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5 Reasons Your WordPress Website Needs Ongoing Maintenance After Launch

There’s no denying that businesses need to invest in website design and clean code. In fact, 73% of businesses that invest in an optimized website have an advantage when it comes to SEO, and also in how quickly that site loads on mobile and tablet devices—which now account for the majority of visits to most websites.

However, many businesses make the mistake of building their website and just leaving it on the host, never to touch it again. This is not only foolish, but dangerous—especially if your site is built in WordPress, where software, plugins, and code are constantly being updated.

Here are five reasons your WordPress website needs maintenance after design and development:

1. Website Maintenance for WordPress Is Crucial for WordPress Sites

If your website was built in .PHP and runs WordPress as your content management system (CMS) regular website maintenance is especially critical because .PHP is an open source platform. Most sites are built with components held together with custom code to keep it all working together.

You see, as great as WordPress is, it wasn’t designed to be a platform to build full-on websites. It was built as a legacy blog platform that was open source, which means developers could make WordPress sites robust through widgets and plugins they create.

WordPress websites require plugins to create the additional functionality like image sliders and forms. If there are issues with the code when the .PHP updates are made, they can affect how the plugins and widget work together, which affects the user experience and can even bring down the whole site.

2. Website Maintenance Helps Your SEO Efforts

All your SEO efforts will be in vain if your website isn’t optimized to load quickly and be user friendly on different devices. Website maintenance involves optimizing your website, making sure the code is working efficiently and images are compressed, and ensuring all the security measures are up to date.

Website maintenance addresses all these concerns and makes sure your site is always up and running at optimal levels. Since SEO efforts depend on an optimal website, you can’t have inefficient or buggy code, slow page speed, or other performance issues. All these things can penalize you with Google and hurt your rankings.

3. Website Maintenance Is Crucial to User Experience

A poor user experience can prove very costly when it comes to converting visitors to prospects on your site. In fact, you face a huge risk of losing up to 89% of your customers to a competitor if your user experience is poor. In an ecommerce business, poor user experience is likely the reason you’re unable to convert visitors into sales.

On the other hand, investing in improving the user experience on your site can get you a $100 return for every $1. Yes, your website should be aesthetically beautiful, but it also needs to be efficient, allowing the user to get to where they need to go (find information) or do what they need to do (buy something). If they have to wait too long for a page to load or an image to appear, they’re going to think that something is wrong with both your website and your company. That makes them lose trust, which makes them leave before doing what they came there to do.

Moreover, slow-loading websites cost businesses in the U.S. a $2.6 billion revenue loss annually. Regular website maintenance ensures that your website is always up to speed and that there’s no slow loading for any reason whatsoever.

With 83% of people expecting websites to load in under 3 seconds, you can imagine how badly slow loading can affect the user experience. Therefore, if you want to provide a positive user experience, website maintenance to optimize page loading speeds is critical.

4. Website Maintenance Makes Your Website More Secure

Security is a bigger concern today than ever before. Web crawlers are constantly bouncing off your website looking for vulnerabilities, which are typically caused by out-of-date software. Since many websites don’t invest in regular maintenance, their plugins may not be addressing the latest security vulnerability, even when the latest update is available. In many cases, the bot embeds itself in a file and waits for an “event.” This could be another update, which triggers the malicious action, causing a number of bad things to happen.

One major hospital in Houston left their site alone for years only to find one day that their domain was pointed to a “Male Enhancement Supplement” website. The entire website had to be rebuilt from the ground up. If they had maintained their website software and monitored it for security breaches, this likely wouldn’t have happened.

5. Website Maintenance Builds Credibility and Authenticity

Better security leads us to higher credibility and authenticity. Websites that are not properly maintained can lose the customer’s trust instantly. It takes a lot to build credibility and authenticity in the digital world, but it takes very little to lose it altogether. Imagine being an accounting firm or law firm—where trust is a huge piece of what you offer your clients—and your website goes down because you had a security breach. It’s embarrassing because clients think maybe you’re careless with their information, too.

