With over 2.6 billion users, YouTube is the largest video marketing platform across the globe. The popularity of YouTube is because the audiovisual medium allows brands to engage with their audience in a unique and interactive manner. YouTube being the most popular search engine, also plays a vital role in its increasing popularity.

However, in a hurry to explore this tremendous opportunity of YouTube marketing, marketers and businesses make common mistakes while making their videos, leading to a complete failure of your video marketing strategy.

Here we give you the lowdown on some such mistakes and tips to avoid them.

1. Making Lengthy Introductions

Have you ever come across a video where the content is insignificant to the actual topic? Do you wait long enough for the person to share the relevant information? Most probably, the answer is no, and you move on to the following video.

The same thing may happen if the start of your video isn't gripping and is filled with boring introductions. Therefore, to make the viewer stay, ensure that the opening is short, exciting, informative, and backed by exceptional content.

2. Not Having a Solid Content Strategy

At the end of the day, video content is also content, and to achieve the desired results, you need to plan and strategize your videos according to your marketing plans.

Creating random videos with no set goals won't take you anywhere. Set a clear goal to define the parameters and timeline for your videos, and curate content to achieve that goal.

3. Lack of Proper Branding

Another common mistake made by brands while creating video content for YouTube is the lack of branding. Even if your content is remarkable, you won't get any leads or conversions through your videos if the user can't place your brand name with it.

Ensure that your video content has appropriate branding so the user can remember you even after the videos end. Also, ensure to keep your branding and logos consistent in all your content so the viewers can quickly identify you.

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4. Making Poor-Quality Videos

One major downer for any viewer is a video that has poor audio and video quality. If your sound isn't straightforward and has a noise problem and pixelated images, no one will watch that video.

You need to ensure that your videos have crystal-clear sound and high-definition picture quality so that the user experience is to notch no matter on which screen they watch the video.

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5. Providing Too Much Information

Suppose you are watching a video on SEO strategies, and it talks about SEO, PPC, and social media in that single video. You would feel confused at the end of it. Too much information does that.

Therefore, only stick to one specific message, topic, or information in a single video. It will enhance the clarity of the content and make it more appealing to the audience.

6. Not Focusing on the Target Audience

Every business has a target audience that they want to capture. Creating your YouTube videos without considering your target audience's interests won't fetch you any results.

While creating your video content, research what your target audience likes and create content around it. You can look at your competition's video to get an idea. Conduct surveys and ask people to fill out feedback forms to learn about their interests.

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7. Hoping for Instant Gratification

Many marketers expect their videos to become viral within minutes and gain millions of followers in a day. In reality, that rarely happens. It takes time and consistency to build your brand on YouTube and gather followers.

Expecting instant results from your videos is like hoping to drink rich wine the same day you brew it. Consistently optimize your videos and post more content to see results with time.

8. Ignoring SEO

As mentioned earlier, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. And it also requires search engine optimization so that your video ranks for the correct search queries or keywords.

Without SEO for your video, your content won't be visible to the right people. Sometimes, it won't even show even if the user has entered the relevant keywords because the YouTube algorithm hasn't recognized your video ideal for the query due to a lack of YouTube SEO. Therefore, you need to ensure that your videos are fully optimized.

9. Ignoring Titles and Subtitles

Your title is what the viewers read first to know what the video is about. If your title is ambiguous and misleading, the viewer may not watch the videos or leave halfway feeling cheated. Therefore, make sure your title is small, precise, and has the right keywords.

Another common mistake is not adding subtitles to your video. Subtitles open your video content to a larger audience that may not understand the language the video is in. Adding subtitles also increases the engagement levels of your video.

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10. Not Asking for Subscribers and Comments

You may feel that the user would automatically subscribe to your channel and comment if they like your content. However, most people need more encouragement.

Ask your viewers to subscribe, like, comment, and share your videos at the end to reach more audiences and gain followers.

11. Not Having Proper Analytics

Feeling happy about getting more views on your video is not a bad thing. It shows that the audience finds your content relatable and insightful. However, as a business, you need more than just views on your YouTube to succeed.

Therefore, set up analytics mechanisms that measure important KPIs and parameters. Such parameters include click-through rate, watch time, engagement levels, etc.

Tip: We recommend that you use a reliable YouTube Analytics tool that helps you know the performance of your channel. A good recommendation is DashClicks' Analytics app.

12. Not Having a Good Storyline

Storytelling has been influencing people's life since the dawn of time. And nothing intrigues the human mind more than a well-dictated story. Videos are one of the best ways to create gripping stories.

However, when creating content for video marketing, most marketers fail to recognize the potential of stories. Using storylines to create engaging videos will improve your KPIs.

13. Not Understanding Customer Emotions

A lot of viewers and subscribers get emotionally invested in a brand when watching its videos. If your videos don't emotionally connect with your target audience, the chances are high that they will leave the video in between and never look back.

