How to Maximize Your Online Visibility

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Online Visibility|How to Maximize Your Online Visibility There are very few businesses without some kind of presence on the internet nowadays, but that does not necessarily mean that all of these businesses are getting tangible benefits in return. It is easy to waste a lot of time on digital marketing with no real return on the investment, but that is not a reason to shy away from it altogether. Whether you are trying to establish your brand, attract inquiries, or boost profits, you need to maximize your online visibility. This guide outlines effective marketing activities you can adopt to ensure you stand out from the crowd in a digital marketplace and attract the perfect customers.

Write a blog for your website

One of the best ways to increase your online visibility is to ensure your website has a blog. The blog is your space to show existing and potential customers your expertise, experience, skills, personality, and value. Your blog posts should be unique, helpful, informative, and/or entertaining. Every blog post you create is an exclusive page which adds to your website’s presence on the internet and increases the likelihood that you will rank for keywords relevant to your business.

Blogs should be posted regularly but avoid posting content for the sake of keeping to a schedule if you have nothing new or useful to add. All the content should be of high quality, even if that means you only publish once a month. If you are concerned that your writing skills are not up to scratch, consider hiring a freelance writer to create content for your blog, which you can check for accuracy afterward.

Share and curate relevant content

You can also share content which other businesses or individuals have published, (as long as you acknowledge your source) you could add you own points of view or commentary to add value, or simply direct your followers or visitors to useful content elsewhere on the internet. If you find helpful content that is relevant to your business, try commenting, and starting a conversation. By sharing useful content, you are not only increasing your visibility but also showing yourself as an expert in your field who is in touch with the industry and customer needs.

Invest in search engine optimization (SEO)

There is no denying that SEO is a complex topic with many digital marketing agencies devoted to the practice. Essentially, it involves applying specific techniques to the design of a website and the creation of content to boost your website in search results. This can include, but is not limited to:

  • Writing high-quality content which is centered on keywords and phrases relevant to the business and searcher intent
  • Using descriptive and unique page titles which include the desired keyword
  • Include keywords in anchor text when linking internally
  • Writing a descriptive alt tag for images using the keyword or phrase
  • Writing a high-quality meta description for each page to encourage searchers to click on your page rather than your competitors.

SEO can be a time-consuming task as the goalposts are constantly being moved in terms of what search engines are prioritizing. This is why so many companies turn to specialist SEO companies such as serendipity-online-marketing.co.uk to stay on top of SEO trends and maximize their visibility.

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Encourage customer reviews

Customer reviews have never been so powerful. Whether the review or comment is left on social media, an official review site, or on your website, positive and negative reviews can make or break a business’ reputation. Unfortunately, most satisfied customers do not go out of their way to praise a company, but customers with complaints are much more likely to voice them. The more positive customer reviews you can attract, the better for your business, so it is essential to have a strategy for acquiring them. For example, you can ask customers for reviews by email or put a feedback form on your website.

You may get negative reviews, but these are not the end of the world. In fact, if you can respond and try to resolve the issue, it will show that you are committed to excellent customer service standards. Also, a company rarely has an entirely positive set of reviews without customers suspecting that they are fabricated, so some negativity is natural and healthy if you deal with it appropriately.

Embrace social media

It is true that not all social media platforms are right for every business, but rarely, a business does not find at least one to be useful – if used correctly. Social media profiles can appear in search engine results, boosting your visibility, so your profiles must be branded and professionally written. When your social media profiles include links to your website, you are also increasing traffic, which will again boost your rankings. You should be focusing on posting high quality and engaging content that encourages interaction – it is not necessarily about how many likes or followers you have.

Competitive Marketing Strategies of the Digital Era

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Competitive Marketing Strategies|COMPETITIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES OF THE DIGITAL ERAIn the booming era of the digital revolution, technological trends are no surprise to anyone. It continues to thrill audiences with exciting and mind-blowing features. From being able to order food online to footing your utility bills – everything is a few clicks away. Likewise, it has hit the business industry, bringing some tech-savvy innovations, especially for the marketing department.

