A high turnover rate tends to be an issue. It means that they’re either not hiring the right type of talent or that their talent tends to look elsewhere because the agency is a bad fit.

3. Don’t Rule Out Agencies Based On Location

Don’t limit your search for an advertising agency to your location. Location no longer means that much. After all, you don’t need to have in-person meetings with your agency all that often. In today’s connected world, it’s easy to keep in touch using email, online chat, video conferencing, and by phone. Additionally, it can actually benefit your company to look for an agency that’s outside of your area as it could provide you with an outside perspective. Such a perspective can really help freshen up your marketing efforts. By limiting your search to your location, you’ll limit your access to quality agencies and unique perspectives.

4. Don’t Rely Solely on RFPs

RFPs (requests for proposals) can be quite helpful, but you shouldn’t base your decision solely on an RFP. Many agencies excel at RFPs but only because they are opportunistic. When you review an RFP, speak with the agency’s leadership to get a feel for how passionate they are about the work that they do. Ask them about some of their greatest successes as well as some of their failures. The way an agency talks about their past failures can be very enlightening. After all, you’ll want an agency that is willing to reflect on its failures and learn from them.

5. Don’t Make Low Prices Your Main Priority

If you’re working with a limited advertising budget to begin with, you might be tempted to go with the agency that offers the most affordable rates. However, keep in mind that like with most things, you get what you pay for. If you go with the cheapest agency, it may result in lower quality work. They may even cut corners, which is the last thing you want when it comes to implementing a successful long-term advertising strategy.

6. Look Into Their Track Record

Do a little research into an agency’s past and current clients to get an idea of how effective they are as an advertising agency. If the agency has been around for a while, take note of its long-term clients. Clients that have stuck with them for a long time are a good indication of the agency’s quality and commitment. If an agency has a large turnover when it comes to clients, it’s often a bad sign. Be sure to ask the agency for references that you can contact as well.

Interactive Speaking & Marketing Consulting Experiences

Outsourcing your marketing efforts is generally a good way to save money over the long run and to ensure that you have an experienced team that you can rely on. Unfortunately, not all advertising agencies are reliable or even reputable, for that matter. As such, make sure that you use these six tips to find an advertising agency that will work closely with you to help you achieve your specific marketing goals.

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Things To Consider When Partnering With A Marketing Agency

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Does your company need help from a marketing agency? If you’ve never worked with a marketing agency before, it can be overwhelming to decide which one to partner with. Before settling with one, it is important to scope out your options to figure out which one will be the best fit for you and your company.

It is crucial that you choose a marketing agency that shares the same goals as you and wants to do everything they can to help you reach them. You should choose a marketing agency that will have a clear understanding of your company’s goals and objectives. It is key that the marketing agency you partner with shares the same beliefs and values as your company. In order to get a clear understanding of how helpful a marketing agency can be for your company, you need to ask the right questions. Having important conversations early on will help you decide if a marketing agency is right for your business.

Enjoy the article: 6 Reasons to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency

These are a few things to consider about a marketing agency before settling with one:

Interview Your Account Managermarketing agency 2

Account managers are important because they are the go-to person the client can count on in the agency. They know everything about their account and make sure the work is being completed. Account managers keep the client’s goals and knowledge in mind. If there is no point person then the client has to educate multiple people on what they are looking for and double check work to make sure it meets their expectations and standards. It is important that you learn who will be managing your account and executing the work. You should feel confident with the experience and expertise of your account manager.

Ask What The First Steps of Work Together Will Look Like

This is a great question to ask a potential marketing agency when deciding if they are right for your company. Asking the agency what the first couple months of working together will entail will tell you what will be done to drive early results. This can give you a deeper insight as to what working with that agency will be like. It can help you better decide if you like what their plan for your company is and if you can see it working in the future. This tactic is beneficial because it can tell you what type of partner they will be. It can show you if the marketing agency has an organized plan for your company’s goals or not.

Question How The Agency Has Helped Past Clients

It is important that you figure out if the agency you’re leaning towards can help your company get the results you want. Try not to focus so much on other companies they have worked with in your industry. This will not help you figure out if the agency has helped their clients reach their goals. You need to voice your company’s struggles and ask how they have helped their clients in the past with similar issues. This will help you get an idea for how they will help your company achieve its major goals. Asking this question helps you learn the marketing agencies track record. Asking them how they responded to other clients with similar issues will give you an idea for how they will assist your company. This can also help you decide if you like their approach.