Understand your target audience's psyche and how their emotions work and create content accordingly.

14. Trying to Achieve Too Many Goals With One Video

A lot of businesses want to achieve all their video marketing goals with one single video. And that becomes the prime reason for the downfall of their video marketing.

The saying ‘Never keep all your eggs in one basket’ works here as well. Make different videos for different goals and keep them separate to get the best results.

15. Avoid Long-Form Videos

Another common mistake that businesses make during video marketing is creating long-form videos to get more view time. It may work for some popular types of content, but most people don't have the attention span of hours and skip halfway.

Stick to short-form videos whenever possible, as they have greater chances of views and engagement.

Summing up!

Being one of the most popular video marketing platforms, YouTube is an excellent marketing tool when used right. However, the key is to understand YouTube algorithms and audience interests and integrate your marketing goals with them.

Everything depends on your ability to help your clients run their sales engine. To win the trust of your clients, you need to consistently hit their revenue targets.

So, what's your approach to ensuring you're on track?

Goal-setting and tracking are the most realistic and productive tactics an agency can use to crank up its sales numbers.

These tactics would also help your campaign sail smoothly, besides keeping the ad spend on the budget.

But then the next big question is how to measure and track your performance as your campaign gets going.

Choosing a platform or software that enables you to easily track goals in your workflows can be a game changer for your agency's success. The magic lies in numbers. So, let the tool quantify the existing or modified KPIs to measure your performance.

So, let's discuss how to integrate goal tracking into your daily workflow.

Do you have clear performance benchmarks such as KPIs and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)?

If you don't have a documented process for it and your team depends on lots of sloppy and vague calculations, chances are you'll drag it until the end of the quarter.

This article will explain how to keep your clients happy through efficient goal-setting and add goal tracking to your performance reports.

How to Set Custom Goals?

Discuss your client's business goals with them and set custom goals for them on an imaginary timeline.

Split the bigger goals into logically smaller ones and add them to the timeline.

These goals and timelines may vary with different clients. For example, you can easily break a sales target of $50 million by the end of the next year into four quarterly goals. The first goal can be a modest $10 million in sales by the end of March 2023.

You can set various other goals to achieve this target, such as increasing leads and conversions every month. You can easily calculate that if you know the size of your sales ticket.

You can further divide this goal into expected numbers from PPC, SEO, social media, and email marketing.

The results will clearly show how your agency is performing in vivid detail. You can use our InstaReports app to generate easy-to-understand reports with colorful graphics and insights.

You can save time, hit your goals faster, and create a transformational experience by leveraging the DashClicks ecosystem. It comprises a white-label dashboard and different functional apps to automate and streamline your agency tasks.

For example, you can use our Deals App, a sales pipeline management software that simplifies the entire sales process. Or, you can use our Analytics App to track everything. Enjoy the power of automation when managing leads and deals within your sales pipelines CRM software.

On the Dashboard app, you can see the goals where you are on track, off track, or "already achieved" status.

General digital marketing goals also come in this periphery. For example, you can set a goal of making 50 backlinks on high-domain authority websites or increasing the number of leads through Facebook advertising by 100%.

Measuring these goals on a timeline will indicate your position.

Show the Value You're Providing to Your Clients

When you set the right goals and achieve them, you show the enormous value you bring on board, but if you set the wrong goals, your entire hard work goes in vain. It may disappoint your clients. Setting false expectations is a major cause of client churn.

Pro Tip: Set achievable goals and adjust them every quarter after discussing them with your client. The more consistent you are in achieving your goals, the longer you will be able to retain your client.

Using a white label dashboard is extremely helpful in measuring and achieving your goals. It allows you to choose the most desired metrics on the Dashboard's home page, making it top of mind. It keeps your entire team on the same page and encourages them to collaborate to consistently achieve their goals.

Adding these KPIs to the performance reports will help your client understand what is happening, boosting transparency and trust.

Setting the KPIs and other goals and adding them to every report you generate also serves as the education your internal and external stakeholders need. Your teams are your internal stakeholders, whereas your clients are external stakeholders. Using specific KPIs and goals help your team to seamlessly collaborate and work in unison.

How to Track Custom Goals Using DashClicks Platform?

It is one of the easiest applications to navigate within the DashClicks platform. It is so important that it displays summaries from different applications through widgets, so you can have a bird's-eye view of the entire campaign and where you stand. Colorful graphics make complex data easy to grasp and understand.

See how it clearly showcases the new leads, the leads won, and the leads lost, so your team can act in the right direction. You can easily customize your dashboard experience.

Below you can see the website analytics.

The visitors and page view stats give you a rough idea of the incoming traffic pattern.

Here is a tutorial video on how to use our Dashboard App.

The DashClicks white-label platform offers 65+ integrations with third-party apps and platforms. Some of the integrations are mentioned in the following screenshot.

Here is the screenshot of the Facebook Ads summary from the Analytics App -

The Facebook Ads tab provides you with the summary.

