Google My Business (GMB) is a Google tool that lets you manage as well as improve your business profile on Google. It even utilizes the widespread adoption of Google Maps by people when deciding to use a local product or service.

In a bid to position Google My Business as the ideal tool for local businesses wanting to reach more customers online, Google has added multiple new features to it. The move will help simplify the way people access their business listing on the search engine. Another significant notable change was the renaming of Google My Business it is now called “Google Business Profile.”

Given how subtle Google is about the changes to its platform, it’s likely that you, as a business owner, may still be unaware of the latest features of Google Business Profile. Keeping track of the updates of this free tool is essential to growing your business manifold. In this post, we’ll discuss what has changed in 2022 when it comes to this powerful tool so that you can continue reaching more customers and set your business up for success. Let’s begin:

What Is the Purpose of Google My Business?

Today, countless people rely on Google to find products and services. A GMB profile provides most companies with the opportunity to list detailed and specific business information on Google to get increased visibility on it.

Here’s a closer look at the other important benefits of Google My Business:

• Boosts Credibility: When a business appears on a search engine, people perceive it as a credible brand.
• Business Growth: As more people notice you online, your customers increase, and you, in turn, generate more business.
• Know Your Audience Better: With the help of Google Business Profile, you are able to profoundly understand your target audience.

The Changes to Look Out For

Let’s discuss the latest Google My Business updates and changes you need to know to stay ahead in the game. Let’s begin:

1. Google My Business Now Has a New Name

We have already discussed the name change Google My Business is known as “Google Business Profile” now. It was less of a surprise to many people, as GMB help documents started using “profile” instead of “listing” a while ago.

2. The GMB App Will Retire

In order to encourage business managers to access their profiles through an upgraded experience on “Google Maps” or “Google Search,” Google has decided to retire the GMB app this year. All you would need to do now is simply type in a search for your business name and click on the profile that shows up.

The Changes to Look Out For

Let’s discuss the latest Google My Business updates and changes you need to know to stay ahead in the game. Let’s begin:

1. Google My Business Now Has a New Name

We have already discussed the name change Google My Business is known as “Google Business Profile” now. It was less of a surprise to many people, as GMB help documents started using “profile” instead of “listing” a while ago.

2. The GMB App Will Retire

In order to encourage business managers to access their profiles through an upgraded experience on “Google Maps” or “Google Search,” Google has decided to retire the GMB app this year. All you would need to do now is simply type in a search for your business name and click on the profile that shows up.

Note: You need to follow a separate process in case you are already logged in. In this case, you just need to type the phrase “my business” and then click on the profile that appears.

3. You Can Claim and Verify Your Listing Directly on Maps and Search

Google announced this update because it wanted small businesses to manage their listings directly through Map or Search results. Owing to this update, you can directly verify your listing or sort other issues on your profile in Google search, along with editing your information.

Google has also communicated that a person claiming or creating a listing on Google can finish their setup directly on Maps and Search. They will also be able to see if their profile is publicly visible.

Apart from this, Google has even made certain metrics associated with your listing available for easy access in Search results, which include:

• Analytics and insights
• Business information update options
• Post options
• Latest reviews and star ratings

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4. Update Regarding GMB Web Portal

Another change you need to know is that the GMB web portal will transition to primarily support larger businesses with multiple locations. Google will offer more detail on this in the coming months, so we all would just have to wait it out.

5. Access to Enhanced Messaging Options

You may already know that business owners can chat with customers through Google Maps. But now, Google Search has this feature as well. Yes, you read it right! Business owners can view and reply to messages directly from their listing.

How to Optimize Your Business Profile Through Google My Business?

Here's a complete Google My Business optimization checklist that you can follow:

A. Fill Out Every Section: Ensure you include all vital information about your business like the company name, website, address, working hours, and phone numbers.

‍B. Add Your Business Description: Summarize your business in 2 lines. Write what your business is about so that a potential customer understands what your business stands for.‍

C. Set Your Business Category: Remember, categories describe your business and not what it sells or does. Select a primary category that describes your business in the best possible way.

‍D. Add Relevant, High-Quality Images: Include photos that will appeal to your potential customers.

‍E. Answer Questions: Sometimes, people may not get answers from your listing. Therefore, they would want to ask you questions. Google provides a feature where the searcher can ask questions related to businesses. Staying proactive in answering these questions is highly important. After all, you would want only accurate information about your business to be present on Google, wouldn't you? And responding to the searcher's question will also leave a positive impression.

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Keeping Your Listing Up-To-Date in 2023

Here's what you need to keep in mind to fully leverage Google Business Profile for your business:

1. Google Business Profile Categories

To help businesses represent their offerings and business in their listings, Google provides a plethora of categories for them to choose from. Although you have the option to select a number of categories for your business, the primary category you select should be a precise and clear reflection of your business. Selecting the correct primary category is also critical because it dictates which other listing options you get. For instance, if you choose “restaurants”, you will also get the listing option “menu options.”

We suggest that you stay abreast with the latest categories that Google adds every now and then to keep your listing up-to-date.

2. Google Business Profile Attributes

Another element we recommend you monitor for any updates is Google Business Profile attributes. Attributes have gained prominence in recent months to provide users a quick idea of what they can expect from a business, regardless of the kind of services or products they offer. You can also think of it as a convenient way to share your business offering and what makes you stand out. The attributes available to you are based on your primary business category.

