Allow experience to build your business
The competition is fierce when you’re operating a business in the digital space.
Everyone is trying to get the attention of their respective target audience and the resulting clamor drowns hundreds – if not thousands – of businesses without the chance of getting their voices heard.
Enter inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a strategic pathway that aligns your content with the specific needs of your customers.
That need will depend entirely on where they are on their buyer’s journey. They could be in the awareness stage, or they could be in the decision stage.
In the buyer’s journey, you’re at the awareness stage. Inbound marketers will pump out content that specifically answers the queries of your target audience that turns you into a thought leader in your niche.
In turn, your credibility and trustworthiness increase in the eyes of your target audience. For this reason, businesses acquire the expertise of inbound marketing retainers.
These are highly skilled professionals that can drive traffic to your site. The bigger traffic, the bigger your audience becomes. And the bigger your audience, the more leads you can convert into paying clients, ultimately increasing your bottom line.
For many businesses, an inbound marketing campaign is a time-consuming and complicated task because it involves nitty gritty details, strategic planning, and constant monitoring and adjustment.
This is especially true if you’re a small- or mid-sized company, a start-up, or a growing business.
Instead of wasting time and diluting your resources which prevents you from focusing on your growth, why not work with a reputable inbound marketing agency? At LOJO Marketing, we do all the time-consuming and complicated things so you can focus on your most important goal–growing your business.
In these ways, your inbound marketing campaign can generate high ROI because it’s designed to attract and reach your target audience at the right time and place. In short, it understands and respects the buyer’s journey.
Think of us as a team of subject matter experts who understand today’s digital marketing and how it should reflect the new consumer sentiment and business landscape. By working with us, you don’t have to worry about hiring and training in-house digital marketing staff so that you can focus on your core operations.
Most of our members have at least five years of experience in their field. Through immersion, we have developed our niche skills and gained valuable knowledge that can give you a competitive edge in the digital sphere.
Since digital marketing trends and customer sentiments constantly change, we invest in our staff’s training and certification. In fact, we encourage everyone to allot a few hours a week to learn about the latest news like the recent Google algorithm changes, current market trends, etc.
Additionally, we give each team member access to premium e-learning platforms and encourage them to gain at least one certification or undergo training every 2-3 months.
In a nutshell, it’s an agreement between you and a digital marketing agency to purchase a service plan for a determined amount of hours (per month, quarterly, or yearly).
And as a client, the initial hours are determined by our team’s assessment of your needs and projects; however, the specific details of each project in the coming months may change, depending on the issues you’re facing. Simply put, the retainer plan provides more flexibility and consistency, which are the key to your long-term success.
Our retainer plans are developed based on the projected scope of work and estimates of hours and project management needs for your specific project (we generally base this on our experience and previous campaigns).
Here are some special cases, a project-based agreement may better suit you.
In short, a project-based model suits you if you have a one-off need or a short-term goal paired with a smaller budget.
What are the benefits of inbound marketing retainers?
With a retainer structure, the hourly rate is lower compared to a project-based agreement since you are getting a blended rate for pre-purchasing hours.
With the benefits mentioned above, our retainer agreement is most suited if you’re into a long-term game.
This is especially true if your goals include building a stronger online presence and brand recognition.
V.S
Our retainer plans come into basic types: pay for work and pay for access. Continue reading below to determine what works best for you.
This is the most common retainer plan in which your digital marketing agency provides you with an ongoing service. By contrast, a project-basis structure is only functionable as long as they are paid for every hour worked.
This means other agencies or companies may outbid each other for the retainer’s time.
In short, the pay for work retainer means you’re paying your agency for the time they spend providing you with specific deliverables and work included in the agreement.
With this model, your digital marketing team does not trade hours for dollars, meaning the time spent on your project is not really connected to the retainer fees you’re paying them.
As its name suggests, pay for access retainer means you pay for an agency to access their in-depth knowledge, experience, expertise and continuing education and training. Depending on the agreement, you can pay them monthly, quarterly or even annually.
To learn which type of retainer contract will suit your needs, you need to answer the following questions below:
Inbound marketing is a long game that requires ongoing monitoring, analysis and improvement to ensure that your campaign reaches your target audience and your content remains relevant and engaging with your customers.