The new overview section will appear when you integrate your Facebook Ads account with the DashClicks platform.

So if you want to see how many times one of your ads appears on screen for a user, check" "Impressions."

Here we can also check CPM or Cost Per 1000 Impressions.

You can also check Conversions, which is an important metric.

Conversion often hints at an action a customer must complete, such as signing up for the newsletter, adding an item to a cart, downloading an eBook, or making a purchase.

The Dashboard will also tell you the amount you spent on completing a single conversion.

And finally, check the ROI on your Facebook ad spend.

Similarly, you can also get campaign insights in DashClicks.

Final Words

This way, DashClicks” white-label platform makes life easy for agency owners. You can save time and money through DashClicks” automation tools. Ensure your success by automating your agency’s goal-tracking process. It brings all the insights to your fingertips without wasting your time in too much back-and-forth in calculations.

It also allows you to focus on each campaign your agency runs and perform in-depth analysis. Transparency would pay off in a big way soon. Tracking goals will ensure your agency’s success by managing client expectations. Last but not least, quickly identify problem areas to fix and showcase your success.

Are you a fitness service provider looking for fitness advertising strategies to stand out in the rapidly-growing health and fitness industry?

Whether you are a supplement company, a small gym owner, or a fitness app provider, fitness advertising strategies can help you grow your business and generate brand awareness.

The goal of fitness advertising is simple show potential customers and clients why they should select your services and goods in a saturated and highly competitive marketplace.

Before we dive deeper into fitness advertising strategies and tips, let's first discuss the marketing challenges of the fitness sector:

• The health and fitness industry is highly competitive. So, it becomes difficult to stand out.
• There are fitness advertising regulations that need to be considered before you launch a campaign. For instance, social media platforms have restrictions on what a brand can say in a fitness ad.
• Fitness advertising heavily relies on visual content as the individuals need to see how your brand or products can help them.
• If you are directly selling to customers, you need to focus on creating effective customer relationships.

Now that you are aware of the challenges you can face in the fitness sector, it is time that we discuss some effective fitness advertising strategies that can help you achieve your goal. Let's start! Influencers can also promote fitness-related services that complement personal training sessions, such as weekly meal prep delivered at your doorstep. Services like these help your clients maintain a nutritious diet, which is essential for any fitness journey, resulting in better overall outcomes and satisfaction.

1. Use Influencer Marketing

If you aim to expand your customer base, think about leveraging influencer marketing. Fitness influencers can convince their followers to try out different workouts, supplements, clothing brands, and much more. They can help your brand reach a wider audience.

Now, you may want to know how to choose an influencer for your brand. When you decide to choose an influencer, pick someone who aligns with your target audience and brand. We recommend that you first partner with micro influencers. They can effectively promote your brand in a niche market. Just do ample research before you zero in on the right influencers for your brand.

2. Use the Power Of Social Media

As per the latest statistics, Facebook, with its 2.96 billion monthly active users, continues to be the king of social media. It is the platform where users stay and spend the most of their time 33 minutes a day on average out of 147 minutes.

As we move further down the list, Instagram has over 1.2 billion active users. Tiktok, on the other hand, has around 1 billion monthly active users.

These statistics are enough to prove that you need to leverage the power of social media. We recommend that you create and set up an account on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok. Ensure you put popular hashtags in your posts for people to notice you. Also, don't forget to post in a consistent manner and create engagement with your followers.

Tip: There are many fitness trainers to check out on Instagram whenever you need some inspiration for your social media accounts.

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We also recommend that you create a social media strategy for your business. The 8 steps you need to take for this are:

• Recognize your objectives and goals.
• Check the resources you have.
• Look for examples that inspire your plans.
• Create a plan for crafting shareable content.
• Choose the social media platforms that you need to focus on.
• Articulate the tone of your brand’s activities on social media platforms.
• Use the correct tools for managing your social media efforts.
• Review the results you are getting and use the insights gained to refine your efforts.

3. Build an Email List With the Help of Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a term for a free item or service given in exchange for contact details. Examples of lead magnets include samples, trial subscriptions, free consultations, and e-newsletters.

A lead magnet is something valuable you can offer people in exchange for their email addresses.

For instance, a famous fitness brand called ATHLEAN-X offers a free bodybuilding guide in exchange for an email address.

Tip: To think about an effective lead magnet for your brand, ensure you understand your audience and what they would find valuable. Do the research and run a few lead magnets simultaneously to check which one is getting the most success.

Also, remember that your work doesn't end after you get leads. You need to nurture them as well. Send helpful content to them in order to create engagement and build their trust in your brand.

DashClicks' Inbound App helps you organize all your leads, making your life easy. It enables you to manage streams of inbound leads across multiple third-party platforms and distribute them among your sales team so that they can instantly follow up with prospects.

