Marketing can be overwhelming, especially in today’s world of social media, Adwords, and more. We believe that online marketing should have a balanced approach and not just depend on one avenue. The graphic helps describe how we see marketing across multiple sources.
A company’s website should serve as the hub of their online marketing. Use other platforms as tools to drive traffic to and from your site if you want to reach more people and convert leads into sales. Utilizing these strategies is also important in order to stay relevant and keep your brand in front of people. Most of these applications cost you nothing and could yield surprising results.
Find out the best ways to leverage these platforms and maximize your website’s effectiveness.
Social Media
Social media platforms like Facebook and Linkedin are components that drive traffic directly to your site. Facebook, in particular, is one of the best ways to advertise online and increase your exposure using targeted ads, HD videos and other marketing tools. Your business’s social pages don’t typically receive traffic from your site, but they generate great attention to it, especially with effective marketing. First, potential customers see an impressive visual ad and some copy that grabs their attention. Then they decide to check out your website to see what sets your company apart and voila—you’ve got a new lead.
LinkedIn has struggled in the past to keep up with Facebook as a marketing tool, but it is back on the rise after its acquisition by Microsoft. It now offers video posting, improved analytics and several new features that allow professionals to more easily network and share content with other businesses.
Facebook and other social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest are all about engaging with people and giving them a reason to choose you over the other guys.
SEO
Your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is one of the most important aspects of any online marketing plan. Ranking highly on search engines is more vital than ever. Over 2 billion people online and nearly 93% of all online experiences begin on a search engine. People are MUCH more likely to visit your page if you appear on the first page of the results, particularly in the top five.
SEO works hand-in-hand with your website. You need to practice SEO in everything you publish online. Keyword-rich copy on your site drives up your company’s listing on Google. The same goes for any blogs, emails, Youtube videos or online ads you create. They should contain quality content that will boost your search results and add authoritative value to your site when people are looking for relevant services.
Youtube
Youtube is another prime example of a platform that can generate traffic to and from your site. Practice proper SEO in your video descriptions, tags and titles, and your videos will show up higher in relevant Youtube searches. Impact people with your videos and provide easy-to-access links, and they will visit your website to see what you’re all about. Also, videos rank very high for SEO purposes—so if you’re not producing videos, you might want to start.
PPC
While organic search results are proven to be more successful overall, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is also an important way to reach new customers and direct traffic to your website. Improving your company’s SEO takes time, however, and often you need results now. PPC is a great tool to get results at the top of the search engine quickly for a specific cost and duration. This is useful for time-sensitive info like special events, temporary deals and more. It’s also good for new businesses and websites that want to generate some initial traffic early on.
Email is sometimes forgotten as a useful means of marketing, but that’s far from the case. Depending on your target audience, emails can attract new customers to your website, let existing customers know about a new offer, or simply serve to entertain your audience. It’s always wise to have a nice layout, proper grammar and some visual element like a graphic or chart so they aren’t just looking at a wall of text. Sending fun, interesting emails is a great way to encourage traffic to and from your site.
There are many different aspects of online marketing. Keeping up with all these is certainly easier said than done. Remember that your website’s effectiveness is limited on its own. Use the strategies mentioned above to increase traffic and ultimately boost sales for your company. Sometime it’s also helpful to work with an online marketing agency. If you need a new site or you need help getting the most out of yours, let’s work together.
