Marketing Essentials — What Are They?

Today, we'd like to tell you a little bit more about our marketing essentials service. Like, what the key inclusions are, and why these are such important activities.

Over the past eight years of running a marketing business, we've curated a list of activities that we believe to be essential activities for any business wanting to improve their marketing, and ultimately grow. There's a lot to cover, but not every single activity is required to achieve a result. Instead, we work out the best combination activities for each client, and use that blend to achieve their desired goals.

We've grouped these activities into four key themes.

1. Objectives — What does your business want to achieve?
2. Website Optimisation — How can we leverage your most important marketing asset?
3. Digital Advertising — How can we use paid advertising to get new visitors (and customers) to your website quickly?
4. Search Engine Optimisation — How can we increase your free organic traffic as much as possible?

Before we look at each of these key themes, here's a quick overview of what we need to set-up before completing these tasks. As a side note, all the videos in this article are from Helium Academy — it's our education platform we use to help clients understand how Helium, and marketing in general, works. If you become a Helium client, you'll get your own Helium Academy account with heaps of resources!

Okay, on to the video.

Before we work on the marketing initiatives we're about to describe, we need to complete a series of set-up activities. They're a mix of both strategic planning to ensure the activities we perform are tailored to your goals, as well as software set-ups for the various tools we use to deliver and monitor our activities. This includes Google Analytics for website data, dashboard software for presenting results, SEO audits to locate needed improvements, and the list goes on.

This is a complicated task, not just because of the volume of the set-up activities required, but also integrating all of the different technologies with one another (and they don't always play nice!).

As an example, we set-up Google Ads to track new enquiries. This involves adjusting your website to measure these, as well as setting up "call tracking", so that new phone enquiries (not just website form completions) are also measured. Once a new enquiry is made, this data needs to feed back to not only Google ads, but also update Google Analytics, and then our dashboard reporting tool so you can see what's working.

Now that we've covered the set-up, let's talk about the first set of activities.

Theme 1: Objectives

We have a variety of different activities that help us specify, measure, track and meet our client's goals and objectives.

Dashboard Accuracy

Your dashboard is a crucial tool we use to show you what's working and what's not. Without your dashboard, we wouldn't have visibility over your marketing and how to improve it.

As an example, one of the metrics we follow is your website traffic and what users do on your website. We observe the drop off rates as a user moves page to page, to identify the weakest links in your website. From there, we analyse those pages to explore reasons the page is underperforming, such as lack of content, irrelevant content, poor page load speed, no clear call to action, and so on.

We take a very grounded approach. Our metrics are down to earth and don't include "vanity" metrics (the superficial ones meant to make us look good). For example, when we present website traffic data we filter out the bots and international traffic (unless you have an international businesses!) so that you are only seeing data from relevant visitors. We also tend to show the metrics in terms of unique users so that you get a clear idea of the number of potential customers visiting your website (not an enormous number inflated by multiple visits).

On an ongoing basis, we're checking and rechecking the data, to ensure it is accurate and reliable. Clear data means clear decisions, so we keep it accurate, transparent and easy to understand.

Review Results

We take a results-first approach. As a digital marketing agency, we know that if we can't generate results, we don't retain clients. We don't want to waste anyone's time (or budget), so one of our most important priorities is ensuring that we generate new customers for you, so that engaging Helium is undeniably worth your while.

For example, if we find that Facebook Ads is generating a high volume of enquiries but Google Ads isn't, we look at why Google Ads is underperforming. Perhaps it isn't the right fit for the particular business (it happens), perhaps there are more competitors on that platform, or the account's set-up can be further improved.

Technical KPI's

On top of looking at results of our marketing efforts, we also consider data in comparison to technical benchmarks. We consider these "technical KPIs" to be indicators of how a particular platform can be improved, to ultimately increase the results we achieve. These technical KPIs are shown on your dashboard, so that you have full visibility of how your marketing assets are performing.

For a website we will look at metrics such as:

• Bounce rate — The number of one page visits, indicating if there are issues preventing users from navigating and using your site.
• Load time — How long does your website take to load, highlighting whether visitors are impatient using your website
• Average time on site — How long does a visitor stay on your website? This indicates how useful your website is and how engaged a visitor is.
• Conversion rate — Out of all the visitors going to your website, how many of the take the desired action?

