If you own a business there’s no doubt you’re familiar with the term Marketing. You know the importance of getting your name and your brand out to prospective customers. In the old days marketing was a lot of “location location location” with maybe some local print media and the occasional outbound phone campaigns.
I recall a phone book Yellow pages add from many years ago, “If it’s not in here, it’s not out there.” Which brings me to the second topic around Digital Marketing. Search Engine Optimization or “SEO”. The new way to find a business is online using Google or some other search engine. The Yellow Pages are an afterthought if they are thought of at all.
In today’s world marketing has taken on a whole new flavor. Almost everyone is shopping online or at a minimum, they are doing research online. This brings us to the world of Digital Marketing, but what exactly is digital marketing and what can It mean for your business? How can you, as a business owner, take advantage of the vast market that is the internet?
First things first. Let’s make sure we all agree on what Digital Marketing and what SEO means. Once we have that straight we can make the short hop to the benefits for your company. Sound good?
Marketing is exactly what we all know and love. It’s getting our brand recognized and in front of prospective clients and customers. It’s the outward-bound part of our business that seeks to expand your reach and reputation through targeted campaigns and channels. Whether those channels are advertisements, newsletters, social media posts, word of mouth, email campaigns or other channels, the goal is always the same, to be where your customers are and help them find you.
Your entry point into this world is your website. But that’s all it is, an entry point, like opening the gate to a magnificent garden. We cannot possibly see or appreciate the entire garden from the gate. We want to walk the paths appreciate the beauty and immerse ourselves in the experience and finally leave satisfied with our experience. That’s the goal of a well-built website.
Assuming we have that goal accomplished, how do we get people to our garden gate and convince them to come in and enjoy the experience with us? Digital Marketing, getting traffic to our gate using the tools and channels noted above.
Digital Marketing then, is the tools, techniques, channels, and processes to showcase your brand in the digital world. More importantly, a good Digital Marketing plan uses data about your customers to target your efforts where your customers hang out online.
One of the most used and often least understood methods for locating businesses in search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Sure, we all know what Google does. But how do they do it? How do they search millions of websites in seconds and produce the top few links for your review and approval?
This brings us to SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Understanding how to get your website to the top of the google search results may seem like throwing paint at the wall and hoping for coverage by embedding lots of keywords etc. in your web content. But there is much more to it than that. The algorithms employed by Google and other engines look at a myriad of factors besides just keywords to decide whose websites get the coveted top spots.
This is where companies like Web Anatomy come in. They know the algorithms and the science behind them. They know what it takes to get your name in the top search results.
Let me backtrack here for a moment. One thing we should agree on is that people rarely look past the first couple of pages of results. The next thing to agree on is the short description, your “headline” for your website better grab their attention and entice them to click on it. I was thinking of posting lots of stats and studies to support this, but I think we all know how we behave when we are looking for things online. So, let’s just agree on those details and continue.
Once we have garnered that coveted “click”, having a well-designed and optimized website that loads quickly, is easy to navigate and lets people find what they are looking for quickly is key. But we’re never going to get that click if we don’t show up until page ten of the search results. That’s the benefit of Search Engine Optimization.
Put them together and the benefits of SEO and Digital Marketing done well become obvious.
You want to appear where your customers are in the online world. You want to be a top result when they go looking for your product or service. Then, you want to get noticed. You want people to click on your website, and ultimately you want people to buy your product or service.
To accomplish all that you need a well thought out Digital Marketing plan that takes full advantage of every aspect of the online world including Search Engines to help people find you first, choose you and look no further. Getting a customer through the gate greatly increases your chances of making the sale.
As a result, your business flourishes, and isn’t that what it’s all about?
