FAQ

Explorer Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency. That means if you need anything relating to digital marketing – we’ve got you covered. 

We’re not built like other marketing agencies. Other agencies are built to deliver services with minimal contact with you. This leaves you in the dark when they are doing work on your behalf. You have to jump through hoops to know what is going on behind the scenes, and you’ll have little to no input regarding how your marketing operation is being run. 

That’s not the way with Explorer. 

We’re a small but powerful team who pays attention to detail and nurtures long-term relationships with our clients. 

Here’s what it looks like in practice: 

We install our Strategist directly into your team by opening a daily communications channel where you can access your Strategist anytime. They’ll make sure you’re up to date on everything. We aim to build close relationships with our clients so they know that we’re really in their corner. 

Additionally, you’ll receive an Executive Leadership Team Document (and ELT) every week to show you what priorities are on our radar and what we’re doing to accomplish our objectives. You’ll also receive a Weekly Team Contribution Report that shows you exactly what our team spent time working on down to the minute.

Let’s get specific about the services we can deliver for you:

 When you partner with Explorer, you can receive: 

🔷 Marketing Consultation

🔷 Digital Marketing Strategy Development

🔷 Branding Strategy Development

🔷 Data Analytics

🔷 Marketing Platform Audits

🔷 SEO services

🔷 Social Media Advertisements

🔷 Google Advertisements

🔷 Email Marketing

🔷 Copywriting

🔷 Graphic Design

🔷 Video Production

🔷 and more!

We understand every business’s needs are complex, so contact us and let us know what you need and we’ll tell you what we can do. 

Explorer can deliver professional quality deliverables in a wide range of areas of digital marketing. We are constantly growing as professionals to expand our skillset. 

Our greatest strengths as an agency are in SEO and social media advertising. 

We’ve discovered that small to mid-sized businesses benefit the most from implementing these two initiatives together, so we’ve become well-practiced in delivering SEO services as well as developing social media advertising campaigns using our full-funnel approach. 

Explorer’s team has been trained in the practical application of the Full-Funnel Approach to marketing strategy. This is just one of many tools that your Strategist will have in their toolbox, but this methodology has given us the best results by laying our clear objectives, KPI’s, and audience targeting priorities. 

As marketers, we’re aiming to reach your audience at all stages of their buying journey. We describe the stages of your audience’s buying journey by visualizing a funnel. The funnel breaks down like this: 

Top-of-Funnel (TOFU)

Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU) 

Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU) 

Reconversion (RC) 

Every campaign that we run focuses on one of these stages of the funnel, and each stage of the funnel is evaluated by different KPI’s. 

The Top-of-Funnel (TOFU)  is where you try to reach customers so that you can get your brand in front of them. This is where brand awareness is built, and your cold audience is prioritized. Buyers in this stage of the funnel may be experiencing a problem or seeking an opportunity that you can provide, but they don’t understand their problems or opportunities enough to accurately describe them. The objective of TOFU campaigns is to get cheap reach to an audience of the maximum size. The content we use in a TOFU campaign is aimed to help the buyer put words to their problem or opportunity so they understand how to research the topic further. KPI’s in this stage include Cost-per-Millie, Reach, Impressions, and Engagement. 95% of buyers are not ready to make a purchase after their first touch-point, so these campaigns don’t return a lot of ROI on their own. A good TOFU campaign does set up the MOFU and BOFU to maximize ROI. 

The Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU) is where you try to engage customers who are exploring solutions to their main problem or exploring options for an opportunity they are seeking. This stage of the funnel prioritizes reaching your cold audience as well as reaching your engaged audience who you captured using the TOFU campaign. Buyers in the Middle-of-Funnel are looking to achieve a deeper understanding of their problem and they will often turn to experts, peers, and influencers to help them make an educated buying decision. The objective of a MOFU campaign is to engage with the audience to educate them about their problem or the opportunity they are seeking. Educational content, tutorials, product walkthroughs, and influencer marketing are all great kinds of content to use for a MOFU campaign. MOFU campaigns are evaluated by KPI’s such as Engagement, Video View %, Clicks, Cost-per-Click, Website Traffic, Session Duration, Pages/Session, and Email Open Rate. 

The Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU) is where you push to maximize first-time conversions. This is the stage when your buyers are ready to make a commitment to a business that promises to solve their problem or provide an opportunity. A BOFU campaign will mostly focus on retargeting your audience of prior engagers, but a small about of your marketing budget should be spent on reaching your cold audience with BOFU messaging too. In this stage, the consumer is comparing their options, so this is the best time for you to deliver messages about your differentiating factors, testimonials, free trials, discounts, and promos. This campaign is primarily evaluated by two KPI’s, ROI and Cost-per-Customer-Acquisition. Other KPI’s like Engagement and Website Traffic can be used to fine-tune your BOFU campaigns or diagnose issues with performance. 

The Reconversion (RC) stage of the funnel is where you aim to crank up the lifetime value and brand loyalty of your previously converted customers. This stage is especially important for businesses who use an affordable product or service to get their foot in the door with a customer. In this stage, the consumer has already purchased your product or received a service from you, and they loved it! If you delivered services well for the customer, you’re qualified to run a reconversion campaign. In this stage, consumers have established trust with your brand, they consider you an authority in your area of expertise, and they trust that you have their best interest at heart. A reconversion campaign will target your existing and prior customer lists to encourage customers to perform one of several actions. A reconversion campaign can be used to capture a review or testimonial, to encourage peer-to-peer referrals, or to capture a new sale or an upsell from an existing customer. KPI’s for reconversion campaigns are often fluid, but mostly focus on ROI, referral volume, and share-of-voice.

That is the briefest explanation of what our methodology looks like. When we conceptualize marketing campaigns, we think about how we will fill the TOFU and move users down the funnel until their eventual conversion and hopeful reconversion. If this is the kind of tactic you’d like to see applied in your business, reach out to us and we’ll get started right away.

Currently the operation is being managed by Ryan personally with assistance from outside contractors as needed. If you or your team need a team built for your marketing operation Ryan will hand-pick top talent to assist with your marketing needs.

Explorer Marketing’s methodology is rooted in the fundamentals of what makes good marketing. As a result, we’ve been effective in serving businesses across industries. 

Explorer serves B2B and B2C businesses – across industries. 

Explorer Marketing does deliver special offers for businesses in the Outdoor, Travel, and Leisure industries, as well as for Documentarians!

If your business belongs to one of these industries,  inquire about the special deals and packages that we can offer exclusively to our clients in these industries. 

The list of industries we’ve worked with is constantly growing! To name a few, Explorer has done marketing for:

• B2B
• B2C
• Influencers
• Travel Agencies
• Documentaries
• SaaS
• PaaS (People-as-a-Service)
• Real Estate
• Events (in-person & virtual)
• Financial Services
• e-Commerce
• e-Learning
• Health Services
• And more!

As Explorers, there’s nowhere we won’t go – and we have the tools to navigate your industry with the expertise you expect to deliver the results you need. 

In most instances, Explorer can be fully integrated into your business and begin delivering marketing services within 1 week! 

During our first week, Explorer will open a communication channel between you and our Strategist who will be your point of contact for everything marketing. 

In the background during that week, Explorer will conduct meetings internally to ensure that the entire team is on the same page about what you are looking for, what you need, and what approaches we believe will deliver the best results for your marketing campaigns. We will also integrate into the backend of any and all applicable marketing platforms you use, such as your: 

• Website
• Google Analytics
• Google Tags Manager
• Google Ads
• Social Media Accounts
• Social Media Ads Managers
• CRM
• Social Scheduling Apps
• Social Listening Apps
• SEO Analytics Platforms
• And anything else that will be important to our work with you. 

Additionally, Explorer will conduct an array of audits to check the health of your marketing operation as it is now. The audits will be concluded with the delivery of a presentation of an action plan which will troubleshoot current issues with your marketing platforms as well as establish the makings of a basic marketing funnel structure. 

When audits are concluded, you will receive deliverables for all of the following – assuming you do not have these documented yourself already: 

• SEO Target Keyword Research Document
• SEO Content Strategy 
• Branding Style Guide
• Writing Style Guide
• Positioning Statement
• Mission Statement
• Unique Value Proposition 
• Audience Persona(s) 

All of the services that are delivered during our first week is covered by your Startup Fee, and regular hourly billing will not begin until the 1 week startup period has been completed. 

