You can only get so far by doing it all yourself.

Whether you’re remodeling your home or repairing your car, DIY’ing it isn’t always the best approach. Digital marketing is no exception: You can run an in-house operation for a while, but not forever.

Your business’s future and success are dependent on your ability to reach out to potential customers, attract and engage them, and convert them into paying customers. Without digital marketing, this is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

So, what are some signs it’s time to chat with a digital agency?

If your digital marketing efforts aren’t delivering the results you’d hoped for, it may be time to hire an agency. Other signs that you should hire a digital marketing agency include:

It’s Broken

When you first started your business, you had to do everything yourself or with a small team. It worked for a while: you came up with great ideas, generated leads, and increased your sales. Then something strange happened: website traffic slowed, leads dried up… Whatever got you this far has broken down.

At this point, you need new ideas and new people to help you come up with and carry out a plan that will get you the results you want. This is another sign to consider hiring a digital marketing agency to help you take your business to the next level.

You’re Overcommitted

With everything on your plate, you probably don’t have enough time to create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy.

Let’s be honest.  Digital marketing is a time-consuming endeavor that includes SEO, content marketing, website updates, social media management, email marketing, and analytics. Unless you have the extra time and resources to learn how to become a bonified marketing expert, then hiring an agency while you focus on your core business is probably a more productive use of your time.

You’re Out of Your League

You know your business and industry inside and out, better than anyone right?  But you’re no digital marketing guru. You are not equipped with the skills, or experience necessary to develop and roll out a digital marketing strategy that is likely to succeed. And that’s okay.  You’re better off allocating your time & resources to the business you’ve created.   Website development, graphic design, content creation, SEO, analytics, social media, technology, and a variety of other tools are all play a role in digital marketing and all tied together.

You Could Not Care Less

You recognize the value of digital marketing for your company, but you don’t understand how it works or how it’s done, or you simply don’t care.  You’re no dummy, you know it works and you want results.  But you can’t or don’t want to be involved in the process of getting them.  So if digital marketing isnt’ your jam an you’d rather spend your time on other parts of your business,  then it may be time to delegate it to an agency with a passion for digital marketing.

Return on Investment Is Underwhelming

Digital marketing can be a roller coaster, especially nowadays.  Your marketing needs to evolve as the web evolves.  So setting up multiple traffic streams to keep a steady flow of eager buyers incoming to your business is the way to go but unfortunately the rock solid strategies you’ve used just a couple years, or even months ago aren’t driving customers to your business like they used to.  And now your bag of tricks isn’t generating the ROI it once was, and you’re out of ideas.

This is yet another sign it’s time consult with an agency.  A good digital marketing agency will track your ROI so you can cut wasteful spending and optimize your campaigns while suggesting fresh new ideas that are working for local businesses right now.

You’re on a Tight Budget

You can’t grow your business without marketing.  Let’s just make that clear.

This normally means 1 of 2 things.  A small budget could mean that the business doesn’t understand how important digital marketing is or that it doesn’t make enough money to spend on digital marketing.

Working with a marketing agency does not have to be expensive. In fact, it can be much more expensive building/maintaining an in-house marketing department. A dedicated space, skilled staff, ongoing training, salaries and benefits, specialized technology, and other costly components are all required for an in-house operation.

This is where a reputable digital marketing agency shines because they’ll already have the team in place, tools, and expertise ready to go from day one and you don’t have to worry about training, paying salaries or providing benefits.

You Need More Targeted Traffic

A slow flow of new leads and customers indicates a less than optimal digital marketing strategy. Maybe you’re using the incorrect channel or channel combination. Perhaps your website is out of date, your content isn’t engaging visitors, or your social media activity is insufficient. You might be targeting the wrong people

These are just some of the many challenges that a digital marketing agency takes on in order to help you reach your target demographic and bring in more business.

The Competition Is Winning

When your competitors’ websites and blog posts rank higher than yours in Google search results and you can’t avoid their social media activity, you know they’re beating you. Clearly, they’re spending a lot of money on digital marketing to expand their business and capture customers and sales that could be yours.

Consider it a wake-up call. You can do it if they can. But chances are you won’t be able to do it alone. To get there, you’ll need the right combination of content creation, citation and link building as well as social media, and analytics support. This is where an agency comes in handy.

