12 Essential Small Business Marketing Strategies Posted on August 4, 2022July 26, 2023 by Jonathan Herrick Let’s face it: there are a million and one small business marketing strategies out there, but if you’re like most business owners, you don’t have the endless budget and time to find the hidden treasures that lead to results. Also, determining which marketing strategy is most effective can take months of testing and evaluation. After growing businesses, testing plenty of marketing campaigns, and helping our small business customers grow, I have come up with the 12 marketing techniques for small businesses that you can use to help your small business flourish. 1. Audience Research Marketing is about sending a relevant message to your target audience to persuade them to buy your product or service. If you don’t know your target audience, you risk focusing your attention too broadly or on the wrong people, which is a catastrophic error in the age of personalization. Successful marketing begins with target audience research — a data-backed process that culminates into elaborate audience persona(s). An audience persona is a profile or visualization of the person you’re trying to reach. It outlines traits such as geographical location, career, gender, motivation, pain points, budget, and more. Audience persona is your “north star” for creating and launching successful marketing strategies, from content marketing to word-of-mouth. It lays the foundation of your marketing strategy and informs the best channels to use for effective marketing. 2. Word of Mouth Advertising Once you’ve laid the foundation, you can get your marketing strategies rolling. One of the most cost-effective small business marketing strategies is to tap into the voice of your customer by getting them to talk about their experience with your business. That means building a great product or service first and then delivering it in an amazing manner to your customers. Encourage customers to talk about your small business on social and professional networks and to share their opinions. This will boost your chances of getting new customers in the door. Typically, people trust their friends and value their opinions. That is why it’s critical to tap into your customers who are willing and able to share your excellent products/services with their tribes. 3. Content Marketing If marketing is the engine that propels your business, content marketing is the gas in the tank. It’s a fantastic way to bring you leads through search engines, but it also works well to educate your customers on best practices. Content marketing is about creating interesting material that your audience is likely to engage with, be it text, video, or audio. It entails the creation of content for publishing on your homepage, blogs, product pages, landing pages, advertising channels, and social media. Content marketing allows you to show that you’re a top expert in your field. This means creating fresh content based on your audience’s biggest challenges and curating content that is relevant to your visitors/readers. Once you have created highly-relevant content, push it out where your audience is engaging, such as Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Your content distribution methods are the only way to harness the full potential of your content marketing strategy. 4. Search Engine Optimization Great content without search engine optimization (SEO) has a low chance of ranking on top of search engine results pages (SERPs). When you create highly-relevant content, you have to optimize it for search engines to increase its visibility when people search for keywords and terms relevant to your products or services. As a small business, it’s tough to compete with the rankings of larger companies when it comes to highly competitive keywords. Start by focusing on keywords with low competition but high commercial intent and search volume. . Once your blog or brand builds authority, throw your hat in the ring for the high-competition keywords. That said, SEO is a multidisciplinary strategy that transcends keyword targeting. Other important SEO aspects you should prioritize include: on-page SEO, local SEO, and site speed optimization. 5. Company Website Every component of your marketing plan is going to come back to your website. Don’t cut corners. It’s where your visitors find out who you are, what you believe in, and what makes you unique. Ultimately, your website exists to convert visitors into leads, and the quality of your leads will improve if you have a great website that attracts the most relevant buyers. Once you get visitors to your website, you’ve got to build a conversion strategy. You’ll want to make sure that your company website has plenty of opportunities for site visitors to provide you with their information. Add sign-up forms to high-traffic pages and landing pages to direct traffic. These pieces will enable you to collect site visitors’ email addresses and add them to your lead nurture campaigns. 