4 Online Marketing Strategies to Engage with Customers

Even the most frugal business can afford a basic website that tells the world who you are, what you do, and how to find you. If you don’t already have a website, for a few dollars a month, your business can convey a professional image with a basic but nicely designed website. If you rely on word-of-mouth advertising, personal contacts, and handing out business cards, it may be all you ever need to stay busy. Even so, there are some online marketing strategies that can significantly increase your chances of being successful.

Most businesses need additional ways for potential customers to discover them — customers who don’t even know you exist. That’s when you need a more advanced digital marketing strategy to stand out.

Let’s say you’re a plumbing company in Denver, Colorado. In all likelihood, someone who needs the kind of services you provide will start by maybe typing “Denver plumber” into the Google search bar. The odds are likely they need a plumber now for an emergency and don’t have time to ask around. Most people will click on one of the top three organic (non-paid) search results in Google, and this is where your site needs to shop up. In this blog post, we’ll discuss four proven and tested online marketing strategies. We’ll share how your business could get more engagement with potential customers and, at the same time, get your website listed at the top of the Google results pages:

1. Make Blogging and Social Media Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy

An excellent way to engage potential customers is to include informative, interesting, even fun content on your site in the form of a blog. Got a snazzy new truck for your business? Share some photos! Save the day for a customer in a rather unusual way? That makes for good content. Opening a new location? Let the world know on your blog. Got some helpful hints to share? People love that kind of information!

In addition to giving people a reason to visit your site occasionally, each of these news entries, if cleverly crafted, adds potential entryways to your website. The more interesting, exciting, and engaging content you have on the site, the more hits you can get in a search. We plan and implement sophisticated content marketing strategies for many of our customers. A typical content marketing strategy can include blog posts, long-form articles, customer case studies, and white papers. If you’re just getting started with your website, simply blogging a few times a month will do. Anything is better than nothing, and at least you’re starting to implement your blogging presence this way.

Doubling up on that strategy, every time you have some news to share, it’s worth cross-posting about it on other social media… Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, can all extend your reach. Maintaining an active social media marketing strategy will naturally support your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Google pays close attention to everything that you do online. Simply tweeting the link to your latest blog post ensures that Google learns about it and that the blog post gets indexed in the search giant’s massive database.

Speaking of organic search traffic, what does that mean to you? In addition to having important keywords in your content (like “Denver” and “plumber”), there are multiple ways to increase your SEO naturally. Like it or not, many other companies pay big bucks to have their results show up at the top of search pages. What works in your favor here is that some folks may not like seeing “paid ad” under those entries, so they look for the next group, the businesses who reached the top of the page naturally. A well-developed organic SEO strategy can put you up top without spending all that advertising money.

2. Search Engine Optimized Press Releases

Got news? Sending news to various media outlets can increase traffic to your site. The business section of your local newspaper is always looking for straightforward content to share with its readers. A well-written, strategically crafted press release can go a long way for getting some clicks. Instead of physically mailing them out like in the old days, your news can be targeted and custom-tailored to meet specific marketing needs.

There are so many things that you could announce with a press release, yet many businesses struggle to come up with ideas. Here are a few press release ideas:

• Announce a new product or service
• Share information about a new employee
• Celebrate the win of a new customer
• Announce a new customer case study or white paper
• Share that you opened a new office location
• Or blow your own horn for the award that your business won

As long as it’s somewhat newsworthy, go for it. Check out this article for additional ideas and best practices.

As part of our overarching digital marketing methodology, we publish search engine-optimized press releases for nearly all our customers. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if we can answer any questions.

3. Start to Host Webinars

Hosting webinars is a fantastic way for any business to connect with its target audiences. Webinars allow you to showcase your expertise and fill your leads pipeline at the same time.

We don’t hold back in our webinars. We give away a ton of free and relevant information that anyone could put to work for right away. However, many webinar attendees realize how involved and complex digital marketing has become these days. Right after hosting a webinar, we usually sign on two to three new customers. Several more webinar attendees will turn into customers over the following months, and sometimes even years later.

Nearly 1,900 people signed up for our webinars in 2020:

Suppose you’re interested in learning how to put a powerful webinar strategy to work for your business too. In that case, I invite you to read an article entitled Meet The Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Strategy That Will Produce Leads and Sales for Your Business for Years to Come.

4. Create a Customer Feedback Loop By Including Social Media in Your Customer Support Efforts

Hands down, social media platforms offer a fantastic opportunity to directly communicate with your customers and potential customers. So once you’ve established a presence on Facebook, or Twitter, or other social media platforms, your company needs to figure out how to respond to feedback. Let’s face it; people seem more likely to leave negative reviews than positive ones these days. After all, it’s more fun to complain than to compliment. Sound familiar?

You don’t need to be on every possible social media platform. Still, you need to be on the social media platforms that your target audiences are on. Even as a smaller business, or potentially a one-person show, you should be able to manage two to three social media channels properly.

As noted earlier, share your latest blog posts and press releases via social media. But don’t always blow your own horn. Share third-party industry information from time to time so that your followers don’t get tired of you.

Ultimately, the key is to develop trust with your customers and followers. Make sure to respond to questions, feedback, concerns, and complaints within a reasonable timeframe. Respond to all comments in meaningful, constructive ways. Consider if negative comments have some merit and think of ways to make things better. And try not to air your grievances in public. A big, nasty Tweet war can get a lot of attention online, but not for the right reasons.

One of my favorite examples is the Southwest Airlines Twitter account. They do a fantastic job, in my opinion.

In a Nutshell…

Even the tiniest company can compete with the big businesses through a well-thought-out digital marketing strategy. Boulder SEO Marketing isn’t a huge agency, and yet, here you are looking at what we have to say. We can do the same kind of magic for you. Contact us today to discuss your unique situation.