Frequently Asked
Questions

Over the years, we’ve fielded a lot of questions about digital marketing and our approach to helping clients reach their goals. Take a look below, and if you’re not finding what you’re looking for — don’t hesitate to reach out.

General

We don’t limit ourselves to partners within a single industry. From tech companies and financial consultants to insurance providers and nonprofits, we help organizations of all shapes and sizes.

When you start a partnership with The Digital Ring, we make your experience as seamless as possible — you’ll have just one point of contact.

You’ll be paired with an account executive or project manager who will handle internal communication to make sure your marketing initiatives are completed on time and on budget.

They’ll keep you updated on our progress and answer all of your questions via regular emails and video chats.

This depends on the complexity of the project. Typically, multiple members from various internal teams work on a single client’s project at different points in the process.

Success looks different for every organization. At the beginning of our partnership, we’ll work with your team to define your goals before creating a roadmap that outlines corresponding marketing strategy, tactics, and KPIs.

We’ve done everything from growing general brand awareness to drastically increasing conversions (e.g. inquiries and purchases).

As a concept, digital marketing is pretty straightforward: it uses digital channels like the internet and social media to promote brands and businesses. It gets more complicated when you dive into strategy, execution, and measurement, which is where we come in.

Traditional marketing, on the other hand, typically involves tangible products like printed-out mailers, billboards, and old-school newspaper ads. It isn’t dead — it’s just changing. Depending on your business’s target market, location, and industry, there’s plenty of potential for traditional advertising efforts to have an impact on your bottom line.

Despite the big old “digital” in our name, we do both digital and traditional marketing here at TDR. After evaluating your situation, we’ll plan the right marketing mix for you.

Know you need help, but not sure which kind of help? No problem! We’ll evaluate your organization and propose the right mix of marketing services to help you reach your goals. Get in touch to get started.

Strategic marketing consulting

This refers to the creation and implementation of marketing strategies that help you achieve your broader business goals. After decades of combined experience working with hundreds of clients, we know the best way to focus time, resources, and budget to make a difference for your organization.

At the beginning of our partnership, we conduct a robust Discovery phase to get to know your organization, your industry, and your audience. Then, we craft and implement a detailed roadmap outlining strategies, initiatives, and tactics that level up to your broader business goals. As our partnership progresses, we continue to refine and optimize our strategy based on learnings and shifting priorities.

This depends on a variety of factors, including your goals, industry, audience, timeline, and budget. Let’s say you want to increase revenue by the end of the year. One strategy could be driving more traffic to your website. Associated initiatives could include running targeted digital ads, creating and promoting compelling content, and emailing existing customers with a special promotion.

The possibilities are endless, which is a blessing and a curse: it can be difficult to know where to focus your efforts and budget. That’s why you need an experienced marketing team to evaluate all options and craft a plan that truly moves the needle.

This depends on your goals. We’ve helped clients increase revenue by generating high-quality leads, raise brand awareness, engage loyal customers, revamp their image, grow thought leadership, and more.

Visit our Strategic Marketing Consulting page to see recent work and get in touch!

Marketing Campaign Creation & Implementation

A marketing campaign is a series of strategic, coordinated marketing efforts aimed at achieving a specific goal. This could be anything from promoting a new product to generating customer feedback.

The campaign creation process begins with a Discovery phase, where we explore your campaign goals, the product or event you’d like to promote, your audience’s needs and motivations, and the best channels to reach them.

From there, we brainstorm campaign themes and create a strategic roadmap that details our tactical approach. Once the theme and plan are approved, our creative team gets to work designing and copywriting campaign assets.

Depending on your goals and where your audience spends their time, the campaign can be implemented across a variety of online channels, including your website, social media, email, and digital ads. We’ll also consider traditional channels, like print, direct mail, window displays, and billboards.

After deciding on the right blend of channels, our internal teams carefully coordinate for seamless campaign execution.

