Month: February 2023

Local SEO services can help you smash more of your small business goals using targeted approaches and proven strategies. As this will be your first foray into hiring SEO professionals, what kinds of services does your company need?

Here are indispensable strategies for local SEO campaigns:

• SEO audits
• Competitive analyses
• Site localization
• Keyword research
• Local content
• Google Business profile
• Business listings
• Local link building
• Local citations
• Reviews management
• Reputation management

Ahead, we’ll dive deep into what local business SEO services entail and why your small business needs them.

What Are Local SEO Services?

Local search engine optimization is a specialized form of SEO that utilizes strategies and tactics to reach audiences on a smaller scale. Preferred by startups, local businesses, and small businesses, local SEO helps these companies grow to scale.

According to Internet marketing company On the Map, 93 percent of consumers found local businesses through online searches in the last years.

If you don’t already have a local SEO strategy, your small business or startup can fail to capitalize on the opportunities you need to propel growth.

That’s where digital SEO experts come into play. Like the SEO services applied on a broader scale, local search engine optimization services can create or elevate an existing SEO strategy to achieve your goals. 

What Does a Local SEO Company Do?

As a small business, local business, or startup, you don’t have a lot of capital to go around. You still want to invest in a local SEO strategy, but if you hire an agency, what would they do?

Here’s what the process would entail. You’d meet with the local SEO company to discuss your current SEO challenges and goals.

The agency will plan a custom strategy for you based on what you’re trying to achieve and what kinds of SEO-related measures you’ve already taken.

They can rework existing SEO tactics or help you start completely from scratch. Since they’re experts, the local SEO company understands what it takes for a website to break into the first page of search results and will help you get there.

Along the way, the agency will ask for critical information such as your products and services roster, audience data, email list numbers, social media numbers, and more.

They’ll create a tailored local SEO campaign for your startup. You’re included every step of the way, so you understand what kinds of measures the agency will take and what the results should be.

When the campaign finally goes live, you’ll receive real-time updates from the agency about ongoing progress, what goals they’ve already achieved, and what objectives they expect to meet before the campaign ends.

Why Does My Business Need Local SEO Services?

If your small business or startup doesn’t already use local SEO services, the question becomes – why not?

Local business SEO services can benefit a company of any size in so many ways. Let’s go over the advantages now.

Build a Strong Community

Local SEO is all about developing strong ties with your community. If you wanted to reach a larger audience, you’d just use regular SEO services.

Through proven local SEO measures such as lead generation, local citations, business listings, content marketing, and online reputation management (among others), you can build in your audience the kind of staunch loyalty that leads to years of repeat business.

Increase Visibility

As a small business, it’s so easy to feel like the littlest fish in an overwhelmingly large pond. You post on social media and keep an active blog, but sometimes, it feels like you’re posting into the void.

Rising in the ranks through local SEO services will make you more visible. You’ll become a more viable contender, attract more business, and inspire the competition to change what they’re doing to keep up.

Get More Reviews

According to Exploding Topics, more than 92 percent of consumers agreed that online reviews influenced their purchasing decisions.

If you only have a few sparse reviews on your products or services, local SEO will help you obtain more.

Potential customers will see your reviews and make a confident, clear-cut decision about whether to buy from you.

Spend Less to Advertise

The whole point of advertising is to spread awareness about your small business and its products and services. When you have a healthy SEO standing, you don’t have to funnel nearly as much money into advertising.

Dollars are a precious commodity to small businesses. Every last dollar and cent counts. You likely already have a small advertising budget as it is. Shrinking it even further will help your business manage its finances.

Attract More Website Traffic

Digital marketing company Infront Webworks states that the first result on a page of search engine results attracts 28.5 clicks.

Even being in the second spot reduces your clicks by a significant margin, as you get only 15.7 percent of clicks.

Clicks lead to more website traffic. Once users arrive on your website, you should have a well-optimized design that invites them to explore, learn more about your business, and sign up for your email newsletter.

Boost Your Conversions

Do you have a teeny-tiny conversion rate that you’d love to increase but you don’t know how? Local SEO services can help.

As your site shapes up and begins rising in the ranks, you’ll notice an influx in more than website traffic. You’ll also have readier leads entering the sales funnel who will eventually convert into customers.

The 14 Best Local SEO Services to Boost Your Business

You’ve decided you’re interested in local SEO marketing services, but which services will best drive success for your startup or local business?

Per the intro, here are the 14 most integral parts of an efficient local SEO strategy. The local SEO company you hire can provide any of these services and more!

1. Local SEO Audit

Before suggesting any strategy, the local SEO agency will begin with an audit.

A local SEO audit assesses the state of your website as a whole, reviewing for elements such as the number and viability of backlinks, on-page SEO, keyword research used, site architecture, and the quality of the user experience.

Search engines like Google use these elements to index your site and determine its crawlability.

You’ll likely fail in some areas, especially if you’ve never had a local SEO audit done before.

That’s okay, as you’ll have local SEO services to make your site a more viable tool for ranking well in search engine results. 

2. Competitive Analysis for Local SEO

Although your company exists on a local scale, you still have a fair number of competitors. Do you know who they are and what they’re currently achieving? What about how they rank?

A competitive analysis with local SEO solutions can answer these questions and more.

During an SEO competitive analysis, the local SEO company will review who among your local competitors ranks for the top spots.

More so than just identifying these companies, the agency will delve deeper to understand how your competitors outranked you.

Perhaps they have a mobile-optimized website and you don’t, or they’ve focused on SEO since their inception while you’ve only begun recently prioritizing it.

No matter why the competition outranks you, part of a practical competitive analysis includes a review of how you can outrank the competition.

3. Local Keyword Research

Local SEO marketing services also include assessing the quality of your keyword research, the types of keywords you’re targeting, and how well you’re utilizing keywords in your content.

As a startup or local business trying to reach a nearby audience, you should use local keywords in your content marketing strategy. 

You can’t choose just any random keywords when putting together content or what you write will fall flat. Your audience simply won’t care.

Instead, you need tailored, local keyword research, another service you can rely on a local SEO optimization company to provide.

You’ll learn to find keywords your audience searches for and then slot them into an editorial plan. We’ll get more into editorial planning shortly, so make sure you don’t miss that. 

4. Website Localization

It’s more than just the keywords you use. Your website must also be localized from top to bottom.

If you’re stumped on how to do that, local SEO services can assist. By learning about your target market, the local SEO agency you hire will recommend what culture and language to use.

Cultural elements the agency can roll into your website include mentions of local holidays, local units of measure, and accurate time and date formats.

The agency will also recommend tailoring the language of your website down to regionalism so you connect more successfully with your target audience.

Website localization can build trust and help you strengthen your bond with your local community.

5. Editorial Plan Based on Local SEO Keyword Research

Now that you’ve got a batch of local SEO keywords to start with, let’s talk more about what an editorial plan looks like.

Through a local SEO company, you’ll determine what kind of content you’ll publish to your blog, including post length and frequency. You might end up tweaking these criteria as you get a gauge of what your audience likes.

Once you know, your editorial plan will come together more seamlessly. You’ll perform keyword research using the strategies the local SEO agency imparted to you and publish winning content that engages, educates, and even entertains your audience.

6. Localized Content

Blog content makes for an excellent start to rising in the local SEO ranks, but you need to produce yet more kinds of localized content.

Here’s a list of the content to incorporate into your local SEO strategy:

• Videos: In 2022, 3.37 billion Internet users watch videos, according to marketing company Social Shepherd. Localizing video to your audience means incorporating the localisms and regionalisms in your language.
• Guides: What kinds of guides can your small business produce with a local flair? Whether it’s a guide to the best food and drinks or sightseeing destinations, you’ll have high-value localized content to content.
• eBooks: When a blog post just won’t cover a topic, you can expand upon it in an eBook. Write as locally as you can. 

7. Localized Landing Pages

Every company has landing pages on their websites, but local businesses need landing pages with a local flair.

Since you’re only selling products or services to a specific audience, localizing your landing page shouldn’t prove challenging. You’ll still have local SEO services to ensure you nail the language per the localization tips mentioned above.

8. Google Business Profile: Setup, Optimization, and Update

One of the most important parts of any local SEO campaign is the inclusion of a Google Business profile.

