Showing posts tagged with: honolulu advertising agencies

May 8, 2023

How to Select The Best Hawaii Advertising Agency for Your Business

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How Do I Select the Best Hawaii Advertising Agency?

Updated: May 8, 2023

Team Vision Marketing is a full-service advertising and marketing agency that has been serving Hawaii clients for over 25 years. We thought it might be helpful to provide Hawaii businesses with an insider’s perspective on the key things you should look for when searching for a new Hawaii advertising agency. Here are our 9 key recommendations.

1. First, decide which specific marketing services you need.

Find an ad agency that specializes in those specific marketing services. If you only need a logo, there may be one graphic design agency that really shines in logo design and you might want to go with them. If you’re in need of a full-service advertising agency to handle all of your advertising and marketing needs, then search Google for Hawaii Full-Service Advertising Agencies and start there. Every agency has their core strengths from branding and web design to social media management, graphic design and digital marketing, and you’ll want to find the one that best meets your specific needs.

2. Get client referrals.

Direct Referrals: When you’re looking for a new agency, try to get referrals from their existing clients, and ideally from someone you know within their client’s company directly. Cold calling an agency’s client might yield similar results to a typical employee reference (most HR managers are going to give you the safe answer and not ruin the employee’s chances of getting the job). You’ll want to talk to someone in the client’s organization that you know and who will give you the straight story on how well their advertising agency performs for them.

Video Testimonials: Good agencies with a solid track record will normally offer client video testimonials on their web site. Video testimonials are much better than simple text testimonials because you don’t really know who is behind the text only testimonials, who actually wrote them, and how sincere they really are. Video testimonials take time out of the client’s day and it really puts their reputation on the line. In our experience, if clients are willing to make the effort to do a video testimonial for an advertising agency, they sincerely have a strong relationship with that agency and believe in their referral.

3. Make sure the advertising agency handles accounts similar to yours.

Let’s face it, if you run a Hawaii luxury hotel brand, it will be really helpful if you hire an agency that has previous experience in managing the full-service marketing for a Hawaii luxury hotel. This is not to say a good agency can’t learn a new industry or business, but guess who is going to be the one to have to teach them… and pay for their learning curve? If you are looking for a new advertising and marketing agency and need them to get up to speed and running quickly, it makes the most sense to hire an agency that has handled an account similar to yours.

4. Whatever services an ad agency is selling to you, make sure they are executing them well for their own business.

We call it putting your money where your mouth is. If an agency claims to be great at web design, check out their own web site and make sure it is top-notch. If they claim to be great at social media, check out their Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social accounts to make sure they are active, innovative, and check on their user engagement levels. If an agency claims to be great at search engine optimization, make sure to search for some key industry phrases (i.e. Hawaii advertising agencies, Hawaii Marketing Agencies, Hawaii Branding firms, Hawaii social media agencies, etc.) on Google Search and see where they show up in the results. A good advertising and marketing agency will utilize all the key marketing tools and services they are selling to you (after all, an agency is a business and needs to market itself) and they make sure their marketing programs are high quality– since it is a representation of what they can do for you. Sometimes agencies will use the excuse that they are “too busy with client work to maintain their own marketing,” but this is another good indication that the agency may not have enough resources to handle your business needs.

5. Make sure there is a personality and cultural fit between the advertising agency and your company.

In our over 20 years of doing business in Hawaii, we can tell you that each client has a very unique personality. Without mentioning names :), some clients are extremely easy to work with, some are difficult, some are very complimentary, some are micro-managers, and then there are others that trust in your expertise and let you run with everything. These same characteristics mentioned above apply to agencies as well. Here are our recommendations on how to address the agency culture issue.

Meet the key team members. You will want to meet your main contacts for each of the major departments: Account Service Executive, Creative Director, Media Manager, Social Media Manager, Web Manager, Production Manager. In addition to the formal pitch meeting, set up a casual get to know you lunch. Ask questions to each team member and let their personalities unfold. When agencies and clients work together intensely on major ongoing projects, flexibility, multi-tasking, the ability to handle stress and problem-solving skills will all come into play. Make sure your prospective agency team members possess most of these traits.