6. Blogging Just as your website is the guiding light for lead gen for your small business, the same holds true with your blog. And if you’re not already blogging, you should be. Why? Brands with an active blog generate 67% more leads than those without one. To generate leads, add a call-to-action on each of your blog posts asking readers to take a desired action, be it buying a product, subscribing to your newsletter, signing up for an upcoming webinar, or downloading a whitepaper. But your blog is more than just a lead gen tool. It’s a canvas to share your thoughts and perspectives, to truly position yourself as a thought leader while connecting you to your audience. It’s also part of your SEO strategy. Create pillar posts on your blog and set up an internal linking strategy so your readers can easily find and engage with similar content. 7. Email Marketing Email has come from a basic communication channel to a powerful platform to achieve your marketing goals. Its power is undeniable – for every dollar you invest in email marketing, you see an impressive $36 return on investment. Email is also a great way to build your contact list for your small business. A good strategy to build your list is to simply create valuable and relevant content. Offer that content to site visitors in exchange for their contact information. As long as you promise to share high-quality, valuable insights, your site visitors will think the exchange is worthwhile. As a small business owner, you probably wear many hats and have to juggle multiple tasks to keep the business moving smoothly. A marketing automation tool will help you facilitate effective email nurture so you can do more in less time, saving you hours that you can devote to other important tasks. An easy-to-use tool, like BenchmarkONE, lets you automatically capture visitors from your website and send the right message to them at just the right time. Doing so improves the effectiveness of your marketing strategy while helping you make the most of your marketing budget. 8. Social Media If your small business doesn’t have profiles on top social media sites, build them today. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Each one offers a different format, but all allow you to connect and talk to your customers and would-be clients on a channel that they’re already engaged on. Using social media marketing is a must to ensure that your brand and your customer base grow. Most importantly, keep your fingers on the pulse of the tilting social media landscape, which includes joining new platforms. If your brand is yet to lay a mark on TikTok, you need to move swiftly to ride the wave of the highly-creative and playful channel. With over one billion monthly active users globally, TikTok presents an opportunity to build brand awareness, promote your products, and engage potential customers, particularly the younger generation. 9. Event or Trade Shows Trade shows and special promotional events are fantastic strategies for launching a new product or service, driving brand awareness, and getting in front of your target audience. If you are attending a trade show, swap out a sponsorship package for an opportunity to speak on a topic relevant to your audience. It will keep your cost down and elevate your status as a thought leader in your niche. Bonus tip: Don’t forget to capture the full ROI of your event! Be sure to connect with prospects on social media and capture email addresses so you can run pre, during, and post-show campaigns. 10. Online Advertising One of the fastest ways to get in front of potential buyers that are actively searching online is online advertising. With PPC advertising, such as Google Adwords and Bing, you can set your budget for the keywords that your audience is searching for and measure the cost per conversion. Remember to not just set it and forget it. For example, adding negative keywords will eliminate unwanted clicks, keeping your spending down. You should also test new keywords to ensure you are optimizing your spending wisely. Also, if you are looking to increase brand exposure, remarketing is a great way to do it. Remarketing allows you to hyper-target visitors that have been to your site that you would like to bring back, with the goal of converting into a customer or sign-up. 11. Free Promotional Tools Budget constraints could limit the options you can use as far as marketing goes. One way to cut overhead is to use free marketing and promotional tools. Evaluate your strategies and determine which activities require premium tools and which ones you could do with free software. For example, if you’re only just getting started with content marketing, you can use free keyword research tools to guide you through the initial phase. Once you scale and your strategy gather momentum, you can turn to paid keyword research and content optimization tools. Sign up for BenchmarkONE’s free plan today! 12. Networking and Partnership Building Finally, always work on networking to promote your business. This is perhaps one of the most valuable ways to grow your expertise and showcase your skills to would-be partners and customers. Networking is a cost-effective way to drive sales leads and opportunities for strategic partnerships. All of these approaches are effective but don’t forget that In the spirit of cutting overheads, it’s okay to only focus on strategies that you know will bring the best results. Start small with your strategies and experiment with different aspects to determine what works. Channel your resources, effort, and time toward sustainable methods of generating revenue. Good luck incorporating these 12 essential small business marketing strategies into the way you promote and operate your business. Doing so will help you spend less time looking for solutions, so you have more time to devote to what you do best.