81% of the online crowd considers trust as the main reason to choose a business, whereas 86% think authenticity is a desirable quality for a business to have. Investing in monthly maintenance and security monitoring is a small price to pay to reinforce trust and authenticity.

OAK Interactive Provides Website Maintenance and SEO Services

If you’re looking for an expert digital marketing agency Houston, OAK Interactive delivers comprehensive digital marketing and SEO services that help businesses grow. Our WordPress website maintenance services give you peace of mind in knowing that your website is running optimally and securely. Contact them now to learn more.

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List Of Dental Keywords That Can Bring More Patients To Your Dental Practice

Keyword research is crucial to any SEO campaign.

Your selection of keywords can actually make or break your Google rankings and have a direct impact on your dental practice.

Strategic keyword research is critical to finding both the high volume keywords as well as the long-tail keywords that can help you rank as one of thetop dentists in Houston.

Here’s why keyword research matters and what dental keywords can make all the difference.

Why does keyword research matter?

Thorough keyword research is the first step to any successful digital marketing strategy—especailly search engine optimization and local search marketing. Keyword research will help you identify your local audience, market theprocedures and services that your target audience searches online, and give you a clear direction for your website.

A thorough keyword research process provides you with valuable customer insights, helps with competitive analysis, and allows you to strategically rank higher in high-conversion keywords on Google search engine results pages (SERPs). Dental practices can optimize their websites, social media platforms, and their Google business profilesbased uponyour keywordstrategy.

Here’s why ranking for keywords is so important:

Over 33% of internet users opt for the top 3 search results on Google. Such high traffic guarantees that you’re getting more exposure, your website visibility is improved, and patients are more likely to convert on appointments.

Top trending dental keywords for dental practices

Patients use both short-tail or long-tail search keywords to find dental services near them.

·         Dentists

·         Dentist near me

·         Orthodontists

·         Pediatric Dentists

·         Emergency Dentists

·         Periodontist

·         Family dentistry

·         Dental implants

·         Cosmetic dentistry

·         Dental clinic near me

Long-tail vs short-tail keywords

Short-tail keywords have a high monthly search rate and are typically highly competitive. If you have a new dental practice, focusing on short-tail keywords will take time to start ranking on the SERPs.  However, most clients search using long-tail keywords when looking for dentists who perform specific dental procedures near them.

Long-tail keywords such as ’family dental practice in Houston’ will generate more quality traffic and inquiries than just “Houston Dentist.” The long-taile keyword also makes for high ranking keywords and guarantee a higher conversion rate because the user is likely looking for a pediatric dental practicioner who also serves the entire family.

Utilizing long-tail keywords for optimizing your website, content, and Google My Business profile will drive lower, but high-quality traffic. A long-tail keyword considers customer closer to a point-of-purchase and more ready to make an appointment.

A full-service marketing agency can help you choose the right long-tail and short-tail keywords for your dental practice.

OAK Interactive is a marketing and advertising firm that works with clients from various industries and helps them createwinning marketing strategies. Their expert services helps dental practices improve brand awareness, audience reach and boost conversion rates.

Visit their website to learn more about their marketing and brand awareness services in Houston.

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4 Things COVID Has Taught Us About Digital Marketing

COVID-19 has transformed the entire marketplace. The pandemic led to increased use of social media, causing businesses to change their strategy accordingly.

 Here are some of the changes companies will have to make to stay relevant in the market:

 1.      You Can’t Afford To be Offline Anymore

 More than 40% of consumers have started shopping online more frequently, while many customers are now trying new brands too. Businesses that still follow the old game plan will have a tough time in the competitive marketspace.

 If a customer wants to find a product or service, they Google it. If your business does not show up in search results, it has then automatically a lost sale.

2.      Explore Various Marketing Strategies

 Innovation is not just a buzzword, it’s a principle that every company must follow in order to get the respect and loyalty of its customers. However, innovation extends beyond a company’s product or service; it has to be present in everything the company does, including marketing.

