Frequently Asked Questions FAQs

Is your mind running wild with questions? Here are some answers!

Our Process & Client Expectations

Our high-level process of executing a digital marketing campaign includes the following 6 steps: Assess, Plan, Build, Drive, Optimize, and Grow.

Assess:

In the Assess Stage, we will assess your current digital marketing performance to establish a benchmark and get an understanding of KPIs such as:

  • Monthly Website Visits
  • Visit-to-Lead Conversion/Sale Percentage
  • Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Percentage
  • Opportunity-to-Customer Conversion Percentage
  • Average Initial Order Value (IOV)
  • Average Lifetime Value (LTV)
  • Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA)
  • Number of Customers You’re Currently Generating from Digital Efforts
  • Number of Customers You Need to Generate to Achieve Growth Objectives

Additionally, you’ll want to answer the following questions:

  • What is our company and marketing department trying to accomplish in the next 12-24 months?
  • What important milestones do we have to hit to meet our goals?
  • What are we currently struggling with?
  • What specific problems do we solve better than anyone else?
  • Which target audiences care most about those problems?
  • In looking at our metrics, where is our growth bottleneck?
  • Is our digital platform (website, social, automation, etc.) ready to support our digital marketing efforts and, if not, what’s lacking?

Plan

Now that there is a baseline understanding of your current digital marketing performance, we’ll move into the Plan Stage where we will collaborate on, research, and define the following:

  • Discovery — a deeper dive into your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, competitors, etc.
  • Targeting Strategy —  the top buyer personas you’re after and where to reach them online.
  • Overarching Content Strategy — the overarching content funnel needed to engage your targeted buyer personas so they naturally move from one relationship level to the next.
  • Traffic Strategy — where and how we’ll distribute content (through organic and paid methods) to make sure that your content is optimally placed in front of your targeted buyer personas.
  • Lead Generation Strategy — specific premium content and resources needed to convert buyer personas into leads in your database.
  • Lead Nurturing and Marketing Automation Strategy — the specific content and automation needed to nurture leads into opportunities/sales.
  • Measurement & Reporting Protocol — define the metrics that matter, how we’re going to measure those metrics, and how we’re going to report on those metrics.
  • Technology Requirements — define the technologies needed to empower the strategies defined above.
  • Logistics — define which team (client vs. agency) is responsible for what, follow-up action items, setting regular meeting rhythms, etc.

Build

In the Build Stage, we’ll build the foundation needed to empower your digital marketing program. This includes:

  • Landing Page Templates
  • Email Templates
  • Digital Marketing Dashboard
  • Marketing Automation Funnel
  • Lead Generation Offers
  • Website Optimization
  • Ad Platforms

NOTE: The Assess, Plan, and Build stages will only need to be executed once. These stages have a finite “project” period of 45-60 days. Once complete, we’ll move into a monthly “service” period that includes the Drive, Optimize, and Grow stages below.

Drive

In the Drive Phase, based on your growth objectives, resources, and budget, we’ll drive visits and engagement using some or all of the following methods:

  • Email Newsletters/Blasts
  • Paid Traffic
  • Online PR/Social Media
  • Content/SEO

These methods are listed in priority order with the top methods driving visits and engagement much faster than the bottom methods.

Optimize

Hand-in-hand with the Drive activities, we’ll Optimize your digital marketing program for maximum performance which includes:

  • Reporting & Coaching
  • Lead Generation Offer Optimization (CTAs, Landing/Thank You Pages)
  • Ad Performance Optimization
  • CRO (conversion rate optimization)

Grow

Once your program is up-and-running, we’ll strategize additional content and offers to engage existing and/or new buyer personas which include:

  • Consulting on Program Growth
  • Targeted Lead Generation Offers and Related Assets
  • Content and Features to Support Buyers’ Journeys

Along with daily, as-needed communication, we will establish a standing weekly meeting with you and your key stakeholders. This allows us to set expectations for weekly tasks, deliver incremental reports, and make quick decisions regarding timely needs. Note: Once-a-month standing meetings may also be established based on your communication preference.