Before You Hire an SEO Company, Try These 16 DIY Tips Posted on January 22, 2016November 18, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick So you want to drive more online visitors to your website or increase your rankings in Google’s search engine, but don’t know where to start. Should you hire an SEO company or go at it yourself? When it comes to search engine optimization it can be an overwhelming process, but it doesn’t have to be. An SEO expert or agency can help ensure that when consumers do a web search, your website is one of the first resources to appear in the search results. But prior to paying someone else to help facilitate improved web results, you may want to enlist a few DIY tips yourself to give your SEO a boost. Here are 16 do-it-yourself SEO tips that small business owners should try before hiring an SEO firm: 1. Start with Personas Driving more visitors to your site starts with knowing the persona of your ideal buyer and understanding what makes them tick. Why? Because websites are ultimately built for humans and not robots. So dig into their challenges, understand why they buy, and create a customer persona. This will help you to best align your SEO and website strategy so you can get found online by your ideal customer. 2. Plan Your Keyword Research Before you push up a bunch of content and copy on your website, make sure you plan out your keyword strategy. Keywords are the words or phrases that your target audience searches for when looking for products and services or when trying to solve a problem in search engines like Google and Bing. Search engines, like Google, will match up the most relevant content to the search of their user and provide the most accurate results from websites, blogs, and images. There are a number of tools that give you valuable insights into which keywords you should focus on such as Wordstream, Ubersuggest and Google’s Keyword Planner. If you need a little assistance with your keyword research, here is a great article from Jason Demers at AudienceBloom that breaks it down step by step. 3. Find Gold in the Long Tail For a lot of industries, ranking for the most trafficked keywords is highly effective. At the same time, trying to rank for those highly competitive terms can be a long and costly endeavor. Instead of focusing solely on the most popular keywords, spend some time building out a targeted strategy around relevant long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are longer and more specific phrases that search engine users search on when they are closer to making a purchase or finding what they are looking for. Longtail keywords are a key to a healthy, online growth strategy.In fact they make up the majority of all search engine traffic: Image source: http://www.ohow.co/ So if you own an accounting software company, instead of trying to rank for an uber-competitive keyword such as “accounting software” with about 52 million searches and national brands vying for the top spot, try a targeted and more relevant approach such as “accounting software for real estate agents.” 4. Study your Competitors Once you have your keyword strategy in place, identify the top competitors for each keyword and what they are doing right to get ranked in the good graces of the search engine gods. SpyFu is a simple cost effective tool to gain better insights into your competitors’ paid and organic search initiatives. Keep in mind that while competitive info can help shape your SEO initiatives, be careful not to rely solely on your competitors. After all, your best website conversions will come from those visitors that are best aligned with YOUR ideal buyer. 5. Blog Consistently Pages on your website don’t change every day. So with Google always looking for new content, blogging is a great way to push up fresh, relevant content for the search engines to index. Remember as you blog, write your content for your ideal buyer and the challenges they face every day. Don’t just load your blog posts with keywords. Again, you’re ultimately trying to connect with people – not search engine robots. Avoid keyword stuffing, but do select a primary keyword for your post paired with research from Google Trends to give yourself the best chance of your content being discovered. Make sure the keyword appears in the title, body copy, URL, and meta description for the best optimization of your post. Another blogging tip is to use guest blogging in your strategy. Identify influencers and leaders in your space who write quality content and partner with them to create content that links back to your site. This is a great way to boost traffic, shares, and brand equity online. 6. Eliminate Duplicate Content One of the easiest ways to drop in the rankings and get punished by search engines is to copy content and use it on your site. When Google is presented with the same piece of content in multiple places, it will show only one page and crowd the others out of the search rankings. The goal of Google and search engines is to push original and relevant content to the top when users search on the terms they are looking for and suppress duplicate content and nonvaluable pages. So if you want to add content from another site, a simple best practice is to link to it and reference the original source or utilize 301 redirects from any duplicate pages to the original pages. 7. Distribute and Share As your content engine is humming look for ways to push out your white papers, guides, blog posts, and resources out through multiple distribution channels. Content distribution platform Outbrain breaks it down in the following ways: Earned Content Distribution: This is when third parties share or publish your content through social media, guest posts, media coverage or product reviews. Owned Content Distribution: This includes publishing content to web properties that belong to you, like your blog, email newsletter, or social media profiles. Paid Content Distribution: As the name implies, this is through paid channels, often using a pay-per-click advertising model. 8. Use Internal Links With today’s heightened focus on content, internal linking is a great strategy to boost SEO. An internal link connects one page of a website to a different page on the same website. By using internal links in your site pages and in blog posts it improves readability for your visitors, rankings for keywords, and Google’s ability to crawl your site. When you link internally try to go deep. In other words, don’t just link back to your home page but to pages that are rich in content and relevant to the topic at hand. 9. Grow your Inbound Links In addition to your internal linking strategy, external link building remains one of the cornerstones of SEO and the best way to improve your ranking in search land. The goal of inbound linking is to get outside links from sites, directories, and forums that have solid domain authority and link them back to your site. For example, if your business gets mentioned in Huffington post, which has a higher page rank than your website, it will boost your page rank, and Google and other search engines will reward you by increasing your position in search results. 