 Gamification, virtual experiences, and multi-channel marketing are all ways to get customers to interact with a brand.

 Even the approach isn’t a slam-dunk, even the failures will help businesses learn more about the new market and about themselves compared to what they would have learned otherwise.

 3.      The Website Is Very Important

 A website is perhaps the most vital part of any business's online presence. It is also the centerpiece of you digital presence:

·         All your social media links to it

·         It's where the majority of SEO efforts are undertaken

·         It’s a place to display all the products and services

·         The website is used to track valuable insights of your customers, including buyer intent and post-purchase behavior

4.      CSR Matters More and More Everyday

 Facilitate increased customer loyalty and improved public image by making a commitment to the environment in your advertising materials.

  Stay On Top Of Trends With The Help Of A Top Digital Marketing Firm in Houston

If you’re searching for a full-service marketing firm that'll improve brand visibility, look no further than OAK Interactive.

 OAK is a marketing agency based in Houston, TX, that helps businesses unlock a valuable audience segment by developing specialized marketing strategies for them.

Call them today to get your website assessed.

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The 3 Undeniable Advantages of Local SEO for Lawyers

Local SEO is a process through which businesses enhance their online presence—mostly through their Google My Business (GMB) listing—to attract more clients from specific locations. It’s especially important for law firms and attorneys offering legal aid in specific geographic areas, since it directly affects how you rank on Google Maps.

Here’s why you should use local SEO for your law practice. 

It Helps You Outrank Your Local Competition on Search Results

First off, local SEO can give you an edge over your local competition, since people usually need a lawyer in their city. If your law firm caters to clients in a specific city, you need maximum online visibility within that area. However, just because you are catering to clients based within a geographical area doesn’t mean that they will automatically turn to you for legal assistance. Chances are, there are plenty of other law firms offering services to the same cities that you are in, and you need to outrank your competition to get the calls.

Using local SEO helps you rank higher for relevant search terms frequently used by your prospective clients. For example, if you do it right, you can use location-specific keywords to enhance your online visibility for your website. When clients type in phrases such as “defense attorney in Houston” or “legal services in Houston” on search engines, your website should show up in the top results. The SEO will lead them to your website, where they can read more about your practice and hopefully call your firm.

It Shows Your Location on Google Maps

When people search for a local business, the search engine directs them to organic search results. These results typically include Map Packs for businesses showing among the top results. Google Map Packs contain additional details about the businesses, such as their contact details and location. A quick online search gives customers access to relevant details, which they can then use to reach out to businesses.

By optimizing the content on your GMB account, you can boost your local rankings. Not only will your law firm show up among the top search results, but your contact details will also be instantly accessible to your clients. This will make it easier for them to call, email, or visit your law firm and get a consultation.

It Improves Your Reputation

Local SEO is also especially useful for improving your law firm’s reputation as a subject matter expert in your practice field.

When a law firm ranks higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs), viewers find it more credible and trustworthy. Since search engines are particular about the websites that rank high and penalize those that use incorrect SEO practices, having your website rank high is a good sign for potential clients. They’re more inclined to visit your web page and reach out to your company because of this very reason, adding credibility to your brand name.

The SEO team at OAK Interactive can help you optimize your web content using the latest local SEO practices. As a leading brand marketing agency in Houston, OAK Interactive has helped law firms and independent attorneys establish a strong online presence with their digital marketing and expert SEO services.

Contact their branding and marketing firm in Houston today for a free website assessment.

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The Essentials of a Great Marketing Strategy

Nike isn’t solely dedicated to selling shoes. It sells the idea of being a passionate athlete.

 Starbucks doesn’t sell a cup of hot coffee. It sells you the experience of being inside a coffee shop where you can sit back and relax.

These brands have managed to create a strong marketing identity through well-thought-out strategies that deliver on emotional not practical benefits. When a brand has a keen understanding of what the emotional value it delivers, it removes much of the price discussion out of the equation.