You may have created a Google Business profile when your small business opened its doors. If you didn’t, your local SEO agency will help you put the finishing touches on your profile now.

The agency will also optimize your page, which they can do in a variety of ways:

• Upload your own videos
• Upload high-resolution photos
• Write a company description that engages your audience
• Double-check for accurate information such as hours of operation
• Include your local phone number

9. Business Listings

It would behoove any small business or startup to get on local business listings, but you might have no idea where to start.

Perhaps you’ve appeared on some listings before, but only small ones. You aspire to show up on larger listings.

You can again rely on a local SEO agency to find business listings that you’d benefit from being a part of. Your target audience will peruse these listings, so you can you build awareness by joining business listings and elevate your website traffic and rank.

10. Local Link Building

As an SEO strategy, link-building ranks among the most valuable.

However, building links associated with huge online resources when you’re a small business doesn’t make much sense. You need to downsize with local link building.

Local SEO services include link building. The local SEO company will know precisely how many referring domains you need to impact search engine results and what it takes to build quality local links that search algorithms pay attention to.

The agency can assist you in taking back lost links, obtaining the links your competitors have laid claim to, finding new local link-building opportunities, and adding relevant internal links. 

11. Building Local Citations

Connected to local link-building are local citations. A local citation includes your Name, Address, and Phone Number or NAP data.

You already added this information to your Google Business profile, which will inspire the accuracy of your NAP data that appears on the web.

Any mention of your small business NAP data, either partially or in full, counts as a local citation.

The more local citations you have, the more beneficial for your startup, but building the number of citations isn’t easy.

A local SEO company will find local and industry websites to send your NAP data, including core sites. They’ll also use data aggregators so that your name appears more plentifully on the Internet.

12. Online Reviews Management

We’ve already discussed the value of reviews in influencing a customer or potential customer’s purchasing decisions. Local SEO marketing services can take it one step further with online reviews management.

Online reviews will begin piling up as your small business or startup rises in the SEO ranks. You might find yourself inundated with other tasks and unable to manage, but your local SEO agency can.

Review management does not mean deleting negative reviews and highlighting positive ones. Instead, the agency will monitor who’s posting what on your Google Business profile, social media accounts, and website.

The agency will recommend that you respond to reviews to continue to drive up positive sentiment and smooth over issues before they negatively impact your audience.

13. Online Reputation Management

Going hand-in-hand with online review management is the next in our list of local business SEO services: online reputation management.

Besides NAP data, mentions of your company will go up as your SEO standing does. People will talk about your local business on your website, social media, and review and industry websites.

As your hired local SEO company will track for reviews, they’ll also frequently comb the web to look for mentions of your business.

Based on your perceived reputation, the agency may recommend instituting an SEO or marketing strategy or several to improve your reputation.

14. Social Media Management

The last part of a great local SEO strategy involves social media management.

Think of social media management as online reputation management on a smaller scale. Rather than focusing on what people say about your small business across the Internet, the focus is on social media.

This may sound easy, but it’s anything but! Social media is a vast corner of the Internet, and you don’t even have to actively use every social media platform for people to talk about you on them.

Work with a Local SEO Services Company

Although a local SEO services company specializes in local search engine optimization, that’s far from the only service they offer. You can also entrust them with general SEO services such as analytics, e-commerce SEO, onsite SEO, offsite SEO, and other elements of local SEO.

Conclusion

Local SEO services can elevate your ongoing SEO strategy, incorporating elements that will increase leads, sales, and conversion rates. Mediaboom is a trusted local SEO agency that helps you achieve your goals. Contact us today to learn more!

Most people are familiar with on-page optimization practices, but technical SEO can intimidate some users. Although there can be a bit of a learning curve for some of the backend work that goes into optimizing your webpage, it can be beneficial to understand how it all works and helps.

Technical SEO refers to the optimization of website and server elements for search engine crawling, indexing, and ranking. This includes ensuring proper site structure, page speed, mobile-friendliness, and technical markup, among other factors, to improve website visibility and performance in search engine results pages (SERPs).

If you want to learn more about how to improve your website’s technical SEO, you’re in the right place! We’ll go over how technical SEO factors work, how to run technical SEO audits, and how to effectively implement them into your SEO strategy.

What is technical SEO?

We already mentioned that technical SEO focuses on backend work for search engine optimization.

But what exactly does that mean?

While on-page SEO is important for optimizing content, technical SEO is also crucial. Basic off-page techniques and structure must be in place for content to pass technical checks by site crawlers. Features such as an XML sitemap and breadcrumbs implemented on the backend help Google categorize content and improve its visibility

The importance of technical SEO

Technical SEO is the foundation of website optimization, ensuring that the backend of your website is properly configured for search engine crawling and indexing. This entails optimizing the structure of your site, increasing page speed, guaranteeing mobile-friendliness, and implementing appropriate technical markup, among other variables. These technical adjustments are critical to ranking effectively in search engine results pages (SERPs), and the pages that rank highly are typically those that are well-optimized.

To help website owners boost their search engine visibility, Google offers recommendations and advice on technical SEO. By following these instructions and optimizing your website for technical SEO, you may enhance your search engine rankings and surpass your rivals.

With this article, we will guide you through the technical SEO optimization process, which includes optimizing site structure, improving page speed, and implementing technical markup.

You’ll be on the right track to improving your website’s visibility and search engine rankings.

Technical SEO audit checklist

There are so many factors that go into technical SEO that it can easily get overwhelming. So, this section is devoted to going over each of the technical SEO factors one by one in a straightforward way.

Technical SEO is the foundation of website optimization, ensuring that the backend of your website is properly configured for search engine crawling and indexing. This entails optimizing the structure of your site, increasing page speed, guaranteeing mobile-friendliness, and implementing appropriate technical markup, among other variables. These technical adjustments are critical to ranking effectively in search engine results pages (SERPs), and the pages that rank highly are typically those that are well-optimized.

To help website owners boost their search engine visibility, Google offers recommendations and advice on technical SEO. By following these instructions and optimizing your website for technical SEO, you may enhance your search engine rankings and surpass your rivals. Our manual will guide you through the technical SEO optimization process, which includes optimizing site structure, improving page speed, and implementing technical markup. With this guide, you’ll be on the right track to improving your website’s visibility and search engine rankings.

1. Preparing for the crawl

It’s likely that you’ve seen the term “crawling” come up pretty frequently in SEO spaces. Crawling your site is essential “the start” of the SEO journey. In order for a page to even be indexed on search engines, they must be crawled.

When crawling your site, search engines are looking for these things:

• A sitemap
• Robots.txt
• Robots meta tags
• Canonical tags

2. Indexing your website

Once your web page has been crawled, it will be indexed! However, it can take up to a week for the indexing process to complete, meaning you may not see your new site ranking for a while.

When optimizing a page by updating it, it’s also important to request an index on Google Search Console. Doing this will send a request to Google to prioritize your page getting crawled even sooner.

3. Hreflang tags

In general terms, hreflang is an attribute that will specify the language of your webpage. So, using hreflang tags will be essential if you have content in multiple languages.

However, hreflang tags can also help discern geographical locations that have the same native language. For example, they can help separate pages meant for American-English and United Kingdom English, and so on.

So if you have a target audience in both and want to separate them, it’s good to make separate pages and utilize hreflang tags for them.

4. URL structure

The URL is a factor that has little effect on rankings. However, it’s still important that you are mindful of how your URLs are structured and that you keep track of them.

Generally, a shorter URL makes it easier for search engines and users alike to better understand the page destination at a glance.

However, if you still really want to change the URL, it’s good practice to send an email to the sites that have your link. This is just letting them know the URL has changed and providing them with the updated one to replace it with. A quicker and better solution is to set up a 301 redirect that will immediately redirect any visitors to the new URL.

5. Structured data markup

When SEO refers to structured data markup, they are referencing Schema markup. Schema is a great way to help Google and users alike learn more about what you’re promoting on your page.

With structured data markup, you can indicate tables, lists, recipes, product descriptions, and more. In relevant cases, Google will also display this in the search results (e.g. when Google shows you full recipes in a search query). Although it can seem tricky at first, there are some tools and plugins to help you with writing Schema markup and even automatically embed it on your site.

