We are over halfway through the year, and today we would like to talk about the SEO strategies for 2018 that businesses would need to watch for and implement.

When it comes to SEO, the strategies used today are tweaked and changed consistently. Even when one approach has worked in the past, it can be completely inefficient in the future. However, some strategies have been improved. Let us explain what these SEO trends are that we need to look out for:

1. Using Voice Search: Voice search is becoming the most popular way for users to search the web. Every day millions of people ask their phone for the answers to their problems. How do you get everyone’s phone to respond with your answer? This is the million dollar question that we have the answer too. Simply put, you must provide the best answer. In-depth, you must give more details, in a fast and easily understood manner. Not only should you answer the question but you should answer any questions that may arise. So if the question is, how do I tie my shoes? You should provide multiple ways to tie your shoes, provide images or videos to support it, and answer questions such as, how do I tie my shoes when I can’t see or how where do I buy new shoe strings. Providing links to answer these questions is better than having a user go back to Google to search more.
2. Think Mobile: Although using laptops, at this time, is never going out of style, almost everyone today owns a mobile device. How could this information help with SEO? Simple. Let’s say someone wants to call a plumbing service. All they would have to do is search for a plumbing service on their smartphone and call the number. With Voice Search and Call Only Extensions, it is easier for customers to contact your business on a mobile device. Also, make sure that your website is mobile-responsive. To test your website’s mobile responsiveness, you can add in your domain URL in the Mobile-Friendly Test tool from Google and find out your results.
3. Create Video Content:  Youtube is the world’s second largest search engine. This means that your potential customers will be looking for your products and services through video content. When you combine long, quality content with engaging videos, you will begin to reach more people on both platforms which will then typically lead to more conversions.
4. Writing In-Depth Content: Gone are the days where you could write thin, keyword-stuffed content and ranked on the first page of Google. In 2018, high-quality, relevant content remains and is still king. Well-written articles with infographics, images, and video to help solve your customer’s problems will always reign supreme. When a website has long, quality content, the searcher that’s looking for a solution to their problem will have everything they need in one area.

Conclusion

We hope that we’ve helped to understand some of the top SEO strategies for 2018. Using these four strategies should help to boost your websites search engines results, giving your site a higher ranking.

When it comes to designing your website, you shouldn’t feel embarrassed. Not everyone is born with a super creative mind. To be a top-notch web designer, it is a must to practice this skill on a daily basis. Having said that, what if you, as non-designer, can design a site that looks beautiful and elegant compared to well-talented web designers? Well, guess what, you can. Just follow some of the tips below.

Here, we will give you great web design tips even if you don’t have a creative bone in your body:

• Build Your Brand Identity: It all starts with your brand. The questions you need to ask yourself are, what does your brand name represent? What makes you as brand stand above your competition? When you find the answers to your questions about your brand, you start to picture images of what your brand identity should look like.
• Keep it Simple: Web design doesn’t have to be complicated. Far from it. Realize that using web design that leans towards the minimal end of the spectrum is usually the best approach. You always want your design to be simple, elegant and easy on the eyes.
• Learn Color Theory: Like we mentioned about your brand identity, you will have visuals that will pop into your mind. What are certain colors that will fit with your personality and brand image? You may have favorite colors that may resonate with your website that will have it looking very professional. Please try not to use all the colors of the rainbow for your web design. Use a few colors and again, keep it minimal.
• Use Proper Photography: Make sure that you are choosing the right quality images for your website. In addition, make sure that you are careful of using copyrighted photos. In most cases, it is best to use your own pictures to design your website, so you don’t get into legal problems.
• Be Consistent With Your Web Design: Everything from your website must be consistent at all times from your images, to the fonts, to the color schemes, and to your content. Every element must fit together when someone navigates through your pages.

Conclusion

Even though you may be a non-designer, use these web design tips for your website, which help you build your website like the professionals.

I’m sure many us can remember a time in our lives where someone said something negative about us. It certainly doesn’t feel good when knowing the things that were said negatively about us were not true and we had to handle the situation by proving to others that the rumors were false. When it comes to promoting your business online, there are others out there that wish to put your company in danger and at risk of losing revenue, and above all, your reputation. With the emergence of social media platforms, it most certainly makes it easy for companies to have a target on their backs. Having said that, here’s the question:

What is Reputation Management and how it can help your company alleviate any bad press online?

Reputation management is a technique that incorporates marketing efforts and campaigns to bury negative reviews, information or search results and promote content that positively shows the desired image of a company.