Partner With an Agency That Shares The Same Values and Beliefs

It is important that you get along on a personal level with the people you are aligning with. Your business and the marketing agency you partner with should have shared values and beliefs. Hiring a marketing agency is like hiring another employee. Companies and employees have shared values and this should carry on into the marketing agency your company hires as well.

It is important that you educate yourself on these tactics before partnering with a marketing agency. Doing your research on your account manager’s years of experience will help you get an idea for how reliable they will be. Discussing company plans for the near future and considering the agencies track record are good to know to get a feel for how the agency will help your business and if you like their approach. Finally, having shared values and beliefs is very important because we all want to get along with our business partners. Using these tactics can give you insight as to if an agency will be beneficial for you to partner with.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business
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6 Reasons to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency

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The reason to hire a digital marketing agency is simple; Internet has driven all kinds of innovation over the years. For example, it changed how companies both big and small can market their business. While anyone can leverage the Internet to market digitally; hiring a digital marketing agency is generally a much better idea than trying to go it alone. This is because there’s a big difference between digital marketing and effective digital marketing.

To get the most out of a digital marketing strategy, you will need to understand how to access and leverage data, trends, statistics, and more, not to mention how to identify, reach, and nurture your target audience in a cost-effective way. It’s the main reason to hire a digital marketing agency. In fact, the following are six more reasons why it’s in your best interests to hire a digital marketing agency:

1. Your Digital Marketing Costs

At first glance, hiring a digital marketing agency might seem like an added cost. However, doing so can actually save you money over the long run. This is because hiring a digital marketing agency means that an entire team of digital marketing experts will be working on your digital marketing strategy for an established fee.

If you were to attempt to develop, implement, and maintain your digital marketing strategy on your own; you would have to hire numerous full-time marketing experts in-house. Such employees can cost a significant amount of money. Especially, when you take into account that you have to pay more for those who have a lot of skills and experience. Not to mention all of the other associated costs with taking on more employees, such as insurance costs, payroll taxes, and the equipment that they need to do their jobs.

As such, if you’re planning on doing more than just setting up a Facebook page, then the most cost-effective route to take is to hire a digital marketing agency.

2. Focus On Your Core BusinessReason To Hire A Digital Marketing Agency 2

Attempting to maintain your digital marketing efforts without an agency isn’t just expensive, it’s time-consuming. Successful digital marketing strategies don’t just take a lot of time to develop and implement, they also need to be constantly monitored and adjusted. Digital marketing is a long-term strategy, after all. By allowing an agency to focus on your digital marketing efforts, you can focus the majority of your time and effort on growing your core business. Trying to handle everything yourself can result in an inability to meet the demands of your business, thereby potentially stunting your company’s growth.

3. An Agency Understands Effective Tactics And Strategies

Odds are that you don’t have a lot of experience when it comes to launching successful digital marketing campaigns. An experienced digital marketing agency will have implemented countless marketing strategies and digital marketing tactics over the years. They will know what works and, arguably more importantly, what doesn’t work. Essentially, you won’t have to worry about trial and error nearly as much when it comes to your digital marketing campaign when relying on a professional digital marketing agency.

Enjoy the Article: Types of Digital Marketing Strategies Your Business Should Use

4. An Agency Has All The Necessary Tools

In addition to all of the different special skill sets that are required to run a successful digital marketing agency (from web designers to content creators and more), you will also need access to countless tools, such analytics and dashboards. While there are some free tools out there, digital marketing agencies will have access to the very best tools, including those that are only available at an upfront cost or for a subscription-based fee. On top of that, digital marketing agencies make a concerted effort to stay up to date on all of the latest digital marketing advancements, which means that they’ll never rely on outdated technology to implement and maintain your marketing campaigns.

5. Access New Ideas For Your Marketing Efforts

There’s no such things as a one-size-fits-all solution to digital marketing. All the best digital marketing agencies know this, which is why they will customize your strategy to meet your needs. This also means that they will likely present new ideas for marketing your brand that can be incredibly effective. Usually, these are ideas that you would have never thought of without them.

6. Scale Your Marketing Needs As You Grow

Trying to scale your marketing needs as you grow can be a huge challenge. Even more so if you’re handling your marketing campaign in-house. You can’t just hire new employees at a moment’s notice, after all. A digital marketing agency should have the resources to be able to scale as your business grows.

