2020 was a major wake up call for businesses. If your business wasn’t online, or your website was old and out-dated, suddenly it was extremely important to sort it out – ASAP!
As a result, in 2021 there are more New Zealand small businesses online than ever before, with good looking websites, making the online space very competitive.
So how does your business get a competitive edge?
Focus on using your shiny new website as a key sales platform and grow your business with Digital Marketing.
Here are 3 key ways Digital Marketing can help your business grow in 2021’s competitive online environment:
Just because you have a website doesn’t mean all the hard work is done. Continuing to optimise your website will bring more traffic to your website and get more conversions. Dedicate time each week to doing something to optimise your site. All the little things do add up.
Add these SEO tasks to your Marketing Action Plan:
Weekly
Review Page Speed and action the recommendations. Just by reviewing a page a week you will improve your overall site health. Research shows that having a website that loads fast improves conversions on average by 7%.
Monthly
Check Google Analytics. Google Analytics will tell you the pages people find the most interesting and show where people drop off your site. It gives you insights into where your audience is located, whether they are using a mobile or desktop computer, what gender they are and how old they are. This is extremely handy information that you can use to adapt your current content and create new content that your audience will find useful.
Check Google Search Console reports to become familiar with the search queries people are using to find your website. You can use these keywords in your content marketing strategy.
Quarterly
Review your website’s mobile experience. Pretend to be one of your buyer personas and use your website as you think they would. Does your website perform as you’d expect? Is it easy to scroll through and find the information you need? Make sure that your content is easy to consume on mobile.
Review your Keyword list. Are you ranking for the keywords that you identified were important? Are these keywords still getting search volume? Are there new keywords you could be targeting?
Review your meta-data to decide if you could optimise it to get more clicks. Meta Titles that include questions, are under 40 characters and use emotive or power words in the copy get more clicks. Can you bring a little more spark to some of your meta titles?
Content helps boost traffic to your site so creating content should be part of your 2021 Marketing Strategy to grow your business online. However, there are over a billion blogs on the internet, so how do you get cut through?
Explore fewer topics in greater detail and provide in-depth content specifically for your niche. Being the authority within your niche indicates to Google that you are the expert and your site deserves to rank.
If you’ve been blogging for a while, you don’t have to always create new content. Think about which content you could simply update or repurpose.
And the clincher?
Optimise your content for a conversion (sale or lead). It’s great that your content is bringing more traffic to your website but how much revenue does it bring in? If you’ve written an extremely helpful blog and it’s really popular with your niche, it’s a wasted opportunity if you don’t promote your products or services within the blog or on the page.
If your customers are on social media you should be too. Chose one or two platforms that your ideal customers are most likely to use frequently and focus on them, making time to post 2-3 times a week.
Remember that with social media, content comes before commerce. Your posts should be about things your customers find of value. By writing about what they care about and providing curated links to infographics, articles and videos they would find helpful, your audience will engage with your brand on a much deeper level than if you’re constantly trying to sell. As you build brand loyalty the sales will follow.
If you haven’t already done so, take some time to create a 2021 Marketing Strategy and Marketing Action Plan for your business. Detailing what you will dedicate time to will help you commit to consistently growing your business, instead of letting marketing fall by the wayside when things get busy.
OUTSOURCING YOUR MARKETING
If one of your goals for 2021 is to outsource your marketing I can help. I offer a Dedicated Marketing Manager service where I create and implement the Marketing Strategy and Marketing Action Plan for you, ensuring everything is covered. Learn More.