In today’s tech-savvy world, escaping the advantages of digital marketing is impossible. But do you think running after those old-school strategies are of any good now? Surprisingly, the new decade brings a whole bunch of new competitive marketing strategies. Marketers using black hat SEO practices, deceptive advertising, and content scraping – the time is up!

2020 demands an authentic approach to marketing, and you can make this possible by leveraging the latest tech tools and emerging channels. Experiment with new media formats, take a closer insight into changing purchase patterns, and brace yourself to make some digital noise. Are you wondering how? We are here to help you with the competitive marketing strategies of the digital era. Have a look below.

1. Bank on Video Marketing

We are far past that time when people enjoyed reading long paragraphs of text-based information. These days, most people prefer visuals in the form of images, infographics, and especially videos. Alongside increasing engagement with customers, videos are a great way to put your brand message across.

With increasing popularity, the two enormous marketing giants, Facebook and Instagram, have allocated 44% of their budget to videos. If you haven’t given a thought or you believe it is not your cup of tea, search for digital marketing in Newcastle to help you get started. Since users are obsessed with videos, this trend is unlikely to fade away anytime soon.

2. Build Communities

In the 21st century, social media forums are a lot more than entertainment tools. It has become the ultimate marketing platform where corporations with deep pockets are allocating a hefty budget for social media advertising. On the other hand, the pay to play model is not working for small businesses. Instead of trying to compete, try to innovate better solutions.

Start building communities on social media using the ‘native group’ features. It lets you develop healthy relationships with customers, giving a sense of exclusivity to group members. Utilize this one-on-one level engagement forum to engage and interact with audiences. You can address the audience’s queries, complaints, and regularly host live sessions. You can bring like-minded people together, allowing them to have a dialogue.

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3. Aim for Position ‘Zero’

Have you seen a featured snippet right on the top of the search engine results page – SERP? Marketers call it the position zero as it appears before all other organic listings. Thus, instead of aiming to bag a spot on the first page of SERP, you have to aim for position zero. It significantly boosts your click-through rate – CTR, while helping you become visible to a broad audience. Unsurprisingly, there is plenty of competition out there, but moving ahead can be easier for you.

  • Create content that focuses on problem-solving – what, when, why, who, where, and write headlines accordingly.
  • Focus on creating instructional content ‘how to’ since people find it more appealing.
  • Structure in a list format to promote understandability.
  • Answer questions through your content.
  • With the rise of voice search, create conversational content around simple things.

4. Focus on All Stages of the Funnel

Sometimes, businesses make their way through the top results of SERP but encounter high bounce rates and low session duration. Unfortunately, this happens because of expectation mismatch, meaning you are targeting the wrong audience. The user lands on the website with an intention, but your content doesn’t meet their expectations. That happens when you spend days creating the top-of-the-funnel content but pay no attention to the bottom or middle content.

Diversify your content by bringing engaging topics and different formats. Create infographics, podcasts, along with text, to improve the versatility of your content marketing initiatives. Likewise, focus on addressing queries that are not on the top-of-the-funnel. Diversity and in-depth content allow you to convert visitors into prospects and then customers.

5. Micro-Influencer Marketing

Previously, we witnessed a rise in celebrity marketing, but in 2020, the wave is ebbing down. Customers now prefer trust and expertise over the clout, making brands realize that it is a wise choice to invest in micro-influencers. Therefore, they are no longer running after celebrities but look for someone they can relate to personally.

Micro-influencers act like role models for many people and have a potential reach of 10,000 to 100,000 followers. Pick an influencer of your niche – for instance, if you have an apparel brand, look for influencers who follow fashion. They will expose your brand to the right target audience without costing you an arm, as their charges are far below what celebrities charge.

6. Inspect Programmatic Audio

With the rise of new marketing tactics like podcasts and audio streaming apps – marketers have more avenues to connect with their audience. Are you wondering what programmatic audio is? It is not as complicated as it might sounds. It lets users place ads in the audio content – podcasts automatically, meaning you can advertise through audio streaming programs.

