You don’t only have to just be one in a million, but one in over a billion when marketing your company online. With over 1.9 billion websites for internet users to access, you need to get their attention, and wow them once you do.
You’re not a cyberspace or marketing expert, you want to do what your business does best, the very thing you started your company to do.
So how do you do that? How do you make sure potential clients find you online, and become loyal customers when they do?
Developing a strong marketing strategy, and implementing it in an intelligent manner, can skyrocket your success and take your business to the next level.
One of the biggest things you can do to market your company, and gain loyal customers, is to make sure your brand is always represented professionally and consistently.
You want to become a household name, like one of the family, always the customer’s go-to brand. This won’t happen if you’re not consistent in always delivering quality products and services.
One bad experience, and your customer could be gone for life, so you have to make sure that every interaction they have with you is the best service possible.
Coca-Cola’s success as the world’s most recognizable brand has led them to be identified by just the color of the packaging. For more than 90 years they have been building a brand that is recognized and loved around the world.
Commercials bring back nostalgic memories, and people order it by name without any debate on which soda they’ll get.
Nike is the most valuable apparel brand in the world and recognized by one symbol. You don’t even need to see the name brand to know it’s Nike.
Copy what these two giants did, do everything you can to become recognizable simply by a logo or color scheme.
Whether you’re marketing your brand in a brick and mortar store, or sending a tweet on Twitter, you need to consistently represent your brand in a professional manner.
This doesn’t mean you can’t have fun or throw some humor into your marketing plan, it just means you have to be smart about what you do and say.
One wrong marketing ploy and it can take years to recover from the bad publicity. This is even more crucial now that the internet spreads stories, posts, tweets and comments like wildfire.
Many companies have felt the consequences of a viral post against them. You don’t want to be the next victim of clumsy online marketing tactics.
Also, while we all like a good laugh from typos and mistakes, no one wants to be the one made fun of for writing it. Proof read your information before you put it out.
Whether you’re just starting out, have worked on your brand for decades, or are attempting to rebrand your company, you need to make sure you always represent your brand in a positive manner.
One frustrated response to a disgruntled customer can turn into a PR nightmare. Ensure anyone who represents your brand does so with the understanding of the long term effects of what they say.
When responding to comments, or posting information online, you need to always consider your audience. You might be responding to one person, but there’s the potential for millions of people to see what you post.
More people access the internet from mobile devices than any other way. You could be losing out on the majority of your potential customers if you don’t consider this and other factors:
– Is your content geared towards mobile searchers?
– Can they find your contact information without a long search?
– Do you gear your content to local and international visitors?
– Do your SEO strategies take your audience into account?
If the majority of your customers are middle-aged soccer moms, you don’t want to alienate that group. In fact, you never know who else might be interested in what you have to say, or who they’ll share it with, so it’s best not to alienate anyone because it may come back to haunt you in the long run.
Don’t limit yourself to a small fraction of the market by not considering everyone who could be your target audience. Always think about the power of word of mouth marketing. Someone may not need your services or products themselves, but they may have family or friends who they could recommend your company to.
You want the internet laughing with you, not at you, so make sure the humor associated with your brand is funny to more than just you. Stay away from anything offensive or questionable, and be careful in how you word things.
Misinterpretation can easily happen in cyberspace, but it’s not easily rectified. People remember the mistake, not the correction of it.
Trolls on the internet are relentless at trying to find misquotes and will harshly point out when you get it wrong.
Just ask President Trump how brutal they can be when you don’t fact check before tweeting.
Integrity and honesty are crucial to your success, and even mistakenly posting false facts can have long-lasting effects on your brand and your profits.
Now that you know how to avoid disaster with your brand online, let’s talk about how to be successful with your marketing strategies.
It’s not enough to have a website and a few social media profiles and to just wait for potential customers to find you. You need a marketing strategy with an action plan of what you want to accomplish, and how you are going to go about doing it.
You need to reach out, endear yourself, and give internet users a reason to connect with your brand.
Your online presence is often the first, and sometimes only, glimpse people get into your brand and what you do. Your website needs to hook visitors with a compelling sales pitch that makes them want to learn more.
Potential customers judge your brand, and your customer service, and make their final purchasing decision based on what you present on your webpage and online presence.