To better understand attributes, let's consider the relatively new attribute category ā Google's Health & Safety attributes for instance. It provides an idea about the measures being taken for the health of customers by a business in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All said and done, it's easy to see how tracking any update to this element can prove to be immensely helpful. The at-a-glance information it provides about a business can make or break a deal.

DashClick's Reputation App

DashClicks' Reputation app helps you manage your reviews across multiple sources from a single dashboard.

The good news is, you can integrate your Google My Business reviews into the Reputation app.

Here are the steps to do the same:

1. Sign up for the DashClicks platform.

2. Open the app drawer on the top right corner in your DashClicks Dashboard and click on the Reputation App.

3. Once the app opens, select the + icon next to the Source filter. Or, you can choose the same icon present in the top-right corner of the app.

4. From the list of sources, choose Google My Business. Select Continue.

5. A login modal will show up in a secondary tab (make sure your AdBlocker is disabled). Log into the account that controls the GMB page and allow permission to continue.

6. Next, choose “Location.” And you are all done!

DashClicks' White Label Listing Services

If you are a digital marketing agency, you should sign up to DashClicks' white label local listing management services to create local awareness for your clients.

With these services, you are able to syndicate your clients' business location to over 70+ local directory listings. You can also integrate Google My Business listing into the DashClicks' platform.

Note: DashClicks' Listings Manager is completely self-serviceable. There is no onboarding required!

The Bottom Line

Keeping listings active and up-to-date is important to dominate your target local search results and draw in new customers. Needless to say, Google My Business plays a critical part in increasing local ranking of any business. But another thing that is just as important is ā tracking every feature and update that's related to Google My Business. It will help you fully utilize the potential of this effective digital marketing tool and pave your way towards successful business growth.

If you observe the present social media landscape, you will see how difficult it is for a brand to maintain a strong social presence. Owing to the ever-changing and ever-evolving nature of social media, marketers face different social media challenges from time to time. Overcoming these challenges is extremely important in order to move ahead of your competition and get noticed by your customers.

But how to tackle these challenges? A lot of marketers end up fretting over this, ignoring actual growth opportunities in the process. How about taking these challenges and turning them into advancements to grow your brand and further establish your name in the industry? In this post, we'll discuss how you can turn social media challenges into opportunities. These are surefire ways that will help you move forward in your industry, gain more customers, and generate business for your brand.

Without further ado, let's talk about social media challenges and how to turn them head on into opportunities.

1. Encouraging Organic Conversations About Your Brand

Today, a social media challenge you may be facing is ā increasing the number of customers talking about you or your brand.

Now, an effective way to get more and more customers to talk about your brand is to receive more positive comments from your targeted audience or customers on social media. This would encourage other potential customers to also check out your business and perhaps even leave a good word of mouth themselves.

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Here’s precisely what you should do to accomplish this:

• Ask customers for a review.
• Promptly reply to social media comments and mentions.
• Share feedback from customers on social media. Don’t forget to take their permission before you do so, however.
• Create posts that ask for your customers’ opinion.
• Sponsor giveaways and contests.
• Offer top-notch customer service.

2. Stagnant and Declining Engagement Rates

The majority of brands out there have gone through this – stagnant and falling engagement rates on their social media posts and pages.

Engagement numbers impact the visibility of your content on different social media channels. Hence, you need to keep a tight check on them.

In case you are currently facing this challenge, you can turn it into an opportunity to know more about social media marketing and your audience. Here’s what we recommend you do:

A. Check Your Existing Social Media Results

Evaluate your existing social media status. Understand what’s working for you and what’s not. Also, don’t forget to check your top-performing posts to know what’s getting you more engagement with your audience.

We also recommend that you search for connections between these:

• Content types (Is video showing better performance than text?)
• Content themes
• Voice/tone
• Post timing
• Formatting

When you check your content’s performance across your social media accounts, you get to know about your audience and take steps to improve your strategy.

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B. Talk to Your Followers, Current Customers, and Online Communities

Yes, we know one of your objectives on social media is to gain new IG followers. But, you should also dedicate a major portion of your content marketing strategy and time talking with your followers, online communities, and current customers.

But how to speak directly to them? Here are some ways:

• Create campaigns to receive more UGC (user-generated content).
• Conduct quizzes and polls.
• Always monitor and respond to comments and kudos from your audience.

C. Keep Track of Consumer and Industry Trends

Keep on checking the latest consumer and industry trends. When you do so, you eliminate guesswork and get to know exactly what your audience prefers to see in your posts.

D. Collaborate With Other Brands and Influencers

To boost engagement, you can opt for an effective way to increase your reach: Collaborating with other brands and influencers.‍

Tip: Find influencers with a follower demographic similar to your target audience. They should also have authority in your niche. You can use tools such as Buzzsumo, Followerwonk, and Buzzstream to find such influencers.

3. Measuring Social Media Marketing ROI

Another challenge that many brands face today is measuring and determining the ROI of their social media marketing efforts.

Why so?

Basically, certain goals are more abstract than others, which makes it difficult to measure them and prove ROI. An example of such a goal is “boosting brand awareness.”

