Online marketing is absolutely essential in today’s digital age. Regardless of whether you are a mom and pop shop trying to compete with your biggest competitors on a limited marketing budget, or if you are a Fortune 500 company, you simply have to be online.
Uptick Marketing in Birmingham, Alabama has decided to explore the 12 Days of Online Marketing, using the holiday season as a time for education on the 12 steps for getting your business’s digital presence up-to-par with the current trends and standards.
Below is a brief synopsis of what each of these online marketing tactics are and why they are important. Over the next 12 days, we will review each of these in detail.
Enjoy!
#1: Responsive Website Design
The first step for any online presence is having a responsive website, which means that the website itself scales based on the device in which it is being viewed. Google (and other search engines) place a high value on whether or not your website is mobile-friendly. If not, you are likely to be penalized, which can prevent your website from ranking high on search results.
Check to see if your current website mobile-friendly with this Google tool.
#2: Quality, Informative Website Content
After ensuring your website is mobile-friendly, the next step is unique, quality, and informative content. The content on your website should be unique, meaning it cannot be duplicated anywhere else online. It should also be quality; therefore, ensure that proper grammar is utilized and that the information you communicate is accurate. Finally, it should be informative. Every page on your website should educate your target audience because when you educate you build trust and trust leads to new buyers.
#3: Search Engine Optimization
The next step is to ensure your website is search engine optimized. What does that mean? It means that you are utilizing the correct keywords and placing them not only within the content of your website, but also in page titles and alt text of your images. SEO is very technical; therefore, we will explore this in more detail within the next few days. For now, just know that SEO helps search engines know what your website is about, which helps you to rank higher in search results for relevant terms.
#4: Local Optimization
Local optimization is incredibly important for local businesses, especially with the way Google now ranks websites. Through local optimization, we help you take control over how your business shows up in search results and ensure data providers have consistent and accurate information about your business. As a result, search engines trust you more. This trust can help improve your search rankings.
#5: Blogging
For some reason, people are still resistant to blogging. However, Google (and other search engines) have made it abundantly clear that blogging is incredibly important for long term search engine optimization efforts. It’s simple – search engines want to see that you update your website on a regular basis with informative content. The best way to do just that is through blogging. Don’t have time? Don’t worry, we can do it for you!
#6: Social Media
There is no doubt that social media is incredibly important today; however, many businesses are still avoiding social media for a variety of reasons ranging from a lack of time to fear of being unable to monitoring their brand online. Social media platforms (like Facebook) are going to create a page for your business whether you like it or not. By being social, you can interact with current and prospective customers and better monitor what people are saying about your business online. Oh, and those blogs we were talking about? Those can help you gain more customers when you share them socially!
#7: Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click advertising (specifically Google AdWords) is a great way to get instant traffic to your website. If you want to show up in search results now while your website’s search engine optimization efforts catches up, then pay-per-click is the way to go. Show up in search results regardless of how new your website is and how little search engines trust you. Plus, track conversions along the way! Just remember, when you stop paying, your ads go away.
#8: Ad Retargeting
What happens once all of these people visit your website from the great blogs, social media, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click? Well, you stay in front of them with ad retargeting! It’s simple, someone visits your website and then your ads follow them around the Internet until they are ready to make that purchasing decision. It’s an incredibly powerful way to stay top-of-mind.
#9: Automated Email Marketing
What do you do with all of those email lists you get from trade shows and other events? Well, you put them into an automated email marketing campaign. The goal is to automatically (saving you time!) send emails to prospects until they are ready to buy. Don’t worry about annoying them; we would only recommend a total of five emails and if they aren’t ready to buy then we’d remove them from the campaign. This tactic is simply a great way to stay in front of prospective clients and educate them on why they should choose you over your competitor.
#10: Video Marketing
Video marketing is great for better educating your target audience on your products or services in a method that can grab the attention of those who prefer video to text. Videos are also great for social media and go a long way toward grabbing the attention of prospective clients. Check out our “Our Approach” page for an example of how you can use video to reinforce your message in a non-intrusive format.
#11: Review Tracking
What, exactly, are people saying about your business online? How can you encourage your customers to review you online? With a really easy-to-use online review tracking and curation platform. You can track reviews about your company from all of the popular online review websites, and with a click of the button have access to the review so that you can quickly respond. You can also upload an email database and send out “please review us” emails to current and former customers.
#12: Analytics and Reporting
After all of this work, you definitely want to check out the results! With detailed analytics and reporting, we show our clients each month all of their progress. From increases in website traffic to conversions on Google AdWords, our goal is to help you see the results! Sick of paying for billboards and television spots that you simply hope are successful? With online marketing you know what is working (plus, it’s cheaper!).
Check out the infographic below for a recap.
More to Come!
Stay tuned over the next 12 days for an in-depth look at each of these topics from the Uptick Marketing team. We hope you have a safe and happy holiday season!
Looking to get your business’s marketing plan ready for 2016? Connect with us! We would love to meet with you to create a tailored plan on how we can help your business grow next year.
