Search engines still assist mobile and web users in locating information in seconds. It’s a competitive marketplace with each business vying for a top position on the search engine results page. Populating your website and social media pages with good quality, keyword-infused content will help attract more visitors to your website on a daily basis. This requires a consistent commitment to curating, creating and optimizing content, which is why most businesses choose to hire a marketing team to manage this side of their business.
Quality Content Requires Insight and Skill
If you’ve ever read about big data, then you know that businesses love to crunch the information obtained from their website. More than a decade ago, the news media also buzzed about how Amazon tracked consumer browsing on its marketplace and then suggested potential products to each returning user. That level of tracking data to obtain sales leads may seem outdated, but the larger concept holds true. Potential leads will stumble upon your website through a search engine while browsing on their laptops, tablets and smartphones. Once they arrive at your website, they will still have a spending decision to consider. They must choose whether to give you their contact information, schedule a service, make an immediate purchase, come back later, or buy from another vendor. Your web and mobile content will either tilt a consumer’s decision in your favour, or it won’t. It depends on what you’ve posted on your site. It also depends on how often you update your website with relevant content that gives your potential customers the information they need in order to make a buying decision.
People don’t always want to read evergreen content. They want to read about subjects related to your current products or services, and how your products or services will benefit them. Even established customers may not make repeat purchases if they aren’t convinced that they either want or need what you have to offer. Ask yourself, how well does my content answer the most frequent questions my customers ask and convey why they should buy from me? Keeping on top of quality, optimized content curation and creation is a time consuming task, and is one of the top reasons busy business owners finally decide to hire a marketing team. The right marketing team will help ensure your content is aligned with your customers’ interests, and your business’s sales objectives.
Lead Nurturing is a Full Time Job
Since we already brought up a marketing strategy from the past, we are going to throw in one more for good measure. Do you remember picking up the phone and cold calling prospects? Perhaps you obtained a phone number because you purchased a consumer’s contact information from a marketing service. Later, you realized that the cold-calling tactic was of limited value. You may have decided that you would need to complete many more sales calls on a daily basis to increase overall revenue. You were lucky to get the opportunity to make a sales pitch on a good day. With search engine marketing, your company’s website works as your receptionist, your storefront, and your billboard. It gets people to submit contact information into your database, which then funnels into your (CRM) customer relationship management software and triggers your lead nurturing process. It isn’t a “set-it-and-forget-it scenario though.” The good news is, when you hire a marketing team that specializes in inbound marketing tactics, they will establish a system for your business that attracts, converts and retains new customers both online and instore. This frees you up to do what only you can do best; run your business.
Inbound Marketing Requires Responsiveness, Constant Monitoring, and Management
Once you have legitimate sales leads coming into your business through your website, you can schedule salespeople to follow up via email, phone call, Skype, instant messaging, text, or whatever your consumer’s preferred method of contact may be. You can invest your time in real conversations with people who have already made an initial inquiry and are likely to have an interest in your brand. They may just need some more information before making their purchase. And the questions they ask you can grant you great insight into what kind of information to include on your website. For those who aren’t ready to purchase from you immediately, or have made a purchase from you in the past, your marketing team can automate a process that sends relevant content, promotions and updates from your business to your past and potential customers, based on how often they revisit your website, and what they spend the most time looking at when they’re there. This calibre of marketing requires that you hire a marketing team experienced in web development, inbound marketing, email marketing and social media marketing to ensure that every contact your brand makes with your customers aligns with your overall marketing strategy.
The Convenience of Your Own Marketing Department, Minus the Overhead
Finally, while many large corporations have their own in-house, multi-person marketing departments, they continue to contract help from outside marketing teams on projects that require specific expertise. For small to mid-sized businesses, marketing either falls on the shoulders of one or two employees, or is done off the side of the business owner’s desk. Herein lies the reason why many business owners decide to hire a marketing team. What was once about launching print ads and billboards, has evolved into a multi-channel marketplace requiring constant engagement, daily activity, and regular updates to remain compatible with ever-changing social media and search engine algorithms. Staying on top of all these marketing channels requires the expertise of more than one marketing professional. And so, while staffing a well-rounded marketing department is out of reach for most, when you hire a marketing team, your business is essentially gaining the expertise of several professionals for the cost of less than one full-time salaried employee. It’s a double-win scenario that offers businesses less risk than hiring salaried staff, and the convenience of a whole team of experts within reach.
We want to help you update the content on your company’s blog and website, and keep it active, optimized, relevant, and current in order to help you win favour with search engines, and more importantly, your potential customers. This could mean building upon what you already have in place, or it could involve a significant revamp of your website. Either way, it’s worth the new sales leads that your site will generate. A properly optimized website markets your brand 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We invite you to contact our team of experts at McAllister Marketing, and learn more about increasing your sales through our online marketing expertise.