 Emotional value is manifested in terms of ego, pride, well-being and joy. Products can make people feel something as they interact and if you don’t understand what those emotional triggers are, you’re commodity selling, not brand building.

 Commodity selling is when price determines who wins the business. Brand building is when emotional fulfillment wins the business because your brand delivers something your competitors can’t. As you create your marketing plan, you must go back to your brand. Otherwise you’ll never get out of the price wars.

  Social media

 Over the past decade, social media has evolved into a lot more than just social networking. There is more to it than sharing check-ins, making new friends, and posting photos. Social media has largely become a shopping platform where individuals reach out to new brands and online stores. The most active age group that frequently engages in social media purchases lies between 18 to 34 years.

 Businesses must stay active within their social media community and have conversations with their customers. This is where your customers are interacting, so keep your them engaged with fresh content daily. Make sure you have a dedicated team to address their concerns, answer their queries, and offer quick customer support at all times. For customers, social media is their ongoing interaction with the brand. How you manage your social media reflects favorably or unfavorably with your brand.

Incorporate employee voices

 Make sure your employees understand and are executing on the brand. They are your brand’s voice because they are the ones who are delivering your promise every day. Making them brand advocates means making sure they have invested in your company’s mission, vision and values and they understand what it means to execute on them.

 Do a brand assessment that involves all of your stakeholders. Let your employees, investors, management team and executive leadership talk about your products and services. Compare their answers and see where gaps lie. How employees talk about your brand could be very different than how executive management talks about your brand. If there’s a gap, it’s time to close it because somewhere along the line, promises are being made, but not kept.

 Some employers are reluctant to allow employees to participate in the process because management is afraid of what they may discover. And that means change. But change is the sign that you are listening to your stakeholders and that you trust their opinions, and are willing to address issues that prevent the business from growing

 Prioritize branding and not selling

 Apple could be the perfect example of branding. When you buy an iPhone, you look beyond the product features and specifications. Apple sells an idea through its brand personality which resonates from it’s online store, to its bricks and mortar locations all the way to how the product is packaged.

 Customers are lured to the Apple brand story and are able to live it every step of the journey. Apple’s branding talks about thinking differently. It inspires its customers to do the same. They see Apple as a sophisticated brand with raving fans lining outside stores hours before a new product comes out. The story brings like-minded individuals together who wish to see the world differently.

 Your brand is the key to a successful marketing mix and should be integrated into the four Ps of marketing: Product, Place, Promotion, and Price. While most companies get the Promotion part, they neglect the effect brand has on Product, Place and Price. These are missed opportunities at best and broken promises at worse because you’re promoting one thing and may be delivering something else.

 At OAK Interactive, we let comapanies talk about their brand’s feelings. Contact us if you’re looking for a creative marketing company and brand experts based in Houston, Texas that can help you create a strong brand voice, let us start a conversation.  

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Top SEO Strategies That Will Take the Lead In 2021

SEO makes your services more visible, drives traffic to the website, and helps you convert visitors into customers. It’s the basic marketing tool that every marketer should be doing that can make a sizeable difference in your company’s growth.

However, as search engines—namely Google—change their algorithm, you need to shift your SEO strategies to make the most out of your keywords. 

 Here are the trends that’ll take the lead in 2021:

How to optimize Google's BERT?

 BERT is a technique based on Google's neural network. It stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and is used in natural language processing. It’s Google's latest search algorithm that impacts at least 1 in 10 queries when it comes to changing the results. BERT was rolled out in 2020 and is being used worldwide. Although it's currently executed in English, the feature will soon be available in multiple other languages. 

 BERT helps the computer system to understand the context of words and their nuances. This indirectly facilitates better searches and generates more relevant results. In 2021, SEO agencies are shifting their focus to optimizing for BERT. BERT focuses on the search intent behind the keyword to give you more meaningful answers to your queries. Common SEO practice is to use multi-intent keywords.