Your Website Requires an Overhaul

Your website is the public face of your company. Customers visit it to learn more about your products and services and to make purchasing decisions. A well-designed, user-friendly website improves their interaction with your brand and speeds up the conversion process. An out-of-date, broken, or confusing website turns them off and undermines your brand’s credibility.

An outdated appearance, low Google rankings, dwindling traffic, incorrect information, infrequent content publication, and technical difficulties are all serious issues that should be addressed right away.

You Can’t Create Enough Content

Do I I really need to say it?  Okay, fine…  Content IS King.  Now more than ever. Content and engagement is how Google measures success. If you go two to three weeks without creating and publishing new content, you need additional help. A lack of fresh content harms your website’s Google ranking and significantly reduces user engagement. When there’s nothing interesting to follow, followers leave and don’t come back.

You should be adding new content to your website on a weekly and daily basis for social media. This content should be interesting, relevant, and useful to your intended audience. If you find yourself falling behind, it’s time to hire a digital marketing agency.

You Aren’t Measuring Results

One of the major advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing is analytics. You can track, measure, and analyze the performance of your marketing campaigns using digital marketing to determine what works and what doesn’t. This knowledge enables you to tailor your efforts in order to maximize your results and budget.

Is your digital marketing strategy producing results? Are your efforts bearing fruit? You’re wasting time and money if you don’t know, and you need an agency.

Wrapping up

In today’s online world, establishing a solid digital marketing strategy and understanding how to apply it is pretty much essential for your success of your campaign. You may be a determined do-it-yourselfer, but unless you are well versed in all forms of digital marketing, you will require the expertise of an agency sooner or later. In the long run, acting sooner will save you more time and money.

When it comes to the performance of your website, page speed is vital.

Your web pages must load quickly and seamlessly in order to lower your bounce rate and boost visitor engagement.

In this article, we’ll explain why it’s important, and show you how to measure it.

According to Google research, every second counts when it comes to page loading speed. Increasing loading times from one to three seconds increases the likelihood of a bounce (the visitor leaving immediately) by 32%.

A shocking 90% of visitors will leave a site if it takes longer than five seconds to load.

The speed of a website has a significant impact on user experience, SEO, and conversion rates. Improving website performance is critical for attracting visitors and keeping them engaged. Here are some steps that you can take with your developer to make your website load faster:

Run a Website Performance Test

Website speed tests determine how well a website performs. Testing a website on a regular basis can help developers identify some or all of the areas that are slowing down website performance, as well as areas for improvement.

There are numerous high-quality site speed tests for measuring performance, many of which are free, such as Pingdom.com.

Google also provides PageSpeed” Insights for more in-depth performance testing while Google Chrome “DevTools” can also assist developers in evaluating the performance of their website.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDNs increase website speed by caching content in multiple locations around the world. CDN caching servers are usually closer to end users than the host, or origin server. Requests for content are routed to a CDN server rather than the hosting server, which may be thousands of miles away and spread across multiple autonomous networks from the user. Using a CDN can significantly reduce page load times.

Image Optimization

Images account for a large portion of Internet traffic, and they frequently take the longest to load on a website because image files are larger in size than HTML and CSS files. Image optimization, fortunately, can reduce image load time. Image optimization typically entails lowering the resolution, compressing the files, and shrinking their dimensions, and many image optimizers and image compressors are freely available online.

Lower the Number of HTTP Requests

Most webpages will necessitate multiple HTTP requests from browsers for various assets on the page, such as images, scripts, and CSS files. Indeed, many webpages will necessitate dozens of these requests. Each request necessitates a round trip to and from the server hosting the resource, which can increase the overall load time of a webpage. Furthermore, because the resources are loaded from multiple providers, a problem with one of the hosts may impact the webpage’s ability to load quickly, or at all.

Because of these potential issues, the total number of assets that must be loaded by each page should be kept to a minimum. A speed test should also help identify which HTTP requests are taking the longest. For example, if images are slowing down a page’s load time, developers can look for a faster image hosting solution (such as a CDN).

Cache Website Pages

Caching is one of the most effective methods for speeding up your website. Caching saves copies of your website’s files, reducing the amount of work required by the server to generate and serve a web page to a visitor’s browser.

By requiring the server to use fewer resources to load a page, caching your web pages can help reduce Time to First Byte (TTFB).

