DIGITAL MARKETING

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.

To see more of The Goss Agency's Web Development success stories, please view the slideshow at the bottom of the page.

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 brand time and again while also encouraging those individuals to advocate to their networks that they, too, should experience your brand 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 constantly surpass the previous month’s (even the previous week’s) data.

It’s vital for businesses to tap into the knowledge and passion of customers/clients and the entire staff in order to have a forward-thinking, 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 customers/clients who need answers in the moment, which requires vigilant listening and monitoring of specific hashtags, check-ins, and mentions.

Our experience has taught us that one of the most effective ways to help a company have a larger digital footprint is to provide ongoing training and support for partner businesses so their individual digital efforts each improve and together live up to the adage, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” We facilitated this training in the past for our clients and partners. We optimize the power of the live event coverage technique to amplify the event before, during, and after through first-hand experience. Lastly, tailoring content to a specific niche 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.

Planning Process

• Identify and optimize channels by individual Affinity Target based on user behavior
• Develop a Strategic Plan for each channel/Affinity Target
• Develop viral marketing concepts for each affinity target with the goal to be radiated through platforms using researched hashtags and best practices and Affinity Target social media behavior.
• Develop a posting schedule that best suits target audiences
• Onsite or online partner training
• Continual monitoring of analytics for results in all active platforms
• Reporting of results in matrix
• Keyword and hashtag monitoring
• Identifying and engaging with influencers
• Involving employees and partners to curate content, ideas, and feedback
• A/B testing content
• Social advertising creation and management
• Coordinating ads, email marketing, and other brand initiatives to optimize and present a consistent brand voice
• Continual weekly monitoring/monthly reporting of the results on each channel, tweaking for performance and integration of non-technology and channels

When managing digital campaigns, it is important to optimize every available marketing channel by individual profile under one brand profile. The Goss Agency has helped our clients experience tremendous success through our integration of various forms of digital media, including, but not limited to, social media, SEO/SEM, PPC, E-Direct, remarketing, and much more.

We have conducted a series of marketing workshops for clients, groups small and large, and for organizations. We have also taught social media courses at A-B Technical College.

The Goss Agency’s social media optimization training provides practical tips, tools, and strategies for managing social media, viral concept development, creating relevant brand-centric content, optimizing profiles, and utilizing social ads, and provides real-world examples of successful campaigns and how they achieved success.

Working with Your Social Media Team
When a full-time social media person is on staff, we start by doing an analysis of current efforts and then provide concrete, actionable feedback that can be implemented immediately. We also provide weekly check-ins with continued feedback and suggestions that align with other work being created as well as provide important news and links to researched information that will help keep your Social Media manager up-to-date and informed on the latest. In addition, we provide monthly (or, as requested and time-permitting, weekly) reporting to help make sure goals are being met (and exceeded!) as well as ideas for new campaigns, giveaways, themes, etc.

As needed, we can also help provide additional support in the form of training, partner workshops, and social channel takeovers for a limited time to get things on a better track or launch new network profiles. Ultimately, we are here to provide support any way we can and in the ways that best complement and support your current and continued digital efforts.

Our Approach to Content Marketing
Be active and responsive. Identify the profiles and publications appealing to your target profiles; provide informative, interesting, and entertaining content in the form of copy, images, stories, links, and video to the publications, as well as within your blog, newsletter, and partners to monitor and respond.

Our Process for Identifying Influencers
Identify “in-contact” (those touching your targets) list per target profile. For example, for destinations, we might target travel planners/websites, car rentals, hotel personnel, restaurants, bloggers, publications, groups/clubs/organizations, and riggers/guides/material providers for activities appealing to our affinity targets.

The Goss Agency Passport Program, designed to enhance the visitor’s experience as well as take advantage of destination partnership opportunities, is a great program in and of itself. With Cherokee, we went a leap further. For the release of the Passport, we arranged with the police a road block with flashing lights, cones, and digital signage at the entrance of Cherokee from the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We had the Cherokee warriors dress up in 18th century regalia as they stopped vehicles entering Cherokee from the Great Smoky Mountain National Park to “check their passports.” Needless to say, our campaign was on the evening news and went viral on
social media.

This post, created by The Goss Agency for Haywood County, received an incredible amount of organic, unpaid impressions and resulted in huge increases in Facebook followers and traffic to the site.

