Complementary Domains: Marketing for the digital age - Rightside Blog
- Updated on: 2019-02-04
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Mandy McEwen, digital marketing consultant and founder of Mod Girl Marketing discusses the challenges and rewards of marketing in the digital age and her use of a complementary domain strategy in this week’s My Side of the Dot™.
Where are you based? We are based in San Diego, California with team members all over the nation.
How and when did you start Mod Girl Marketing? I graduated from college, got a job in sales, and started looking at different ways to work online and make money. Online marketing seemed like a gold mine at the time so I started messing around with it, experimenting with my full-time income and I found that I really enjoyed it. As a sales rep, I enjoyed working with people, helping them and consulting them. I think of marketing the same way—you are helping people find greats solutions!
I then discovered that building my own websites and trying to make money from them via affiliate marketing was becoming very difficult. I would get a Google slap or face some other setback, making the the income unpredictable. I didn’t have my own product and didn’t know much at the time about making my own digital product so I brainstormed a bit and figured, hey, there are business owners out there that have no idea what they are doing online. I had so much knowledge but it wasn’t getting put to good use—at this time affiliate marketing was booming and the competition was getting more fierce. It was like an endless rat race. I knew I was good at online marketing, SEO in particular, and I knew I was good with people, and had sales experience, and connections in the Kansas City community so I started Mod Girl.
I sent emails out to random companies at first, offering free SEO services. Literally free. Like a “Hey, here’s what I can do. Pay me when I get you there or pay me now, up to you.” My very first client owned two businesses, so that was a plus. Then he told a friend about me in the same industry; I met with him, sold. Then it was just networking and word of mouth from there. Once I started seeing how I could make such a huge impact to small businesses owners, I became even more motivated and excited about the potential of Mod Girl.
I now have a team of over 30 professionals working for me at Mod Girl Marketing. Some are full-time employees while most are freelancers whom I’ve built a relationship with over the past decade. We are also growing and I’m always looking for new professionals to join my Mod Girl team.
Tell me a little about the name. How does Mod Girl Marketing capture who you are and what you do? Mod stands for modern.
Modern digital marketing services is what we provide to our clients. We like to be known as the forward-thinking digital marketers, always keeping our clients up-to-date with the latest in digital marketing trends and strategies. As well as portraying our clients as the modern, go-to industry leader in their space.
What are some of the services you offer? We provide full-service inbound marketing solutions:
How is marketing and branding in a digital world different from marketing and branding before the internet revolution? The internet has changed the way consumers think about a brand—and for the better! Before the internet, consumers were presented with brand advertisements via TV commercials, magazine ads, radio commercials, and other forms of print advertising. These old-school advertising methods would interrupt the consumer as they are reading, watching, or listening. There was a huge lack of value that these brands provided to the end consumer.
Now, thanks to the internet, big brands are taking advantage of content marketing and inbound marketing. Valuable content that engages, entertains, and educates are what wins the game. Brands are really honing in on the customer journey from start to finish and providing a true social experience for consumers by taking advantage of modern marketing techniques—social media, video, blogging, etc.
Word of mouth marketing is bigger than it ever has been, thanks to social media. Brands are turning to brand advocates to spread the word about their products. Online reviews are increasingly important.
With the evolution of the internet also comes A LOT more work for big brands. With real-time social networks like Twitter, being used as an outlet for customer complaints (and praise!), brands MUST hire teams who work around the clock, responding to all customer inquiries in a timely fashion.
Also, the competition is fierce these days. Brands must stay on top of the latest in digital marketing trends and find new, innovative ways to win over consumers.
So although the internet has provided so many more ways of getting in front of your potential customer, it also presents several challenges and requires a robust team of experts to keep everything running smoothly and innovative ideas flowing freely.
Tell me a little about your clients: Do they tend to represent a particular industry? Where are they from? How do they find out about you? Most of our clients find out through our own inbound marketing campaigns (SEO, social media, blogging, email marketing, etc). They represent various industries, although recently we’ve decided to focus on the healthcare and technology sectors. Our clients are located all over the US.
What is the biggest misconception about digital marketing and branding that you’d like to dispel? Having a new website will create more traffic and leads.
A lot of business owners are under the assumption that their shiny new website will bring in lots of new leads. That couldn’t be further from the truth. A new website requires a lot of marketing work in order to actually generate targeted traffic and leads. From SEO to strategic blogging to content that resonates with your end user to creating a powerful user experience—digital lead generation is so much more than just a pretty website.
It also takes at least six months for a new website to start seeing traction with their inbound marketing campaigns. And that’s with consistent blogging, SEO, and social media efforts. A new website is not a set and forget piece of the marketing puzzle—it needs constant love and nurturing in order to generate massive ROIs, day in and day out.
Do you think new technology has made it easier or harder for brands to market themselves? You must know HOW to use the technology in order for it to provide results. There are amazing marketing technology tools and new ones being released all the time. It is easy to get overwhelmed by all of the tools and not know which ones are best for your company.
One of our most popular blog posts is a list of the top tools we recommend.
How and when did you first learn about the new TLD program making more domain options available? I’ve known about new TLDs for at least a year, but I never took action until recently.
What is your opinion of the new TLDs and their potential role in digital marketing and branding? How do you make your business stand out from the competition?
There is no easy answer, but I believe part of the solution lies in creative branding—for example, the use of creative branded domains. Alternative domains can be memorable, fun, and inspire creativity on your part to expand and consolidate your content.
Modern marketing is not about “what’s trending”; it’s about building a memorable brand and connecting with an audience. Branded Top Level Domains (TLDs) that are relevant to service offerings and community building are just one of the many modern marketing strategies we deploy for our growing brand and recommend to our clients for their growing brands.
Are you currently utilizing any of these new TLDs, or do you have plans to use any new TLDs, and, if so, which ones and why? Our websites, www.ModGirlMarketing.com and www.8Waysin8Days.com have been around for several years now. As my company continues to grow, I plan to further educate our audience with educational training programs, webinars, and eBooks that will provide more in-depth tutorials and help more people succeed in building powerful brands through modern digital marketing strategies. These alternative domains will come in handy in redirecting people to specific high-value campaigns and offerings. Currently, I’ve activated a complementary domain strategy to intuitively reinforce some of my website’s most important existing pages.
For instance, we recently purchased the following domains for branding purposes:
www.modgirl.marketing – which we’re redirecting to our main homepage. www.modgirl.social – which we’re using to promote a plastic surgery internet marketing case study video through social media outlets right now. www.modgirl.tech – which we’re using to promote our marketing solutions for technology firms page. www.modgirl.reviews — which we’re using to promote client testimonials. www.modgirl.news– which we’re using to promote inbound marketing blogs (or news, if you will). www.modgirl.press – which we’re redirecting to our press page. www.modgirl.consulting – which we’re using to promote our one-to-one consulting packages. www.modgirl.video – which we’re using to promote our YouTube channel. www.modgirl.me – which we’re using to promote our “about” page.
