As social media and the web becomes a larger part of how we communicate and find solutions, savvy business owners are connecting with their customers in ways that were previously unavailable.
With digital marketing, you now have the ability to target your marketing and create an intimacy with your customers that can bring huge returns. By connecting directly with your target demographic, you can increase awareness, educate, build trust and authority, and win over new customers. A prospective customer can get to know you by reading content that informs them, and an existing customer can be delighted when you respond directly to their feedback.
As a small business owner, you don’t have a ton of time to spend on marketing. It’s important to focus on what works. As the marketer for an Edmonton hydrovac company in charge of connecting with our customers online, here is where I’ll be focusing in 2018, and I encourage you to focus here too.
Optimize for Mobile
The majority of your customers browsing your website will be doing so from their smartphones. Google knows this, and it’s important that you do as well.
If a customer can’t easily browse your website, find your address and phone number, or make a purchase from their phone, they’re going to leave your site and find your competitor instead.
Building your website with mobile users in mind is a necessary investment, both for converting interested customers into buyers and for keeping up in search rankings, as Google penalizes websites that aren’t mobile friendly.
Get Found Locally
Where’s the best place to bury a dead body? On the second page of Google rankings.
Ranking high on Google is important, but for small businesses, ranking high on local searches is extremely important.
That includes claiming your Google My Business, showing up on Google Maps, and getting to the top of rankings for searches involving your city. Make sure you’re including the name of your city on your title tags and meta descriptions. Get your website listed on social media, Yellow Pages, Yelp!, Trip Advisor, and local business directories.
Local SEO takes a bit of time and effort, but the payoff can make a huge difference in whether your customers find you or not.
Increase Intimacy Through Video
Having videos of you, your business, your employees, and your happy customers can create a sense of intimacy and transparency that no other form of marketing can.
You don’t have to invest in a professional video team. High-quality videos can be shot on a good smartphone (I use a Pixel) and edited on the same phone using simple and user-friendly video editing software (I love GoPro’s Quick).
Make a short sales video of you talking to your clients, then make a few “day-in-the-life” videos of your business doing it’s thing and interacting with happy customers.
You can even include daily Snapchat or Instagram videos if you think your customer demographic is on those platforms.
Just having a few short videos that can be made in an afternoon on your website and Facebook can go a long way to converting curious browsers into buyers.
Get Personal
The beautiful part of social media is that your customers can write amazing reviews about you, giving you precious social proof — and you can respond to them (and mitigate bad reviews).
With a few minutes a day, this can go a long way to making sure your customers stay engaged with you, refer their friends, and return again and again.
Write Persuasive Copy
Copywriting is writing that persuade your customers to take action.
Writing great copy is all about writing with a specific audience in mind. You need to understand your customer’s dreams, fears, pains, desires. You need to know what drives a customer to buy, but also what holds them back from buying, and address those issues.
Having the right words, written in the right tone of voice, discussing the right pain points and the right solution can increase conversions on your website dramatically.
Learning to write a bit of copy can be a great idea – or investing in a professional to write it for you – can greatly boost your bottom line.
Get Learning
Social media and web marketing can have a learning curve, but the investment will pay off. There’s no better way to engage with your customers, get found, and increase intimacy and brand loyalty.
Guest article written by: Jonathan Pullin specializes in web marketing and works for Summit Hydrovac, which services Edmonton and surrounding areas.