10. Use SEO Friendly URLs Making sure your URLs are clean and optimized is an important DIY tip if you want to rank highly on SERPs (search engine results pages). URLs are simply the address of a unique page on your website that directs online users to your site. When building URLs for your website, it’s important to make sure they are friendly, easy to read for online visitors, and include relevant words (keywords) that correlate to the copy on the page of the website. Let’s say someone is looking for red men’s socks so they search Google. By creating a descriptive, friendly URL you can increase the chances you will show up in the top search results in Google and improve your conversion chances with an easy-to-digest, relevant URL: Notice that Nordstrom is in the #1 spot and their URL is: shop.nordstrom.com/c/mem-socks/red And… Here is the URL for Saks Fifth Avenue’s page, found on page 10 of the search results: http://www.saksfifthavenue.com/Men/Apparel/Underwear-and-Socks/Socks/shop/_/N-52k84v/Ne-6lvnb5 There are two main takeaways from this example. First, the descriptive and concise URL structure that Nordstrom has created has helped it to outrank the Saks Fifth Avenue ad. Second, as a user when I click through to the two pages from the search term “men’s red socks,” the Nordstrom page shows me red socks while the Saks Fifth Avenue page just gives me men’s socks. Actually, there are no red socks on the page. Remember, Google is rewarding relevancy more and more. So, matching URLs and content together both improves your SEO and gives your conversion rates a boost. Bonus Tips: Try to keep URLs short making them easy to type and read. Also, eliminate unnecessary words such as and, the, and symbols such as @. If you need to separate words in your URL use hyphens instead of underscores as Google has a hard time recognizing them and won’t index your page. Here are 10 Helpful tips from MySiteAuditor to make sure you keep your URLs tidy and friendly: 11. Feed the Need for Speed Believe it or not, how fast your site and your pages load is critical to how Google ranks your site for SEO. Not only does it impact your search rankings, but it affects the experience your users have when they engage with your website. In a world of online options, visitors won’t stick around for pages, images, and videos to load. In fact, pages with longer load times tend to have higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates. Here is a great post from Moz to help you optimize your page speed. 12. Optimize for Mobile More and more people are using their mobile devices to search online which means it can be a major source of traffic and conversions for your business. In fact, studies show that 70% of mobile searches lead to an online action within just one hour. Recently Google launched their mobile-friendly update designed to give a nod to pages that are mobile optimized. This is a quest by the mother of all search engines to provide the best possible experience for its users when looking for products and services. If you want to find out if your pages are mobile-friendly you can simply utilize Google’s tool that checks your URL for mobile-friendliness. 13. Use Landing Pages A landing page is a stand-alone page on your website where visitors land from sources such as search engines, PPC, social, and email marketing. It is a great tool to drive focused traffic to your site and optimize conversions from search. Most landing pages typically use a form to capture and convert visitors. When creating landing pages in WordPress or one of the landing page tools such as Instapage, don’t forget to optimize for SEO with your keywords and use relevant content with a specific call to action (CTA). 14. Don’t Forget the User Most websites are still built for the way Google used to rank. They’re often overloaded with keyword jargon and not optimized for humans. But current-day search engines have put algorithms in place to measure a website’s user experience and reward sites that put UX (User Experience) into practice. Elements like clean site navigation and sitemaps help users to discover content more easily and help your website to be indexed effectively, making sure search engine bots can easily crawl your site. It’s the quality of traffic and not always the quantity of traffic that is going to grow your customer base. When you build your website around the user and focus on adding value for the user, visitors will stay on your site longer, digest more content, subscribe to your lists, and connect with you to learn more. Bounce rates will decline and conversions will climb. 15. Keep up with SEO Trends Search engine optimization is an ever-changing landscape. Staying at the top of search rankings consistently takes keeping up to date with trends, news, and new concepts. Sign up for SEO blog newsletters and check out sites such as Moz, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, and industry-leading SEO sites. Other helpful resources are Moz’s Whiteboard Friday and the Google Webmasters YouTube channel. 16. Use Analytics As you make changes to improve SEO, you need insight into what’s working and what isn’t. Google Analytics is a free tool to help you to monitor your traffic, see which sources most of your traffic is coming from, learn which landing pages are converting the most traffic into prospects for your business, and measure the overall conversion rate of your website. In addition to website analytics, you want to make sure that the traffic you’re driving eventually converts into new customers for your business. Tracking the lead source of each prospect in your CRM can tell you which sources your customers are coming from, and measure how many folks become customers by finding your website online. 16.5 Reach out to An SEO Agency The DIY tips provided here are designed to give you a solid foundation to help you build an effective SEO strategy and get found online. However, depending on the competitiveness of your industry and the resources of your business you may want to reach out to an SEO firm or consultant to help you along the path. When looking for the right SEO firm ask lots of questions, understand their linking strategy, and what analytics they will provide you with, and don’t forget to speak in depth to relevant references. Got your SEO on the right track? Now it’s time to ensure your marketing and sales efforts are headed in the right direction, too. Check out BenchmarkONE’s marketing automation and CRM tool for free and see what it can do for your bottom line.
