Frequently Asked Questions
What is SEO?
It is an acronym that stands for “search engine optimization.” SEO simply means the process of improving your website to increase its visibility for relevant searches.
What am I going to get for my money?
What are your goals?
First, define them:
- Are you looking for qualified leads, or trying to sell products?
- Are you trying to expand awareness of your brand, or convert a highly specific audience?
What type of results can I expect?
The key performance indicators we look at are organic website traffic and search engine rankings. We will track this each month and report it to you.
How long will it take to see results?
It can take up to 6-12 months to get on the first page of search engines. It depends on how competitive your industry is and the keywords we are targeting. Our goal would be to show you monthly increases in your organic traffic and rankings.
How often will I get a report?
Our service is meant to teach you how to run your own social media campaign, so we can help you evaluate your existing social media campaigns or a new campaign. If you prefer us to handle your social media completely, we have social media management services for that as well.
What Is PPC Advertising?
PPC or Pay Per Click is a web advertising model where, as the name suggests, advertisers pay each time a targeted customer clicks on your ad.
What is link building and how does it apply to SEO?
Link building is important because it is a major factor in how Google ranks web pages. Google notes that: "In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.
Is content really that important?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action
How much does hourly SEO cost?
Today industry standards are 40% of US SEO agencies charge between $101-$250 per hour; · A full 71% charge between $101-$300 per hour.
What is an SEO retainer?
An SEO retainer is a monthly fee you pay to a digital marketing agency to set aside a certain amount of time and expert eyes.
How much should a marketing retainer cost?
While the benefits of good SEO are clear, the cost of accomplishing an SEO strategy is priceless. Plan on spending $3,000-6,000 based on project scope.
What is Social Media Marketing?
In a nutshell, social media marketing involves promoting your business or cause online through social media platforms. The most common platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Though Pinterest, Tik Tok, Snapchat, and Reddit are also highly used too.
The goal is to create content that both helps to build your audience and connects with them too. Social media marketing agencies or Social media freelancers will plan content, schedule it, and monitor the results. By looking to see what works for your platform, a social media marketing expert can streamline your goals with the content that gets put out across your social media channels.
They can also help speed up the process by running paid advertising campaigns, which reach a larger audience in a much quicker timeframe.
Considerations
It’s worth thinking about the current problems that you’re hoping to resolve through social media before hiring an agency or freelancer. That way, they’ll have a clear understanding of what you need from them.
The quality of the posts and the expertise required will all affect the price. Some social media marketing agencies have copywriters, designers, developers, and statisticians who may all work together on each client. On the other end of the scale, it’s also possible to find someone who attempts each of these attributes themselves, which may work out cheaper if budget is your main concern.
What changes the cost of Social Media Marketing?
The amount you’ll pay for Social Media Marketing will be impacted by several factors, including:
- The complexity of the service
- Hourly rates vs. packages
- Professional’s experience
The complexity of the service
The cost of social media marketing will ultimately come down to the complexity of the service you need. The frequency of posts also has an impact on cost, as the more you require, the longer it will take to generate and schedule.
The most common pricing structure social media marketers offer is a monthly package, which costs around $400 - $650 per month on average. This would include the generating of content and some feed support, but wouldn’t be as in-depth as what other packages can provide.
Though, the beauty of social media marketing is it’s customizable to your needs. So, it’s possible to start small and build up the level of support you need, or even scale back services that aren’t needed.
Social Media Marketing Management
For basic social media marketing management, you could pay as little as $20 per hour. On the other end of the scale, a comprehensive package could cost anywhere up to $10,000. This would include the likes of customer service, feed management, and expert level designers and copywriters who would create your monthly content.
Other points to consider
If you’re not sure where, to begin with getting your business up and running with social media, here are some key points to consider:
- Your social media marketing goals
- Social media channels
- Monthly content creation
- Customer service
- Feed management
- Paid advertising
- Compiling stats and generating reports
Your Social Media Marketing Goals
When used correctly, social media is a powerful medium that allows you to connect with your audience at scale. Identifying your goals will help streamline and concentrate your efforts. For example, do you want to increase page followers? How about boost sales of a particular service you offer?
Most businesses have multiple goals, which may change depending on the time of year or the needs of the business itself. Your social media marketing expert will need to devise a specific strategy for each goal.
