July 2017 - Creative Agency Secrets

What do you do? Explain, clearly or lose leads

31 July, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Case Studies, Copywriting, Lead Generation, Local Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

I want to showcase this list of three businesses who want to grow their international connections. Shared by a reputable international facilitator organisation, these exemplify the utter incompetence of smart people when answering the question “What do you do?”.

I despair.

Poor descriptions of business loses leads

How to differentiate your business

We did some work this week with a consultancy who describe themselves as “Family Business Specialists“. How straightforward. I know who they advise…. I don’t yet know what they do – but that three word description allows me to filter myself in or filter myself out of using their services. Either I am or I am not a family business. Either I need or I do not need a family business advisor.

Who wants to work with an

“Extremely passionate and dedicated consultancy who loves its customers. We live to server our customers.”

Now maybe this is a clever IT joke “I server my customers, you server your customers etc”. Or more probably it’s a spelling mistake nobody spotted. Never mind that – every consultancy can claim passion, dedication and customer services. It doesn’t say what TYPE of consulting they do or for whom.

C’mon.

10 questions to answer before writing your elevator pitch

Who are you and what do you offer?
What is the company history?
Who are the key personnel?
Who are your clients?
Which are your case histories?
Who are your competitors?
What’s different about you?
Who is your target market?
What are your company objectives?
Where does your company want to be in 5 years time?

This is Step 1 in our New Business Development workshop – during which you write a one year marketing plan, and from which you will understand how all the parts of the “marketing mix” join up to deliver successful communications to your prospects.

Read more blog posts about Step 1 State your Business by clicking the image below – it will take you to that category on our blog. Teach yourself, how to describe your business successfully.

Being Proactive About Your Digital Marketing Proficiency

26 July, 2017/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

The rapid pace of innovation in the digital marketing sphere means staying up-to-date and informed on topics in the industry is an essential skill. Google offers a good starting point for research, however, access to a curated compilation of tutorials can give you a greater advantage.

We’d like to congratulate Dan Morris and Rachel Martin from Blogging Concentrated for putting together another excellent collection of resources with this year’s BC Stack, worth over $8,000 in value. 65 products come together into a single package that is offered for only US$27 (~NZ$37) during a 7-day promotion that ends tomorrow.

The stack accumulates years of expertise from 65 industry professionals that provides an all-encompassing marketing database. Check out the product list subdivided into relevant categories below to start formulating a plan to accelerate your education.

#Affiliate Marketing

How to Create an Amazon Affiliate Campaign that Converts — Robin Cockrell
Affiliate Marketing Mini Course — Kayla Aimee
Ways to Make Money With Amazon You Never Knew — Sheri Ann Richerson

#Business Strategy

Performance Coach University — Jairek Robbins
How To Be An Influencer — Neal Schaffer
How To Build A Power Presence On Social Media — Aikyna Finch
7 Reasons Your Small Business Is Not Setup To Thrive And How To Fix It — Isabelle Mercier Turcotte
Private Coaching Planner — Nicole Dean
The BC eBusiness Subscription Box (1 year) — Dan Morris & Rachel Martin
Private Coaching Planner — Nicole Dean

#Content Marketing

Small Blog, Big Income: Advanced Ninja Tricks for Profitable Blogging — Carol Tice
One WordPress Premium Lifetime Plugin — Lynette Chandler
Primp My Post: More Page views Without More Content?? — Angie Nelson
How to Successfully Organize a Blog with Multiple Topics — Lena Gott
20 Day Blogging Bootcamp — Maria Davis
Blogging for Stay At Home Moms — Aysha Iqbal
A Guide to Your Technical Blogging Frustrations — Lesley Clavijo
Web Design Crash Course for Creative Bloggers — Sarah Eggers

#Entrepreneurship

Zero to Your First $10K — Brain Lofrumento
Live Sales Funnels Masterclass — Ingrid Kellly-Owens
Membership Ignition — Chad Fullerton
How to Create Passive Income with Digital Products — Carla Lynne Hall
Monetization Tools and Tech — Jeremy Randall
11 Ways to Profit with Pre-Written Content Report — April Lemarr
Domain Flipping and Investing, From The Inside Out — Gene Pimentel