6. Implementing SSL on your website

SSL or Secure Sockets Layer is a security feature that establishes encrypted links between computer networks. The great news about SSL certificates is that most browsers and web builders will already automatically have this enabled.

However, it’s still a good idea to be mindful of it to make sure your SSL certificate stays active on your site. If your site does not have SSL implemented, it is more likely to get flagged by browsers as an “untrusted site” due to an insecure network.

7. Making sure your site is mobile-friendly tested

In most cases, mobile users will make up the vast majority of internet traffic (and in some cases up to 70%). Not optimizing your website to provide an excellent mobile experience for such a large amount of traffic could hold your site back.

8. Optimizing your page speeds

As we mentioned above, most traffic will be from mobile users. So, it’s important to also understand how fast your page load speeds are for them, too. Having too many visuals and moving parts can bog down load times – especially for mobile users!

Luckily, PageSpeed Insights is a tool that will provide you with plenty of specs and insight when it comes to your web speed. They also even give you the option to run the test for mobile or desktop users, so you can get a clear idea of both!

We’ll go more into using PageSpeed Insights to ensure you’re providing your audience with both a great user experience on mobile and desktop in a later section.

9. Checking for duplicate content

There are several ways that duplicate content can harm your ranking in keywords you’re targeting and the overall site ranking, too. The primary reason is that you may end up cannibalizing your own content by having multiple posts target the same keyword. Another common reason is landing pages that use nearly the same content, duplicated to target very similar keywords.

10. Fixing broken links

Another part of optimizing content is going through and checking it for any broken links. Broken links are no longer active and will take the user to either an error page or a redirect. Having too many broken links all throughout your site can negatively affect your page authority, thus bringing your rankings down overall.

So, it’s important to make sure your internal and external links are consistently accurate and updated!

11. Server response codes

There are several response codes that can occur. The ones you will most likely deal with (and your audience is most likely to see) are 404 pages and 301 redirects.

It’s likely you’ve encountered a 404 error while browsing, and some companies will have a quirky tagline for their 404 “lost” pages. A 400 or 404 error can mean several things on the backend, whether the page has been deleted, broken, or the server is down. Regardless of the reason, this will result in the user likely backing out of your site completely. Not only does it squander your traffic, but it can also negatively affect your domain authority as well.

301 redirects are beneficial when used correctly. As mentioned before, when changing the URL of a page, all of the backlinks to it will be lost or dropped. That is, without a redirect. If you are able to set up a successful redirect, you won’t have to worry about your backlinks dropping off from the page as they are safely being redirected to the new URL.

12. Orphan pages

An orphan page is simply a page with no internal or external links to it. Internal linking your own stuff is highly beneficial: it’s also a free and easy way to help improve your on-page SEO. Even including just one internal link will resolve an orphan page.

Technical SEO Audit Tools

Throughout this article, we’ve mentioned several times how there are tools available to help you optimize your website. In this section, we’ll overview some of our favorite tools to get insights and run successful technical SEO audits.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the starting point for many technical SEO experts. At a basic level, Google Search Console provides valuable insights that help you see exactly what terms are bringing your audience in and even how pages compare.

You can even set time filters so you can see how a page’s performance has increased or decreased over time.

Although Google Search Console isn’t as feature-rich as some of the other adjacent clients, it’s free and a versatile starting point for any SEO goal you have.

PageSpeed Insights

As mentioned above, PageSpeed Insights is an incredible tool that offers you valuable insights into how your web pages are performing. The categories PageSpeed Insights will focus on are performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. In each of these categories, you will receive a ranking between 0-100, and they will also tell you where you can improve.

Some recommended tips for generally improving your webpage speed for mobile are:

• Eliminating render-blocking resources
• Reducing unused CSS
• Sizing tap targets correctly

Keep in mind that they will likely indicate many other yellow flags for you to address. Of course, these are a case-by-case basis, so it’s hard to narrow down what you may see for your site.

Mobile Optimization Test

So we’ve talked about how optimizing for mobile is important, and that speed checks are also important too. But how would you go about figuring out how to optimize your site to be mobile-friendly and fast?

An easy way to do a mobile-friendly test for your website is to use Google Search Console’s mobile-friendly test tool. This test will provide you with some general insights regarding speed and performance. The main You can even see the mobile usability issues that were detected on your site with their Mobile Usability report.

SEO suites

SEO suites will be your main hub when it comes to doing research. Semrush and Ahrefs are extremely powerful tools that provide a lot of value. Both services offer audits for backlinks, keywords, and the overall site. They both also have the ability to be able to help you track your rankings for your target keywords and web pages.

Both of these offer a ton of value but come with a bit of a learning curve. If you find yourself stuck, there or many resources to help you learn how to utilize these tools. Or, you can hire a technical SEO expert to handle it for you.

In short, these tools will practically be your right-hand when it comes to anything with on-page and technical SEO.

Screaming Frog

Many technical SEO experts will utilize both SEO suites and Screaming Frog. What sets Screaming Frog apart from Semrush and Ahrefs is that Screaming Frog focuses on web crawling and excels at providing technical SEO audits.

Of course, usage will depend on your site size. If you have a smaller site with less pages to manage, then tools like Semrush and Ahrefs will still provide excellent audits. However, if you have a large site with a lot of pages indexed, Screaming Frog will give you a more in-depth look at their audit.

Merkle SEO tools

Merkle has a lot of straightforward features, such as a robots.txt tester, sitemap generator, and even a Schema markup generator. And the best part is they aren’t locked behind a paywall, nor do they force you to sign up for anything.

This makes Merkle a great solution for beginners who want to test the waters and familiarize themselves more with these skills and concepts.

Hiring a technical SEO Agency

All of these techniques involve a lot of trial and error and can take months to see real and consistent results. Most places with a dedicated marketing team can have some room to target more ambitious SEO goals. On the other hand, many companies will still opt to outsource their SEO needs to technical SEO agencies.

A technical SEO agency can help you with local SEO, onsite and offsite SEO, and analytics. Even if you do want to give it a try yourself, a technical SEO agency can provide you with a rock-solid foundation by providing a site audit and a plan for you to implement yourself.

Branding vs. marketing is a critical discussion, especially among startups or small business owners who might not understand the difference between the two. Although they share similarities, brand identity and marketing strategy are critical to your long-term success in various ways. Precisely how are they different?

A brand strategy entails formulating and strengthening your company identity, whereas marketing is about promoting that identity and related products and services to grow your customer base and revenue.

Today’s guide will provide an even more in-depth look into the difference between branding and marketing. We’ll also define both terms, explore similarities, and discuss which is more important to your company’s success!

What Is Branding?

Before we delve into how marketing and branding diverge, let’s provide definitions of both terms to get you up to speed.

Definition of Branding

First, there’s branding.

A brand is a company’s personality, to put it simply. That brand personality encompasses many elements, including a company logo, preferred color scheme, font typeface and size, and the tone used to communicate everything from emails to social media.

As much as visual branding is important, other elements of branding that are less visually inclined abound. They include your brand positioning, targeting, values, and brand promise.

According to design resource Renderforest, 75 percent of consumers recognize a brand by its logo, 60 percent by its visual style, 45 percent by its brand colors, and 25 percent by its voice. All these elements require careful consideration and planning.

New companies will focus on pinning down and expanding upon a brand, whereas more established companies with a definable brand will strive to build awareness and strengthen their respective brand.

Taking the time to create a solid brand is always worth it. Dropshipping resource Oberlo states that 77 percent of customers will gravitate toward brands when they have the same values. 

What Is Marketing?

Now that you understand branding, let’s shine the spotlight on marketing. 

Definition of Marketing

Marketing, at its core, is all about promotions.

What a marketing campaign promotes varies. For example, you could launch a campaign just to promote your brand, whether a first-time new brand or a rebrand for an existing company.

Much more often, marketing promotes products and/or services.

A marketing strategy will use as many elements as needed to achieve its objectives. Some of those tactics include:

• Niche segmentation
• Blog content
• Video content
• SEO
• Social media marketing
• SMS marketing
• Email marketing
• Whitepapers and eBooks
• Infographics
• Webinars
• Speaking engagements

The digital marketing industry has risen to an all-time high. Online advertising resource WordStream reports that in 2020, the industry reached a value of $350 billion and that by 2026, the value will increase to $786.2 billion.

