Web Marketing Maestro

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

Do you love digital marketing? Self identify as a leader? Generally win at anything you put your hand to?

Your uncommon devotion to your vision and instinctual ability to draw out the strengths of those around you to achieve truly exceptional results.

An adept communicator, you’re looking for just the right place to spread your wings and mastermind like you were born to.

If this sounds familiar, you may be just the digital marketing maestro we’re looking for!

Are you an experienced or formally trained marketer?
Can you track and manage dozens of simultaneous priorities with a strong planning system?
Do you love the strategic and analytical planning process that goes into executing phenomenal marketing campaigns?
Are you a perfectionist who cares about getting the smallest thing just right?
Can you write well and communicate with everyone from the delivery person to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company?
Do you have the initiative to proactively seek out ways to solve problems and improve things before you are asked?
Are you passionate about improving the status quo?
Are you an upbeat, energetic person that loves helping business owners benefit from the technology that is a part of your day to day life.

You’re looking for a modern agency that is flexible and on the cutting edge of what’s possible in lifestyle design.

You’re unique and you expect your working life to reflect that.

Overview:

You role is integral to delivering excellent results to our clients.

Working with our talented team, you weave their skills and your own expertise together to craft, execute and measure ongoing digital marketing deliverables. Ensuring the utmost in quality is adhered to, you’re also adamant things get done on time and on budget.

Your dedication & enthusiasm inspires those around you to give their best, and enjoy doing so.

You like working with a well established firm, but one that is small and flexible enough to grow with, and have an impact on.

Role:

Work with the team to create, plan and execute digital marketing projects.
Project management, quality control and specification assurance
Liaise between contractors and vendors to realize project goals.
Personally execute some tasks as needed.
Fulfil production quotas; meeting & exceeding billable hour benchmarks.
Internal & external communication as required.
Act as an ambassador to the organization- actively contribute to brand building and engagement with the community via social channels.
Stay on the cutting edge of relevant developments in Site, Search & Social Marketing
Ongoing collaboration with the President to create & execute best practices across all areas of the organization.

We are:

A Western Canadian based digital marketing agency. The business owners that work with us watch their sales soar through Site, Search & Social media.

We harness the power of the internet to help people live better lives: that applies to our team, our clients, our communities and entrepreneurs as a whole.

We are in our 9th year in business and as demand for our services grows, we’re excited to continue our steady growth strategy.

Primarily serving clients in Alberta & BC, we also work with clients worldwide.

Soft skills:

Great attitude; Positive & Proactive
Strategic, Analytical Thinker
Detail Oriented
Ability to adapt to change/willing to learn
Ability to manage multiple overlapping projects
Technically savvy, comfortable
Team management and coordination experience
Previous marketing experience required
Excellent communication skills: written and verbal
Sales experience an asset
Experience working in a web development firm an asset

Hard skills/tools:

Google suite of products: analytics, adwords, docs, drive, g+ hangouts and social
Social media accounts existing and utilized: Facebook, twitter, linkedin, google plus, Pinterest, instagram,
Ad management -Facebook, google
Emarketing software: mailchimp, constant contact
Basecamp
Project planning experience: specification creation, creative brief, scheduling.

Compensation:

Starting at $30k/annum depending on suitability, experience.
Additional earning potential based on commissions, additional projects.

Perks:

Work from anywhere that has an internet connection & cell phone reception
Very flexible & fun work environment
Very high upward mobility
Regular contests & prizes

Control Your Email Habits Before They Control You

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

As a small business owner, few things are more important than good productivity and effective time management. Unfortunately, these aren’t always easy to achieve; especially when there’s Facebook to check, blogs to read, and a steady stream of emails to reply to.

Unlike Facebook and blogs though, email is something that no small business owner can or should avoid in the working day. The problems come when too much time is spent reading and rereading them while taking no action.

