Whether it's creating a Facebook page for your business or jumping on the hottest new social media or marketing trend, the answer is (unsurprisingly) "it depends."

However, each business is unique. There's no "one-size-fits-all" approach that can yield consistent results across products, industries, and demographics. 

What to Ask Instead

Platforms and marketing tactics will change over time, but one thing that remains consistent is your business's need for a website.

Why is your website so important? You own your website (as opposed to content posted on social media platforms), and it's the 24/7 digital salesperson for your business. Some better questions to ask:

• Is my website working?
• What's wrong with my website?

How to Get People to My Website

• SEO
• Social Media
• Content

The Bottom Line

Instead of asking "should I be on Facebook," ask these  questions:

1. How can I make my website work better?
2. How can I create better content?
3. What's the overall strategy that ties it all together?
4. What are the overall channels we'll utilize?

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

"How long will marketing take to start working?" 

The truth is that marketing takes time to produce results because it's not a switch you flip on and off. It's more like an engine you have to get going up to speed slowly.

1. No One Knows Who You Are

As with person-to-person relationships, becoming familiar takes time. You wouldn't jump right into marriage on the first date. The same applies to developing a relationship with your audience before they become customers.

2. Your Customers Have Different Timelines

The typical customer journey looks like this:

• Awareness  
• Consideration
• Decision 
• Delight

Marketing effectively meets people where they are in the customer journey and guides them to the next step at their own pace. Your marketing plan should address all the different stages of the customer journey and be flexible enough for someone to drop in and out as necessary. 

3. Show Up In More Than One Place

Have you ever seen an ad online for a product and realize later that you have no idea how to find that company again? Businesses that don't effectively use their marketing to hold their audience's attention and turn them into qualified marketing lead end up losing customers. 

Instead, a brand can better retain its audience's attention by showing up in front of them in many different places. 

4. Brand Messaging and Visual Identity are Wrong

Poor functionality, lousy design, irrelevant messaging, and an outdated look in your website can distract your audience from considering your solution.

If a competitor's website looks and works ten times better than yours, customers will likely go back to the competitors when making a purchase decision.

5. You're Not Optimizing Your Marketing as it Runs

Unfortunately, many treat marketing as a 'set it and forget it' lever they can let run and revisit next year. However, to optimize your marketing (and marketing budget), it's vital to course-correct as you go.

The Bottom Line

The longer you take to start marketing, the longer it takes to start working. Don't waste any time. Get your company or brand in front of the right audience with the right message. 

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

5 Reasons Why Your Marketing Isn't Working

In this episode, Jessica and Kevin discuss how brands that are pursuing growth may be missing the mark when it comes to some of their marketing efforts.

1. Incorrect Brand Positioning

Are you talking about your business in a way that your customers are willing to learn about it? Many business owners struggle with marketing because they didn't position the company from their customer's perspective.

2. Lacking a Customer-Centric Approach to Messaging

Who is the best at communicating the value customers get from the business? Why, customers, of course!

3. Your Investment is Too Low

A business owner may see a new company (or competitor) with a great marketing strategy that makes them very successful. However, this competitor is only "new" to the business owner; they don't understand how long and how much planning and execution it took that company to get to that point. 

4. Not Enough Time Has Passed

Similar to point number three, your marketing may not be working simply because you haven't been doing it for long enough. 

5. It Doesn't Look Good

A B2B IT company around for 40 years may have an outdated website and branding that doesn't connect with a modern audience. This poor customer experience leaves the audience wondering whether the company is trustworthy and can deliver on the promises they make.

The Bottom Line

Just because you haven't been successful with marketing in the past doesn't mean it won't work for you in the future. The issues plaguing your marketing efforts are often difficult to identify from inside the company. That's why companies hire marketing experts and professionals to help them.

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

5 Marketing Things You Should Be Doing Right Now

Jessica and Kevin discuss the 5 Marketing Things You Should Be Doing Right Now. Why do them now? Remember the "Roaring Twenties?" Well, we're about to enter another "Roaring Twenties" in this century.

Here are the five marketing things you should be doing right now.

1. Talk to Your Customers

We've been asking our clients what they need now and what they think their business will need in the future. In addition to current clients, we also ask these same questions to people who would be ideal clients but don't work with us yet. 

2. Focus on How You're Going to Reach Business Goals

Concentrate on taking steps towards your goals every day or risk being in the same position this time next year.

3. Get Your Website Working for You

Customers demand a fast, beautiful website, but your time is better spent elsewhere than maintaining a website.

Also, your website should speak to the customer's needs and desires and paint the picture of a better future for them. Customers visit your website because they have a problem to be solved.

4. Show Off Your Employees in Your Marketing

Communicate to your audience that your team is there to help make things better as we all adjust to the new normal.

5. Outmarket Your Competitors

Many businesses have permanently closed, leaving many customers without the solution they need. Let them know you're ready to serve them.