What Are the Differences Between Branding and Marketing?

We’ve defined them separately, so now it’s time to explore in more detail branding vs. marketing by highlighting all the differences.

Branding Is More About Identity, Marketing Is About Promoting That Identity

A brand, as we established, is your identity. It includes your brand story, passions, goals, and values all rolled into one. It’s both your visual identity and non-visual identity, but at the end of the day, it’s about who your company is.

Marketing doesn’t include elements of brand creation and identity. A marketing campaign expects that identity to already exist. Then, you can promote aspects of your brand identity to reach a specific target audience.

Branding Is an Ongoing Effort, Marketing Campaigns Start and Stop

We’re not saying that marketing ever stops, but campaigns come and go in a way that branding doesn’t.

A branding effort must be consistent over the life of your company. Returning to our previous point, when your company first starts, your goal is to define your brand.

Once you know what your brand is, then you strengthen it and build it into a household name. Sometimes, your branding efforts might find you expanding your brand in new and exciting directions than you had originally anticipated.

Brands can also stagnate, especially as your audience, roster of products and services, and goals change. In that case, then it’s time to rebrand, but you never once do you stop working on branding.

Marketing should remain an ongoing effort too, but each campaign has a definable endpoint. You can only promote a product or service for so long in the same way before you have to try something different to prevent the audience from getting bored.

Then it’s on to the next campaign. Considering the frequency with which companies introduce new products and services, that too informs the lifespan of the average marketing campaign. 

Marketing Grabs Attention and Branding Holds Onto It

Marketing and branding also diverge in which parts of the sales funnel they appeal to. For instance, it’s the primary job of a marketing campaign to grab a consumer’s attention.

Once the company has attention, how does it hold onto it? That’s through branding. Customers will learn more about the brand, find similar values, and hopefully feel inspired to make a purchasing decision. 

Some Similarities Between Branding and Marketing

Branding vs. marketing mustn’t always be some grand battle. As we’ve made abundantly clear, marketing and branding share many traits, so let’s take a closer look.

Marketing and Branding Increase a Company’s Value

It’s all about value for so many audiences. Consumers expect valuable offerings when engaging with a company, from high-quality lead magnets at the opt-in stage to quality emails and valuable products and services.

Marketing and branding alike bolster the value of a company and its offerings. To a customer, value determines how much something is worth and whether it’s something they need.

The more valuable a company and its products and services come across, the more interested in that leads will become. That can lead to conversions and sales.

Branding and Marketing Move Customers Through the Sales Funnel

Although neither marketing nor branding is directly involved with product or service sales, both still propel customers through the sales funnel.

Branding shines the brightest when a customer enters the sales funnel in the awareness stage. A strong brand will stand out to a lead and help them connect in these critical early days.

Then comes marketing. For example, you could use social media marketing to engage an audience and automated email marketing campaigns to nurture a burgeoning professional relationship.

By the time the leads reach the action stage, thanks to your marketing and branding efforts, making a purchasing decision should be simple.

Which Comes First, Branding or Marketing?

We’ve all heard the age-old dilemma of which comes first, the chicken or the egg? While that’s a more debatable subject, the question of which comes first, branding or marketing, is much easier to answer.

It’s branding!

Why Does Branding Come Before Marketing?

If that wasn’t clear to you, let us delve into why branding must come before marketing.

A marketing campaign is only as successful as its target audience. That’s why no marketer will ever answer that their audience is “everyone” because that’s far too broad of an audience.

Instead, marketers will do targeted audience research to identify segments that may have an interest in a product or service. Then the marketers will home in on aspects of a product or service to appeal to that audience.

Marketing without a brand is just as fruitless as marketing to a general audience, except in a different way. Whereas marketing to everyone means not knowing the right audience, marketing without branding means not knowing oneself.

You can’t possibly identify a receptive target audience until you understand more about your own brand. Even if you by chance guessed upon a receptive audience group, how do you appeal to them?

What colors? What tone? What verbiage?

Let’s say you somehow got all that right and had a successful campaign, but you still don’t know your brand. The next time you market a product or service, you could swerve in a totally different direction without a brand to ground you.

That’s a great way to shed your audience and cost your business revenue. Brand template platform Marq reports that a consistent brand presentation increases a company’s revenue by up to 33 percent.

Customers don’t only expect consistency from a company; they demand it. Branding is the only way to build a consistent representation of your company.

Once you’ve gotten your brand nailed down, then you can pivot back to marketing. Your campaigns will be more successful.

Which Is More Important, Branding or Marketing?

Declaring either branding or marketing as more important than the other misses the point. That suggests we’re back to the branding vs. marketing debate when really, you need both to drive your company goals forward.

Both branding and marketing are important for any company’s long-term success. You should focus on branding first and marketing second, as discussed above, but that’s just an order of operations.

You already know what happens if you skip the brand and launch a marketing campaign. Skipping the marketing with a strong brand may not be as deleterious, but it’s not great.

Once you have a brand you and your staff adore, you’ll want to scream it from the mountaintops, and that’s where marketing comes in handy. Without marketing, a brand’s ability to progress quickly reaches its limit.  

Brand Strategy vs. Marketing Strategy

Going back to branding vs. marketing, another clear difference between the two is how you formulate your respective strategy and what that strategy entails.

A brand strategy is internal. While you can’t develop a brand without considering your audience, you’re mostly turning the mirror on yourself and asking tough questions like why your company exists and what you’re hoping to achieve.

Marketing campaigns are decidedly more external. Your strategy centers around which audience segments you can appeal to with your latest products or services. You’ll also devise a method for reaching customers, as marketing entails so many tactics, as you’ll recall from earlier.

How Branding and Marketing Work Together

The most successful companies know how and when to utilize both branding and marketing.

When in tandem, they create a compelling company profile that lures people in. Backing that up with a strong roster of products and services only further compels consumers.

Strong marketing campaigns targeting the right audience groups with products or services that address those groups’ pain points will ultimately inspire more sales and conversions.

Marketing and branding shouldn’t be pitted against one another but understood and appreciated as separate entities and used together for a killer combination that’s known for delivering huge results.

Hire a Branding and Marketing Agency

Crafting the perfect brand doesn’t come easily, nor does launching profitable marketing campaigns. If your company struggles in either area or both, you should hire a branding and marketing agency like Mediaboom.

The pros at our agency specialize in services like web design and development, advertising, digital marketing, SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, video production, copywriting, and campaign management.

With us on your side, you’ll be ready to build a brand your audience receives well and then promote that brand in ROI-heavy campaigns.

For more information or to start getting results today, contact us here.

Customer marketing is a must when operating within a highly competitive marketplace. Customer loyalty and retention are paramount, and it is imperative that you deploy all necessary resources in order to ensure consistent customer engagement.

Customer marketing deserves a prime spot in your overall marketing strategy. Remember − retaining a customer is far easier than attracting a new one. As such, your customer marketing efforts are central to ensuring the long-term success of your business. Additionally, effective customer marketing will aid in separating yourself from your competitors, thus elevating your presence within the marketplace.

In order to fully understand the importance of customer marketing, and the strategies therein, let’s take an in-depth look at its varying components and the utilities you can leverage to achieve success.

What is Customer Marketing

At its core, customer marketing refers to strategies aimed at retaining current customers. Attracting new customers − though vitally important as well − is handled by separate marketing campaigns, and you should take care not to conflate the two endeavors.

Different strategies can be used to implement customer marketing, and we will take a thorough look at several of those later on.

5 Benefits of Costumer-Centric Marketing

The benefits of customer marketing are profound and will serve to bolster your business in appreciable, meaningful ways. Let’s highlight a few of the key benefits.

Customer Retention

First, successful customer marketing lends itself to the retention of current customers. Why is this so important? Well, consider the fact that 60-70% of total business sales are repeat customers. That’s an overwhelming majority of sales and firmly reinforces just how critical customer retention truly is. Put simply, this is an area you cannot afford to neglect.

Increased Customer Loyalty

Second, customer marketing is a surefire method to instill customer loyalty. As a business owner, you know just how challenging it can be to attract new customers in such a highly competitive marketplace. In today’s day and age, consumers have an incredible amount of options available to them, and the battle for their business is fierce. Therefore, do yourself a favor, and implement the necessary customer marketing strategies to bolster customer loyalty.