As we use MailChimp for our email marketing campaigns, we’re able to monitor our subscribers’ email habits. A few of the trends we’ve noticed from looking at this information is rather shocking; some people are actually opening our emails on up to 21 separate occasions.

Clearly this is a huge waste of time, and has prompted us to share a few tips on how to control your email habits before they control you.

Self-control with a self-timer

Assigning yourself a set amount of time for each task every day is a great way to ensure you don’t spend too long on just one and neglect the others. You can even set aside times for getting your fix of the non-work websites that are usually a constant temptation and distraction.

One of the most popular time management systems is the Pomodoro Technique, a method of assigning yourself medium length blocks of dedicated work time, usually around twenty five minutes long, interspersed with short breaks of five or ten minutes.

Giving yourself twenty five minutes of concentrated email time, perhaps two or three times a day if need be, will help to focus your mind on the task at hand, while giving yourself a guilt-free five or ten minute window to check Facebook or browse some blogs to refresh your mind in between.

Accountability looks good on paper

If you find yourself quickly checking your email and taking no action constantly throughout the day, it might shock you to learn just how many times you do this, even if the accumulative time spent doing so isn’t that much.

Every time you turn your mind to your email, no matter how briefly, you’re taking it away from all the other important tasks that need your attention too.

It’s natural to tell yourself you don’t do this too often while underestimating the real figure, but having a pen and paper with you and keeping a record of how many times you idly check your email throughout the day will help you see just how often you do so, which will in turn give you the visual evidence you might need to control this habit.

This technique isn’t restricted to just your email habits, either. Keeping track of how many times you unconsciously open a social media page or look at blogs you don’t actually read can help you cut down on that habit too.

Another type of game theory

One irrefutable fact of life is that people are more likely to work on tasks if they enjoy them. Another fact of life is that nobody enjoys wading through a backlog of emails. The obvious solution here then is to somehow make email a fun endeavor, and eliminate the boredom that constantly drives people back to browsing social media and non-work related blogs. If only there were a way.

Welcome to the Email Game.

Easily found on Google, the Email Game is a web application that turns the task of clearing your inbox into something enjoyable, which of course helps motivate you to get through them quickly, eliminating the bottleneck that is your inbox and freeing you up to get on with the next thing on your to-do list.

Take control of your email habits today

Spending time on email every day is unavoidable for small business owners, but nurturing good habits can ensure that time is spent well rather than wasted. Every minute saved on not idly checking your inbox can be spent on something more productive.

It can even be reassigned and become time reserved for browsing social media, reading blogs, or any other leisure activity that can help relax your mind and maintain your concentration on the important tasks of the day.

Using Google Analytics to Measure your Web Marketing: Part One

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

While many business owners and CEO’s know they need to measure the results of their marketing, many don’t measure beyond the sales generated.

Being aware of broader trends and areas of improvement help maximize the returns you’re getting from your web marketing and help you make better business decisions.

One way to measure your web marketing is leverage a free Google Analytics account to measure your website performance statistics.

Using Google Analytics to Measure your Web Marketing.

Part One- setting up your account.

If you don’t already have a google account, sign up for one and save your password in a safe place. Then, go to google.com/analytics and sign in.

Add in your website URL, country, Industry and fill out any other fields requested.

You’re almost done with your set-up, there’s one last critical step. Google Analytics will provide you with a tracking code which must be embedded in your website. Send this code to your web developer to add, and verify it’s working.

Then, schedule a reminder for yourself every 30 days to look at your stats, or ensure you’re getting a report from your web marketing team.

Part Two- getting familiar with your web visitor behaviour.

Once your account is created, click on your web address, and then on the left select Audience> Overview. You can choose your date range and even compare against past data using the tab on the top right.