With our Inbound App, you can create inbound campaigns, manage lead notifications, and assign sales reps to specific campaigns within seconds.

Further Reading: How to Optimize your Website for Lead Generation?

4. Give Video Marketing a Try

YouTube is the most popular video-sharing site in the world. As per YouTube statistics for 2022, 1 billion hours of YouTube videos are watched on a daily basis. Moreover, 90% of consumers say they get to know about new products and brands via YouTube.

Keeping these statistics in mind, we can easily say that YouTube is perfect for fitness professionals who wish to grow their business. It provides them with the necessary online exposure. You do not even require professional recording equipment to start filming and run your YouTube channel. Simply upload regular video content to create a solid subscriber base.

Let's discuss some videos you can consider creating for your channel:

• Interview other fitness professionals and upload the video on your channel.
• If you own a gym, make a promo video where you showcase the facilities you have. Also, include some clips of people using the gym equipment.
• Provide quick fitness tips, such as how to work out from home, choose a supplement, or begin strength training.

Note: Ensure you create brief, engaging videos. Also, make sure you end with a CTA such as contact us for a personal training session subscribe to our channel.

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5. Create a Membership Site

Membership sites are where individuals pay money to access informative content. Through these exclusive members only sites, brands can look to offer the below-mentioned perks:

• Special Workouts
• Supplement guides
• Meal plans

You can also think of offering your members a monthly or annual package, which they can choose according to their budget and needs. Moreover, consider creating a social media page, a support group, or a members-only forum as part of your membership offering.

6. Run Facebook and Instagram Ads for Your Target Audience

Chances are that you may already be running Instagram and Facebook ads. But, make sure you are targeting your audience in the best way possible. The great thing about advertising on Facebook and Instagram is that you can get extremely specific when it comes to narrowing down your audience. This ensures your ad is displayed to the right individuals, that too at the right time and location. Here's an example to explain this in detail.

Check the image below. Here, people within a particular zip code who are engaged shoppers, newly engaged, and interested in weight training and yoga are being targeted.

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With the help of this example, you can easily see that targeting lets you focus your content on a specific section of your audience.

7. Share Client and Customer Testimonials

Let's start with a closer look at the latest online reviews statistics.

54.7% of consumers read at least 4 reviews before purchasing a product.

Nearly 9 out of 10 consumers read reviews before they go ahead and make a purchase.

Keeping this data in mind, we recommended that you encourage your satisfied customers to write online reviews about your services and goods. When your potential customers go through happy reviews of your business, there is a high chance that they will convert.

Additionally, always remember that when you talk about the fitness industry in particular, reviews can help individuals decide if they can trust your brand and whether you can provide the results they are looking for.

Tip: There are many ways in which you can get reviews. For instance, consider asking your customers for reviews via email or in person.

Once you receive the reviews, convert them into client testimonials and add videos or images. Visuals help create a successful advertising campaign, so you can convert your reviews into graphics that have the power to engage. However, an important thing to note here is that you need to ensure you have permission to use the reviews in this manner.

Conclusion

Owing to the highly competitive nature of the health and fitness industry, you require a meticulously created marketing plan in order to succeed. After you clarify your fitness marketing goals and know your target audience, choose some of the fitness advertising strategies mentioned above that you think will appeal the most to your chosen demographic.

To sum up, you can begin by building brand awareness on social media and other famous online platforms in order to advertise your fitness brand. Another way in which you can advertise your business is by partnering with influencers who align with your brand and target audience. In the end, we recommend that you try a mix of different fitness advertising techniques and then compare the outcomes of each campaign to choose the best marketing strategies for your business.

The 2008-2009 mega recession left invisible scars on numerous industries and turned the course of life for many. But this was not the last recession to happen. Post-pandemic, we are yet again heading towards a major recession, which is not as severe as the 2008 downturn but big enough to jolt the economies across the globe.

Negative Impacts of an Economic Downturn

A downward recessionary spiral can crush everything. With decreased incomes and less money to spend, retail sales tumble down, impacting the entire economy.

Businesses are forced to shrink their workforce and cut overall operating expenses to prevent a possible shutdown. Mass layoffs lead to high unemployment, lower wages, fall in GDP, and missed opportunities.

Slow and uneven recovery and social consequences further compound the problem, as we saw in the Great Recession of 2008. Student debt, lower fertility rates, increasing mental health issues & suicide rates, breaking families, and social unrest brutally hurt economies and markets for many years.

How to Keep Your Business Afloat During a Recession?

Even the best businesses struggle to survive during the recession because their expenses supersede their incomes. Here are 15 tips on how to market and survive during a recession.

1. Discover or Create New Revenue Streams

Follow the market trend during tough times and seize potential opportunities. You have numerous options to find alternative methods of creating new revenue streams.

Take stock of your abilities. You can create new products and services by utilizing your existing capabilities. These products and services may save your agency when there is a slump in demand for your current services.

