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Sales & Marketing

The Impact of Referrals on Business Success

If you’re here reading this article, it’s likely that you’re seeking ways to expand your business. Along the way, you’ve probably considered the value of referrals. Whether you already receive referrals and want more or you’re new in business and want to understand how to generate business through word-of-mouth, referrals can play a crucial role. In this article, we’ll explore why referrals are not only good for your business, but how they can create significant revenue streams and pave the path to success in the long run.

If you’re here reading this article, it’s likely that you’re seeking ways to expand your business. Along the way, you’ve probably considered the value of referrals. Whether you already receive referrals and want more or you’re new in business and want to understand how to generate business through word-of-mouth, referrals can play a crucial role. In this article, we’ll explore why referrals are not only good for your business, but how they can create significant revenue streams and pave the path to success in the long run.

In the online world, where everyone seems to be chasing the next big thing, it’s important to remember that people ultimately prefer to buy from those they know, like, and trust. While various experts might promise you countless customers by following their proven success formulas, the truth is that referrals have proven to be the best source of valuable, loyal customers. Even when buying online, trust plays a vital role. We often research businesses and individuals extensively before making a purchase. We want to feel confident and establish a certain level of trust before sharing our credit card information with a new entity.

Although online marketing has its advantages, the truth is that the human element and trust factor can be more easily established through referrals. Unlike advertising, which can be a game of chance, referrals provide a degree of predictability that sets them apart. By playing the long-term game and nurturing your referral strategy, you can lay the foundation for sustainable growth in your business.

Referrals may take time to generate, but they come with a higher conversion rate. When someone who trusts you refers you to a prospect, that prospect is already primed to do business with you. Referrals create a warm connection and significantly increase the likelihood of closing deals successfully.

To truly benefit from referrals, it’s crucial to understand the distinction between a referral and a lead. A lead involves two parties: the person giving you a contact and yourself. On the other hand, a referral requires three parties: the referrer, the referee (the client), and you (the supplier). Referrals go beyond simple contact information; they involve a personal effort from the referrer to introduce and vouch for you.

Surprisingly, while referrals are highly sought after, only a small percentage of businesses have a strategy in place to generate them. It’s essential to have a well-defined referral generation strategy to maximise the potential of this powerful business growth tool.

At the core of a successful referral strategy is the principle of “Givers Gain” or the law of reciprocity. By genuinely helping others succeed, you create a positive loop of support that ultimately benefits your own business. Building trust is the driving force behind referrals. When others trust you and feel that you genuinely care about their needs, they are more inclined to refer you to their trusted networks.

While some companies employ paid referral systems, genuine referrals are built on trust and do not require monetary compensation. A sincere “Thank you” delivered in a meaningful way can often be the best reward for a referral.
Written by Braith Bamkin

Categories
Sales & Marketing

The Impact of Mobile Search on Local SEO

In today’s rapidly evolving world, mobile devices have seamlessly integrated into our daily routines, becoming indispensable tools. These portable gadgets serve as gateways to the internet, enabling us to access search engines, social media platforms, and various online resources. Consequently, it is imperative for businesses to prioritize the optimization of their websites for mobile devices to ensure a top-notch user experience.

Mobile optimization transcends the realm of user experience; it holds substantial implications for search engine optimization (SEO). This article by a top local SEO company highlights the impact of mobile optimization on SEO, underscoring its critical importance for businesses seeking to excel in the digital landscape.

What Is Mobile Optimization?

Mobile optimization refers to the process of crafting a website that caters to the unique requirements of mobile devices. It involves designing a website that seamlessly adapts to various screen sizes, optimizes loading times, and ensures user-friendly interfaces. In addition, mobile optimization guarantees that users can effortlessly access the website, whether they’re on a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop computer.

Furthermore, mobile optimization extends to enhancing website content for mobile devices, with the objective of elevating the overall user experience and bolstering the website’s standing on search engine rankings. In today’s interconnected world, mobile optimization stands as an indispensable element for businesses and website owners. The rationale behind this lies in the growing trend of people predominantly using their mobile devices to access the internet.