There are several methods for caching your web pages. This can be done at the server level, which means your host will handle it for you.

Another option is to use a caching plugin, such as W3 Total Cache, a free WordPress plugin that makes caching web pages simple. After you’ve installed and activated it, go to General Settings > Page Cache and check the Enable box.

Reduce the Use of External Scripts.

Any scripted webpage elements loaded from elsewhere, such as external commenting systems, CTA buttons, or lead-generation popups, must be loaded each time a page is loaded. Depending on the size of the script, this can cause a webpage to slow down or not load all at once (this is known as ‘content jumping’ or ‘layout shifting,’ and it can be especially aggravating for mobile users).

Avoid Using Redirects

A redirect occurs when visitors to one website are forwarded to another. Redirects increase page load time by a few fractions of a second, or even whole seconds in some cases. Every second counts when developing a website that is optimized for performance. Redirects are sometimes unavoidable, but they should be avoided if possible.

Remember that every second your website takes to load increases the likelihood that your visitors will leave. If your website is running slow, how long can you keep running your business while losing leads?  Is it time to speed things up?

For decades, email has been the preferred method for sending and receiving mass messages and reaching audiences. Text (or SMS) marketing, on the other hand, is a quick, cost-effective way to share promotions and updates with customers. So, which reigns supreme?

SMS or email marketing?

In order to figure out which strategy is right for your business you need to consider factors like: cost, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, level of engagement, open rate, and ROI – just to name a few.

In this article, we will breakdown the differences between SMS marketing and email marketing. We’ll explain each strategy and demonstrate how they work, their benefits and drawbacks, when to use them, and whether you should hire the services of a digital agency for help

So What Exactly Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is mass-sending emails to people (leads or customers) on your e-mail list. The people on your list have chosen to be there. You send emails to inform current and prospective customers about new products, services, discounts, and special offers. Consider it a direct method of communicating with your customers in which you have their permission to send them promotional information. Your email list should be one of your most valuable business assets.

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Email Marketing

Every day, approximately 125 billion emails are sent. Email marketing is an important part of any business, and it works best for delivering more detailed information. It also has a much higher ROI than many other marketing channels and is quite versatile. In fact, an email campaign can be used for product updates, subscriptions, and promotions.

Here’s Why You Should Use Email Marketing:

It is reasonably priced – With a $40 profit for for every $1 spent on email marketing it’s still the best ROI in the game for over 2 decades.

Emails have the ability to be personalized to the recipient –Any reputable email marketing expert will tell you that this feature enables you to connect with your audience, thereby increasing the email marketing conversion rate.

The versatility of email is unlike any other marketing tool –You can use emails to provide detailed product information, make brief announcements, send reminders, welcome new customers, announce special offers, follow up with leads, or simply say hello to your target audience.

It plays on user habits and intent – 44% of consumers check their emails at least once per day. People open emails with specific intentions, such as looking for updates, product information, customer service, and so on. This is why email marketing is so important.

Emails are an excellent way to increase traffic to your website – You can increase the number of website site visitors looking for your products or services by using targeted email marketing services. Using targeted traffic increases the ROI of email marketing.

The Cons of Email Marketing

A crowded inbox makes it difficult to capture the attention of your consumer – Every day, we all receive approximately 121 emails. When consumers sort through those emails on a daily basis, it’s easy to put everything in the spam folder. In many cases your emails will end up in the same folder as spam.

Emails can be prevented from inboxing – Email servers now have sophisticated filters. If your email appears to be spammy, it may be blocked from reaching your recipient’s inbox. Any reputable digital agency can assist you in crafting emails that are more likely to reach your target audience’s inbox.

People can easily delete or unsubscribe from emails – People may delete your emails or unsubscribe from your list for any reason like if they see messed up graphics, poorly written headlines, unreadable text, or blocked images or content that isn’t relatable to them

What Exactly Is SMS Marketing?

SMS marketing is the use of text messages to communicate with customers. SMS, like email marketing, is used to inform your audience about promotions, campaigns, updates, news, and more.

Before sending any promotional information, both SMS and email marketing ask for your audience’s permission. The CAN-SPAM Act and the Consumer Protection Act are the primary laws that protect consumers from unsolicited SMS (TCPA). These rules and guidelines are followed by all good SMS marketing examples.