Creating a website with a blog can give you a great venue for sharing information on everything there is to know about your industry niche, and your brand in particular.
A blog will also help build your brand reputation with search engines, and give you more ways to engage and entice potential customers on other platforms.
A good blog is a great way to drive more traffic to your site, and get them to stay longer when they do stop by.
Internet users prefer to see and watch than to read and interpret, so it’s important that you provide them with lots to look at.
81% of internet users admit they only skim through content, and with an attention span of just a few seconds, this makes it even harder to get their attention and hold it.
Images have 650% higher rates of engagement than text alone, making it crucial to include dynamic visual content on your website, blog posts, and social media comments.
Not only will people interact with you more, but they’re more likely to share your content if there are visuals as well. Tweets with images are 150% more likely to be retweeted than one with only words.
Images aren’t the only thing that can help you gain more attention. With more than half of all internet users watching online videos every day, and 92% of mobile consumers sharing videos they see, you don’t want to miss out on this powerful marketing tool.
More than 90% of consumers report videos about products and services being a factor in their purchasing decisions. 64% said online videos helped them choose to make an online purchase after viewing the information.
If you want to be truly successful online, search engines have to know you are there, what information you have to share, and that you’re a reputable and respected authority in your niche. This is accomplished by search engine optimization of everything you post.
One of the projected realities of online marketing is that the power of organic reach is declining, especially if you’re talking about social media pages and profiles. There is so much content being posted daily by a wide variety of people, that it’s almost impossible for even your followers to see the content you offer unless they’re actually looking for it.
Search engines like Google have algorithms that consider hundreds of factors when ranking results to show their users. They want to provide the best response possible when asked for information, and you want to make sure you’re high on the list.
If you want to attract visitors, and rank higher in search engine results, you need to think like potential customers.
Brainstorm and research the ways people access the internet and your site. Find out what keywords are used most in your industry. See what industry leaders are writing about. Provide unique, informative, dynamic visual and written SEO content. Check out what is going viral online and see how you can adapt.
When you understand how and what is being searched for, you can adapt your content to meet the needs of searchers and the search engines they use. This allows you to create a structured plan for SEO, allowing you to reach both successfully.
While you want to appeal to a worldwide audience, there are great benefits to focusing some of your attention on your local community. Local SEO is worth the effort.
It’s important that you list your business the same way on every directory though. If you spell out the word “Street” on one, you don’t want to abbreviate it to “St” on another listing.
Search engines may not recognize that the listings are the same company, and you’ll lose the benefits of being considered more relevant, and more of an authority, for the frequency you’re mentioned online.
Listing on local directories, posting local content, and networking in your area can have huge benefits for you with customers and search engines alike.
Networking with others in your industry, and with businesses in your community, can be an effective part of any successful marketing strategy.
It can be beneficial to stop by their website, link blog posts to information they have (as long as they aren’t competitors), and even invite some other business owners in your area to guest post on your blog. You might be able to get a reciprocal guest post on their blog, or some links in their content, leading visitors to your site.
Attend community activities, festivals and networking events, and business marketing conferences to make some connections and get your brand noticed in your neighborhood.
If you can remember and gear your online content to always include AIDA in your content creation strategy, you’ll be promoting your business to readers and have the perfect formula for getting the most engagement possible.
All your content should first capture the attention of the reader so that they want to read past the first paragraph.
You then need to create interesting enough content that educates and entertains the person reading or viewing it. This gives them a reason to keep reading, want to share, and find out more.
The more interesting and informative your content is the stronger desire customers will have to engage with you and to share with others. By the end of the content, you’re posting should include a call to action.
A call to action encourages your visitor to stay and engage in some way. This could be by asking them to leave a comment, to share your post, or to visit another page on your website.
Hopefully, after reading our guide, you don’t feel quite as overwhelmed with the thought of creating a digital marketing strategy.
There’s a lot to it, but if you know what you’re doing, and implement some digital marketing hacks mentioned above, you can be successful.
You don’t have to do it alone. There are experts who know how to make the internet work for you. Be sure to check out the rest of our blog for great advice, tips, and tricks to make your company more successful than you ever dreamed.
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