 Do your keyword research. 

 As we move into 2021, most of our searches are going to be dependent on zero clicks. These searches result in richer SERP results. Consumers don't have a lot of free time at their hands. They like getting quick answers—before they finish typing out a query. To generate such results:

Do your keyword research well.

Invest your time to see what works for your business and what     doesn't.

Make your keywords as relevant as possible to drive traffic and     sales to the website.

 Long-tail and targeted keywords will take the lead in 2021. Google Search Console is your best bet to find unique keywords for your niche. Focus on the search intent. If you’re using  'SEO expert' in the keywords, are you an SEO service provider or looking for an SEO provider? Focus on keywords that have actions attached to them like 'hire SEO expert' or 'SEO experts near me' instead. When the intent is right, even a low-volume keyword can generate reasonable sales.

Conduct an SEO audit 

 A good SEO company will begin with a detailed SEO audit of your website and see if it’s structured properly and has all of the onsite meta information search engines look for. Your site also has to react to the different algorithm changes. The SEO audit should uncover hosting issues, webmaster settings, link profiling, social media analysis, and HTML optimization issues. With the audit, you can make the necessary changes to make sure the website complies with the Google guidelines and other white-hat strategies that result in improved rankings.

 If you're looking for an SEO company in Houston, TX, Call OAK Interactive. With their premium SEO services, they can help your company grow by improving your site’s findability on top search engines like Google and Bing. Call them for a website assessment.

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4 Reasons Why Your Business Needs SEO

You need a robust SEO strategy to appear on the first page of search results, which attracts 90% of the web traffic. Research shows that more than 85% of customers search for products and services online before they head out to physical stores. So, to improve your search visibility, you need to implement effective on and off-page SEO.

If generating leads and increasing sales are your prime objectives, you need to start focusing on search engine optimization.

Here are key reasons why you must consider SEO for increased business growth.

1.    Improve Brand Visibility & Gain Qualified Traffic

Statistics show that almost 80% of users skip distinct paid ads that appear on Google search results; instead, they prefer to click on organic search results (the web page listings that closely match the user's search query based on relevance).

Your business website needs SEO to rank high for relevant keywords that are used by your target audience. Your potential customers won’t find your business if it doesn’t rank for products and industry-specific searches.

To identify high-volume and relevant keywords, study your target audience, write credible content on relevant topics, research your audience’s search intent, and see what’s working for your competitors.

Did you know that Amazon generates almost 60% of its total sales from long-tail keywords? Google has revealed that the use of long-tail location keywords has grown by 150%. So, for example, instead of targeting “active wear”, you can rank better by targeting “best women Nike active wear.”

Hence, using high-performance location-specific keywords that cater to voice searches can help you boost brand visibility and organic traffic.

You can get in touch with professional SEO strategists at OAK Interactive to help your business grow on digital platforms.

2.    Enhanced Conversion Rates

If you get the SEO strategy right, you can boost conversion rates by as much as 15%.

On-page SEO involves creating killer Calls to action and landing pages, adding testimonials and a live ChatBot for swift customer service, among other things to improve conversion rates.

Here’s how you can fine-tune your SEO strategy to increase conversion rate:

·         Add site pop-ups

·         Remove unnecessary form fields that cause visitor fatigue

·         Add third party sign-up services

·         Share social proof such as product reviews and customer feedbacks

3.    SEO Builds Brand Credibility and Authority

High-quality content creation is an integral part of SEO; it helps position your brand as a leader in the industry. More customers will visit your website when you build trust and credibility through fact-based, engaging content such as videos, infographics, webinars, etc.

Consider SEO as a long-term marketing investment that facilitates steady growth through organic prominence. Focus on Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (E-A-T principle) when creating blogs, articles, and web copies.

Get in Touch with a Leading SEO Services Provider in Houston, TX

As a full-service marketing firm, OAK Interactive, in Houston, Texas, offers an expansive array of brand marketing packages creative marketing solutions, and expert SEO services tailored for each client.