#Growth Hacking

Traffic Avalanche Strategy — Mary Jacksh
Traffic NOW Technique from PotPieGirl — Jennifer Ledbetter
The Triple Loop Autoresponder System — Neil Kristianson
ConvertKit Masterclass: Email Marketing — Monica Froese

#Leading Edge Tools

Easy Does It: Webinar Sales Funnel Training — Cindy Bidar
Media Kit Smash — Melissa Culbertson
Speaker One Sheet Design Templates — Angelique Duffield
Event Buzz: A Blueprint for Filling Your Events and Increasing Engagement — Jennifer Henczel
Google Analytics Training — Sarah Arrow
15 Day Google Analytics Challenge — Adrienne Dupree
$37 Gift Certificate for a PLR Product — Tracy Roberts & Susanne Myers

#Podcasting

Podcast Mastermind: Ask Me Anything — Vernon Ross
Podcast Editing — Natasha Rivera
Accelerate your Podcast Success — Ani Alexander
Should You Start a Podcast — Kirsten Oliphant

#PR Management

How To Become A Local Celebrity — Connie Ragen Green
Zero Bullshit PR: Discover How to Get the Attention of Media — Tammy York

#Productivity

Make Money While Working Less — Sarah Titus
Stretched Too Thin: 10 Days to Overcoming the Hustle and Thriving as a Working Mom — Jessica Turner
Momentum Intensive: Change How You Show Up — Kelly McCausey
Travel the World as a Digital Nomad — Ricky Shetty
The Athlete’s Edge: a Dramatically Different Approach to Crush Your Limits — Gina Parris
How to Outsource to a VA — Tawyna Sutherland
Photoshop Your Biz — Holly McCaig
3 Month Marketing Planner — Joanne McGowan
3 Months Pre-Written Marketing Plans — Crissy Herron

#Publishing

The Complete Kindle Publishing Course — Tom Corson-Knowles
Build Book Buzz Publicity Forms & Templates — Sandra Beckwith
30 Days to Self Publishing: Taking Control — Dan King
Compilation of eBooks — Crystal Stine

#Social Media

Ultimate Facebook Profits Masterclass — Matt Astifan
Viral Content Busy Bee Account and Reputation Management Course — Ann Smarty
Hashtag Membership Directory — Helene Sula
LinkedIn Profile Makeover Course — Ted Prodromou
The Unofficial Book on HootSuite — Mike Allton
Periscope for Entrepreneurs — Joan Mullaly

#Videography

Make Video Magic: How to Edit Videos — Albert Bonet
YouTube Success: Pitch Close Upsell Repeat — David Anderson
Making Videos and Life Easier with Camtasia — Michelle Schoen
Best Practices for Successful Video Podcasting — Scott Paton
Mastering Mobile Video — Mike Stewart
Get Your Logo / Image Animated — Simon Fawkes

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How to Get Subscribers to My Email Newsletter?

26 July, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B, Copywriting, Email, Marketing ideas /by Rebecca Caroe

I just started a curated newsletter about personal finance for millennials. Each issue includes 10 curated articles from various sources about investing, budgeting, paying off loans, and etc. I do not have any subscribers yet.

Well done – getting started.

Focus on Your Marketing Assets

Let’s help you work out the key answers you need: Start with answering these questions.

Do you have a website?
On your website how do you invite subscription?
Have you got social profiles?
On your social profiles, how do you invite subscriptions?

So you’ve guessed, you need to get people to visit a place on the web which you own (website / social profiles) and then invite them to join your newsletter. Consider what ‘offer’ you can make which is attractive to them in addition to getting the articles. Sumo.com has a good WordPress plugin for subscriptions. Also check out Push Notifications as many sites prefer this as subscribers won’t share their email address. I wrote this article about Notifications

Push Notifications: Is this the death of email newsletters?

