Profitable Connections

Helping You Grow Online

Category: Free Marketing Advice

Everything you might want to know.

  • Brand Management for Small Business

    Brand Management for Small Business

    Brand Management Explained

    We were at a discount close out store the other day, when I discovered that they had a graphics novel section. I had been told to wait by the bathroom, but the round black, red, and white little Deadpool logo on a large book kept calling me over, until I was knee deep in discounted comics feeling the tingle I get before I am about to buy something fun.

    Clutching my Deadpool minibus made me happy, even when my wife yelled at me for wondering off.

    We wondered around together through the store, which was a collection of all kinds of discounted household items. They had signs up with a cartoon character that looked like Eisenstein’s retail cousin, saying things like “The place may be a mess, but the oh the bargains.”

    We were looking at a rack of pants. Okay, she was looking at pants, and I was reading the back of my new book. It took a moment of her looking before she said, “The size on the hangers don’t match any of the pants. I have to look at each stupid label?” She managed to grab a store employee that was scurrying across the floor like a rat trying escape the light. ”Excuse me. None of these hangers match the labels,” she said. The man looked at her, his face hard to read behind his mask. “That’s what you get here,” he said before running off into a back room, quickly closing the door behind.

    We didn’t buy any pants, but the book will be digested over several days of reading.

    You may not have realized this was a story of brand management, because brands have been part of our society, since we thought society was a good idea.

    A brand is a symbol, name, or feature that represents one organization and differentiates it from another.

    Marvel weaves brands into everything they do. Deadpool’s brand includes a logo that artists use to fill spaces in their books. It is easy to see and is easily memorable. In a stack of books, it stands out. I can guess what kind of story and what the art will look like based on that logo alone.

    The retail Eisenstein store’s brand is “that’s what you get here.” It’s for people willing to sift through a dumpster to find a bargain.

    So what does brand management do for small business?

    Your brand is the public face of your company. Not managing your brand is like not brushing your hair and putting pants on before going out. It’s going to have an effect on the way the public remembers you.

    Much like a comic book character, people tend to treat brands like actual people, rather than fictional constructs. Brands are associated with emotional values, such as trustworthiness and more physical values, such as durability. Your company’s brand is the face of your company.

    Our job as Digital Marketers is to provide communication between your brand and the general public. This starts with research. Who is your brand? What values do you associate with your brand? Is your brand a Capricorn or a Libra?

    How does the public see your brand? This requires an honest look at your product or service, employees, sales process, customer service, and advertising. All of these qualities come together to form an overall perception of your brand.

    Once we know what your brand is and what you would like it to be, we can start communicating that to the public using all the tools and methods we use as digital marketers.

  • LinkedIn Group Guide

    LinkedIn Group Guide

    Linkedin Groups Grow Through Members

    Linkedin is social media for business. It’s organized in much the same way as Facebook. Here we will go over some key points of Linkedin and how group members can increase group effectiveness.

    Linkedin Group Basics

    Connections are what make Linkedin work. There are multiple ways to build connections. Here we will focus on building connections through groups.

    Your Linkedin profile is your professional face to the world. Your work history, current company, skills, endorsements, and connections are all shown here.

    A Linkedin business page is a page dedicated to a specific business. Only page admins can post but anyone can react and comment. They are great for businesses that want to connect to other businesses.

    A Linkedin group is a collection of profiles dedicated to a certain topic. Group members can post, react, and comment. They can also invite members.

    Linkedin Group Tips

    • Invite relevant people to join. Large groups are generally more effective at building connections than small ones. Each member adds to the group’s overall number of connections.
    • Like and comment on group posts. Each member that does this will add that group post and their response to their feed. This increases the overall number of possible connections that see the group post.
    • Post relevant content to the group. Adding content doesn’t just help inform the group, it also exposes the group to a wider audience and allows group members to comment and react, which will increase the audience.
    • When you tag this content to a profile, the profile plus their connections will see the post.

