As entrepreneurs, we are faced with many challenges running our businesses with marketing being one of the most important to master. The use of digital marketing for today’s business owner is no longer a nice to have item, it is a must. Digital marketing has evolved to become a powerful tool that enables you to deliver your messages at the right time to the right people.
We are excited to help you develop your digital marketing skills and become a more successful business owner. Be on the lookout for a series of in-depth articles on digital marketing coming your way. We’ll kick it off with a high-level overview but promise some deep dives as we go on the journey.
We are grateful that you are one of our valued clients and we know these articles will be helpful to you. If you are not a client, we would love to meet you and share our story. Either way, let us know what you think and if there are any topics, in particular, you would like us to address (we are still working on the zebra and stripes thing). As always, feel free to reach out and let us know how we can help.
Website Design
Your website is your number one digital property. Your website will be found from a simple Google search or even clicking on an ad. What people see on the homepage (or landing page, as applicable) will determine their next move: either they keep exploring or they will leave your site.
Modern web designs include a clean interface with lots of white space, simple and intuitive navigation, and beautiful colors to match your company brand. Likewise, having a responsive or mobile-ready website is also a must. Google is now penalizing websites for not having a mobile-ready website and soon they will do the same for sites without an SSL certificate.
SEO & Site Structure
Proper site structure is essential because it shows Google what parts of your website are most important. Google uses this structure to index your site accordingly. Indexing includes making a hierarchy of your pages so Google knows which pages are more important than others. A well-planned site structure is also vital when creating funnels or paths to help guide where a customer visits on your site. Think of it as constructing a building where you want people to get to the top floor without ending up at the breakroom on the 5th floor. This helps you gauge if a customer is doing what you want them to do as you implement goals and sales strategies on your website
Social Media
All businesses need to be social in order to find clients and to keep their current ones engaged with the business. What does it mean, being social? It means sharing useful and interesting content on your social media accounts, keeping your followers engaged by opening conversations, asking and answering questions, organizing contests and preparing special offers for your followers.
Social media is the best platform for getting to know your clients. You can find out many useful details about their lifestyles, their likes and dislikes, and the needs and problems which you can solve through your products and services.
Content Marketing and Blog Articles
Content is king! Sharing valuable information (like this post) is a powerful way to promote your brand and values. When you share relevant, meaningful content, it supports your position as an authority figure in the industry. Another great benefit with adding articles to your is it can attract readers with strategic keywords and builds valuable backlinks to your website.
Reputation Management
This is a tough subject for most local businesses. Our society has fully turned to the opinions of strangers on platforms such as Yelp and Google Reviews to make purchase decisions. This is true for where to eat dinner all the way to large purchases. This is how social proof works whether we agree or disagree (honestly, most of us do this too). Having customers write reviews or testimonials on a regular basis will have a profound effect on purchasing decisions. Having a single negative review can be detrimental if not addressed properly.
Google Tools
Google is one of your best allies for local businesses if you use all the tools it offers in the right manner. With Google My Business, you can tell Google how to show information about your company including name, address, phone and business hours. It also allows you to tell Google exactly what products or services you offer and which is the most important. Google Webmasters helps you understand how the search engine reads and indexes your website and shows you all the problems it encountered so that you can fix them and get better page rank.
Email Marketing
Email is still one of the most popular means of communication, although direct messaging (text, audio, and video) is gaining more fans. It is important to manage your relationship with customers by sending them messages on a regular basis. If they are reminded of your business, they will be more likely to buy from you when the time comes.
You can also use email marketing to track what items your customers want by seeing how many times they open your email and what they click. Knowing this, it can help you customize their experience by only showing what they want to see
Want to know more about Digital Marketing?
Let’s talk! I hope this sparked some thoughts about your efforts, successes, and challenges with digital marketing. If you feel like it is the wild west, that’s okay. We have found most customers are in a similar spot…hence why we are starting this discussion. Stay tuned…..