Things for you to GrowthHack test

Once you have started the newsletter and finding subscribers, you need to work on continuously improving your offer and the means for people to join it. Growth hacking is the process of improvement and measurement.

Is 10 articles too few / too may / just right?
What offer can you make to subscribers?
How are you monetising your newsletter?
Which brands can you collaborate with to grow your list with theirs in a joint venture arrangement?
What are your key metrics and ideal customer profile?

Now grow your profile

Get known by answering questions in public which relate to your issue (Financial services) and your audience (millennials). By showing off your knowledge and linking back to your website or social profile, you can encourage people to remember your brand and respond – starting discussions, which further allow you to show off your expertise.

Good places to start are Reddit and Quora search for questions on your topics of interest e.g. student loans. Also find niche financial services websites and discussion forums
And also use Google Alerts to search and email you links to places where your key words are being added to the internet
Bookmark websites where these show up regularly. Approach them and ask if you can write a guest article with a link-back to your website

Good luck and keep up the good work.

This answer was originally posted on Clarity.fm

Become Social Media Savvy with the Social Media Conference 2017

20 July, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Marketing, Public Speaking, Social Media /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

This September, the Social Media Conference is happening again! We are big fans of the content, even more so this year because our very own Rebecca Caroe is a speaker!

Are you looking to use Social Media to benefit your business but just don’t know how?

Social Media isn’t just for kids these days. In fact, it’s one of the biggest platforms for a business to market in today’s environment. Whether it be Business to Consumer or Business to Business, the Social Media Conference 2017 provides insights on how to utilise these skills to your business benefit.

Expand your knowledge in this field through New Zealand’s biggest Social Media conference hosted by The Online Business Academy for its fourth year.

Rebecca Caroe (CEO of Creative Agency Secrets)

Marketing experts from all over the world come together to talk about their experiences with Social Media, how it helped them in their business ventures and how it can help you market to a larger audience through Social Media.

Listen

Wanita Z (Founder of the Online Business Academy)
John Kapos “Chocolate Johnny” (Chocolatier to Marketing Mogul)
Andrew Baird (Business Coach)
Our very own Rebecca Caroe on “The Art of Pre-suasion: Content, Keywords and Social.”

Discover

Omni channel Experience
Social Selling through Social Media
How to run Live Events

Learn

Be Seen, Heard and Found Online
Build and networking your brand through Social Media Outlets
Win your customers through Social Media
Deal with the difficult customers online

Master

Twitter
Facebook
Snapchat
Instagram
LinkedIn
Pinterest
YouTube
And much more

Seize the opportunity to network with business owners from all over the country and develop connections for your business. Gain information that can assist with expanding your business through Social Media platforms and understand how Social Media aids with keeping up to date with the evolving business world. If you’re serious about expanding your business, you wouldn’t want to miss Social Media Conference 2017.

SkyCity Auckland
September 15th and 16th 2017
8:00am – 5:00 pm

Use the code “REBECCA” at the checkout to get a $250 discount!

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Can you tell when you’ve found the right business in search?

18 July, 2017/0 Comments/in SEO /by Rebecca Caroe

I was searching for a music streaming service for classical music. But I got the name wrong.

I knew I had not found the right business in my search results when I clicked through to the best result, and found this website design (top image). Realising my mistake, I quickly revised my search (by spelling the business name correctly) and was directed to the second page – where I knew I’d arrived at the site I wanted.

You can see how I worked out my error, through the image design, layout and styling. It’s dated and not mobile responsive. Styled as 2000s versus 2017.

Now imagine if that actually WAS the correct result and it was the business I wanted. What first impression is your website giving to first time visitors?

NZ Entrepreneur Magazine features our article

6 July, 2017/0 Comments/in Local Marketing, Marketing ideas /by Rebecca Caroe

We are stoked that this month’s NZ Entrepreneur Magazine has published an article by Rebecca. Called

Marketing Strategies to Grow and Scale a local business, it sets out 12 top tactics for local marketing.

Subscribe to NZ Entrepreneur Magazine to get it monthly delivered to your inbox.

