Tag Archive: pulse marketing agency

1. Ten Ways to Ensure Your Website Content is Optimized

   Google’s new Hummingbird update has been making waves recently—and for a very good reason. Because of this new release, your Google search ranking is now primarily dependent on the quality and originality of the content on each and every page of your website. In other words, Google wants to see a more natural, conversational tone that’s more tailored to your audience, rather than odd-sounding text filled with repetitive keywords added to “game” search engines. To ensure a high SERP ranking under the new framework, you should write your content with the idea of answering the most common questions a first-time visitor would have while perusing your website. In other words: write for people, not machines.

2. Your SEO Ranking Depends Largely on Your Website Content

   This week, all of us here at Pulse Marketing finished taking the last of three SEO update seminars on the latest Google Hummingbird release. At the end of it all, we’re quite happy to discover that Google likes us! Why is that, you might ask? We’ve always paid a great deal of attention to the quality of our content—and based on Hummingbird’s new criteria, content is now the undisputed king (of Google’s world, that is).

3. Why Strategic Product Placement Matters During the Holiday Season

   The holidays are a peak sales time for many businesses. After all, nothing encourages a shopping spirit like festive decorations and attractive seasonal displays. With strategic product placement, though, even products and services offered throughout the year can become more noticeable and appealing to holiday shoppers – which opens the door to a host of new marketing opportunities.

4. How to Evaluate the Performance of a Marketing Agency

   Skeptical business owners and administrations often ask me how they can evaluate my performance as a marketer. I think this is a straight and fair question, especially for businesses weighing the cost of my services against doing their marketing in-house – after all, we all need to have some idea of how to measure our ROI. I have been on both sides of the spectrum – as the client of an agency in the past, and currently as the service provider – and can offer you a few suggestions on how to evaluate the performance of your agency.

5. Don’t aim to be a big business. Aim to be a great business.

   I was recently interviewed by a local magazine, and the reporter asked me if I had ever planned to build a big company. The question surprised me. As a small (more like micro) business owner, I want to see my company grow and prosper—but being big has never been the focal point. Instead, we strive to be great at what we do, and to make sure that we provide quality service and real value to our clients.

6. The Wisdom of Planning Ahead in A Customer-Driven Market

   Whenever I watch a movie featuring a traveling salesman (usually an older film), I’m struck by how drastically B2C marketing approaches have changed in recent years. Consumers today (myself included) don’t like being sold to. With a digital world at our fingertips, we seek our own solutions to problems when we need them, wherever and however it’s convenient for us. B2C businesses need to plan ahead to make an impact in this challenging, customer-driven market – taking the time to build strong, flexible marketing strategies.

7. Should You Follow Your Competitors’ Footsteps?

   I often hear people tell me about something their competitors are doing that they’d like to do as well. Interestingly enough, though, many times they don’t have a clue whether or not this new thing is actually helping their competitors grow, or make money.

8. Why Facebook Doesn’t Replace A Well-Designed Website

   With limited marketing budgets, many small businesses opt for social media over a full website – after all, platforms like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter are free, and accessible to a huge audience. The truth is, though, even a robust, frequently-updated Facebook page doesn’t replace a website. Visibility is key in marketing, but success depends on having a permanent web presence – a place where customers can learn more about your business, explore what you have to offer, and (ideally) make a conversion.

9. Non-profit Marketing: When Asking for Donations Does More Damage than Good

   I work with many non-profits, both as a volunteer and as a marketing consultant.  From each perspective, I have recently noticed a new trend (and a bad one) – people are getting sick of being asked for money. That’s not to say that the general public doesn’t want to support non-profit causes; they’re just feeling overwhelmed by the number of organizations cornering them from every angle. So, last month I decided to do some research on my own.