The Law of Attraction: How to Attract Your Markets Online
Global messages are being relayed faster than ever and if you can talk the language of the web, users and search engines will respond. It’s vital to put attention and energy into your digital marketing strategy if you wish to attract attention back.
More and more users are being drawn to alluring information that has something to offer and conversing about topics in online groups rather than being influenced through traditional mass-marketing mediums that can haphazardly pump out information.
Just like traditional marketing, it is important to target your markets online. For example, if you’re engaging in SEO, there is no point in targeting high-volume, generic keywords that have little to do with your site’s actual content or what you offer online in a bid to get high traffic to your site. Once users land on your page, they bounce straight off again because it’s not what they’re looking for. It’s simple; don’t try to attract the wrong crowds!
Even after you attract the right crowd, it’s vital to engage your market and encourage them to connect and interact with other users. It is this two-way dialogue and significant content that will keep people actively involved with your site.
Put newsworthy and valuable information that is pertinent to your target market, coupled with the right digital marketing tools that harmonises with an alive and kicking website, and you will find that the right market will gravitate to you. Put your feelers out there because like will attract like.
To create a gravitational presence online, ensure you have:
- Researched your target market – Know exactly who your market is, where they are, how they search for information, what they are looking for etc
- A visible website – Implement search engine optimisation techniques or a Google AdWords campaign to make sure that you can be found and are noticed
- Killer content – Provide relevant, unique and updated content that will draw in users and is search-engine friendly
- Fulfill your users’ needs – Why are they on your site? Needs are varied and can include informational, transactional, social and for entertainment value
- Tools to talk – give your customers and users a platform to interact with each other, the community and you. Let them ask questions, give advice and provide invaluable feedback
- Help your content travel – implement multi channel marketing techniques such as social bookmarking, RSS feeds and other social networking tools that help people to connect. This will give your information and message a path to travel.
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Read MoreOnline Customers Shop Offline Too!
With more and more businesses adding online stores or e-commerce systems to their offerings, the need to present a uniform business image is becoming increasingly important.
In the past there’s been a trend amongst many businesses to treat their online presence as a completely separate entity. However, as the Internet becomes more and more mainstream in terms of online buying, the need to make online customers feel comfortable with a brand is also growing in importance.
Online consumers expect to see a consistent brand image in order to be reassured that they are receiving the same level of service that offline customers are.
The Australian pizza industry is one market where there’s a range of approaches. Of the three major pizza chains in Australia, one provides a very slick online experience, allowing coupons to be added, pickup or delivery options specified and most importantly uniform pricing across all marketing channels. That is, the prices advertised in mailbox drops, TV commercials, coupons and online ads are all uniform.
This is a critical factor for an industry such as pizza, where traditionally phone orders have been the primary ordering method. Online ordering in an industry such as pizza doesn’t create a huge deal of cost savings over phone ordering, but it does give customers more convenience.
By contrast, one of their competitors has a scatter-gun approach to pricing and uniform marketing. Prices advertised on TV often can’t be ordered online, certain coupons are only able to used by phone and what a potential customer is faced with is a bizarre form of brand confusion whereby the same company is advertising across multiple mediums a completely different range of products.
However, this particular case is not unique. Countless businesses fall into the same trap of thinking there are two different types of customers; 1) ones that buy online, and 2) ones that don’t. The distinction is not so black and white anymore, and many customers will feel comfortable using both.
But this multi-channel shopper needs to see a certain degree of pricing and brand uniformity, or else they will likely switch to a competing provider.
Popularity: 7%
Read MoreWebsite Usability: Getting the basics right
Ranking highly in Google is one thing, but there’s no point in being number one if users land on your website and leave straight away. This is why it’s so important that not only is your website well optimised to appear at the top of Google for relevant search terms, but it’s also important that your website has a solid web strategy in place to ensure it is as user-friendly as possible.
When it comes to web strategy, sometimes you might need a complete overhaul of your website’s structure. Starting from scratch with a clean slate is sometimes easier than just continuing to tack things on top of an existing deficient structure in an attempt to make things simpler, when in fact things are just getting even more out of control.
However, if your website’s foundations are simple and efficient, sometimes all that’s needed is some basics that will help to improve the overall usability of your website. Here are a few basic tips to ensure your website is as user-friendly as possible.
- If you have a lot of pages on your website, it’s a good idea to use breadcrumb pathing to increase users’ situational awareness. This can help users easily find their way back through the path they just took.
