Famous Last Words – I Can Do It Myself

Famous Last Words – I Can Do It Myself

by | Aug 30, 2021 | Business, Marketing, Metrics, P.R. & Social, Performance

Famous Last Words – I Can Do It Myself

Olivia McDonald

The Cowbell Agency

There are no shortcuts when it comes to managing high performing Google Ads campaigns. 

Have you ever had a home improvement project that needed to be tackled and said to yourself “This should be easy. I can do it myself.” only to encounter unforeseeable roadblocks that left you feeling in over your head? And when it was all said and done, those roadblocks lead to far more of your time, energy and money than you expected, and it probably would have been less expensive to hire a professional to do the work?

This “I can do it myself” attitude is the same one many business owners take when they decide to get into the digital marketing space with Google Ads. At a glance, creating and managing your own account doesn’t seem all that overwhelming. However, like that home improvement project, you will soon realize that it is going to take far more time, energy and money than you originally anticipated, and the day-to-day operation of your business may be neglected as a result. At Cowbell, we have a team of certified Google Ads experts who have been trained in the best practices of Google Ads and know the best way to optimize campaigns based on your market, competition and budget. 

There are clear advantages to having an agency get behind the wheel of a Google Ads account and take the results to new heights. For starters, there will be no wasted budget. Your Google Ads Specialist has the skillset to take any budget and maximize results, from making adjustments to ads to improve quality score to reducing the average cost per click to increase the daily number of clicks. Next, Google is doing their best to persuade small businesses to adopt an automated bid structure. They make it seem as though they are helping you by taking the pressure off you to monitor and optimize as often as you usually would. In reality, this takes away the advertiser’s control and gives the advantage to bigger businesses with bigger budgets. More times than not, small businesses with smaller budgets end up paying more per click, quickly eating up the daily budget far quicker which leads to serving ads to less people. Lastly, without an automated bid structure, monitoring and optimizing campaigns takes a significant amount of your precious time. You can’t just set it and forget it. Passing the torch to your certified Google Ads expert frees up your time to focus on what is most important – running your business. 

Running a Google Ads campaign yourself only makes sense if you have extensive experience in Google Ads and its constantly changing landscape. If you don’t, you may be setting yourself up for a costly learning experience. If you want to see results without it costing an arm and a leg, it’s crucial to go to the experts. There are no shortcuts when it comes to managing high performing Google Ads campaigns.

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HTML Email Signatures. Look like a pro to everyone.

HTML Email Signatures. Look like a pro to everyone.

by | Aug 30, 2021 | Blog, Brand, Business, Messaging, P.R. & Social

HTML Email Signatures. Look like a pro to everyone.

Mike McBride

The Cowbell Agency

Have you ever noticed how some company email signatures simply look better and more professional than others? That is no accident. Those are HTML email signatures that help companies stand above the rest in email communications.

 

What’s so great about HTML email signatures?

The biggest benefit is continuity of delivered design. Many people do the best they can crafting their email signature right in an email program such as Microsoft Outlook or Mail and Calendar, Apple Mail or one of the many web-based email apps. Their expectation is that everyone will see their beautiful email signature just as they see it. This is not always the case. Though an email is technically like an HTML webpage, it gets translated and displayed on an email “client” program as opposed to a far more forgiving web browser. Each email client’s ability to properly display emails is affected by a multitude of factors including software versions, settings, platforms or whether it is being viewed from a computer or smartphone. HTML email signatures bypass many of these issues.

 

How is an HTML email signature different from those built with images, rich text and links using an email client?

The content, styling and imagery with an HTML email are all coded for consistent delivery…fonts, text styling, tables, links, etc. are not contorted into a mess by email client defaults. Images of company logos, social logos, head shots and more are not delivered as attachments in an HTML email. The images are hosted and served. This allows emails to be smaller in delivered size and also less likely to be flagged as spam.

 

If HTML email signatures are so great, why isn’t every company using them?

Creating HTML can be tricky for non-coders or expensive for those using HTML email signature apps or generators. And even after an HTML email signature is developed, it has to be personalized and installed in the email clients of all employees. At Cowbell Agency, we strive to make the design and deployment process as simple as possible. So our clients can communicate as consistently and effectively as possible. Contact us to learn more.

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Beginning a Social Media Program

Beginning a Social Media Program

by | Jul 7, 2021 | Blog, Brand, Business, Marketing, Messaging, Metrics, P.R. & Social

Beginning a Social Media Program

Adam Latham
The Cowbell Agency

To some, getting a social media program off the ground seems like some sort of black magic. You have a Facebook page, but no likes or follows. You have a twitter handle, but no followers. So, you think, why even post. And if you did, what is the value?

You know you should, and you know that eventually it may be worthwhile, but getting started seems daunting. 

The first thing I like to do is forget about the woeful size of your audience right now and think about these channels or platforms from a purely strategic perspective. What is their purpose and how do they fit my needs?

Let’s start with your needs. Apart from just advertising your product or service, ask yourself what type of information do you want to deliver to your audience? What, from you, do they want to hear? 

The answer to these questions will vary widely based on what your organization does or produces.

To help you answer these questions, let’s create a few hypothetical organizations. Let’s say you were a government or NGO who has a vested interest in pushing out a lot of information to the public, as in activities and schedules of events. Every time you push out a press release, it costs money. So instead, you’ve decided to use Twitter as your distribution channel. You are not looking to get into a lot of discussions with your audience there, just a public channel to broadcast that something new is available. 

This channel is very effective at this because most of the media itself follows organizations they regularly report on. 

Let’s also assume your organization wants to also build a community with relationships and conversations. This will most likely take place on Facebook. 

