To have an effective online marketing strategy you need much more than just a website. You need to take initiatives that raise your visibility in search engines, you need to proactively seek out and communicate with potential customers, and you need to ensure that when they do reach your website they take a positive action. With that in mind, here are five strategies to improve your online marketing.<!–more–>
<strong>Go Mobile</strong>
Your customers use mobile devices. You don’t necessarily need research to prove this as all you have to do is look around – you probably use a mobile phone to browse the internet too. But the research does exist, and it shows that about <a href=”http://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/the-new-multi-screen-world-study_research-studies.pdf”>65 percent</a> of people use a mobile device when researching products or services online. They might continue the research or complete the transaction on a computer, but they use their mobile at some stage.
With so many people searching online with their mobile phones it is therefore important that your website shows up in mobile searches. But Google treats mobile search and normal search very differently – just because your website shows in a search conducted on a computer does not mean it will show on a mobile search. In fact you can rank in position one on a desktop search and not rank at all in mobile search.
This is because Google only displays mobile friendly websites to users when they search using mobile devices. If your website does not display properly on a mobile phone, or has functions that don’t work on mobile, you should get this fixed.
<strong>Email Marketing</strong>
A lot of the talk about online marketing today is about new technologies – mobile apps, retargeting, new social media platforms etc. But one of the oldest forms of online marketing remains one the most effective – email marketing.
You should constantly build up your email list and communicating regularly via helpful emails that your audience wants to read.
<strong>Landing Page Optimisation</strong>
Most business websites in Ireland are poorly optimised. In other words they are not designed to get a result, which is getting the visitor to fill out an enquiry form, or make a telephone call. Instead most business website pages have low quality images, text that is boring and introspective, and a lack of an effective call to action.
By optimisting the landing pages of your website you will get more leads and enquiries which you can then turn into customers or sales.
<strong>Content Marketing</strong>
Over the past couple of years Google and the other search engines have evolved. The changes are to help them achieve their ultimate goal – to give their users the best possible result when they search. Google has discovered in research that searchers often prefer recently updated pages, and they dislike content that is stale or out of date.
It is therefore important that you keep your website regularly up-to-date. One way to do this is by content marketing. Content marketing is creating content for your website that is informative, helpful or entertaining, but that doesn’t sell. The most common form of content marketing is a blog. A regularly updated blog has several advantages:
<ul>
<li>It helps keep Google interested in your website</li>
<li>It builds up your reputation as an expert in your field so that when people think about your industry, they think of you</li>
<li>You get additional traffic to your website through long-tail search enquiries</li>
</ul>
<strong>Social Media</strong>
Social media has presented an opportunity and a challenge for many businesses in Ireland. The biggest question is how do you get a result from social media? It is important to first consider what social media can achieve.
If are looking for a direct sales tool, social media is not the answer. In other words if your posts consist of details of your opening hours, information on sales, or special promotional offers, you are probably wasting your time.
Social media is a soft selling tool where you build up a relationship with your customers over time. This keeps you at the forefront of their minds. It is also a place where you can have two-way conversations, and learn about what your customers and potential customers think about your business, your products and services.
This takes time and effort but the rewards are potentially substantial.
All of the strategies outlined in this article can be implemented by any Irish business with a small investment in time or money. The results of doing it will be significant, tangible and measureable – you will get more traffic to your website, more of that traffic will turn into leads or enquiries, and you will get more sales.
