Author: Chirag Narang

The craft of brewing to ferment beer is widely regarded as the oldest known recipe in the world. Ancient Egyptians were the first to document the brewing process on papyrus scrolls. But what exactly is craft brewing?

Specifically, it refers to a brewery that focuses on producing a few quality beers rather than mass-producing a large number of assorted beers. Many craft brewers in the US do indeed produce large volumes of their beer for consumers, just with limited selection.

Understanding The Craft Of Brewing  

The physical process of craft brewing first requires converting grain starches to sugar. The next step is to extract the sugar with water, and then ferment it with yeast. It is this step of extraction and fermentation that produces the alcohol present in beer.

Beyond the physical process of craft brewing, it’s important to understand that the industry is tight-knit and community-oriented. 

The Brewers Association, an American trade group consisting of more than 5,400 breweries nationwide is dedicated to the promotion and protection of small and independent brewers. The group seeks to advance the interest of craft brewing and its enthusiasts across the country. For example, in 2017, the Brewers Association helped negotiate legislation lowering the federal excise tax for breweries for a period of two years. This ruling was later extended by Congress through the end of 2020. 

The Consumer Craze Over Craft Brewing

Taste is the primary concern of beer consumers, according to multiple surveys. Because craft beer provides consumers with a plethora of choice as compared to mega-breweries, it has developed a strong following.

Additionally, craft beer drinkers tend to be fiercely loyal and care about where their beer is sourced from and how it is made. Since craft beer is typically produced locally, it is even more attractive because it can help stimulate a regional economy. The less corporate nature of craft breweries is thus, often appealing. 

Furthermore, craft beer can even provide small health benefits in comparison with mass-produced beer such as the inclusion of antioxidants and an increase in lipoprotein levels which helps lower cholesterol. Finally, craft beer tends to be comparatively cheaper and can be consumed while burning less of a hole in consumer’s wallets. 

Marketing Your Craft Brewery

Now that you understanding the love consumers have for craft breweries, the key is to figure out how to make your brewery stand out. These are some good first steps:

Engage with your customers on social media

Interacting with consumers is the first step towards building a loyal following of beer drinkers. Social media platforms are the greatest, most cost-effective way to build a relationship with customers. 

The best approach to relationship-building on social media requires a detailed content schedule and strategy. Determining when and where to post, what type of content to release, and how to engage with people interested in the industry is key. It’s common for breweries to post and discuss new beer releases or community events, or even detail brewing processes.

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again, craft beer drinkers tend to be fiercely loyal. Engaging them on social media is a great way to develop faithful followers that will continue to buy beer and spread word about the brewery.

Website Strategy And SEO

Just as craft beer drinkers tend to be fiercely loyal, they also tend to be passionate followers of the breweries they purchase from. 

Provide them opportunities to explore behind-the-scenes and learn more about the culture of your brewery. It is a great way to continue to build a devoted following.  

The best, most efficient way to provide this type of access is often by creating an interactive website. There you can post more written content, in addition to the visual content that plays well on social media. 

Furthermore, you can use SEO techniques to ensure your brewery attracts interested beer drinkers seeking craft beer in your area. Finally, breweries can utilize Google Ads to target traffic in a specific locale to create a buzz in a particular area.

Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is an incredibly cost-effective way to market your brewery. It can be used in two distinct, but very important ways. Utilize email marketing to provide interesting stories and insights, but also to understand what topics your subscribers are most interested in. 

People subscribing to a mailing list clearly have some level of interest in the product. You can use this to your advantage by surveying what would make them most likely to enter your brewery. For example, when developing a new flavor of beer, a brewery can poll a number of choices to see which most interests its subscribers. It’s like a free focus group!

Developing Your Own Craft Brewing Brand

If you’re starting your own craft brewery, the aforementioned strategies will provide a strong basis to begin developing your brand. You can learn even more about brewery branding in our in-depth article on the topic here.

If you’re interested in learning how to develop a strong brand and robust online presence that stands out in the brewery industry, DataDay Design can help you. We specialize in web design and digital marketing. Whether you need help with strategy or developing content, DataDay is your one-stop-shop for branding and digital marketing!