    Following these tips will help you get the most out of group and help you build your own connections. The quality and number of your connections are key factors in determining how effective your Linkedin experience will be. Referral groups like Referral Force Two Twelve can combine connections in a way that amplifies everyone’s reach.

  • Another Marketing scam?

    Another Marketing scam?

    Can You Spot the Marketing Scam

    A video ad popped up in my Facebook feed for Digital Marketing Services. These are great opportunities for me to learn what other companies are doing, and it was a good video. It had a young woman trying to get help with small business marketing and the frustration she had with different types of companies.

    There was the large mega digital marketing company that uses an expensive one size fits most service, and no one listens to her when she asks questions.

    They had the “Trust Me” company, where she pays for something and has no idea what she is getting in return. She is only certain that he takes her check.

    They had the single owner many hats guy. His marketing hat was a hipster outfit and a creepy stare.

    And then she met a marketing for hire site and lived happily ever after. It’s a strange little ad but entertaining.

    In the book “Clone the Ace,” the author talks about the different types of customers, and he says the overwhelming number of clients you will find will be the ones that tried a digital advertising company and were unhappy with the result.

    Most of the ads I see about Online marketing are either “The Digital Marketing System Facebook doesn’t want you to know,” or “We are better than those other guys.”

    I can see why anyone would be frustrated with ever an changing complicated world of websites, social media, and online advertising. There are experts and idiots, and there is no easy way to tell the difference.

    At Brayson we have thought about all these challenges. It’s easy to not be the large company with people walking in and out of your account, when that’s not who you are. We are a small business and you will be talking to one of the owners.

    We use tools created by the by the search engine, social media, and DNS companies to evaluate your internet presence. These are tools you can run yourself, and are the same ones developers use to test how well things are working. We create detailed monthly reports that show how our work is starting to grow leads. That’s not something the Trust Us company would want to do.

    The Many Hat company can describe most businesses. I have a pile of hats that I have to wear for my business, and you probably do too. It’s more about whether the company has the right skills for your company. Brayson has a variety of partnerships that allows us to offer you the individual care of a small business with the variety of services and the expertise of a large company.

    The questions we suggest you ask a perspective marketing company are things like “What’s your turnover rate? How quickly do you respond to technical changes in the industry? What kinds of reporting do you offer? What services will I have access to with your company?” Questions like this make it much easier to determine which type of company you are dealing with and will help you decide whether you want to spend your marketing budget on them.

  • The Case for Digital Management

    The Case for Digital Management

    Truck Wraps are nice but Digital Management is the Future

    We had a potential client that was in the construction industry and ultimately decided that digital marketing was not worth the money. He didn’t market the company anywhere else but word of mouth. This worked, and in the beginning he found work fairly regularly with loyal clientele. This small group of customers were able to provide him with steady work for a short period of time, but it became sporadic. He would find work and be so busy that he wouldn’t have time for anything else. He would finish this work and then there would be a time where he was doing nothing. When he was busy, he would complain that he did not have enough help. When he was not doing anything, he would complain that he was not getting enough work and couldn’t hire anyone. His business ran in a kind of circle where he would find the work, do the work, and find the work again. He always seemed one step behind himself in getting the steady work that wanted.

    Some people get in the way of their own success, and I was never able to convince him why we could solve this problem for him.

    If this sounds like you, let me give it another try right now. To break this cycle, you are going to have to do something different. You are going to have to use some digital tools to build internet lead generators. But it takes time, experience, and knowledge to set this up. You can only wear so many hats in a day, and the digital marketing hat is one you should hire.

    One reason is that we are working while you are working. For a small investment, you can save time and have us handle all the work for you. This means you can spend your time running your business instead of using it to create forgotten websites and social media pages.

