A while back, my fence was needing a major overhaul. I got several bids from several reputable vendors and wasn’t too excited about paying thousands to install a new fence and having to wait weeks for the contractors to be able to squeeze me in. A neighbor heard my concerns and suggested a handyman he had used for several rental properties. This handyman came out and gave me a bid that was significantly less than everyone else and who could start ASAP (red flag #1). I didn’t feel that references were needed as he came recommended by my good friend. Once work started, I noticed that the workers appeared to be family and more of manual labor, rather than skilled craftsman (red flag #2). When I came home to inspect their initial work, my concerns were confirmed – the work was substantially substandard. I approached the contractor and outlined each of my concerns, to which he agreed to remedy. A few days later the issues were not resolved and additional construction continued to be unacceptable. I ended up firing the contractor and having to hire another to completely re-do the project. I ended up with a project that took twice as long, caused significant headaches and stress, and cost significantly more than if I had opted for the reputable option out of the gate.

I was reminded of the quote: “If you think it is expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur” Red Adair

At Epic, we have found that critical errors are common in the early stages of marketing for many businesses. Many times new businesses will go with the quick, easy, and cheap option right out of the gate. Often this ends up hampering their ability to scale, as much of that early work has to be re-done, thus transforming those early projects into long, difficult, and expensive endeavors. If these elements had been done properly from the outset, they would have withstood the need to re-tool during the growth phase of their business.

1. What’s your WHY? If you don’t know it, your customers will never care.
   – What is your motivation for business (life)?
   – Why does your business need to exist?
   – What problems do you solve?
   – What is your Unique Selling Position?
   – What is your Value Proposition?
2. Branding – this will live forever and provide the first impression to most of the market.
   – Name
   – Logo
   – Colors
   – Style, Voice & Tone Guide
   – Visuals
3. Website – this is the central hub for all marketing. Do it right and think about growth.
   – Custom not Cookie Cutter
   – What do you want people to do? Why would they do it? Funnels!!!
   – Don’t be “mobile-friendly”, be “mobile-first”
4. Collateral – how do you present yourself?
   – Business cards, letterheads, etc. (yes – they still matter)
   – Kit covers, sales brochures, one-sheets, etc.
   – Email templates, signatures, office templates (PowerPoint, agenda, etc.)
5. Digital Presence – beyond website
   – Social profiles – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
   – Maps – Google, Apple, Yelp, etc.
   – Industry – Houzz, Thumbtack, Angie’s List, Pinterest, etc.

We have fielded hundreds of inquiries from small businesses where many are asking essentially the same question: “How do I generate the newest business with the least amount of expense and headache?”

This is similar to me asking a contractor, “What is the cheapest, quickest, and easiest fence option?” The contractor would likely suggest a chain-link fence that may fit the requests, but not be what I actually want or need. Instead, the contractor’s ability to achieve my short and long term satisfaction goals will improve as they strive to understand the motivation behind my request, my vision for the future, and current budget parameters. He would then understand that while quick and inexpensive were initial motivators, they are not critical in the long-term. I want a fence that will last, be visually appealing, and require little maintenance. Given this new information, he can then show me how a slightly more expensive option (wood or vinyl) would better achieve my objectives and help me to understand the value of investing in a better quality product.

For a small business entering the marketing arena, early performance is critical as it can dramatically impact the bottom line (both for good and bad). Unnecessary expenses or time required to fix mistakes can rob a business of key resources that are critical in a start-up phase.

We recently installed a dartboard in our office for some friendly lunchtime competition. As we brushed up on the rules, many were surprised to note that the bullseye is not the top value location on the board. A bullseye in standard darts is worth 50 points. There are in fact there are 4 other locations that are worth more (triple ring 17-20 – valued at 51-60 points). This knowledge has changed the way that we play the game. We find that we are consistently getting higher scores than when we just were aiming for the bullseye. A small bit of information about the game has allowed us to quickly improve our score, without necessarily getting better at darts.

We find similar situations with many of our clients. They feel like they know their target audience. They have always aimed for the “bullseye”, and paid limited attention to the rest of the board (market), as they figured it was not their best option. However, in some cases our market research has shown that a business could improve their results by simply adjusting their efforts to target a slightly different segment of the market. By making small changes, we might be able to improve your business without altering the game.

