Welcome to the family!

When we say that, we mean it!

Joe Youngblood SEO & Digital Marketing Consulting was built around one simple principle: Do good, honest, successful marketing work to help businesses.

We have held true to that principal through every Google algorithm update, every SEO trend, and every change in consumer search behavior.

Our agency works a little different than most every other SEO agency out there, including the big ones you have probably hired or heard of in the past. This is a brief explanation of what makes us different.

1. Always Changing

SEO, Paid Social, Paid Search (PPC), these are all marketing disciplines that are under constant change. If an SEO from 1995 was using the same exact tactics today that they used back then, most likely their client sites would not be easily found in search engines. If you tried using a Facebook tactic from 2009 you likely wounldn’t reach any new customers. Because of this immutable fact our agency is also under a constant state of change and evolution. Our team has to keep up with every small change on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other major search engines and with changes to how social media algorithms and paid advertising marketplaces operate – but they also have to keep up with things like WordPress Plugins, WordPress Page Builders, Website Builder Platforms, Hosted Ecommerce Solutions, Virtual Work technologies, Business Directory Changes, PHP code changes, and How consumers use search, social, and digital technology.

You may have noticed in your contract that we point out this constant state of change and enforce our ability to adapt your SEO, Organic Social, Paid Search, or Paid Social program to fit the ever-changing needs modern SEO and digital marketing demands.

2. Just the One Hat Please

You may have heard terms like black hat or white hat tossed around in terms of SEO or even Facebook Marketing. Here we are just HAT, an acronym that stands for Honest, Accountable, Transparent. We know all of the possible tactics to help your engagement with us be a success and have very clear guidelines on what we will and will not do to help your business be successful. For example we know many agencies that purchase fake reviews for their clients business, not only is this illegal in many countries it is incredibly dishonest to both the client and consumers.

Being H.A.T. also means you always know the truth of what is happening, enabling you to make important and difficult decisions. Digital Marketing is tough work and we own up to any mistakes or missteps we might make as we endeavor forward, almost always with a plan of action to correct any issues. There is a lot we do not know and a lot that we always have to learn, stumbles and missteps are part of all digital marketing journeys and we feel better knowing we are always transparent with you.

3. We Like to Celebrate

Every month on the first Monday of the month we hold what we call “Awesome Day”. This is a day where our team stops all work flow, rejects calls and meeting requests, and focuses solely on your marketing analytics data. Digging in to find recent wins or nuggets of data that might otherwise get lost in the day to day fight.

If you are on a long-term contract with us or have purchased an SEO Audit you likely have seen something called a “Champagne Metric” show up in your records. This is typically something that represnts a major business achievement such as a high volume of sales or obtaining high-value number on ranking in Google. When we hit the Champagne Metric it is time to celebrate the win!

4. Real-Time, Logged, and Automated Reporting

We give our clients three types of reporting: Real-Time, Logged, and Automated. This keeps our team focused on work tasks instead of reporting tasks while ensuring you the client stay up-to-date on everything occuring on your account.

Real-Time Reporting – Our team is instructed to send you communications about important events as quickly as possible no matter if those are positive or negative events. Often times we may even send out a real-time report on weekends or during after-hours if it is important enough.

Logged Reporting – Each campaign gets a Live Roadmap, a Google drive based system created by our brother agency Winner Winner Chicken Dinner. On this Live Roadmap is a tab that tracks the major work items our team has recently completed along with date due and date completed. Small daily or routine tasks such as a Google Analytics check after a Google algorithm update, Facebook Ads account checks, or Google My Business quality checks are not logged as the logging often takes more time than the work activity and crowds this system.

Automated Reporting – For most monthly marketing reporting you will get an automated email report. This report is seen and reviewed by our team members at the same time you get it and you may also get email updates in reply to your report.

5. Communication is Key

We deeply value communication with our clients as the most effective tool for the achievement of our mutual goal – your marketing success. To ensure we communicate well with each other we have a few guidelines to ensure our communication stays as a benefit for both of us and not a hinderance.

• All client requests are given a 48-hour window (2 business day) for a response from our team. Due to our new policy about after work hours messaging we may send a message after 48 hours that was written inside of our window (see below for more information)
• Clients are asked to only send one request per email as emails are treated like tickets internally and the conversations are shared among team members. We only respond to one request at a time to make things go much smoother for all of us. If a client sends more than one request in an email, our team may respond in different emails with different subject headings to make each request a separate conversation.
• Clients may request an in-person or virtual meeting at any time. In-person meetings require a 7-10 business day notice (prior week) and virtual meetings require at least 48-hours notice. (COVID NOTE: We are fully vaccinated and will only send fully vaccinated staff for in-person meetings)
• Scheduled Emails and Responses: Our team has began scheduling emails to be sent at 8am the following day in Central Time (our time) if the email was responded to after work hours (after 5pm Central or Local time). We are doing this as effort to help our clients protect their personal time, family time, and mental health.

Basically, please send us questions through email communication but please send only one question per email and give us a 2-business day window to respond.

We request that clients refrain from sending large, bulleted, lists of several questions. We are also not obligated to explain how any digital marketing discipline works in detail and/or how our actions may impact your desired metrics. There are services online that specialize in these areas including YouTube video tutorials, courses, guides, training, and virtual coaches.

At this time we do not offer these services to our clients, we do offer growing abundance of free educational content on digital marketing here: https://www.joeyoungblood.com/education/.

6. Flat Rate Pricing, Big Time Bundle Value

At our agency we charge a flat monthly rate for our retainer fee to execute on specific digital marketing disciplines which are clearly laid out in your contract. This makes budgeting for your marketing much easier and helps you hit more business goals without big increases in pricing that might come from variable or sliding scale pricing.

We may even offer you a discount or price reduction for bundling certain marketing services together that compliment each other well, for example SEO and PPC or Facebook Management and Facebook Ads.

Our goal is to make sure you have the best agency and best pricing for your needs.

7. Auto-pay Please

We do not have a big accounts recievable / payable team, in fact we do not have one at all. In your contract you likely noticed the portion about auto-payment being required. Like many other features of our agency this directly impacts our ability to maximize our efforts for your business. The more our team members have to spend time chasing down invoices, the less time they have to do the marketing work you are paying for.

As a note we do not offer refunds for any reason.

8. Account Perks

We believe in delivering more value than you paid us for. As an agency we are constantly on the lookout for new opportunities to increase the value of your engagement with us, which is no easy task. Your account may be eligible for different perks depending on your contract details (contact us to find out what perks you are eligible for).

Those perks may include:

• Licensed WordPress Plugins – Need to borrow a plugin license? We have plenty of officially licensed plugins to choose from including WP Rocket, Gravity Forms, Divi, Divi Booster, and Asset Cleanup.
• WordPress Plugin Discounts – Get access to our high-end plugins at a discount.
• Exclusive WordPress Plugins – Get access to plugins built just for our clients.
• Media Connection – Pitch stories to our media partners directly.
• Unlimited AI Images – We will generate Unlimited numbers of images on your behalf using the Midjourney image generation system. Some limits will apply, ask for more details.
• Social Media Distribution – Get your content in front of millions on our network of social profiles.
• Call Tracking Numbers – We provide you at least one number free of charge.
• Employee Discount Network – Offer a discount to employees of businesses in our growing network.