This is Part 2 of a blog series on Search Engine Marketing. This article focuses on PSA (Paid Search Advertising); Part 1 focused on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). To read Part 1 click here.

What is Paid Search Advertising? 

If SEO is the unpaid, organic version of Search Engine Marketing, then think of Paid Search Advertising (PSA) as its antithesis. 

It is a paid and inorganic way to ensure your website ranks at the top of search results. This is achieved by paying search engines to advertise your website on the search engine results page (SERP). These are the websites you see first with the word ‘Ad’ next to it at the top of your search engine queries. 

These ads are tied to certain keywords. For example, if you had a dog grooming company, you could choose to select “pet care” as a keyword. 

When a consumer then searched for “pet care”, they would see your website advertisement at the top of the SERP. 

Here is the beautiful thing: Despite your ad being displayed at the top of the SERP, you don’t actually pay a penny unless someone clicks on your advertisement.

This practice is called PPC, or Pay Per Click. It is one of four must-know terms that make up Paid Search Advertising. 

Four Must-Know Terms for Paid Search Advertising

Pay Per Click:

A form of SEM designed to increase web traffic in which advertisers pay each time an ad is clicked.

Google AdWords:

You guessed it! The name of Google’s PPC advertising system.  If you wanted to run an advertisement for your website on Google, this is the platform you would go to. 

It’s very simple. Just bid on the specific keywords that are relevant to your website. Then, your advertisement will display on Google’s search results for the keywords you selected. 

Once again, you as the advertiser do not pay a single cent unless your ad is clicked on and the consumer visits your website. 

Remarketing Search Ads:

This feature allows advertisers to pay to target consumers with ads that have visited your website before. 

The idea is that if a consumer has previously visited your website, targeting them with an advertisement might serve as the little push they need to make a purchase.

In practice, this means that whenever a consumer who has visited your website before later searches a keyword that you bid on, your advertisement will display on a search engine or a partner site (sites with advertisements). 

For example, let’s say you own a clothing store. Normally, bidding on a keyword like gift or present might seem useless since it is very vague.

However, because using Remarketing Search Ads means your ad will only display to people who have visited your website before, you can breathe easy knowing the consumer already has an interest in your product and just needs a subtle reminder to make a purchase. 

Remarketing Search Ads can lead to a +300% conversion rate and a 30% increase in your return on investment compared to regular PSA. 

PPC Campaign Optimization:

This is an extended version of the regular Pay Per Click (PPC). 

PPC, as aforementioned, is a model wherein you pay each time your ad is clicked. With PPC Campaign Optimization, your advertising is more methodical. 

Instead of bidding on a few keywords you hope might attract consumers to your website, you bid on a wide range of keywords that display on search engines for a pre-determined period of time. 

Then you can go back and track how well each keyword performed in driving traffic to your website. 

Those words that performed poorly and did not create many clicks can then be cut from your PPC campaign. The best part is you don’t have to spend much money to optimize your campaign.

Now you are only left with the keywords that you already know performed well. With these high-performing keywords, you will achieve a greater click rate on your PPC advertisements. 

Adjusting to Paid Search in the COVID-era

COVID-19 has thrown a wrench into business planning. It can be hard to know how to attract customers in such a volatile market. However, consumers are shifting to eCommerce at lightspeed. Utilizing Search Engine Marketing (SEM) may be key to driving sales for your business, even if it has not required spending on digital ads in the past. 

Word of Mouth advertising is harder to come by when people do not interact with each other. 

Even if you are a well-established brand, losing Word of Mouth advertising can mean that people forget about your business. 

If people no longer say, “I went to ______ today”, you are losing your free advertising. SEM can make up for that gap.

SEO vs. PSA

Taking on a combination of SEO and PSA will help to better market your business and is sure to pay off in both the long and short term. 

Whether you prefer organic SEO or paid PSA, having your website display at the top of search results is sure to improve your market reach and drive greater sales for your company. 

Pick your poison or choose both, the choice is yours. 

Need an SEM Wizard?

If you’re looking for help with search engine marketing you’re in the right place. Whether you’d like to raise your SEO ranking or run a PSA campaign to drive business, DataDay can help you.

