The digital age has changed the way entrepreneurs and business owners market goods and services. In the past, business owners would open a store and hope that it attracts customers. They may invest in direct mailers, radio ads or even TV commercials, but this style of “push” marketing is not very efficient and can be costly. In today’s world, consumers are using search engines, social media, online reviews and referrals to search for specific products and services. If your business is not found when consumers are searching, that is a potential loss of revenue. It is important to have a robust and strategic online marketing strategy. Focusing on the following key components can help fuel business growth and take your business growth to the next level. Content Strategy Companies that blog tend to get more visitors to their website then companies that don’t. Therefore, your website should include an integrated blog that provides your customers with relevant and quality information about your industry niche. • Establish a monthly blog calendar and publishing schedule. At minimum, publish a new blog post twice per month.
• Make it easy for your readers to subscribe to your blog and if possible provide them an incentive to sign up (coupon code, a downloadable free report)
• Use your blog content to share on social media channels and drive traffic back to your website.
• Share blog content with your network via a monthly newsletter. Optimized Website / E-commerce Ensure your website has a clean professional look and is easy to navigate. • There should be clear call-to-actions on several webpages, so that your customers can continually think about what your company can provide for them.
• Add relevant key words and phrases on each page to ensure that it is found by search engines Mobile / Cross browser friendly Ensure that your website is optimized on all browsers, smart phones and tablets. In 2013, 17.4% of web traffic has come through mobile, representing more than 6% increase since 2012. SEO You must use search engine optimization techniques to help your website, blog and social media accounts rank higher in search engines. • Use Google AdWords Keyword Planner to research specific key words and evaluate their competiveness
• Utilize these key words in your website and social media posts
• Ensure your meta description for each page is unique and less than 155 characters
• Ensure that the title of each webpage is unique and meaningful PPC Paid Search (PPC) is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines results page (SERP) when someone types a specific keyword or phrase in the search engine. Google Ad Words is the most popular paid search tool. Social Media Having a strong social media presence has many advantages for a business. • It gives you an opportunity build an online community and foster real-time communication and engagement with people who are interested in your business
• The viral nature of social networks allows you to reach exponential numbers of people at minimal cost.
• It allows you to share direct links to your website which leads to a higher ranking in search engines. Analytics It is important to monitor and measure the results and trends of your website, blog, email campaigns and social media activity. Some important metrics that you should pay attention to: • Website: site visitors, page views, pages per visit, time spent on site, bounce rate
• Blog: subscribers, views, visits, comments, back-links, social media shares
• SEO: # of inbound links, #key words sending traffic to your site, # of indexed pages, page rank
• Social Media: # of likes, repins, retweets, shares, conversations, engagement Here is a short video clip from one our recent workshops on Online Marketing Strategies:
