It’s Not All About SEO

In this series, we’ve gone through the steps of how you can lay a rock-solid foundation for your online presence and future SEO efforts. We began by researching and understanding your market and your positioning in it. Then we talked about how you can optimize your website for search engines so people searching your most important terms are more likely to find you. Finally we talked about producing content and getting exposure for it so that your customers come to you.

If you followed through on what we talked about, you’re well on your way to establishing a strong, SEO-optimized web presence. We’d be lying though if we told you that was all you needed to do. SEO is only one part of a broader online marketing strategy. Getting visitors to your website is only the first step, now you have to nurture them, convert them, and turn them into lifetime customers. Embracing a content marketing strategy is a huge first step, but you’re leaving a lot on the table by not exploiting the other options it leaves you. Let’s take a look at some of the ways to do that

Email Marketing

Email is an often overlooked, but invaluable part of any online marketing campaign. A study from 2011 showed that the email marketing can boost revenue as much as 50% in a single year. Email is so powerful because it lets you get access to a prized possession, the inbox. Unlike having vistors come to your site, being able to deliver your content to their inbox puts you ahead of your competitors.You can see a 50% boost in revenue with smart email marketing.

Email can play a role in many parts of the sales cycle. It can be effective for lead generation by using an email series to educate potential customers and build authority and trust. (If you received a link to this post via email, guess what? That’s exactly what’s going on right now ;).)

Email also works as a way to remind customers that are back in the buying cycle. That means if you’re normal sales cycle is 3-4 years, you can remind customers who bought from your 3-4 years ago that it might be time to look at buying again.

Use targeted, smart social media marketing to help boost organic search traffic.Social Media Marketing

Social media Marketing is similar to email marketing in that it’s useful throughout the sales cycle. If you’re creating and publishing useful content like we discussed, social media is a great way to get that content out in front of potential customers. It’s also a great way to stay in touch with current customers and turn them into repeat buyers.

Recent changes in the search engine algorithms also suggest that social signals such as likes, +1’s, and re-tweets will play an increasingly important role in organic search. If you’re already producing content, social media is a no-brainer way to increase your reach onto new platforms and in to new audiences.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization may be one of the most important parts of  online marketing.

Conversion Rate Optimization is an often overlooked aspect of online marketing, but may be the most powerful. One of the great advantages of marketing online is the measurability of it and companies that don’t drill down into the data lose that leverage.

Conversion Rate Optimization begins by identifying your sales funnel and doing a thorough audit to see at what stages improvement can be made. It doesn’t help you to go spend a fortune on SEO if you aren’t converting all those new visitors to your site.

Drilling down into analytics data, conducting A/B tests, and making sure your site design is optimized for what you want visitors to do are all essential.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)Companies who know which keywords to focus on and how to pair PPC campaigns with landing pages can see great success.

Pay-per-click advertising isn’t as effective as it was in the past due to increasing competition, but it’s still effective in certain industries when done effectively. That means understanding how to choose the right keywords and pair them with the right landing pages to get the most out of your campaign.

Some of the best returns in PPC advertising are seen by companies that understand the role of different PPC platforms like Google Adwords, Bing, and Facebook Ads and how they integrate into a more comprehensive marketing plan.

Use press releases to gain exposure and boost awareness for your brand and your projects.Press Releases

Press Releases are yet another way to gain exposure for your content and increase the size of your audience. Much like PPC, press releases on their one aren’t very effective, but they can be extremely effective when made a part of a larger strategy.

A good example of this would be revealing the results of an internal or market study. Press Releases need to be newsworthy, so make sure they’re broadly relevant and not just company specific.

Paired with a good content marketing strategy, press release can increase exposure bringing in more links for SEO and more important, more leads.

How We Can Help

Many businesses realize that online marketing and SEO is essential to the future growth of their business, but just don’t know where to get started. We created this email series with the hope that we could help business get their online marketing campaigns started the right way.

Our business is helping your business achieve it’s full potential. If you’re interested in talking to us more about how we can help you get started or gear up your online marketing, please contact us.