by hijinxmarketing | Marketing Best Practices
As a small business owner, SEO may not be a term that you are completely familiar with. You may have heard it mentioned by your web developer or read about it in conversations about marketing. But what is it and how can you get better at it?
In the most basic terms, SEO is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine.
There are people who make their entire living helping businesses with their SEO. But there are several things that you can do yourself to help increase your ranking.
- Create good content. One of the most important things that search engines look for is the quality of the content on a website. This starts with knowing what your audience really wants (not what YOU want to tell them!). Content that appears to be spam or only existing to to sell products does not sit well with search engines. Your content needs to more relevant to your audience than your competitors in order to rank higher in search results.
- Update the content often. Stale information is not quality information. According to research, websites that created 16 or more blog posts per month saw more than 3.5 times more traffic than those that only posted 0 – 4 times. Have a strong content marketing strategy can help you plan your content around upcoming events, holidays and other dates that are important to your business.
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly. In 2016, people worldwide started using mobile devices to access websites more than they used desktop devices. When your audience does visit your website on their mobile device, if they cannot find what they are looking for or the navigation is not clear they will quickly leave and find a site that better suits their needs. This is why Google ranks mobile-friendly websites higher than those that are not. Google even has a tool that allows you to test your website to see how it will perform across devices.
There are a lot of other things that can affect your search ranking, but these few actions will put you on the right path. If you need help, consult an expert. SEO can be complicated depending on the size of your business and the industry that you participate in. There are over 1 billion websites and search engines try to surface the sites that will be the most useful for people. Make your site one of them!
by hijinxmarketing | Social Media
Using social media is easy, right? Just set up a Facebook page or Twitter account and start posting. Sounds easy. Unfortunately, for businesses, it is not.
“Doing” social media is one thing. Being good at social media is another. Consider this: on most days there are more than 1,000 job postings on monster.com with ‘social media’ in the title. That means that companies are willing to pay for 
people who specialize in how to help them reach their customers on social channels. People who know how to craft a post so that it gets the most likes, shares and clicks. People who know whether your video post should go on Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat.
Aside from developing a strong strategy and creating content, you also need to monitor your page for comments, messages, tags and other notifications. That can be a lot of work if you have a large following. Certainly not something that a small business owner should be spending their precious time doing themselves.
Lastly, social media is not really a free marketing channel anymore. Do you know what the best advertising structure is to reach your target audience? How much money should you spend? Should you boost posts or boost your page? Or both?
This post just touches the tip of the iceberg of the considerations when you embark on social media. Needless to say, feeding the beast may be the least of your challenges if you really want to be GOOD at social media and use it as a tool to increase customer loyalty or sales. You wouldn’t try to fix your furnace yourself if you weren’t trained to do so. So why are you still trying to do social media by yourself?
by hijinxmarketing | Content Marketing, Marketing Best Practices
Whether you have a large marketing team and create a lot of content or a single person who does all of the work and has to prioritize content creation, there are several ways that you can use all of that great content in new ways. Be sure that the content you choose to repurpose is evergreen (timeless) and was well-received the first time your shared it.
- Break it up. Do you have white papers or long form presentations that can be broken up to social media size nuggets? People often have short attention spans on social media and breaking up your larger content can be an easy way to create a lot of different social media posts.
- Visualize differently. There are so many different ways to visualize content. Infographics, text blocks, video, GIFs, lists and more. Find the right ways to show your content (not all content works with all visual styles), pair with your ‘break it up’ method and you have a whole week or month’s worth of content.
- Change the channel. Have you traditionally posted on Facebook and Twitter? How about trying a podcast? Or start a blog. Take some of that great content that you have created in the past and post it in a place or in a way that people may not have seen before.
- Bundle it. Just like you can take long form content and break it up, you can take short form content and bundle it to create a new experience for your followers. Create a whitepaper from a group of social media posts that have a similar theme. (And don’t forget to collect user data before letting them download your paper!)
- Spread the love. Stretch the life of your content by asking your employees or loyal customers to share on their personal social media accounts. Sometimes you just need to push your posts directly to people who would be willing to share it. You can’t rely on them seeing it natively on social media.
No matter how you use your content remember to never use it only once!
by hijinxmarketing | Audience, Brand
One of the best ways to ensure customer loyalty and gain new customers is to ‘do unto others.’ People respect companies that support their local communities. It shows that an organization, big or small, is comprised of people that have a vested interest in the areas where they do business – and the people who live in those areas.
Whether you are helping clean up a park, working at a local food bank, or reading to school children, doing your part to help the people who support your business not only helps them, it helps you as well.
According to a study by Harvard Law School, companies who engage in corporate social responsibility can be seen as providing value to customers on a number of different levels. This increase value proposition leads to more loyal customers. Even customers who are willing to evangelize on a company’s behalf.
Don’t know where to start? Small local business are in a unique position to have a positive impact on their communities.
- Partner with local schools. Schools are always in need, whether it be for supplies or your time. Does your business sell something that a local school could use? Could they use volunteers to help with activities like reading to students or organizing events? Do your employees have expertise in a particular area that would be interesting or useful to students?
- Partner with community organizations. Whether it is a food bank or a beautification project, organizations are often made up of volunteers and are often in need of help. They also often need money. You could offer to underwrite or host a fundraising event.
- Sponsor a local team. Find a local youth sports team that is in need of a sponsor. By providing funding to these teams, the burden is lifted from parents who often have to pay for things like uniforms, snacks and travel. (And those parents will thank you.)
- Organize a drive. Partner with a local organization who is in need of items (clothes, food, supplies) and have a competition among your employees to see who can bring in the most items.
By participating in community outreach activities and allowing your employees the time to volunteer, you also have the added benefit of more engaged and loyal employees. Many companies have a ‘Day of Caring’ in which they either plan an entire day of community activities or allow their employees a day to participate in their favorite community outreach.
Do you have a unique community outreach program? Share with us in the comments or on social media.
by hijinxmarketing | Brand, Marketing Best Practices, Strategy
When it comes to customer loyalty programs, there are two schools of thought. The first is that providing enticements to customers should not be necessary and is a cost without great reward for the company. The second is that offering rewards to your customers is just good business and inspires, well….loyalty.
Over the past few years, rewards program companies have cropped up. Some are better than others. Some understand the nature of customer loyalty and some are just going through the motions. If you will be looking to start a customer loyalty, be sure to do your research before choosing a vendor. Once you start, you are stuck with what you purchased unless you want to give your customers whiplash and degrade customer loyalty.
So should you employ this type of customer engagement? That depends. You first need to ask yourself some questions:
- Are you customers repeat customers? If you sell something that people don’t buy very often, having a customer loyalty program probably won’t change that.
- What reward could you offer that will get your customers to come back? If you own a restaurant with a very high price point, getting a $5 credit after 5 visits is not most likely going to be a reason to come back.
- Can you use a loyalty program to encourage customer referrals? These types of programs aren’t just to bring current customers back, but can be used to garner new customers as well.
Do you have a customer loyalty program? How is it going? Have you had growing pains? Let us know about in the comments or on social media!
