Hiring the Right People for Your Marketing Team

For a marketing team, finding the right people is one of, if not the most crucial part of, developing a strategy for success. Even if you have a great vision that could lead to great things, it is pointless without great people to execute that vision. Now, the difficult part is finding the right people. Here are two great concepts to consider when hiring new employees for a small business.

The first is what is known as the bus principle, a concept developed by Jim Collins. Think of your business as a bus. You have specific seats on the bus for specific functions: social media, content, sales support, digital, etc. Each of these seats needs to be filled by the right person who excels at that specific function. If an employee in the social seat is better suited in digital, move him. If he does not want to ride the bus any longer or does not fit in any seat, get him off the bus.

To sum this concept up, it comes down to having the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seat. Focus on who is on the bus before solidifying where the bus is going. And sometimes if you can't find the right person for a specific seat on the bus, looking to external marketing agencies like Apex One.

The second idea is to look beyond the potential employee’s résumé and look at what drives them and where their values lie. Some of the best employees do not have a strong résumé or are recent college graduates with little to no experience in the field of business. This doesn’t mean they will not fit or perform well, what this means is they haven’t had the opportunity to yet.

Finding employees with similar core values to that of the company, added with a strong desire to exceed, is a win-win for both parties. Skills and technique can be taught, but values and drive are established and ingrained long before the interview and are difficult to change. Probe the interviewee with questions less about what they have done and more about what they aspire to do and their personal interests. Employees that match the company on this level are the right people to have on the bus.

How do you find the right people? Do you prefer to outsource to experts? Let us know!

SEO Checklist: Product Descriptions That Convert

Search engine optimization is defined as the process of building a website or a web page in a way that allows it to appear more often in search engine's organic results. SEO is an interesting and complex topic that is hard to fully understand thanks to Google.

Google does not fully disclose all the details in how to make the "perfect" SEO page, but there are some good rules to follow, especially for e-commerce businesses that are building product descriptions:

Before we get into the checklist, it's important to know a few things up front before building out product descriptions:

1. Product descriptions for two products can never be the same, even if the products look exactly the same. Google frowns upon duplicate content and this will lower your organic search ranking. Make sure to spend the time to write unique copy.

2. Always be accurate in your product descriptions: Never guesstimate a measurement or assume a feature that it doesn’t have. Google may not always be able to track this information down for complete accuracy, but it's never a good idea to have incorrect information that would ultimately lead to an angry customer.

3. Before you start writing anything, create a comprehensive list of features and benefits for your products. Be sure to highlight the benefits of each feature.

Now you're ready to jump into creating great product descriptions. Here is a basic SEO checklist that you should follow when creating this copy:

• Keywords should be used and based upon what people are searching for. For example: a stuffed animal deer should include the keywords: deer, realistic, handmade, stuffed animal.

• Use keywords early, but don’t stuff descriptions full of them. Use a mix of different keyword variations throughout the entire description.

• Use emotional language that has feeling words. Instead of using ordinary functional words, go for some emotional pizzazz (see examples below).

• The best product descriptions address your ideal buyer directly and personally. Determine who your ideal buyer is and talk directly to them. Ask and answer questions as if you’re having a conversation with them, except you choose the words your ideal buyer uses.

• Use descriptive words that describe your products vividly.

• Write unique copy that adds value to what your selling. You are the salesperson, so sell them on what you have to offer, don’t just regurgitate what someone else has already said.

• Provide enough content to fully satisfy the searcher’s intent: around 100-150 words per description is the ideal length.

• Make content easy to read by breaking it into short paragraphs of 2-4 sentences each.

• Follow your brand's tone of voice and writing style guidelines. If you are a smaller business and don't have a writing style and tone of voice, this is the opportune time to create them!

• Use social proof (what others have to say about you) to help backup your descriptions.

• If your products are selling on other sites like Amazon already, lookup those product reviews and use part of them in your description. Here is how that would look:

• Amazon review: “My daughter adores her stuffed owl. Really soft and such a cute face. I have two of them just in case one disappears. My daughter would be devastated. I washed it multiple times and it feels and looks just like new.” - Nicole

• Use in your product descriptions like this: Mom Nicole says her daughter loves her owl so much that “she has to have two of them just in case one disappears.” Now that’s a fan!

To give you a better idea of how some of these checklist items look in real product descriptions, see the examples below.

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For more information on how to get started on building an SEO strategy for your business, shoot us a message and we will help connect you with the right resources and advise.

It's important that you don't push this aside, especially if you're building your business by yourself. Take advantage and act on information. Don't wait for someone else to come along, who is willing to work harder than you, pass you by. This is a way to grow your website traffic organically - so don't ignore it!