These are the main reasons to hire a digital marketing agency. A good digital marketing agency can tailor your online marketing strategy to suit your specific needs in order to successfully reach your target audience and to meet your unique digital marketing goals

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

Senior Living Advertising Ideas That Avoid Stereotyping

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One of the main reasons why marketing a senior living community is so challenging is because it’s easy to fall into the trap of advertising to seniors in a stereotypical way. In fact, a recent survey of 400 seniors aged 70 or over revealed that 60 percent of respondents felt that most advertisements used stereotypes to represent seniors. Keeping that in mind, the following are a few advertising ideas to help you avoid senior living stereotypes:

Don’t Be Pushy Or Preachy

A lot of ads that target seniors tend to be on the condescending side. You’ll want to try and position yourself as an authority on the subject, but you won’t want to do so in a way that you’re telling your audience you know better than they do. This will come off as pushy or preachy, which is a tone you should avoid. Be factual and informative in an honest and respectful manner.

Focus On The Individual, Not The Demographic

One of the biggest offenses in senior stereotyping is to use actors that fit the general demographic of your audience and have them do something mundane, like smiling while they drink a glass of wine and stare out into the distance. How is your audience supposed to relate to an image like this? On the other hand, you also don’t want to deceive a senior struggling to live on their own; such as someone being helped into bed because they are too feeble to function by themselves.

Instead of trying to represent an entire demographic by the extreme ends of the spectrum, focus on the individual. What does your target audience actually want and need out of a senior living community? Highlight purposeful activities, such as actively participating in the world and continuing to pursue their passions.

Check out this article for tips on how to market senior living communities

Show Don’t Tell

Having someone speaking to the audience about the benefits of moving into your living community is a tired trope. It’s something that most seniors expect from a pamphlet. Showing is much more effective than telling. A great example of a senior living community that did this focused on showing the day-to-day lives of its residents as they dined, exercised, played pool, painted, and more — all without any dialogue whatsoever. Like they always say, an image is worth a thousand words.

Entertain Your Audience

It seems like many advertisers forget that seniors still like to be entertained and that they have a great sense of humor. You don’t need to be deadly serious when marketing towards seniors. Try to entertain them and appeal to their sense of humor — you’ll find that they’ll be much more engaged as a result.

Many senior living communities fail to market to a senior audience effectively. This is because they fall into the trap of using advertising ideas that rely on senior stereotypes. Seniors recognize these stereotypes and do not appreciate them. As a result,  you will have difficulty generating interest in your community. Use these advertising ideas to help avoid stereotyping seniors in your marketing efforts.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

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The Importance of Google Ads Quality Score

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When running a PPC (pay per click) campaign, you’ll want to make sure your ad’s content is of high quality. You’re investing in these ads, after all. The last thing you want is to pay for clicks if those clicks aren’t converting because of poor ad copy, poor landing pages, or poor use of keywords. It’s one of the reasons why you should pay attention to the Google Ads quality score. However, Google Ads quality score doesn’t just give you an idea of the quality of your ad, it can also affect the performance of your ad, which is why you’ll want to track your quality score and improve it if possible.

What is Google Ads Quality Score?

The Google Ads quality score is a rating that’s given to PPC ads based on a number of different factors. These factors include how relevant your keywords are to their ad group, how relevant your landing pages are to the ads they’re linked from, the quality of those landing pages, the relevance of your ad’s copy, your click-through-rate, and the historical performance of your AdWords account. Google doesn’t divulge how much weight each factor holds in the calculation of its quality score; however, the click-through-rate is the most important factor. This is because a high click-through-rate indicates that your ad must be relevant to users.google ads quality score

Why You Should Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score

Besides rating the quality of your PPC ads (and therefore giving you an idea of whether you need to improve your ads or not), the quality score of your ads will actually play an important part in how they perform. Higher quality scores directly correlate with lower your cost per conversion and your cost per click. This is because not only does a high-quality ad perform better in general, but Google rewards ads with high quality scores with lower costs and higher ad rankings.

Similar Article: How Your Web Page Speed Effects Your SEO and Adwords Performance

3 Ways To Improve Your Quality Score

The following are three ways that you can improve your Google Ads quality score:

  1. Do your keyword research – You not only need to make sure that the keywords you choose are relevant to your ads, but that they are competitive as well. Look for long-tail keywords in particular and make sure that you divide your keywords into organized groups that can be more successfully tied to your individual ad campaigns. In addition to looking for high-quality keywords, you should also keep a list of negative keywords to avoid.
  2. Test your ad copy – In addition to writing quality copy that’s free of errors, you should test out copy that’s more targeted to individual ad groups. The more effective your ad copy is, the more click-throughs you’ll obtain, which contributes to a higher quality score.
  3. Optimize your landing pages – Landing pages should connect directly with your ad groups, meaning that they need to be relevant to the copy of your ads. Generic landing pages can confuse visitors and hurt your conversion rate. Not only should the offer remain exactly the same as it was on the ad copy, but you should be using the same keywords as well.

