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 | 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 | 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!
by hijinxmarketing | Marketing Best Practices
It’s a new year and for many people that means a fresh start. That could mean resolving to lose weight (we’ve all been there, right?) or stopping a bad habit. That is great for individuals, but what about for your business? There is no better time to plan a fresh start that could help you grow your business in 2017 and beyond. But for many small business owners, they don’t think about the new year as a fresh business start.
What is your excuse for not making this time a fresh start for your business?
Don’t have the time?
Make time before it is too late.
Don’t know how to make the change?
Find someone who does know how.
Afraid to fail?
You can’t succeed if you don’t try.
Fear change?
Progress does not happen without change.
Don’t have the resources?
Get creative…where there is a will, there is a way!
Don’t let excuses get in the way of a successful 2017.
by hijinxmarketing | Marketing Best Practices
There has been a major shift in marketing in the last several years from ‘selling’ to ‘telling’. Consumers have become more savvy and are no longer keen to traditional marketing tactics. One of the ways to reach your customers is to be real…authentic. How do you do it?
- Leave your body. Figuratively, at least. You are the subject matter expert for your business, but that is not always a good thing when you are trying to create content for non-subject matter experts. You need to avoid using technical or industry jargon. If you need to, have someone that you trust who does not work in your industry read your content before you post it.
- Don’t stock up. When creating visuals, try to use ‘real’ photography instead of stock images. If you are a restaurant, hire a photographer to take some nice photos of your food. If you have a storefront, use photos from your actual store of your actual products. Use real people in your photos (make sure to get consent). Take photos and videos of your staff enjoying themselves or talking about your business or products.
- Don’t do it. Let me clarify…don’t do it yourself. Give creative license to your business’ advocates, your loyal employees and customers. That is the most authentic content you can find. It gives them a sense of ownership and a bit of the spotlight.
- Tell a story. People do not want to be sold to. They want to be given all of the information they need to make a decision on their timeline in their own way. Weave your story and sprinkle in information about your product or service. People respond better if they hear a story rather than a sales pitch.
- Be human. This is probably the hardest thing for business owners and marketers to do (ironically!). Write like a person, not like a business. It brings a sense of personal touch to your content.
If you are going to change to a more authentic approach, do it slowly so you don’t throw your followers for a loop. Find the ‘voice’ that works best for your business by testing different phrases, words and imagery.
by hijinxmarketing | Marketing Best Practices
As 2015 comes to a close, there are several lessons that can be learned from large companies who stumbled in their marketing.
- Don’t market your restaurant as being healthy, then ignore food safety. Chipotle learned this lesson the hard way. After claiming early in the year that they were going ‘all natural’ and eliminating GMOs, they suffered from many outbreaks of E coli which sickened over 200 people. Oh, and try not to make your main food items a whopping 1,000 calories. Does not sound very healthy.
- Vet your social media campaign before execution. The internet has an uncanny ability to take any mundane attempt at promotion and turn it against a company. There were many cases of this happening in 2015, including Bud Light’s ‘Up for Whatever’ and #AskSeaWorld.
- Don’t use war to glorify your widget. UnderArmour, in a case of what can only be explained as ‘our Marketing Director was on vacation’, used an icon image from World War II and inserted a basketball theme. Just don’t. Please.
- Manage your promotional links. This includes QR codes and short URLs. When you are done with a campaign, you can’t let these lapse, as Heinz Ketchup learned when a QR code on one of their bottles directed users to a porn site.
- Don’t direct customers to commit a crime. This should be self explanatory. But apparently nobody told Bloomingdale’s. They created an ad that told people to spike their date’s drink when they were not looking.
When all else fails, hire an expert to help. And have a successful 2016!