A campaign is successful if it accomplishes the goals defined at the beginning of the process. Performance indicators along the way include a range of metrics: click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost-per-click (CPR), cost-per-conversion (CPC), bounce rate, total impressions, and more.

We’ll keep you updated on campaign performance via regular reporting and check-ins.

Visit our Marketing Campaign Creation & Implementation page to see recent work and get in touch!

Brand Strategy & Identity

While it’s never been easier to reach customers, it’s never been harder to connect with them — in part because of an overabundance of options. In order to stand out, get noticed, build connections, and drive more sales (or donations or sign-ups), you need to develop a strong brand.

Your brand is more than your logo. It’s also more than the products or services you offer. Your brand is a person’s perception of the sum of your parts: the entire experience your organization provides. This can be a tricky concept to grasp, so we’ll illustrate with one of the most well-known brands in the world: Starbucks.

When you think of Starbucks, you don’t just think of the company’s logo. You likely consider a combination of the below:

  • Their coffee itself
  • The clean, streamlined look of their menu
  • The atmosphere of their coffee shops
  • The way their baristas greet you and call your name when your coffee is ready
  • The type of people that drink Starbucks
  • What drinking Starbucks says about you as a person
  • What Starbucks as a company stands for (e.g. recent efforts at inclusion and diversity)
  • And finally — how all of these factors make you feel

The appeal, distinctiveness, and consistency of these elements (and more) contribute to the strength of the Starbucks brand. Starbucks doesn’t get away with high prices because their coffee is objectively the best in town (although it is pretty good); they’re able to charge a premium because of their brand.

Branding is the process of influencing a person’s perception in order to create an emotional connection. That process involves:

  • Identifying what your audience really wants or needs, and positioning you as the vehicle or guide to help them achieve what they’re seeking
  • Differentiating you from the competition so you can stand out and be memorable
  • Providing consistent brand experiences to build trust

All of this starts with a Discovery process and the creation of Brand Guidelines, which are a key deliverable in our branding projects.

Our process varies slightly depending on whether you need help with a single aspect of your brand (like a logo or product name), or if you’re looking to fully rebrand or build a brand from the ground-up.

Our typical process begins with a set of Discovery workshops where we identify your goals and get to know you, your audience, and your market. These conversations, coupled with our own research and insight, inform brand positioning, key messaging, and visual identity: elements like your logo, colors, typography, and imagery.

After we pull these elements together into Brand Guidelines, we move on to implementing your new brand across various applications, like your packaging, signage, and any printed materials. If needed, we can also help you plan and implement internal and external brand rollouts.

That’s a good question. Here are a few reasons why a rebrand might be your best option:

  • Your brand feels dated — it’s no longer reflective of who you are today
  • You’ve been struggling to connect with your target audience or you’d like to pursue a new one
  • You’ve expanded or updated your product/service offering
  • You look just like everyone else in your industry
  • You need to disassociate your brand from negativity (it happens)

Visit our Brand Strategy & Identity page to see recent work and get in touch!

Website Design & Development

A good rule of thumb is to update your website whenever information or design elements are out of date. It might be time for a refresh or even overhaul if your site no longer aligns with who you are and where you’re going as an organization, or if it feels “dated” compared to your competitors.

We’ve developed a unique website creation process to finish an average client website in just 90 days. Now, if your website has super complex functionality or hundreds of pages, it might take us a little longer. We’ll work with you to develop an accurate timeline at the start of your project.

We’re pretty big WordPress fans over here, but we’ll work with any website platform or content management system a client requests. We’re proud to be “tech agnostic” — that is, willing to use any technology tools that fit the project at hand.

Absolutely! We’re happy to handle your website’s maintenance and updates long-term, but we’ll also teach you to make simple updates yourself (no coding knowledge needed!).

These relate to the way a website functions on a smartphone.

A mobile-friendly website is designed for desktop and “shrinks down” to display on mobile. A visitor is technically able to navigate the site by zooming in, but it’s not a great user experience.

