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Should You Choose a Large or Small Marketing Agency?

1/18/2021

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Are you looking for an online marketing agency to help you reach new customers or clients?

When you go online or ask your family or friends you will be inundated with dozens of businesses that make extraordinary claims to get your business seen across the web. One quick way to cut through the clutter is to identify if you want to work with a large marketing firm or a small agency. In this blog we will discuss the pros and cons of each and you can decide which path is right for your business.
Large Marketing Team

Large Marketing Agencies

Large marketing agencies are easily found online because they have years of experience helping them rank their services higher on Google. They also have more revenue to pay for ad placements and reviews so they come up when you search for marketing in your area. A big agency will come off very professional when you first contact them. They will make you feel like a priority with clean proposals and audits of your online presence and have the capacity to tend to your inquiries right away. A large marketing agency is typically made up of anywhere from 5-25 employees sometimes even more. Below we discuss the pros and cons of dealing with a bigger firm.

Pros

  • The onboarding process is more likely to go smoothly
  • You will probably have a dedicated representative if you spend enough per month
  • They have more people which typically means more combined experiences so you aren’t an acting guinea pig
  • Leverage their network of backlink sources to speed up your SEO work
  • Larger agencies usually pay for services like Facebook Ad Reps that give them better access to solutions, tools, and features across platforms

Cons

  • While you may get fast service in the onboarding process, there is a chance your communication starts to slow down once they lock you in
  • Larger agencies love contracts! Be careful what you sign as they tend to lock you in for long periods of time and come with all sorts of ways for them to keep you onboard for a long time to come
  • You may get bounced from rep to rep as these larger agencies tend to have really high turnover

What businesses are best suited for larger marketing agencies?

  • Businesses in hyper competitive industries 
  • Businesses with a marketing budget over $10k+ a month
  • Businesses that are able to enter into year and multiyear contracts with a long term focus.
Big marketing firms focus on big clients. If you are not a big spender you will most likely get put into their client funnel where you get passed from rep to rep. The overall quality of these marketing efforts often come off as stale or seemingly cookiecutter, which they are. By the time you figure this out, you are locked into a contract and are used to having your credit card hit every month you end up in a never ending cycle of paying top dollar for minimal attention. One day these words may come back to haunt Mad Mango Marketing if we become a bigger firm but from what we have heard from our clients who have managed to leave these big firms, if you don’t spend thousands a month you won’t see the same results you would get with a more focused team.

Small Marketing Agencies

Your other option, which can seem risky at first, is going with a smaller agency. The marketing firm your neighbor recommended, your co-worker’s kid’s business, any number of ways you may come in contact that does smaller scale marketing work. Their prices are often lower than the bigger firms but they don’t have as clean of a presentation or maybe they don’t have an office so it seems less concrete. Many small business owners are faced with this decision and are concerned with how they would hold this small business accountable for their efforts at all because as a small business owner they are already too busy managing everything else. 

A small agency can be anything from a 1 man show freelancer to a 2-5 person operation. Here are some pros and cons that can help you make this decision. ​

Pros

  • You will typically get a better price with a smaller firm and have more negotiation abilities
  • You will have a direct contact and can’t be passed from rep to rep
  • You will be a higher priority with less spend
  • Smaller agency owners and employees are likely to be more knowledgeable than the intern you’ll be dealing with with the bigger marketing company
  • Easier for you as a business owner to hold your marketing team accountable

Cons

  • Smaller agencies tend to have smaller networks and this could make your marketing efforts move slower
  • If you’re dealing with a freelancer something could happen in their life greater than work leaving you without a marketer
  • Small marketing firms may not have access to enterprise tools like a Facebook Rep or high end video editing software
Small marketing agencies tend to give the business owner more control and access to information which makes them great choices for businesses that have anywhere from $500 - $5,000/mo to spend. If you are lucky enough to find a good small marketing team they will beat the big agencies every day due to the added attention.

No matter which decision you make you should go into the agreement with your new marketing team and expect to ride it out with them for  at least 6 months. As the team learns your individual business and get more familiarized with your niche, the results will follow.
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Complete Guide to SEO on Duck Duck Go

12/2/2020

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DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg on February 29, 2008, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The search engine newcomer has been able to gain some name recognition over the recent years because DuckDuckGo does not track users around the internet, integrate with social platforms, or sell data to any third parties.

This security, in a day in age where privacy is the primary source of confusion and stress on the internet, is a big deal to a lot of people and may even be enough to finally switch. Even Apple is taking notice as you can now opt to have DuckDuckGo be your primary search engine on your iPhone.

Competition will always deliver a better product to the consumer and as SEO experts we quite frankly embrace competitors. Having all your eggs in one basket is never a good business strategy and we hope to see DuckDuckGo and other privacy focused search engines expand their reach soon.
Duck Duck Go SEO

Who Uses DuckDuckGo?

Because DuckDuckGo is so privacy focused, we don’t know this answer and either does DuckDuckGo. DDG only tracks the number of queries and the search terms used in those queries therefore the latest data shows DDG bringing in around 82 million daily searches which is dwarfed by 3.5 billion daily searches by Google.

DuckDuckGo users are typically security conscious and interested in tech, news, & software. They tend to spend an average of 9.5 minutes on sites and are more likely to spend quality time on a site.

This means that DDG has very valuable traffic. Figuring out how to get in front of that traffic can get a little ambiguous.

How Can I Rank on DuckDuckGo?

DuckDuckGo relies on over 400 sources across the internet (Google isn’t one of them) to help deliver results to searchers. These sources gather information from other niche search engines like Tripadvisor, Yelp, and more.

Essentially, if you focus on these SEO tenants you (in order of importance) you will begin to see traffic flowing to your site from DDG:

  • Backlinks - DuckDuckGo is all about privacy and authority. They have no interest in showing you a site for the purpose of a sale or an ad. They just want to deliver relevant information. Because of this security focus the biggest factor that will get you ranked is a high-quality backlink profile. Focus heavily on getting relevant and authoritative links and you will begin to rank.
  • Site Quality - If your site loads fast, is easy to move through, and has proper tagging you will be at an advantage over slower, clunkier sites when a search takes place on DDG. One tip you can implement is to not have a pop up or lightbox on your homepage as search engines can interpret this as spammy activity.
  • Content - Create content that is easy to digest. Lists, slide shows, PDFs, and infographics are all a great place to start.

Ultimately, DuckDuckGo doesn’t have a Google Search Console-like platform where you can submit links for indexing so you will need to send strong signals in these areas to get your site ranked and shown often.

The Most Important Factor to Rank on DDG? Location.

One of the biggest differences between a typical search engine like Google and DuckDuckGo is that DDG never tracks where a user is searching from. This means that you have to give extra attention to ensuring that you are mentioning your service location as often as possible in applicable locations (without keyword spamming). 

Including hyperlocal keywords in your blog content and on your site is critical for DuckDuckGo. This means you should be mentioning neighborhoods in cities you serve and even major street names here and there. You are going to want to make sure you have at least a couple location specific pages on your site to increase your DDG visibility.

Conclusion

Search Engine Optimization is never a simple answer and DuckDuckGo is no different. You need a balance of quality backlinks, sufficient content, and site speed to rank on any search engine. The best way to compete on DuckDuckGo is to do a backlink and site comparison between your site and the website that is being served in the #1 position for your service or keywords.

You can contact us here at Mad Mango Marketing and we can provide you with a complete backlink profile of a leading competitor as well as a list of website improvements we recommend.

If you want to rank well in Connecticut and beyond, reach out to the DuckDuckGo SEO Experts today!
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