Failing to optimize a website for mobile devices can result in adverse consequences, including subpar user experiences, increased loading times, and diminished search engine rankings. Conversely, mobile optimization empowers businesses to widen their audience reach and deliver a seamless user experience, irrespective of the device used. It additionally contributes to enhancing website performance and bolstering conversion rates. Therefore, it is imperative for businesses to make significant investments in mobile optimization to remain competitive and adeptly meet their audience’s evolving needs.

Impact of Mobile Search on Local SEO

The mobile revolution has transformed the way consumers search for products and services. According to statistics, in 2021, there were over 7.1 billion smartphone users worldwide, and this number is expected to grow. As a result, mobile devices have become the go-to tool for people seeking information on local businesses and services.

One of the most critical aspects of this mobile revolution is the use of mobile search engines. Google, Bing, and other search engines have adapted their algorithms to prioritize mobile-friendly websites and deliver more relevant local results. The section below takes a closer look at the impact of mobile search on local SEO.

1. Mobile-First Indexing

Google, the dominant player in the search engine market, introduced mobile-first indexing in 2018. This means that Google primarily uses the mobile version of a website’s content for ranking and indexing. In other words, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, it could seriously impact your search rankings.

The importance of mobile-first indexing cannot be overstated for local SEO. When potential customers search for businesses or services near them, Google aims to provide them with the most relevant and accessible information. Mobile-friendly websites are not only prioritized in search results but also offer a better user experience, reducing bounce rates and increasing engagement.

2. Location-Based Searches

One of the significant impacts of mobile search on local SEO is the prevalence of location-based searches. With the use of GPS technology, smartphones can pinpoint a user’s exact location, allowing search engines to deliver results tailored to that location. For example, when someone searches for “pizza,” Google can show them a list of nearby pizzerias.

This feature is a game-changer for local businesses. It means that small mom-and-pop shops have a better chance of competing with larger chains in local search results. By optimizing their online presence for local SEO, these businesses can ensure that they appear in relevant searches and attract nearby customers.

3. Voice Search

The rise of voice search is another significant factor in the impact of mobile search on local SEO. Voice-activated virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa have become increasingly popular. People are using these voice assistants to search for local businesses and services, often in the form of conversational queries.

To adapt to voice search, top local SEO companies suggest that local businesses consider natural language and long-tail keywords. People are more likely to use phrases like “find a Chinese restaurant near me” when speaking to their voice assistants. Optimizing your website and content for these conversational queries can significantly boost your local SEO efforts.

4. Mobile Page Speed

Mobile page speed is crucial for local SEO. Mobile users have high expectations when it comes to website loading times. If a site takes too long to load on a mobile device, users are likely to abandon it and move on to a competitor’s site.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can help businesses identify areas for improvement in terms of mobile page speed. Optimizing images, minimizing code, and leveraging browser caching are just a few strategies to enhance mobile performance. Fast-loading mobile websites not only improve user experience but also contribute to higher search rankings.

5. Mobile-Friendly Design

Creating a mobile-friendly website design is not just about aesthetics; it’s about functionality and user experience. Mobile users should be able to navigate your site easily, access important information, and make quick decisions. Responsive design, which adjusts the layout of your website based on the user’s device, is a key factor in ensuring mobile-friendliness.

Additionally, businesses must ensure that their website is easy to read on smaller screens. This means using legible fonts, optimizing images for mobile devices, and keeping the overall design clean and clutter-free.

6. Google My Business

Google My Business (GMB) is a powerful tool for local SEO, and its mobile integration is crucial. A GMB profile optimized for mobile can significantly boost your visibility in local search results. Mobile users often turn to GMB to find essential information about a business, such as hours of operation, location, phone number, and reviews.

To make the most of GMB for local SEO, ensure that your profile is complete and up to date. Encourage customers to leave reviews and respond to those reviews promptly. Consistently posting updates and engaging with your audience on GMB can also improve your local search rankings.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, mobile optimization has become an important element in ensuring the success and competitiveness of your online presence. It’s not just about adapting to the present; it’s about future-proofing your digital strategy.

