The Goss Agency’s goal with keyword planning, SEO, and SEM is to make your Brand #1 above relative competition in all primary search phrase/word categories.

Keyword planning, research, and banking is the foundation of effective SEO and SEM. SEO is an incredibly powerful tool to increase web traffic, improve on-site usability and value, build Brand awareness and trust and convert sales. Effective, high-quality SEO takes time. It is an investment, and the payoff can be enormous. In fact, a web page that ranks #1 on a Google search result receives 33% of all visits for that specific search query. If a website is built to convert sales, one can see how good SEO can improve the bottom line considerably.

Using paid search, you can immediately drive users to your website without requiring any organic authority. These ads, often known as pay-per-click ads, come in a variety formats, and each has its own unique strengths. SEM also has the benefit of pairing your Brand with the keywords that you want customers to relate with your Brand. Plus, with the average cost-per-click on Google at $2.18 for search and $0.47 for display, high-quality SEM serves as one of the most cost-effective methods to drive new leads to your website.

Keyword Planning, Research, & Banking:

• Identify your target market’s Keyword Universe using market research, analytics data, PPC data, internal search data, Google AdWords, Google suggest data, and competitor insights
• Expand list using tools like Google’s Keyword Planner
• Categorize keywords based on relative search volumes, CPC, competitiveness, and Affinity Target
• Prioritize keywords based on cost, competition, and search volume
• Develop Strategic Plan
• Implement keywords on website, social media, SEM strategic plan, and any relevant content produced by your destination
• Measure, analyze, refine

SEO:

• Conduct audit of your website and web presence
• Develop Strategic Plan
• Use keyword bank to identify high-value, low-competition keywords
• Implement keywords and Google’s best practices throughout your website and social media accounts
• Optimize URL titles and meta-descriptions for all pages
• Identify high-value backlink opportunities
• Develop and publish share-worthy content on website that is relevant to Affinity Targets
• Persuade high-authority websites and websites related to Affinity Targets to link back to your website
• Publish your website on all relevant travel directories/lists
• Track search ranking by keyword or keyword phrase week-by-week
• Measure, analyze, refine

SEM:

• Identify high-opportunity, low-cost keywords from keyword bank per Affinity Target
• Determine the optimum placement strategy based on subject matter, Affinity Target, and objective
• Develop Strategic Plan
• Create emotionally compelling text and/or display advertisements per Affinity Target
• Provide search engine with keywords designed to accomplish objective at lowest possible CPC or CPM
• Optimize website with landing pages per ad per Affinity Target
• Measure, analyze, refine

Digital Direct continues to be a powerful tool for Brands to find new leads and increase Brand awareness cost-effectively. With the frequency people check their email throughout the day, it’s surprising some Brands still choose to leave digital direct out of their marketing mix. According to the digital direct marketing company BlueHornet, 98.4% of Americans between the ages of 16-64 check their email at least once per day, with 33.8% claiming to check their email “throughout the day”. With the right messaging, design, and deployment strategy in place, Brands can experience tremendous success with digital direct marketing.

Here at The Goss Agency, we begin by identifying and acquiring a prospect database for each Affinity Target/prospect profile and then develop emotionally-engaging content/creative that appeals to each profile. We then design landing pages/fulfillment dashboards that correspond to each profile campaign and serves as a data capture/exchange point. Depending on your objective and the interests/needs of each Affinity Target, this landing page may consist of a custom/individual dialogue or an insight/informative presentation. These digital direct campaigns can then be automated to deliver follow-up emails or responses to each Target Audience pool, reducing overhead costs and maintaining Brand awareness.

According to Statista, 78% of the U.S. population has a social media profile (which has been a growing percentage since 2008 when 24% of the population had a profile). Social media gives destinations the vast opportunity to reach niche targets and establish relationships with specific Affinity Target profiles.

At The Goss Agency, our social philosophy pivots on providing value with every post shared in a tone that conveys the spirit of a destination and stays true to the Brand voice. Goals include creating lifelong fans who will return to your destination time and again while also encouraging those individuals to advocate to their networks that they, too, should experience your destination as well as providing prompts and context to encourage user-generated content. Since social media moves at a rapid pace, constant experimentation and analysis is crucial in order to deliver results that consistently surpass the previous month’s (even the previous week’s) data.