Now, the question is ā How to overcome the challenge of measuring and proving ROI of your social media marketing efforts?

After all, you need to see some solid results in order to efficiently deploy your marketing budget and time on future marketing efforts.

The answer lies in determining which metrics to track to better measure and prove your ROI in future. For this, the below-mentioned metrics could come in handy:

A. Bounce Rate

Imagine this: One of your Facebook posts brought a lot of visitors to a web page of your site, but they left after a few seconds. The result of this? It increases your bounce rate.If you see that you have a high bounce rate, it indicates that your posts may not be relevant to the specific web page content they are leading consumers to. Ensure you use this information to produce your future posts accordingly.

B. Engagements

Tracking engagements such as saves, mentions, shares, and comments is important for the purpose of showing a gradual increase in your authority. It helps you track your performance and improve campaigns and posts in the future.

C. Referral Traffic

We recommend that you utilize UTM parameters and keep track of the amount of traffic coming from your chosen social media networks.All you need to do is embed these parameters in all the links in your social media accounts, individual posts, or campaigns. Take the help of Google Analytics and you are all set!

D. Return on Advertising Spend

If you are looking for a metric measuring the effectiveness of your digital advertising campaigns, then your search ends here. It's called Return on Advertising Spend. Track this metric to know what's working and what improvements to make to your social media advertising for upcoming campaigns.‍

Note: Use DashClicks' Analytics app to monitor and report on all your marketing campaigns in a single place. The best part about using the software is that you can integrate all your third party marketing and analytics integrations with it from an ever-increasing list. You can also view granular data insights from your dedicated dashboard.

4. Maintaining a Consistent Brand Voice

Your brand voice a unique tone of communication that you adopt at an earlier stage of marketing must reflect in every content piece you produce. Otherwise, it can negatively impact your engagement.

Today, maintaining a consistent brand voice is yet another challenge a lot of brands face. Businesses often face this challenge because of a lack of long-term content planning.

Now, the question is, how to convert this challenge into an opportunity? How can you eventually overcome it?

We suggest that you craft a brand guide that details your tone, do's and don'ts, language usage, causes you stand for, etc.

Tip: As your brand voice sets your brand's personality, it's important to keep it impactful and relevant.

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5. Time Lost Due to Managing More Than One Social Network

From interacting with followers and strategizing over post ideas to cross posting and juggling content deadlines, there are plenty of tasks involved in managing different social platforms.

As a result of all of these tasks, productivity and time management can suffer. If you notice that you are facing this challenge, check to see if you can do without one or two social media platforms. This will also work as the perfect opportunity to streamline your social media marketing plan.

Here's what we recommend you do when faced with this challenge:

A. Conduct an Analysis of Each Platform

Check which social media platforms perform the best for your business. For this, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• Which social media channels align more with your voice, goals, vision or brand image?
• On which social platforms do you see growth occurring for your brand?
• Where are the most meaningful engagements happening?
• Which social media platforms do your targeted audience frequent the most?

Finding answers to this question will help you know if you can stop using one or two platforms that aren't benefiting you in any way.

B. Hire White Label Social Media Services

If you are a digital marketing agency that's currently struggling with social media management for your clients, you can think about outsourcing. We recommend you hire reliable white label social media services from a reputed agency such as DashClicks. These services help you, the agency owner, leverage different social media platforms to increase social engagement for your clients.

Wrapping It Up

Since the beginning of social media marketing and advertising, marketers have come across many challenges that either make or break their marketing efforts. The fact is, social media challenges will always come up in one form or another. So, whenever your brand is faced with these challenges, you should look at them in a positive light. What we mean is, think of them as opportunities to improve your strategy, steer ahead of your competition, and boost sales.

For instance, if you face the challenge of declining engagement rates, then look at it as an opportunity to speak to your followers, online communities, and current customers to determine what they want. Or, if you face the challenge of time loss due to managing more than one social network, check which social platform you should pay the most attention to and direct all your efforts towards it.

In all, ensure you implement the pointers we discussed above to effectively interact and engage with your audience on social media and build your brand. Good luck!

In this digital age, you ABSOLUTELY need a mobile-friendly website for your business.

Why?

As you read this post, your potential customers may be searching for your business on their mobile devices.

A mobile-friendly website means a site that's created and optimized for smartphones and tablets.

There are even stats that point towards the importance of a mobile-friendly website:

• 55.4% of web users use mobile devices to purchase online.
• Moreover, 61% of users will never return to a site that isn’t mobile-friendly.

The number of global mobile users is also expected to grow with each passing year.

All of this points to one thing: the need to have a mobile-friendly website in order to offer the best user experience to mobile users visiting your site. It plays a crucial role in helping them decide whether or not they should purchase from you.

In this post, we'll discuss all the important things you need to know about mobile website design, the process in which you take steps to optimize the web experience for mobile users. Here's what you should keep in mind when creating a mobile-friendly website.

1. The Text Should Be Large Enough to Read

This is one of those mobile website design tips that may seem obvious, but deserves a mention because it plays a huge role in making your website mobile-friendly.

Your mobile site must have text that's large enough to read comfortably. The users should never have to scroll left/right or zoom in to read something.