If you’re still not sure if an inbound marketing retainer is suitable for your business, continue reading below and learn more about its notable benefits:
If you want to save time and money and don’t like to dilute your organization’s resources, opt for a retainer plan; this is especially true when you don’t want the stresses involved in hiring and managing an in-house digital marketing team.
By contrast, having your own in-house digital marketing team means you’re responsible for each employee’s healthcare, 410K program and other benefits.
Additionally, you need to provide them with continuous training and pay for e-learning courses to keep their skills up-to-date.
When you sign up for LOJO Marketing’s retainer plan, you can access our team’s in-depth knowledge and experience; this is like having access to a group of people (or to be exact, a valuable human resource) at your disposal.
All successful digital marketing strategies have one thing in common: They are managed by a team of star employees (or better yet, a constellation of talents) rather than handled by a one-person crew.
Consequently, many small- and mid-sized companies find it more cost-effective to work with an online marketing agency than have their own in-house staff.
In general, a la carte services are ideal for someone who just needs an agency to implement specific tactics without any real insight or any value-added offer. By contrast, inbound marketing retainers are primarily designed to deliver your business goals, with task implementation only as a secondary focus.
Instead of working with multiple agencies, why not just partner with a full-service digital marketing company like the LOJO team so you can get the best talents to handle your website, SEO, social media, blog site, graphic design, content, email marketing, etc.
Think of your inbound marketing campaign as a clock that needs multiple gears designed to run everything smoothly and consistently. For this reason, you need a powerful project management tool that allows you to set a hierarchy of tasks to ensure efficient and timely completion.
The right project management tool also allows you to indicate which tasks or actions are sequential, which in turn, promotes smooth collaboration between members of your team. As a result, everyone knows their responsibilities and accountability, which are the keys to transparency and efficiency.
The right project management tool also allows you to indicate which tasks or actions are sequential, which in turn, promotes smooth collaboration between members of your team. As a result, everyone knows their responsibilities and accountability, which are the keys to transparency and efficiency.
With our project management tools, you can enjoy accurate AI predictions that will allow you to determine when campaigns can be completed and how much they cost. And with more precise and realistic planning, it’s also easier to save time and money and, more importantly, to focus on your core business goals.
Hootsuite is an excellent example of a tool that paves the way for easy project planning.
While it’s not a project management app in the strictest sense of the word since it’s primarily designed for managing social media channels, it has features that can help you execute projects aimed to improve your marketing and public relations with your audience.
Proper project management tools can help you manage your most valuable resource, i.e., people, by allowing you to designate tasks reasonably, accurately and realistically to each team member. As a result, you can eliminate burnout, inefficiencies, errors and bottlenecks.
With the right project management tool, team members can discuss the timelines, tasks, outstanding work, errors and other issues. This is critical since the long-term success of your inbound marketing campaign relies on smooth and transparent collaboration.
With collaboration, it’s also easier to address problems, increase efficiency and adapt to the ever-changing business landscape and consumer sentiment.
Take for example Asana, a project management tool that allows team members to break down large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks.
With more accurate forecasting, you can define the stages of your project and create a plan that sets your business up for success.This is especially important nowadays when project managers typically handle multiple campaigns and teams simultaneously.
All marketing projects require proper allocation of resources like time, effort, talents and arguably the most important of all–budget. For this reason, you need a project management tool that gives you an accurate forecast and real-time financial picture for each project, allowing you to compare the planned budget and the actual expenses, and make the necessary adjustments.
With up-to-the-minute reporting and monitoring, you’ll know if you can meet the deadline, work within the budget, and make the necessary adjustments. Additionally, you can keep track of each task and monitor each team member.
Trello is arguably the most notable project management tool when it comes to real-time reporting, collaboration and simplicity since it looks like a board with sticky notes where you can organize projects and tasks and see their status, workflow and ownership.
Have you ever heard of the saying, “Any plan, even a bad plan, is better than none?” This is especially true in digital marketing campaigns where you need a comprehensive plan that includes identifying your target audience, establishing your budget and timeline, and determining your main goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Although your marketing plan should be backed by research, experience and industry standards, it doesn’t have to be perfect. As long as you create a plan with an open mind, sooner you’ll discover the errors, tweak some secondary goals and deadlines, and re-allocate resources and tasks until you meet your objectives.