If you want to achieve exceptional SEO results, partnering with a trusted expert is key. That’s where Search Berg, one of the best local SEO companies, comes into play. With their proven track record and expertise, Search Berg can help you navigate the intricacies of mobile optimization and take your online visibility to new heights. They are the most affordable local SEO services agency.

About the Author

John C. is a seasoned digital marketing expert with a Master’s degree in Marketing. He has worked with numerous businesses, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, helping them enhance their online presence and achieve remarkable results through effective SEO and content strategies.

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Top 10 Benefits of Outsourcing Digital Marketing that Improve Sales

Accelerating growth is one of the prime aspects on every business leader’s agenda. And looking for new opportunities is only natural in order to inch closer towards the desired growth. One such gate of opportunities is the domain of digital marketing. Flooded with endless possibilities and an equally remarkable flexibility in terms of ideas and methods of execution, digital marketing is indispensable for every business today. Digital marketing improves ROI, boosts your reach and targets the exact customer base that you need.

However, these infinite possibilities and opportunities may also make digital marketing quite overwhelming in more ways than one. This becomes more of a problem when a business decides to not rely on external support or expertise. In that case, failure and chaos become inevitable. 

The Solution: Outsourcing Digital Marketing 

When we compare in-house strategies with outsourced digital marketing, the latter is a clear winner. Why? The pay-off is better, the threats are lesser and the comforts are more. After all, time is a precious commodity and we all seem to be running out of it if you look close. Irrespective of how big or small your business might be, it requires a team that would make it possible to optimize all that available time in the most productive ways. This is where outsourcing comes into play. It brings in a fresh perspective, new techniques and a load of new possibilities to make your campaigns a success while simultaneously allowing you the luxury of more time that can be spent on focusing on other key areas of your business. Let’s take a closer look at how you can better keep up with the latest digital marketing trends if you take the outsourcing route. 

  1. Access to the Best Industry Experts

When you outsource digital marketing, you can enjoy access to an immense pool of experts in the area, all around the globe. Since you are no longer limited by geographical boundaries, it automatically makes things easier. Professionals in the area are already aware of how to achieve results that you are expecting. Their experience makes it possible for them to handle your projects with utmost efficiency. 

  1. No Administrative Hassles

When you approach a digital marketing agency, you don’t have to worry about payroll and employee benefits. The concerns of non-performance can also be put to rest when it becomes the responsibility of your hired agency or organization to ensure output. You are basically making an expert to get the desired results more efficiently. And it is certainly more cost-effective than hiring a full-time in-house employee for the same job. 

  1. Better Consistency and Professionalism

Consistency is one of the keys to successful digital marketing. So, if your in-house employees keep taking multiple days of leave repeatedly, it could become a problem for you. Or a massive internal event may throw everything else off track. Outsourcing can certainly help get rid of all these issues. That is because even if you are not working on the same project due to other priorities, your digital marketing experts would still be taking care of business. 

  1. Better Structure 

When you outsource your digital marketing to the right agency, they tend to have a more balanced structure. You get a full team of art directors, copywriters, designers, illustrators, web developers and so on, working on your marketing round the clock. There is an equal distribution of work among the specialists and set deadlines which further ensure a better quality of time and a faster turnaround time.

  1. Better Innovation

When members working on your team sit together to brainstorm ideas and their best execution, it boosts up the chances of yielding desired results in terms of creativity, novelty and effectiveness.  

  1. Access to the Latest Technology

Your in-house marketing department is highly likely to be technology-deprived or at best, be an assortment of incompatible marketing technologies that can render even the best ideas hopeless. There are over 4000 marketing technologies waiting to be explored and outsourcing can make it way easier for you to access the same. A performance-based overseas company that can ensure the right guidance to your marketing strategies coupled with implementation service and support can add immense value to your business. 