Here are a couple questions that can help to determine some key information to improve your sales score. These are just a few of the things that a good marketer should know about your business.

• What is your most profitable service/product?
• What product/service do you sell the most?
• What product/service do you advertise and market the most?
• Who is your most qualified buyer (gender, age, income, marital status, etc.)?
• Why do clients choose to contact you?
• Where do your clients come from?
• What area(s) do you target with your advertising?
• Who is involved in the buying decision (spouses, business partners, etc.)?
• What are the primary buying objections?

Once we know answers to these questions (and many more), we can then help our clients to hone in their game, and make the best decisions with their marketing budget. A major part of that is ensuring that we are aiming and hitting the right target audience – which may be slightly off center from the bullseye.

To Hire Full-Service, Specialist or go In-House?

The hardest questions in life are often deciding between good and good. While we acknowledge that there’s no “one-size-fits-all” answer to this question, we’re going to focus on the benefits of a full-service solution, often considered the best full-service agency approach for many businesses.

In a nutshell, a full-service advertising agency works best when the various elements of a business are leveraged and synergized to help with one another. At Epic Marketing in Utah, we’ve spent the previous 12 years perfecting how we utilize every resource in every relevant department, delivering comprehensive solutions that align with our clients’ business goals. Our agency’s ability to integrate strategic marketing services ensures that every campaign maximizes impact.

If you’re here because you’re not convinced of the advantages of a full-service solution then I’d like you to imagine the following statements as true or false questions:

•Your social media marketing strategy can be leveraged to boost your search engine optimization and PPC campaigns.
•Your print and direct mail campaigns can work in tandem to enhance your website development or email marketing efforts.
•Your web analytics can reveal in deeper granularity who your target audience is and which campaigns should target which audience, enhancing customer lifetime value.

Even if you think just one of these statements is false, wouldn’t you like your Utah advertising agency to believe they’re true and apply that industry knowledge to your benefit?

Experts Who Advocate For Full-Service Ad Agencies

Gerald Vinci, Owner of Vinci Designs LLC –

“[Agencies] do not diversify their service offerings enough to meet the needs of their customers. This is a problem for most agencies who remain extremely one-dimensional…If we offer only the bare essentials they are forced to hire multiple vendors to complete the project and no customer wants to add more work and frustration to their plate.

Gina Rodriguez, Digital Marketing Specialist at Keenability –

“[A full-service agency] benefits the client in the long term since they are able to have fewer account managers and people to email…Not only does it make it easier for the client, but also for the agency — especially if the agency manages the website as the SEO team, social media manager and content writer all need to work in sync with one another to be successful.”

Mark Mulhern, President of Digital Marketing at iCrossing (east region) –

“In the beginning, digital was new and separate and a different set of skills that needed to be addressed by specialists,” he said. “But now fast forward to 2017 and…everything is happening…in the digital funnel and there is real value in a client having one partner who understands every phase of that.”

Advertising By the Numbers

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According to Statista, The US has, by a long shot, the largest advertising market in the world. In 2015, approximately 190 billion U.S. dollars were spent on advertising in the United States. This figure is more than double the amount spent on advertising in China.

It’s projected that by 2018 the United States will collectively be investing approximately $220,000,000,000 into media-based advertising, including paid advertising like Google Ads. This is a near 40% increase since 2011.

To every advertiser’s misfortune, this massive increase in advertising spend comes bearing gifts:

1. An increasingly saturated market
2. A more competitive digital marketing landscape  

These two misfortunes work together to make your advertising campaigns more difficult, so shouldn’t you have every medium, campaign, and individual working together as well? That’s where cost-effective marketing services can make a difference.

What You Won’t Find Elsewhere

Whether you’re an enterprise level business, or a brick and mortar store, perhaps one of the many local businesses we serve, we’ve got a collection of definitive conclusions as to why full-service is almost always the right solution for your business. Here are just a few, backed by our marketing expertise.

1. No One’s Playing Favorites

“If the only tool that you have is a hammer, the solution to every problem is banging on a nail.”
–  Mike Teasdale, Planning Director of Harvest

There’s one thing every agency has in common: they want to retain your business. With this objective in mind, a full-service agency has the capacity to be impartial towards services and partisan toward results. They’re interested in providing you with creative solution that works so they can retain you as a client, often through marketing research to identify the best path forward.