We specialize in helping businesses improve their online presence; you might call us SEM wizards. If you’d like to learn more about how DataDay can magically attract you more consumers and drive more business, you can schedule a free consultation below.

This is Part 1 of a blog series on Search Engine Marketing. This article focuses on SEO (Search Engine Optimization); Part 2 focuses on PSA (Paid Search Advertising). To read Part 2 click here.

SEM in a COVID-19 World

The transition to eCommerce is happening at breakneck speed. COVID-19 has caused consumers to switch almost exclusively to online shopping overnight. This lightspeed shift in consumer spending means having a strong, integrated search engine marketing strategy is more important than ever: but what does that actually mean in practice?

Consumers click on the top link on web searches about 33% of the time. The top five results receive about 75% of clicks. If your website doesn’t show up in the top five on web searches, you are losing business. 

This is where SEM (Search Engine Marketing) comes in.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing is a concentrated online marketing strategy that seeks to increase traffic to your website through search engines like Google.

It can be split into two parts: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PSA (Paid Search Advertising). 

This article focuses on SEO. Part 2 of this series explains PSA. 

Understanding Search Engine Optimization

SEO seeks to organically accrue visits to your website. By organic, we mean without paying for advertising. 

If consumers can’t find your business online, they will spend their money elsewhere. Even though the pandemic is changing the way business is done, if you implement SEO you will increase your web traffic and help your business navigate the change.

In short, if you can execute these five SEO strategies you will be taking a strong step to ensure your business will thrive.

Five SEO strategies to know

Technical:

Optimizing your website and server to better help you index your site to improve your search engine ranking. Think fixing broken links, site speed, changing HTTP links to HTTPS.

On-page:

This requires optimizing specific web pages to help you get more traffic from search engines. Think keyword research. 

Content: Within On-page SEO is ‘Content’ which focuses on creating specialized content on your website that directly relates to web searches relevant to your business. Content increases the likelihood consumers will visit your page, even if they aren’t seeking to purchase a product. It helps build brand awareness and rapport to support future purchasing and can sometimes cause consumers that stumble on your page to buy a product even if they weren’t looking to spend money. Think blog posts, videos, etc.

Off-page:

Actions that are taken “off”, or away, from your website to improve your ranking on search engines. This means boosting your website’s popularity, relevance, credibility, and authority. In practice, that means having other reputable online sources link to your website. In the eyes of search engines, it’s as if the sources are “vouching” for your credibility. Think social media exposure, backlinks, and promotions.

Local:

Targeting your audience in the same geographic area as you are. These are location-specific boosts to your online presence that help promote your business to your local community. Think location tagging, Google My Business, Yelp, etc.

Mobile:

Probably what you would expect: making sure all these other SEO strategies are compatible with mobile devices.

Keying in on Keyword Research

When discussing these strategies, or optimizations, it is essential to understand keywords and keyword research.

This is because keywords should be plugged into any online copy that exists related to your business (website copy, social media, blog posts, infographics, video and podcast names, captions, and descriptions – everything).

Keyword research requires you to look into the specific words and phrases that are used most when consumers search for companies in your industry. More explicitly, this means finding which of these words and phrases have high search rates, but low competition so that when they are searched, your page comes up quicker.

If you conduct sound keyword research you will boost your SEO meaning more people will see your website.

SEO in a Rapidly Changing World

The rapid shift in how consumers buy products and services due to the COVID-19 pandemic means that having a strong SEO strategy and presence is essential to the survival of companies and small businesses, especially those with a business-to-consumer business model. 

How we work and connect has undergone a fundamental change. With cities on lockdown, employees sent to work from home, and public safety in question, more and more of us are turning to eCommerce to purchase goods and research services. Word of mouth marketing is a lot more difficult to achieve because people are not interacting. 

Whether you are looking to save, stabilize, or grow your business, improving your online presence through SEO is essential. It helps to improve the customer experience, increase your website visibility, and drive web traffic, all while supporting your authority, edging out competition, and boosting your sales conversion rates. 

Need an SEM Wizard?

If you’re looking for help with search engine marketing you’re in the right place. Whether you’d like to produce more engaging or improve your local SEO, DataDay can help you.

We specialize in helping businesses improve their online presence; you might call us SEM wizards. If you’d like to learn more about how DataDay can magically attract you more consumers and drive more business, you can schedule a free consultation below.

The craft brewing industry has witnessed tremendous growth over the past few years. An impressive number of breweries open each day across the United States and other parts of the world. With an 8.9% increase in US breweries between 2018-2019 and a market of over $106 billion, it’s no wonder why new breweries require the best in brewery branding to be successful.

With the competition of thousands of companies pouring a nearly identical product, how can your brewery stand out? As ever, branding is key. 

This ultimate guide will teach you all you need to know about brewery branding including how to build a strong and unique presence within this highly competitive industry.

Understanding Brewery Branding 

In a world of intense competition, a strategic approach to how you market and brand your brewery has never been more important.

At its core, your brand is simply the consumer perception of your company. This includes tangible and intangible things like your beer offerings and your brewery culture. 

To build a strong brand you need to first define your position. This means you must identify your brewery’s core concept, main audience, and what makes you unique from your competitors.

Framing Your Core Values

Your brand’s core values are the laws that govern how you choose to run your business. It’s a combination of financial, cultural, and customer service rules that set up your entire business ecosystem. For example, if your brewery has a core value of 100% customer satisfaction, you might have a policy that any customer unsatisfied with their beer can replace it at no cost.

It’s essential to spend a considerable amount of time analyzing your brewery’s core values to understand how they will guide your business decisions and make your brand unique.

Defining And Understanding Your Brand Essence

Your brand essence is the heart and soul of your brewery. Similar to your core values, it is more specifically, the foundation that defines your business. In practice, this is typically a one-to-three word short statement that helps govern how you market yourself to consumers

Some famous brand essences are:

BMW – Driving Pleasure

Nike – Authentic Athletic Performance

Walt Disney – Magical

If you’re wondering why you never heard of these before, it’s because your brand essence itself is not marketed. It is used to constantly remind you of what emotion or ideal you want consumers to associate with your business. 

Positioning Your Brewery

Positioning is crucial for any brewery to stand out from its competitors. To develop a strong business position, you need to conduct market research to identify the characteristics of your target market. Then you should analyze the marketing trends of your competitors to understand how they attempt to attract consumers. 

With this information in tow, you can identify your company’s position to differentiate your brewery and its public appeal so that you stand out from every other brewery in your region.

Developing a Robust Brand Strategy and Personality

Once you’ve identified your core values, essence, and positioning, the next step is to develop your brand strategy and personality. While building this plan, be sure to focus on articulating your brand personality while also building off of your core values. 

Your brewery should have a compelling thematic story aligned with its overall concept explaining how your business came about. Some other aspects of your brand strategy include your business model, your beer offerings and branding, your brewery atmosphere, and pricing.

In general, consumers should be able to relate more to your business’s personality than the business itself. For example, people like the Walt Disney Company because it is magical and makes them feel whimsical more than do because the business operates theme parks and makes movies. 

The final aspects of your brand strategy include details like the color scheme, logo, secondary icons, and typography.

Crafting Your Brewery Personality with a Great Name

Finding a great name for your brewery can be difficult in a highly competitive industry like craft beer. Your brewery should spend time nailing down the right name for its brand that conveys its core values. 

A great name should serve as an asset reflecting your brewery’s essence to consumers.

Web Design and Digital Marketing For Your Brewery 

To tie your branding together and best reach your target market, you must have a strong website and digital marketing presence. 

Utilizing social media channels will help your brewery engage customers and connect to a wider audience. A well-designed website will better communicate your brand personality and increase your business accessibility.

In addition, you can build a blog to illustrate your brewery’s journey, share customer’s stories, and provide previews on beers coming soon. Implementing local SEO will drive traffic to your website and blog which can prove essential to attracting new consumers in your region. You can read more about implementing SEO here. 

If you are interested in learning how to develop a strong brand and robust online presence that stands out in the brewery industry, DataDay Design can help you. We specialize in web design and digital marketing. Whether you need help with strategy or developing content, DataDay is your one-stop digital marketing shop!

The number of digital media companies around the world is growing at a tremendous rate. It’s a crowded field, with new players joining the market each day. But what do digital media companies actually do?