PPC campaigns can be a very effective part of your online marketing strategy; however, their success depends on their quality, which is why you should pay attention to your Google Ads quality score and make every effort to improve it. Improving your Google Ads quality score not only improves the general quality of your ads, it will put you in a better position to succeed as a result of being rewarded with higher ad rankings.

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earned media vs paid media

Understanding the Difference Between Earned Media vs. Paid Media And Embracing The PESO Model

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When it comes to digital marketing, there are four main types of media. The first, owned media, is relatively obvious. Owned media refers to the media that you own, such as your website, your blog, or your social media pages. Then there’s paid media, which often comes to mind first. However, you could argue that earned media is just as important. The following is a breakdown of earned media vs paid media as well as the importance of following the PESO model, which implements all forms of media for a more balanced digital marketing strategy.

Earned Media vs Paid Media

Paid media consists of the marketing elements that you pay for. Traditionally, paid media consisted of things like TV commercials and magazine ads. However, these days, they also include PPC (per-per-click) ads, social media ads, and display ads. To get the most out of your paid media, you have to plan your marketing strategy carefully and make sure that you’re targeting the right audience. However, paid media can be quite effective at helping to increase brand exposure and web traffic. earned media vs paid media

Earned media is essentially a form of marketing that you do not pay for and do not own. Customers and brand advocates generate earned media. In a way, it’s like a digital form of “word-of-mouth.” Earned media can include having reviews written by customers as well as professional product review sites or having news stories published about your company. Any kind of publicity that you didn’t pay for is earned media. Earned media is an excellent way to increase brand recognition even though you don’t have direct control over it; however, earned media is also free.

What Is The PESO Model?

Earned media and paid media are not the only types of media you should be concerned with. Owned media, which includes marketing elements that you have direct ownership and full control over (such as your website and your business blog) as well as shared media, which is the media you earn through social media engagement (shares, likes, and comments), both play an important part in helping to grow your brand. The mistake many businesses make is to focus more on one type of media than the other.

Similar Article: Using The Right Media Mix During Each Stage Of The Buyer’s Journeys

Gini Dietrich stressed the importance of integrating all four forms of media with her PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) model. By implementing the PESO model, you integrate all four forms of media to strengthen your ability to attract leads and convert customers. For example, the use of paid media and shared media can help draw the attention of prospects. Earned media helps to establish the credibility of your brand so that those prospects trust you. Owned media, such as eBooks or whitepapers, help showcase the value of your brand.

While knowing the difference between earned media vs. paid media is important, it’s also important that you don’t value paid media over earned media or vice versa. They, along with shared media and owned media, play an important part in helping to grow your brand. Finding the right balance can take some time, but as long as you keep the PESO model in mind as you create your marketing strategy, you’ll end up having a more balanced and effective marketing campaign.

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5 Simple Facebook Advertising Strategies

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Facebook has an enormous user base that’s only continuing to grow every month. As of the first quarter of 2019, Facebook boasted 2.37 billion active monthly users — up 55 million from the previous quarter. Additionally, roughly 1.56 billion users are logging into Facebook on a daily basis. These are numbers that no marketer can ignore, which is why you should be using Facebook Ads. However, just because Facebook has a big audience doesn’t mean that you’ll reach your target audience. It’s why you need to put some time into crafting an effective Facebook advertising strategy. The following are five Facebook advertising strategies that will help you reach your target audience:

1. Target Life Events

Depending on what your business is, you can target users based on major life events. Users commonly share big life events, such as if they bought a new house, got engaged, had a new baby, moved to a new city, or got a new job. Facebook is well aware of this, which is why it offers advertisers a Life Events parameter. You can select what life event you’re targeting and the date range from that event that the event will remain relevant. For example, if you’re a moving company, you might want to target users who have just closed on a new home within a three-month range. If you’re a jeweler, you may want to target newly engaged users within a year of their engagement.