Learn more about how the OAK team can help you drive hyper-targeted traffic or get in touch with them at (832) 321-3196.

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How to Promote Your Business with Paid Social Marketing

Social media marketing is a must if you want to reach a new, targeted audience—fast.

If you’re starting your online presence from scratch, then building organic traffic with content and SEO alone can take at least six months. And if you want to turn these efforts into measurable profits, you’re probably looking at an 18-month period.

A quicker way to increase customer engagement, website traffic numbers, and improve direct response is to leverage the power of paid social media marketing.

Studies have shown that 78% of salespeople gain an edge over their competition by using social media for their business.

Social media marketing involves publishing great content like text, images, videos, and snippets on social media profiles to drive audience engagement.  

Types of Social Media Ads

Here’s a list of each social network’s ad types that you can use to promote your business

· Facebook and Instagram ads

Ø Photo and video ads

Ø Stories ads

Ø Carousel ads

Ø Slideshow ads

Ø Collection ads

Ø Ads in explore pages

Ø IGTV advertising

· Snapchat ads

Ø Filters

Ø Lenses

Ø Story ads

· Pinterest ads

· YouTube ads

· TikTok ads

· LinkedIn ads

Due to its fluid and engaging nature, social media makes for the perfect launchpad for product introductions, brand storytelling, and community initiatives. Plus, in the era of e-commerce, social media marketing is no longer an option; it’s more of a business-critical tactic.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss ways in which you can use paid social marketing to achieve marketing goals:

Know Your Business Objective and Target Audience

The first step in creating a social media marketing campaign is defining your marketing goals:

· What short-term and long-term goals do you wish to achieve with your campaign?

· Which platforms are your competitors using?

· Which platforms have a high concentration of your target audience?

· What kind of budget do you need to allocate to paid media marketing?

· What message do you want to send your audience?

Know Your Target Audience

What are your target audience’s preferred social platforms? Knowing exactly who your target demographic is will help you be more efficient in your spending.

Here’s a summary from Pew Research Center’s 2019 social media fact sheet that offers a breakdown of the proffered platform for various demographics:

If you’re targeting a young audience, you’ll probably find them on Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, and now TikTok. But if your offerings target soccer moms in the U.S., Facebook ads seem to work best.

What Matters To You: Impressions Or Engagement?

To keep your marketing budget under control, determine what matters to you more.

· If you’re paying for impressions, your ad messages can have a bigger outreach

· If you’re paying for engagement, you need to focus on an audience that’s already interested in your business

Make sure you align the metrics you wish to track with your paid social media marketing campaign.

Mobile-Friendly and Responsive Social Ads

Nearly 3.25 billion users access social platforms via their mobile devices. Therefore, your social ads must be specifically designed for small screens and incorporate images that can be viewed and make sense on pocket-sized devices.

Additionally, many social media platforms allow you to leverage “geofencing” to target smartphone users in a specific zip code. When you’re running local ad campaigns, this is a must.

OAK Interactive, a leading branding and marketing agency in Houston, Texas, can help you grow your brand across various social media platforms. The OAK team studies your target audience and creates a social media marketing strategy to serve them with creative and compelling that resonates.

Get in touch with OAK to optimize your paid digital advertising though paid social media today.

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The Role of Reputation Management in Lead Generation

In this era of mass digital media and review-driven ratings, reputation management goes hand in hand with brand marketing. What used to be word-of-mouth has transitions to word-of-masses since people’s opinion about your business are read by thousands rather than heard by a few.

Whether you’re a small business owner or run a major enterprise, failure to manage your online reputation can make or break your business. In fact, studies have shown that enterprise executives report that a company’s reputation makes for nearly half of its market value.

What’s more, in this era of social media marketing, most prospective customers base their purchasing decisions on your business's online ratings and reviews.

It’s essential that you reinforce the positive reviews with thank you’s—it’s only polite when someone says something nice about you. But it’s even more important to monitor and manage misleading and negative conversations surrounding your business and make sure you respond. This is where reputation management comes in.