To further explore the importance of customer loyalty, consider reading through this insightful piece regarding loyalty in the hospitality business. Although your business may or may not be under the hospitality umbrella, the content of the article is absolutely applicable to other industries.

Strong Advocates for Your Business

Furthermore, customer-centric marketing is a fantastic way to establish strong advocates for your business. The more often a customer engages with your business, the stronger their connection and, consequently, the more likely they are to share their experiences with others. Keep those customers coming back to create a legion of advocates!

Better Communication Across Departments

Efficacious customer marketing is an enterprise that needs to be performed by numerous different departments within your company. The marketing, sales, and customer service teams all need to participate in various ways in the overall customer marketing strategy. This will, in turn, lead to increased communication between these departments and result in a more streamlined, effective process.

More Profits!

The goal of any business is to consistently grow its profit margins. In that vein, customer marketing is an excellent means of making this goal a reality. All of the aforementioned benefits combine to result in the ever-important growth of your bottom line.

Customer Marketing and the Subscription Economy

Customer marketing and the subscription economy go hand-in-hand. In order to understand how, let’s take a moment to define what is meant when referring to the subscription economy.

Put simply, the subscription economy is a business model that revolves around selling a subscription to customers, rather than one-off purchases. The subscription model has proven to be enormously popular over the past decade, with incredible growth propelling its success. In fact, according to Entrepreneur.com, “the subscription economy has grown almost five times faster than the S&P 500.” Clearly, subscription models are highly profitable.

In addition to their economic benefits, subscription models also represent an ideal method of achieving customer retention. When a customer enrolls in a subscription service, they are automatically agreeing to be a repeat customer − they are paying a recurring fee to access a particular product.

As such, subscription services are integral to customer marketing. If you haven’t already, be sure to further explore the realm of subscription services and how you can implement them into your business model.

Customer Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing 

Both customer marketing and traditional marketing have their place in a comprehensive marketing strategy. With that said, it is important to understand the difference between the two strategies.

Traditional marketing refers to marketing endeavors performed through the use of “traditional” outlets – any advertising that takes place “offline”. According to Indeed.com, direct mail campaigns, billboards, radio and television advertising are some examples of conventional marketing.

In contrast, customer marketing in the 21st century is principally performed through digital platforms. Online advertising through social media – such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. – is the primary avenue for customer marketing.

9 Customer-Driven Marketing Strategies

Now it’s time to examine different strategies to ensure successful customer marketing. Each of the following will complement the other and serve to benefit your business!

1. Online Reviews

The importance and influence of customer reviews cannot be understated. Consider that, according to Forbes, an incredible 91% of consumers between the ages of 18-34 read online reviews prior to making a purchase. Accordingly, you must leverage your positive reviews by placing them prominently on your website. Doing so will highlight customer experiences, thereby encouraging continued business.

Furthermore, take care to properly manage your online reviews – respond promptly and respectfully, and take reasonable measures to correct any customer dissatisfaction. Proper review management is an excellent way to show customers you value their business, and is an effective method of separating yourself from your competitors.

To fully understand the importance of online review management, dive into this excellent article!

2. Testimonials

Consider customer testimonials as a more thorough version of customer reviews. Soliciting and promoting customer testimonials − either written or recorded in-depth feedback from a customer regarding a positive experience − is another means through which to bolster customer loyalty and satisfaction. Display these testimonials on your website and include them in your promotional materials.

3. Loyalty Programs

To increase customer loyalty, consider offering programs specifically formulated around loyalty. Offer incentives to repeat customers to keep them coming back − tactics such as exclusive offerings, discounts, point systems, and free merchandise are all worthwhile options to explore. Repeat customers want to feel valued, and loyalty programs are a wonderful way to accomplish this.

4. Referral Programs

Designed to encourage existing customers to recruit new customers, referral programs are another means of instilling customer retention and loyalty. Offer benefits and rewards to existing customers for referrals − doing so will keep current customers happy and also bring about new business! Referral programs absolutely deserve a spot in your customer-centric marketing endeavors.

5. Giveaways

Everyone loves a giveaway! Giveaways represent a fun, straightforward means of customer engagement. Pick an appealing item that will entice customers to enter into your giveaway and be sure to promote it heavily. Giveaways show your customers that you value their business and stand as an expression of gratitude.

6. User Generated Content

User-generated content, known as USG, refers to content posted on social media by consumers. Leverage the power of social media by encouraging your customers to promote your business online. Offer incentives for doing so, and consider scaling the rewards to encourage continued USG.

7. Community Building

Community building is an effective and worthwhile component of customer marketing. It can be performed both online and offline.

Examples of digital engagements include webinars, chatrooms, and social media events. Online community-building events allow you to cast a broad geographical net to capture the largest audience possible, as consumers are not restricted by their physical location. Furthermore, these events often require little or no overhead, as they are typically performed by current employees and in an office setting. For proof of the power of digital community building, be sure to read this incredible article on video storytelling to engage your audience.

Community building can also be performed through more “traditional” enterprises, such as the sponsorship of local community events and organizations. In fact, engaging with the local community is a great way to show customers that you care about and value the area in which your business operates, which will serve to further instill customer appreciation.

Utilize both digital and traditional community building to effectively engage with your customer base!

8. Online training materials

Online training materials are another vital component of customer marketing. Providing insightful and helpful information regarding the function, usage, and intention of a given item will instill a sense of gratitude within your client base. Furthermore, this allows you to exemplify your expertise in a given area by providing thoughtful, helpful, and informative materials to your customers. Finally, accessibility is key here – be sure that this information is easily attainable!

9. Customer Support

Offering exemplary customer support is a vital component of customer marketing and is fundamental to achieving repeat business.

Customers expect to receive a commendable level of support throughout their buying journey. From inception to completion, it is of the utmost importance that you offer assistance along the way. Making customers feel supported and valued will not only lead to repeating business, but will also encourage current customers to share their positive experiences (whether it be through word-of-mouth, online reviews, or customer testimonials).

Be sure that you are dedicating the required resources to customer support – doing so will reap tremendous rewards!

Measure Your Customer Marketing Success

Implementing all of the aforementioned strategies will no doubt result in fantastic customer marketing. With that said, it is not enough to simply execute the above – you must also track your progress!

Keeping tabs on the efficacy of your various endeavors will not only help you identify areas that are yielding positive results, but will also highlight zones that may need bolstering or revisions.

In order to properly measure your customer marketing efforts, consider investing in thorough analytics software. These powerful tools provide invaluable insights and performance metrics regarding your online marketing efforts and will allow you to hone your customer marketing measures to achieve maximum success.

For more information regarding analytics software, check out this awesome article on Google Analytics.

Work with a Customer Marketing Agency

As a business owner, you no doubt have your hands full of a plethora of tasks that demand your attention and time. As such, consider enlisting the services of a skilled customer marketing agency. Doing so will provide you with the peace of mind that all the components of a successful customer marketing campaign are being executed and managed by a team of experts. Do yourself a favor and reach out to the knowledgeable and experienced group at Mediaboom today. Allow them to guide you through their recommended services and get started on your journey to finding new levels of success!

In 2022, global e-commerce was worth approximately $5.7 trillion. That number is expected to grow to $8.1 trillion by 2026. As an entrepreneur or business manager, you can’t ignore potential online profits, especially since society is becoming more digital.

Specialist marketing agencies can be a powerful tool in your arsenal as you look to differentiate your products and services from the rest and get ahead.

What are the advantages of specialist marketing agencies?

Specialist marketing agencies offer long and short-term benefits. They bring to the table better and more effective marketing strategies that are the result of many years of experience. These agencies can provide insights, strategies, and tactics you may not have considered before but are worth trying to achieve success.

Small and big organizations can learn something from working with a marketing agency because managing a business with an online presence entails keeping up with the latest marketing trends and methods.

So, if you want to benefit from a partnership that can expose you to plenty of opportunities and ideas, it’s time to look into specialist marketing agencies and their pros and cons. Although traditional marketing strategies still work, you can gain more specialized insights and take advantage of the latest developments with a specialist marketing agency by your side.

Here is an overview of what you need to know about specialist marketing agencies.

What Is a Specialist Marketing Agency?