    We will setup a social media page with an advertising campaign. This will provide your business with an internet presence and a method of bringing traffic to that page. This simple setup will help bring customers to you, while you run your business. You might even get enough steady work to hire that extra person. With a little more of an investment, we can handle all of your internet services to provide professional domain email that you control and looks professional to your clients. We can provide a state of the art website that is optimized for your customers to find it. We can ensure your business is well connected to search engines so your clients find you.

    All of this work helps in a few ways. It provides a kind of digital sign post that allows your customers to find you on their tablets, cell phones, and computers; and it provides you a low cost and active way to reach your customers. It’s a great way to grow your business and much cheaper than traditional marketing.

  • Businesses Need Reputation Management

    Businesses Need Reputation Management

    How Reputation Management Works

    Ever had to save face? Saving face means you avoid that thing we all hate, public embarrassment. Your business has a face too, and it’s likely tied to what people think of you. How much is that worth? It costs nothing to ruin it.

    Have you ever gotten upset with a company and written a bad review on their Facebook, yelp, google, or profile?

    But you run a good company and no one will ever have any complaints.

    We live in a world where everyone complains and it doesn’t take much to set them off. Competition will also write bad reviews to take away your business. Anyone can write anything and post it anywhere.

    To protect your businesses reputation you need to monitor it. You need to know when someone is saying something negative as early as possible. The longer the comment sits, the more people see it, and take it at face value. Doing regular google searches on your company, belonging to groups in your business area, and checking review sites, are all great ways to monitor your business name.

    You also need to decide on a response, and it won’t be the first one you think of. People naturally get angry when someone publicly calls them out. The angry response, even if justified, is not the right one. There are legal considerations, because whatever you put in writing becomes part of the public record and can be used in court. Think about how you would explain what you wrote in a court of law.

    If the review is fraudulent, you can appeal to get the review removed. If it is a customer service issue, you can resolve it with the possibility of getting your customer to edit the review.

    Approach the problem with an open mind. Your customer has their own perspective, whether you agree with it or not. Try to find some common ground. Resolving a problem rather than fighting will have a better outcome.

    If you ever need help managing your reputation, we are here to help.

  • Get Positive Digital Marketing Data

    Get Positive Digital Marketing Data

    Using Digital Marketing Data to grow your business

    Facebook Results

    The results you see are from a advertising campaign we did to grow our Facebook subscribers. The ad campaign worked well. It took about four hours of labor, an advertising budget of thirty dollars, and some experience to know how to make it work. There are no quick and easy ways, despite what some companies may tell you. It’s more of a process with various steps and pitfalls.

    Facebook growth is helpful to your business, because it provides an increasing channel for your business to collect sales leads and a channel for communication directly to your potential customers. It is one of many social media sites that offer low cost ways of building sales leads; and If you are looking to increase your sales, increasing sales leads are a great place to start.

    To get results like this;

    1. Create a business social media page that describes your services and links to your other social media and web sites.
    2. Post your content marketing across all your marketing channels with relevant keywords to your business. Boost this content to gain further reach.
    3. Run relevant video and graphic campaigns that catch your potential customer’s interest
    4. Create and run advertising campaigns
    5. Collect Sales Leads
    6. Profit

    Brayson Management can help you achieve these results and more. It starts with our free assessment that helps us determine where our services will have the most benefit. Our proposal will explain everything you are getting and what it will cost in plain language. From there you can accept the offer, and Brayson will start working for you to get results.

    We start with some basic questions about your business. You provide something that people benefit from. Good marketing means putting out a message of that benefit to the people that can use it the most. With the information we collect, we create social media, websites, and advertising campaigns that work together to give you quality sales leads that understand your business’ message. Your sales team will have everything they need to turn a lead into a customer.

    When you look at Facebook’s Insights results it helps to know what the results mean. This shows growth that came from our content marketing and Facebook advertising on a rolling 28 day basis. Reach refers to the number of people that have seen our posts and advertising during that period. Post engagements are the number of people that have reacted, shared, and commented on our advertising and posts. Page likes are the the total number of subscribers during that time.