Because full-service agencies aren’t pigeonholed in just SEO or just public relations they can diagnose the best solution(s) to cure your advertising or marketing ills, enhancing on your brand identity.

2. Go on a Date Before You Agree to a Relationship

With a full-service agency, you can utilize one service or all of them. You have the option to try digital marketing services before deciding if you want social media management, or web development before you pull the trigger on media buying. Our focus on continuous improvement ensures that every service evolves with industry trends.

Specialty services put a lot of bearing on their sales or growth teams to structure their contracts over the course of 6 months or a year. The commitment you might already be unsure of comes with even bigger dollar signs.

Here, our clients are billed month to month and pay for marketing services on a needs basis. This is the kind of autonomy that keeps our clients coming back for second and third dates. They stay with us because they want to, not because we’ve forced them, and they see results like increased organic traffic and lead generation.

3. Marketing Monogamy

This is where your personal preference will determine which solution is right for you. With every agency, every 3rd party product or service, there also comes a new relationship. Deciding what services you need and how you’d like to manage them will determine which model will be right for you.

FULL-SERVICE ad agency MODEL

SPECIALTY OPTION

The full-service model is meant to reduce and optimize:

•Cost: Full-service agencies almost always have flexible pricing models that principle their costs around “The more you bundle, the more you save.” making them cost-effective marketing services.

•Talk Time: With a full-service agency you are empowered to be as involved as much or as little as you’d like. Because you’re managing one relationship as opposed to several, you have more time to devote to your full-service agency or other projects on your to-do list.

•Reporting: At Epic Marketing, we consolidate everything you need to know about all your key services into one report. After approximately 12 years (144 months of reporting) we’ve left behind the vanity metrics and focus on reporting KPIs that matter to your business, driving brand building.

As a Full-Service Advertising Agency in Utah, We Handle:

• Research/Analysis (Market Research) 
• Strategy (Strategic Marketing Services)
• Media Placement/Buying
• Creative (creative solutions)
• TV
• Video Production & Editing
• Print
• Mailers
• Billboards
• Radio
• Online Marketing (Online marketing efforts)
• Direct Mail
• Pay Per Click
• Search Engine Optimization
• Graphic Design
• Website Development
• Social Media
• Campaign Development
• Campaign Tracking Tools
• Brand Identity
• Production/Printing
• Public Relations
• Script Writing
• Copywriting
• Content Marketing

We can effectively run any or all of these categories. We do so with our complete in-house team. This allows for consistent messaging, plus it’s less stressful, much easier and economical for business owners. Our Influence marking strategies can even amplify your reach.

We help our clients plan, build, and maintain every aspect of their marketing efforts and we can handle all of your advertising needs. We stand out from other ad agencies by functioning as an extension of our client’s staff, acting as their marketing arm at a fraction of the cost of a full-time marketing specialist or hiring a team of other agencies. With our industry knowledge, we deliver results that align with your vision.

See how we can help you reach your advertising and marketing goals.

Throughout our years of experience working with hundreds of businesses in a variety of different of industries, we’ve found that some practices or businesses have a harder time attracting new customers or patients than others. As we’re worked with different clients, we’ve seen a trend in some key factors that can hurt advertising results. But unfortunately, these factors are often overlooked. Being aware of these factors can help you better plan for and gauge your marketing success:

1. Competition: While competition can be good in many ways, it can also have a negative effect on your advertising if competition is high for you industry in certain areas or mediums. Even if your ads are professionally crafted with a great message, they may not get as much of a response if your competitor’s ads are run in the same place (newspaper, TV, etc) on the same day.

2. Reputation: Sometimes a great ad can’t always fix a bad reputation. Reputation management and repair isn’t easy to do, but the fact is that until it is repaired, your ads will produce far less results compared to a business with an established and credible reputation. If a negative reputation is detracting from the success of your ads, it’s worthwhile to look into making efforts to repair it over time.

3. Geographic Differences: Cities, counties and states across the country can have widely different population densities and demographics. It’s not surprising to note that business or practices that have a higher density of potential customers or patients within a 60-mile radius of the location generally see better ROI with their advertisements. It’s important that businesses don’t follow a “one size fits all” approach for geographic targeting, as it can vary greatly depending on the population density around your location.