What Constitutes Online Reputation Management?

Simply put, online reputation management involves techniques and strategies that ensure your prospective customers find the right information when they look up your business online.

Instead of courting the press or writing advertorials, it focuses on responding to misleading reviews or comments with truthful, polite comments that show that you care and that you are concerned about all negatives reviews.

Key Online Reputation Management Practices

Here are some ways in which reputation management best practices contribute to elevating your brand:

Building Credibility

A brand’s trustworthiness depends on how credible consumers perceived it.

Reputation management practices ensure that all content that enters search engines and social media is brand empowering. This gives you some control over what your target audience sees, allowing you to ensure content uniformity across various platforms.

Since a brand’s real ambassadors are its customers, reputation managers encourage loyal customers to post positive reviews and comments on social accounts as well as third-party review sites.

Reputation managers use customer advocacy to improve engagement and capture new leads.

Improve Customer Experience and Support

Research shows that customer interaction and experience influence nearly 70% of purchases; therefore, online reputation management focuses on delivering a stellar customer experience both before and after the purchase.

Reputation managers can help by:

· Sending out surveys to collect customer feedback

· Personally checking in with customers

· Keeping potential and existing customers in the loop through email newsletters and product updates

· Promptly responding to customer queries and resolving customer issues

· Offering multiple support channels such as live chat, email, and DMs to improve personalized customer engagement

· Responding to negative comments in a helpful, humble and empathetic manner

· Maintaining an active social media presence to improve brand reputation

Manage Your Online Reputation with OAK Interactive

Get in touch with one of Houston’s leading digital marketing agencies, OAK Interactive, to reclaim your business reputation with link suppression and link enhancement services.

Their brand managers leverage social outreach strategies, channel management, and SEO-friendly link-building strategies to help you build a better online reputation.

Contact their brand marketing firm today for more information.

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Major Benefits of Developing a Strong Brand Image

If you’re running a business and you don’t know your company’s value proposition, products, services, and standing in the marketplace are, then you may doing as well as you could be. You brand image may not be an authentic representation of who you are and what you stand for. In other words, what you promise your stakeholders doesn’t match what you actually deliver to them. 

You’ve gotten this far doing something right. You may have an understanding of everything on a surface level, but when asked to communicate it, you stumble a bit.

So how do you build a ‘strong brand image,’ that truly reflects what value your business actually delivers. Here are a few questions you can ask:

What is a Brand Image?

In a competitive marketplace, it's extremely difficult to differentiate—what is the unique thing do you do that no one else does—or, even better, CAN do?. Getting your brand right gives you a story to tell complete with a setting, plot, characters and conflict.

Brand image is how customers see and think of your brand based on their interactions and experiences with it. Yes, it’s advertising and first impression, but it’s everything after that too from using your service to what people do after that. Did they like the product? Did they tell their friends? Do they make referrals and rate you on Google? All of these elements create the mosaic that form the basis for your brand and how it’s perceived in the marketplace.

It’s the aggregate of ideas, beliefs, and perceptions that a customer or a potential customer holds about a brand from the time they are aware of it all the way through how they remember their experience with it.

What is a Brand Image’s Importance and Function?

Any business that has a strong brand image enjoys a certain number of advantages that its competitors don’t. The top three are:

· Strong brands equal preference. Customers are more likely to buy a recognized and trusted product or service merely because they have a strong bond with the brand. Take Starbucks for instance: a morning cup of coffee from a Starbucks is pretty much a lifestyle now. This doesn’t mean that other coffee shops on the block serve terrible coffee. It just means that consumers have formed a rich bond with the coffee purveyor’s products, changing flavors, and in-store environment. All of which can be experienced only at a Starbucks store. Customers know this and they based their choice of coffee shops on Starbucks consistently delivering on the promise to deliver a rich coffee experience.