Here’s how Reputation Management can manage your online presence:

• Increase Sales and Revenue: The internet is the primary spot for individuals to connect to when they are searching for answers to their problems. It is the best place to search and research for all kinds of topics. One of the best ways to use Reputation Management and increase your sales and revenue is to directly engage with customers through the means of social media and your website. Of course, this should be done in a positive light and you must be transparent so your customers can continue to trust you. The company who is implementing Reputation Management should make sure they find a reputable person or marketing company to take over this role.
• Build Credibility: Like we mentioned previously, gaining your customer’s trust is of the utmost importance for a business to survive online. Whether you’re in the B2C or B2B market, the internet gives your customers a voice to say whatever is on their mind online if they aren’t happy with your service or your product. One negative comment about your brand will spread much faster than a positive one. Once you have a reputation management strategy in place to alleviate negative reviews, it helps you build your credibility as a brand that deeply cares about its customers and wants to improve your services and products.
• Build a Brand Image: With Reputation Management, you can definitely build a better brand image for your company. Once you or a marketing agency can monitor the responses that are being put out by bad press comments, any attacks can be dealt with swiftly. This can be done by publishing a social media post, where positive dialogue can begin to build your brand’s image moving forward.

Conclusion

Building credibility and brand image are paramount. In the end, businesses make mistakes and it is their duty to have their loyal customers trust them again and continue to service them in the most ethical way. This is the power of Reputation Management.

While it is true, many consumers spend less on services such as contractors and repair services due to saving for the holidays and holiday shopping in general, many consumers still contract services. November and December are the slowest months in Real Estate, however, consumers still list homes and buy homes in these slower months. What causes your peers and colleagues to capture these sales and revenue while you do not?Marketing Firm Melbourne FL

During slower time periods it can be common for some business owners to take spiral of death approach to managing the business. When sales are slower, maybe you pull back your advertising spend, if you have marketing budget at all. This is the time where you should double down on your efforts. Ensure you have the most refined business plan developed and in place, which in large part includes a well-executed marketing program. The service providers that realize success in the 4th Quarter of the year or the realtors that capitalize on the buyers and sellers in this market are those successful businesses that execute their business plans effectively, focus on their efforts and market in this season. The businesses that do not change their behaviors to meet the changing climate or seasonality of their businesses are those that fail during these times. Don’t take my word for it. Gary Keller, the famous founder of Keller Williams Real Estate Group discusses this problem at length in his New York Times Best Seller “Shift” where he calls out why 98% of the real estate community left the industry after failing miserably during the 2008 recession and why just 2% of the top performing realtors realized tremendous success during those terrible economic times.

Whether you’re a retailer or wholesaler that stands to partake in a significant revenue increase during the 4th Quarter of the year or a service provider that typically sees a tremendous revenue slow down, navigating your 4th Quarter successful requires a strategic marketing program.

People have asked us; Are you too small that we cannot pitch you to our investors? Are you too big for my company that I cannot afford you? How many employees do you have? Do you conduct your own marketing? Do you practice what you preach? Do you rank within organic search for your own keywords? Those questions are really great questions. Allow us to provide a bit of insight and give you a glimpse of who we are.

The AD Leaf ® is intrigued to collaborate in excellence with company’s at all sizes, in multiple business modalities, and industries. Our core focus is to foster positive relationships where our client’s culture centers around executing a business plan which in large part includes a well-strategized marketing plan in order to improve their company.Shareholders, employees, and investors like these sorts of new-fangled ideas, right? We collaborate and work with clients that possess a home based office up to and including one Fortune 50 and two Fortune 100 companies. Our marketing and advertising firm’s capabilities provide a boutique & mid-size agency level size with the flexibility to scale up or down to meet our client’s needs. Per the project, The AD Leaf ® can mold and mesh to the Main Street marketing firm size without the exorbitant cost structures often associated with these relationships.

Our capabilities allow us to develop strategies born out of the idea of ensuring our client’s success is at the center of our professional work product. We are not the agency that attempts to fit a square peg into a round hole. Please do not assume or ask if we are an SEO company because you may slightly insult us. We understand that digital marketing is not the best fit for every company, and conversely that when you tell us your only marketing program has been word of mouth that you absolutely need tremendous amounts of marketing help. We develop strategies and marketing programs that are tailored to your company’s needs, business trends, industry standards, and best practices. What success looks like to you, is what success looks like to us.

Our team is comprised of degreed, innovative, well refined, and exciting professionals from diverse realms within the marketing vertical. Our leadership team has supported the growth and successful operations, and development of several Fortune 50 and 100 companies in the fields of senior level operations leadership and marketing. We also love coffee, environmental causes, human rights, and we are die hard gator fans. Once, we worked with a Noles fan and student on our team but we sent her back to college!