But how do you create a comprehensive marketing plan, and what should you include when making one?
Here, we list a step-by-step guide to help you create an effective and comprehensive marketing plan for your business:
1. Create an executive summary.
It’s a summary of your company, its key function and the purpose of its marketing plan. You can also include future plans for your business and notable achievements.
2. Identify your target audience.
When you know your audience, it’s easier to focus your marketing efforts and budget on the demographics that are most likely to buy from you. As a result, you maximize your money, time and effort, resulting in high ROI.
3. Research your competitors.
Competitive research shows why customers buy from you or your competitors and how they market their products. Doing this also helps you understand their successes and failures, allowing you to improve your marketing programs and correct some gaps and weaknesses in your methods.
4. Establish your brand identity.
All your offline and online marketing efforts should reflect your brand, which is not just your name, design, symbol or any other visual identification (these are more accurately referred to as marketing tools).
Many people think that a brand is like a visual identity of a company, but it actually goes deeper. In reality, it’s a “feeling” and “belief” people have every time they see your company, product or anything associated with your business.
5. Budget your marketing plan
Marketing requires a budget for tools and software, paid ads and promotions, content creators, web developers and designers, web hosting, etc. In addition, this should cover all marketing-related expenses over the quarter or year, depending on your resources, timeframe, and what you want to achieve.
These are the other key factors that you must include when making a budget for your marketing plan:
Your website is your most valuable digital asset. Are you winning or losing business right now?
Talk to usAllow experience to build your business
The competition is fierce when you’re operating a business in the digital space.
Everyone is trying to get the attention of their respective target audience and the resulting clamor drowns hundreds – if not thousands – of businesses without the chance of getting their voices heard.
Enter inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a strategic pathway that aligns your content with the specific needs of your customers.
That need will depend entirely on where they are on their buyer’s journey. They could be in the awareness stage, or they could be in the decision stage.
In the buyer’s journey, you’re at the awareness stage. Inbound marketers will pump out content that specifically answers the queries of your target audience that turns you into a thought leader in your niche.
In turn, your credibility and trustworthiness increase in the eyes of your target audience. For this reason, businesses acquire the expertise of inbound marketing retainers.
These are highly skilled professionals that can drive traffic to your site. The bigger traffic, the bigger your audience becomes. And the bigger your audience, the more leads you can convert into paying clients, ultimately increasing your bottom line.
For many businesses, an inbound marketing campaign is a time-consuming and complicated task because it involves nitty gritty details, strategic planning, and constant monitoring and adjustment.
This is especially true if you’re a small- or mid-sized company, a start-up, or a growing business.
Instead of wasting time and diluting your resources which prevents you from focusing on your growth, why not work with a reputable inbound marketing agency? At LOJO Marketing, we do all the time-consuming and complicated things so you can focus on your most important goal–growing your business.
In these ways, your inbound marketing campaign can generate high ROI because it’s designed to attract and reach your target audience at the right time and place. In short, it understands and respects the buyer’s journey.
Think of us as a team of subject matter experts who understand today’s digital marketing and how it should reflect the new consumer sentiment and business landscape. By working with us, you don’t have to worry about hiring and training in-house digital marketing staff so that you can focus on your core operations.
Most of our members have at least five years of experience in their field. Through immersion, we have developed our niche skills and gained valuable knowledge that can give you a competitive edge in the digital sphere.
Since digital marketing trends and customer sentiments constantly change, we invest in our staff’s training and certification. In fact, we encourage everyone to allot a few hours a week to learn about the latest news like the recent Google algorithm changes, current market trends, etc.
Additionally, we give each team member access to premium e-learning platforms and encourage them to gain at least one certification or undergo training every 2-3 months.
In a nutshell, it’s an agreement between you and a digital marketing agency to purchase a service plan for a determined amount of hours (per month, quarterly, or yearly).
And as a client, the initial hours are determined by our team’s assessment of your needs and projects; however, the specific details of each project in the coming months may change, depending on the issues you’re facing. Simply put, the retainer plan provides more flexibility and consistency, which are the key to your long-term success.
Our retainer plans are developed based on the projected scope of work and estimates of hours and project management needs for your specific project (we generally base this on our experience and previous campaigns).