· People talk about strong brands. A strong brand image means that customers will rave about the products and services to friends and their online communities. This action, directly influences their purchasing decisions. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. Think about the number of times you bought a product or visited a store that your friend recommended. Even though you didn’t know about it before, you trusted your friend’s recommendation. Word of mouth advertising is a powerful revenue tool because it’s free. All you have to do is deliver the goods as promised.

· Strong brands are always having conversations with their customers. Customer service is one of the most important aspects of a strong brand image. How you talk to your customers, respond to their queries and deal with their concerns dictates the future of the business-customer relationship. A powerful brand image means customers trust you and keep coming back. And, in the event their purchase-experience isn’t perfect, they forgive you because mistakes don’t define who you are—especially if you quickly jump on the issue and make the error right. . Strong brands reassure customers that even if something goes wrong, the next time, it will be right.

How Do YouBuild a Strong Brand Image?

Consumer-generated digital media has completely changed the advertising and marketing dynamics from one-way, brand-delivered messages to conversations with consumers. Simple TV ads, radio spots and billboards are no longer enough to motivate customers try out new products. Consumers tell you what you want and how you can improve. All you need to do is listen.

If your business is struggling to build a positive brand and improve your customers’ perceptions on different online platforms, contact OAK Interactive, a digital marketing agency Houston.

We’re a marketing ad agency that carefully executes digital marketing and advertising strategies that help build brands and businesses grow. To know more about their services, check here.

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Reasons Why Creativity Is Important For Marketing

The average person is exposed to thousands of messages per day. Great marketers know they can get more engagement through creativity. 

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Steps to Choosing the Best Digital Marketing Agency in 2019

Digital marketing is all about connecting with the right target audience and creating content that is both effective and measurable. Unlike other types of advertising, digital marketing is unique because it's dynamic, ever-changing and beautifully trackable.

From technology to trends and tactics, nothing is stagnant in the digital world, which is why it's critical for brands—especially small businesses—to choose a digital marketing agency that’s able to keep up with the latest trends and search engine updates.

If you’re thinking of hiring a new digital marketing agency in Houston, here are three things to think about:

Understand What You Need

Digital marketing is diverse going beyond just a few platforms. It includes social media, pay per click (paid search) marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) content, email marketing, and affiliate marketing. Tapping into all of these avenues is neither effective nor prudent—even for large businesses, let alone small ones.

While a digital marketing agency can expertly help you pick and implement the right marketing strategy, you should do your research. The first thing you should be asking is “what do you think will work best for us?” This will give you an idea of how the marketing agency works. An agency that’s done work in your industry may give an immediate answer demonstrating their understanding of your company and services. However, an agency that responds with “We don’t know” could be more thoughtful and strategic opting to do their due diligence before giving you an answer. They could be a better fit because they’ll seek more insight before giving a recommendation.

Check their Qualifications

A lot of digital and advertising agencies claim to be experts in all sorts of marketing, but feel free to question them. Every agency has a different area of expertise. While they may do everything, they will have areas where they are the strongest.  

Most agencies have their portfolio or case studies posted on their websites. Request their portfolio and work samples for previous clients. This should give you a clear idea of where they excel and whether their services will be right for you.

Work with a Decided Budget

Keep in mind that no two agencies will offer you the same price. It’s not like buying a toaster that costs the same no matter where you buy it from. Prices in the services industry are dependent on many factors.

The larger agency that’s has more experience will more likely cost the most. Costs also depend on how they work. Some agencies charge a flat fee, others charge by the hour and others are based on a percentage of media spending.

Digital marketing isn’t cheap, because it can be incredibly hard for an agency to keep up with changing trends. Considering what you’re investing, be wary of agencies that offer everything at extremely low rates. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. And who knows how long they’ll be in business.

Who to Hire

OAK Interactive is an advertising and marketing firms in Houston Texas that deals in digital marketing, branding, packaging and traditional advertising. The company has worked with large multinational brands as well as smaller start-ups.

For more information, contact us here.