Digital media companies encompass a wide range of services from traditional content delivery to mobile applications. They also provide services like custom CRM development, email marketing, and video production.

We’re taking a deep dive to better understand digital media companies and how they rule the internet from behind the scenes. If you’re interested in what it takes to build a successful online business, this article will tell you how.

What Do Digital Media Companies Do?

Digital media companies create, manage, and deliver digital content and information. The types of digital content they work with is vast. It can include copy, video, graphics, or vectors to name just a few. 

These agencies utilize the content they work with and deliver it to consumers around the world via information technology devices like a laptop or tablet.

Traditional media companies used channels like newspapers and television commercials as the primary outlet for advertising. However, the rapid advance of technology has created countless new channels, like email and social media, through which companies can reach consumers. 

These new channels instantly spread information to the furthest corners of the planet. As such, the purpose of digital media companies is to utilize digital channels to help businesses efficiently reach and engage new consumers. 

The rise of digital media has provided power to small businesses to identify and exploit niches that larger corporations overlook or ignore.

Content Strategies of Digital Media Companies

There are many strategies used by digital media companies to develop and share content. They allow companies to reach a global audience in order to advertise or create awareness about their or their clients’ product, platform, or service. Some of these strategies include:

Video Hosting Sites

Video sharing on hosting sites is one of the main advertising channels for digital media companies. Often creative and engaging, video content frequently goes viral. Platforms like Vimeo, Youtube, and TikTok are all about user-generated content. Digital media agencies and businesses alike use these platforms to promote new devices, products, or services to engage with their audiences. In addition, many companies pay to advertise and promote their products on these channels.

Websites and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In 2020 it’s essential for every business to have a website to establish its digital presence. SEO strategies help to improve the ranking of a business’s website on the results pages of search engines like Google. To learn more about SEO, check out our detailed breakdown here.

SEO helps to increase consumer traffic to websites which can, in turn, improve engagement and sales. A website that offers valuable information can be an effective marketing tool. 

This is where digital media agencies come in. They can design or refurbish websites, specifically with marketing in mind, to help businesses build brand awareness. Moreover, there are a variety of SEO techniques that help improve the ranking of a website such as utilizing backlinks, metadata tags, and keywords. 

They can design or refurbish websites, specifically with marketing in mind, to help businesses build brand awareness. Moreover, there are a variety of SEO techniques that help improve the ranking of a website such as utilizing backlinks, metadata tags, and keywords. 

 

Search Engine Marketing and Paid Advertising (PSA)

Paid Search Advertising, or PSA, allows businesses to pay to push the rank of their website to the top of google search results so consumers see it first.

Companies can efficiently target a specific group or audience by paying to ensure their website appears first when related keywords are searched. Digital media companies are often paid by other businesses to perform PSA campaigns for them.

Social Media Marketing

Social media channels help companies reach diverse and hyper-specific sets of audiences. Moreover, digital media companies use these platforms to build a relationship with their clients and their own followers and fans.

Social media marketing provides a unique ability for businesses to show off their brand personality. In addition, communication through social media channels is two-way and so it also allows consumers to directly interact with businesses.

Email Marketing

E-mail marketing is a particularly useful strategy digital media agencies use because it guarantees an engaged audience. In order to email a consumer they must first authorize company access to their email. By doing so, consumers automatically alert a business there is a level of interest in their products or services. 

Accordingly, these companies use email marketing to deliver targeted messages that are likely to sway interested consumers to make purchases.

Choosing a Digital Media Company

To conclude, Digital Media companies facilitate social interaction and empowers people through their content, services, or information. Moreover, it also provides services to consumers such as digital marketing, social media management, website development to name a few. DataDay is one of the well renowned digital media companies which uses human-centered design to provide start-ups and small businesses to establish or improve their online presence. So, if you are looking for any help or consultancy revolving around digital media, feel free to get in touch or contact DataDay Design.

Marketing Analytics is essential for any business to understand their marketing initiatives and insights. Many companies use these analytics to inform and justify their marketing decisions. This crucial data can help explain important details like customer preferences, behavior, and trends. 

Let’s dive in and understand marketing analytics and its importance to achieving your marketing goals.

What Is Marketing Analytics?