Social Media Channels
If you’re a sole trader or a small business then you may not have any social media channels, let alone know which ones would work best for your company!
A social media marketing agency or expert can help you get started, or pick up from where you’re currently at. Price-wise, the more content that needs to be generated in terms of platform types and frequency, the more expensive it will be. However, given the idea of marketing is to generate a return, if done correctly your social media marketing will produce a healthy ROI.
With 2.7 billion users and counting, Facebook is a great platform to reach a wide audience.
The expert you choose should be well versed in Facebook as a whole, but more specifically Facebook Ads, as managing digital advertising budgets is very important.
Engagement is a huge part of how Facebook works too. Aside from replying to customers, you need to be engaging (liking and sharing content), and getting your users to do the same with your content. This can only happen if the content your page puts out is engaging and relevant to the audience.
Twitter is all about succinct messaging (tweets) and clever use of imagery. People can either like or retweet or converse with anything you post. Hashtags should be your secret weapon to boosting the reach of your tweets, but they need to be used the right way.
Twitter also has an ads platform. It’s not as complex as Facebook but still requires a knowledgeable approach to hit the right audience. You’ll need to consider the content of your messaging and the time at which it goes out to achieve success.
As a highly visual platform, Instagram is all about promoting the right image and video content. Plus, each post requires an engaging piece of copy underneath, that also makes use of hashtags and tagging.
It’s also possible to sell products through Instagram and build brand pages. This can be facilitated through the ‘promotions’ function. You can arrange to promote particular products or services, that your social media marketing expert will launch and monitor for you.
YouTube
Video content is a powerful tool for engaging audiences. As a business, it’s one of the best ways to promote your services. For example, a mechanic could upload a ‘how-to’ guide on how to change a tire. The video itself can be monetized, meaning you’ll earn money for each view. However, you can also leave your contact details in the description box so that customers can find you.
YouTube videos can be shared on social media or embedded into your blog pages. Though it takes skill to capture engaging video content, edit it, and then share it correctly. Elements of SEO also come into play here, which is why it’s best to leave your YouTube videos to a social media marketing expert.
How do I get customers involved and engaged in my social media posts?
Posting frequently and engaging with customers. We take care of that for you. Putnam Marketing can manage all social media posts and engagements for you! All you have to do is sit back and let the leads come in.
Monthly content creation
The majority of a social media marketer’s job is to create, schedule, and publish content. Depending on your business, you may want a post to go out across all feeds every day. Though some businesses increase this to every hour throughout the day. Your agency or freelancer will help you work this out, by checking your analytics to see when your followers are most active.
The content needs to be relevant to your business, but also be something people, in general, will want to engage with. From decisive polls to humorous posts, there’s a lot more to getting social media right than is first apparent. That’s why your monthly content needs to be on point.
Customer service
If you own an online business or eCommerce store, then you may require customer support as part of your social media marketing package. This includes replying to customers who send your direct messages, and those who leave comments on your page. Keeping on top of this can take up quite a bit of time, which is why it’s so handy to be able to outsource this to a social media marketing expert instead.
Feed Management
The golden rule of social media is that it’s a public platform, which means your social media channel could become subject to spam or offensive content. That’s why you must have somebody closely monitoring your feeds to remove such content before it has the chance to negatively impact your feed as a whole.
This also extends to aspects such as negative reviews, which all businesses will encounter to some degree. Such issues require a thoughtful approach to how the situation is dealt with, as an unprofessional reply could cause more harm than good. Social media experts are well versed in all aspects of feed management, which will help protect your business image and work to resolve any issues constructively.
Paid Advertising
Most social media platforms have paid advertising options such as Facebook Ads. Understanding how to create campaigns successfully takes a fair bit of technical knowledge, not to mention mathematical ability. If you get it wrong, you could waste large amounts of money on advertising that fails or gets rejected by the platform.
Therefore, understanding paid advertising is an important aspect of social media marketing. Your expert will work with you to devise an audience and a budget. You’ll agree on a budget in advance, tailoring the reach following your budget.
Compiling Stats and Generating Reports
As well as generating content for your social media, your chosen freelancer or agency will need to compile stats and generate reports about the progress of your campaigns. For example, presenting the increase in followers since they started managing the feeds. Or, how many users your paid advertising reached and how many conversions this generated for the business.