Explore ad formats such as ad pods or companions to get an insight into the benefits they are offering. Besides these formats, even Google, Soundcloud offers programmatic audio advertising features. Thus, give your social media followers a break from routine content and tempt them towards audio streaming platforms, helping you gain an edge.

7. Invest in Artificial Intelligence

Although digital assistants and chatbots are nothing new, still many brands are missing out on them. These tech-savvy tools are capable of delivering content and helping users with their purchases. They provide 24/7 customer support, dealing with customer queries around the clock without any coffee or tea breaks.

Likewise, digital assistants are smart enough to understand user needs, helping customers book tickets, and make reservations. With the increasing trend of voice search, marketers must leverage conversational artificial intelligence tactics, letting people talk to them. Moreover, artificial intelligence systems come in different variations and pretty affordable price, leaving you with no excuse to miss out on it.

Final Thoughts

In the changing dynamics of the digital era, there is so much you can do with marketing strategies. Despite the competition getting intense, technology continues to bring new tools and tactics to keep the users hooked. Hence, don’t be afraid to try new marketing techniques because you never know what works for your brand and always keep up with the competitive strategies.

How to Use Website Design to Drive Digital Marketing

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Website Design|How to Use Website Design to Drive Digital MarketingWhile the majority of business owners are aware of the importance of digital marketing, many lack the technical know-how to fully comprehend the extent to which a successful digital marketing strategy relies upon website design. A well-designed website is one that can be trusted, not just by customers, but by search engines too. Without this trust and navigability, the potential of any digital marketing campaign will be severely limited.

Why Web Design and Digital Marketing are Inextricably Linked

There seems to be an obvious answer to this question: customers won’t want to spend time on a poorly designed site. While this is true, there is much more to it. Awareness of the extent to which a website affects marketing comes from focusing on how a customer arrives at the site. Of course, a website design must facilitate an enjoyable customer experience, but in order for this to happen a website must be accessible, otherwise, all efforts are futile.

While there are some tweaks that can be performed in-house, consulting a website design company that specializes in marketing, such as The Gist, is the best way to ensure a site is fully optimized and complements your wider marketing strategy. Optimized design has a big impact on the website’s potential search engine rankings. The list below outlines some areas of focus.

Loading Speeds

Search engines are businesses looking to provide the best product to their users. This is particularly apparent when considering loading speeds. Take Google as an example: their research has shown that the average user expects a site to load in less than three seconds… otherwise they consider leaving.

Google has repeatedly stated the importance of loading speeds for high search engine rankings and they are set to continue prioritizing websites that have fast loading speeds. A good agency will know how to compress code, use the right images and make little tweaks to boost speed and retain users.

Navigation

A study from the Stanford Technology Lab found 46.1% of participants judged a website’s credibility on factors such as visual design, layout, typography, font size, and color schemes. While the overall aesthetic of a website is very important, there is one particular aspect that is necessary to achieve a high search engine ranking: navigation.

Navigation links inform search engine crawlers which pages are the site’s most important and provide them with an easy way to access these pages. There are many different navigation tools available: drop-down menus, double navigation bars, and single navigation bars being the most common. Having descriptive titles a good robots.txt and a site navigation map will make a site more crawlable.

Mobile Compatibility

In the first quarter of 2020, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 52% of global website traffic, making mobile users an important market to cater to. Specifically tailoring a website for mobile devices can include cutting down long bodies of texts, simplifying the navigation system and reducing the size of images and videos to improve loading speeds.

Crawlability

Websites must have the human experience at the forefront; however, this needs to be carefully balanced with crawlability. Search Engines use bots to crawl websites as well as download and index information to determine if the site can be trusted and if they should recommend that site to their viewers. If a website’s architecture cannot be processed by the bot’s algorithm, then they will be automatically classified as suspicious and may be penalized.

