Mark Subel Unveils the Secrets of Successful Digital Marketing

Welcome to our insightful conversation with Mark Subel, the principal and chief strategist at Two Wheels Marketing, a distinguished digital marketing agency based in Columbus, Ohio. Specializing in SEO, PPC, and paid digital advertising, Two Wheels Marketing stands out for its clear, transparent, and goal-oriented approach. In this interview, we’ll explore the unique strategies and philosophies that drive their success in the constantly evolving landscape of digital marketing.

SEO Strategy Customization

SBS – How does Two Wheels Marketing tailor its SEO strategies to suit different types of businesses?

Mark – We first do an analysis of the client, an audit of the website, and review the industry they are in and then develop our SEO strategies based on the SEO needs they have from that analysis and audit. Doing the analysis/audit is the only way to really provide a deep dive into their current status and develop a comprehensive and strategic SEO strategy.

Evaluating PPC Campaigns

SBS – What key metrics do you focus on when assessing the effectiveness of PPC campaigns?

Mark – This can depend on the client’s particular goals. Take e-commerce, for example. Obviously, the main goals are sales and revenue numbers, but we also look at things like return on ad spend and profitability. Other metrics we keep an eye on that help paint the story of how those top-line metrics are doing are things like conversion rates, cost per conversion or sale, CPC rates, and average order values.

On the lead gen side of things, we are monitoring things like conversions (leads typically form submissions, phone calls, chats, or emails), cost per conversion, conversion rates, average CPCs, and conversion rates from the client sales side — which campaigns/keywords drive the most “closed” leads.

When we look at things like cost per acquisition (CPA), we’re also tying that back to CPA for closed leads as much as possible to get better numbers than just CPA on a form submission or phone call. We track and want to know the CPA on actual closed leads. In some of our processes and tracking, we can actually get the value of the leads for the clients so they can see how much revenue they are getting from the leads we are sending. This helps them then to get a more accurate look at their return on investment with us and our campaigns.

We also have had clients that really are looking for more brand exposure and traffic to their site, so in those cases we are running campaigns to drive the most impressions and clicks to the site. So we’ll review those metrics in addition to things like Average CPC, CPM, and CTR on the ads and reach.

Transparency in Reporting

SBS – How does your agency ensure transparency and clarity in reporting to clients?

Mark – We provide our clients with regular (mainly monthly but sometimes weekly) reports that sync in with the platforms we are running campaigns for them on — i.e., Google Ads, Microsoft Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads, etc. These reports are provided to clients via a URL so they can check in on their stats daily since they are updated daily from the platforms in Google Looker Studio. We review these reports and walk clients through them so they thoroughly understand them and can reference them regularly if they would like.

Aligning Marketing with Business Goals

SBS – In what ways do you align digital marketing strategies with a client’s specific business goals and sales model?

Mark – I would say that we ALWAYS align our strategies with the client’s specific goals. Otherwise, they wouldn’t want to work with us anymore. Everything we do is based on their goals and objectives and developing strategies to help meet those goals.

Overcoming Digital Marketing Challenges

SBS – What challenges have you faced in digital marketing, and how have you overcome them?

Mark – So many challenges all the time from a wide variety of sources. It could be certain platforms like Google Ads changing the way they track things or perhaps changing their interface to make it harder to perform as well. It could be reporting or tracking issues on the client side that take us a while to troubleshoot and fix. It could be competition stepping into our client’s lane and us countering with a new strategy. If you work in digital marketing, there are ALWAYS challenges, and so the more you work in digital marketing, the better you get at dealing with and navigating challenges. There’s never a day where you don’t have some sort of challenge, and you just have to figure it out.

Keeping Up with Digital Trends

SBS – How does Two Wheels Marketing stay updated with the constantly evolving digital marketing landscape?

Mark – We read industry websites and blogs a ton to stay updated on the latest. We also are involved and engaged in online Twitter chats and LinkedIn groups from others in the industry, where you can learn a lot more about what is going on and get more specific examples and answers from people in the digital marketing industry who are smarter than you.

Budget Management in Digital Advertising

SBS – What is your process for managing a client’s budget effectively in digital advertising?

Mark – Once we know their budget, we allocate it accordingly based on their goals. This helps us to put the strategy together in terms of how much we allocate to each platform and what times during the month or year. For example, we might increase clients’ Google Ads budget because we are seeing amazing results and decrease their Facebook Ads budget because we aren’t seeing as good of results. That flexibility and ability to make decisions based on data gives us the ability to maximize the client’s budget more effectively and efficiently. We are hawks on monitoring a client’s performance, checking in on campaigns and platforms regularly during the week to keep track of daily performance and look for any anomalies that may be popping up that we need to address.

Measuring ROI

SBS – How do you measure the ROI of digital marketing campaigns for your clients?

Mark – With e-commerce clients we monitor their return on ad spend and margins/profitability by campaign to provide them a feel for their return on investment. Sometimes, it may be by product line, depending on the margins of certain products.

For lead gen clients, we use tracking to the point where the client can actually put in the revenue they generated from those leads into our system, and if they stay updated and current with that, then we can provide them a more accurate look at lead gen ROI.

Optimizing for Lead Generation

SBS – How do you approach lead generation and conversion optimization for businesses?

Mark – We do a LOT of lead gen campaigns, so we approach all of them the same way. They are looking for not only leads, but QUALITY leads that end up converting into customers/clients.

So we take a holistic approach starting with campaign buildout and our strategies we know work there, but then optimizing the landing page experience to work to improve conversion rates once our traffic gets to the client site. All the way to the “after lead” process by even coaching some of our clients on best practices for taking inbound calls, their process for following up with leads, and other strategies that will help them close leads once we deliver them. We, of course, cannot close a lead once we send it to a client, so we really push our clients to improve their processes after we have delivered the leads because if they can’t close them, then our work will not show results to them.

AI in Digital Marketing

SBS – How does Two Wheels Marketing integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into its digital marketing strategies?

Mark – We use a bit of Chat GPT for brainstorming ad copy ideas, landing page copy, keywords and other uses similar to that. It really has helped us to get more creative and spend a bit more time on the conversion optimization side of things.

Value of Digital Marketing

SBS – What is your advice for businesses that are skeptical about the value of digital marketing?

Mark – Most times, businesses are skeptical because they have worked with rogue providers or digital marketing companies that do not provide clear communication and reporting, so they are rightfully skeptical. Our job is to instill trust and provide them with the results they are looking for at the end of the day. We provide case studies and testimonials from our clients to provide them a look at how digital marketing has worked for many companies before and it will continue to work if the strategies and products/services are strong.

Brand Strategy Alignment

SBS – How do you ensure that the digital marketing efforts are aligned with the overall brand strategy of a business?

Mark – This is always a discussion with the client to make sure our campaigns, our ad copy, the keywords or audiences we are targeting, the landing pages we develop and the creative we use all align with their brand and messaging. We make sure all relevant information and ad copy is approved by the client before launching and this ensures that our campaigns and messaging align with the overall brand strategy of the client.