Simple Tips to Make the Most of Inbound Marketing Posted on January 19, 2016May 27, 2016 by Nicci Troiani In the fast-paced and competitive small business environment, every second counts. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs spend way too much time worrying about ineffective marketing schemes instead of focusing on day-to-day business concerns. With an effective inbound marketing strategy, you can let prospective clients and customers come to you, instead of spending all of your time attempting to attract the attention of uninterested parties. If implemented incorrectly, inbound marketing can be every bit as inefficient as other marketing approaches; however, with a carefully-crafted strategy, it is possible to expedite the process and significantly grow your customer base — all with minimal effort. The following simple inbound marketing tips will make business generation easier than you ever imagined. Optimize Your Site Inbound marketing is all about search engine optimization, which is used to improve a site’s ranking on Google and other prominent search engines. The higher your site lands on Google’s front page, the more visitors it will attract. Carefully-researched keywords should be used in your site’s URL, in any content featured on the page, and in image names. Avoid the temptation to stuff your page with keywords; this could actually harm your search engine ranking. Instead, create relevant content that solves a problem for your ideal customer. Help Prospects Convert Your website is more than just an attractive brochure – it’s a handshake with new visitors that helps you to begin the sales conversation. As SEO drives traffic to your site, you should be able to capture qualified prospects with forms. Helpful resources can connect you with top-of-the-funnel leads, while a sales form can capture prospects who are interested now. Small businesses don’t need a super fancy website. Instead, focus on building a clean website that is simple to navigate and has a main objective of connecting with your ideal customer. Harness the Power of Social Media Inbound marketing efforts should not end with your company’s website. In today’s connected world, businesses can benefit from a presence on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Depending on where your ideal customer hangs out online,, your business could also benefit from maintaining an active Instagram or Pinterest account; however, the pursuit of a social media presence need not hog all of your time and resources. A strong presence on a select group of networks will allow you to better connect with existing clients and customers while also attracting the attention of new consumers. Publish Testimonials and Reviews If you’ve managed to build up a small, but very enthusiastic customer base, consider asking these satisfied individuals for feedback. They will be all too happy to have their input featured on your website or social media pages. A few favorable testimonials can go a long way toward establishing confidence among those unfamiliar with your brand. Nurture New Leads As you connect with visitors coming to your website through SEO, social media and other channels, you can keep the conversation going through email nurturing. Not everyone is ready to enter thesales process today, but they will be down the road. With email campaigns, you can automatically stay in touch with prospects to become a trusted resource, and eventually their first choice when they are ready to buy. Track Metrics Inbound marketing often involves some element of trial and error, as it is impossible to know exactly what works until you test it. Once these initial steps have been achieved, it is important to keep an eye on website analytics, which will tell you how visitors find your website, how long they stay there, and whether their browsing sessions result in conversions. You can also track lead source in your CRM to report on which channels are actually converting into customers. The best inbound marketing strategy is simple and straightforward. A good website and strong social media presence will help you to attract new leads. Email nurturing continues the conversation, turning more of your leads into customers, and tracking metrics ensures you’re focusing on the right inbound strategies for your business. When customers come to you through inbound marketing, you can avoid time-consuming marketing initiatives and instead focus on the activities that matter most to you.