Strategic partnerships will help you during the tough times to expand into the markets you previously couldn't tap.

You can sublet it and add your rental income if you have extra office space.

2. Sell Online Courses

As the eLearning market is booming, you can launch your online education business. Online courses are selling like a hotcake these days. Create online classes on your areas of expertise and sell them aggressively.

You need the following items to start with –

• A good HD Camera and a tripod
• A whiteboard, projector, and lights
• Proper Software to edit
• A well-written script

Buy a software program such as Teachable or WordPress’s LearnDash to make life easy.

Teachable is a popular software for creating online courses, which makes creating online courses a cakewalk. You can start with a fully functional free plan.

LearnDash is the best WordPress online course creation software with the best features to win your heart. Yet, it's quite affordable.

3. Implement an Evolving Business Model

Purge the static business models and replace them with evolving models, so you can easily withstand the tough times. To achieve this, you must pay attention to the changing customer needs. Keep your business model flexible to stretch and change your offerings.

4. Cut Your Pricing to Beat Your Competition

Premium pricing can knock you out of the market, especially during a downturn. So, to stay afloat, get out of your comfort zone and cut your pricing. Remember, customers, act as a lifeline for your agency. Keep them happy, and they will keep you in business.

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5. Innovate and Deliver Value

Innovation acts as a game-changer for businesses. Automate your operations. It saves time and money. Agencies can use the DashClicks white label platform and enjoy its amazing automation tools and apps that make report generation, analytics, and building websites a breeze.

Improve the quality of your product and services and improve your processes through DashClicks Deals and Project Management apps.

6. Position Your Agency Strategically and Find New Niches

If you are a PPC agency and notice that your clients have drastically cut their ad spending following a demand slump, try positioning yourself as a social media or SEO company. It can be a great survival move. You can also target new niches such as TikTok marketing etc.

7. Plan Proactively Ahead of an Economic Meltdown

If you foresee a downturn ahead, plan proactively to deal with it. Revamp your marketing strategies, migrate from manual to automated processes, and cut your costs. You can also consider downsizing your agency.

8. Hire Business Coaches and Mentors

Mentors and business consultants bring a lot of experience and new ideas on board and can help you survive a recession. Recessions wouldn't last forever, but the value that business coaches bring would elevate your agency to new heights, even after the slowdown.

Hiring a business coach can infuse life into dying agencies when many businesses get wiped out, and only the fittest survive. DashClicks offer business consulting services to digital agencies to make them recession-proof.

A business coach can help you maneuver through times of uncertainty. You need to take a plunge and undertake risks to pick up low-hanging fruits during the recession and reap unmatched rewards when the market recovers.

9. Offer Discounts, Incentives, and Rewards to Your Customers

Rewards and incentives hit the "temptation zone" and instantly help promote sales. It becomes even more important during tough times. Leverage discounts and rewards to romp ahead of the looming competition.

10. Reduce Your Operating Cost

Perform a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Study all costs of a project or decision vs. the total projected benefits. Of course, it also involves assigning a monetary value to those benefits. This way, you'll get to know if a particular expense makes sense or not. Slice off all the unnecessary expenses and drastically reduce your operating cost to stay lean and agile.

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11. Increase Your Marketing Budget

Contrary to conventional wisdom, some marketing gurus advise businesses to increase their marketing budget instead of reducing it during a recession. It has logical reasons behind it.

At a time when a small gesture of kindness may catapult your agency to newer heights, increasing your marketing budget may put the oxygen to your business and make it top of mind.

12. Monitor Your Cash Flow

Study your accounts and pay attention to patterns such as clients' payment cycles. Make sure your income supports your expenses, such as staff salaries, rent, payment to vendors, EMIs, and other bills, on time.

Improve your cash flow by cutting costs, getting customers to pay faster, and getting cash for your assets. You can also learn how to apply for a business credit card and credit lines if needed. Make sure your invoices are paid on time. You can also consider delaying payments to vendors.

13. Go International

If you see a slump in demand in the domestic market, you can think of expanding into global markets. Every country has a unique supply and demand pattern, and you may easily find clients overseas if you invest in international marketing.

According to an Americal Enterprise Institute study, Procter and Gamble (58%), Chevron (57%), Oracle (53%), Alphabet (52.7%), IBM (52%), and Pfizer (50.5%) generate more than 50% of their sales in overseas markets.

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14. Postpone Big-Ticket Items

If you plan to buy big-ticket items, postpone them until the market recovers. Shelve your plans to purchase premium furniture or invest in machinery or equipment. Freeze recruitment unless warranted to keep the wheel moving.

15. Fix Your Credit Lines

Identify the credit cards that might be bleeding your budget dry. Immediately pay down high-interest credit card balances. Switch to fixed interest rates from variable ones.

Final Words

In short, a recession would mean you and your client will spend less on marketing and advertising. Even the strongest brands need to pull punches to survive the tornado. But you can still spend on marketing because it has numerous rewards in store for you.