3 Top Tips for Building Your Business’ Online Brand

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Online Brand|3 Top Tips for Building Your Business’ Online BrandDo you want your business to become instantly recognizable in the eyes of both your target consumer base and the wider audience? If so, it’s absolutely imperative that you make a conscious effort to build your business’ online brand. The sooner you perform this all-important task, the sooner your company will become an easily identifiable figure in its industry.

To find out about three top tips for building your business’ online brand, be sure to read on.

Write a powerful mission statement

If you want to build a brand that is capable of resonating with your target audience for years to come, you must have a powerful mission statement at hand right from the off. This will provide your brand with the strong foundations it needs to be able to stand the test of time going forward.

When writing out your brand mission statement, be sure to put the following advice into practice:

  • Keep the statement short and concise
  • Think about the future and your long-term goals
  • Don’t make any false promises
  • Find out what other people associated with your business think about your statement before you go ahead and publish it
  • Never be afraid to rewrite or make changes to your statement as time goes on

Choose a tone of voice

The tone of voice that you use whenever you post new content to the web will make or break your ability to build an effective online brand for your business. You need to choose your tone carefully, as one wrong move in this instance could result in you alleviating a portion of your target consumer base. If that were to happen, your reputation as an inclusive business would take a hit and, ultimately, your sales turnover would be negatively affected.

To ensure that your tone of voice hits the mark right from the off, you must do the following:

  • Get to know the wants, needs, and expectations of your target audience
  • Identify and/or define your business’ core values
  • Know when to be formal, when to be serious, and when to be matter-of-fact

Harness the power of social media

Social media is one of the best platforms that you can use in your bid to build your business’ online brand. Harnessing the power of sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will allow you to communicate your brand directly to your target audience members, which in turn will help you to avoid instances of miscommunication and misunderstandings.

If you want your maiden voyage into the world of social media advertising to prove successful, you shouldn’t attempt to go it alone. With a Facebook advertising agency such as MV3 Marketing by your side, you will stand a much better chance of running a social media branding campaign that actually resonates with your target audience.

If you’re determined to take your business right to the very pinnacle of its industry, you’re going to have to build a strong and recognizable brand for it sooner rather than later. When you decide to take on this all-important challenge, be sure to remember all of the advice and information laid out above.

B2B Lead Generation Strategies For SaaS Companies

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SaaS Lead Generation|B2B Lead Generation Strategies For SaaS CompaniesSaaS lead generation in a B2B environment can be quite challenging, and SaaS marketing is famous for being very data-driven with extremely little margin of error. Meaning, we also can’t rely on our competitors making mistakes to find new opportunities.

In this guide, we will discuss some of the most effective B2B lead generation strategies for SaaS companies, starting with the first one.

1. A Performing Website

In B2B marketing, your website is a very important marketing asset more than in a B2C environment. A website is perceived as more ‘professional’ compared to social media profiles, and most B2B buyers today expect a professional-looking and performing vendor’s website.

So, how can we determine whether a website is ‘proper’? There are three main factors:

  1. Great content both in quality and quantity
  2. Proper user experience, technical-wise
  3. Aesthetically-pleasing according to today’s standards

We’ll cover more about content in its own section below, but your website would need to at least achieve the following:

  • Mobile-friendly: there are two main reasons for this. First, Google and the other search engines now prioritize mobile-friendly/mobile-responsive websites on their SERP rankings. Second, is that simply a majority (over 60%) of users, including B2B buyers, are using mobile devices to access your website. The latest data has shown that 80% of B2B buyers are using mobile devices at work.
  • Fast loading speed: close to half of the users will bounce from a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load (on a standard 4G connection).
  • Security: how you convey to visitors that your site is completely safe is very important, especially if you also sell your products on your website. At the very least, make sure your site uses an SSL certificate (HTTPS instead of HTTP).
  • Easy to navigate: your website should be an all-in-one resource for your users. Make sure it’s very easy to find your contact information (make it as obvious as possible). Also, include effective clear-to-action with proper placements. Don’t forget to also display clients’ testimonies, client’s logos, awards/accolades, and affiliations properly. They are really important for B2B websites.
  • Aesthetically pleasing: yes, we do judge our books from their covers. Close to 40% of B2B buyers admitted to leaving a website due to poor design and/or navigation. It’s especially important to be clear about what your company is, what you do, and what you sell.