Quite simply, it is the precise measurement, management, and analysis of the performance of your organization’s marketing initiatives. Its use helps to maximize effectiveness and optimize return on investment.

This information is essential for management to make informed budget decisions. With this data-driven approach to marketing, businesses can hone in on their most influential metrics to better refine strategy and move the bar on sales and conversions. 

The metrics used in marketing analytics relate to websites, social media, lead generation, and ROI. These data help you to understand audience interest and engagement while also providing greater insight into digital campaigns and market segmentation. Furthermore, they better support your ability to track your competitors and analyze your performance against theirs.

Keyword Analytics

One of the most powerful performance metrics is keyword analytics. Keyword data can be analyzed click by click to optimize and inform various business processes. In addition, keywords help you to understand what is on the mind of consumers. Keyword data can be utilized in many ways such as:

Product Layout and Design: Keywords can reveal and help you understand the solutions or product features customers are looking for or expecting.

Industry Trends: Changes in keyword usage frequencies can help in identifying and predicting trends in customer behavior.

Customer Support: You can use keywords to better understand in what ways customers are struggling and how to better support them.

Other Types Of Marketing Analytics

A few other types of Marketing Analytics include:

Web Analytics

Web Analytics helps you understand consumer interaction with your website. Simply put, it allows you to determine whether your platform is captivating the audience or if they are leaving to visit the websites of your competitors.

Some of web analytics relevant metrics include page load time, pageviews per visit, and returning visitors. These measures help quantify the effectiveness of every page on your website.

Digital Marketing Analytics

Digital marketing analytics provide a clearer picture of consumers’ interactions with your content. They also give additional clarity on your website traffic as well as your SEO/PSA. For more information about SEO and PSA, check out our two-part guide on search engine marketing.  

Some of the measures of digital marketing analytics include engagement, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and follower growth. These metrics are extremely helpful for crafting a sound digital marketing strategy that maximally optimizes your digital activities.

Competitor Analysis

Oftentimes, relying on only your own performance metrics is not sufficient to achieve success. This is where competitor analysis comes in.

Competitor analysis gives insight into the sources of, you guessed it, your competitor’s consumer traffic. For example, it can provide you with the keywords, search terms, and social media channels that bring qualified leads to your competition. Competitor Analysis is as good as gold because it supplies a behind-the-scenes view into the marketing strategy of your competitors.

How Do You Actually Use Marketing Analytics?

You may be thinking, great, more data! What do I even do with all this information? 

It’s true that there is so much data available that it can be difficult to pull it all together and discover any insights of value. The good news is, marketing analytics tools are designed exactly for this purpose. 

These tools allow you to analyze, understand, and visualize thousands of data points. Their use will provide you with the meaningful insights you need to build your successful marketing strategy. 

Marketing Analytics Tools

Some of our favorite marketing analytics tools include:

Hotjar – A web analytics platform that illustrates how people are using your website or app through cool tools like heatmaps and session recordings.

Ahrefs – An SEO software platform that alerts you when you have SEO issues or broken links.

SEMrush – Another SEO platform that does your keyword research for you, reveals the keyword strategy of your competitors and provides you with valuable backlinking opportunities on your blog.

Benefits of Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics benefits your organization by providing insight into your marketing initiatives. In addition, they allow you to:

1. Better understand customer and user behavior and respond proactively
2. Personalize your marketing and customer engagements 
3. Sharpen your social media strategies
4. Better cross-functionally collaborate on decisions
5. Have a safer balance between data analysis and data governance to safeguard both the interests of both the company and its consumers

Implementing Marketing Analytics into Your Business

Clearly,  marketing analytics is vital to the future success of your organization. They can help you re-prioritize how you build your budget and use your time, energy, and resources. 

At DataDay, we firmly believe our customers can outsmart, rather than outspend their competitors. We take pride in providing efficient solutions to achieve marketing success. If you want to implement marketing analytics into your business and need help determining where it’s most useful for you, we can help. 

As a digital marketing agency, we specialize in helping businesses better execute their marketing strategy. Marketing analytics plays an important role in doing so. We also provide support with social media management and digital branding. If you’re interested in learning more about how DataDay can specifically improve the efficiency of your business, you can click the button below to schedule a free consultation.