  1. Ability to Focus on the Core Areas of your Business

If you wish to keep your marketing processes separate from the core of your company, outsourcing services can be all the more helpful for you. It allows you to play around with better ideas and develop better strategies that are independent of the company’s other processes. With the right information and access, it becomes extremely helpful to focus on all areas of the business equally and in way better ways than ever before. 

  1. Improvement in SEO

SEO is a highly specialized job that requires dedicated experts working on it independently. When you outsource your digital marketing work, you are improving your chances of getting better SEO for your website too. That is because digital marketing and SEO often go hand-in-hand. 

An All-Round Approach to Digital Marketing

  1. Higher possibility of beating competition

Outsourcing further makes it easier to beat online competition. The amount of time and expenses required for setting up an in-house digital marketing team can be invested more wisely in exploring options across the globe that are reliable, experienced and established in their areas of expertise. You get to enjoy more transparency and a more 360-degree digital marketing approach that includes maintenance and development of strategies, campaigns, websites and other digital products that may have been a crucial part of your marketing move. 

  1. Better reach and visibility

Outsourcing broadens the possibility of increasing traffic, improving brand awareness and ultimately, sales. This is achieved as your visibility increases across multiple digital marketing and advertising platforms. In other words, a global reach is what you need for a better push to business. 

It is important to choose the right organization when you want to outsource digital marketing. The idea is to get better results at justifiable prices. So, a thorough look at their portfolio, credibility and hiring models is crucial. Besides, the larger and more competent your team is, the higher the chances of success. Outsourcing ensures this by removing boundaries and biases in terms of knowledge, trends, resources and so on.

Author:

John Tie
Digital Marketer & Content Strategist
www.virtualemployee.com
Categories
Sales & Marketing

Digital Marketing Tasks That Annoy The Hell Out Of Entrepreneurs

Digital marketing is essential for any business these days, whether online or physical. The rewards for doing it right means more customers, higher search engine rankings & an increased domain authority. Although digital marketing is important, to put it bluntly, it can be tedious and very boring.

If you’re an established business, you’ll probably have an expensive marketing team or freelancers conducting the digital marketing on your behalf. Congratulations & well done to you.

But when you’re starting a business in the absence of a big financial backer, you have to do the dirty work yourself. 

Running digital marketing tasks is by no means quick & easy. The activities consume a lot of time and can distract entrepreneurs from their actual business. Some of the aspects involve a lot of cold emails asking (begging) for something to happen.

You’ll soon find yourself away from the glamourous part of being an entrepreneur; making decisions, picking your strategy & ensuring your customers are happy. 

Instead you’ll find yourself pulling your hair out (if you still have any) over the grammar of a 2,000 word article. Sending hundreds of cold emails asking (begging) for something to happen. Or you might be starting to experience arthritis like symptoms from writing content crammed with your keywords. 

That 9-5 job you just left might now be looking more appealing.

Let’s look at some of the things entrepreneurs will for sure be annoyed about during digital marketing work

What is digital marketing?

So we’ve got eMarketing, email marketing, Internet marketing, digital marketing and so on. Rather than going through each one and writing up fancy definitions, lets keep it simple.

Digital marketing is all the online techniques you do to get more customers. Dividing the tasks into two buckets, you have 1. Advertising and 2. Growing your site’s authority.

Examples of Advertising Tasks are:

  1. Running Google Ad campaigns
  2. Creating social media adverts
  3. Runner banner ads
  4. Paying for solus emails
  5. Newsletter features
  6. Sending cold emails (known by many as SPAM, JUNK or “just delete it”)

Examples of growing your sites authority include

  1. Creating website content
  2. Creating backlinks
  3. Optimising your website for search engines (SEO)

Annoying things you’ll face during digital marketing

So now let’s explore what probably attracted you to reading this article in the first place – a 101 of annoying things you’ll face during digital marketing activities.

HARO – How can you just ignore me?

HARO is a great tool for getting journalists to write about you. Journalists post questions and you respond. In return your business gets mentioned on their site, often with a backlink.