This is a very complex question that demands a thorough answer.

But, before we provide marketing budget recommendations, let’s define it: Your marketing budget refers to all costs for marketing, advertising, public relations, event marketing, and anything else you might leverage to promote the brand and drive revenue.

Based on the latest research, our expert opinions, and years of marketing experience, we, generally, recommend:

You should spend 2 to 5 percent of your sales revenue on marketing.

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends spending 7 to 8 percent of your gross revenue if you’re garnering less than $5 million a year in sales and your net profit margin—after all expenses—is in the 10 percent to 12 percent range. For new companies (startups), especially those in competitive markets, these numbers increase to 12 to 20 percent. For established companies, you should be spending 6 to 12 percent of gross revenue on marketing.

What about digital marketing-specific budgets? 

According to Forrester Research Inc., most industries such as design and media, transportation, retail, health and beauty, real estate, information technology, agriculture and environment, and building and construction dedicate 50 to 65 percent of their overall marketing budget to digital marketing specifically.

When working with Unified Marketing, if you haven’t already defined an annual marketing budget, we will build one with you collaboratively. This budget will be derived from real, meaningful, benchmark data that we plug into a business math formula to determine your COCA (Cost of Customer Acquisition). Some example metrics within the formula include:

  • Monthly Website Visits
  • Visit-to-Lead Conversion/Sale Percentage
  • Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Percentage
  • Opportunity-to Customer Conversion Percentage
  • Average Initial Order/Contract Value (IOV)
  • Average Lifetime Value (LTV)

From here, we can begin to determine necessary, profitable budgets based on your goals and benchmark data, and begin to project marketing ROI as well.

We determine success metrics for all program activities by performing a COCA (cost of customer acquisition) analysis prior to any contracting.

We consider metrics like the LTR (lifetime revenue) of our client’s customers, our client’s gross margin, LTV (lifetime value), and COCA% to determine a max COCA$ that ensures a program with eventual ROI.

For lead generation campaigns, we also consider monthly objectives like website visitors, leads, qualified leads, opportunities, and customers along with the conversion rate at each point.

Paid/direct response KPI examples would include metrics such as impression-share, CPC, CTR, landing page engagement, and conversions.

We track KPIs through a varied tool stack that includes, Google Analytics, Shopify Analytics, HubSpot, and more.

Yes, exhaustive competitor analysis and benchmark report is a mandatory initiative/service for all new client programs. Save

We leverage best-in-class tools like Google Analytics, Google Trends, Ahref, SEM Rush, Raven Tools, Moz, ScreamingFrog, Majestic, Sprout Social, Spyfu, SearchMetrics, and more to deliver comprehensive peer analysis, audit reports, forecasting, and future strategy planning.

Absolutely!

If we cannot help you with your marketing needs, we will help you get in touch with someone who can.  We have built an extensive network of agency partners who we work with regularly and trust.

Yes, we work with clients all across the US and beyond.

We work primarily with B2B clientele, with anywhere from 5-150+ employees, producing 1M-50M+ in annual revenue, that have a considered sales cycle, that needs a high volume of qualified leads.  We work primarily in industries such as medical, finance, professional services, trade professionals, software, and technology.

Miscellaneous Information

Yes, providing thought leadership, and being active in the global marketing community are very important to our team. Our team members have spoken at universities, entrepreneur organization events, local high schools, marketing events, and conferences around the world on a variety of topics.

We work to stay on the cutting edge of digital marketing best practices, always develop new talks and slide decks, and openly share our ‘secret sauce’ from our client’s success in order to ensure attendees garner valuable, unique content.

Get in touch with us to discuss your conference or event. Adam Segall, our CEO, is also available to deliver keynote presentations. If you are interested, please contact us.

