Frequently Asked Questions

Here Are Some of the Most Asked Questions About Working with The Alchemy Consulting Group

Media Sites

What is a media site?

A Media Site is a highly specialized type of website with its own unique URL. Unlike a traditional website, a media site has fresh content uploaded every day. This content focuses on the interests and questions of your ideal prospect. Articles on your media site are summarized and posted across your social media platforms, making you the influential leader in your marketplace. This “You—Everywhere—Now” strategy ensures maximum visibility and influence for your business.

How will a media site impact my business?

The bottom line is that a media site takes you out of the role of advertiser, competing with every other business or professional practice in your market. Instead, you become the influencer, educating your prospects and attracting them to your leadership.

We only offer one media site in each market area and business niche. If your business has a media site, then you will be the dominant player.

What business types will benefit most from a media site?

Here are some of the industries experiencing high ROI with a media site:

Health and Wellness: Local medical and dental practices
Professional Services: Legal and Accounting
Construction and building trades: roofing, remodeling, plumbing
Real estate professionals
Financial services
Technology companies

Do you help me after the site is launched?

Yes, our team manages the curation and creation of content for your media site and all transfer of content to social media. Each month you receive a comprehensive report detailing the impact of your site. This is a 100% turnkey product for you, we handle all the details.

AI Chat Bots

What can an AI chatbot do for my business?

An AI chatbot can improve your business by providing instant, 24/7 customer support and freeing up human agents for complex tasks. It can automate lead generation and qualification, personalizing the buyer experience and boosting sales. AI chatbots also handle repetitive tasks like order tracking, providing product information, schedule meetings on your calendar, manage subscriptions with ease, and can be scaled to manage high volumes of customer inquiries simultaneously. AI technology has advanced so rapidly that in just the past six months we have the ability to inject “personality” into a chatbot. In fact, we have found that it is important to let people know that they are talking with a bot. It has become that difficult to discern the difference!

How easy is it to integrate the chatbot with my current website or social media accounts?

We handle every aspect of design, programming, and installation of your chatbot on either your website or a social media platform. We’ll help you decide what you want your chatbot to do, and then develop the “flows” to accomplish this. Each bot is customized to the specific needs of our client.

What are the benefits of using an AI chatbot compared to live agents?

First and most obvious, your chatbot is a 24/7 representative of your company. It is programmed with the data it needs to properly interact with your prospects and customers. A bot doesn’t need sleep, meal breaks, or a vacation.

How secure and private is the chatbot?

Our chatbots use are encrypted and the platform we build on is considered secure. That being said, just like your website a chatbot is still vulnerable to data breaches and malware injection. When we work with you to design your chatbot, we help you avoid sharing sensitive personal or business information. We also build in controls for what, if any, third party websites your bot can connect with.

Do I need a chatbot for my business?

It has been predicted that by the end of 2026 chatbots will be interacting with visitors on 80% of websites. While that may seem surprising, consider how AI information search has progressed in the last 18 months. Consider that 2024 was the first year that Google lost market share in online search. More people are now using tools like ChatGPT and Claude for search.

Early adaptors of the technology will have a decided advantage over their competitors.

Website Building

How long does it take to build a new website?

As a rule, our developer team typically builds a new website in two to four weeks.

What platform/CMS do you use for website development?

We build new websites on the WordPress platform using several themes. This gives the greatest degree of design flexibility to accommodate the vision you have for your website. We also use a page builder program called Funnel Pages when a client needs a sales page or unique landing page for a specific campaign.

Will my website be mobile-friendly and optimized for SEO?

Yes, all our sites a mobile friendly, incorporate the most current on-site SEO strategies, including schema mark up, an SSL certificate, and compliance with federally mandated ADA requirements.

What is the process for designing and launching my website?

Your website is your 24/7/365 salesperson. As such it needs to quickly and effectively answer the question, “why should I choose your business over your competitors?” Our website development process incorporates three steps. First, we thoroughly analyze your current site, or if you don’t already have a site, we use a comprehensive checklist to help you think through exactly what you want your site to accomplish.