Some marketing gurus even recommend increasing your marketing spending during a recession. It will take you miles ahead of your competition, who risk disappearing from the public eye when they need them the most. Make sure your cuts in spending don't hurt your agency's momentum. The best way to survive a recession is to 10X your marketing and customer service.

The pandemic has devastated businesses, and client retention has emerged as the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs post-COVID-19. Clients are leaving businesses for multiple reasons, but some major factors behind the declining demand are fast-draining resources and recession-prone market conditions hitting revenues hard.

In these tough times, agencies should proactively try to retain as many clients as possible because that is much easier and more cost-effective than acquiring new clients. This article will discuss some crucial client retention strategies.

6 Strategies to Help Your Agency Grow in the Post-pandemic World

Agencies can use the following six techniques for client retention during tough times.

1. Use of Social Media

According to a study by loyalty 360, more than 27% of businesses admitted that social media marketing is the most effective channel for customer retention in the pandemic-hit market.

Customer loyalty is directly linked with retention, and boosting customer engagement can be the most favorable strategy to ensure long-term business. Since we spend more time online in the post-pandemic world, social media is the strongest channel to boost customer loyalty and engagement.

Social media gives you the best opportunities to interact with your clients and engage with them. Instead of a single-minded sales approach, try to discuss the problems and challenges they are confronting, and they would be more than willing to join the conversation. It will boost your brand image as a sincere partner concerned with the well-being of its customers rather than simply a business hardballing their products.

Here are a few techniques to boost customer retention through social media:

A. Use Effective Social Media Listening and Monitoring Tools

You can use social media monitoring tools such as Hootsuite, Google Alerts, Sprout Social, or AgoraPulse to help you with client retention.

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Social media listening tools allow you to keep a tab on customer conversations about your brand anywhere on the web. They will provide instant notifications if a customer mentions your brand or uses key phrases.

So, these tools offer crucial insights about your customers and opportunities to participate in hot conversations.

B. Use Relevant Hashtags and a Consistent Username

Make your brand accessible to your customers across different social channels. You can use relevant hashtags and an easy-to-remember username for that.

C. Publish Platform-Specific Content

Learn about customer psychology and share platform-specific content to engage your customers. Some brands use social media publishing tools to replicate similar content everywhere, but that is not a good practice. The content that succeeds on Twitter greatly varies from the content you should post on Facebook on Instagram. So, keep that in mind while curating branded social media content.

D. Hire a Dedicated Executive/Team for Social Media

A dedicated social media team is necessary to ensure timely responses to queries and complaints. Be attentive and highly responsive to customer feedback on social media. It boosts customer loyalty more than any other tactic. Try to minimize your customers' pain points and be reactive to their struggles with your products/services to earn their unmitigated loyalty.

E. Make Heavy Use of Social Media Advertising

Social media ads are highly visible, and consistent advertising increases your visibility on social channels. You can use these ads to promote your products, create awareness, and educate your customers. Social media advertising, for this reason, is well-known as a precursor to online action.

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F. Use Social Media Metrics

Use popular social media metrics to get deeper insights about your customers for better engagement.

G. Use Referral Programs

Leverage social media's powerful reach by running referral programs. Let your audience share your products on social media to amplify your brand's reach. It will not only boost your sales but also enhance customer retention. Don't forget to reward your customers for their referrals.

2. Improve Your Brand Perception

According to a Science Direct study, "The hospitality industry's strategic response to the COVID-19 pandemic & customer retention," the brand image of a hotel chain plays a big role in the hotel selection process in the post-pandemic world.

As described earlier, focusing on existing customers and retention are vital to succeed in the current market scenario. Hotels are counting on increasing revisits by existing customers as it's crucial to survive in today's highly competitive market.

Several revisits are directly influenced by brand perception, and brand image is a function of customer experience. So, if an agency wants to retain its existing clients, it should focus on its customer experience and brand image.

For example, to boost their brand image, hotels are taking many preventive measures, such as contactless services, QR code creator for entry logs, regular disinfections, and mandatory enforcement of mask mandates for the staff.

3. Offer Innovative Products

According to a study compiled by Sprout Social, a social media management platform, Alpha | BRAVO, a social agency, revamped their social media strategy in 2020 in the wake of the increasing challenges their clients face.

Since small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) were the hardest hit in 2020, struggling with slashed sales volumes and dented marketing budgets. Clients were getting impatient to see the results, but delivering results wasn't a cakewalk for the agencies those days.

But economic downturns always carry a seed of enormous growth. So, Sprout Social launched a new program that enables small and medium-sized companies to take control of their social media campaigns. The program was christened "aB Op.ti.mate," which gave the clients full access to Sprout Social dashboard.

As a result, clients could upload images, create and schedule posts, and monitor reviews and mentions, whereas Sprout Social provided all the strategic & consulting services. SMBs also got access to Sprout Social's creative team comprising writers, designers, and social media strategists for their needs.