It’s vital for destinations to tap into the knowledge and passion of locals, partners, and staff, and develop a Brand-centric, current, effective, and fully-optimized social network. We can help achieve this foundation and train the participants. It is imperative to execute a fresh and effective social strategy that’s constantly being fed with real-time content. Speaking of real-time content, one-to-one conversations and customer service responses must be executed on a daily (ideally hourly) basis in order to engage with tourists who need answers in the moment, which requires vigilant listening and monitoring of specific hashtags, check-ins, and mentions.

Tailoring content to a specific Affinity Target across each channel is proven to be effective to generate more engagement, which is far more important than how many followers you’ve collected.

To achieve optimum results from The Goss Agency Social Media Activation, it is imperative for our clients, stakeholders, partners, and influencers to be in sync on Brand message/strategy, and be active and current in all social channels relevant to their target audience; therefore we developed The Goss Agency Social Download Training Program where we walk through 7 steps of planning, deployment, and channel overview.

	Identify Affinity Targets to which the visitor experiences/Brand appeals
	Identify and optimize channels by individual Affinity Target based on user behavior
	Identify Influencers (Look through four lenses to identify the ideal influencers: Online Directories, Industry Influencers, Local partners/national chains, Groups, Clubs & Organizations, Bloggers and Publications)
	Content Development - Viral marketing concepts for each Affinity Target and Influencer with the goal to be radiated through platforms using researched hashtags and best practices (found by A/B testing creative/content) and Affinity Target social media behavior
	Develop a posting schedule that best suits target audiences, and coordinating ads, email marketing, and other Brand initiatives to optimize and present a consistent Brand voice
	Social Listening/Analytics: Keyword/hashtag monitoring and weekly monitoring/monthly reporting of the results on each channel, tweaking for performance and integration of non-technology and channels
	Training - Explanation of Social Media Strategy, involving employees and partners to curate content, ideas, and feedback

Website Development Procedure:

• Analytic profile behavior research: day/week/year activity, key word/phrase, average time on site/page views, conversion, etc.
• Identification of primary platform and APIs
• Content/user wireframe development based on user profile, client, goals, and objectives
• Key word/phrase bank development by Affinity Target and integration into content beds/copy platforms
• Content development with appointed landing pages corresponding to identified Affinity Target Profiles, Ad Campaigns, Newsletters, and Social Media, or tracking, conversion optimization, and relationship marketing
• Image library with motion and still imagery per profile
• Social media/media channel optimization strategy
• Newsletter/Onboarding strategy and implementation
• Brand Content/Design integration- creation of content per wireframe layout
• Link strategy/integration
• CMS outline and training
• Update procedure/schedule

Developing Your Website
Before the real website construction begins, we work out a long list of specific objectives/deliverables, and work with the development team to agree on the order in which these items need to occur. We prefer to have a daily review of the deliverables that need to be accomplished that day, and to review the items that have been completed the day before. Because a new website is a huge undertaking, we believe that this detailed and methodical process keeps the project on track and enables us to give the client consistent progress reports to keep everyone’s minds at ease.

Weekly management/meeting steps:

• Immersion/objective/target use behavior
• Wireframes
• Selection of platforms/plugins
• Page design/UI approvals
• Importing content/content creation
• SEO Implementation
• Testing on all platforms

Going Live With Your Website
Before we ever hand a website off to a client for final review, we have a stringent internal review process. Using a checklist that outlines every page, link, gallery, and search/sorting functionality, we comb through the site on every platform, and make sure that the visual identity is consistent and uncompromised, and that each function is working properly. We also ask our team members who are not working directly on the project to follow the same process to ensure that the UX works for people who are unfamiliar with the site.

When we hand off for client review, we are more than happy to share our checklist for the client to use to make sure that everything on the site is performing to their standards as well, and so that they are able to see the in-depth nature of our review process. After the client has approved the final project, we pick a time where web traffic is naturally slowed to “go live” with the site, to ensure that the least amount of users are affected by the transition. We monitor the site constantly after it goes live to make sure that all redirects are working and in place, all old social media links still connect to the site, and that it is still performing quickly and consistently on all devices.