This week we are going to talk about a basic strategy for marketing a business.
What’s up Fish Fans! My name is Marcus. You’re watching Marketing Madness, the Blue Fish vlog!
It is not uncommon for us to get requests where the person we are talking with just wants some ideas. I don’t mind speaking to what a business needs to be doing to get word out about their products and services because the real value is in the details and in the execution. So we wanted to share what we normally say in those situations.
Every business has a need for branding of some sort. Colors, fonts, some sort of logo, these are all things that help when you start to have business cards printed or a website built. So that is where we would start. Logos should be simple. If you just go to google and type in awesome logos you will find a number of sites that feature current trends for minimalist logos. Never ever just outright copy someone. But you can get a feel for what a good logo should look like. If you don’t have the funds to invest in a logo then you might just go to istockphoto.com and find a logo that is generic enough to use to get started. At some point in time you will probably want to have someone create a custom logo for you so you can really solidify your brand. But you can probably find one to get you started.
We view websites as the foundation to any good marketing strategy. They are a hub of information that help people connect with you. There are some things to keep in mind regarding your website that will help it perform better. Ranking in Search Engines today means having a site that is built responsive. Desktop only websites, or websites that have a mobile version are no longer good enough. That is technology that was in use over 5+ years ago. So if you have a website that is desktop only or that has a mobile version, you might want to upgrade. It also helps a tremendous amount to have a site that has really clean code. If you look at the code on our site you’ll see we develop sites using really clean code.
Blog posts and Vlog posts are really helpful in adding keyword density to the site. They also add title tags and headlines and other elements that all help Google feel good about ranking you higher. So my suggestion if you are just getting started, would be to create a new site.
We have an offering for websites that is a software as a service that we offer for as low as $750 down and $100 a month. That does not include a whole lot of help in making it look like a site customized to you. If you want to do that we can customize the theme based site for a bit more.
If you want a completely custom site we can do that too. Those start at $12,000 and go up from there. When we build a custom site we are not just modifying a theme. Our custom sites starts with a blank slate. We take into consideration all of your likes and dislikes and what you are trying to get your website visitors to do once they get to the site.
Once the site is good to go we would look for ways to send traffic to the site. One way to accomplish that is to have an active Facebook page. Try and post 1-2 times a week with content that is engaging and informative. Do not be afraid to give away information. Gone are the days when people couldn’t find the answer on their own. Google makes that easy now. The key is you want to be the search result when they go to Google and search for something related to your area of expertise. Currently we have an offer for creating Facebook posts that starts at $850 per month for 5-6 posts. We go up from there depending on the number of posts and how much involvement you want us to have in managing the comments / engaging with the audience.
We also highly suggest writing blog posts. If you were engaged with us, we wouldn’t necessarily need to be the ones writing those. But we would highly suggest them, and we can write them if need be. The benefit of you writing them is they take on your tone and personality. But if you don’t have time or desire to write blog posts then we can do it and getting them written and out into the world is important.
Something we highly suggest is to have a vlog that you release weekly on social. Take that video and transcribe it and post it to the blog section of your website as well. Video is the current future of social media. People learn a lot about you when they watch you on video. Believe me, I've learned a lot about myself. Your presence and mannerisms subconsciously tell them whether they want to work with you or not. And that is a good thing. Video can be economical if done correctly. If we do it in our studio and record 4-5 in one session you can them to cost around $500-600 each. Transcription from a service provider would probably be $100-$150 for those 4-5 videos. Or better yet, write out the scripts and use our teleprompter so you sound even more professional.
Both blog posts and the transcriptions for the vlogs also help increase your keyword density on your site which will also help your Search Engine Ranking.
Next we would look to look at ads. We can either run Facebook and Instagram Ads or Google Ads or both. We normally suggest doing Facebook and Instagram first as they allow you to buy your way into someone’s feed. You can then start to build an audience by grabbing people’s attention. Google Ads requires that they use specific words in their search in order for you to appear. Both serve a purpose, but given a choice and limited budget we would opt for Facebook and Instagram first. We charge a min of $500 for managing Facebook or Google Ads per month. Creative can be economical but is usually at least a couple of hours. Ad spend would depend on your budget.
We have other tools we can use too. We can work with all of the major TV and radio stations and newspapers. We can also advertise on Snapchat, Pandora, and more. But those are secondary to what we have discussed in this video.
Well, that’s a wrap for this week! I want to thank you for checking in. Make sure to hit that like button. And if you have any questions or comments leave them down below. If you want to talk about how Blue Fish can help you grow your business just send us a message and we’ll get the conversation started!