Op.ti.mate program witnessed immense success and helped the social platform add new clients and retain existing ones at the peak of an economic meltdown caused by the pandemic.

4. Offer the Right Support With the Right Technology

DashClicks, a white label digital marketing service based in Florida, Miami, launched DashClicks 2.0 in 2021. It's a digital marketing platform aimed toward agencies.

DashClicks 2.0 is a white label platform that allows heavy automation through different applications. It has apps to generate performance reports, build bulk websites, perform analytics, manage projects, create forms to generate leads on the website, and much more. Besides that, DashClicks also launched its fulfillment services for the agencies that did not have sufficient staff or expertise to accept new digital marketing projects. DashClicks 2.0 became an instant hit in the market, and the white-label company saw huge growth in six months.

5. Deepen Your Relationship With Clients

Businesses are deeply hurt in the post-pandemic world, and many are vulnerable because of weak demand and poor marketing strategies. In such a scenario, you should deepen your relationship with your clients and look for their special needs to survive. Agencies should leave their comfort zone and provide the right support and assistance to their distressed clients. This practice alone can make you a winner while implementing client retention strategies. If your clients struggle with the strategy, you can immediately arrange a meeting and ask your experts to help them formulate a new strategy.

6. Be Flexible

Try to find out your clients' issues and alleviate their burden, even if it means going beyond your contract terms. You can decrease your fees or provide value-added services if needed to help your client survive. Being flexible will fetch you unmatched rewards in terms of client retention. Strictly following your contract terms may lead to a huge churn. Consider providing specialized training, webinars, or consultancy contracts to help them survive in the new market conditions.

Final Thoughts

Client retention is a much more powerful and cost-effective way to survive as an agency than adding new clients to your portfolio. It became even more prominent in the post-pandemic world. Everybody talks about customer-centric businesses, but very few companies go out of their way to help their customers and build long-term relationships.

So, the big question looms here: How to improve client retention? The best way of client retention is to focus on your customer's needs and problems. The competition is heating up, but it's never too late.

Google's ultimate business objective is to improve its search results, and it achieves it through its complex algorithms. So, Google constantly rolls out algorithm updates to prevent poor search results from appearing on top of SERPs.

What Is Black Hat SEO?

Google Webmaster guidelines are compiled to help website owners and businesses to stick to the best practices and avoid the shady ones.

Despite the clear guidelines from Google, many businesses try to manipulate and game the algorithms. The objective is to achieve a higher rank in a short span of time. To achieve this end, they won't even shy away from engaging in unfair practices. And that is known as Black Hat SEO. Hollywood movie-makers showed the bad guys wearing black hats in the old cowboy movies. That is the reason why these dubious practices are termed Black Hat SEO.

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The standard way to win the SERPs is to create high-value, high-quality content that solves people's problems. You should also engage in deep keyword research to make yourself visible in front of the people searching for the products you sell.

Google is constantly improving itself while identifying and penalizing Black Hat SEO strategies. So, when a practice becomes prevalent, Google rolls out an algorithm update and penalizes the websites engaged in such malpractices. But this does not stop people from inventing newer Black Hat techniques.

Signs That Your SEO Agency Is Implementing Black Hat Tactics

Here are the nine signs that indicate that your SEO agency might be hurting your website with black hat tactics.

1. They Are Engaged in Link Exchange and Buying Links

High-quality backlinks are extremely important because Google takes them as a signal of your site's authenticity, trustworthiness, and reliability. Backlinks from high-traffic websites also drive huge traffic to your website.

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It prompts some webmasters to buy the backlinks; however, that is completely against Google's guidelines. Google goes one step further and says that it doesn't work. It means that Google is aware of it, and its algorithms can penalize the site if they ever find out it's engaged in buying links.

In some instances, Google can impose an automatic or manual penalty that can impact specific pages or the entire website.

Google specializes in identifying deliberate actions and abnormal patterns to easily identify black hat SEO.

2. They Participate in Link Schemes

Google also despises link schemes such as exchanging links, free products, or discounts. To prevent such links from appearing as a link scheme, make them a no-follow link. You can do it by using the rel= "nofollow" tag. When you use this tag, your backlink will not impact the SERP rankings.

3. They Hide the Links

There are many ways to hide a link, and the prominent ones among these are:

• Placing the link on the footer
• Using it as anchor text
• Hiding it in the background color
• Keeping text off-screen
• Using font size ‘zero’

The easiest way to insert a link is to place it on the footer because there is enough space out there, and people have been doing it since the dawn of the world wide web.

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The worst thing is to use the commercial anchor text, which Google takes as a way of suggesting to rank the web page for the text used in anchor text. Google doesn’t like anyone to tell which site to rank higher. It’s manipulative, and Google hates it.

The worst part is to try to hide the links in the background color or the website text. Google will identify it both ways and penalize your website. The message is loud and clear, “Don’t try to game the system.”

