Top 3 Digital Actions IN A POST COVID-19 WORLD
Depending on the category of your business, you have either been somewhat impacted or severely impacted by COVID-19 shutdowns. You’ve likely frozen or readjusted your marketing budgets. No matter where the health of your business stands, now is a good time to take a serious look at what you can do differently with your digital marketing moving forward. Analyzing marketing performance, results and return on investment are essential.
There are three areas you should rethink. All three can help you reactivate and grow revenues if you invest the time, in some cases, spend some money, and ask for help.
In the past three years, I have analyzed hundreds of local websites. There are five common issues I find in 75% of my reviews. 1. The website has not changed in years. No new content and incorrect information. 2. The website has not been set up for search based on Google’s top ranking priorities. 3. There are no analytics set up to measure website traffic and performance. 4. The website doesn’t include videos. 5. Home page message does not speak to the needs of potential customers visiting site. Does your website have any of these issues? If so, it probably doesn’t rank well on a Google search. Google looks at hundreds of indicators when ranking your website. Fresh content, relevant content, useful content, well written title, description tags (meta tags), an easy to navigate website and serving the needs of the user are some of the critical areas you should be focusing on. If you don’t have these basics covered, you won’t stand a chance. Not sure what all of this means? Ask for professional help. Have a thorough analysis of your website done so you know where to focus.
Tracking and measuring results has never been easier. Website analytics can help you understand how many new customers are coming to your website, what pages they’re looking at, how long they are staying and where they came from (your online ads, social media posts and ads, TV campaigns, etc.).
Social media marketing can be a good investment or a waste of time and money. If you are not looking at the data available for ad campaigns, you are missing key performance information that helps you determine what’s working and what’s not. You can certainly look at ad views, clicks, impressions, click through rate, likes, shares and comments, but if your ads are not generating leads that turn into sales, you may be wasting marketing dollars. Develop a plan to better understand your analytics and start measuring what counts.
Your Google My Business page (GMB Page) is one of the best marketing opportunities you are probably not taking advantage of right now. If you make it a priority, you will reap the benefits of your efforts right away. I mentioned Google ranking factors earlier. GMB is one of the most important tools you can use to rank well. Out of all the things Google looks at, GMB is the top indicator.
Hopefully you have already claimed your Google My Business page. If not, you should do it as soon as possible. If you have claimed your page, locate the email address and password associated with your page. Google continues to add more FREE features that you should add to your page. Here are some of the recent additions that will help your page become more valuable to Google users and to your search ranking.
1. Create a full business description with keywords.
2. List a full range of products and services with photos.
3. Add video and more photos.
4. Add secondary categories that help you better describe your business to Google.
5. Download the Google My Business app so you can add photos, videos and information from your phone.
6. Take advantage of free packages to encourage reviews
You don’t have to invest a lot of money to improve your digital presence. You just need to invest a little time and energy to ensure your digital marketing is working for you. TK
Al Bonner has 20-plus years of digital marketing experience. He is Google Certified in Google Ads, Google Analytics and Google My Business