Check this example where the text shown on the site perfectly fits the screen size of a mobile:

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2. Use Large Buttons

Your business' mobile site needs to have buttons large enough for users to tap on. They should never have to zoom in while tapping on the buttons.

Note: Never place hyperlinks too close together. This is because a user attempting to click on one link may end up clicking on another.

3. Go for a Simplistic Design

One of the best mobile website design tips to follow is to go for a simple and clean design. As you only have a few seconds to convey information about your business when a user visits your site on mobile, you need to opt for a simplistic design.

Tip: Too much copy, graphics, and videos can hamper the loading speed of your site when a mobile user visits it. So, an uncomplicated design with a focused copy is the way to go.

4. Think With Your Thumb

Ensure your mobile website is such that a user is easily able to navigate your site with a single thumb (or index finger). They shouldn't feel the need to pinch to zoom or use any extra fingers. This way, you know you have designed a site that users can easily use on their mobile devices, on the go.

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5. Create Attention-Grabbing Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

A CTA is a banner, an image, or simply a piece of text, that prompts users to take a specific action. For instance, Your CTA can tell users to learn more about an offer, sign up to your mailing list, or buy a product.

Now, you need to create a CTA for your mobile site that catches the eye of the user. Otherwise, it would defeat the entire purpose of placing the CTA.

But how to design an eye-catching CTA for such a limited screen space?

An easy tip would be to place your CTA above the fold where it's easily visible to the user. They would not have to scroll down in order to see it.

6. Create Simple Forms

Users almost never face a hard time filling a large form on a computer. This is because using a keyboard to enter information in a large form that's already displayed on a big desktop screen is extremely easy. But, on mobile devices, forms need to be shorter for the user to easily fill them. These forms also need to have large buttons and text fields for the user to comfortably fill the form.

Here are some best practices you can follow to offer a smooth form-filling experience to the visitors on your mobile website:

• Ask only for the first name and email address of a visitor if you want them to sign up to your mailing list.
• If you need to include more than two fields in your form, ensure you make them easy and quick to answer.

Tip: Use DashClicks' Forms app to create user-friendly forms for any kind of data collection.

7. Make It Easy for Users to Contact You

If a customer searches for your contact details, chances are they might be facing some kind of an issue or question. This means, they may already be somewhat frustrated or confused. So, ensure you make it extremely easy for users to get in touch with you while designing a mobile-friendly site.

Here's what you can do:

Place a chat icon at the bottom-right. Or, if you can't offer this, provide a contact form in a Contact link that a user can find in your menu. You can also link to a Facebook chatbot if you aren't able to go for any of these options.

8. Provide an Intuitive, Simple Search Feature

Your site's search feature is relatively more important to mobile users. To make it seamless for mobile users to carry out a search, make sure you put in place an intuitive, simple search feature. For this, ensure you position it front-and-center for your users to quickly spot it. This is one of the most important mobile website design tips to follow for providing a great user experience to visitors on your mobile site.

9. Use Simple Menus

Desktop website menus have plenty of space. They can take up a complete bar at the screen's top. And the good thing is that it never hurts the user experience. But when it comes to smartphones, you just don't have that much space.

But then how to design menus for mobile sites?

We recommend that you use simple menus that show your website's overview. You can then add the search feature, filters, and categories to help users find what they are searching for.

You can even use the hamburger symbol that's used in the example below:

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This symbol comprises two or three horizontal lines, signaling that a menu is present. This menu can then show large buttons and text upon opening.

How Do You Know if a Website Is Mobile-Friendly?

If you are wondering whether your existing website is mobile-friendly, you can run a test to know for sure.

To do so, we recommend that you use Lambdatest’s mobile-friendly test tool. All you need to do to use the tool is input your website link and click Test URL.

About DashClicks' Sites App

If you wish to build an attractive, mobile-friendly site for your agency, you can use DashClicks' Sites app. The website builder software lets you access different site views including mobile, desktop, and tablet at all times. This will help you provide a quality UX to your potential customers, regardless of the device they use.

Here are some more features of the Sites app:

• Select the template of your choice and get your new custom site built within a matter of seconds.
• You can use the app to create, manage, and optimize your site, no tech experience required.
• You can access exhaustive website analytics to see the stats of your site and know how it is performing.
• Sites include hosting that is done on AWS and an SSL certificate to ensure your site is protected.

Wrapping It Up

A mobile-friendly site is created to work well both on tablets and smartphones. From creating eye-catching CTAs to using text that fits perfectly on the small screen of a mobile, there are many mobile website design tips you can follow. Another way to deliver a sound user experience is to create a mobile app for your business. AppMySite's mobile app maker enables you to build an app in minutes without writing a single line of code.

Now that you know what a mobile-friendly website is and how to create one, you can begin building your site with confidence knowing that you will provide only the best experience to your potential buyers if they visit your mobile site. Good luck!

Hiring a digital agency can be your most significant investment in a business; ensure you are getting the best out of it. Also, remember that hiring an agency does not guarantee success, so check that your business fundamentals are strong and you have a robust business plan.

Furthermore, it is imperative to keep logical expectations and not to get disappointed or drive the agency owners crazy with your unrealistic expectations.

To ensure success, you should know what to expect from a digital marketing agency.