To see more of The Goss Agency's social success stories, please view the slideshow at the bottom of the page.

Affinity Marketing Program

• Identification of Groups, Clubs and Organizations appealing to Affinity
  Marketing Profiles.
• Construction of promotions per profile.
• Conversion of E-Direct campaign per profile.
• Relationship development for deployment of E-Direct campaign with
  Affinity promotion.
• Conversion- newsletter/visitation.
• Remarketing/Relationship Marketing Strategy Program.

Before you pick up the phone, you have to know who you are calling. It is the same of effective digital direct campaigns. Our philosophy never involves throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks; our targets are carefully researched and chosen so that your marketing dollars are put to use in an effective and efficient way.

E-Direct Campaign

• Identification of E-Direct subscriber list based on various Affinity Psychographic Profiles and geographic zone from destination core.
• Subject line research, strategy, execution.
• Creation of video/content rich Affinity Target landing page/dashboard with features based on profile research top desired interests.
• Creation of emotionally-connecting E-Direct creative messaging specific to each Affinity Profile driving above average open rate, CTR, newsletter
  sign-ups/conversions.
• Onsite behavior/activity tracking by individual profile.
• Remarketing/data collection.

Email Marketing is one of the most cost-effective and information-rich forms of digital marketing today. Marketers are able to see, in real time, who is opening the email, what content is most engaging, and what language is triggering the most conversions. A/B Testing is fairly straightforward, and because of the relative ease of creation, content can be very time-sensitive.

The Goss Agency has had well above success with our E-Direct campaigns, due to the strength of the creative, and the targeting/profile process by which we choose our email recipients. Through this process, we are able to engage our targets and make them a part of the brand narrative, in order to create customer loyalty and genuine interest. The Goss Agency consistently averages 30% higher returns on digital marketing campaigns than national average.

Newsletter Campaign

• Website newsletter sign-up optimization.
• Newsletter database analysis.
• Newsletter content, design strategy/optimization.
• Subject line research, strategy, execution.
• Newsletter analytics reporting- open rate, CTR, time on site, pages, device, etc.
• Data capture - relationship/remarketing/surveys.

While E-Direct campaigns are fantastic for creating relationships with your clients/customers, newsletters are the best form of direct digital marketing for maintaining relationships. Each subscriber is kept up-to-date on everything that is going on within your business, and you are able to track the activity and interest of each individual through our newsletter reporting.

A series of E-Direct campaigns created for Cherokee, North Carolina directed at specific Affinity Targets (motorcyclists, avid hikers, fly fishers, and kayakers) identified using The Goss Agency's Affinity Marketing Program.

To see more of The Goss Agency's Digital Direct success stories, please view the slideshow at the bottom of the page.

PPC Campaign

• Construction of text ads/search.
• Search engine results description text.
• Research and identification of Google Analytics Affinity Target internet search user behavior and average CPC.
• Development of PPC Google ad network campaign/conversion of E-Direct campaign concepts/design.
• Weekly tracking/monitoring/monthly reporting- CPC, Google Analytics/
  site analytics.

Digital Media – Each campaign is monitored with optimizations made continuously, as well as recommendations for shifting budget based on performance. Campaigns are also optimized based on client KPIs (CTR, CPC, CPA, etc). Reporting is then delivered to the client with insights and recommendations for change. Our process for running successful digital media campaigns is this:

• Implement – Select media programs, including new test programs.
• Track – Continue to monitor performance.
• Evaluate – Determine success of media programs.
• Optimize – Remove underperforming media, increase spend on successful media, add new “test” programs, make adjustments to increase results.

The Goss Agency averages 7-10% “added value” bonus metric per $250,000 expenditure.

Measurement, Analytics, and Optimization

• Goal: Generate high volume of applications at low cost per acquisition
• Campaign monitored with optimizations made continuously, as well as
  recommendations for shifting budget based on performance.
• Optimized based on client Click thru rate, Cost per click, Cost per acquisition.
• Reporting delivered to client monthly with insights and recommendations for change.

A selection of the many PPC Display Ads created for Haywood County, North Carolina TDA. Website traffic from display ads increased 49% after the deployment of these ads.

To see more of The Goss Agency's Outbound Search success stories, please view the slideshow at the bottom of the page.