At the conclusion of the first week, Explorer will be fully prepared to do anything and everything we need to ensure your marketing operations are run with expert precision.

Explorer Marketing is a location-neutral business. That means we can work with partners across the US – from New York to San Francisco and Alaska to Florida! We even deliver services internationally depending on country and timezone. If you aren’t sure if Explorer serves your area, feel free to ask!

Some projects will require Explorer’s in-person presence. On those occasions, Explorer will meet you where you are to deliver services like Video Production and Photography for your marketing campaigns.

As Explorers, there is nowhere we won’t go!

Primarily, yes. Most of the services we provide can be delivered on virtually.

Video Production and Photography services are available as well, even if travel is required. We are glad to meet you where you are to make the content you need!

Yes!

Many business owners and influencers love making their content. Some already have a dedicated team or team member to do so. We encourage business owners and influencers to be as involved in the content creation process as they want. We also understand content creation can be time-consuming and hard to master. If you want to make your content, you should. If you want a professional to handle it, we’ll gladly step in for you.

Our rates vary depending on the scope of a project. A typical contract will include a startup fee and an ongoing hourly rate for services rendered after the contract initiation. To learn more, talk to Ryan about what rate you can expect for your businesses needs.

Yes! At Explorer, we consider marketing an adventure, and we want to be with you through all of it.

We love our partners who opt to retain our services. If you decide you want us to be your long-term business partner, we can establish a personalized monthly retainer agreement based on what you need and how frequently you need it.

Get a free consultation and quote; click here!

Check out our free online resources to help you make great content with a solid strategy. Click here!

If you already have a creative team, you’re way ahead of the game, and that’s a good thing! Your content strategy is already set up for success as long as you have a solid, actionable, and achievable strategy in place. That’s where Explorer comes in!

We’ll work closely with you and your creative team to build your perfect content strategy and production plan. We help with defining your goals, planning content creation, and developing a content calendar to give your team the structure to keep your content production on track.

Once you launch your content campaign, we’ll track your analytical data and provide routine reports on your Key Performance Indicators. If data suggests areas for improvement, we will adjust your strategy to capitalize on what is working and bolster areas that need improvement.

Absolutely!

At Explorer Marketing, we’re not just analysts and strategists- we’re creatives. We’re equipped to make any content you need for your business, whether it’s:

• Video Production for social, ads, or blogs
• Photography or photo editing
• Copy for:
  • Website
  • Blogs
  • Social Media Posts
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Email Marketing
  • Traditional Ads (brochures, flyers, mail, ect)
• Graphic Design including:
  • Logos
  • Infographics
  • Banner Art
  • Photo Editing
  • Lead-Generation Documents
  • Business Cards
  • Brochures

The list goes on!

We aim to be your all-in-one content service provider, from strategy to creation to distribution.

In short, if you need something created, we’re the people to do it.

Optimizing your website for SEO and encouraging conversions using stellar website design and functionality are top priorities with Explorer.

When you sign on with Explorer, the first thing we do is an SEO Audit and a Content Audit. By performing these audits, we’re able to identify easy early win opportunities in SEO and conversion rate optimization. These will be some of the first issues Explorer will recommend we address for our long-term partners.

If you’re working with Explorer on a project basis and looking for website optimization services, Explorer can deliver:

• SEO Audits
• Metadata and Metatitle SEO Optimization
• SEO Copy Adjustment
• SEO Webmap Re-Organization
• Webpage Design Optimization
• SEO Blog Strategy and Blog Content
• Website User Journey Mapping & User Journey Optimization
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• Landing Page Building
• A/B Testing
• and more

Explorer is not explicitly a website designing service provider, but we do offer services that benefit website development, including:

• Copywriting
• Blogging
• Graphic Design
• Photography
• Photo Editing
• Videography
• Video Editing
• Sales-Funnel Analysis
• Analytical Data Recording and Reporting

If you seek help with your website, we will look at your site and decide to make the desired changes. If we are unable to, we will subcontract another professional to do so. We will work alongside them to make the changes you need. For your convenience, all billing will be handled through Explorer Marketing.