Here are the 11 tips to consider when engaging a digital agency to drive the best results -

1. Do Your Homework First

You can't expect your agency to do everything for you. So, before you hire an agency, do your homework and finish the prerequisites. For example, before hiring an agency for a paid advertising project, build a website with all the necessary landing pages. Conduct on-page optimization to easily convert customers when running paid campaigns.

Similarly, while onboarding new clients, your responsibility is to provide your credentials, such as logos and business information, give access to software, create customer profiles, and so on. Also, be ready with high-quality product photos, niche keywords, USPs, previous ad clips, and the terminology used in your industry.

2. Conduct a Business Feasibility Study

Before hiring a digital agency to promote your business, check your business fundamentals. If you don't have a business plan and haven't performed market research, you are doomed for failure. Assess your market size, competition, and people interested in your products or services. The lack of strong demand and a large targetable market indicate that your business has weak fundamentals. It can be risky to invest in marketing for such a business.

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3. Evaluate Your Agency's Expertise

Signing a contract without due diligence and evaluating your agency's capabilities and expertise is like jumping into a dark well. You will engage with the digital agency to assign them the crucial task of your brand's marketing and conversion. You should get some upfront value in exchange for the money you will invest in the services.

So, it is a good idea to check their proposals. A professional agency would always share a well-prepared presentation highlighting its strategy and execution. You can also give them a test project, but it doesn't work with every service, especially SEO, because search engine optimization doesn't yield any results in the short term.

Some agencies also offer a free website audit and plan to improve the SEO and web design for improved visibility and user experience. It proves that the concerned agency is serious in its approach.

4. Assess Your Agency's Work Culture

There are no standard benchmarks for digital agencies, varying according to their work culture and processes. You must also understand that they work with multiple clients, so they can't entirely focus on your project and might not use all of their resources and tools for your project.

So, you should have at least one person to manage your project in-house who knows the nitty-gritty of the project and monitors the results delivered by your agency. This ensures that both of you are on the same page. Make sure that the content and graphics your agency provides are as per your branding and convey the right messaging to the audience.

5. Stop Taking Daily Feedback and Doing Micromanagement

Marketing takes time to deliver results. So, stop pricking agency owners daily, as it can be counterproductive and annoying. Similarly, micromanaging everything is certainly not a good business practice.

Be focused on the results and avoid interfering with the tasks assigned to your team members. There should be just one point of contact in the agency, most preferably the account manager, so you don't have to contact random people about your queries.

Your point of contact should be an expert in the field and have access to your project's real-time updates so that they can provide satisfactory answers to your queries and clear confusion if any.

6. Make Sure That Your Agency Specializes in Your Niche

If you have worked with a specific niche earlier, you would be familiar with its nuances, such as the product life cycle, market trends, and customer psychology & preferences. Similarly, different marketing channels require different kinds of expertise and strategies.

If your agency hasn't ever dealt with your niche, it can be a red flag because they'll likely not be familiar with the channel-specific strategies needed to succeed in the tough marketplace. So, prefer an agency that's experienced in your niche and adequately understands your market.

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7. Check the Contracts

To prevent nasty surprises and unpleasant experiences, you need to be careful about the legal side of your relationship with your agency.

Here also, a few things can be a red flag. As nobody can commit to a contract with guarantees and own responsibility for any damage to your brand, you need to be doubly cautious about your agency choice.

Choose a prudent and competitive agency and go for a time-bound contract.

8. Estimate the Project Costs

Hiring an agency is technically much like outsourcing. However, cost-cutting is not always the objective behind outsourcing. Quality products and services are necessary to compete in the market, and they don't always come at a low price.

You might hire agencies who will charge less for the same project, but you can't be sure of the quality they will deliver. There must be indeed a logical reason if someone demands a premium amount in this tough marketplace.

To decode this problem, you need to do some math. Calculate and compare the price difference between setting up an in-house team and hiring a premium and experienced agency. Research the salaries experienced professionals charge in your field and what it would cost you if you hire an agency. Here is an example of price difference

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9. Identify Project Scope

All projects are not the same. Some are longer and more complex; in some projects, you get the actual picture only after working on them. For example, you received an SEO project, but soon it dawned upon you that you need more quality content on your client's website first. So basically, it's content marketing plus an SEO project focusing on content marketing.

So, you need to clearly understand your project before you decide to hire an agency. It includes the timeline of the project, its evolving needs, and how far its budget can stretch.

SEO projects normally take longer to achieve any concrete results regarding search engine visibility, but paid ads or PPC projects provide immediate results. However, paid advertising is considered extremely risky. So, you must be very careful about your paid advertising projects because the budget may soon skyrocket.

10. Be Realistic

Marketing has many more variables than other business processes, such as design, development, and operations it is not easily predictable.

Given the competition and the market dynamics, things change rapidly, affecting the results. Furthermore, the first few months are the testing phase in every business relationship, which may last even longer. The agency business is no exception. Be ready to face this, and keep patience.

Failure is also an integral aspect of marketing; failure management takes time. If such a thing happens, get in touch with your agency and try to understand the underlying reasons. Bigger successes stem from failures. We need to learn from our failures rather than get disappointed and quit.

11. Hire Multiple Agencies if Needed

Adding multiple agencies is not bad because every agency specializes in one area. If we focus on delivering the best results to our clients, we may consider hiring various agencies.