Here are some special cases, a project-based agreement may better suit you.
In short, a project-based model suits you if you have a one-off need or a short-term goal paired with a smaller budget.
What are the benefits of inbound marketing retainers?
With a retainer structure, the hourly rate is lower compared to a project-based agreement since you are getting a blended rate for pre-purchasing hours.
With the benefits mentioned above, our retainer agreement is most suited if you’re into a long-term game.
This is especially true if your goals include building a stronger online presence and brand recognition.
| PROFIT |
|---|
|
RETAINER MODEL |
|
Dedicated Marketer Ease of Access for all Marketing Campaigns Takes away menial tasks to allow you to grow the company The Retainer Model is to allow expansion of your business to be possible by letting a trained professional handle your marketing duties while you focus on growing the business. |
| SECURITY |
|---|
|
PROJECT-BASED MODEL |
|
Limited budget or time Clearly defined beginning and end of project Fixed schedule with defined goals and tasks The Project-based model is best used when you need to test campaigns, markets and need a study conducted for a limited time frame. |
Our retainer plans come into basic types: pay for work and pay for access. Continue reading below to determine what works best for you.
This is the most common retainer plan in which your digital marketing agency provides you with an ongoing service. By contrast, a project-basis structure is only functionable as long as they are paid for every hour worked.
This means other agencies or companies may outbid each other for the retainer’s time.
In short, the pay for work retainer means you’re paying your agency for the time they spend providing you with specific deliverables and work included in the agreement.
With this model, your digital marketing team does not trade hours for dollars, meaning the time spent on your project is not really connected to the retainer fees you’re paying them.
As its name suggests, pay for access retainer means you pay for an agency to access their in-depth knowledge, experience, expertise and continuing education and training. Depending on the agreement, you can pay them monthly, quarterly or even annually.
To learn which type of retainer contract will suit your needs, you need to answer the following questions below:
Inbound marketing is a long game that requires ongoing monitoring, analysis and improvement to ensure that your campaign reaches your target audience and your content remains relevant and engaging with your customers.
If you’re still not sure if an inbound marketing retainer is suitable for your business, continue reading below and learn more about its notable benefits:
If you want to save time and money and don’t like to dilute your organization’s resources, opt for a retainer plan; this is especially true when you don’t want the stresses involved in hiring and managing an in-house digital marketing team.
By contrast, having your own in-house digital marketing team means you’re responsible for each employee’s healthcare, 410K program and other benefits.
Additionally, you need to provide them with continuous training and pay for e-learning courses to keep their skills up-to-date.
When you sign up for LOJO Marketing’s retainer plan, you can access our team’s in-depth knowledge and experience; this is like having access to a group of people (or to be exact, a valuable human resource) at your disposal.
All successful digital marketing strategies have one thing in common: They are managed by a team of star employees (or better yet, a constellation of talents) rather than handled by a one-person crew.
Consequently, many small- and mid-sized companies find it more cost-effective to work with an online marketing agency than have their own in-house staff.
In general, a la carte services are ideal for someone who just needs an agency to implement specific tactics without any real insight or any value-added offer. By contrast, inbound marketing retainers are primarily designed to deliver your business goals, with task implementation only as a secondary focus.
Instead of working with multiple agencies, why not just partner with a full-service digital marketing company like the LOJO team so you can get the best talents to handle your website, SEO, social media, blog site, graphic design, content, email marketing, etc.
Think of your inbound marketing campaign as a clock that needs multiple gears designed to run everything smoothly and consistently. For this reason, you need a powerful project management tool that allows you to set a hierarchy of tasks to ensure efficient and timely completion.
The right project management tool also allows you to indicate which tasks or actions are sequential, which in turn, promotes smooth collaboration between members of your team. As a result, everyone knows their responsibilities and accountability, which are the keys to transparency and efficiency.
The right project management tool also allows you to indicate which tasks or actions are sequential, which in turn, promotes smooth collaboration between members of your team. As a result, everyone knows their responsibilities and accountability, which are the keys to transparency and efficiency.
With our project management tools, you can enjoy accurate AI predictions that will allow you to determine when campaigns can be completed and how much they cost. And with more precise and realistic planning, it’s also easier to save time and money and, more importantly, to focus on your core business goals.