Monday – Friday, 8 AM – 6 PM EST, but we are always available for last-minute, late-night chats, if necessary.

Tools & Partnerships

We’re a certified Google partner agency managing over 1 million dollars in annual client ad spend.

With team-wide certifications across Google’s entire suite of ad products, Search, Display, Mobile, Video, and Shopping, we’re able to connect with a wide variety of our client’s target audiences at the optimal stage of their buyer’s journey to effectively drive brand awareness, website engagement, lead generation, and sales.

We have a large and varied digital marketing tool stack to assist with reporting, client communications, file sharing, campaign planning, campaign tracking, trend monitoring, analytics insights, CRO, and more. Here are just a few examples:

  • Google Drive
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Data Studio
  • Google Trends
  • Google Tag manager
  • Google Ads + Keyword Planner
  • Google Optimize
  • Facebook Pixel Helper
  • Sprout Social
  • Hootsuite
  • HeyOrca
  • Buffer
  • Buzzsumo
  • Ahrefs
  • SEM Rush
  • Lucky Orange
  • Screaming Frog
  • Tag Assistant
  • Moz Local
  • Moz Pro
  • Bright Local
  • HubSpot Blog
  • HubSpot Analytics
  • HubSpot Marketing Software & Sales CRM
  • Slack
  • Dropbox
  • Basecamp
  • Canva
  • Adobe Suite

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

If you own a business or manage a website of any kind, you likely want target audiences to visit it. SEO is important because it’s specifically aimed at helping do just this; improve the online presence and traffic for a website. SEO helps you show up at the most important stage of your customer’s journey when they are actively looking for products and services you offer, or resources and information for which you have expert insights.

Our SEO approach calls for segmenting organic search traffic/queries, and therefore website engagement, into 1 of 4 buckets, Google calls these query categories “micro-moments:”
  1. “I want to know”
  2. “I want to go”
  3. “I want to do”
  4. “I want to buy”
We leverage industry trends and insights on the search behavior from these micro-moments to guide on-page optimization strategy for relevant pages, build funnels, and segment users to appropriate landing pages that are hyper-relevant to their query.
As an example, for an eCommerce client, our keyword research and focus may center around “I want to buy” intent/queries. As a result, we would optimize intent/action-based pages (product pages) around purchase-related keyword queries and topics to best serve the user and improve relevance with Google.
From each query, we can extrapolate intent. Furthermore, each page should serve a very specific function and play a unique role in the user’s buyer’s journey whether they are in the awareness, consideration, or decision stage.
A homepage, as another example, is typically serving branded/reputation-based keyword queries and search intent, and aligns with the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.
A blog post, for example, serves education-based keyword queries and search intent, and aligns with the awareness and consideration stages of the buyer’s journey.
We work to understand how we can best position the website to serve users with relevant content at the optimal stage of their journey, identify what KPIs should we be measuring to demonstrate increased engagement, and focus on how can we improve performance over time.

The Beginning (0-6 months): 

The first 6 months of any SEO effort are almost always exclusively dedicated to fixing mistakes, fine-tuning, and closing the gap between what your website has in place and current SEO best practices.

Once completed, these efforts can have ongoing and compounding benefits for years to come. The newly accessible and optimized pages start earning rankings and traffic, which foster more links, more exposure, more sharing, and more business.

The Turning Point (6-18 months):

Eventually, the list of actionable, immediate fixes and optimizations depletes. At this point, your website will hit an “SEO Plateau.”

In order to reach the next growth plateau (between campaign months 6-18), you must invest in new strategies, such as:

  • New Keywords & Content
  • New Verticals & SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Features
  • Additional SERP Domination
  • Moving Up the Buyer Funnel
  • International/Multi-Language Targeting

Local SEO is a hyper-specific tactic that focuses on optimizing your website to achieve local search rankings by ensuring that your business is properly represented on review sites like Yelp, City Search, Kudzoo, and others.