For Google Ads, we look at Technical KPIs such as:

• Click through rate (CTR) — How many people see your ad and click on it? Low CTR means the ad isn't relevant and needs improving.
• Cost per click (CPC) — How much does it cost to get a click to your website?
• Cost per conversion/acquisition (CPA) — How much does it cost to get the desired action? This important as it tells us if the marketing effort is sustainable for your business model.
• Budget constraints — Is the budget adequate for the range of keywords being targeted? If not, we either need to increase the budget or lower the volume of search terms.

For Search Engine Optimisation, we look at KPIs such as:

• Domain rating — How credible is your website in the eyes of Google? More credibility, means more visibility, and more new customers going to your website.
• Referring domains — How many other websites have at least one link to your website? More referring domains means more credibility.
• Back links — How many links in total from all of the referring domains? More links means even more credibility!

Tracked Phone Calls

We use a software to track new enquiries from not just website forms, but also phone calls. It's important to track these calls so that you know how many new enquiries we generate for you, and also so we can tailor the marketing efforts to what's working.

For example, if we look at each individual ad in a Google Ads account, we can see which ads are performing best so that we spend more money on them and less on the ones that aren't working. However, if we aren't tracking phone call enquiries we may turn off really effective ads without knowing.

Theme 2: Website Optimisation

We'll have our own ideas about what can be done to improve your website, backed by plenty of tools and data we can use to support these suggestions, but we also value your opinion. At the end of the day, you'll know your business and customers far better than us.

These changes might be new requests (such as creating a new page on a particular topic) or it might be a practical one (such as updating your pricing information).

Either way, we provide a tool called "site comments", which allows you to annotate your website in a way that is easy for us to understand and efficient to implement. You can use this tool if you'd like to request changes to your website.

Watch Session Recordings

One of the ways we can improve the website experience for your visitors is by observing real website visitors and how they interact with your site. All data is anonymous and cannot be used to determine the identify of a visitor.

These activities reveal website issues that make visitors frustrated. These might be:

• An eCommerce website that automatically and accidentally added stock to visitors cart, preventing them from checking out the item they actually wanted to purchase.
• A professional service website that had unclear form labels, creating confusion for prospects to complete the enquiry form.
• Logos not appearing probably on mobile versions of a website.
• A pricing table that didn't work on all device types.

You get the idea. We're basically looking out for issues that prevent visitors becoming customers.

Heatmaps

One of the other cool tools we use to optimise your website is Heatmaps. These are a visual representation of which parts of your website are most used. Cold represents low usage, red indicates high usage.

There are a range of different heat maps types:

• Scroll Heat Maps — This displays how far down on a page a user (on average) will scroll, ensuring that important content (like call to actions) are visible.
• Click Heat Maps — This shows you where users click the mouse, as well as the most popular links, which content is being engaged with, and sometimes even when visitors are frustrated (click rage).
• Attention Heat Maps — Based on where users move their mouse, which has been shown to correlate to where the user is looking. This helps us follow the flow of a user to see how the engage with any given page.

Theme 3: Paid Advertising

As part of your engagement with Helium, we'll help you create, manage and improve paid marketing activities. This includes Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads and even Microsoft Ads. Other than the basics of setting up these campaigns and running them, we have a variety of tools and activities to make sure you are getting the most out of your advertising dollar.

Click Fraud Protection

Click fraud protection is an essential activity for any business running paid ad campaigns. You may be surprised to know that a decent chunk of your budget is being chewed up by either competitors or bots, which maliciously click your ads (so your potential new customers can't!).

We see between 5% to 30% of a client's budget being wasted on this alone. So, if you have a budget of $1k advertising spend a month, this activity alone could save you $300 straight off the bat. Obviously the savings increase if you are spending more than this.

We pay for and install this tool on your behalf, and we can even let you know how much we save you.

AI and Machine Learning

We're a hardworking bunch, but humans can't pick up every detail. We're living in the digital age which provides many advantages, however it's easy to become swamped in raw data. We're backed up by AI and machine-learning software that methodically analyses your accounts to make a list of recommendations on how they can be improved. These recommendations are reviewed by our in-house experts (actual humans) to determine which recommendations need implementing and which need dismissing.