A specialist marketing agency is made up of small teams with various areas of competencies. It can be a branding or luxury marketing agency, SEO, web design, photography, social media marketing, or analytics firm. Specialist marketing agencies can advise you on which areas can provide the most growth so you get maximum benefits from their discipline, focus, and exceptional expertise.

Unlike a full-service marketing agency that covers all your marketing needs, specialist marketing agencies only focus on certain aspects.

Specialist marketing agencies continuously develop their skills in one particular area of the marketing landscape. These are your go-to support teams if you are dealing with a special niche or you want specific metrics of your business to improve.

For example, if you want to boost your social media presence, get the assistance of a marketing team to enjoy a more dynamic and interactive website. The specialized marketing agency for website creation or content design will be your best resource in this scenario.

And if your goal is to focus more on digital marketing solutions, then there’s a team for that one too.

You can identify your needs as an organization yourself or get a specialist marketing agency to help you decide on which aspects offer the best growth opportunities.

5 Reasons to Work With Specialist Marketing Agencies

1. Experts in the Sector

Specialist marketing agencies have la creme de la creme or the best of the best professionals. These people are at the top of their chosen fields and have the experience and know-how to pitch great ideas and make them happen.

Employees of specialist marketing agencies are veterans in their chosen fields due to years of continuous learning and experience from working with different clients.

This is one of the biggest benefits of hiring a digital marketing agency. You will work with people who know the business extremely well.

2. Solid Team

One of the advantages of specialist marketing agencies is they provide you with not just one knowledgeable person but an entire team that can help you brainstorm and execute your strategies. You don’t have to worry about who does what which helps you keep an eye on the big picture and what you want to accomplish.

These team members know how to collaborate, compromise, and get the job done professionally. They already have a working and effective system so you get a well-oiled team without having to hire them individually or think about how to farm out various tasks.

3. Proven Results

Specialist marketing agencies have solid track records. They have a roster of clients they’ve worked with before and numbers to prove their success. Whether you’re looking to increase website traffic, increase brand awareness, or improve conversion rates, specialist marketing agencies can show you that they’ve done it before and they can do it again for your company.

4. Maximum Return on Investment

Specialist marketing agencies have their reputations to uphold so they will work tirelessly to get you the results you agreed on. They know how to maximize your budget and can provide accurate pricing information so you can ensure maximum return on investment (ROI).

Almost always, one of the goals of organizations who work with them is to increase current revenue through expanded client reach and additional marketing strategies. Specialist marketing agencies can help get your money’s worth when you use various digital marketing tools like PPC campaigns, SEO and local SEO, email marketing, and Google Ads to name a few.

5. Access to the Latest and Most Innovative Technologies

One of the advantages of specialist marketing agencies is their access to and knowledge of the latest software, platforms, and tools that can help you boost your presence. Of course, incorporating new systems has its pros and cons, but usually, the disadvantages are outweighed by long-term benefits.

Being knowledgeable about newer platforms like SEMRush, Facebook, and subscription tools that don’t require additional expense can help your organization leverage the latest and most effective marketing strategies.

A specialist marketing agency can provide you with the guidance and support you need to maximize these tools while increasing your company’s reach and performance.

What Are the Top 5 Services Provided by a Specialist Marketing Agency?

Specialist marketing agencies can provide a wide range of services but these are the most in-demand ones that clients ask for:

1. Website Creation

Specialist marketing agencies can help you build a website that showcases your brand, products, services, and commitment. One of the main goals of website creation is to provide a user-friendly experience to its visitors.

Aside from building pages and links, website creation is also about design, navigability, and functionality. In addition, it must load quickly and be easy to use whether you’re viewing it from a laptop or a mobile device.

Companies understand that a website is an integral part of their digital footprint. To be effective, it needs to meet certain standards which a specialist marketing agency can help them with.

2. SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO boosts your website’s visibility, ranking, and traffic. After all, people should be able to find you so that you can tell them who you are and what you offer.

SEO comes into play when potential customers look for your products or services through search engines like Google and Bing. The higher your rank, the more visible you’ll be on search engine results pages (SERPs). However, this can only happen if you’re using SEO properly on your website.

Digital SEO experts from specialist marketing agencies can help you with SEO.

3. Advertising

The traditional way of advertising is promoting your products and services through newspapers, magazines, newsletters, television, and radio, but more and more companies are focusing on digital advertising.

Advertising is essential because it allows organizations to connect with their potential clients, increase brand awareness, and boost revenue.

There is a high and unprecedented demand for digital marketing these days but specialist marketing agencies can also help with traditional marketing and blended strategies that incorporate digital and traditional advertising.

4. Content Design

Content design is one of the many services offered by specialist marketing agencies. Contrary to the popular belief that content design is focused on entertaining and jazzy layouts, it’s really about thinking strategically about the content that you provide. Its activities involve discovering, collaborating, creating, and testing content to meet and understand what clients and businesses want.

To make this possible, content designers work with researchers, engineers, managers, UX (user experience) writers, graphic designers, data analysts, and more. Because it requires teamwork from people with different technical skills, specialist marketing agencies are uniquely positioned to provide this service.

5. Social Media Marketing

Did you know that there were 4.59 billion social media users in 2022? It’s, therefore, no surprise that social media marketing is one of the top services that specialist marketing agencies cater to.

Social media marketing work entails crafting, designing, and publishing social media posts that are engaging, relevant, and interesting for your target audience.

It may mean creating announcements, hosting contests and giveaways, holding product launches, and running ads and news about your organization and its products or services.

At the end of each social media campaign, your specialist marketing team will pore over the results for market insights and ideas for future initiatives. This can be a valuable learning process as you learn what makes your audience tick and which pitches are most effective.

Conclusion

The advantages of specialist marketing agencies are many. If you’re serious about your business and gaining a competitive edge, working with a marketing agency that offers specialized services can help you in a number of ways.

Hiring an agency may be overwhelming if you’ve never worked with one before but you’ll soon find that they’re worth the extra effort, time, and expense. You can benefit from their exceptional expertise, have a solid team at your disposal, maximize your ROI, and use the latest and most innovative technologies.

To learn more about our specialist marketing services, visit Mediaboom or send us a message.

Local social media marketing is a great way to boost your business’s profile and drive increased revenue. Whether your business is large or small, you stand to benefit significantly from this endeavor and should not delay in executing this critical strategy.

In order to reap the full rewards of local social media marketing, it is imperative that you devise a multi-pronged approach. This requires careful analysis of the different social media platforms, consistent and dynamic oversight, and incorporating a variety of key tips to maximize effectiveness. 

In what follows, we’ll explore the various components of local social media marketing, its benefits, and efficacious tools to assist you in your efforts. Read on to become an expert on local social media! 

6 Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Local Businesses 

1. Connect with the Local Community 

At its core, social media is meant to serve as a conduit through which people discover and foster connections. This practice, however, is not limited to the form of person-person; indeed, valuable connections consistently occur between people and businesses. Take care to build and nourish relationships with members of the local community – they will surely thank you for it! 

2. Improved Understanding of Your Target Audience 

Engaging with your local community on social media provides you ample opportunity to further understand your target audience. Soliciting feedback about your business – in all forms – will help you hone your daily operations and better meet the needs of your clients. 

This practice also lends itself to establishing a feeling of value in your clients; giving them a voice in the decision-making process signals how much you value their business. 

3. Reach a Wider Audience 

A successful business cannot allow revenue to stagnate; efforts must be continuously made to drive growth. Local social media is a prime example of an undertaking that will aid in this crucial goal. Maintaining an active presence on a variety of social media platforms will no doubt increase the total number of people who are aware of your business and what you provide. This, in turn, will significantly increase the likelihood of new clients, thereby resulting in higher revenue. 

Don’t waste time – get out there and spread the word on social media! 

4. Build Authority in Your Local Area 

Leveraging local social media is fantastic for creating brand authority and loyalty. In today’s technology-driven world, consumers are more knowledgeable than ever before. With a wealth of information at their fingertips, consumers can readily evaluate a business and its products with alarming ease. Furthermore, the vast majority of consumers cross-shop prior to deciding on a purchase. It should come as no surprise, but you better believe your clients are also considering your competitors! 