Ask their clients about the agency’s personality. It will be hard to gauge an advertising agency’s personality in one or two meetings, so the best thing you can do is get client referrals. Call and ask their existing client’s things like: Are they easy to work with? Are they flexible? Are they reasonable with their billing and do they charge rush charges? Do you trust them? Are they fair? Can they react quickly when it’s needed?

6. Review an agency’s portfolio of work.

An established full-service advertising agency will have an extensive portfolio of advertising, graphic design, web design , social media, digital marketing and search engine optimization portfolio examples. They will also have examples of each of these core services for different clients in different industries which will give you a good feel for their quality and consistency across a range of clients. Most agencies will offer these portfolios on their web site, but others may require you to go into their office to view them. This alone could be another sign of whether or not the ad agency is a good fit for you. If your company is a technology forward company, you might not be a good fit for an agency who doesn’t practice that same type of thinking in the day to day operation of their business.

7. Make sure your ad agency understands the Hawaii market.

A growing trend we’ve seen over the past ten to fifteen years is Hawaii clients using mainland-based advertising, web design and social media firms. In some cases, this works out just fine. In other cases, we have received many client complaints about the “lack of understanding of our culture, our market, our language nuances (i.e. use of okina and kahako).” If your business is a Hawaii business that caters to locals and visitors, we recommend you hire a local Hawaii advertising agency. The reason, you likely want your business to be branded as local and authentic, and not the typical “palm trees and hula skirts” representation often developed by non-local agencies. In addition to just understanding the overall Hawaii market, an experienced advertising agency that has worked with clients on the different islands of Oahu, Maui, The Big Island of Hawaii, Kauai and Lanai, will understand that there are also different cultural nuances for each island. This becomes very important when executing campaigns in local island markets.

8. Don’t hire an agency solely based on their past, look toward their future.

Yes, ideally you want to choose an advertising agency that has longevity and a proven track record in the Hawaii market, but you don’t want to choose an agency that has outlived its success and one that is resting on its laurels. Find out how well the agency understands and utilizes technology. Have they consistently demonstrated a leadership position in the marketplace for adapting to, and implementing, the latest technologies in web design, social media, digital displays, etc.? Technology is advancing more rapidly than ever before, so you want to hire an agency that has proven it has the ability to guide you through future changes.

9. Don’t choose by price alone.

Look, we’ve seen it all and can only offer you advice based on our experiences. Don’t always go after the lowest bid. Many times, less reputable agencies will lowball the initial bid to get the business and then try to increase fees later on. Other agencies may truly offer a low price, but are you getting the same level of service you would have received from the agency charging a little more? Going for the low-cost agency could result in downgrading the quality of talent on your business (the B Team) and provide you with a lower quality product. Instead, pay the agency fairly and increase savings by improving operational efficiencies. You are hiring an agency for the quality of its creative products and services, so don’t undermine that by tightening the reigns too tight on compensation.

We hope you found these tips helpful on “how to select the best Hawaii advertising agency for your company.” If you are in the process of looking for a new Hawaii advertising agency, we kindly ask that you consider Team Vision Marketing as an option. We’re more than happy to be tested on the nine initial criteria we provided above. And in the meantime, you can check out our client video testimonials and our extensive web site portfolio.

Hear from Harry A. Saunders, President of Castle & Cooke Hawaii, on his 20 years of experience working with Team Vision.

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Call Us Today at (808) 536-0416.

October 3, 2019

What to Expect After A Google Broad Core Algorithm Update

If you’ve landed on our Hawaii Marketing Tips blog while searching for Team Vision Marketing, please visit our home page, creative portfolio or client video testimonials. If you’re interested in learning more about Search Engine Optimization and SEO, please continue reading.

Ever wonder how Google’s algorithm works, and how it ranks the millions of web site content updates that are published every day? Sadly, we’ll never get to know exactly what factors go into their ranking system, but we do know that the Google team is constantly making to maintain their search engine algorithm. Although these updates usually go unnoticed, several times a year the algorithm goes under a big update called, the “Broad Core Algorithm Update.” With these big updates, you may notice some changes in your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.

If you’re just hearing about the core update now, don’t worry. In this blog post, we provide a brief explanation on how these updates might affect your web site and what your brand should do after the update to upkeep the success of your online presence.