The questions journalists ask can be very niche or vague & open to ideas. You need to review the type of questions being asked regularly and choose which to respond to

HARO sends 3 emails a day during the week so it’s impossible to respond to all relevant questions. 

Every so often, you’ll see an extremely niche question that seems as though it was written for your business as it’s so specific. 

So you own a vehicle rental business specialising in blue colored mopeds in California? Well imagine seeing the request “I’m looking to interview a moped rental business owner based in California to ask about how blue colored mopeds sell more that other colors”

So naturally, you get excited, write a well written response addressing exactly what the journalist was asking for. Then you submit the response and sit back waiting for the article to be published.

A few days pass & you hear nothing… then a few weeks pass and you begin to realise your response isn’t going to get featured.

But…But… your response was perfect!

It’s demoralising when you think you’ve hit the jackpoint with certain questions & getting nothing out of it.

It’s important to keep at HARO, consistent responses will be rewarded. HARO is a quantity, not quality game. Actually no, that’s wrong. HARO requires quantity and quality. 

Commit to responding to a certain amount of questions every day without losing the passion.

Make life easier for yourself, have introduction and closing paragraph templates that can be adapted to different queries ready.

Refine your templates. What can be added to increase your credibility? What needs to be removed to improve reading for the journalist?

Focus on requests wider than just your business domain. If you own a property business, for sure target property industry related questions. But you’ll no doubt have gained skills in sales, face to face communication, online conversions and so on. ‘Soft skill’ requests are included in HARO everyday, make sure you review those as well and see what value you can offer.

The backlink costs HOW MUCH?!

Creating backlinks improves your site’s authority and as a knock on affects your rankings for keywords.

As founder of Rent Round, Raj Dosanjh explains: 

“If people are naturally writing about your site and how great it is, fantastic. 

But if that’s not the case, you’ll need to reach out to bloggers to see if they are willing to write about how great your site is.

Bloggers & site owners as nice as they are, aren’t always as accommodating. Many will ask for a fee in return.

For newbie digital marketers, realising a blogger wants to be paid for posting your excellently written, over 2,000 words and original article can be an eye opener.”

Paying for backlinks has been part of the game for decades. You should expect fees to be quoted by most of the bloggers you reach out to. 

A site’s domain authority gives you an idea about how much you should pay, the higher authority the higher the cost.

What’s annoying is the actual costs some of the bloggers & website owners try to pitch. 

Fair enough, it’s their site, they control the content & choose their price. But 

I’ve been quoted prices over $300 for a site with a domain authority of 30. 

On the flip side, cooling some of the frustration, I’ve seen sites with domain authority over 60 charging less than $100.

When being quoted extortionate… No, I shouldn’t use that word. When being quoted higher than expected prices, you have two options.

  1. Walk away
  2. Make a lower offer

Walking away is fine, unless you really really really want to be featured on the site. Although you may want to ask yourself why that is, if the site’s domain authority is low. 

It may be the case that the site’s traffic converts well for your product. If the ROI works, then possibly the higher price is justified.

Making a lower offer is usually the best bet, although you’ll want to take care to not be insulting.

The initial high price may have been a result of the blogger or site owner trying to maximise their revenue.

When a site owner begins to chase you for a response after you’ve ignored their quoted fee, that may indicate they want your business.

Free Google Adword audits

If you’re paying for Google Adwords, you don’t need me to tell you how expensive & time consuming running campaigns can be.

Your eyes will be glued to cost per click, conversion rate & impression share metrics.

So much so, you’ll be tempted to try out a Google Adwords management firm. Often these firms will throw in a free audit of your campaign, which is where I start my moan.

Now my moan isn’t about large (expensive) Google Adword management firms. My moan is about the flurry of managers promising to manage your account at a low price.

As an entrepreneur starting your business on a small budget, these managers can be tempting. You’ll face yourself accepting a free audit at some point in your initial journey for sure.

The feedback will be underwhelming. I’ve had 3 audits on my campaigns and it’s basically a rehash of the Google Adwords recommendations tab that focuses on your optimisation score.