    This growth didn’t come from some magical marketing trick. The secret is work, time, and money. If you don’t have the time or the experience, you can limit this list to only money by hiring someone like Brayson Management to create and run your content marketing and advertising campaigns. You can see this growth ebb and flow between marketing campaigns and content posts in the Insights results. This shows that your work and investment works to get your message out.

    We have found that this growth is so low cost that the leads it produces makes it a very profitable investment. The growth that you are seeing in the graphic came from a $30 Facebook advertising budget. If your business is not investing in digital marketing, you are missing out. Even if you have more business than you have time for, digital marketing is an investment that ensures that this growth continues. Investing when you have the money is just good business and having good marketing ensures you continue to beat out your competitors.

  • Reasonably Priced Digital Marketing Company

    Reasonably Priced Digital Marketing Company

    Pick the Right Digital Marketing Company

    The digital marketing world is confusing, expensive, and time consuming. It’s filled with costly solutions from companies that make a lot of promises in exchange for a lot of money. Our mission is to make the same services available to small businesses that the big ones get by making these services affordable and easy to understand.

    There are several things you need to look for in a company that sells digital marketing services. There are key things to look for like;

    • Effectiveness: Are they just providing the service you asked for or do they create a custom solution for your unique business.
    • Transparency: Does the company provide clear written results and guidance. Do they offer realistic goals.
    • Cost: How much of your investment is going to the marketing company and how much is going to your advertising budget. Do they offer advice you can do yourself to increase your success?
    • Scale: Can they grow cost and services as your business grows. Are they willing to start small and grow?

    Brayson Management is unique among marketing companies in how it does business. Our target audience are companies that most marketing agencies actively disqualify for being too small. Small businesses can’t make the minimum investments they require and can’t pay the high rates for their services.

    If you are a small business with under ten employees, you most likely do not have the deposit they need to even get started. So how do you cut through the noise, when your competitors have thousands to put into marketing? You contact us. Brayson Management has no minimum investment, our prices are low, and you control your advertising budget.

    Most digital marketing companies have nice offices downtown that come with things like gleaming tile floors, local art, rent, utilities, office supplies, and cleaning crews. Brayson Management doesn’t have a fancy office. We don’t need one to provide quality service; unless you like paying more to sip bad coffee from a belching Keurig. The same questions can be asked over a Zoom call, and no one has to spend money on gas.

    You want results more than the chance to sit in our office waiting room, and that is what we focus on. You get the same results that your competitors are likely paying ten times the amount for, so you can reinvest in your business and grow.

    Contact Us

    See how we can help you today.

  • The Search Engine Shows Rude Results; Why?

    The Search Engine Shows Rude Results; Why?

    How Search Engine Results Work

    Why does my search engine keep showing me plus sizes when searching for clothes It’s rude?

    I have been using Google’s new experimental topic picker to get topics to write about. Most of the results have been silly but this one made me giggle.

    Digital advertising and search results are run by algorithms, which are a series of instructions carried out by a computer. The algorithm decides what to show you, and it has decided that you are a plus sized human. I can’t tell you why completely. Algorithms like these tend to be kept secret to some degree. Maybe you searched for diets and cheese cake recipes earlier?

    On Instagram I found a post about being introverted funny and gave it a heart. Instagram spent months afterwards recommending either ADHD or Autism pages to me because of it. I don’t think the algorithm should be diagnosing me.

    While this is all fun, it does give a hint as to how it all works. If you are a small business looking to grow through digital advertising, having an idea of what the algorithm is looking for will help you get noticed by people likely to want your products and services.

    Search engines like Google will explain their process so that you can create websites that are easily searched and ranked. Advertising platforms show how keyword combinations and money work together to reach a certain audience number.

    These are all necessary windows into how their algorithms work so that users are able to create content that works with it.

    But

    How does the algorithm know who are decision makers, what their interests are, and what actions are they likely to take? This is the part of the algorithm that’s hidden from view, accessed through keywords or pull down menus, but the magic is still there.