For example, if a digital agency is proficient in SEO and another is popular for paid advertising, you should hire both for hybrid projects. Sometimes it is difficult to manage different agencies, but the rewards far outweigh the hard work. If you can't handle more than one agency, stick to one only.

Final Words

Having realistic expectations is crucial when engaging a digital marketing agency. It will help you get the best results and maintain an excellent relationship with your agency.

You should know what an agency is capable of and what it is not. Despite their proficiency and expertise, they can't ensure success with a poor business plan and weak fundamentals.

Once you are ready with a business plan and demand forecasting, you can hire an agency to scale your business.

YouTube analytics is critical to YouTube marketing strategy. If you use YouTube for business, you must know how to deep-dive into YouTube Analytics.

Irrespective of whether you use YouTube as a marketing platform or plan to earn money directly from your YouTube videos, you need to understand what’s working and what’s not.

When you dive into different YouTube metrics, you get to uncover important details. This information includes traffic sources, keywords users use to find your videos, and audience demographics. In all, you gain valuable insights that help you refine your content strategy with the passage of time. It simply makes sure people continue watching your YouTube videos.

In this post, we’ll discuss how to use YouTube Analytics to grow your channel. Let’s begin:

How to Use YouTube Analytics?

Before you learn to leverage the benefits of YouTube Analytics, you need to know where you will find the data. Here are the steps you can follow for the same:

How to View Analytics on YouTube?

• Log in to your YouTube account.
• Click on your profile icon. You can find it in the upper right corner.
• Select “YouTube Studio”.
• You will be shown a few summary metrics. For even deeper analysis, click on “Analytics” or choose “Go To Channel Analytics.”
• Now, you can easily toggle between Reach, Audience, Engagement, Overview, and Revenue. You will find different metrics in each of these tabs (talked about in detail in the next section).
• To see an exhaustive breakdown of your channel analytics, you can choose “Advanced Mode.” Here, you can also dive into the detailed metrics for each video.
• In the “Advanced Mode,” you can also choose “Compare To.” You can find it in the upper right corner. Once you click on it, you can check how your videos perform against your entire channel and even the year-on-year growth of your channel.

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How to View YouTube Analytics on Mobile?

Here are the steps you need to follow to see YouTube Analytics on your mobile device:

• Download the YouTube Studio app.
• Sign in to your account. You will come across some summary metrics.
• Toggle between Reach, Audience, Overview, and Engagement. Here, you can find different metrics in each tab (discussed in detail in the next section).

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All About YouTube Metrics

Now that you know how to see YouTube Analytics, here's everything you need to know about YouTube metrics.

YouTube Channel Analytics

You can find these metrics by choosing the Overview tab. You can use such metrics to identify average trends and chart your complete channel performance.

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1. Realtime Views: The number of views that your videos got in the last 48 hours. You will see this data in the form of a bar chart with estimated hourly views.

Tip: This data can help you know how your newly updated videos perform on YouTube.

2. Subscribers: The number of individuals who subscribed to your channel over a particular time period.

Tip: Check how this information compares to your usual subscriber growth. If you note a shift from the average, look for the reason behind it.

To determine the cause behind the shift, you can check if you posted less or more videos than usual. Also check the performance of all your videos to ascertain the cause.

3. Channel Views: The number of views your complete channel received over the time period you choose.

4. Top Videos: Your top-performing videos on the basis of their views over a certain time period.

5. Channel Watch Time: The total time individuals spent watching all your channel videos, in hours (calculated over a particular time period).

Tip: Select a 28-day timeframe to compare this information with your average watch-time.

YouTube Reach Metrics

These metrics help you know how people are discovering your videos (in and outside of YouTube). These insights help you make any necessary tweaks to your strategy.

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1. Impressions: The total times your video thumbnails were displayed to YouTube viewers.

2. Impressions Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of individuals who clicked on a thumbnail on YouTube to watch your videos.

A high CTR signals that you have done a great job with your keywords and thumbnails.

Listen Up: Check for similar patterns in videos that have low or high CTR. Doing so will offer you insights into what prompts your viewers to click.

3. Top YouTube Search Terms: The top search terms individuals entered in YouTube search that led them to your videos.

This information gives you an idea about your current YouTube keyword strategy. It helps you understand whether you need to make improvements to it.

4. Traffic Sources: Where and how individuals are finding your videos.

Examples of YouTube traffic sources include suggested videos, browse features, search, and playlists.

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Listen Up: When you take a look at traffic sources, you also learn about potential collaboration opportunities. You can check “Suggested Videos” to know which channels are driving traffic to your channel.

YouTube Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics help you know how individuals interact with your videos.

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1. Average View Duration: The amount of time your average viewer sees your videos before they click away.

Listen Up: A low average view duration means people watching your video are not getting what they expected from the video after clicking.

2. Top Playlists: Which playlist has the highest watch time overall.

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Tip: To increase the performance of your lower-performing playlists, you can always reshuffle the order. Find the video in the playlist that has the highest average view duration and move it to the top position.

YouTube Revenue Metrics

You can go to the Revenue tab to track your earnings (if your account is eligible for YouTube monetization features).