Ranking Factors 2017 report from SEMRush

What’s new in SEO? 5 actions to do today

5 July, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Data, Digital media, Marketing, Marketing ideas, SEO /by Rebecca Caroe

Last week I got the latest research on SEO from trusted brand SEM Rush. You can download and read their report Ranking Factors 2017 in SEO.

Ranking Factors 2017 report from SEMRush

Creative Agency Secrets has read the whole report and below are 5 SEO tasks you can initiate immediately for your own website or ecommerce store.

The report has a number of chapters each of which is followed by “What this means to you as a marketer” Read these pages for the SEMRush interpretation of their research findings.

5 SEO actions for 2017

Check you have a secure (https) website. Get a SSL Certificate installed if your url begins http://. See Secure websites below
Find websites which can link back to you. Clients, Suppliers, News / Magazines, Directories. See Referring Domains below
Get ideas for your SEO and your content creation from Answer the Public research tool
Use more keywords on your “cornerstone” content pages. See Keywords below.
Plan the visitor pathway through your site especially with a view to reducing bounce rate.

The Detailed insights

Note these are paraphrased from the SEMRush report including some verbatim quotes. All the ACTION FOR YOU tasks are recommendations by us for your website or ecommerce store. The page numbers are the actual page number in the report NOT the number top RHS.

If you want help, Creative Agency Secrets offers 2 services – we can do it for you; we can teach you how to do it yourself.

Secure websites – page 6. The higher the page position in search, the higher the keyword search volume most sites are secure https domains. We interpret this that websites with SSL are trusted and are gaining over plain www and http sites.
Referring domains – page 10. The pages that rank higher have more backlinks from unique domains. Websites that appear on SERPs for high-volume keywords have significantly more backlinks than ones that appear for low-volume keywords — almost 10 times more. ACTION FOR YOU the competition for high-volume keywords is vicious, and those websites are invincible. But for low-volume keywords the competition is not so tough, so some link building could bring tremendous results.
Content length – page 18. What we saw first was that there is generally more content on the pages that rank higher for all search volume intervals. There is more content on the pages with long-tail keywords than on those with short-head keywords. ACTION FOR YOU pick your “cornerstone” content pages and work them HARD for SEO goodness. Content length is important for your page’s success as long as it is valuable, well-written, and optimised, especially if you target high volume keywords.
Keywords – page 23. In the high volume keyword group. the majority of the pages add a keyword to their title, meta and body copy but the occurrence of the keyword in the meta description does not influence the page rankings. Pages that rank for long-tail keywords repeat those keywords less often than pages that rank for short-head keywords. The pages on the first positions (for both longtails and short-heads) have noticeably more keywords than all other pages. ACTION FOR YOU If you plan to rank by long tail keywords, having an exact-match keyword in your on-page SEO elements is not crucial. In fact, it is more important to diversify the semantic core of your text and make it relevant to the target keyword rather than copying it. The presence of a video didn’t show a significant influence on page rankings, so we came to the conclusion that video itself is not a silver bullet. However, in certain niches clients expect video content, so it makes sense to provide it. Consider your audience’s demands, and if they include visual support, use video.
Volume of visitors – page 33. Not a strong correlation to page rank here especially if your search phrases are low(er) volume searches. For the low-volume keyword group, the trend is flat, indicating that a page’s position does not strongly correlate with its number of total monthly visits. For high-volume popular keywords, the number of page visits gets noticeably smaller for sites that rank below the 12th position. ACTION FOR YOU this means organic search is not the only thing you should be concentrating on. Drive a strong traffic from direct and social media linked visits by pushing brand awareness on these platforms and also through newsletters.
Bounce Rate – page 37. The higher a page’s position is, the lower its bounce rate. The user navigates through three to three-and-a-half pages per website, per visit. As your site moves towards the top of the SERP, there are more pages per session for every domain. ACTION FOR YOU firstly ensure you have strong internal page linking. Think about what you want the visitor to do next on every page. Connect with Cornerstone content discussed above. Also analyse your rivals (How to compare my site to a competitor’s) Inside Google Analytics, check your queries performance and lastly, find low ranking pages for Bounce and improve them to reduce bounce rate and page rank.