Hootsuite is an excellent example of a tool that paves the way for easy project planning.
While it’s not a project management app in the strictest sense of the word since it’s primarily designed for managing social media channels, it has features that can help you execute projects aimed to improve your marketing and public relations with your audience.
Proper project management tools can help you manage your most valuable resource, i.e., people, by allowing you to designate tasks reasonably, accurately and realistically to each team member. As a result, you can eliminate burnout, inefficiencies, errors and bottlenecks.
With the right project management tool, team members can discuss the timelines, tasks, outstanding work, errors and other issues. This is critical since the long-term success of your inbound marketing campaign relies on smooth and transparent collaboration.
With collaboration, it’s also easier to address problems, increase efficiency and adapt to the ever-changing business landscape and consumer sentiment.
Take for example Asana, a project management tool that allows team members to break down large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks.
With more accurate forecasting, you can define the stages of your project and create a plan that sets your business up for success.This is especially important nowadays when project managers typically handle multiple campaigns and teams simultaneously.
All marketing projects require proper allocation of resources like time, effort, talents and arguably the most important of all–budget. For this reason, you need a project management tool that gives you an accurate forecast and real-time financial picture for each project, allowing you to compare the planned budget and the actual expenses, and make the necessary adjustments.
With up-to-the-minute reporting and monitoring, you’ll know if you can meet the deadline, work within the budget, and make the necessary adjustments. Additionally, you can keep track of each task and monitor each team member.
Trello is arguably the most notable project management tool when it comes to real-time reporting, collaboration and simplicity since it looks like a board with sticky notes where you can organize projects and tasks and see their status, workflow and ownership.
You can’t design your website without your logo, consistent color palette, and other visual elements that represent your brand.
A logo is one of the most important visual elements because it creates consistency across your online presence, from your website and social media to landing pages, blogs and paid ads. Consequently, it can boost your brand recognition and help your target audience and existing customers recognize you from different digital platforms.
A logo becomes even more important when you redesign your website because it allows your audience to recognize you even after making some changes. By having a unique and memorable visual identity, your customers will know that they can still expect the same quality of service or product they’re getting from you.
It’s not uncommon for businesses to be apprehensive about website redesign, especially if it involves a significant or complete overhaul, because of the risk of confusing their audience. But with a memorable and unique logo, you can avoid this problem
Meanwhile, these are the things that warrant website redesign:
Have you ever heard of the saying, “Any plan, even a bad plan, is better than none?” This is especially true in digital marketing campaigns where you need a comprehensive plan that includes identifying your target audience, establishing your budget and timeline, and determining your main goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Although your marketing plan should be backed by research, experience and industry standards, it doesn’t have to be perfect. As long as you create a plan with an open mind, sooner you’ll discover the errors, tweak some secondary goals and deadlines, and re-allocate resources and tasks until you meet your objectives.
But how do you create a comprehensive marketing plan, and what should you include when making one?
Here, we list a step-by-step guide to help you create an effective and comprehensive marketing plan for your business:
1. Create an executive summary.
It’s a summary of your company, its key function and the purpose of its marketing plan. You can also include future plans for your business and notable achievements.
2. Identify your target audience.
When you know your audience, it’s easier to focus your marketing efforts and budget on the demographics that are most likely to buy from you. As a result, you maximize your money, time and effort, resulting in high ROI.
3. Research your competitors.
Competitive research shows why customers buy from you or your competitors and how they market their products. Doing this also helps you understand their successes and failures, allowing you to improve your marketing programs and correct some gaps and weaknesses in your methods.
4. Establish your brand identity.
All your offline and online marketing efforts should reflect your brand, which is not just your name, design, symbol or any other visual identification (these are more accurately referred to as marketing tools).
Many people think that a brand is like a visual identity of a company, but it actually goes deeper. In reality, it’s a “feeling” and “belief” people have every time they see your company, product or anything associated with your business.
5. Budget your marketing plan
Marketing requires a budget for tools and software, paid ads and promotions, content creators, web developers and designers, web hosting, etc. In addition, this should cover all marketing-related expenses over the quarter or year, depending on your resources, timeframe, and what you want to achieve.
These are the other key factors that you must include when making a budget for your marketing plan:
Your website is your most valuable digital asset. Are you winning or losing business right now?
Talk to us