As such, take care to stand as the local authority in your field. Share insights and suggestions, and explain why and how your business offers a premier experience in your local area. 

5. Focus on Local Advertising 

No matter the size of your advertising budget, it must be allocated in a manner that optimizes chances for success. Partitioning a piece of your advertising budget and allocating it to local social media firmly fulfills this criterion. 

The major social media platforms all offer advertising utilities that not only spread the word about your business but also provide critical data for analysis. You can use this data to fine-tune your strategy and inform future advertising endeavors. 

6. Improve Your Customer Service 

Prompt, efficient, and actionable customer service is paramount. Again, consumers have options, and you simply cannot afford any lapses in the realm of customer service. Thankfully, local social media is a wonderful utility through which to meet customer expectations and provide exemplary service. 

It is imperative that you actively monitor your social media platforms for opportunities to display your commitment to customer service. Respond to customer reviews – positive and negative – with respect, appreciation (when warranted), and clear and reasonable attempts to assuage any disgruntled customers. 

For more information on the importance of online review management, be sure to check out this insightful article. 

Best Social Media for Local Businesses 

There are a number of social media platforms that are well worth your engagement. The most prominent are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Let’s take a look at each service and why it will benefit your business. 

Facebook 

Though it may sound surreal to say, Facebook has been a wildly popular form of social media for nearly 20 years! It now boasts close to 3 billion users worldwide and over 70% of the US population is on Facebook. The platform’s age demographic is considerably vast, including children and seniors alike. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of your customers are active Facebook users. 

As an advertising platform, Facebook makes it very simple for you to use local social media marketing for businesses. It offers professional pages (business-specific pages), paid post promotion, and native advertising. Additionally, users are presented with weekly reports detailing the reach, success, and effectiveness of their advertising efforts. 

For tips on how to create a stunning and effective Facebook page, check out the following article. 

Instagram 

In contrast to Facebook, Instagram skews much younger with regard to users’ age. Instagram users are predominantly millennials (or younger), and it can be a challenge to effectively target older audiences. This does, however, present you with an opportunity to engage and capture younger clients who, hopefully, will remain loyal for many years to come. 

Also, Instagram is unique in the sense that it is an image-dominated form of social media; posts are pictures, videos, or both, with brief descriptions attached. As such, it requires that you post excellent, professional-level photos of your products that capture a user’s attention. 

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is very much business-centric. It is less concerned about personal information and is rather intended to facilitate effective connections between businesses, employers, and recruitment personnel. With that said, it still warrants your attention and efforts, and it affords you strong B2B opportunities that are certainly worth taking advantage of. 

Twitter 

Twitter demands brevity – your “tweets” have a character limit and you must utilize concise language and strong editing skills when crafting what you wish to say. Nonetheless, Twitter propagates the ability to “go viral” (multiple re-tweets reach an ever-increasing audience as the tweet spreads across the platform like a virus). As such, Twitter is a legitimate method through which to potentially spread the word of your business to a plethora of people – even those beyond your initial target audience. 

For even more insights into various platforms and their utilities, be sure to read through this informative article. 

10 Essential Tips for Local Social Media Marketing 

1. Analyze Your Audience and Choose Your Social Media Platforms 

To leverage local social media marketing to its fullest extent, you must possess the prerequisite information regarding your consumer base. Criteria to consider are their age, location, income level, and professional history. Obtaining this knowledge will inform which social media platform(s) are the most vital. For example, should your audience be younger in age and early in their careers, then Instagram is most likely worth the majority of your efforts. 

2. Analyze Your Competitors 

Keeping tabs on your competitors is a must. You need to be aware of their advertising strategies to properly understand how you need to respond. 

Perhaps a certain competitor deployed an especially effective advertising campaign on social media, requiring a commensurate approach from your business. Or, maybe, your competitor’s strategies are floundering and you devise a completely different tactic in order to separate yourself. In either scenario, it is vital to remain informed on what your competitors are doing and then act accordingly. 

3. Join Local Social Media Groups 

Local social media groups are powerful entities that will surely help to promote your business. In essence, social media groups gather like-minded individuals in one location, thus making it remarkably easy to readily reach a portion of your target demographic. Social media groups are present on nearly every social media platform, though they are especially prominent on Facebook. 

Take the time to look for and gather information on local social media groups – it will be highly beneficial! 

4. Connect with the Local Community

Connecting with the local community is vital to growing awareness and appreciation of your business. Though it will take time and an intentional approach, infusing your business with a personal touch on social media will result in an identifiable entity that instills customer loyalty and satisfaction. 

5. Build Your Own Community 

Local social media marketing permits you the opportunity to build your own online community and invite members to join. This will no doubt make these individuals feel valued and appreciated and will help to promote sustained customer satisfaction. 

Should you create your own community, be sure to keep it lively and active – you run the risk of losing members should your content lapse. 

6. Create a Content Plan 

Your advertising efforts need to be guided by a thoughtfully constructed roadmap. You should establish achievable goals, and create milestones within those goals in order to hold yourself accountable. Decide which platform to utilize for certain content, who constitutes your target audience, and what the messaging will entail. 

When done correctly, each component of your local social media marketing campaign will serve to complement each other and bolster overall effectiveness. 

7. Create a Content Calendar 

In a similar vein, it is also important to plan ahead when it comes to disseminating your marketing efforts on local social media. You need to choose when to push your advertising, how long to maintain a particular campaign, and coordinate around specific moments in time (the holidays, the ending of school, etc.) to increase awareness and efficacy.

8. Follow Trends 

It is also wise to keep up-to-date on the latest trends. Being aware of what is currently “in vogue” will inform your advertising efforts and aid in potential impact. This requires you to actively engage in your community to learn what is resonating most prominently among your local population. 

9. Take Full Advantage of Social Media Analytics

As mentioned prior, advertising on social media comes with the added benefit of informative and helpful data. Properly analyze the results of your advertising campaigns to determine which areas are excelling, where you need to improve, and what the future needs to look like in terms of planning and execution.

10. Use Social Media Marketing Tools 

Full-fledged local social media marketing can be quite the endeavor, requiring considerable resources to ensure success. Thankfully, social media marketing tools are available to help you in truly meaningful ways. The best of such services include automation abilities, analytics utilities, scheduling assistance, and engagement services, all of which will provide appreciable assistance in reaching your goals. 

Best Social Media Tools to Boost Your Business

There are numerous social media marketing tools for you to consider. Let’s take a look at a few of the best options so as to narrow your list. 

Hubspot 

With support for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms, Hubspot stands as a true do-it-all social media marketing tool. It offers insightful data, automatic publication, engagement tracking, and the ability to inform you of brand mentions and associated conversations. 

Sprout Social 

Sprout Social is a fantastic tool with which to manage your local social media marketing. It possesses the ability to delegate various tasks to certain members of your team, allowing you to effectively delegate different components of an advertising campaign. 

In addition, Sprout Social also offers data reports, automated publishing, scheduling support, and much more. 

Mention 

Mention is also a top social media marketing tool. With extensive utility surrounding “listening” (scouring the web for mentions of your business), Mention will keep you well informed of what people are saying about your business. Keeping you in the loop and up-to-date ensures that you can respond promptly and effectively. 

Hire a Local Social Media Marketing Company 

By now, it should be sufficiently apparent how involved local social media marketing can truly be. As a business owner, you no doubt have your plate full of a multitude of pressing items. As such, do yourself a monumental favor and consider hiring a professional team to manage your local social media marketing. 

Employing a team of experts will maximize your chances for success; after all, these people make a living off of performing exemplary local social media marketing. Furthermore, it will provide an appreciable degree of peace of mind, knowing that your advertising dollars are being put to the best possible use. And, finally, it will result in you having increased bandwidth to focus on other matters! 

To get started, reach out to the Mediaboom team to begin taking full advantage of local social media marketing!

A 2022 study found that 70% of marketers see SEO as far more effective than PPC. However, many new brands and companies don’t understand the first thing about SEO management and how to implement this effective marketing strategy into their business.

SEO management is the implementation of on-site and off-site search engine optimization techniques and strategies to benefit a website’s visibility. While some internal marketing teams handle SEO management, it is often outsourced to agencies or consultants who carry out SEO tasks while following best practices to deliver sustainable and effective strategies that align with the most recent search engine algorithm updates.

