March 2018 – ACS Reduc 2022

How Digital Marketing Helps Businesses

March 26, 2018

Last week, we wrote about what you should do after you launch a new website. This week, we explain how digital marketing can help your business thrive!

Find New Customers

Whether you’re a new company or you have been in business for decades, you always need to bring in new customers. That’s where digital marketing comes in.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is one of the most effective ways to find interested clients. This form of advertising puts your brand in front of potential customers just as they are researching companies like yours.

With pay-per-click ads, your company appears at the top of Google results for targeted keywords. Consumers rely on search engines to help them make purchase decisions, and that is part of what makes SEM so effective.

If you’re an eCommerce company, digital marketing encourages direct purchases on your website. Those ads that follow you around the internet after you shop for tools, ties, or tires? All of them happen because companies invest in digital marketing.

Build Relationships

While you’re reaching new customers with pay-per-click ads, you also should connect with existing contacts through email marketing.

Emails may seem outdated by digital marketing standards, with bots and blockchain on the horizon. But emails are still one of the best tools to help you build one-on-one relationships with consumers.

For instance, maybe you sell cupcakes online. You could send out an email with photos and links to videos about your baking. You could find out your customer’s birthday and send a personalized coupon for free delivery on that date. As your customers get to know you, they will look forward to your messages. With careful segmentation and strategy, your emails will set your brand apart from competing cupcake shops.

Sticking to a regular email schedule gives customers the opportunity to get to know you, like you, and trust you. Ultimately, once they trust you, they will buy from you again and again.

Get to Know Your Audience

As customers get to know you through emails, you can also get to know them through your digital marketing programs.

Pixels, cookies, and analytics tools help you learn more about your customers. You can find out answers to questions you didn’t know you could ask. Who opened your emails? Who clicked on your Facebook ads? Who filled out your contact form? You can learn — down to the person — who is interested in your business.

Then, your sales team can contact the most engaged prospects. That person who opened your email 25 times? It’s probably worth it to give them a call. That former client who liked your Instagram page? It may be time to send them an email.

Your digital marketing channels should all work together to help your company grow. It’s all about reminding interested customers why your brand benefits them. If you invest in different digital strategies at the same time, your integrated campaigns will make an impact. You’ll see more leads, clients, customers and revenue.

So Your New Website is Live. Now What?

March 15, 2018

You’ve had a whirlwind few months – going back and forth with designers, developers, writers, and project managers to ensure your new website is beautiful and functional. Every last icon, image, letter, and pixel has been double-checked for absolute perfection. You devoted extra attention to user experience, workflow efficiency, and information architecture to ensure your online goals are not only met, but exceeded. Today, your brand new website launched, the floodgates are wide open, and new business has poured in like never before – right? Probably not.

How could this be? You did everything right. You hired talented people. You did the research. You invested your time, money, and resources into building a well-oiled digital machine engineered to sell. Don’t panic – these efforts aren’t in vain. It’s important to keep in mind, your pursuit of online success doesn’t end with a new website; it begins with one. Now is the time to get to work! Here are a few actionable items that should help inspire your next steps…

Content Marketing

Of course your new website is search engine-friendly, but that doesn’t mean it has the content to appear in search results. To put your business in front of potential customers online, you have to offer valuable content (blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, white papers, etc.) that they might be looking for. The more you publish on a particular topic, the more authority you build within your industry and in Google’s very complex algorithm. Posting “evergreen” content that stays forever relevant will continue to work for you over time and cumulatively increase organic traffic to your site. Be sure to supplement your content marketing efforts outside of your own domain with social media, guest posting, and public relations as well. Everything ties into (and funnels back to) your website’s primary call-to-action.

Paid Advertising

Surely, you’re financially exhausted from building this aforementioned beautiful and functional new website. Now is not the time to close the purse strings, though. Trust that your improved design works as it’s intended to and begin sending large volumes of target traffic its way. Spend some money on Google AdWords and Facebook. Create specific landing pages to further increase visitor confidence and goal efficiency. Finding the perfect balance between ad spend and ROI is by far the most effective means of online growth.

Email Marketing

Does your reimagined website entice visitors to join your email list, complete a form, or contact you? Without a doubt, email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach a captive audience of past, present, and future customers. Remember, these individuals have opted to hear from you! Collecting new subscribers every day should be a top priority. Delivering relevant content to those subscribers’ inboxes is a close second. There is a lot that can be done with an email address these days, from responsive promotional templates to automated drip campaigns and even behavioral segmentation. An effective email marketing strategy keeps people engaged with your brand and coming back to your site!

Mind you, the items above are just a handful of directions to go after a website launch. Although independent efforts, they work in symphonic harmony together, when executed properly. Remember, a shiny new site may be an essential first step to growing your business online, but it’s just that – a first step. There is no such thing as “set it and forget it” in the highly-competitive digital marketing world. Passionate persistence and strategic action will surely garner measurable, positive, ongoing results for your business.

3 Reasons Why Quality Trumps Quantity in Digital Content

March 9, 2018

“Quality over quantity” is a cliche. But it’s a cliche for a reason. When it comes to your website and digital marketing, it’s important to craft thoughtful content (quality), and not churn out a lot of content at a faster pace (quantity).

A quality over quantity approach to digital content makes sense, and it’s an easy enough idea to buy into on paper: Spend more time on writing great articles, and you will get better results.

In practice though, that type of dedication isn’t easy. You need a strong team by your side to motivate you and follow through with ideas.

Still, quality content is worthwhile in the long run. Whether you’re building a website from scratch or growing your current site, your business benefits from well-researched and well-written copy. In this blog post, we’ll go over a few reasons why longform web posts matter for your website and your bottom line.

1. Stand out from Competitors

Longform content is rare because it takes more time and effort to publish. Quantity usually wins in a digital environment, as brands race to publish as much information and capture as much attention as possible.

Take a look at your competitors, for example. How long are their blog posts? How detailed are their FAQ pages? As marketing entrepreneur Neil Patel explains in his research, most blog posts are short, so longer posts give you a competitive edge.

Detailed articles also show who you are as a company. They give you the opportunity to present your brand as thoughtful, knowledgeable and helpful.

2. Make Search Engines Want You

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a tricky concept that’s even trickier to execute well. Every company wants their website to appear at the top of search engine results pages. One way to earn your spot is to write longform content on your website.

Google especially favors longer articles. In this way, quality posts lead to better SEO, which then brings more traffic to your website. If your website is well-designed (and please contact us if it’s not), more traffic will then lead to more conversions, and more revenue for your business. It’s a beautiful circle that all starts with prioritizing quality over quantity in your digital content.

3. Satisfy Your Customers’ Cravings

As helpful as SEO can be, not everything is about Google. It’s about your customers.

People want good information from reliable sources. With the constant firehose of messages on social media, it’s useful to provide in-depth content that makes life easier for your readers.

CEO of Rep Cap Media Mary Ellen Slayter spoke with the Content Marketing Institute about the benefits of longer content for growing your business. “For B2B customers, it’s not just, ‘I came to your site, I clicked, and now I’m going to buy real quick,” she said. “The decisions they make require thought and money, and the customers need to know who they’re dealing with.”

In other words, quality content helps build trust with your website visitors. By making your website a consistent source of valuable information, you encourage potential customers to come back time and time again.

“Quality over quantity” is an important lesson in web design and marketing. We relearn this lesson every day as we work with our clients. If you have questions about improving your digital content, please get in touch with us any time!