1. Estimated Ad Revenue: The estimated revenue for AdSense and DoubleClick ads for the chosen parameters.

2. Estimated Revenue: The net revenue your channel earned over a chosen time period from all Google-sold ads and transactions.

3. Transaction Revenue: The estimated net revenue from transactions such as Super Chat or paid content for your chosen parameters.

YouTube Audience Metrics

YouTube audience metrics help you gain insights into who watches your videos. This helps you devise effective content strategies.

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1. When Your Viewers Are on YouTube: This is a bar chart that shows the times and days most of your channel viewers are on YouTube.

Viewing this data will help you schedule your video uploads at the best time.

2. Unique Viewers: An estimate of the total number of individuals who watched your videos over a particular period.

3. Returning Viewers: People who have watched your channel’s video in the past and have come back for more.

High returning viewers mean that your content is striking a chord among people.

4. Audience Demographics: The gender, language, location, and age statistics for the individuals who watch your channel videos.

This crucial information helps you plan your content according to your audience.

Note: Learn how to create a YouTube content machine that drives insane traffic.

5. Watch Time From Subscribers: The total watch time that comes from your channel subscribers.

If you notice that the watch time from your subscribers is low, you can consider creating a consistent posting schedule and making sure they know about it.

YouTube Video Analytics

You should also track metrics for specific videos. From the Analytics overview screen, click on a video to check its stats.

You can use the Engagement, Reach, and Audience tabs for each video to see different metrics for the video.

1. Views: The total times your video has been viewed (includes repeat views from the same person).

2. Watch Time: The cumulative amount of time individuals have spent viewing a particular video.

Note: Watch time is a major ranking factor in the YouTube algorithm. Videos that have a higher watch time have more chances of showing up in recommendations and search results.

3. Average View Duration: The estimated time (in minutes) watched for each view of the chosen video.

4. Video Subscribers: The number of individuals who subscribed after viewing a video.

This metric is extremely important because it signals if a specific video connected with the people who watched it.

Note: You can also view the count of subscribers lost because of a specific video. This information can also help you ascertain what went wrong because of that particular video.

5. Advanced Mode: Take a look at the “Advanced Mode” reports to know how individual video stats compare to the complete performance of your channel. These insights will help you produce future videos that will definitely show a great performance.

Popular YouTube Analytics Tool

You can also use a reliable YouTube Analytics tool to know about the performance of your channel. A great example of this tool is Analytics app by DashClicks.

Set up YouTube tracking in Google Analytics for an in-depth look at how individuals reach your channel.

Using DashClicks’ Analytics App

Want real-time marketing reporting software at your fingertips? Use the best-in-class Analytics app by DashClicks. It helps you monitor and report on all your marketing campaigns in a single place.

Take a look at the features of this incredible app:

• See granular insights to make smarter marketing decisions and drive better conversions.
• Choose the date range from predefined options or create a custom date range to see all your data.
• Integrate your third party marketing and analytics integrations to the software from an ever-increasing list.
• Get accurate white label reporting quickly and in real-time.

Conclusion

Armed with the knowledge of different YouTube metrics, you can now gather a wealth of information about your YouTube channel and take your YouTube game to a whole different level. YouTube Analytics is extremely important for your business as it helps you grow your channel at a faster pace! Ensure you use the data gathered to create awesome content and gain more customers. Good luck!

Today, most successful businesses know that collecting information about leads, their needs, and preferences hold importance in developing and growing a database. Lead generation forms enable you to effectively collect this information. There are also a host of other benefits of using a lead generation form. For instance, the data you collect through these forms plays a vital role in improving your services and products. It helps serve your potential customers better.

All in all, you can think of a lead generation form as a vital cog in the wheel of any modern-day business.

In this post, we’ll discuss in detail why you need to include a lead generation form on your website. We’ll also learn about how such a form works, its types, and what makes a good lead generation form (with examples). Let’s dive right in:

What is a Lead Generation Form?

A lead generation form is a set of fields used to collect and capture the contact details and other crucial information of your site visitors. But why collect such data? To convert your site visitors into potential customers.

You need to build lead generation forms that have a simple design and are easily accessible and appealing. Otherwise, visitors won’t be convinced to submit their information.

Note: As per Hubspot, organizations get an average of 470,000 website visitors,1,800 leads, and 300 new customers every month. This means you require a lot of form submissions to get leads.

A good recommendation of a form building software to create simple, visually-appealing, user-friendly lead generation forms is DashClicks’ Forms app. This app features an extremely easy-to-use interface to help you quickly build forms. It also offers one organized view of all your forms and submissions for you to review and take action on.

Why Include a Lead Generation Form on Your Website?

Competition in your industry is getting fiercer by the second. And because of this, you need to generate more leads and connect with a wider audience for your business.

When you include an effective lead generation form on your site:

• It generates as many leads as it can.
• Captures sufficient data about each of your leads, enough for you to make a decision about whether or not you need to pursue them.

Tip: To build an effective lead generation form, you need to keep in mind the following:

• Identify and ask for the most important data you require from your leads.
• Make it as easy as possible for your lead to provide this information.

The best thing about including a lead generation form on your website is that you gain high-quality leads from people that are more likely to purchase from you either at a sooner or a later stage.

How Does a Lead Generation Form Work?

Here's how a lead generation form works ā

You need to provide an incentive to your site visitors, which will entice them to opt in and offer their contact details.

