Anyone who owns a business knows that much of its success is based on branding and marketing. However, not everyone is familiar with marketing their business online. The importance of proper representation online cannot be overstated. Today, we’re going to discuss just how important it is for your business to be properly represented online, as well as some helpful tools that will lead you to success.

Establishing your brand is very important in the success of your business. You want to make sure you maintain brand consistency across all platforms. Wherever you have marketing efforts in place, you will want your brand to be consistent and unique to you. Therefore, you should establish a brand that you are pleased with and stick to it; same goes for your logo. Once you have a logo designed that accurately represents your business, you’ll want to include your logo across all platforms. Stick to the same formats, colors, and designs on your website, social media pages, Google business page, and any other platform you are including in your marketing strategy. Without brand consistency, you could mislead or confuse your audience. Every successful business has a well-established brand. So, maintaining brand consistency across all platforms will substantially help your business’s online position. When you work with Weblocal, Inc. on developing a digital marketing plan, you are guaranteed that your business will be properly represented online as we put an emphasis on brand consistency.

Helpful Tip #1…Make sure your brand is consistent across all platforms you’re currently using as part of your marketing strategy.

Proper representation online is important because more often than not, your business is making its first impression to potential customers online. With that said, your business will greatly benefit from having a marketing strategy in place that positions you ahead of your competitors. When potential customers search a keyword related to your business, you want to be the first to appear. When you are the first to appear, you want to make your first impression on potential customers count. The content included on all platforms should be up to date and informative. You want potential customers to see a well-established, professional business who cares about their image. Moreover, you want potential customers to visit your website and be impressed with what they both read and see. Get started with WebLocal, Inc. today on properly establishing your business online. First impressions matter, so make yours count.

Helpful Tip #2…Make your first impression count by establishing yourself online in a professional and organized way.

Position yourself in front of the competition with proper representation online. You can do this by applying these five helpful tips to your digital marketing strategy:

1. Know Your Competition – Determine who your competitors are, what their products and services are, and what makes them unique. By doing this, you will be able to identify what areas you need to improve in order to position yourself in front of the competition. Make yourself different than the rest.
2. Be Different – Now that you’ve determined who your competition is, you can now take the necessary steps to make your business stand out. Provide your customers with reasons to give you their business and not your competitors. What makes you unique? Once you’ve determined your unique selling point (USP), you can implement this in your marketing strategy and stand out amongst your competitors.
3. Know Your Customers – Learn your customers; what matters to them, what products and services stand out to them, price points they prefer, etc. Once you get to know your customers well, you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
4. Engage With Your Customers – Make an effort to tell your customers who you are and what you have to offer. Customers are quickly impressed when businesses take the time to respond to their comments or questions online in a quick, professional manner. Don’t just engage with your customers on one platform, but across all platforms.
5. Keep Up With Trends And Update Your Image As Needed – Keep up with current trends in the digital marketing world and make revisions as needed. The internet is ever-changing and neglecting to adapt to the changes can set you back. WebLocal, Inc. can help you create an image that reflects your unique selling point and stay up with the newest trends in digital marketing.

Contact WebLocal, Inc. today to speak with a consultant who will help you get your business properly represented online and positioned ahead of the competition.

Social media marketing can seem like a daunting task – posting something new each week, keeping your audience engaged, keeping up with social media trends…there’s a lot to think about.

In today’s world, it’s important to understand the value of keeping up with your social media channels for marketing purposes. Social media posting is a great way to keep customers engaged and up to date with your company.

In this blog post, we are going to discuss five tips on social media marketing.

1. Post Consistently

We can’t stress enough the importance of posting consistently to your social media channels – consistency is key. We advise our clients to post to each one of their social media platforms on a routine schedule, keep their customers up to date with new sales or promotions, and provide any other important information customers might want to hear. Posting often to your social media channels will make your audience feel important and keep them engaged.

2. Develop a Social Media Marketing Plan

In your social media marketing plan, you should outline what your routine posting schedule will look like, as well as the type of content you plan to share. Developing a calendar that outlines the details of when you publish content, and which content you plan to publish, will help keep you on track for success in the social media world.