2. Target Custom Audiences

Another unique feature that you can use on Facebook is the ability to target Custom Audiences. The feature works by uploading who you want to target, such as a customer phone list, an email list, or even your Facebook followers list. You can then specifically target these audiences. Doing this can be an excellent way to increase your lifetime customer value and to boost brand loyalty. You can also choose to specifically exclude the list you upload if your goal is to target completely new leads. facebook advertising strategy

3. Use Geo-Targeting

As you can imagine, targeting all of Facebook’s 2.37 billion monthly users is a ridiculous idea. This is especially true if you’re running a local business that provides a local service. This means that targeting an audience in a different country or even a different state is going to be a waste of time. Geo-targeting allows you to target users who are located within the vicinity of your physical location or the locations that you serve.

4. Retarget Engaged Users

Retargeting users who have engaged with your brand via Facebook in some way can be effective for a number of reasons. First of all, they’re aware of your brand. Secondly, they’ve shown interest through interaction. For example, if you ran a Facebook video ad campaign, then you can retarget users that watched the video all the way through with an additional call-to-action.

Similar Article: How Much To Advertise on Instagram And Why It ‘s Worth The Cost

5. Take Advantage Of Look Alike-Audiences

Lookalike Audiences lets you mirror your Custom Audience list or Facebook following. By doing this, you’ll target a completely new audience that has a lot in common with your current leads and customers. You’ll be able to expand past your reach while still targeting users with specific profiles. 

These are five ways you can implement a Facebook advertising strategy that will allow you to effectively target your audience. Just keep in mind that these strategies work best if you’ve already done the basics. This means developing your buyer personas, understanding who your target audience actually is, and establishing the main goals of your Facebook ad campaign.

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what is an ad exchange

What is an Ad Exchange and How Does it Work?

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Before ad exchanges began popping up, the only way for marketers to purchase ad space online was directly through publishers. This process was not very cost-effective. It was also time-consuming. As new ways to purchase advertising space online have popped up, including programmatic ads and RTB (real-time bidding) ads, so have ad exchanges. Ad exchanges have made it much easier to buy ad space that’s both more effective and more efficient. But what is an ad exchange, exactly?

What is an Ad Exchange?

An ad exchange is an online marketplace for ad space that functions as an auction. Publishers (such as website owners) make their digital advertising space available. Then, advertising agencies and marketers then purchase this ad space through the ad exchange. It’s worth noting that ad exchanges are autonomous, meaning that they aren’t on the side of either the buyers or the sellers.

While ad exchanges are simple for publishers and advertisers to use, the way they actually function can be a bit complex. When a publisher lists ad space on an ad exchange, they provide details that include the page location, audience, topics, and URL. When somebody visits the publisher’s website or mobile app, data about that user is collected. That user data is transferred to the ad exchange. The ad exchange then sends a bid request to DSPs and ad networks. Each DSP inspects the bid request and the parameters of the advertiser to decide of the impression will be relevant to the advertiser. If it is, the maximum bid amount will be sent back to the ad exchange along with the location of the advertising copy to be placed in the ad space.

The ad exchange will review all the bids, eliminating bids from advertisers that don’t meet the publisher’s requirements. The impression will then go to the highest bidder. Their copy will then be displayed on the publisher’s website in front of the user that’s visiting the website. As complicated as this process may appear to be, it takes milliseconds for it to occur.

What Are Marketing Qualified Leads And Why Do They Matter?

The Benefits of Using an Ad Exchange

The use of an ad exchange provides benefits to both publishers and advertisers. The following are a few of the advantages publishers have when using an ad exchange:

  • Establish the minimum CPMs (cost per mile, which refers to the cost per thousand impressions) for their inventory units.
  • Filter and block ads that have sensitive content or that are ads for competitors.
  • Choose the ad format and style, thereby defining what types of ads can appear on their webpage. what is an ad exchange
  • Choose where the ads will be displayed on their webpages.
  • Customize combinations of fonts, colors, and corner style. They can then apply these combinations to multiple display ads at a time.

Ad exchanges don’t just benefit the publishers. They also benefit advertisers who are buying ad space in the following ways:

  • Choose targeting options, behavioral profiling, price settings, and bidding capabilities.
  • Blacklist certain audiences.
  • Blacklist certain publishers.
  • Place limits on the number of times the same ad appears to the same user.
  • Retarget across multiple ad exchanges.