Examples of some common types of incentives include:

• Updates on future events and sales.
• Subscription to a newsletter.
• A discount on purchases.
• Downloadable eBook, white paper, etc.

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The data you collect in exchange for the incentive you offer can go into your marketing platform or CRM. Then, you can make it a part of your digital marketing strategy planning. Awesome, isn't it?

Types of Lead Generation Forms

Lead generation forms come in a variety of types. The most common ones you need to know are:

1. Floating Bar Form

The floating bar lead generation form finds a permanent position at the bottom or the top of a webpage and is static even when site visitors continue to scroll.

Such forms are simple in nature and possess only 1-2 fields. These forms are ideal for getting email addresses of high-quality leads.

2. Modal Form

A modal form is one of the types of lead generation forms that you can think of as a pop-up lead generation tool. When a visitor browses a page, it appears after a short delay. It entices them to offer their details in exchange for an incentive.

The incentive can be 20% off on the first purchase after the visitor enters their email address.

Chances are, you may have already come across such a form when you visited a website. When a modal form appears, you need to enter your information or simply close the pop-up in order to proceed.

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Note: If you create a modal form, ensure it doesn't annoy your site visitors and force them to leave your site. Modal forms help increase conversions and are highly effective when used in the right manner.

Tip: Ensure your incentive is too good to miss. This will convince your site visitors to provide you with their email addresses without a second thought.

3. Floating Box Form

A floating box form floats and sits on a permanent spot on a page, even when the site visitors scroll. Now you may find this form similar to the floating bar form, but it has a slightly bigger layout. You can add more fields and receive more information about your site visitors with the help of a floating box form.

Oftentimes, this type of form appears when an individual arrives at your site. But, you can also set the time at which you want this form to show up. You can even select where it displays on the page.

4. Inline Forms

These forms are one of the most-used types of lead generation forms. Inline forms are embedded within your page content. You can include them on your site's contact page, landing page, or just about anywhere else.

Let's take an example to understand a scenario where you can use this type of form. You can use it to receive a site visitor's contact information along with the state they reside in or the size of the company they work for. Ofcourse, you should have a reason for asking for such information.

Best Practices for Your Lead Generation Form

When you deploy the best practices for creating and optimizing your lead gen forms, you get to drive the maximum benefit out of these forms.

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Let's discuss these best practices along with some important lead generation form examples:

1. Choose the Correct Type of Form

Check the intent of your customer before you decide on the kind of lead generation form to use. For instance, if a site visitor wants to sign-up for a mailing list, you should create a lead gen form with a minimal number of fields.

In contrast to the example shown above, it's best to put in place a long form if your customer base requires an insurance quote, for instance.

2. Your Forms Should Look Best on All Screens

Your audience may come across your form on desktops or mobile phones. Irrespective of whether it's a desktop or mobile screen they use, make sure your lead generation forms work and look best on every screen size.

Tip: You can take certain steps that help make the form-filling experience easier on the small screens of mobile devices. For instance, you can left-align the form fields.

3. Break Longer Forms into Multi-Step Versions

Some lead generation forms need a lot of data entry. It's best to break such a form into multi-step versions. For instance, the food delivery service, SnackNation, uses multi-step options in their lead gen form to break the monotony. If you see their lead gen form, you will notice that they have added different field types, a progress bar, and auto-scrolling.

4. Add a CTA Button Within Your Form

Adding a CTA button within your lead generation form informs your site visitor about a definite action they should take. The CTA of a lead gen form includes the use of standout colors and power words. This helps highlight it. Here's an example of a lead gen form by LinkedIn that uses a clear CTA called Sign in along with its signature blue accent color:

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5. Create a User-Friendly Form

Here are some steps you can take to create user-friendly lead-generation forms:

• Ensure your website loads quickly. In other words, the web page that contains your form should never be slow to load.
• Your form should provide clear instructions to the user.
• Ensure you adequately space out the fields in your forms (both vertical and horizontal).
• Don’t add any non-essential fields that make your form unnecessarily long.
• Make sure you create a logical order of all the fields in your form.

Use DashClick's Form Builder Software for Your Requirements

DashClicks' Forms app is an efficient online forms building and management software that enables you to create custom forms for any kind of data collection. You can use the app to quickly create effective lead generation forms.

The best part about using the Forms app is that you can choose from hundreds of pre-built templates to speed up your workflow and save your time. Also, there is no limit to the number of form submissions you can have stored in your account. Use the app to create simple, great-looking lead gen forms. You can also use the app to get one organized view of all your forms and submissions.

Notable Features of DashClicks' Forms App

Take a look at some important features of the Forms app:

• You can send one-time form links to contacts and invite them to submit the information you need to collect.
• When you add fields to your form, you can customize backgrounds, borders, and fonts as per your preference.
• You can easily embed the form you create on your website.
• Three form types are available while using the app – classic, group, and card forms.

Wrapping It Up

From helping you generate as many leads as it can to getting sufficient information about them, effective lead generation forms offer a plethora of benefits. Now that you know all about these forms, you can create lead gen forms that help you convert your site visitors into potential customers. Use a reliable form-building software by DashClicks to create visually appealing, user-friendly lead gen forms. Good luck!