In short, make sure your website is performing well in both aesthetics and technical performance. Even just one bad experience on a website can make most users less likely to revisit this site.

2. Effective B2B Content Marketing

Content marketing is obviously very important nowadays both in B2C and B2B marketing, and today content can come in many different forms and mediums from blog posts, social media posts, YouTube videos, live streaming videos, podcasts, and more.

Content marketing is very important because as we have discussed, more and more buyers are relying on online content to make their purchase decisions. 91% of B2B marketers are doing content marketing, and close to 80% of B2B buyers have admitted that content quality significantly influences their buying decisions.

So, how should B2B businesses approach their content marketing? Which types of content should they develop?

There are no one-size-fits-all answers for these questions, and ultimately how you should approach your content would depend on your target audience’s behaviors and preferences. Here are some of the content forms you can consider:

  • Blog posts:

Blog posts, articles, and other similar forms of textual content are very useful in the awareness building/demand generation stage.

The idea here is to provide content that tackles your target audience’s needs and problems, which should be related to the problems your product or service solves. Your content should show customers that you understand their needs and pain points and that your brand can be a potential solution for this problem.

Your blog shouldn’t only focus on promoting your product or service but to provide your readers with actionable, informative tips.

  • Social media posts:

Social media is where our audience is nowadays (yes, even B2B audience), and it would only make sense that we should have powerful, engaging content on social media platforms. We will discuss this more on the social media marketing section further below.

  • Video content and live streaming

We all know how big video marketing is nowadays, and it is also one of the most important formats in influencer marketing nowadays. Videos—in a B2B environment—allow businesses to offer in-depth tutorials and demos of your products, and are also a great medium to promote a product launch.

Live streams are also a very effective medium to engage your audience. You can, for example, create a behind-the-scenes content about your team or your product/service.

  • Podcasts

Podcasts are getting bigger in recent years, and can be a very effective medium to establish your credibility/thought leadership in your niche.

The key takeaway is to define your target audience, understand their behavior, pain points, and needs, and produce content to cater to these needs.

3. Social Media Marketing

As discussed, social media is an effective platform to engage your audience, since it’s simply where the audiences are.

We can divide social media marketing into two different types: organic and paid. Organic effort is building your own followers and posting your own social media content. Paid efforts, on the other hand, are about using the platform’s paid options (advertising, LinkedIn’s Sponsored Post, etc. ) to reach more audience.

The key here is finding the balance between both. Organic social media efforts are obviously more affordable and can be totally free, but it would take more time to build your audience. Paid efforts, on the other hand, would save time, but can be very expensive.

So, it is actually the case of finding the balance between time and cost.

4. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing used to be a channel that is almost exclusively B2C. However, in the past couple of years or so, many B2B businesses now adopt influencer marketing in their strategies with varying successes.

Even in the B2B environment, people are more likely to purchase products based on the recommendations of their peers, and this is why when a trusted influencer in the niche promotes your product/service, it can be very effective.

Influencers in the B2B influencer marketing offer:

  • Their authority and followers. They can help you promote your existing content and help make your brand more visible to their followers.
  • A different point of view than your brands’ which can help you in targeting your audience as well as reaching a new audience.
  • Authentic professional credibility that can otherwise take you years to build. This can help provide answers to the pain points of your target audience.

End Words

Although B2B lead generation is difficult, that’s not saying it’s an impossible game. With the right SaaS lead generation strategy, we can generate more leads and open up tons of new opportunities. It’s very important to remember that in B2B lead generation, lead quality is often more valuable than quantity, and we should always aim in getting higher-quality leads with each effort.


About the Author

Mike Khorev is an SEO consultant who helps SaaS, software, IT, technology, B2B and startup companies generate more sales and grow revenue online. He offers expert advice on marketing your company the right way through performance-based SEO, inbound marketing, conversion rate optimization, search engine marketing and many other online practices