Your followers are likely following hundreds of other accounts on a variety of social media channels. Therefore, publishing new content as often, if not more often, as majority of accounts out there will help you to not get lost in the mix.

3. Carefully Choose Your Content

The quality of the content you share beats the quantity of content you share. Your audience is not interested in reading long, drawn out posts about anything that does not relate to them. Be picky about the content you share – make it valuable.

Quality content will include:

• Helpful and informative information
• Relevant information
• Entertaining or fun information for your audience

The more frequently you post to your social media channels, and the more valuable the information you share is, the more engaged your audience will be.

4. Interact With Your Audience

Implement this social media marketing tip, and you will quickly notice an improvement in how engaged your audience will be. If you simply share posts with no relevancy, or posts with content that has no value to anyone reading them, you will not have an engaged audience. However, once you start sharing valuable posts that relate to your audience, you will notice more feedback, comments, and reviews on your social media channels. Once you notice this response from your audience, you’ll want to respond to your customers in a professional, positive manner.

Interacting with your audience will included:

• Sharing posts with content that demands the attention of your audience
• Receiving comments, tags, and reviews from your audience
• Responding to posts from your audience in a professional, positive manner

Once you start interacting with your audience on social media, you’ll find that your social media game is now a two-way street. You want to encourage conversation on your social media channels, as well as participate in the conversations that take place.

5. Share Pictures Often

Last, but not least, you should be sharing pictures with your audience on all of your social media channels. We don’t recommend just posting any pictures, but high quality pictures that capture the nature of your company, products or services. Examples of valuable pictures that you could share might include: a picture of a product you’re running a new promotion on, a new hire employee, or someone performing a service you provide. The value of the subject in the picture and the quality of the picture are incredibly important. Do not share any photo that might be blurry in image, too dark or light to see the subject, or low resolution. High quality pictures will grab the attention of your audience members who want something to look at, not read.

Depending on your business’s current situation and objectives, an effective social media plan may consist of different layers that are suitable for you. This might include post engagements (organic or paid) and/or paid Ads, with different objectives available for your Ad choice. Paid post engagements or Ads can improve the visibility of your business simply by paying for your post or Ad to be seen by people within your targeting demographics. If you are looking for more detailed advice, or help with putting together a specific social media plan, contact us and we can get you in touch with one of our local consultants.

We hope you try implementing these five social media marketing tips and share your success with others. You’ll quickly start to establish your brand’s presence in the social media world and build an engaged audience. Get out there and put your stamp on social media.

We live in the digital age – the age of information – an age where phone books are seemingly obsolete. Why is this? Are there any benefits to advertising your business in the local Yellow Pages? Or, is it time you take your business’s advertising efforts one step further and jump on the digital marketing train.

Let’s look at the ROI of phone book advertising and see how it measures up to digital marketing…

Isabella Anderson (2018) provides an interesting example in her article of how to determine the ROI of phone book investing:

Here’s how to figure out how many phone calls you’d need from one phone book ad for you to break even. First, take the cost of the ad and divide it by your average sale, then, figure out how many phone calls it takes to make a sale. For example, if your ad is $200 and your average sale is $30, and it takes 10 phone calls to make a sale, 200/30=6.6 and 6.6×10=~67 people. That means 67 people would have to call your business from a Yellow Pages ad in order for your phone book advertising to break even. Ten more calls (or one more sale) and you make a whopping $10.

According to MSN, 70% of the American population do not open their phone books before next year’s batch is delivered. That is 70% of people who will not see your advertisement, and a poor, poor return on your investment.

ComScore has found that over half of the U.S. population has replaced the phone book with an online search; this number is growing as mobile usage skyrockets (Anderson, 2018).

Additionally, back in 2014, less than half of the U.S. population was regularly using a phone book, yet today, phone directories remain a $3 billion industry (Anderson, 2018).