    Re-targeting is another way advertisements are chosen. Re-targeting is a method of converting website traffic to sales leads. It takes multiple website visits to get your customer to commit to anything. A way of ensuring that the same customer sees your content multiple times a day is by re-targeting or showing that same content again when they go somewhere else. This is done by setting up a web beacon on your site that connects to the re-targeting company. If you access a site that sells plus size clothing, it will show you the same plus sized clothing over and over again.

    If this is something that your business might be interested in, let us know and we will help you get it started.

  • What kind of advertising generates awareness?

    What kind of advertising generates awareness?

    Brand Awareness Messaging

    Brand Awareness is a term that describes the number of people that have heard of your business and remember something about it.

    It’s often the first goal of a marketing campaign when starting out with a new client. The idea is to communicate a short simple message that will tell your potential customer about your product or service. This message is often not enough to get a customer to start the sales process, but is enough to let them know that you exist and that you can provide something they want.

    Digital Marketing uses several methods to increase brand awareness. Social media, search engine, and website marketing are all of methods of generating brand awareness. There are a variety of platforms with unique technologies and methods. Most involve creative use of video, graphics, and writing to show a quick message to a potential customer.

    The goal of brand awareness is to create brand interest, so potential customers will move on to the research stage, which is where social media and websites become the focus.

    Brand Awareness can be measured in a number of ways. Reach are the number of people that have seen your message. Impressions are the number of time your message was viewed, and Frequency are the number of times your message was seen for the first time by someone. Conversions refer to the number of times your message was able to influence customer behavior in some way, such as subscribing to your page or filling out a contact form.

    These numbers are used to show how well your brand is represented over various digital marketing channels. Typically these are the first indicators of a brand’s health, because they focus on how widely your message is being received.

    Brand Awareness is often increased through advertising, subscriptions, digital marketing, and re-targeting. These are low cost ways for using digital marketing to increase brand awareness and can be very effective. Brayson Management can help your business develop a winning digital marketing strategy.

    Digital marketing strategies must be built around your business, so a one size fits all approach is not enough. It starts with research into who your customers are and what they want. We then create advertising that shows this message in a clear concise manner across a number of channels. These campaigns build awareness over time with a small investment and some effort and are an important part of an overall marketing stratagedy.

  • Will Digital Marketing make my business money?

    Will Digital Marketing make my business money?

    How Digital Marketing Makes Money

    If you are like most business owners, you have a limited advertising budget. How you spend this money is important, and it needs to work for you.

    The digital marketing business is full of quick ideas for making quick cash. The landscape is littered with articles claiming the top ten best ways to sell your business on the internet. They sound like scams, and some of them are outdated techniques of scamming a major search engine.

    The truth behind digital marketing is that it is a combination of work and money. There is no magic technique, and there are no quick ways around the work.

    As a small business, you may find that you don’t have time for the work. This is why you hire a digital marketing company like Brayson Management. We stay up to date on all the latest news from all the major search engines and social media, so we can use the latest techniques and technology to help your business. We do the work, not trends; and what we do will work for you.

    With Brayson, your marketing budget is under your control. You set the investment, so you are able to scale your investment over time.

    The core benefit from digital marketing are the sales leads that grow over time. Your sales team can use these leads to increase sales. This is where you get your return on your money. Instead of paying a sales team to cold call perspective clients, hoping for word of mouth, and putting a sign on the side of the road; you could be running digital advertising that puts your message in front of perspective clients. You only pay for the ones that click, so you only pay for the ones that are interested. In many cases, the campaign goal is to get them to subscribe. Your sales team can contact these subscribers and try to turn them into customers.

    The question then becomes “How many of these potential customers that are already interested in my business can I convince to become actual customers?” This is where your investment makes money. You don’t waste time, and you make the connections that lead to increased sales.

    It does not cost a lot to get started, and we can help you build a successful solution.

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