Best Ways to Market Your Business
What are the best ways to market your business in 2021?
In the not so distant past, businesses would advertise in physical print like in newspapers, magazines, and mailers. While those media platforms are still somewhat alive, they are in no way the best option for business marketing. They are extremely expensive and are mostly cost prohibitive when it comes to being a feasible option for most small businesses.
While we would all love to have a giant billboard on the side of the expressway, the costs don’t justify the means in today’s digital world. Today, you can get one of those giant billboards, except the internet version. Being front and center on a search engine with the horsepower like Google, will virtually give you the same ROI, if not better. Plus, its measurable via all of the various analytics tools available today.
Organic SEO
What is organic SEO?
Organic SEO refers to optimization of your website, or other digital properties, for the purpose of showing up on the first page of the major search engines. My recommendation for all business owners is to lay a solid foundation via organic SEO, versus paid advertising, which we will discuss later. The main reason you want to start with organic SEO versus other methods is automation. Wouldn’t you like to put in the work up front and get traffic for free later on? You have the ability to only pay for whats needed, and 6 months, 1 year, 2 years down the road you are getting traffic to your website without lifting a finger.
Organic SEO consists of many different aspects, visit my article on SEO here.
Do the hard work first.
That’s always been my motto. But many business owners don’t do organic SEO because you won’t see a Return On Investment (ROI) till many months, or even years later. We now live in a culture of now now now, we want results NOW. But SEO doesn’t work that way. Its takes time for the crawlers and bots to find your content, your page, and index it for people to be able to visit it.
How Much Does Organic SEO Cost?
Costs can vary depending on if you are locally-focused or nationally-focused. For local SEO, I personally charge about $400-600 per month. For national SEO, which is a much broader scope and requires more work, I charge between $600-$1000 per month. Ecommerce stores take even more work due to the sheer amount of pages for each individual item that requires optimization.
Most companies will charge between $600 and $3,000, depending on complexity and scope. Make sure you ask digital marketing companies for examples of their work and digital media portfolio, so you can ensure that they actually know what they are doing. Many pretend to be digital marketing agencies, while in fact they are not.
Social Media Marketing
Is social media advertising and marketing a viable way to market your business? Absolutely! But my recommendation is to not solely rely on it. Ensure you are on the major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok. TikTok you say? Listen to my podcast episode where I discuss the relevance of TikTok for business. Its important to not only create profiles on these platforms, but also engage your audience. Get out of your comfort zone and make it happen.
Social media is literally FREE, and all businesses should be taking advantage of it in 2021.
Paid Advertising
The reason why paid advertising is #3 in my list is because it costs significantly more money than the first 2 options. Not only that, but once you turn off the figurative faucet of paid advertising, the leads and traffic dry up. Paid advertising can drain your pockets quickly if you are inexperienced in this realm. Social media paid advertising can be very inexpensive to someone who knows how to use it successfully. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are great examples of how to spend very little money and get a huge return on investment in the form of leads and website traffic.
Google Advertising (PPC)
Google is fantastic for local businesses where people are searching for specific services. If you own a brick and mortar or have a service-based business such as HVAC, roofing, or home remodeling, Google can work in your favor. The reason I say this is most of their ads show up first in the search results but are mostly text-based. Companies that require more of a multimedia version of their ad won’t successfully advertise and fall on their faces, wasting a ton of capital in the process.
Facebook Advertising
As mentioned, Facebook is very inexpensive but is highly competitive. An outside agency should be brought in to create the persuasive ad copy as well as the imagery so you can get the most bang for your buck. Doing it on your own will most often result in displeasure of the results, and in turn you may choose to not use the platform for advertising again.
YouTube Advertising
The best kept secret in advertising in YouTube. You can get thousands of views of your video for less than $50. There are a few options via Google Ads (YouTube afterall is a Google property). You can choose in-stream, or partner advertising. In-stream advertising is the short 5-seconds you see when watching something on YouTube. This is a great way to get exposure, but you must grab their attention quick if you want to keep them watching. Think about it, why would they want to watch your advertisement over what they originally clicked on? It better be good.
Online Business Directories
We all have seen directories like Yext, Yellow Pages, and others but what value do they have for your business? Online business directories are great for overall exposure, but most importantly online relevance to the search engines. The more times you come up as a local business by being listed in business directories, the more relevant that the search engines see your company.
Comments
Post a Comment