As the world grows smaller and digital networks expand, customer relationships with products and services are evolving.  Branding and marketing practices are evolving in turn to maintain viability within markets.  Traditional marketing principles still apply in so far as to acknowledge the customer and the value of maintaining presence and relevance.  However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit and maintain brand loyalty with a constant influx of new products and suppliers.  Additionally, the general public now has unfiltered engagement with a variety of competitors of different levels.  Direct competition has never been so fierce.

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is fast replacing the parent concept of traditional marketing.  Eventually all marketing will be digital.  For optimal success, one can never start to early tailoring all customer engagement efforts on a digital platform. 

Get ahead of the competition

Close to 80 percent of all small businesses currently use digital marketing as the core of their promotional strategy, advertising online more often than through other media.  By this logic, larger established companies are far ahead of the pack, but the potential for small businesses to compete with the big dogs is now less of a taboo.

Depending on your approach, digital marketing can be costly; however, with a little time invested to lay a solid foundation, it needn’t be.  Of the more cost-effective digital marketing techniques, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) may be the most useful. 

SEO explained

If your business has a website, you’re likely no stranger to terms like organic and inorganic search results (SRs) – organic being from unpaid sources.  Because SEOs deal solely with organic data, it is a method that costs you nothing.  Using SEOs efficiently can take some practice but once mastered, will increase the quality of traffic to your website where you can then focus on converting clicks to completions. 

Search Engines identify and separate quality traffic through algorithms triggered by a number of ranking factors.  The list is consistently revised and added to through constant market research, evaluating the most common search pathways used by the average internet-user.  Thus, traffic brought to your website through intelligently gathered SEOs will be more likely to convert.

Make it Work

Its not difficult to design an effective SEO strategy.  The most useful skill is an understanding of your customer.  Consider the needs and values of your prospective market. Prioritise which factors would be most important and thus most appealing as a feature on your website.

In recent years, google has released their predictions for upcoming trends in SEO optimization.  These have included, securing websites using HTTPS, improving quality of content, optimizing your site for mobile browsers, and the list continues.  At a brief glance, these seem painfully obvious, and they are. 

The main purpose of SEOs is to understand your place in the digital landscape and to work tirelessly at ensuring that place remains favourable, relevant and attractive to customers.  As with traditional marketing techniques, word of mouth cannot be beat.  Create relationships with sister-sites and brands that carry the same aspirational value and following as your own personal targets – parallel, not direct competition.  Back-links to appropriate sites with elevated reputations will elevate your site’s reputation by association.

Common sense is an invaluable practice when managing your site for improved SEOs.  Make the user experience as fluid as possible.  Make sure your site is running at an optimum speed and that all links work.  Pay close attention to the content you provide and ensure it keeps in line with what prospective customers are searching for. 

Familiarise yourself with on-site design, and become comfortable with terms like Schema and Metadata.  Both allow you to define the terms by which search engines identify your site, and where your site features in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Mastering these criteria will not only improve your online presence and market viability, but has the potential to promote your business beyond your conceived realm of possibility or hire affordable digital marketing company like www.infodatadirect.com.