Lucrative Online Marketing

“The problem in today’s society is that we don’t share a common baseline of facts. You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.” ~ Former US President, Barrak Hussein Obama.

Every industry has its rules, its facts and its myths. In the online marketing industry, it is easy to confuse fact and myth. It is not uncommon to have a client who believes that their website is already topping the ranks or that a particular approach would work for him/her simply because it worked for a friend.

Running a quick Google search of your business while you are still logged into your Google account will give you a biased result as Google tracks you and shows sites you go to often. A good way to check your rankings is to get a website audit and check your product and service keyword rankings. Checking the analytics data will give you information on the different search variations used to find your site. Ongoing if you receive a keyword ranking report against competitors website you will see fluctuation and catch any keywords dropping in rankings early.

It is important to understand that in digital marketing, different niches will need different approaches. An end user looking to spend 20 dollars on a cheap product online is different to one needing new building interior costing millions. Every platform works it more the way you are marketing that isn’t working.

Some of the common myths (arguments) in Digital Marketing are:

• Websites will be obsolete and it’s all going social.
• Facebook messenger is better than email and growing. In some ways, this is true as Messanger has a better open rate.
• We only need a Facebook page or Facebook doesn’t work for us.
• We only need Instagram or my Instagram has loads of likes but no enquiries.
• I don’t want a reviewing system, someone might post something bad.
• Organic search results are not as good as social media.
• Search engine marketing costs way to much.
• Social media is losing credibility.
• Facebook is now for old people (40+).
• I’m sick of wasting my time on Facebook.
• Why should I pay staff to keep posting when I get nothing in return.
• PPC gets the best clients who are ready to buy.
• Remarketing is everything.
• I post videos weekly and have heaps of views, it’s all I need.
• Google business pages are a waste of time.
• We don’t bother with directory listings.
• Content is a waste of time and I don’t need it on my websites home page either as we have a load or nice graphics.
• Lead nurturing email campaigns don’t work.
• Landing pages are too much work.
• My friend told me to use Pinterest only.
• The list goes on

The baseline facts in digital marketing may be a tad confusing and it is easy to get frustrated because if we were to pose the question, how to market a business to a specific niche or industry? We would get different opinions for accountants and lawyers, tradies, restauranteurs and every online marketing company would use a slightly different or totally different approach.

A marketing budget is required to bring in customers, how else can you grow? Referrals are great, existing customers are also great however to find new and ready to buy customers you need to spend money and spend it wisely. The level of competition in your market will determine how much you need to spend.

Check out our post: Digital marketing resources which provides loads of useful and in-depth information to help you form a better opinion and come up with some solid facts. Search engine marketing is a long-term strategy for most of our clients and it works really really well especially with high-end products that require client credibility before they get leads (generally) and when combined with quality website content and landing pages along with targeted ads and remarketing you are onto a winner.

Awesome sales pitch followed by terrible after sale support.

We’ve heard it a hundred times from clients. The IT Company had an awesome sales team, everything seemed perfect but once we were signed up, the support has been terrible and the final result of the website is that it doesn’t get results. We paid thousands for the site and it doesn’t work.

It needs to be clear that development and marketing are two different services. Just because a website looks fancy does not mean it’s going to be found or even get a sale or lead. This often occurs when those involved in the development stage have little or no knowledge of digital marketing. Creative minds struggle with on-page search engine techniques and SEO’s struggle with the wants of graphic designers, programmers and branding companies.

Find the Balance

There needs to be a balance between what looks good and what ranks or converts to a sale. A website loaded with fancy graphics and images will probably load slow (especially on cheaper shared hosting platforms) and achieve low rankings. However, finding that balance will bring in customers. Great imagery and graphics posted onto a blog with new content and shared to Facebook or Instagram then boosted to a target audience will work with testing. Some people get lucky straight away, others it takes careful planning, strategy and time with fantastic offers and deals.

For the best results, you need to build a website with a great looking landing page, blog and a load of regular content. If you do not have time to write the blog posts yourself, you can hire someone or even outsource it. In competitive markets, you will need to have a marketing budget. At a small cost, we can help you come up with a budget scalable with growth.

Finding New Customers

The level of completion will determine how much it will cost for you to get a new customer. We recommend finding keywords for SEO with less competition & targeted audiences on social media so you are not up against the marketing budgets of big companies. You can also compete with some simple strategies that work such as, content marketing for long tail keywords, brand awareness ads on social media that are reasonably cheap to run, then remarketing visitors. By adding regular content to your website blog you start to rank for lots of different keywords, it’s a worthwhile approach as you have new social media posts and you rank for more keywords organically.

Remarketing strategies will bring all your past social media and website visitors back to your landing pages when they are ready to buy. Google Adwords offers a great way to also target your competition site visitors as well and these are generally the perfect audience to run ads.

Website conversion optimisation with quality landing pages

A professional digital marketing agency can help with conversion optimisation. The truth is, every business niche is different and yet, while some platforms might outperform others in some industries, the best option is to run a marketing campaign on all the platforms with a testing budget and landing page optimisation, especially if you want to grow your business and not just maintain it. This will allow you to track your business online and gather facts regarding it. Landing pages that convert are gold so start testing and trying different layouts along with action buttons and offers to entice a sale or enquiry. We recently wrote an article called “Attracting, Converting and Retaining Customers” which has some more information on converting site visitors to a customer.

Below are some of the absolute basics to get you started:

1. Keep an eye on your website reports and analytics to see what platforms are working best and track your competition.
2. Add “how did you hear about us?” on the website content forms so that you can track where the best quality leads are coming from. Then increase or decrease budgets accordingly. Spending $15k on one platform per year for 20 leads at $750 per lead is critical information to understand especially if another is providing 2000 leads for the same money.
3. Website optimisation (speed, hosting etc), content, branding and organic search rankings. These are the basic building blocks of growing your business website. Ensure that your website is secure, has great content, branding and photography. These basics will help your website content to get shared on social media and provide a platform to remarket visitors.
4. Building directory citations, reviews and a well-optimised Google business page which has regular content updates will get you ranking locally in the search results.
5. Google Adwords (PPC). When people are looking to buy a product, they run a quick search on Google. How your business is optimised determines where you show on the index. Also, protect your brand with your own business name ads in Adwords. Competitors can track your website visitors and show ads to them being very relevant. Protect your site visitors with ads of your own.
6. Business name and SEO. A Google business page will have your business name listed in the rankings locally for free.
7. SEO will bring in quality leads from people browsing and ready to buy.
8. Brand awareness ads on social media will definitely help with your business brand name searches as they lead to more organic search results for the business name.
9. Use Facebook messenger, its growing and taking on email as the preferred contact method with fewer bounce rates. Using chat plugins on your website will also improve your conversion rate.
10. A testing budget will help you understand other platforms.
11. A talented graphic designer can make all your ads and posts look more enticing. Spend some money on graphics and professional photography. It works
12. Need more enquiries now or business a little slow. Use Pay Per Click as its the fastest way to bring in business quickly.
13. Boost all your latest offers or deals out to Facebook and Instagram. Uses targeted audiences from your Facebook pixel to remarket past visitors to your website, social media pages, video viewers, email database and more.

Want to be nurtured and made aware of what’s happening in your businesses. At RCS Online, we make sure you have a regular update on facts with reports sent to you weekly, fortnightly and monthly. We make sure you have the facts up front so we can do something early if anything slips or competitors start ramping up.

 Free Download: Our Recommended Online Marketing Strategy Guide.

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