Matthew Berman
Matthew Berman started Emerald Digital , a digital Marketing agency that specializes in services tailored to
deliver targeted traffic, generate qualified leads, and grow business with measurable results, in 2011 after
completing his education at Tulane University.
Berman has worked with brands such as Heineken, Hennessy, Delano, Fireball Whisky, The Law Center,
among hundreds of others. Berman oversees all agency efforts to create click-worthy content,
PPC campaigns, social marketing, and to develop aesthetically pleasing websites with back-end SEO efforts.
Now, in his seventh year of success since founding Ember Networks, Berman has chosen to
strategically partner with lifelong friend Warren H. Cohn to create a comprehensive, full-service
digital marketing agency that caters to consumer needs.
A Q&A Session with Matt Berman, CEO/Founder of Emerald Digital
BD Mag - How and why did you get into digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the perfect blend of creativity and technology, two major passions of mine. I've been playing guitar for 25 years and, as a teenager, fell heavily into digital music production. I loved being able to manifest a vision using digital tools.
When I was 18, I sold several songs to international brands, which introduced me to the agency and marketing world. It was eye-opening. I was able to be creative, constantly experiment with new technologies and programs, and deliver multi-channel campaigns that helped our clients' businesses. It's great to see a concept on a whiteboard turn into a living, breathing thing -- primarily when it works and performs as you had hoped. Analytics, optimization, and data collection then really scratches that perfectionist and scientific itch.
BD Mag - Have you ever faced struggles with marketing, and how did you overcome them?
We are interested in multi-year marketing partnerships with our clients. We want to work with you for years. We want to grab beers. We want to BBQ with the kids. These relationships involve trust and being on the same page.
Over many years, I've had to learn to identify red flags in our clients (or prospective clients) internal communications, expectations, or product/services. We believe in proper and clear communication with our clients, setting achievable marketing expectations based on the clients' budget and resources, and choosing the right client partners to invest in and work with.
If your budget is $100,000 and your goal is to be Amazon in the next 12 months, no amount of magic will get you there. If your product is inferior and more expensive than your competitor, we need to address these issues. A placement in WashPo won't make up for deficiencies. Our job as your marketing and strategic partner is to help you address these issues, but it's a two-way street. Our client partners should be open to listening.
BD Mag - What are some of the common misconceptions about marketing?
Some people still think of marketing as the outbound mass marketing done in the Don Draper days. This type of interruptive marketing is intrusive and often focused on what the brand is selling. It's a 'me' approach. The brand tells the customer to stop what they are doing and 'look at me.' There are cases where this approach still holds water, but marketing has (or should have) evolved to the point where the star of the marketing effort is the customer. The customer has a problem, need, or desire, and our job is to find those people and provide them with value. Our brand/client has the solution to the customer's problem.
BD Mag - What is your best keyword research tool to enable you to rank organically?
SEMRush is our primary driver for keyword research as their keyword research is robust when compared to competitors. However, we recommend supplementing keyword research with other methods to not rely entirely on one data set. We have a search engine scraper (built with python) to deep crawl different search engines for keyword ideas, and we can upload those ideas to SEMRush or Ahrefs for other metrics on those keywords.
BD Mag - Can you share your number 1 way to build backlinks and the number 1 thing to avoid?
The best way to build backlinks is by creating content that drives value and builds relationships. My team has a motto, 'stop the scroll,' meaning we want our content to stop users from scrolling. If our content is compelling (and adheres to best onsite SEO practices), then we can activate our relationships to seed that content throughout the web. We build relationships through prospecting, continually reaching out to webmasters, editors, press, and more.
Time is always of the essence, so it's best to identify backlink opportunities on useful websites (you can check domain authority or URL authority for a general idea) and the relevance of the website's content. We kindly ask for backlinks and highlight why our content is valuable to their readership. Additionally, our relationships and backlink opportunities often define the type of content that we produce. If we identify potential backlink opportunities, we may create content specifically that they would find valuable.
You want to avoid spammy websites. Many paid link building services will place links on any old web page, alongside horrible and non-valuable content. One useful link is worth thousands of spammy links.
BD Mag - Paid advertising: is it worth the money, and what platform is best?
We find a lot of success with paid advertising. Ad platforms have incredibly sophisticated targeting tools, and we want to be part of the action. It's all about giving our clients the best outcome, and paid advertising has a synergistic effect with our organic search efforts.
Organic generally takes time to manifest, while paid gets the ball rolling immediately. Paid also helps us reach users across thousands of channels. These users may not have found us otherwise. A customer may have a problem but did not realize there was a solution to that problem. Paid advertising helps get that message across and brings users into our marketing funnel.
Is paid advertising worth the money -- generally yes, but there's a lot of variables. You need to have the right protocols in place to measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. You may need to tweak your content, audience, or channel to get the best results. We're always iterating, experimenting, and working to improve our client's return on ad spend.
There's no single platform that will work best for every client, every industry, every product, and every service. A single location medical practice is going to see different per platform results than an international consumer brand. Our job as marketers is to provide proactive ideas and test, test, test. It's all about which combination of message, audience, product/service, and platform delivers the best result for our client at this specific moment in time.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/emerald-digital-marketing-agency/
https://twitter.com/EmeraldDigital_
https://www.facebook.com/emeralddigitalagency/
https://www.instagram.com/emerald.digital/?hl=en