- Make sure your headings are relevant and meaningful. Most users will just scan a page of text rather than actually reading it word for word. Therefore, help your users find the information they need by ensuring you use relevant and meaningful headings.
- Write your online content using an “inverted pyramid style.” Provide the most relevant information to users at the top of the page before they get sick of reading (or scanning).
Obviously there’s a lot more to good website usability that just these three, but getting these right will put your business on the path to an effective web strategy.
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Read MoreBuilding an Online Store
When it comes to setting up a new physical retail space, most business owners will take the time to research demographics in the new area, write up a new business and marketing plan and not be afraid to spend time and money to make sure it works.
So why is it then, that as soon as that new store becomes an online one, planning and deliberation take a back seat. Many businesses will simply spend up big on a new website and sit back, waiting for sales to come rolling in.
The downfall of many online stores is that they do not go through the same planning steps that a ‘bricks and mortar’ store would, and this is major downfall because for many businesses, online stores make the same if not more, than their physical stores put together.
For a physical store, businesses spend extensive time and money on choosing the right store location and signage to make sure that potential customers can find their store. Online stores are no different. It is even more important to make sure consumers can find your online store because unlike a physical store in a shopping centre, there’s basically zero chance of a customer accidentally finding your store on the web. For this reason, it becomes essential that you have invested wisely in search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).
Without adequate investment in both these facets of e-commerce, customers won’t be able to find your store and any investment in an expensive, flashy website will be wasted.
The key then becomes utilising the right resources to make SEO and SEM work for your business. Whether this be a do-it-yourself attempt or outsourcing to a professional with industry knowledge (www.reloadconsulting.com), it is essential that you take the first steps towards a successful online business.
For more on why you need SEO: http://searchstrategy.com.au/?p=4
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Read MoreWeb strategy – why you need it first
There’s a common trend amongst businesses that, as soon as they feel the need to build their first website, or even a replacement website for an old one, they scuttle on down to a web designers office and hand over their hard earned dough.
What’s wrong with this?
Well, the most common problem that emerges from this is that these businesses tend to blow thousands of dollars on websites that are visually stunning, but don’t convert into sales. Too many businesses then put this down to the “internet being a fickle thing” or “our industry is not set up to support web sales.”
The actual reason why these websites fail is because they have not been strategically designed.
Web designers are not web strategists or strategic business consultants, and while they are great with the flashy components of your site, they are not business strategists.
Issues such as usability, navigation, search engine performance, and most importantly, conversion to sales, are not a web designers forte. This is where a web strategist steps in.
A web strategist, such as Reload Media, takes you through all of these elements and more BEFORE you see a web designer, ensuring that by the time you walk into a web designers office, you know exactly what needs to be done and the entire process is both time and cost efficient.
So what exactly does a web strategy company like Reload Consulting do?
To begin with, they determine from you what “Aims” you have for your business in terms of online sales. From there, they work with your business to develop a “Strategic Web Plan” which can be taken directly to a web designer, ensuring you don’t waste your dough on a website that doesn’t earn a crust of sales. These web strategy companies use industry knowledge gained from years of experience to assist you with all elements of planning your website.
You might be thinking that this all seems like a lot of work, after all, it is just a website. But think back to how much time you spent developing your business plan, and how much time you spent searching for retail or office space, the sign out the front, and the marketing campaign.
Your website is essentially just like another retail space, only it operates in its own medium that requires new strategies and marketing ideas. And just like your physical store, if customers cannot find their way to or around the shop, get help when needed or be able to make the purchase decision, then the investment to open that new space is wasted.
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Read MoreWelcome to SearchStrategy.com.au
Welcome to SearchStrategy.com.au!
Our aim is to provide you with practical and timely advice about all things related to SEO or Search Engine Opimisation. This will allow you to make informed decisions about your business online.
SearchStrategy.com.au aims to supply you with blog topics on all facets of your internet campaigns including search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), web strategy, usability and so much more.
Written by a Brisbane-based team of web strategists, our blogs are informative with up-to-date developments direct from the wide world web.
Our job depends on our ability to keep informed about every change to a search engine’s algorithm, ranking equation, keyword trends and everything else that is search strategy, making Search Strategy the difinitive voice for web strategy.
Feel free to browse our blog articles and make comments as you feel.
Search Strategy is a part of Reload Media – one of Brisbane’s leading Search Engine Optimisation companies.
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