Search Engine Marketing: SEM Best Practices (And Why You Need Them) Posted on January 13, 2016August 25, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Search engine marketing, or SEM might sound intimidating, but really it just means promoting your business online. SEM best practices include keyword research and analysis, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), paid advertising, and organic referrals from search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Using Search Engine Marketing to Find More Customers Actually, with search engine marketing, you don’t find more customers – they find you! Successful search engine marketing means getting in front of potential customers who are doing research online, searching for solutions to problems you can help them with. Keyword Research & Analysis When you have question – whether it’s where to eat or what software is the best for your business – most likely you’ll type it into a search engine to learn more. Your customers are no different, and that’s why a solid SEM strategy starts with identifying the right keywords. Most advertisers use tools like the Google Keyword Planner to find those keywords and phrases that their potential customers are searching for. When thinking about your keyword strategy, think outside the box for terms that could attract customers early in the sales process in addition to when they’re ready to buy. These terms could be directly related to your business, or they could be an area where your customer’s problem and your expertise intersect. For instance, if you’re a crossfit gym, your keyword strategy might include phrases like “crossfit gym” as well as “workout of the day” or even “eating healthy around the holidays.” Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of getting your website to appear organically in the top of the search results for the keywords and phrases you’re targeting. Once you’ve identified the keywords your customers are searching for, the next step is the build out relevant content. Valuable, in-depth content that relates to your keyword strategy will help your business rise to the top of the search results and get found online. While appearing organically in the search engine results is technically “free,” it does require time and resources to develop content. At the same time, organic traffic to your website is extremely valuable to your business. Think about how Pay Per Click Pay-per-click (PPC), or PPC advertising is one of the most common forms of paid Search Engine Marketing. With PPC advertising, you use your keyword strategy to bid on ad placement in the sponsored ad section of the search results. The single most popular PPC advertising system in the world is Google AdWords. AdWords turn up right in the sponsored link section of Google search results – your bid for a particular keyword determines when it shows up and for how long each day. Like everything else Google does, metrics are important. In fact, your ad’s placement is based on your keyword bid amount and a formula that multiplies your highest CPC bid by your Quality Score, which is based on click-through-rate, relevance, and the quality of your landing page. Geo Targeting If you have a local business, another way to advertise online is by geo targeting. This means using location to help local searchers find you. For instance, if your business is in downtown Sacramento, Calif., you might mention that fact, or perhaps say that your location is across the way from the Golden Bridge in downtown Sacramento. You can also use geo location in paid advertising to serve up ads only to folks in your region. Creating Ad Content Paying for ad placement is worthless if you don’t have ad copy that compels folks to click on your ad. To make sure your ad differentiates itself from others in the same business as you are, do: Note the pain-point your customers are facing. Highlight the benefits of your products or services. Make sure that the copy of your ad is relevant to the keyword that the ad corresponds to. Have the ad point to a relevant landing page on your website. If search engine marketing sounds overwhelming, you’re not alone! There are a ton of moving parts, and some you may feel comfortable managing in-house, and others you may want to outsource. Many small and medium-sized businesses hire experienced digital marketing firms to do the keyword research, write the ads, and do the metrics within SEM best practices. This leaves time for owners to do what they do best – run their business.
What is Inbound Marketing? More Importantly, Is It Better? Posted on January 12, 2016October 21, 2022 by Katie Culp What if instead of a marketing campaign that you hope finds new prospects and customers or clients, your online marketing campaign is designed to have them find you? Inbound marketing is just that, marketing focused on being discovered by customers! Marketing used by most startups and small or medium-sized business is the more traditional, outbound marketing. However, expert internet marketers understand the limitations of outbound marketing, as reflected by these stats from Voltier Digital: 86% of people skip through television commercials 44% of direct mail is never opened 200 million Americans have registered their phone numbers on the FTC’s “Do Not Call List” The outbound marketing methods used to work when marketers controlled the conversation, market, message, and channels. Now, there are infinite channels through which we get our information. Though outbound marketing still is in use and still has its place, it is more expensive than an inbound marketing program and less effective. Why Inbound Marketing Works Most people hate sales calls, do not open emails from people or businesses they do not know, block phone calls from anonymous callers or blacklisted marketers, do not read printed newspapers, and record TV shows to avoid commercials. In other words, consumers really don’t appreciate aggressive advertising – and now have the technology to avoid it. It’s the consumer who’s in the driver’s seat when it comes to conversation. Inbound marketing works well as it is non-intrusive. Potential new customers and existing customers crave quality content and they choose the channels where they find what speaks to them. If you can attract your prospective customers to your website by having a strong content, SEO, and social media strategy, you have a successful inbound marketing campaign. Content Effective inbound marketing campaigns are centered around content creation that offers valuable information. The goal of content should be enticing your prospect to give their information so you can then nurture them into a customer. Either written by you or on your behalf by a professional writer, well-crafted content is the driving force behind your inbound marketing strategy. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO techniques make it easier for would-be customers to find your content on the web. SEO is key to your site’s success by building inbound links from other sites and social media. You want to build a spiderweb of links around the internet that all go back to your website. A side benefit is that as your inbound campaign takes root and you develop inbound links, your Google ranking will go up! Social Media Having a strong presence on social media sites such as Facebook, Google+, Yelp and other social media sites helps you in getting your content distributed to new potential clients. Social media also encourages shares, feels more ‘real’ and fosters discussions about your content – a great way to draw more qualified customers to your website. DIY or Professional Help? Powerful inbound marketing does require investing time and resources into content creation and distribution. But the pay-off is huge. Instead of sinking money into futile advertising or an army of sales people, with the right inbound marketing strategy, the customers come to you! So yes, inbound marketing is better!