There is endless amounts of research supporting the argument that phone books are becoming obsolete. Think about it, when was the last time you cracked open your Yellow Pages? Were you looking up a business, or were you just checking to see if your business was still listed? On the other hand, when was the last time you searched for a business online? We are willing to bet the latter was done most recently.

When you commit to advertising your business in the Yellow Pages, you are not guaranteeing that your listing will be seen. When you invest in digital marketing for your business, you can be certain that your business will get noticed. Digital marketing can position your business to be at the forefront of an internet search. Not only can your business be the first to appear during an internet search, but a significant amount of information about your business can be accessible to potential customers. Your website, Google business page, directory information and reviews, and social media accounts can all appear with one search.

The local exposure you can get from digital marketing is unparalleled. You will be able to reach the high volume of people looking for exactly what you have to offer. It is time for your business to move forward with digital marketing, and realize that phone books are dead.

References

Andersen, I. (2018, February 8). Yellow Pages vs. Digital Marketing: Is the Phone Book Really Dead? Retrieved from https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/yellow-pages-vs-digital-marketing-is-the-phone-book-really-dead/516574/

Stromberg, J. (2014, December 17). The Infuriating Reason You Still Get A Phonebook Delivered Every Year. Retrieved from https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-infuriating-reason-you-still-get-a-phonebook-delivered-every-year/ar-AA5VCAJ

What are the benefits of digital marketing? First, let’s discuss what exactly digital marketing means and what it entails. Digital marketing is the promotion or marketing of products and services with the use of digital channels to reach targeted consumers. Digital channels might include a website, social media pages, search engine tools, and online directories.

So, now that we’ve determined digital marketing refers to any promotion of products and services via various forms of electronic channels, we can discuss how your business can benefit from digital marketing.

1. YOU CAN REACH A LARGER AUDIENCE

Your business will reach a much larger audience online by utilizing a variety of digital channels. Much of your business marketing efforts may run on word of mouth or referrals and paper advertisements – this limits your audience. Once your online exposure is enhanced, you will reach a whole other, much larger, audience that you didn’t know existed. The internet is ever-changing and evolving. Face it, most people go online to look for products and services, and to find a local business to buy from. It’s time you get in front of the audience who are seeking to find you.

2. YOU CAN TARGET THE RIGHT AUDIENCE

We have limitless amounts of information at our fingertips. We utilize a variety of search engine tools that teach us a lot about people – what they search for and how they search for it. Using tools like Google Keyword Planner Tool, we are able to determine which keywords potential customers use to search for certain products and services. With this information, we can construct your digital marketing efforts to include the keywords used most often. This is the type of data that will help us to help you target the right audience online.

3. YOU CAN STRATEGIZE WITH VALUABLE DATA AND ANALYTICS

As previously stated, we have access to limitless amounts of information in the digital marketing world. After all, this is the age of information. We are able to analyze online traffic information to help us better determine what marketing strategy is right for you. With this information, your business will gain insight into customer preferences and what influences their buying patterns.

4. YOU CAN COMPETE WITH LARGE COMPANIES

Digital marketing can put your business in a position of competing head to head with large companies. We can help you develop a competitive advantage online, no matter the size of your business. If you have found yourself competing with larger businesses in your local area, than you are someone who can benefit from enhancing your digital marketing efforts.

5. YOU CAN EARN A HIGHER REVENUE AND ROI FROM YOUR CAMPAIGNS

You can expect both a higher revenue and ROI by utilizing digital marketing strategies. You will quickly see an increase in conversion rates (the percentage of visitors to your website to achieve a goal out of the total number of visitors). High conversion rates are indicative of successful digital marketing efforts – people want what your business has to offer, and they’re getting it. An increase in conversion rates can greatly benefit your business. In addition, we can generate a better cost-per-lead (CPL) for your business which will in turn give you a better return on your investment (ROI).

WebLocal, Inc. can position your business online in a way that will get you noticed and allow you to experience the many benefits of digital marketing. We want our clients to understand the value of the local exposure we can get them and the volume of people looking for exactly what they have to offer. Digital marketing efforts will enhance your local exposure, which will in turn enhance your business. Get ready to be found.