Below is a screenshot comparing an overview of two months of web traffic. We’ll cover each metric and how to interpret it.

measuring web marketing

A session is defined as the period of time a user is actively engaged with your website. Typically, you want to see this number increase each month.
A user is a person who has had at least one session within the date range.
Typically you want to see this number increase each month as well.
Page views is the total number of pages viewed. This number should also increase each month.
Pages per session shows the average pages per session- or, how engaged your web users are with your website. A great benchmark to aim for is 4-5 pages per session.
Average session duration is how may minutes and seconds each session is. This is also an indicator of user engagement and this number should be increasing rather than decreasing.
Bounce rate is the percentage of users that land on your site and exited without interacting with the page. This number should be decreasing rather than increasing.
% of new sessions is an estimate of the percentage of first time visits. Typically this number should be increasing month over month.

By looking at this overview you can get a good idea of how engaged the traffic to your website is and measure your web marketing progress each month.

Next, we will find out specifically where your website traffic is coming from.

Click on Acquisition > Overview.

This chart shows the quantity and quality of the last two months of web site traffic. The blue lines are the most recent month, and the orange are the month previous.

Organic Search Traffic is defined as users that come to your website from a search they’ve done on a search engine.
Direct traffic is traffic that comes to your website by typing in your website address into the address bar.
Social traffic is traffic that comes to your website through sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc.
Referral traffic are website visitors that have come to your site from another website that links to yours.
Email traffic are website visitors that have come to your website by clicking a link in email.

What this shows us is all traffic, from all sources, except email is up. The decrease in new sessions suggests more repeat traffic.

The behaviour of these users shows that the traffic from organic search has an increased bounce rate, which is bound to happen with the huge increase in traffic.

The culprit for the overall website increased bounce rate is the large jump in the bounce rate from our email traffic. This tells us that perhaps we’re not doing the best job of engaging users from our last email newsletter.

In our next post we’ll cover how to determine what types of content is working, and what types of traffic are the best to cultivate.

What has been your experience with measuring your web marketing? Do you review your metrics regularly? Let us know in the comments below!

Don’t forget, sharing is caring, if you found this post useful please share!

3 Signs Your Email Habits Are Ruining Your Business.

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

Today I want to talk about how email could be ruining your life as a small business owner and more importantly, what you can do about it!

A symptom of having an improper relationship with your email is the frequency and amount of time you spend checking it, and not getting other things in your business done.

We use MailChimp for our email marketing software and I’m shocked to see that sometimes people are checking emails and opening our email 21 different times!

That shows a sort of paralysis when it comes to decision-making, “Should I reply? Should I delete it? Should I respond?” and being tied to your email with all these technology devices like our phones and iPads and our laptops mean that a lot of people – myself included – feel very much tied to our email so we are constantly checking it and not getting a lot of other important things done.

So here are three tips to manage your email instead of having it take over your life.

So the first thing you can do is set a timer so you are checking your email say, for example three times a day for 30 minutes. When that timer goes off you stop.

The second thing to do is actually make a little tick using a pen or a pencil on a piece of paper noting how many times a day you are actually opening your email and maybe not responding but just leaving emails sitting there.

The third tip and what I really love is this thing called the email game. So, it’s a game that actually helps you get through your backlog in a fun way- perfect if you have a bunch of emails in your box that you just haven’t acted on and get that all cleaned out for you.

That’s your one minute tip! If you liked this please share and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel!

Systems Aren’t Sexy, But Freedom Is. Why Documentation is Critical for Growth.

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Brooke Boser

Your business is expanding, which is a wonderful thing, but the more you expand the more you find your time being taken up by training and answering questions. This defeats the purpose of expanding in the first place, doesn’t it? Wasn’t the point to bring in help in order to free up your time to work on the business?

Before you go blaming the poor person you hired for this, take a step back and look at the systems you have in place. Do you have a shared calendar where they can see you have blocks of time booked off for focus work? Do you have a task management system in place where everyone knows what they are responsible for and when it is due? Do you have documentation available to show rules of engagement, processes, procedures, and templates?

