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Brick and mortar businesses that rely on traditional advertising methods are beginning to realize that digital marketing is needed in today’s day and age especially as COVID began to hit.
Are you one of these businesses? Maybe you are wondering what you can do to meet today’s digital marketing needs to join the online wave that is needed to keep your business competitive with your competition? Are you even aware of this happening? In this blog, I will address some tips for you to get caught up to the digital marketing needs of today fairly quickly.
1. Business Website
Do you have a website for your business? This to me is the first step needed as possible to begin to have the search engines know who you are and begin to rank you. The earlier the Google spiders can crawl your site the better off your business will be in the long run in the eyes of Google. Your website should be desktop and especially mobile-friendly, as mobile is becoming the front runner with everyone being on their phones all day long.
Your website is where your contact info, about us, storyline, products, and information are needed. This allows the customer to make their purchasing decision quickly. Please keep in mind that the less work a site visitor must do. Typically the better they are at converting to a purchasing customer. Make the website desktop and mobile-friendly. Make the website desktop and mobile-friendly.
When a user must figure out how to find a product and are unable to, they will leave your site sooner than they got there. You want to keep your bounce rate low and keep the visitors on the site if possible. This will allow the customer to continue their potential purchase of goods or services. Doing this on your website will most certainly help you satisfy today’s digital marketing needs.
2. Social Media
Social media today is almost more relevant than a website but that is not the case just yet. Websites and social media complement each other. There are multiple different social media platforms to choose from such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Waze, Snap Chat, Tik Tok, and more. Each platform has its own identity and purpose for use. The fun part is figuring each one and what they are used for to relay the right message to current customers and potential future customers.
Engagement, brand recognition, and your voice need to come through in social media. [bctt tweet=”Stay true, real, and honest because social media doesn’t mess around. Your followers will turn on you quickly if they realize you are using gimmicks” username=”ThatCompanycom”]
Utilize social media to have the potential customer message you, call you, or book an appointment. You can use these social media platforms to run paid advertising such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.
Social media can be difficult. If you find yourself needing help with social media, you should consider using our white label social media management services. We are sure that we can do great work with you and make sure you utilize all channels available to you.
3. Google Ads
One of the quickest ways to get in front of the right customer who is searching for your service or product is by running a Google Ads campaign. Depending on the type of business you run, there are multiple types of campaigns to run. The first main two types of campaigns that are run for a new Google Ads account are branding and a competitor campaign.
Branding campaigns let you bid on your brand and claim ownership in the bidding auctions with other bidders who are bidding against your brand. Your brand is yours and you will receive cheaper costs per click because you are the actual business/brand. We always recommend running a branding campaign, so you don’t have competitors taking potential future sales away from you.
A competitor campaign helps you garner more traffic than the competition might be getting. Your ads will begin to show when they search a competitor’s name and give you a chance to grab that potential buyer’s attention to another product. Another tip to keep in mind is to pay attention to the search terms and negative keywords.
Negative keywords will help keep unwanted traffic away and only bring in the type of searches you are looking for regarding your business. No one wants to waste money and adding negative keywords helps you accomplish this quicker.
If you’re interested in learning more about Google ads, you should read our article about why you shouldn’t automate your google ads PPC campaigns. This will give you an in-depth look into taking control of your google ads and will be sure to be of use to your business.
4. Active Phone # on the website with call tracking
Today most online searches are done on a desktop computer, mobile phones, tablets, and voice to search like Alexa/Google/Siri. Having an active phone number on your website is a great way to meet today’s digital marketing needs. The phone number on your website should be clickable so that when a potential customer clicks it on their mobile phone it automatically dials out through the phone. By having the phone number on a desktop computer clickable with the href tag then it will allow for the phone number to be able to dial out.
Call tracking is useful, so you know how long people are on the phone, when they call you, where they are calling you from, and if the calls went well or not. One general customer service tip to pass along is to make sure that when someone calls your business that the gatekeeper or receptionist should answer between 2-3 rings. Anything above that the customer service quality begins to go down and begins the process of losing potential sales.
Another tip is to respond to any voice mails or phone calls as soon as possible so the potential client/customer doesn’t feel ignored. Perception is a reality so give them the best perception by staying on top of customer service.
5. Sell products and services online as an e-commerce store
If you sell products in your store, then you are going to want to sell products online on your e-store. Two platforms come to mind: Shopify and Big Commerce. These two platforms come across our desks most of the time. In my experience in PPC, it makes things easier to be able to add conversion tracking or code to an e-store on these platforms.
They also have good technical support in place to help when something doesn’t make sense, or you cannot get something to work. When you run an e-commerce store then you can run Google Shopping ads. Just a heads up, Google Shopping requires a product feed and Google Merchant Center to get things rolling.
6. Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is good for local searches for businesses. When you open a GMB account update all your business info and hours so that customers who search for you have the same experience online as they would pulling up to the door to read your hours of operation. You want these experiences to be the same. GMB works with Google Ads and you can ask your PPC Consultant about that next time you speak with them at That! Company. Posting pictures and post updates are good to keep your GMB relevant in the local area searches.
These are just a few examples to help get you up to date with the digital marketing needs of today with your brick-and-mortar store. Figuring out which social media platform or digital marketing tool is best is where we come into play. Stop wasting time trying to figure it out and let us help you get up to speed faster.
There is no need for you to go through growing pains because we have gone through a lot of them. Consider using our white label services so you can meet today’s digital marketing needs. I hope these tips and I hope that we can help you when the time is right. That time is now, so don’t hesitate to contact us. Good luck navigating the digital world!
Author: Joseph S.