A responsive website adjusts based on the device to look and function optimally at any screen size. For example, a large top navigation on desktop might turn into a small toggle menu on mobile.

In a mobile-first design process, designers prioritize a website’s look and feel on mobile before considering how those elements translate to desktop.

Responsive and mobile-first websites are industry standard for a few reasons.

First, more than half of all internet users view websites from their smartphones. It’s important to give them a seamless, consistent user experience across devices — especially when you’re trying to sell a product or service.

Second, search engines like Google have started using mobile indexing to determine what websites to show on their results pages. If your website doesn’t provide a good user experience on a smartphone, you’re likely out of luck to rank on Google’s first page.

Generally, good candidates for blog sections are businesses who:

  • Want to position themselves as a source of authority on a particular topic
  • Have regular company news they’d like to share online
  • Want to take their SEO to the next level by using high-value keywords and internal links

In short, always consider the “why” behind your blog. As long as you have a strategy driving your posts, blogs are a fantastic way to connect with potential customers, keep your existing audience informed, and improve your website’s search engine rankings. (Want to learn more? Click here.)

Yes! Custom software development is the process of designing, building, and maintaining software that helps businesses handle various processes. Well-built software can help you streamline operations, accelerate processes, and increase efficiency.

At the beginning of our partnership, we’ll learn about your business and what you’d like to accomplish before proceeding with custom software or recommending “out-of-the-box” software, which can handle many standard business processes.

Our software development process mirrors our website development process — both involve a robust Discovery workshop and ongoing communication and touchpoints as we design, develop, test, launch, and maintain the software.

While we’ve whittled our website builds to roughly 90 days, developing custom software usually takes a bit longer. After we meet with you to discuss your business needs, we’ll be able to give you a projected timeline.

Visit our Website Design & Development page to see recent work and get in touch!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a combination of technical website development and content strategies to make your organization’s website rank higher on search engine results pages.

This is important because most people click one of Google’s first few results when they search for something — in fact, 90% of users never go past Google’s first page!

Search engine algorithms are essentially the “decision makers” that choose which website pages appear after a user enters a search term. Search engine optimization helps your website better “talk” to these algorithms to increase your chances of showing up first.

There are hundreds of factors that affect your site’s ranking, but it all comes down to delivering a high-quality user experience that solidifies your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Key considerations include site content, performance, and backlinks (i.e. inbound links from other high-quality sites).

Your business’s search engine optimization strategy will depend on your specific industry and long-term goals. We’ll work with you to develop a unique plan that takes into account every last detail to help you see results.

Website content written with search engine optimization in mind is based on keyword research with the goal of answering a user’s search query. In other words, it aligns your web content with topics users actually care about.

Content written for SEO is also structured in a way that helps the user move through the content quickly and easily: think headers, bullets, and short, uncomplicated paragraphs and sentences.

Choosing the right keywords to include throughout your website takes thoughtful research and honesty about your business’s voice and industry. You can compare and contrast different search terms with online tools, but the number one thing you should ask yourself is what your visitors will find valuable.

When it comes down to it, writing for SEO is equal parts art and science. Data analytics needs to drive the journey, but a human voice has to carry it through.

Back in the day (circa early 2000s) search engines primarily relied on a metric called “keyword density” to determine which websites ranked first on the search results page. This led to marketers “stuffing” their web pages with keywords by hiding them as white text on a white background or behind a cleverly positioned image.

Google’s gotten smarter, though, and if you do this now you’ll be penalized. It’s best to get search engine traffic the right way by creating valuable content and making sure your website’s technical features are top-notch.

Your customer reviews affect your website’s ranking on search engine results pages, especially within your local geographic area. Just like people, search algorithms see third-party reviews as a strong signal of trust — yet another reason to stay in tune with your customers and do work worth talking about!

You should regularly monitor your customer reviews and respond to both the good and bad comments. This not only encourages community — it’s a valuable opportunity to adjust to feedback.

Visit our Search Engine Optimization page to see recent work and get in touch!

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