Examples of what this type of insight might look like:

• Thursdays after 5:00pm, your ads get a lot more conversions than any other day or time slot. Therefore, increase your budget during this time to capitalise on the activity.
• A particular service page of your website may get more conversions on mobile, therefore increase the amount you are willing to bid for that traffic if a user is on their mobile.

Every month we are learning more about your campaign and how it can be improved, by leveraging both technology and talent.

Keyword Optimisation

A lot of paid ads revolve around certain search phrases or keywords. There are both regular keywords, and negative keywords. A regular keyword is a search term that we want your website to appear for. A negative keyword is one that blocks a search for that phrase.

For example, if you run a custom software business looking for more clients, you may get a lot of traffic for any phrases that contain the word "custom software". These phrases would like "custom software Perth", "custom software agency", "should I build custom software?" and "custom software jobs". You'd want your business showing for the first three searches, as these are likely being searched by your prospective clients. However the last example, "custom software jobs", is a search phrase that would be done job hunter. Obviously, this isn't your target audience and you'd like to have your budget spent on potential clients. We'd add the negative keyword "software job" to block your ads showing to job hunters.

When we start a new campaign, we'll import a considerable list of negative keywords (approximately 500) to help your account get off to a good start. However, every business will have unique searches so this is something we refine over time as we get to know you and your account more and more.

Theme 4: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Similar to paid search advertising like Google Ads, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about helping your business get to the top of Google for selected search terms (or keywords). This can be hugely beneficial to a benefits as you are effectively getting prospective clients landing on your website without you having to pay for that traffic (unlike Google Ads). In addition, you can continue to rank for important keywords even with little ongoing effort, so it is somewhat like a marketing asset.

The down side is that SEO is hit and miss, and a long-term marketing strategy. Results can be seen as soon as three months, however sometimes it can take a full year or longer to really see the benefit of the effort (which is why at Helium we pair it with paid advertising, so you can put food on the table in the meantime).

Think of it as a high-risk, high-reward, long-term marketing strategy.

Fortunately, there are powerful tools that can indicate your website's progress (or lack there of), so even though it's very transparent about the efforts put in and the iterative result.

Here are a few of the activities we look at for improving the volume of organic traffic that reaches your site.

Blog Articles

At the end of the day, your website can only rank for content that is on your website. If your website doesn't have much content relevant to the keywords being search for, then we need to create it.

This content can take shape in the format of either blog articles or landing pages. A landing page is often reserved for a specific topic and can be found through the main navigation of your website, while a blog article is often either a time sensitive or niche topic.

Site Health Audit

No matter how much content we add to your website, it won't rank unless it is considered to be a "healthy" website. We'll run a site audit to identify a list of critical errors and warnings that may be negatively affecting your SEO, and therefore, ranking potential.

You may be surprised how many errors are present on your website, in some cases there can literally be hundreds of critical errors and even more warnings. These issues include errors with meta data, not using heading structures probably, broken links, improper redirects, and the list goes on.

We can help you not only identify these issues but also resolve them. This ensures our content efforts have the best chance of ranking.

Backlinks

One of the other major factors that will affect your SEO is your websites domain authority (DA). This is a score out of 100 and reflects the popularity of your website, and the amount of attention it receives from other websites around the world. As an example, a small business with a new website might have a DA of 1/100 and a mega corporation like Google will have about 98/100.

The higher your DA, the easier it is for you to rank. For example, if you are an accountant trying to rank for "negative gearing" and have a DA of 10/100, it's unlikely you will be able to beat another accountant who has the same content but a DA of 20/100.  Therefore, we focus on increasing your domain authority month by month.

Increasing your DA is primarily achieved by getting "backlinks" which are links from other websites that link to yours. This is primarily done by creating useful content that other websites want to share, and another reason blog articles are important.

A Summary of Marketing Essentials

So, there you have it. You now have a much deeper understanding of the types of activities we cover in our Marketing Essentials service. I know I've thrown a lot of technical information at you today, but that's only because my intention is to be transparent about the inclusions of our Marketing Essentials service. You should at least have a better idea of what we are covering behind the scenes.

Of course, if you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me or you Marketing Essentials Account Manager to discuss these strategies further.