Ad exchanges are incredibly effective because they provide advertisers with a lot of control over where their ads will be seen, who will see them, and how much they are paying for those impressions. They also help you save a significant amount of time finding ad space in general. As such, ad exchanges are well worth looking into.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

 

Digital Marketing Strategies For Higher Education

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As a college or university, you have a lot to offer to your students in terms of obtaining a higher education that can help them pursue their dreams of a career. However, you’re not the only school around, which means you’ll need to implement effective marketing strategies for higher education in order to attract prospective students and to convince them to enroll. The following are a few digital marketing strategies for higher education that are proven to be effective if leveraged properly:

Using PPC advertising

PPC (pay-per-click) ads are an excellent way to reach the students in your target audience and to generate high-quality leads. Prospective students will perform a significant amount of searches when trying to find higher education options, which means that PPC ads are a great way to put your school in a position to be found. They’re also very cost-efficient since you are only paying for the clicks that your ad gets.

When using PPC ads, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. For example, you need to know who your audience is and what they are searching for in order to choose the right keywords and create effective ad copy. You will also need to take great care in deciding where to place your ads to best reach your audience.

Optimizing your site for SEO

To improve your page rankings and increase exposure to potential students, you’ll need to make sure that your website is properly optimized for SEO (search engine optimization). This includes paying attention to both on-page and technical SEO, using high-quality, relevant keywords, and earning high-quality external links. All of these elements are important in bringing in more organic traffic. Building up your external links will also help you bring in a bigger audience from other relevant websites and will go a long way towards expanding brand awareness and building a positive brand reputation for your school.

Check out our article: 7 Reasons Why Digital Marketing for Manufacturers is Critical to Success

Creating high-value content

Prospective students will do a substantial amount of research before making a decision. Not only do most students have to pay for a higher education, it requires them to commit a significant amount of their time to it as well. They’ll want to make sure they make the right choice, w

hich is why you will want to provide them with plenty of content on your site that is relevant and helpful to their interests.

Not only can good content help with your SEO efforts (thereby drawing in more organic traffic), it can help establish your school as an authority, which will make your programs more attractive to potential students.

Establish a regular social media presence

A regular social media presence will put you in a position to communicate directly with prospective students, allowing you to address questions and concerns, provide valuable information, and develop relationships with students, thereby building trust.

These are just a few of the marketing strategies for higher education that can help give your school an advantage in attracting prospective students for years to come.

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

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5 Package Design Trends for 2018

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Change happens quickly, and if you are caught unawares, you could be left with packaging that is outdated and stale. Recognizing and incorporating the following package design trends into your packaging ensures that your packaging is modern and beneficial to your image.

1. Minimalism

Minimalism, the use of elegant, streamlined, and visually simple packaging, never really goes out of style. There are numerous ways to achieve a minimalistic look, including using bold typography contrasted with stark white backgrounds, splashes of color on clean backgrounds, or a basic arrangement of simple shapes. If you incorporate this year’s top colors, including pink, purple, and color of 2018 PANTONE® 18-3838 Ultra Violet, you can make your minimalistic design modern and timeless, without isolating or overwhelming the viewer.

2. Go Bold

Color has always played an integral part in developing packaging and this year is no different. Use bold colors to evoke emotional responses in potential consumers and, consequently, impact their buying decisions. So, the primary color you use in your package design has a significant psychological effect on those viewing it, and you should choose it carefully. Be bold, but choose colors that represent the personality of your brand.

3. Handwriting and Handmadepackage design

Many consumers are looking for environment-friendly and ethical goods, including homemade items. Homemade products also create an emotional connection with the consumer, often evoking warm memories and nostalgia. The handmade package feel can be achieved through careful package design that includes text that looks handwritten. However, it is essential to ensure that your writing is clear and readable. You do not want to confuse or inadvertently mislead consumers.

4. Whimsy

Most consumers love goods that evoke positive childhood memories, or that engage their inner child. Using fun visuals, bright colors, and fantastic illustrations, including hand-drawn logos, is a great way to engage such consumers. Whimsy makes people smile and feel happier, so when your product packaging incorporates whimsy, you are creating this joyful connection between your customer and your product.

5. Eco-friendly

Going green is the best way to gain new customers and keep returning ones. It is not enough for your product to have eco-friendly credentials though; your packaging has to as well. Using packaging materials that are eco-friendly, biodegradable, and locally sourced is a great place to start. However, your design must also shout eco-friendly. Using earth-based colors in your packaging is one step, as are the inks you use in printing and the amount of packaging you use.

Incorporating these package design trends into your packaging will benefit your business in 2018. However, it is also important to employ them in a way that maintains your individuality and ensures that you are instantly recognizable to your audience, so using the same color scheme as you use in the rest of your marketing can be a great start.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business