Your Local SEO Expert focuses on making sure that your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) are correct and consistent across these listings so Google indexes your business information and website appropriately.

SEO as a broader practice focuses on optimizing your content – your blog and your website content, in general – to ensure it’s fresh, accurate, and interesting for search engines.

Content Marketing

Yes. This is performed in-house, at no additional cost outside of the agreed-upon content development scope between Unified Marketing and our clients.

Specific content deliverables include, but are not limited to: owned blog content, earned blog content placement, infographics, white papers, photo edits, video edits, landing pages, webpages, executive interviews, etc.

Yes. We offer digital content placement, blog posts, interactive content, infographic creation and marketing, directory submissions, citation creation, and competitor backlink analysis.

Yes. CRO is a primary service offering provided in-house for which we have a dedicated team. We leverage tools like Crazy Egg and Google Optimize to deliver website personalization and multivariate testing for our clients.

We do not offer video production in-house. But, we often recommend and work closely with local video production contractors and agencies.

Paid (Advertising & Retargeting)

We offer paid advertising campaign management across a variety of social media and search engine platforms including:
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Google
  • and others…

First, we select a list of research-backed, optimized keywords that will be triggered by users searching in search engines like Google.

For those keywords, we develop and write advertising creative to market your products or services so that users will your advertisement when they search for relevant terms.

You will pay each time a user clicks on the advertisement and traffic is delivered to your website.  This payment model is referred to as Cost per Click (CPC).

The CPC amount you will pay is dependent upon a preset “maximum bid” determined by what you’re willing to spend. Additionally, there are other factors that influence the CPC such as the quality of your advertising account structure, advertising creative, and advertising relevance.

Upon returning your SOW, your strategist will schedule a kick-off phone call or in-person meeting with your team. We will take over management of your campaigns at this time and follow up on the action items we outlined in our initial audit of your account and your SOW. Generally, within 1-3 weeks of our initial kick-off call, you will have a newly-revised series of campaigns ready to launch!

Paid social media advertising works similarly to paid search advertising in the fact that cost is often accrued on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis — that is, you pay only for the traffic that is delivered to your website from the advertisement. That said, there are two noteworthy differences between paid social media advertising and paid search advertising:

  1. Paid social media advertising targets buyers during different stages of their buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration, decision), whereas paid search advertising mostly targets people in the consideration and decision stages.
  2. Paid social media advertising is “passive” in that the advertisement is delivered to people that match certain audience criteria as opposed to paid search advertising where the advertisement is delivered to people based on their “active” keyword search on websites like Google, and YouTube, etc.

Our approach to developing paid campaigns depends on variables like campaign goals, buyer personas, our clients’ sales cycles, and commercial transaction type (B2B or B2C).

EX) Optimizing lead-gen campaigns with Google Ads for B2C companies with considered sales cycles, requires razor-sharp buyer personas and demographic targeting, tightly themed ad groups, testing ad copy and enticing offers, focused landing pages, and a variety of keywords.

Email Marketing

Yes. We have experience with HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, MailChimp, Constant Contact, and MassiveMKTG.

However, we primarily leverage MassiveMKTG’s email marketing and automation tools to manage email marketing and lead nurturing campaigns for our clients. We build templates, workflows, and automation. Additionally, we offer list management and comprehensive reporting to help you make informed decisions.

We can work with any list size.

We’ve worked with startups whose main goal was list growth and development, growing them from zero subscribers to more than two thousand in 90 days.

We’ve also worked with clients who had lists with hundreds of thousands of emails and worked to segment, optimize, and grow their lists in alignment with larger digital campaign objectives.

Our clients work with us to send anywhere from 1 to 12 emails per month. These include promotional emails, sales emails, and/or newsletters.

We also build workflows and set up lifecycle emails such as welcome series, win-back emails, transactional emails, and triggered emails that are automated.