Struggling with Content Marketing Strategy? Nail it with these 5 Tips. Posted on November 5, 2015November 11, 2022 by Jessica Lunk You want to be seen. So, do something. Something big. If you want to catch people’s eye in your content marketing endeavors, you have to do three things: Be bold, be relevant, and be impressive. If you want to make an impact and get your business noticed you have to go the extra mile. To reach and engage your audience use these 5 tips to nail your content strategy: 1. Know Who You Are Knowing who you are takes a deep understanding of the product or services you offer, why you offer them, and a bit of the roadmap that lies ahead of you. Once you understand your business, you have to create a brand around it – and this is the tough part. You know who you are, but does your audience? Branding is how you communicate; it’s your face to the world and while it may change over the years, it should remain a version of itself. Think of Q-Tips, Kleenex, Xerox. These companies are so inextricably linked to their product that most time people don’t know whether you are talking about the company of the item. That’s what you want for your business. 2. Know Your Audience Knowing who you are also means knowing your audience. Successful businesses don’t try to be everything to everyone. Instead, they are super intentional about putting their stake in the ground and defining their audience. Herb Kelleher, co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, took this exact approach. He decided that his audience wasn’t everyone. It wasn’t even the business-class flyer. Instead, he set his sights on the family flyer. He appealed to them by offer low fares, painting his planes like whales, and implementing a hiring strategy that focused on hiring attitude before skills. And this targeted approach paid off. Today, Southwest Airlines is the nation’s largest carrier in terms of originating domestic passengers boarded. When your demographic is defined, you can get to know your audience intimately. What are they interested in? How are they finding information? What are their pain points? Knowing your audience allows you to tailor your message, taking a personal approach to your marketing to stay super relevant to your audience, and create raving fans of your business. 3. Be Where They Are After you’ve defined your niche, go find them. Does your ideal buyer hang out in specific geo locations? Do they participate in certain communities online? Are they urban or suburbanites? Are they looking for a specific resource that you can provide for free? Take a multi-level approach to meeting your ideal buyers where they are by: Driving top-of-mind awareness with ads. Delivering value through helpful resources. Nurturing with personal email marketing. Especially for smaller businesses that have to do more with less, being targeted with your audience means that you can allocate resources efficiently and effectively. 4. Use Technology Marketing technology used to be reserved for big businesses with big budgets and lots of technical know-how. But today, there are a ton of free or budget-friendly resources that are easy for small businesses to implement and use. Try these examples on for size: Create a blog on your company site. Share your expertise, show off your company culture and feature guest posts from others in your niche. Blogging displays your authority, builds up a reserve of content you can share, and helps your ideal buyer find your business online through search. Leverage Youtube to connect with your audience. Produce your own video, or better yet, leverage your customers’ video testimonials to share with your audience. In fact, Offerpop revealed in a recent report that brand engagement rises by 28% when consumers are exposed to professional content along with user-generated product videos. Create buzz on social media sites. With social media, you can take word-of-mouth marketing one step further and get your audience talking about your brand. Focus your efforts on the channels that your ideal buyer engages with the most. 5. Make Sure They Can Find You with SEO Creating useful, relevant content for your audience is the first step to getting found online. Then, reach out to your partners, influencers in your space, and your customers to share and exchange content, helping boost your reach. As you build content on your site, you may also want to hire a SEO consultant to help make sure your website is structured properly for ultimate optimization. For a few more ideas on how to get found online, check out our Small Business Guide to Online Marketing. You want to make a big splash, right? Try these ideas and watch as you reach grows exponentially.