SMS and email marketing are both owned channels. This means you can choose who receives your emails or text messages.  It also means you have control over the type of user experience your customers will have.

You can send the SMS marketing examples listed below:

1. Promotional SMS: These are SMS messages that are intended to raise brand awareness, promote products or services, and boost sales.
2. Transactional SMS: These are text messages that contain information that your customers require, such as delivery updates, product specifications, and order information.

SMS Marketing’s Benefits and Drawbacks

When comparing SMS marketing to email marketing, SMS has the advantage of capturing the recipient’s attention right away. When you receive a text message, your phone alerts you, capturing your full and undivided attention right then and there. This is why the open rate for SMS marketing is higher than the open rate for email marketing.

This sense of urgency created by the alert is both a benefit and a disadvantage for SMS marketing. On the one hand, it may compel your customers to act immediately in response to your promotion. However, if sent at the wrong time, these texts can turn off users, who will either ignore or delete them.

Let’s go over the specific benefits and drawbacks of SMS marketing.

Pros of SMS Marketing:

Your customers do not require internet – It’s worth noting that 15% of Americans (52 million people) today have little or no internet access. This is a massive market that is beyond the scope of any email campaign.

It has a better response rate -On average, text messages are read in three minutes. That’s a response rate of up to 209 percent when compared to social media, email, or even phone calls.

It has a high level of engagement – SMS, like email marketing, is a marketing channel with higher levels of engagement than other lead generation strategies. higher engagement levels suggests a higher SMS open rate.

Some of the Drawbacks of SMS Marketing:

It has a limited amount of content space – You have only 160 characters to work with. D elivering powerful messages that short while still packing a punch requires a pretty big vocabulary.

It’s more expensive -The cost of running an SMS campaign is higher than the cost of running an email campaign.

It may erode customer trust – Customers can easily lose trust with businesses that send them unwanted text messages or SMS that are poorly structured. Customers may become irritated if you send text messages at inconvenient or inappropriate times and It may also cause them to opt out.

What Is the Difference Between SMS and Email Marketing?

Which is better: SMS marketing or email marketing? Think about the following:

Insert the table here from the bottom of the article Chris.

One of the first things marketers notice is that the ROI of email marketing is higher than that of SMS marketing. This suggests that the conversion rate for email marketing is also higher.

These are the figures that email marketing companies will provide you with. The lower email marketing open rate, on the other hand, proves the case for SMS marketing. Text messages also have a significantly higher CTR and response rate.

The Answer: Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing is the use of multiple marketing channels to increase your bottom line. Your business has unique needs, so balancing SMS and email marketing is recommended for better results. You have a better chance of capturing your audience’s attention if you develop a marketing strategy that uses both in tandem.

When should SMS marketing be used?  It should be used to respond to customer questions, solicit feedback, promote one of your products, and collect signups for your programs. Keeping track of its usage allows you to stay within your marketing budget.

Email marketing, on the other hand, is better suited to promoting multiple products due to its lower cost. It can be used for company updates, newsletters, and a variety of marketing emails.

Working With a Seasoned Digital Marketing Agency

Finding the right balance between SMS and email marketing can be difficult, especially if you haven’t had much success with either.  If you are looking to improve your SMS and email marketing results, connect with us today. We can help you create a customized omnichannel plan based on your budget and goals.  Connect with us to learn more!

If you’ve watched any tv news broadcast lately, it’s no secret that the economic future is clouded by uncertainties, with the COVID-19 epidemic still persisting, the ongoing crisis in Ukraine putting additional pressure on soaring interest rates, and Chinese lockdowns potentially affecting supply lines.

Economists predict that the United States will enter a recession by late next year or early 2024 as inflation ripples through the global economy. With a recession on the horizon, businesses and industry leaders are in uncharted territory.

Is digital marketing a good approach during an economic downturn?

To put it simply, Yes!

People will continue to look for products and services online even if overall demand has reduced, therefore your digital marketing efforts should not be shut down during a recession.

In fact, this is likely the most useful marketing expenditure you can make during an economic slump since it allows you to reach people who are actively looking for what you have to offer or who most closely match your target audience.

Experts agree that a strong internet marketing strategy is the smartest long-term investment you can make to safeguard your company during a downturn in the economy. Recession-proof business marketing methods are more important today than ever.