What is a “Broad Core Algorithm” Search Engine Update?

The broad core algorithm update is one big update that improves Google’s overall algorithm. With these updates, the algorithm changes the weight and importance of its ranking factors, then it reassesses everything on the internet, based on these improvements.

Broad core updates are not as major as the Penguin, Panda, Pigeon, or Fred updates, which were implemented to address specific faults or issues in Google’s algorithm. Instead, these updates are made to help Google provide the most relevant and best information to their audience.

What will happen to my web site’s SEO rankings?

Unfortunately, Google has a reputation for giving vague explanations on what issues the updates will address, so we don’t know exactly what will happen when the changes roll out. The rare times that Google has explained how an algorithm has changed, they were trying to promote a specific behavior, such as mobile responsiveness or the adoption of HTTPS as a required part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices.

However, you can expect to see notable changes to your web site ranking and web traffic. The improved algorithm will edit the web sites ranked on SERP, prioritizing the most relevant and up to date content. Luckily, Google announced the planned core updates in advance, which allowed companies to make last-minute improvements to their sites Search Engine Optimization strategies in order to lower the chances of any negative changes resulting from the algorithm update.

My web site SEO rank dropped! What should I do?

Remain calm. A shift in your SERP rank after a core update does not mean that Google is penalizing your site, nor does it mean that your web site is low quality. Keep in mind that this broad core update is reassessing your content against all the other content that has published since the last update, making newer and more relevant web pages more discoverable for everyone. Google used a wonderful analogy to describe how the core algorithm update operates:

“…Imagine you made a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later in 2019, you refresh the list. It’s going to naturally change. Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realize they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before.”

If your website is bringing in less traffic or is currently ranking lower on the Google search engine results, Team Vision Marketing suggests you do the following:

According to Google executives, a drop in ranking probably lies in its relevancy factor. We recommend that you regularly post new blogs or publish new content on your web site.
Look through your content. Make sure you are publishing well-written content that provides quality information and accurate data.
Go through your web site to see if there are any technical issues, like slow loading pages or bad links, that you need to fix. You should be using Google Webmaster tools to regularly evaluate your site.
Update and enhance your SEO strategies to make it easier for Google’s algorithm to crawl your website’s content.

Will my web sites SEO ranking recover?

Your ranking and web traffic may or may not improve in the next update. It’s not guaranteed that all your improvements will help your site recover to its former search engine ranking. Improving your web site’s rank on Google is not a one and done type of job. It requires regular maintenance to keep up with the competition. You may want to check out our recent Hawaii SEO Tips blog post, designed to help local Hawaii businesses improve their Search Engine Optimization strategies.

My web site rank went up! Will it stay like this forever?

That will depend on you. SEO best practices are constantly changing over time. Team Vision urges all brands, including the ones who are currently ranked at the top of the SERP, to regularly make improvements to their web site and their SEO. Regular web site maintenance is the key to sustaining your web site’s successful online presence.

To conclude, Google’s broad core algorithm update ensures that it’s providing the best information for everyone. The core update may or may not affect your online presence, but all brands should actively publish new content and practice webmaster approved SEO tactics. If you are a local Hawaii business that needs assistance with your advertising, web development and/or strengthening your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts, reach out to Team Vision, a Hawaii full-service Hawaii advertising and digital marketing firm. We have designed and built web sites, and provided SEO management services for Hawaii clients on O’ahu, Maui, Kauai, Lana’i, and the Big Island of Hawai’i.

Contact Us:

Phone: (808) 536-0416

Email: info@www.teamvision.com

Web: www.www.teamvision.com

Hear from Harry Saunders, President of Castle & Cooke Hawaii, on his experience working with Team Vision Marketing.

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Call Us Today at (808) 536-0416.

July 11, 2019

Know The Common Difference: Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO

If you landed on our Hawaii Marketing Tips blog by accident while searching for Team Vision Marketing, please visit our homepage, creative portfolio or client video testimonials to learn more about us.

Know the Common Differences: Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO

What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

If you’re not in the know, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a vital digital marketing strategy that is used to improve a website’s Search Engine Results. SEO helps drive web traffic to your site organically. You can read more about SEO marketing and additional tips on our SEO Tips for Hawaii Businesses blog post.

Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO

In this blog post, we provide an overview of the Black Hat and White Hat approaches to common SEO Marketing strategies. By understanding their differences, you can confidently distinguish which SEO marketing tactics will improve or hinder your online presence.

You may have heard that White Hat or Gray Hat is the preferred and ethical practice of SEO marketing. This idea is prevalent because the White Hat approach follows the Webmasters Guidelines, which lists techniques that have long term benefits for your online presence. These techniques will also reduce the risk of being penalized by Google’s algorithms because they’re geared towards creating a valuable audience experience on your site. Going the White Hat route does require more effort and time on your behalf, but the payoff is well worth it.

Black Hat SEO marketing includes “quick win” approaches that work outside the Webmaster Guidelines, thus manipulating the search engine’s algorithms to get a higher SERP ranking. Although controversial, these methods do work, but only for a short amount of time and the result of using these taboo techniques may get your web site penalized by Google and other search engines. We here at Team Vision Marketing highly recommend avoiding the use of Black Hat SEO techniques because they cater to the search result’s algorithms, instead of benefitting your customers with rich content. Remember, the health of your online presence relies on the number of people that visit your site, how long they stay on your site, and how many pages they visit.

What Happens When You Use Black Hat SEO?

You can’t cheat your way to the top of the SERP unscathed. Although it’s not illegal, Black Hat SEO tactics are shady tactics that violate the Webmasters Guidelines. If caught, Google will send a preliminary warning against your site and lower your ranking, giving you the chance to correct the wrong. Once you fix your SEO issues, you can submit a reconsideration request to restore your ranking. If your site continues to break the search engine’s rules, the site will be excluded from the SERP. Ultimately, this will your weaken your online presence and negatively impact your company’s reputation.

Creating Web Content

Content is one of the top key factors that affect your search rankings. However, your web page’s content is a broad web component that isn’t limited to materials created by you. It also includes the information or materials shared from other content creators.

White Hat:

White Hat SEO marketers understand that Google rewards sites that regularly post valuable content. The higher the rank, the more likely you will receive increased web traffic and new leads to your site.

Knowing this, you should create excellent content that covers trending topics, and that includes popular search words and phrases. Your content should also include credible links and share other high-quality materials, like videos or infographics, that help your audience discover new content creators or in-depth information sources. You should also regularly update older pieces of content with current information.

TIP: We suggest writing longer blog posts (current recommendation is 2,500 words or more). Longer blog posts help make your posts stand out not just to your audiences but to Google, as well. Think about it, longer content means more keywords and backlinks.

Black Hat:

When it comes to creating content, Black Hat SEO marketers will try to use auto-generated content. This is content created programmatically, using a set of rules or scripts instead of original content to trick Google filters. If you come across an online article that is full of grammatical and spelling errors, has duplicated information, is full of spam adverts, or includes nonsensical strings of keywords, it was probably auto-generated.

Adding Keywords and Key Phrases

Mixing in popular, relevant keywords and key phrases in the content, tags, and metadata are important to improving your SERP ranking. These tactics help direct leads to your web site via search engine inquiries.

White Hat:

The proper way of using keywords is to pair your content with a blend of primary and secondary (AKA related) keywords. We suggest brainstorming search phrases related to your content or research keywords with tools like Google Trends, Google Search Console, and Google Correlated. You can even use the “Search related to _____” section at the end of the SERP for keyword inspiration (Image 1).

TIP: Optimize your content for long-tail keywords (long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that contain at least three words). They’re more specific and less competitive than generic keyword terms. Long-tail keywords are also optimized for voice searches.

Black Hat:

A common Black Hat hack for incorporating keywords into content, according to HubSpot, is keyword stuffing. Essentially, keyword stuffing is using an unnecessarily large amount of irrelevant or repetitive keywords in an attempt to rank higher for key search phrases. This is most commonly seen as blocks of text repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural.

Here’s an example of keyword stuffing:

Honolulu, Hawaii Search Engine Optimization - Keyword stuffing example — Image 2

Another common controversial keyword hack is hiding text, which is used to trick audiences without raising red flags. This method can trick the search engines into taking account of all these keywords and ultimately result in a higher search engine ranking.

