Digital marketing has proven to be the most effective way to reach your target audience at present. Many small business owners have realized this and saw the potential of this amazing technique. This is the reason why more and more people have been turning to digital marketing agencies, and have been including it in their mainstream marketing activities.
Digital marketing is a term with versatility. There are lots of components in it, such as SEO, PPC, social media optimization, local optimization, search engine marketing, email marketing and social SEO, you name it. The idea of digital marketing is still in its initial growth stage, yet the phenomenon itself is so wide that business owners tend to focus on just a few things instead of the whole thing.
Just a glimpse of what small business owners focused in the recent past, it shows that the focus was limited to these components:
- Social media optimization
- Review optimization
- PPC, and
- Reputation management
One major thing, SEO, has been overlooked by a vast majority of marketers and business owners, and that’s due to the following reasons:
- SEO efforts take time to pay off
- SEO efforts need to be consistent and continuous
- SEO requires patience and hard work
You may call it boring, or some might say that people were looking for quick results, yet SEO remains one powerful component of digital marketing. You may want to consult search engine marketing expert Canada at Webryze who’ll tell you how important SEO is for small business, especially local businesses.
Here are some interesting discussion points shared by digital marketers and small business owners as they were talking over building a powerful and flawless marketing approach. Here you go!
1. SEO is Time Consuming : Most digital marketers and business owners tend to ignore SEO intentionally, saying that the results that your SEO could give after months, can be achieved within short time via social media, paid ads and local review optimization. It was astonishing to see people going after quick results, instead of investing their efforts.
2. More Followers More Reviews : Most of the business owners and content marketers believed they were doing well. In reality, business owners liked their social profiles getting more and more likes and followers, while content marketers were doing what they were asked to do. Similarly, getting positive and favorable reviews on HotFog and Yelp seemed to be the objective of businesses, and they looked quite happy achieving them.
3. No Improvements in Terms of Conversion : When these people were asked whether they were getting more customers because of all these efforts, the answer turned out as, “not really”. But most of the agreed that they were observing high traffic volume on website and engagement on social media. This can be confusing. What’s the purpose of high traffic and engagement if prospects are not really converting into customers?
The Real Aim of Digital Marketing :
It’s quite simple – translating prospects into customers, but since the purpose is not achieved, getting likes and followers or good reviews is a waste of time, money and efforts. There must be some ROI associated with the entire activity, and it can only be achieved by means of proper, legitimate SEO.
If you’re doing SEO to answer customers’ queries, other potential buyers would find it useful, and they would surely convert into your customers. In this way, not only will you get followers, likes and good reviews, you’re making use of your time and money in your content marketing.
What Buyers See In You :
Buyers decide to buy from you on the basis of these two steps.
- Discovery: the visibility of your website in response to the queries they enter in Search Engine’s query box. They can turn to a paid ad or organic results. But once again, organic results are more favored, and it totally depends upon your SEO practices.
- Verification: It is simply the sum total of your activities to make your business credible. You can do it by making yourself known – through social media and review sites.
Summing Up :
Small businesses and content marketers are focusing more on the second step, and tend to ignore the first one which is far more important than the second step. If you are verifying your business across all social platforms, but not focusing on customer’s queries, soon you’ll see a steep drop in your customers. On the other hand, if you make the process of discovery easier for customers, you’re actually investing in constructing a strong and long lasting customer base.