Digital marketing is made up of a multitude of closely interwoven elements, like the gears of a machine. When everything is in place, a minimum of effort is enough to guide the customers. Conversely, if you miss a piece, you can burn a lot of energy without getting anything back. Here’s a five-step overview to make sure your digital strategy is complete.
Step 1: Verify and standardize your fact sheets
Your business is automatically listed by a large number of resources on the web: search engines, directories, government websites, applications, etc. One bad piece of information can be highly damaging to a potential customer who clashes with the closed doors of your old address; it does not make a very good first impression.
Inconsistencies from one source to another may also send search engines negative signals as to the reliability of the information. Fortunately, free tools can quickly identify the main windows to update your records.
Don’t feel like updating your information on all 25 different platforms? Yellow Pages’ NetSync tool allows you to synchronize everything from the same dashboard.
Step 2: Have a strong website
Do you have a website? If so, when was it last rebuilt? At the very least, your site should be optimized for proper display on all types of screens (computer, tablet and mobile), provide information about your products and services in order to maximize organic SEO and submit some contact forms to gather your customers’ information.
How do you choose the right provider? After having built an online presence for more than 17,000 businesses, the experts at Yellow Pages have developed an adaptive website solution that can evolve at the same pace as your business.
Step 3: Develop quality content
Without maintenance, even the most expensive landscaping will end up withering – just like your website. Creating relevant content – be it blog posts, videos or informative visuals – must be done on a regular basis to gain and maintain an enviable position on the search engines.
The creation of content produces occasions to attract new visitors and gives existing users a reason to come back to see you. Search engines are able to evaluate the quality of content on websites – and to confirm its originality – in order to recommend the most relevant during searches.
This material allows you to also feed your social networks by always having new things to discover. Interesting and useful content is more likely to be shared by readers and receive better organic reach.
You don’t know where to start? Video content generally has the most amount of impact for small businesses. A professional shoot by Yellow Pages can be completed with a modest budget.
Step 4: Engage with the community
Be sure to establish contact with your current and potential customers, whether in store or online. Social networks like Facebook and Instagram offer you privileged platforms to answer questions, inform your community about news and ensure that you are not forgotten. Invite your online customers to come in store, and those in store to follow you online.
The Facebook advertising platform also allows an unmatched level of control to reach potential customers according to highly specific criteria. Geographic location, age, gender, languages spoken and spheres of interest: these targeting settings ensure you only pay to reach the relevant audience.
Yellow Pages is the first company in Canada to receive Facebook’s Small Business Solutions badge, demonstrating its commitment to serving small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada.
Step 5: Utilize paid search
Once all the essential elements are in place, paid search can speed up the pace of digital marketing. Even with a modest budget, this solution makes it possible to appear at the top of the list during relevant searches. As soon as your business is able to handle additional orders, paid search can generate huge value quickly.
