Get Endorsed by a Local celebrity.
Many business owners dream of having their product or service endorsed by a global celebrity. But instead of trying to get a superstar to support your business, try seeking out a local celebrity instead.
Who exactly are local celebrities? These are people your local paper is writing about -- perhaps an "unsung hero" such as a teacher or a resident who's doing something positive and newsworthy. Since they're in your neighborhood, these people should be relatively easy to locate and contact by phone or e-mail. Let them know you'd like to send them a gift, namely your product or service.
The only catch: you'd like to follow up with them in a few days to get their honest feedback. Their responses can make for useful blog or marketing content.
Search Engine Optimization
When people think of online marketing and the search engines, SEO is usually the first thing that comes to mind. SEO is used to create a site that the search engines will rank as one of the most relevant pages for a given term. The fact is, 95 percent of searchers click on a page that appears on the first page results for Google, Yahoo! or Bing. You can see that search rank is a big deal!
Building a solid SEO strategy consists primarily of selecting relevant keywords and providing valuable content related to those keywords. In the past, SEO was driven by factors like keyword placement, keywords density, and even how many times a keyword was used to link to that page.
But the search engines quickly discovered that keywords could be easily manipulated. A page that had nothing to do with a keyword could be ranked in top three, just by optimizing the page. Today, this means that sites who rely solely on keywords are often ignored by the search engines.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is not a new concept. In fact, John Deere started the trend in 1895 when they released The Furrow, an agricultural magazine. Other companies like Jell-O and Michelin followed suit with recipe books and automotive tips. Content marketing is important because it helps build your brand and inspire confidence in your company. In fact, six out of ten consumers say that after reading a custom publication, they feel better about the company.
Online content marketing has expanded the field to include blogs, training videos, podcasts, and even video games. But like every other online strategy, content marketing has its downsides. Low quality content is the most common mistake and can affect your rankings and damage your brand. For example, content riddled with grammar and spelling errors makes you look careless and unprofessional. Providing statements without verifying the facts can make you look foolish. Remember that the content you put on your site might be the first impression a prospective client gets of your company.
Another mistake many businesses make is to pull away from content marketing all together. This likely results from a trend against guest blogging prior to the recent Google updates. Aggressive marketers were creating guest blog posts, and then submit them to anyone who would publish them in return for a backlink to their site. These backlinks were thought to be the perfect marriage of content marketing and good SEO.
Google, however, thought differently. They saw poor quality content of no value used for nothing more than backlinks. So Google took action against these aggressive marketers, and online marketers became concerned. Many dropped guest blogging and content marketing entirely, worried that their ranks would fall.
But Google never said guest blogging would result in poor rankings. They said marketers should provide valuable content and host it on reputable sites. Which should have been the plan for most marketers to being with.
Social Media Marketing
For some, social media is nothing more than a way to stay in touch with old friends. But for businesses, social media is a way to tie SEO and content marketing together. Search engines take into consideration the number of shares a page receives when it ranks that particular piece of content.
Social media is also quickly becoming the primary way content is shared. Sites like Twitter, Stumble Upon, and Facebook all allow consumers to share valuable content with others in their network. Research shows people are more likely to trust content shared from people they know, so a share is akin to a 4 star rating!
A common mistake in social media marketing is thinking a large number of followers is all you need. In fact, many businesses have sprouted up offering to sell you 100 or 1000 ‘real’ friends or fans. Keep in mind that friends and fans are not enough – you need to build engagement. Friends that are purchased are often not your target demographic or are fake accounts. Neither will help you accomplish your goals.
In order to make the most of a social media marketing strategy, you need to interact with your fans and create a true community. Show that you are accessible by allowing people to ask questions, voice concerns, and even complain. Then address these issues in a professional manner. Provide them with content that interesting, not just promotional. Remember, social media is first of all social!
How good are the digital marketing capabilities for your business?
We think it’s really helpful for companies to review their current capabilities so that they can compare to competitors and then create a road map for where they need to priorities for digital transformation.
Our Digital Excellence capability framework will help you review how effectively your digital marketing is managed across seven key areas:
- A. Your Strategic approach
- B. Evaluation and performance improvement process
- C. Management buy-in to investment in digital marketing
- D. Resourcing and structure for digital including integration
- E. Data and infrastructure or platforms
- F. Integrated customer communications across Paid-Owned-Earned media
- G. Integrated customer experiences across desktop and mobile devices
What can go wrong when you don't have a strategy?
Through working with many businesses we have seen so many wasted opportunities and problems when companies don’t have a strategy.
Here are ten reasons you need an online digital strategy. Creating an online marketing plan helps solve these problems:
- Lack of long-term strategic direction of how to use digital to support growth – so you need a more clearly defined digital marketing strategy,
- You won’t know your online market share and how to defend it.
- Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share.
- You don’t have a powerful online value proposition for your brand.
- You don’t know your online customers or insight well enough.
- You’re not integrated.
- Digital doesn't have enough people/budget given its importance.
- You’re wasting money and time through duplication.
- You’re not agile enough to catch up or stay ahead.
- You’re not optimizing so the opportunity of online leads and sales is missed.
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