This type of service is more comprehensive but is the best way of determining what is working for your social media feeds and what isn’t. It’s also a great opportunity for them to share ideas about what could work for upcoming posts, based on how previous content has performed.
Investing in Social Media Marketing - is it worth the cost?
If you lack the time or knowledge to market your business successfully through social media, then getting an expert on board is well worth the investment. They will plan your monthly content, schedule it, and monitor how successful each post is. Social media marketing also involves launching paid ads from your platforms, which requires a specialist approach to get right.
In our digital age, social media marketing is an important platform for reaching new audiences.
It’s worth having yours taken care of by someone who not only knows what they are doing but is genuinely passionate about it too. That’s why social media marketing experts are well worth the investment.
Bring your business into the 21st century - find a trusted Social Media Marketing expert with Putnam Marketing.
Do I need social media for my business?
Social Media is where your target audience is. Social media is so prevalent in today's society it is where your target audience likes to spend their free time. Social media marketing is an easy way for businesses to connect with their customers directly.
Which social media platforms should I be on?
Most popular social media platforms are; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
Can I repost the same content on different social media platforms?
Yes! Users normally only follow certain brands on each platform. Normally people have a favorite platform that they spend most of their time on. It is best to post on all platforms to cover all the bases.
How do I create content specific to my audience?
Do not worry about that! Putnam Marketing has a team of creative designers and developers. We create all the content and send it over to you for your approval prior to posting. Our social media experts also build out custom audiences making sure that your target market is being reached.
How long are the contracts?
We offer initial contract terms of 3 months. After the initial contract term is complete, your account will be serviced on a month-to-month basis. You have the option to cancel at any time with a 30 day written or digital notice. After 30 days, we will cancel all services and return any information we have back to you.
Are there any setup fees?
There is a one-time setup fee. It is primarily for getting you set up on or end to run your campaign. We will set you up in our search engine systems, analytics systems, and other administrative tasks. We would also set up necessary advertising accounts for you.
How long does it take to get started?
If you are ready to get started, contact us. One of our sales consultants will help you identify the best plan of action and develop a proposal for you. Upon your approval, we will send you a contract and get your campaign started asap.
Service & Working Together
Who will be working on my account?
You will be assigned a dedicated SEO Specialist. This person is trained in search engine optimization and is likely to have experience in helping clients move up the rankings. This person will be your main point of contact. In addition, each SEO specialist reports to a Director, who reviews all deliverables before it is sent to you. This is to ensure that you receive quality work and resolve tough situations.
How will you identify keywords for my business?
We will first gain an understanding of your business through a formal questionnaire. From there, we will perform keyword research to identify high-traffic keywords that will be valuable for your business. To do this, we use the keyword planning tools that allow us to find keywords related to your business, the competition level, and how many times it is searched each month. Once we conclude our research, we will report to you our findings and recommendations.
How will you do a competitive analysis?
We will first identify the keywords that we are going to target for your business. Once this has been identified, we will analyze the websites of competitors who are already ranking on the first page of Google. We would use tools that we have to analyze the structure of their websites, and we may be able to apply a similar strategy for your website.
What will you change on my website? Will it be different?
We would change technical things on your website, such as coding, tags, and some of the words to include the keywords you want to rank for. However, we would not change the physical design of your website. All of the changes to your website will be ran by you first so that you are aware of what we are doing to your website.
How are you going to write blogs for my business?
We will write blogs by first obtaining an understanding of your business. Once we do this, we will develop a blog calendar. This calendar will include topics we will write about. You will be able to approve the blog topics before we write anything and approve it. Once the blog calendar is approved, we will write the blogs and optimize the blogs for SEO. To write the blogs, we will research the topics to write valuable content. Before we post the blog, you will be able to review it to make sure it meets your standards.
How will you get backlinks for my business?
We will develop backlinks through a combination of 1) outreach to blogs and publications to get your website featured in their content 2) writing engaging blogs and 3) increasing social shares and exposure.
Can I contribute to blog ideas or blog content?
Yes, if you have information that you would like us to write about you can send it to us. We can incorporate your ideas or content into the blogs we’re writing to make them even better.