The audit will pull out the fact that your optimisation score is only 56% and the Adwords management team can bump you to 100% in no time. 

Sounds good right, a higher optimization score is sure to get you more profit… yeaaa not quite.

A lot of the recommendations won’t be adequate for your campaign or cost you more money.

Looking at recommendations for some of my current campaigns, I can see I can improve my optimization score by 8% if I increase my Adwords budget. Fantastic (for the shareholders of Google).

The best cost save, if you have the time, is to run your Adwords account yourself. There are so many online tutorials that learning the basics & some of the fancy features can be done quite quickly.

Once you’ve grasped the basics and have built conversion data, switching to Adwords automated bidding strategies may help. 

The automated strategies will use algorithms and your existing data to target specific users that are more likely to convert. 

If you’re planning to hire an Adwords manager, running the ads yourself or using an automated strategy to start with is essential. This will allow you to build metrics to compare to how well your manager is performing.

You need to ensure that the improvements the manager brings outweigh the cost of hiring them. Seeing performance before & after you’ve hired them gives you that analysis.

SEO Optimization Guru’s

Getting ranked high on Google and other search platforms is the holy grail for most entrepreneurs. You’ll get more site traffic and you can finally cut down on advertising costs.

At the risk of sounding like a simpleton, getting ranked high on search engines isn’t easy (yes, yes, I’m a genius).

Your site needs content, the right keywords need to be targeted and your site should have the right metatags & descriptions to name a few things.

As soon as you can press the “Go-Live” button on your site, you’ll be bombarded with offers to improve your sites SEO and get “ranked to number 1 in a few weeks”

Perfect!

My insightful/expert/genius comment on these types of promises is, the services won’t work. We all know that they won’t, but that doesn’t stop the irritating offers still continuously coming through.

The promises will no doubt come with the enticing offer of a free SEO audit.

It’s a similar vein to free Adword audits. The audit findings are pretty much based on free tools available across the internet that automatically scan your site for errors & improvements.

Run the tools yourself online, to see what errors on your site are impacting your SEO. The tools will identify issues such broken links or pages that cannot be crawled. These issues can have quite an impact on your site therefore it is crucial to get them fixed quickly.

While they are crucial to be fixed, it doesn’t mean you need to pay someone to identify them. There are plenty of free or partially free online tools available

Content, content, content. 

A key part of digital marketing is creating content for your website. Articles that talk about your industry and services are crucial to improve your search engine rankings.

When starting a new business, you probably thought you’d be focusing on big decisions and negotiations with clients. 

Whereas the reality, if you’re starting off small, is you’ll be spending a lot of time writing.

It can’t be any old drivel either. You need to;

  • Write well, keeping content as clear as possible
  • Avoid excessive promotional talk
  • Make sure articles are over a certain amount of words, ideally over 700
  • Include relevant images
  • Create original content 
  • Ideally, include research to backup your content
  • Choose your keywords to target the right traffic

Using the above criteria, it takes hours and hours to write good content. The objective is your content is good enough to start your site ranking for your keywords. In addition, your good content you hope will start to be picked up by other sites, who will then organically link to you.

The process of creating continuous content can be gruesome. Paying a writer can be an option. You will need to set clear guidelines on the content you want created and the keywords to target

Why the hell are my rankings dropped?

So you’ve got a bunch of backlinks, created bucket loads of content and fixed your SEO errors, so you should be on a upwards trajectory for your keywords rankings right?

Not always.

Rank tracking sites such as What’s My Serp show you how well you’re ranking for your targeted keywords.

You’ll soon find yourself checking your rankings on a daily basis. On the good days, when there’s a sea of green (meaning your rankings have gone up), you’ll be over the moon. You may even treat yourself to that muffin you’ve had your eye on.

However on other days, there’s red, red, red. Most of your rankings have dropped. That ever so important word that was just creeping onto the first page, now’s been thrown in the midst of other mediocrity on page 20.

Search engine rankings are determined by complex algorithms that only the aliens who created them understand.