It’s Time to Prepare Your Business for a Recession

If there is one thing that separates recession-proof businesses from the competition, it’s the fact that they take action sooner, and start business planning for a recession before their competitors do.

Have you started making plans for a recession in your business? Follow these digital marketing tips to better prepare your business for a recession and safeguard your brand:

Improve Your Online Presence

Building and maintaining a strong online presence regardless of the economy is one of the foundations of recession-proof companies. Maintaining a strong digital presence enables you to capture a larger portion of the market if and when a recession occurs.

To stay top of mind with your target audience, invest in market research, create a mobile-friendly website, hire a expert to help you with your search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing.

With a recession on the horizon, establishing a stronger digital presence is even more important in staying on potential clients’ radars online.

Do not reduce your marketing budget

During a recession, business owners must decide whether to reduce their marketing budget, suspend marketing efforts, or double down on their digital marketing campaigns.

It may seem sensible to some to suspend marketing during a recession. Spending a lot of money on digital marketing may seem counterproductive when revenues are down. Consider what took place in 2020. Spending on digital marketing campaigns fell about the same time that 255 million full-time jobs were lost globally. Due to lower ad earnings during the COVID-19 epidemic, even Google had to cut its marketing budget by half.

So, why should you keep working on your digital marketing strategy and investing in digital marketing services?

Businesses that continue to market throughout a recession are more likely to survive, according to studies. During an economic downturn, many businesses reduce their advertising budget. This is a opportunity to show that your business is stable even when things are hard. So continue your digital marketing campaign efforts or, at the absolute least, dial them back slightly, but never fully suspend them.

To keep business flowing, have a digital marketing strategy in place. If you decide to discontinue your marketing efforts just know that it will be that much easier for your competitors to take a bigger slice of your customer pie.

It’s Time to Optimize Your Website… Now!

Check out your website. Is it generating leads for your company 24 hours a day, or is there room for improvement? If you’re not sure which parts of your website should be improved or updated, consult with a reputable digital agency – it’s what they do!

Agencies normally will employ In-house conversion rate optimization (CRO) specialists who perform in-depth website audits to evaluate your website’s interactions and discover areas you need to optimize to meet your goals.

Conversion rate optimization helps you make the most of your traffic by examining the data from your website to improve the consumer experience.

You will learn what pages are visited the most, where visitors spend the most time, which pages receive the least engagement, cart abandonment, and overall customer behavior.

Gather this info to create a data-driven strategy. That way, you’ll know that any changes you make to your website are more likely to affect your bottom line.

Maintain Your Social Media Efforts

During an economic downturn, many people prefer to stay at home in order to spend less and save more. This also implies that potential customers spend more time on their mobile devices. This is an ideal time to use social media marketing to attract new consumers and nurture leads via your sales funnel.

Continuing your social media marketing during this time also ensures that your audience is aware that your business is still present and active online. Whether you reduce the number of posts sent per week or your advertising budget, a little can still go a long way to attracting new/existing customers.

Create Compelling Video Content

Certain web marketing approaches pay off tenfold due to their cost-effective, creative approach to audience involvement. Video marketing is one such example.

Video marketing is still one of the most engaging ways to connect with your target audience and deliver valuable information. It fosters trust and confidence in ways that text alone simply cannot.

Consider creating video content that is evergreen (always relative) and will continue to be useful content for years to come. This ensures that your dollar goes further as opposed to spending more on campaign-specific content.”

Share videos on your social media platforms. Request that customers create video testimonials for you to use on your website. Allow followers to communicate with your brand and ask questions in real time by live-streaming on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.

During a difficult time, Americans are more inclined to spend time online keeping up with friends and current events. Video marketing is a wonderful way to engage with your target audience where they spend the majority of their time and grow your customer base.

When done correctly, video marketing can be one of the most effective digital marketing ideas for maintaining revenue during a slump.

Optimize Your Marketing Budget and Choose Your Priorities Wisely

Digital marketing is not like a light switch.  You can’t just turn it on or off, it is a continuous process.

Even though the economy is struggling right now, you owe it to your team, organization, customers, and community to figure out how to source, sell, and optimize your business to get through these uncertain times.

As a result, it is crucial that you begin improving your digital presence and investing in new digital marketing methods that produce positive long-term benefits for your business.