If you are looking to advertise your business locally, congratulations. You have taken the first step to expanding your business digital footprint online that can lead to more traffic and leads.
In this article we will discuss some of the many ways to accomplish this in today’s era.
Who to run your marketing?
With the plethora of options to choose from freelance workers to ads agencies there are a number of key points and differences in each to consider. Freelance workers can potentially nickel and dime your company with each little change that you need to implement and may or may not have all the experience you are looking for. They also could be working many side jobs at once or worse, double timing a day job. It comes down to careful consideration and asking the right questions between your business and the person you are considering hiring to determine if they have the right skills, experience and knowledge as well as time to get the job done your company needs. When it comes to an agency, some of the same careful considerations need to be made. Do they have the right people in the right places to run my marketing for PPC, SEO and CRO? Do they have too many clients, are they in the scope of your budget and needs? This is where choosing a digital marketing agency like PositiveDigitalFootprint.com can come in handy since we have a vast amount of experience, knowledge and time to get the job done.
What types of marketing to run?
This will depend on many factors, but the good news is you don’t have to recreate the wheel when it comes to marketing or create overly complex schemes to get traffic and leads. If you are already testing running Google ads, start with requesting a PPC audit. This audit will give you insights into the scope of work, needs and work that would be done on your account. Conducting an SEO audit would also be another good place to start as Organic traffic is usually the best place to see a lift on organic search traffic as well as one of the top converting digital marketing channels. SEO will usually start to climb from your geo specific locations and slowly expand from there in an outward radius. There are other channels of marketing as well such as Social media marketing but consider the intent of the people on that channel. They aren’t there to shop online for products or services but they usually are there to check out a business profile and see if they are active and or a real company. Intent is the main consideration so if its traffic and leads you want, most times in the beginning a company should start with SEO and PPC to begin with since the bulk of intent driven traffic is on Google actively searching for your products and or services depending on your business type.
Where to put your marketing efforts in?
This is part of the above paragraph where the intent of the user should be considered, but also the trending platforms will change overtime. Depending on if you are selling products you might need to focus more on other platforms like Amazon, Tiktok and or Youtube as they are all silo’ed platforms for marketing efforts. If you are more of a service related business, then Google will be your main focus for your marketing efforts in the beginning and over time you will need to expand based on diminishing returns as you start to saturate the market. Google should be the main focus today as they are still the dominant marketing channel by far head and shoulders above the rest. Not to say Facebook might not work, but always consider the intent of the user on that channel. People on Facebook are not active shoppers on that channel but its more of a supporting channel where it can resonate with your other marketing efforts. There are other programs like Local service ads which could end up being a good choice if your not already doing them and you should sign up sooner than later since its a pay per lead program unlike Pay per click on Google ads.
When to start expanding.
Expanding your marketing efforts can be done in a variety of ways, but it can be done from geo expansion, keyword expansion, platform expansion but with all of them, one has to consider the intent of the expansion. KPI’s from Impressions, traffic, leads, subscribers, all vary because the type of marketing that would be done will vary on the intended outcome of those marketing efforts. For example on PPC, keywords, geo, devices or channel per Google ads PPC marketing are some simple ways to consider expansion efforts. Google is the elephant in the room when it comes to traffic so it should be the core consideration.
Why online marketing works.
Online marketing works because you can reach the people at the right time, place they are searching for your online marketing efforts online. Not to say traditional media marketing doesn’t work, but, it’s got an attribution issue. Oftentimes I have worked with broadcasting companies that the client’s question is, how do we see the lift from radio or TV ads and the short answer is, it’s hard and complex as you can’t see the clicks from any of those sources but it’s more of an impression that would support direct traffic. In the modern era of marketing from PPC to SEO, it’s always best to focus on your own marketing vai your website and or pay per click efforts so you can see the direct result of those efforts. PPC is like a light switch to get instant traffic, while SEO is more of a long game strategy and putting new content on your website is a good way to start as it’s your own website where the content isn’t going away unless you want it to.
In summary your business should focus on where the biggest lift for your core services or products are going to translate into tangible results online. SEO being your core, anything else is additional marketing should be well vetted, planned out and regularly monitored and reported on. Consider PositiveDigitalFootprint.com an expansion of your online marketing efforts for your local area to expand your digital footprint as any person and or business online leaves footprints online which can be seen by everyone who searches.