It’s vital to understand ranking well isn’t a sprint, but a marathon. 

Especially for new sites, your keyword rankings won’t be stable. You’ll see large fluctuations, good and bad. Don’t cry based on a small period of adverse ranking trends.

However it’s important not to be passive either. OK so your rankings are doing well? Good, keep doing what you’re doing and don’t rest on your laurels.

Ratings are going down the pan? Don’t panic and look into why. There could be a whole host of reasons aside from natural volatility a new site incurs.

For example, a few of the reasons are below (deep breath):

  1. Lost backlinks: A site with a high reputation may have removed their link to you
  2. Server issues: If you’re site isn’t stable, it will reflect in your rankings
  3. Google updates: If Google have changed the way they rank sites, if could have a negative impact to your site specifically
  4. Sudden surge in backlinks: If your site has suddenly had a lot of backlinks created, it indicates a promotional activity, as opposed to organic growth. This upsets Google.
  5. Penalties: You naughty entrepreneur. If you’ve paid dodgy sites to backlink to you, Google knows this & will put you on the naught step..

Conclusion

Being an entrepreneur and starting your own business is fun and fingers crossed, rewarding. But that’s not to say it can be frustrating as hell. Overcoming daily annoyances is key to consistency. Use the analogy of a gym head. No one packs on muscle just by training for a few weeks. It takes months & years of consistent & quality training to build one’s desired body. Treat your business the same. Be consistent and keep motivated – don’t let the bad times doubt yourself. 

Author: Raj Dosanjh founded Rent Round, a letting agent comparison site that is taking the property industry by storm. Raj Dosanjh also founded a consultancy that works with large banks including the Bank of New York Mellon, Barclays & Deutsche Bank. He has been featured in the Harvard University research portal and numerous tech & property articles.

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Integrated Marketing Campaign Things To Know

The first part of this series discussed the basics of integrated marketing and how the method blends traditional techniques with digital parts. The previous article looked at how this modern tool combined the elements of more conventional outbound marketing with inbound marketing.

This second installment looks at how to take a step back and watch how these moving parts interact by looking at a few hypothetical campaigns that bridge the gap between cyberspace, print, radio and television.

Integrated Marketing Campaign Example

Some of the best integrated marketing campaigns encourage customers to support local small businesses. For example, an event promoting small retailers in a place like Pennsylvania could start with a hashtag like #ShopPenn as the fulcrum of the campaign.

YouTube Videos

That twitter hashtag might point to some YouTube videos about specific local businesses in the Pennsylvania area and perhaps even a live event to be held in a public location where shop owners can distribute pamphlets and flyers, all through one centrally organized campaign.

The Sagefrog Marketing Group has long been leaders in the integrated marketing space. Their 2017 B2B Marketing Mix Report highlights the need to use this integrated technique to engage both younger and older demographics.

The survey notes:

  • 55 percent of businesses don’t have a formal marketing plan.
  • The top lead sources have email marketing, social media marketing, public relations and trade show events all sharing space as big drivers for success.
  • Online marketing and trade shows and events have excellent ROI.

Mark Schmukler, CEO and Co-founder of Sagefrog Marketing Group, sees the parts of these campaigns as interrelated and the focus continually shifting.

Pendulum

“I think the whole thing is a pendulum really,” he tells Small Business Trends. “When digital first came along it was so innovative and powerful people thought all the old channels were dead.” He goes on to say that while digital routes are great for measuring ROI, people are looking to drive revenue too and that’s where these more traditional tools come in.

There are more than a few examples that prove Schmukler’s point. Narrowing the focus helps to get the message out across different channels to your target market. Not everyone needs to be on Facebook or Pinterest. Deciding what’s right for your business and target market is critical.

Therefore, it stands to reason a good marketing communications mix might have several elements like:

  • A press release.
  • Product giveaways on social media that tie in with a series of limited coupons.
  • A website that’s updated with new offers.
  • Demos and events where your product or service gets demonstrated.

What is an Integrated Marketing Campaign? [Smallbiztrends]