E: info@theadleaf.com | P: 321.255.0900 | Skype: Chris.Delarue

Summer time brings lots of fun at the beach, pool parties, barbeques, and fun gatherings.  It also can be a time for sales slowdowns for many businesses.  Depending on your business model, industry, product and or service, your sales can lower drastically during the summer months.  This drastic reduction in sales can lower profitability, cause you to lay off staff, and be enough of a downturn to instill worry about your business potentially affecting your quality of life.

This thought our idea does not have to be the reality for your business.  While these trends are cyclical in many business models, there are tactics and processes you can employ to mitigate or lessen the effects of the summer sale slow down.

Because most millennials are enjoying summer break, parents are taking vacations while their children are off from school, and many people in general tend to enjoy more time off during the summer months.  This is a great opportunity for your company to redesign and execute a well-developed Social Media Marketing strategy for your company.

With more users (your customers) reviewing social media during the summer months at a more frequent pace, a well-developed Social Media Marketing program will ensure your brand, your products, and your services are or remain at the forefront of your intended audience.  You will have more opportunities to present your business to your customers in the summer months.

Consumers still purchase in the summer months, however, consumers will purchase from those brands that resonate with them and appeal to their needs and desires.  If you are nowhere to be found, if you are not interacting with your potential customers, and if you are not at the forefront of their attention when they are using the public and digital mediums, your sales will drop alongside of the rest of the businesses who realize a drastic sales slowdown during the summer months.

E: info@theadleaf.com | P: 321.255.0900 | Skype: Chris.Delarue

I Don’t Have the Money to Market my Business

If we had a nickel for every time we have heard the statement “I Don’t have money to market my business”, “It’s not in the budget”, or “We’ve spent so much money in marketing we are not going to do it anymore”, we would be billionaires!

Here’s the skinny. In the 1980’s my grandparents spent $2500.00 per month for a full page phone book advertisement for their business that may or may not have procured customers with their local audience of 25,000 citizens. Why? Because we had to market? Said Grandma. It wasn’t something we could afford to gamble with if we wanted to stay in business. Sure, we had referral customers, but people move away, retire, and their life situations changed.”

In business, like in life, we make time and money for what we ultimately feel is important. If you truly started a business without capital funding to run your business and execute your business plan, then you do not really have a business. What you do have is a whim and a prayer. That is not only dangerous for you, that is dangerous for your customers, employees, vendors, and will open you up to potential legal action should you default with one of many of the folks I just listed. In most situations, when we hear those statements around the availability of money written in the first paragraph, the sad reality is, is that the business owner or decision maker really doesn’t understand executing a business plan and budgeting critical expenses like compliance education, legal counseling, training, and marketing. Understanding the fundamental problem that we really do make time and money for what we “think” is important in business, the expense categories I just listed are treated as a luxury expense. The 2016 business playing field screams to us that these expenses are anything but luxury items.

In September 2013, Forbes Magazine and Bloomberg Weekly reported that 8 out of 10 business fail within the first 18 months. In addition, another sad reality is, is that many of the small business clients that approach our marketing firm to engage in marketing services have waited to the absolute last conceivable minute to do anything about marketing, they(you) are in jeopardy of losing the business and closing the doors. Many believe that $500.00 and one month of marketing is going to somehow function as the magic bullet that saves your business from failure. That is not the case. If you have waited to execute your business plan until you are in trouble, I’m afraid to tell you it may be too late.

Now that we have called out what the typical small business owner trajectory is, here is how you can prevent you and your business from becoming just another statistic and failed concept. First, educate yourself in writing a business plan. Put together funding to run your startup company. You are not the first person that has thought up a great idea, or invented a game-changing widget, or developed the best possible concept. You cannot start a business without funding and a business plan, it will not work. Interview and be sure you have vetted the right vendors to support what your needs are. Understand that you are not the subject matter expert in all areas and don’t treat critical expenses such as legal compliance, Human Resources training, corporate compliance, and Marketing as luxury expenses because they are not. Think about this conceptually like a baseball or football team. There is a reason why the pitcher is not playing all positions on the team. It’s simply because he or she is not great at right field or shortstop. He’s the pitcher! Finally, just like you would expect for the services(or goods) you sell, hire and pay your business contacts an appropriate and fair market value fee for their services. If you think you can get away with going the cheap route for any needed expense, you are going to make a devastating and costly mistake in 2016. Your competitors are educated, they possess business the professional business acumen that you don’t have, and they have been seated at the table long before you came around. If you think that you can take short cuts and create a pathway to business success you are going to become another Forbes and Bloomberg statistic in 2016.

E: info@theadleaf.com | P: 321.255.0900 | Skype: Chris.Delarue