Developing a Well-Balanced Marketing Strategy
2022 is quickly approaching. Is your business ready for a successful year? A defined marketing strategy is vital for the success of any business. Your business’s marketing strategy should be complex, flexible, and include various types of marketing, both visual, online, and traditional methods. The best thing about developing a marketing strategy is that it allows business owners a major opportunity to hit the ground running with solidarity in their plans and make tweaks to their approach where they see fit once the results start to pour in from customer feedback. While there are challenges to creating a sound strategy, standing out in the online landscape can be done when approached with the right tactics in mind. Here, you can learn how and we’ll even give you a complimentary strategy template at the end!
Website
A website is the beginning and most of the time the foundation of your online presence. Going into 2022, you should try not to think of your website as a static sort of presence, rather something that can change with the times around us, acting as a marketing tool. Your website should be changing and updating every month. Your business’s website is a great place to not only direct your clients to for more information and to push consumers through the sales funnel, but it also aids in your local search authority through Google and Bing to gain more business visibility.
SEO
Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing a website in order to increase traffic, leads, and brand awareness from local search. Some of the most common tasks associated with local SEO include finding local keywords, optimizing a Google Business Profile, and building NAP citations. 46% of Google searches have local search intent and 75% of consumers that search for something local on their phone visit a store that day. If your business is not actively working on their SEO, you are missing out on vital exposure to future customers.
There are four main components to SEO: onsite optimization, backlinks, NAP citations, and another category I am going to just call “other”. Onsite optimization consists of authentically integrating your top keywords that you would like to appear in Google for throughout your website not only into your page content but in your title tags, meta descriptions and more. You can also include relevant blogs to increase your credibility within Google. The next part of successful SEO is a backlinking strategy. A backlink is a link from a 3rd party article that is linking back to your website’s target pages you are trying to rank. This is where SEO companies really move the needle by creating keyword maps to link certain backlinks to specific pages on a website they are trying to rank. Just publishing a blog in and of itself without a backlink strategy will fall short of expectations. Your business’ NAP Citations are also important. These are directory listings such as your Yelp or Apple Maps listing. Not only should you have many citations, but your citations also need to be consistent across all platforms. Lastly, the “other” category contains a variety of other more granular tactics that provide an additional push such as optimizing the user experience for your customers and technical edits that help Google better understand your website.
Social Media
Everyone knows that if you are not on social media you are missing out on tons of exposure for your business but how do you engage with your audience without being annoying? Strive to have your social media content be consistent, branded and interactive. Below you will see an example of an interactive post. Something simple, but it gets your audience engaged with your page. More engagement will help your business to appear more frequently within your followers’ news feeds.
This post also does a great job of using relevant hashtags and emojis which do a great job catching social media users’ attention and expands the potential visibility of the post. The use of an emoji increases shares by 33% and engagement by 57%. Hashtags are a great way to reach your target audience that are searching for information relevant to your hashtags.
Paid Advertisement
Paid advertisement, whether across social media or Google, is a great way to gain immediate leads. Within Google there are several different types of paid advertisement: local services ads, search ads, shopping ads and local 3-pack ads are a few. Paid advertisement on social media is a great way to target your customers based on their demographics, behavioral interests, or interactions with your website.
Traditional Marketing
While our world becomes more virtual with each passing day, traditional methods of marketing don’t seem as though they would be as powerful as they once were. This is where many people go wrong. Traditional marketing is essential when it comes to making an impact on local audiences. Traditional marketing like newspaper ads, billboard placements, and radio advertisements are a great way to create a layered marketing approach and to build a brand identity beyond the typical digital footprints. Take a video ad for example. While a 30 second video commercial may be great for targeting Smart TV and YouTube users, not all audiences can be reached or may have the same level of engagement on those platforms, so a media buy on local tv or cable may make sense depending on the target audience and message.
Consumers today rely on relationships more than ever and the best free advertisement spreads by word of mouth. Through creating a relationship with your audience full of potential clients and customers, they will be more likely to choose the business run by the individual who they believe consistently demonstrates a genuine interest in their well-being.
Essentially, your thoughtfully designed marketing strategy can help your business in areas you didn’t realize organic growth was possible. Through implementation of a clear and consistent marketing strategy with a defined budget, you will be able to filter out less effective tools or tactics and understand what is really working for your company. Not sure where to start? Download our free marketing strategy template HERE to get going!
Building Brands Marketing, founded in 2018, is a full-service marketing consulting firm and advertising agency that has worked with businesses across the United States on building trust, improving reputation and increasing sales. Our team of marketers, advertisers, developers, videographers, and creators offer digital and traditional marketing services to businesses throughout the United States.
To view all services or for more information, visit buildingbrandsmarketing.com. For up-to-date marketing trends, tips, and advice search Building Brands Marketing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