In this guide, we’re going to present you with several strategies to build your online presence through search engine optimization. You’ll learn the definition of SEO, how it works, and what you can do to increase your site’s position in search engine results pages.

What Is SEO Management?

SEO management is an overarching term for handling any strategies that are relevant to search engine optimization. Companies may partner with specialized agencies, such as a full-service digital marketing agency or a local SEO company, to develop an SEO strategy in order to achieve certain sales, marketing, or business goals.

What Is an SEO Manager?

More than 63% of businesses invest in professional SEO Services nowadays, hiring SEO management teams to take care of their specific digital marketing strategies.

Within these management teams, you will find an SEO manager whose job is to consider every aspect of a search and develop strategies to funnel consumers to the products or services they are looking for.

The overall tasks of an SEO manager might include

• Website content management
• Content optimization
• SEO strategy development
• Negotiating backlinks
• Campaign planning and organization
• Keyword research
• Website monitoring
• Market and user analysis

Moz has an excellent video about what SEO managers do in their day-to-day work.

10 Steps for an Effective SEO Management Process

If you’ve already connected the dots, then you know how important SEO management is to create a successful SEO strategy.

Let’s look at the ten steps for crafting an effective SEO strategy.

SEO Audit

One of the first steps is to run an SEO audit on your website. With an audit, you can learn which portions of your site are working and what you might need to consider changing. An audit will identify weak points upon which you can improve.

Starting with a website audit will wipe the slate clean and help build a stronger foundation for your future SEO efforts.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is an umbrella term to define the optimization of websites and servers, helping search engines crawl and index your website more efficiently. With proper technical SEO, you can improve your organic search rankings.

Search engines like Google prioritize websites that utilize special technical elements, such as fast loading times, responsive designs, or secure connections.

Here’s a small technical SEO checklist that you can implement in your SEO management plan to make sure your website is optimized:

• Use SSL – Using SSL technology creates an encrypted link between the browser and the web server. You can easily install an SSL certificate on your website if your website builder doesn’t include one by default.
• Optimize Your Site for Mobile – Not only must your site be responsive on a desktop, but Google has made it very clear over the past few years that the mobile-first approach is more essential than ever, especially when it comes to indexing. Ensure your website is optimized for mobile visitors.
• Speed Up Your Site – Search engines give preferential treatment to websites with quick loading times, so make sure your site speed is optimal.
• Get Rid of Duplicate Content – Having duplicate content on your website is a big no-no in the SEO world, as search engine algorithms see this as a website trying to manipulate search rankings with more keywords and content. Go through your site to ensure you do not have any duplicate content.

Audience Research

Having an in-depth understanding of your audience is crucial.

 An SEO manager will put in the research to understand what the brand’s target market is looking for from their products or services. Even if you have already come up with customer personas in the past, you might consider re-evaluating your research as you develop a new SEO management strategy.

Remember, just like your business will change over time, so will your customers.

Industry Research

Industry research begins with analyzing your competitors to see what kinds of content and SEO strategies they are using. The worst thing you can do is start creating content blindly without knowing what kind of content you are trying to compete with.

 There are a few questions you might consider asking:

• What are some of the top keywords your competitors rank for?
• What competitor has the top-ranking pages for your chosen keywords?
• What makes their content rank highly and is their content valuable?
• How many backlinks are they using?

Make sure to pay close attention to the number of backlinks your competitors are using, as it will give you a better idea of how many you should consider using to compete.

Keywords Research

When considering keywords, think about the search terms that potential customers would use to find your brand’s website. There are plenty of great keyword research tools out there that can provide you with insights and metrics regarding ranking difficulty and relevancy.

When you develop an SEO management strategy with the right keywords, you can make sure that consumers are finding your business based on the proper Search terms.

Onsite SEO

Onsite SEO is a website optimization process wherein an SEO manager optimizes elements on a website rather than external links that are elsewhere on the internet. One might optimize both the HTML source code and the content on a given page.

Having good onsite SEO can help visitors determine whether or not a page is relevant to their search query and can help them quickly understand what a particular page is all about.

Content Marketing and SEO Copywriting

Consider optimizing the copy on your website based on your keyword research. Create content with those keywords in mind, and utilize copywriting with a focus on the products or services you specialize in.

Of course, don’t just start writing blogs with stuffed keywords. Having content that is both informative and valuable to the customer is crucial. The longer visitors stay on your site, the more Google will begin to recognize it as an authoritative platform.

Offsite SEO

Offsite SEO, sometimes referred to as off-page SEO, is any SEO action that is taken externally from your website. These actions can be anything from mentions on other websites to backlinks.

Off-site SEO management looks at link building, social media, content marketing, reviews, podcasts, and more.

We like to think of offsite SEO as a website’s reputation. A website with a good reputation will rank higher, as search engines will see them as more trustworthy and authoritative. Let’s take a look at five different offsite SEO strategies you can use to optimize your organic search traffic and authority:

• Link Building – Get other authoritative websites to link to pages on your own website to boost your own authority.
• Content Marketing – Find ways to distribute your own content on other channels, such as guest posts, influence or marketing, social media, PR, and forums.
• Social Media – While social media does not directly influence the ranking factors for Google, it is great for garnering more attention. Think about it this way. The more people that share your content on social media, the greater the number of links for that content you will receive.

There are many other offsite SEO methods to consider, though these should present a good jumping-off point to get you started.

Analytics

Now that you have some SEO strategies in place, how are they working?

By performing search engine optimization analysis, you can identify whether or not current strategies are working. In addition, you can discover more opportunities to improve the placement of your website in the search engine results pages.

A professional analysis might begin with a succinct report on potential improvements, such as URL optimization, new content creation, or keyword placement.

Think of the analytics portion of your SEO management strategy as an ongoing effort. Search engine results are constantly changing, and keeping up with that high velocity of change can help you stay competitive.

Refresh and Optimization of Older Content

Refinishing your old content to optimize it for SEO is one of the most effective methods of increasing your search engine results. Plus, it’s far more efficient than trying to create tons of new content.

Don’t leave your posts to rot. If you do, you could be missing out on major opportunities. One of the easiest ways to ensure your content is reaching its highest potential is to refresh it every so often.

Find blogs that are dead in the water or blogs that are past their time. Look at the data and see if there are ways that you can get the hearts of these blogs beating again. You may consider updating the content with your current keyword research in mind, adding new videos to old posts, or combining other low-performance blogs that cover similar topics.

SEO Management Software and Tools

Semrush

SEMRush is definitely a fan favorite when it comes to high-performance SEO tools. The beauty of SEMRush is that it allows you to perform a domain vs. domain analysis, helping you compare your website to your competition.

You can also get access to analytics to give you a better understanding of your website’s traffic, data, and more.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most recommended online SEO tools, second only to Google in the realm of website crawlers.

The site audit feature is one of the greatest tools we have ever used, highlighting different portions of your website that you need to improve in order to rank higher in search engines.

Moz

Moz continually pops up as one of the prime expert SEO tools, as it is seemingly always up-to-date when it comes to Google’s ever-changing algorithms. One of the things we love about Moz is the chat portal, as it provides insightful answers and responses to any question we might have.

Whether you’re looking for a site crawl or keyword recommendations, see what Moz has to offer.

Ubersuggest

Neil Patel developed Ubersuggest quite some time ago to help marketers identify keywords relevant to search intent. With this tool, you can find everything from short-tail phrases to long-tail phrases, making sure you have the right terms to use on your website.

You can get plenty of metrics from Ubersuggest, including competition, keyword volume, CPC, seasonal trends, and more.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is one of the top SEO tools for monitoring and reporting the presence of your website in the Google SERP. The best thing about this tool is that it is completely free to anyone with the website, so make sure to take advantage of its offering.

Work with an SEO Management Company

We know that all of this can seem overwhelming, especially if you don’t have experience developing SEO strategies.

This is why many brands and businesses hire SEO management companies to provide search engine optimization Services. They help their clients to increase the amount of traffic to their website by achieving higher rankings in relevant search results.

Final Thoughts

With the right SEO company at your back, you can increase your visibility and keep your business on top in the rapidly evolving landscape.

Get in touch with us here at Mediaboom today to see how you can benefit from our many years of expertise in SEO management services.