But, if you want to reach the generation between 16 and 23, then you should also include Instagram.

Let’s say your leadership, C-level executive and management, wants to be seen as thought leaders. If so, you need to include LinkedIn as part of your strategy.

So, before I even concern myself with building audiences and managing the pages, I build a matrix that includes the types of information I want to disseminate, and I choose the platform on which I want to broadcast that information. 

Secondly, I then, knowing the culture of those different platforms, will know how many different topics and amount of posts I need to create. 

This is how you begin building a Social Media Strategy.

The next phase is all about tactics. Connecting and automating where you can, getting the resources to fill the pipes with content, measuring and building audiences. 

Notice I put building audiences last. There’s a reason for that.

Everyone usually likes to start there. They go to their platforms and don’t see any audience and they think what is the point. Well, the point is, if you don’t have a regular flow of information, nobody will ever follow or subscribe. It would be like trying to get subscribers to a streaming service without shows for anybody to watch. Unfortunately you DO have to show a value for others to value your content.

And trying to build an audience before you can show value, is like kicking yourself in the butt. Every time someone goes to your page and is disappointed, the least likely they are to come back. Remember, when someone shares some of your content, you want to build and convince others to get there first.

Once you have your channels ready… you know, a good amount of videos on YouTube, articles on LinkedIn, posts and events scheduled on Facebook, an active Twitter feed that is constantly sending out links to interesting articles… then you begin paying occasionally to boost your circulation on your best, most valuable content.

Lastly, be humble. Share other people’s information if it is of value. Now, this can get misunderstood. I’m talking about Ford sharing GM information. What I’m talking about is the reality that every industry has resources from other sources that their customers might find interesting. The more you look like a channel of non-stop advertising, the less relevant your channel will become. 

Lastly, don’t be afraid to have a personality. At the end of the day, beyond special offers and announcements, people want to be entertained. Never lose sight of that. The object is to get as much of your followers to want to share your info with THEIR followers and friends. It isn’t only about building your audience, but rather, inspiring your audience to spread the word for you.

Good luck and have fun.

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Maintaining a Positive Online Reputation

Maintaining a Positive Online Reputation

by | Oct 9, 2020 | Blog, P.R. & Social

Maintaining a Positive Online Reputation

Adam Latham
The Cowbell Agency

Understanding the Proactive Review Management Process

As Bob Dylan once opined, “the times, they are a-changin’.” And one of the industries that has seen the most radical changes in the last ten years has been marketing and brand management.

It is almost hard to imagine how well major corporation did at controlling their brand perception. Through just the right focus on PR, a few high-visibility sponsorships and events, you knew all the corporations wanted you to know about them. Barring some major news event or tabloid expose, the corporations were in charge of their brand.

Those days are gone. Now, the true managers of a company’s brand is its customers. For good or bad, social media has allowed customers to talk and exchange information about companies whenever they want. All it takes is one #ABCWidgetrippedmeoff and a scathing blog post, and next thing you know, everyone has their own story. Before long, decades of paid-for public relations is toast.

For consumers, this is a good thing. For companies, it is scary as hell. For PR companies and marketing agencies, it means we have change our strategies.

The Cowbell Agency has taken an effective and somewhat radical approach to maintaining a positive online reputation. We start with the assumption that customers are going to talk about you. They are going to leave reviews. And if they are angry, they are going to want to vent to somebody.

Given that assumption, you want to be proactive and soliciting feedback from customers as often as possible. Because if for any reason they are upset with you, you want them to talk to you about it instead of their facebook friends or potential customers on Yelp.

You do this by being disciplined. Depending on your business, you want to ask customers for feedback as soon after your interaction as possible. We recommend a system that sends text messages and emails that not only solicit feedback, but allows them to give you a star rating from 1-to-5. This way, you get a pretty good idea what star rating they would give you on Google, Facebook or Yelp.

Their reply to you flows into a dashboard environment that allows you to see each and every comment, and then respond back to customers as soon as possible. If there are issues you can rectify or smooth over. Do it here, and do it quickly, before they have an opportunity to make their angry post or review.

By the time you’re done with this interaction, you have a pretty good idea what kind of rating they would give you at those public, third party review sites. It is at this time you can, if you so desire, try to encourage them to share their feelings about you.

This solves two major issues: 1) it builds your database of reviews which will help lessen the impact of the negative reviews, and 2) allows reviewers to judge your company on your entire customer service approach, which now includes your attempt to engage them and satisfy their needs.

The other approach I characterize is more of a “fix on failure” policy. You, as the business owner, just sit back and hope your customers are saying good things about you. When you see one come across, and it is a 1-star, you get all angry. You try to remember who the heck this angry customer was. You read the review and you frantically try to figure out if there is a way to remove it. After all, this person is obviously crazy.

But guess what. You can’t. And since you don’t have a pro-active, review-encouraging process, it just sits there…for days. Maybe weeks. Maybe even months. And every time someone searches for a business like yours, there it is, staring every potential customer right in the eye, that 1-star review from hell. You sit there again, passively, hoping someone else would review your company to push that one down the page.

Our systematic approach provides a framework for the type of disciplined internal processes that put you proactively in charge of your online review management and can be implemented in just a few short hours.

 

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A cool content marketing overview to help you get things started

A cool content marketing overview to help you get things started

by | Sep 6, 2020 | Lead Nurturing, P.R. & Social, SEO

A cool content marketing overview to help you get things started

Adam Latham
The Cowbell Agency

Although it is a couple of years dated now, this presentation posted in 2016 is a good starting point for understanding the type of content that should be part of your content marketing program. 

https://www.slideshare.net/CMI/content-marketing-playbook-and-ideas

 

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