When it comes to announcing your brand’s existence and identity online, it really is a rollercoaster of business tactics, trend prediction, divining the mood of your target public, and, if we are being 100% hones, sheer, dumb luck. With all of those, and many other, factors in play, staying on top of things can really be a challenge.
So, right now as the year is halfway done might be a good time to evaluate your results so far and maybe make some adjustments to your battle strategies for the next six months period. We had a little chat with some of our friends over at ADV Marketing, and they gave us some expert tips for making it big in 2019. Read on and get crafty with it!
Make the most out of local SEO
We humans are creatures of routine, and if we can find what we need somewhere in the vicinity of our comfortable homes, we will always give priority to the closest option. Therefore, a surefire strategy is to target specific geographic areas as well as specific demographic elements.
Pepper all of your website with keywords specific to the region. Make your business ID info (your company’s name, contact phone, and physical address) consistent and unvarying everywhere online. Tailor your landing pages to regional needs or trends and do some digging about local link building methods.
Up your social media game
The advent of social media platforms has seriously changed the marketing landscape, which you can read more about through this link. Whether this change was for the better or the worse is anyone’s guess: you get more reach and more potential customers, but also more flaming from trolls and more people who block your ads in sheer annoyance.
Whatever the case, you need a strong presence on social media and there is no way around, so you might as well hop right to it. This is a great way to keep your audience informed, and the level of interaction really boosts loyalty to the brand.
Keep in mind that it is a strategy game, though. Forget about covering all fields at once – not all media is actually a good channel for conveying your business and spreading your content. Instead, identify some half a handful of platforms and focus intensely on that small number. You can find some handy tips on how to make those choices at this link: https://www.relevance.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-choosing-social-media-platforms-for-your-business-infographic/
Aside from videos, images, and news regarding your own products and services, share content that will enable you to build a meaningful connection with your visitors. Keep them updated on the industry in general. Publish how-to’s and interesting facts. Let everybody know that the pages are run by actual humans.
Focus on making your customer experience dazzling
Customer experience is an idea that gets thrown around a lot, especially in strategic meetings, but it seems that still a lot of people have no idea how to work with it until the bad sides of the story come crashing down on their heads. Do not be among that lot of people.
You have to make sure that people will be able to relate to your business, and that they will associate what you do with positive thoughts and good feelings. Respond to your customers as quickly as you can. Give them useful information instead of pre-rehearsed fluff (they will instantly recognize it as fake and will instantly hate your guts for it). Above all, be honest with your consumers at all times, so that they will come to trust you and your brand.
On a technical side, make your web pages easy to navigate, well-organized, easy on the eyes and make them load fast like this blog site. Great functionality across platforms and intuitive organization are your best weapons in the war for conversion.
Have a strategy for managing your online reputation
Seriously, the entire idea of “Please leave us a review!” has gotten beyond tatty nowadays, not to mention it is being increasingly reported as irritating – especially when these prompts are pop-ups within applications or take a similarly disruptive form. Moreover, it is quite pointless. People will post their opinions of your business whether you ask them to or not. The idea is to get a handle on what they write and where they write it.
So, when you are putting together your strategy for reputation management online, you have to at least have sensible review system guidelines. The most important bit (on your side of the interaction) is to decide who will respond to reviews, in what kind of tone or register, and to absolutely stay away from copy-paste answers. Whether the review is bad or good, you have to answer the living person behind the text.
The benefits of good reviews are common knowledge, so consider ways to turn negative ones to your advantage. Use them as a foil to demonstrate your professionalism, cooperativeness, and overall friendliness. Respond quickly, courteously, and to the point. Show people that you can handle conflict and displeasure in a healthy, mature way. Maintain polite distance and never make it personal, even if the reviewer is being a drama llama.
Build landing pages with specific audiences in mind
You might still be wondering what is the exact distinction between a landing page and a homepage. Try comparing it to a book: the homepage is the aesthetic cover with the most basic info. The landing page is the place you open when you want a specific chapter. Ideally, you will make them 100% separate things.
A landing page should be heavy on the relevant keywords. Fill it with phrases that people in a given industry or other target demographic will search for online – make their queries “land them” on your “runway” to increase your traffic. Make sure that the landing page will have genuinely informational content – finding the info they need at first click is what drives them to explore your brand and services.
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