Systems aren’t sexy, and taking the time to put them in place isn’t a whole lot of fun, but in the end, freeing up your time is well worth it. In fact, it’s critical if you want to keep you business growing.

Here are 9 steps you can take towards documenting your important business procedures:

Create flowcharts to show how a process should sequentially flow in order to reach an endpoint
Implement checklists to ensure all steps of a procedure are taken
Use screenshots where possible in order to give the person a visual representation of what is asked of them
Keep text in documentation short and to the point
Involve others in your office in the development of this documentation, in case they have suggestions or improvements
Clearly explain why they need to follow the process and what may happen if they do not
Keep all documentation in a central, accessible place so that people don’t have to search for it
Create a clear folder / taxonomy structure so that finding documentation is intuitive and quick
Review documentation at least once a year to ensure it is still relevant and up to date

In the end, the better the documentation you have in place, the less questions that will be asked of you, and the more time you will be able to spend on continuing to grow your business. Just think short-term pain for long-term gain, and believe that in the end, freeing up your time is worth it!

5 reasons to drop everything & go to social media camp.

Posted on February 6, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

Just the word camp elicits a feeling of freedom, learning and fun doesn’t it?

While this type of camp is decidedly missing the roasting of marshmallows, there are plenty of reasons to justify putting business as usual on hold to attend.

1. You’ll actually learn useful stuff you can apply right away in your business.

If you don’t feel 100% comfortable in your social media strategy or execution- this is the place to get clear and confident by learning actionable tips from the best minds in Social Media in North America.

There are as many as 5 sessions running at once, and they’re classified from beginner to intermediate. There are also workshops, coaches and handy poster sized summaries of each talk for easy note taking.

Most sessions offer a hand out or some sort of supplemental material you can refer back to later as well as instruction during the seminars.

Reference materials created during Tod Maffin’s talk last year.

2. Networking opportunities

Social media camp feels a lot different than many other conferences.

They’ve done a great job of structuring it so networking and community building happens naturally in the various in-between-session rooms that serve up popcorn as well as plenty of charging space for your devices.

Most attendees (67%) are key decision makers in their business, so with hundreds of attendees, there are plenty of movers and shakers to meet.

You may get to rub shoulders with best selling authors and TV personalities in between their talks or at the always packed local pub across the street.

This year’s keynote is marketing expert John Jantz- the Author of the Duct Tape Marketing series of books.

3. Time to reinvest back in your business.

There’s so many things demanding your attention every day it can be hard to prioritize personal development & learning.

It is critical though, to allocate a percentage of your work time to ongoing training in order to remain competitive.

As Darwin famously said -it’s not the strongest or the smartest of the species most likely to survive-it’s the most adaptable to change.

The undeniable way social media has influenced the consumer buying cycle and how we interact in our relationships demands the attention and adaptability from all professionals.

4. Location, Location, Location

There are few places in Canada that are as beautiful as Victoria BC in May.

With one of the most temperate climates in the country and flowers year round, Victoria is about as tropical as you can get without crossing the border.

After the long, cold, hard winter why not spend some time in the milder climes of the West Coast of Canada?

You may want to take an extra day or two and visit the many things to do and see around this picturesque city. Gorgeous beaches, surfing, whale watching, tropical rain forests and some of the best local dining in Canada are all popular attractions..

5. You’ll make my day.

From Social Media Camp 2013

Not lying.

I’d love to see you at Social Media Camp!

I’ll be around for the majority of the conference soaking up all the learning.

As well, I am thrilled and honoured to be asked to present on the topic of my book Social in 17 – how to effectively market yourself on social media in just 17 minutes a day.
The conference is the 6th of it’s kind and takes place May 21-23.

You can get your tickets here, but hurry, they sell out fast: http://bit.ly/1Dqe5se

For more information on Social Media Camp check out their website: www.socialmediacamp.ca

Welcome to the neighbourhood

Monthly Archives: February 2015