4. Economy: A more unpredictable factor, the state of the economy can have a big impact on the success of your advertising results. Unfortunately, consumer confidence in the economy can shift even on a weekly basis. Consumers are constantly prioritizing their spending habits, wants, and needs, and that can affect how responsive they are to your advertisements. This, of course, varies by industry as well. Businesses—such as medical practices—that offer more of a “need” than a want typically seem to see less of an effect with economic shifts.

5. Seasonality: Each calendar year brings with it a variety of holidays and special events that can also vary with geographic regions. It’s important to be aware of how seasons and holidays affect your advertising so you can get the most return on your marketing dollars. For example, some businesses or industries based on the nature of their product or service should advertise heavily over holidays. Others, however, should go light on marketing efforts over holidays like Christmas and summer vacation because the response is not as successful.

6. Acts of God: While it may seem a little unconventional, extreme weather and natural disasters can have a huge impact on any sort of advertising that runs on the same day. Extreme snowstorms, floods, earthquakes, tornado warnings, or really anything that heavily disrupts the day-to-day flow of your local area can hurt your advertising results. While you can’t necessarily prevent these things from happening, recognizing that they were likely the cause of a somewhat unsuccessful ad will make your future marketing efforts a lot better off.

Running a business or practice of your own can be difficult as you’re expected to wear several different hats to get the job done—this includes marketing and advertising. It’s something that our clients who are business owners keep a very close eye on because it’s expensive, and as such, they have a lot riding on that investment every month. Poor marketing decisions—particularly ignoring these six factors above—can result in wasted money that could eventually cost you your business.

Epic Marketing works with businesses and practices across the country to help them see a greater return on their marketing and advertising dollars. If your marketing could use some improvement, contact us today to speak with one of our experienced account executives and find out how we can take your business to the next level.

A good receptionist is one of the most vital components of marketing for your business. Receptionists are responsible for greeting customers, patients, clients, visitors and answering phone calls. They are also responsible for managing the affairs of the office and participating in many aspects of the business. The receptionist is usually the first point of contact for a customer and they leave the customer with a first impression of your business. They are key players in bringing new customers to your business, and such, it’s important to hire qualified professionals to take on these responsibilities. Once you have hired your receptionists, the most important thing you can do is to invest in them and their future with your company.

Here are a few ways you can invest in your receptionists and see a great return:

Recognize the Value of Your Receptionist

Recognize the value of your receptionist to your business. Receptionists are usually the most underpaid employee of the company. They are also the most undervalued employee. They deserve to be respected and treated well, to be regarded as business professionals, and valued for the difficult tasks they perform each day.

Show Your Appreciation

Show your receptionists that you appreciate them. But don’t just show them… tell them! Show them by regarding them as the professionals they are. Your appreciation will go a long way and will motivate them and help them to be excited about their job and about your company.

Provide Training and Continued Education

Now that you have hired business professionals, do everything in your power to train and educate them. Set the expectation that you are developing them as business professionals and integrate them into every aspect of the business. If you do this properly, your receptionists will possess a wealth of knowledge about all aspects of the company and will serve as one of your most valuable assets.

Incentivize Your Receptionist

If you are looking for exceptional performance from your receptionists, pay them well. If they are working for minimum wage, they will give you minimum wage performance. Pay them well to begin with, but when they have earned and deserve it, give them a raise.

Second, incentivize them. When they bring on a new customer, give them a bonus. By incentivizing your receptionist, you give them the drive to work hard at what they do and a reason to care about every customer that walks through the door. This will motivate them to put forth concerted effort every time they interact with a potential customer. Also, incentivize your receptionists by giving them advancement opportunities through an employee development program.

Intermountain Vein Center in Orem, UT is a great example of a company that truly invests in their receptionists. Heather Todd, Office Manager said,

“Our receptionists are vital to the success of our organization. They provide that most important first impression a patient gets of our clinic and the last impression as they leave. No one enjoys going to the doctor and our receptionists understand that. They are there to make sure our patients are as comfortable as possible, and part of that responsibility is to be able to answer questions that can help put patients’ minds at ease. Our receptionists undergo extensive training and education on venous disease and the treatment options available. At the Intermountain Vein Center, we make sure we work as a team and all employees are involved in the treatment process of each patient, but the receptionists are our star performers.”

There are various ways to invest in your receptionists, and every business should realize that receptionists have the potential to become one of their most valuable assets. Invest in your receptionists and you’ll realize a great return and the true value of your investment!