Second, our content writers and developers collaborate to translate your vision into a site that is both aesthetically pleasing and fully compliant with current
search engine best practices. Finally, we review the site with you, make any updates you ask for, and then launch it onto the internet. We offer a complete hosting package, or we can load the site onto your host platform.

Do you offer website maintenance and updates after launch?

Yes, if you host on our premium, high speed servers we offer periodic content and image updates. Depending on the volume of changes requested there may be a charge for this service. Maintenance and updates on a 3rd party server can also be done, but there is a charge for this service.

Paid Advertising (PPC)

Which paid advertising platforms do you recommend for my business?

Google and Facebook are the two dominant paid advertising platforms in today’s marketplace. They give the best potential to target the specific prospects that will give you the highest return on your paid ad investment.

How much budget should I allocate for paid advertising?

This is dependent on your goals and capacity to handle new prospects. We will help you define clear goals and the key performance indicators that are meaningful to your business. We also perform a detailed keyword analysis so you can see the keywords that are in higher demand and cost more to get a click or impression.

Once a budget figure is established, then we develop a mixture of high and low competitive keywords that will give you results within that budget. These keywords are tested for several weeks and then evaluated based on actual market response.

What is included in your PPC management services?

Paid advertising is one of Alchemy’s core products. We have managed more than $10M in client ad spend. As mentioned above, we always start with keyword analysis. Then a study of what your competitors are doing. Ads are developed with a unique headline that addresses the subject the searcher is looking for. We always include site links and location extensions. In most cases we also create a unique landing page for the ad.

How do you track and report ad performance?

We use Google Analytics 4 as a primary reporting tool. For banner and retargeting campaigns, we have a proprietary demand side platform that tracks impressions and clicks on those campaigns.

How quickly can I expect results from paid ads?

Paid campaigns on Google and Facebook as well as all banner campaigns typically take three to five business days to create. Once they are uploaded there is an approval process that can take another two or three days. After approval you could see results the first day.

Social Media Marketing

Which social media platforms should my business be active on?

Too often a business owner feels like they need to be on every social media platform to stay competitive. This is not true! You want to be represented on the platforms where your prospects visit. Think about your typical customer demographics. Then we can help you identify the best social media sites to reach them.

How do you measure the success of social media campaigns?

This depends on what is important to you. Engagement rate (likes, shares, comments) and reach (unique viewers) are two areas that are commonly used. If you are posting ad content, then clicks to your landing pages is a valuable metric. While it is a little more difficult to measure, brand sentiment and mentions are sometimes tracked.

Can you help with reputation and community management?

Yes, reputation tracking and management is one of our core products.

How often will you post and engage on my behalf?

We can design campaigns with one or multiple posts each day. Also, just business days each week, or six or seven days at your option.

Reputation Marketing

What is reputation marketing and how does it help my business?

Reputation marketing is a proactive, ongoing process of shaping and leveraging a business's public perception to attract new customers and foster growth, focusing on building trust and credibility by actively collecting, promoting, and amplifying positive customer reviews, social proof, and media mentions.

How do you monitor online reviews and mentions?

Our proprietary platform monitors the 20 online review sites that are most frequently used by someone writing a review. When a post for your company appears on one of these you receive an email so you can respond to the review. (Our team also receives a notice so we can help you with responses if desired.)

Can you help improve my business’s online ratings?

Yes, our Reputation Marketing tools can reach out to your customers and invite them to leave a review. While we encourage that reviews be added to your Google Business Profile, if you are not able to have a GBP then we’ll offer the most relevant review site for your business. The more positive reviews you have the more the search engines will give your website preference in search results.

What should I do if I receive a negative review?

All reviews, positive and negative, should be responded to. When you respond to a less than positive review, remember you are also ‘responding’ to everyone who visits the review site in the future. That means even if the review is unfair or an exaggeration of the actual situation, you must be respectful and attempt to resolve the complaint. Getting into a “flame war” with the person hurts you far more than it will affect them!

How do you encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews?

Depending on the type of business you have, the best is always to invite a positive review at the time of sale or rendering service. Statistics indicate that 24 hours after a transaction you only have a 15% chance a person will leave a review.

Our platform can also send emails to past clients as a way to generate additional reviews.