The Bottom Line

Get in front of your audience and talk to your customers. If you find talking to customers challenging, Hot Dog Marketing can handle it for you. We love talking to the customers of our clients. 

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

Difference Between Brand Building and Lead Generation

There’s more than one kind of digital marketing approach. While most companies will benefit from brand building activities, not all businesses are a great fit for digital lead generation. In this episode, Kevin and I discuss the differences between the two styles of digital campaigns. Enjoy!

What is Brand Building?

Brand building is delivering a consistent message, look, feel, and story through consistent channels to the right audience. Many companies haven't thought through what their brand message is.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is getting new people into your sales funnel so they develop into customers. Having a lead generation program setup can be much more effective in terms of reach and costs than hiring another outbound salesperson.

Effective Lead Generation Needs Brand Building and Vice Versa

If a movie is uninteresting, it doesn't matter how much it turns up in front of people, they won't want to watch it. On the other hand, a fantastic movie needs the word to be spread. 

Do Both

Build your brand with audiences who aren't ready to buy yet. Use lead generation to provide a clear path for those who are ready to buy. 

The Bottom Line

Most small businesses don't have the bandwidth or expertise to focus on both brand building and lead generation activities. They don't have the time or resources, either. The best option is by sticking to what they do best and trust their marketing actions to an expert partner like Hot Dog Marketing.

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

What are Marketing Goals?

How can a company set intentional growth goals for the year after simply making it through the year 2020? 

In this episode, Jessica Scanlon and Kevin Ring dive into marketing goals. 

Know Where You Want Your Business to go this Year

Most business leaders have their goals in mind and know where they want to go, but they don't know how marketing applies to those goals. Even more so, they often aren't aware of the marketing tactics available.

Preparing the Business and the Leader

Along with putting together the marketing machine that drives growth, we help our business leader clients level up their marketing knowledge and skills. 

Favorite Business Goals We See

• Grow by $10MM in 7 years
• Diversify channels where leads come from
• Diversify client base
• Move to a higher-value client base

Examples of Good Marketing Goals

• Building brand equity
• Increasing the value of leads
• Increasing the quality of leads
• Diversifying leads
• Account growth

Examples of Bad Marketing Goals

• Ranking #1 on Google
• 10k Instagram followers

Bottom Line for Setting Marketing Goals

Social media and SEO will certainly be a part of the strategy, but they are just tools to use to help a business achieve its true, underlying goals.

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

The Importance of Doing Things in Order

Why not jump into all the marketing services at the same time?

Is marketing strategy worth it?

In this episode, Jessica Scanlon and Kevin Ring discuss how important it is to do things in order when it comes to executing on marketing.

Focus on How You Deliver the Maximum Value

Jessica talks about the early days of Hot Dog Marketing when she began charging for the strategic aspect (instead of doing all that work for free!), she had some clients that would choose to skip the strategy and move straight into services.

This would always end up in poor performance in the client's marketing efforts and, predictably, disappointment.

Don't Market Without Planning

It's important to follow the steps and do them in order because marketing works best that way. It seems simple to jump right in with ads or another marketing service, but the outcomes will fall short of the business goals. Leading to either abandoning marketing, or having to pay even more to redo the services.

Bottom Line for Following the Marketing Steps

The main idea is that as a business leader, you don't want to miss any opportunities in acquiring customers because of a poor acquisition process. 

A typical gap for small businesses is having a poor website. At Hot Dog Marketing, we often use the analogy of a website (and entire marketing plan) being like a house. For people to feel comfortable entering and walking through the house, they need to know what to expect. Have a marketing plan that walks people through the whole experience, one step at a time.

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.

How do you balance a strategic plan and flexibility?

How can you plan for a year that already seems like it'll be unpredictable?

Jessica Scanlon and Kevin Ring discuss how to win in business in 2021. They talk about how to take the lessons learned from the wild ride that was 2020 and apply them to have a successful year in business, even when things don't turn out like you expected (or wanted).

Business owners and decision-makers that lead teams and companies through 2020 saw many projects that weren't finished and deadlines that weren't met. This can be a very emotional experience as business leaders may find themselves reassessing their business's direction due to diminished demand (e.g. event venues), or even a disappearing audience (e.g. office workers). 

Focus on the Goal, be Flexible on the Method

Although the means and methods might change, being solidly rooted in the end goal of meeting customers' needs will be a much more worthwhile perspective. 

Don't Put It Off - Act Now

Stopping marketing and communication efforts with customers will disconnect businesses from their target audiences, losing points and making them much more difficult to win back.

Bottom Line for Winning in 2021

Key takeaways for surviving and thriving in 2021:

• Stay alive
• Understand the value that you provide
• Don't hold too fast to your plans to deliver value
• Remain flexible
• Give yourself a break
• Plan for success

Remember to focus on the big goal-the light at the end of the tunnel. 

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Hot Dog Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Round Rock, TX serving small and medium-sized businesses. We excel in delivering marketing strategy, digital marketing, website design and development, and outstanding customer service.