Welcome to our new "Meet the Team" series, which features members of our enCOMPASS Agency team. We've picked our first target, asked a handful of questions, and posted the interview here—just to share who we are and why we do what we do.

Few things frustrate an entrepreneur or a marketing team more than investing money in high-quality content, then getting little or no audience engagement. Often, there’s a simple reason why content falls flat: It’s not that it’s bad, just that nobody can find it. Content always needs to be optimized for discovery, and made more visible among search engine users. In other words, content creation always needs to be married to sturdy SEO.

Among small business owners, you can find a spectrum of opinions regarding the practice of content marketing.

Some entrepreneurs balk at the idea, seeing it as little more than a waste of time to produce regular blog posts and social media updates.

For years, Google My Business (GMB) has been a no-brainer among business owners. As a platform created by and expressly endorsed by Google, GMB plays an obvious role in bolstering search engine visibility. In fact, having a GMB profile is crucial for maintaining a presence in local searches, including the Google Local Pack. GMB is an easy platform to operate and makes it simple for even SEO novices to enhance their online presence. Best of all, the service is free. Or at least, it always has been. But now, that may be changing. Google recently sent out a survey to GMB managers asking their thoughts on some pay-to-play options within the platform. It’s the first serious sign that Google may be putting at least parts of the GMB service behind a paywall, and it’s created a bit of a stir within the SEO community.

enCOMPASS Agency, an award-winning digital advertising firm, driven by intelligence, passion and trust, received 18 prestigious honors and distinctions in the recent 2019 International Communicator Awards Competition.

As you might imagine, TV advertising is big business. By some estimates, the amount spent on TV advertising each year surpasses the $80 billion mark. Historically, the bulk of this money is spent during upfronts week, which is when TV networks enthusiastically show off their latest round of programming, and advertisers opt in on the programs where they’d like to have a presence. Any ad inventory that’s left over following upfronts is sold, typically for a much lower price, on what’s known as the scatter market.

Nobody likes to receive criticism, nor to be told that their work comes up short. When you’re a business owner, however, this is all part of the job. You may have customers express dissatisfaction to your face, but even more troublingly, you may have them air their grievances in a public forum, such as an online review site.

We’ve said before that email marketing remains the most effective way to make a direct connection with your audience—and indeed it is. Simply put, most of us are attuned to our email inbox around the clock, ready to drop what we’re doing to check the latest messages either from our desktop, our mobile device, or even our watch. With that said, email marketing does take some high-level strategy and some ongoing refinement. Not all email marketing strategies are created equal, and it’s worth contemplating some of the ways your company can boost its own email marketing performance.

If you’re looking for a compelling reason to invest in PPC advertising (Google ads or Bing ads, most likely), you won’t have to look very far. In truth, the benefits of PPC abound. It offers a relatively low threshold for entry, and potentially some prompt results. It provides you with a wealth of meaningful data. It allows you to track what you’re doing and see what works and what doesn’t. It interacts harmoniously with other marketing channels.

As a business owner, you are probably aware of the reviews your company has received on sites like Facebook, Google, and Yelp. You may know from personal experience that receiving a positive review can make you feel good about yourself; and likewise, that seeing a negative one can cause you to feel angry or simply hurt.