Marketing offer, SEMRush, creative agency secrets,

SEMRush custom offer at the end of the report

And a cunning end-point which is a marketing “trick” I’ve used a lot for clients – on the very, very last page is an offer. A really good one. SEMRush will do a niche study for your industry if you write to ask. We did (for a client) and they said they’d been overwhelmed and would put it on the list…. but still. This is a fabulous reward for the people who do read all the way to the end. #TopTip

Ready to rock with some improvements on your business SEO? Let’s get started together!

How to hire any expert e.g. a website developer

2 July, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Golden Question, Pitching /by Rebecca Caroe

It’s really easy to find a specialist supplier. It’s really difficult to find out if they are any good at that specialism. Especially when it is in an area that you know nothing about.

What is an Expert? Image Credit: Workcabincommunications.ca

Giving a keynote speech to an industry group recently I was stunned to find how many felt that they did not have the confidence to hire a website designer. This motivated me to write this short guide.

How to hire an expert (when you don’t know)

Are you a business owner who feels that they got mis-sold or ripped off by a website design project?

Did you pay a lot of money and find that the website you got did not deliver what was promised?

This is my tried and tested technique that will help you to find a supplier who is both an expert and will work well with your project situation.

Start with the outcome you want. Can you describe in plain English what you want to happen by the end of the project? Use this to explain what you want to buy. So you could say I need a website that will showcase my products to customers living in Australian cities who buy mens fashion. That is much clearer than “I want a website that will put me on page one of Google”. [By the way, that’s impossible to promise – so don’t trust anyone who says they can do this for you.] When we work with clients seeking websites, read the descriptions we write about their projects.
Ask good questions. By gaining detail from questions, you can discover the depth of expertise in each business you talk to. Let’s say you have a written quote from a web developer explaining how they’d achieve your outcome. You can ask them questions like “What’s the best way to achieve my outcome?” and “How will you go about doing that?”. So if they say that on-page SEO is the best way to achieve search results for customers living in Australian cities who buy mens fashion, ask them to show you HOW they’ll do it. Step. By. Step. Yes, I’d ask them to explain in this level of detail. If they can’t do it, or do not appear consistent, or are unwilling that’s a big red flag that they may not have a robust process methodology.
Know the language they use and understand it. Write down the words they use in written submissions and in conversation. Go away and look them up. What is on-page SEO? How do UTM Tags work? There is no shame in research and increasing YOUR knowledge. And afterwards, you can follow up and get them to explain more about the phrase they used once you understand what it is. So that’s back to Step 2 – ask good questions.
Run tests when you are face to face. Any skilled operator should be able to show you real live work jobs that they have done or are currently working on that will be using the same techniques as your project. So when you meet your expert – get them to SHOW you what they mean. Open up Google Analytics for YOUR website live in the meeting on your laptop. Ask them for their views on your recent traffic history. Watch how they browse inside Google Analytics – do they know the sub-menus, can they navigate confidently to the answer they’re talking about, do they explain something which you hadn’t noticed? Nobody who works in marketing should be ignorant of GA. Including YOU. So if they don’t or can’t use it. Run away fast. Another test you can run is to show them a problem you have and ask how they’d fix it. Then ask them “How will I know that this problem is fixed?” so that they show you the proof that they are an expert and good at their job and can prove it as well.
Think hard before hiring a friend. Many business people like to recommend other businesses. Nothing wrong with this. But in my experience, your friend or your friend’s friend is probably not the only person who can help you. Do interview the friend, but also go and look for other supplier experts and compare them fairly. You want the best value for your business, after all, don’t you?

Now you’ve got a good core set of skills to start your expert hiring process. Be courageous and keep good records – you won’t regret it.

And if you want a website built, or some direct response copywriting, or a video made and overall effective marketing done that brings in sales – get in touch with us. We will either teach you how to do it yourself or we can do it for you. Easy!

Archive for month: July, 2017