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Another way to hide the backlinks is to post the link in the same color as the background, but you can't fool Google as they immediately detect it.

You should also not try to keep text off-screen using CSS or font size 0.

4. They Have No Activity to Show

If your agency has no genuine activity to show in the first few months, chances are they are involved in black hat activities. What you can expect at this point is:

• A comprehensive website audit.
• Detailed website analysis & optimization report.
• Identification of the target keywords.
• A list of targeted keywords per month.
• The articles or content created and published on the website and elsewhere for organic SEO.

If they have no clue who has done that, it means they are not seriously working on your project and might be doing Black Hat SEO for rankings.

5. Utter Lack of Communications

A professional SEO agency will regularly communicate and update you regarding the necessary accesses, reports, website errors, potentially harmful things on the website, a list of targeted keywords, and previous work on the website.

They might need access to CMS, Google Analytics, previous SEO and audit reports, Google Search Console Tools, and social media handles as part of their regular digital marketing activities.

If they are not doing that, it strongly indicates that they are relying on spammy backlinks creation, which can be potentially harmful to your website.

Most of the digital marketing work requires collaboration between the client and the SEO agency. At times, an SEO agency may suggest you take certain actions or complete certain tasks. It can also be a big red flag if they do not give you any suggestions or recommendations.

6. They Maintain a Layer of Confidentiality

If they don't disclose their tactics and maintain a high level of confidentiality around their activities, it can signal that something fishy is going on.

And when you ask something about the project's progress, their response is, "We are doing a lot of activities, so we can't share them with you at this point. However, you will soon learn about them and their impact on the website."

True SEO involves legitimate activities such as local SEO, guest posting, on-page optimization, and Google My Business listings. There should be nothing to hide if you are implementing it. Only scammers keep things secret. If such a thing happens, this is high time you should fire your SEO agency.

7. Your Website Is Penalized

If you signed the contract barely a month or two ago, and you see your website getting penalized, it may or may not be the fault of your SEO agency. However, there's a strong signal that they might be going in the wrong direction, i.e., practicing Black Hat SEO.

In this case, you should perform your research and try to know the reason for the penalty.

Some of the types of penalties that you might receive are as follows.

• A manual penalty
• A sudden drop in rankings
• A noticeable drop in the traffic

If you receive a GWT notification or an e-mail regarding a manual penalty, it's certainly not good news. If it has been just two or three months since you commenced work with your SEO agency, you can't be sure, but it's a potential red flag.

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Google's algorithms are constantly updating, so a drop in rankings doesn't always indicate that it's your agency's fault. However, if you notice a consistent fall in the rankings, use your analytics tools to know why.

A sudden drop in traffic is a strong signal of an algorithmic penalty. Investigate the reason for such a fall. It doesn't indicate that it's your SEO's fault, but you need to be cautious. Get a list of all your SEO agency's activities on your website and check if these activities might be the reason behind these penalties.

8. Your Website Starts Receiving Traffic From the Wrong Keywords

Suppose Google Analytics tells you that you have started ranking for the wrong keywords or are receiving traffic from the wrong keywords. In that case, it's a strong signal that your SEO agency is practicing spammy activities. In that case, ask your agency to furnish details of its actions on the website in the last few months.

Also, share with them the list of the wrong keywords your site is ranking for. If it is an error, they will rectify it, and if it is because of some spammy practice, you should immediately fire your agency.

9. Rise of Suspicious Backlinks

A spike in the number of suspicious backlinks to your website indicates something fallacious is happening. Check your link profile. Your link profile shows how Google should rank your website. In general, if you are an education technology business, you should not receive backlinks from gambling, textile, or spa websites. And if you are a US-based company, and you start receiving links from Chinese-language websites, your link profile is messed up.

It means that your digital marketing agency is using some tools that create spammy backlinks. These backlinks will not help increase your site's authority but will devalue it. In this case, you should immediately discuss it with your SEO agency and share the spammy links that your website has received. So, even if you don't get an honest answer, at least they will do something to fix the issue.

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You can use Google disavow tool to disavow those links or get your agency to do it.

Final Words

When you work with an agency, you need to keep patience, especially when it has been just a few months since they began working on your website. White-hat SEO takes a considerable amount of time to deliver results. Even if you outsource services from an agency, you should constantly research and keep yourself updated with the current market trends.

Signing a contract with an agency does not always mean you are not supposed to do anything. Instead, a professional agency will work with you as a partner and recommend several things you should quickly implement.

These tasks are generally not mentioned in your agency's scope of work but are crucial to getting the desired results.

To summarize, SEO is crucial for your website, and you cannot afford Black Hat SEO. Sometimes the success of your business depends on the SEO. You should give some time for your agency to deliver results, but you should constantly monitor them. If you notice something fishy, discuss it with them, try to conduct your research, and then make a decision.