SEO Tips to Start Using Right Now Posted on September 23, 2015November 18, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Search engine optimization (SEO) has changed a lot in the last several years. Like the Internet itself, SEO has become more sophisticated and complex. With search-engine software becoming more adept at understanding keywords from context, marketers no longer have to win the race by splashing keywords everywhere. Instead, that type of SEO is frowned upon. Google is focusing primarily on what searchers want. The new buzzword is “user intent.” If you are thinking about your prospects and customers when you market your content, then you are already sailing in the right direction. What other SEO tips will help right now? Focus on Your Audience Focusing on your audience in every way possible will help you beat your competition, and even better, build your audience. Fine-tune your content strategy to please your customers, answer questions that prospects have and connect your customer service directly with queries. People are doing a lot of searching on the Internet before they call or come into your shop. If you start your interactions online, then you are sailing in smooth waters. Don’t Forget about Mobile Customers are searching on mobile, smartphones and tablets, more than you might think. In 2014, 60% of total digital-media time spent was on mobile devices. This statistic means that your company can no longer ignore mobile SEO. Your site needs to be mobile friendly, preferably mobile responsive. You need to improve your on-page SEO to match how your mobile users see the pages on their mobile devices. This segment of the market is critical to future conversions. Google has been adding mobile into their algorithms for the last couple of years. You should too. Links are Still Important Although you may have heard rumors that links are passé, that rumor is patently false. Useful, relevant links from your site to additional information will build your reputation. Links coming into your site from relevant, reputable sources show Google that your content is high quality. If you have broken links on your site, then fix them. If you have links to irrelevant pages, get rid of them. However, continue to build a link network within your site and to relevant material that supports or adds value to your content. If the link will help your customer, then add it. Track and Analyze Good reporting software can help you understand what is working and what is not. Starting with Google Analytics, study the queries that you receive, keywords that people search when they land on your site and which areas of your site need added content. Hone your SEO strategy to find the best possible terms to rank for on Google and other search engines. If you focus on ROI instead of just ranking and keywords, you will be able to analyze your successful SEO tactics. Use your metrics to determine which keywords are driving conversions. Coordinate SEO Efforts Partner your SEO efforts with PPC to maximize your reach. These two channels can impact one another and complement each other. Use what you learn from both channels to improve your ROI. Have your teams compare metrics to learn which tactics can be successful across the board, and reduce the chance of duplicating efforts. Social and SEO While social is not always part of SEO, SEO should be considered when using social media channels. If you are marketing through Pinterest, for example, don’t forget that Pinterest pins and boards are searchable on Google. Include your keywords in pin descriptions and titles. Use SEO as a tool to engage your prospects and customers, and you will increase traffic to your site. You don’t need to be an SEO expert to improve your strategy. Moz is an excellent resource to learn more about SEO. The Hatchbuck Resource Digest will also send SEO and marketing tips for small business straight to your inbox.
7 Ways Small Businesses Can Compete with SEO Giants Posted on September 10, 2015July 22, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Can your small business compete with giant competitors when it comes to SEO? The bad news is, there are simply areas where being outspent by large corporations is going to be tough to break through. There are areas, however, where small businesses can have an advantage. Before you outsource your SEO, take a look at these 7 ways to improve your small business SEO. Start by making sure your website is well-optimized. There are a lot of factors in determining a well-optimized website, including having one that is responsive and mobile capable. This ensures your site can be viewed well on a variety of devices. If you seek to show up when users enter different keywords, create pages for each keyword as opposed to cramming them all into one page. Make sure pages load quickly and that there are no broken links. The best way to know that your website is not optimized is that is it not generating the leads you expect. Compete with a long tail keyword strategy. Odds are you will not compete against the big boys in the keywords you both are battling for but a well-executed long tail keyword strategy can bring results. This is especially true if your business is a local or regional one. By adding your location to your keywords you can create a strategy that is difficult for the big boys to adapt to. Small businesses can create better content marketing. In many cases, small business content marketing is created by someone on the ground floor. Superior content marketing pieces can be created this way because you experience what is going on every day. You hear the questions clients and prospects are asking. Many times, large competitors are churning out fluff pieces or those simply created to fill space. In the meantime, you can create well-thought articles that address the keywords and long tail keywords you need to address. Hang on to that domain name. Even if you have a flat, outdated website, if you have had your domain name for 10 years or more hang onto it. Most search engines, Google included, place a value on the length of time a company has owned the domain name. They view it as a sign of stability. While a web person may suggest a snazzier or more contemporary name, don’t be too quick to give up on your original. Get involved locally and use it as part of your content marketing strategy. Every small business is looking for subjects to talk about in their blogs. When you get involved in your community, you can promote an event prior to it happening, and then talk about it afterward. This better associates you with your community and can be very useful in SEO. This is not something the giants can do well. Pay attention to your online reputation. Ask good and loyal customers if they would consider submitting a review on sites like Yelp. Address bad reviews courteously and promptly. In today’s search engines, many of these reviews are showing up quite high. This is not something your giant competitors can do well. Know what you are exceptional at and own it. If you have a diner known for its fried chicken, make sure your viewers know it. If you are an HVAC company that 100% guarantees your work, make sure that is all over your website. If you are the most experienced at something or have the most up-to-date equipment, tell readers about it and create separate pages addressing those specific benefits. It is not always easy but there are ways small business can compete in SEO with the giants. Start using the above seven and get on your path to improved SEO.