Here are the following ways Google says that black hat practitioners can disguise text and links:

Using white text on a white background
Locating text behind an image
Using CSS to position text off-screen
Setting the font size to 0
Hiding a link by only linking one small character—for example, a hyphen in the middle of a paragraph

Getting More Backlinks

Backlinks or inbound links are incoming links to your web site. These links help add credibility to your content, as they are considered as a vote of confidence that your content is high-quality.

White Hat:

There are a number of authentic ways you can increase backlinks, but they do require time and effort. Here are our 3 tips on effective, Google-compliant methods of increasing backlinks:

1. Build a reputation as an expert in your field by frequently producing high-quality content, like blog posts, infographics, videos, or reports. Once established, other reputable web sites will want to share your content on their site and add backlinks to your site.

2. Network with popular blogs relating to your field or participate on news web sites as a guest blogger. Guest blogging, when executed within Google’s guidelines, is a highly effective SEO marketing strategy where you publish your content on another web site. This gives you the opportunity to increase brand awareness and create backlinks, thus enhancing your web traffic with a new set of audiences.

3. Moz.com suggests trying out “Ego Baiting”, which is a type of well-researched content that recognizes the excellence of highly reputable bloggers, industry leaders, etc. for the purpose of building a link networking relationship. “The hope is that, by being included, these people feel better about and are more inclined to share the content with a link,” according to Moz.com. This process includes outreaching to the recognized companies or individuals to encourage them to share the link to your “ego baiting” content on their site.

Black Hat:

Creating Private Blog Networks (PBN) is a Black Hat SEO technique used to increase backlinks inorganically. PBN are a collection of spam web sites or blogs that will backlink to a central web site (see Image 3). PBN cheat Google’s algorithm by artificially boosting the “trustworthiness” of the central web site. You can easily tell if a website is a part of this scheme if the content of the PBN web sites are basic or repetitive and if they all backlink to one site.

Building Structured Data & Schema

Think of Structured Data and Schema as something similar to metadata. These HTML tags help organize your web site’s data and add more descriptions to your content. This, in turn, helps search engines understand your web site better to create enhanced search results via rich snippets like reviews and phone numbers.

White Hat:

White Hat SEO marketing will use Structured Data and Schema to enhance their look on SERP by adding extra helpful details that their search audience will find valuable. For example, a boutique hotel will add tags to include room rates (Image 4) or a cooking blog will add tags that will show the calories of their dishes (Image 5).

TIP: Write strategically compelling tags that will help your site stand out from your competitors. Make sure to monitor your competitors search listing results so that you can evaluate and modify your Structured Data and Schema to remain competitive.

Black Hat:

Someone practicing Black Hat SEO will abuse Structured Data and Schema by providing inaccurate information to fool search engines and users into clicking onto their web site. For example, you can use Schema markups to artificially inflate your positive reviews or ratings with a fake review site, and use structured data to make the fake reviews stand out on search results pages.

Conclusion:

White hat Search Engine Optimization is the best way to sustain your long-term online presence and increase your overall web traffic. With our White Hat tips, you can increase your web traffic organically, build strong networks with other reputable sites, and strengthen your site’s credibility.

Black Hat SEO techniques should be avoided as much as possible. While these shady tactics can achieve short-term results, search engines have created specialized algorithms to penalize Black Hat techniques:

Florida, which penalizes keyword stuffing
Panda, which penalizes content farms
Penguin, which penalizes certain bad linking practices

These penalties include lower search engine rankings, a decrease in web traffic, having your web site banned on the SERP, and a crippled reputation.

If you found this blog post on common White Hat vs. Black Hat Search Engine Optimization techniques interesting and insightful, please give us a call at (808) 536-0416 to learn how we can help you improve your digital marketing efforts. For over 20 years, we’ve been a leading full-service Hawaii advertising agency, web design and digital marketing firm. But don’t take our word for it, please view our client video testimonials and hear directly from our key clients on how we helped grow their businesses.

Phone: (808) 536-0416

Email: info@www.teamvision.com

Web: www.www.teamvision.com