Blue Dots Partners

Blue Dots Partners Blog Guest Post

By Melanie Yunk, President of Roaring Pajamas.

To attract and retain customers, a business must consider all marketing tactics – from traditional to new, and from snail mail to social media marketing – and thoughtfully align an overall marketing strategy to customer needs and customer whereabouts. More specifically, a company must be visible in all places a customer or potential customer seeks information. Showing up where a customer looks, which is almost everywhere online, requires a carefully coordinated, concerted effort across all marketing tactics.

Today, customers define the parameters of where and when they want to research a topic, engage a business and start a conversation; a company’s marketing must be responsive to and synchronized across these broad parameters. Rather than investing heavily in broad-scale branding and advertising, we suggest a company focus resources where customers and potential customers look for ideas and information. To achieve this focus, we recommend a multi-pronged approach that starts with a clear position in the marketplace and includes optimizing keywords for organic search (search engine optimization – SEO), implementing paid search (search engine marketing – SEM) and maintaining an engaging presence across multiple social media marketing platforms. Let me explain:

SEO: The goal of SEO is to organically attract the right people to a website via a search engine. To attract the right people naturally, a site must show a clear purpose and rank high on search engine results pages, best achieved by using relevant keywords in the proper context for optimization.

To embark on an SEO journey, a company must research and choose keywords that both accurately describe the business or solution and hold relevance to the targeted searchers. In other words, choose keywords or keyword phrases that pertain to the business but also are something a customer or potential customer would logically and likely type into a search bar.

Once keywords are selected, proper site optimization requires understanding SEO principles, writing current content that supports the keywords and creating links to and from other relevant and legitimate sites that reinforce the chosen words and phrases.

Paid Search Marketing: Paid search allows a company website to show up on the search engine results page when someone types in the specific keywords or phrases for which the company has paid. Paid search marketing complements organic search efforts and focuses on the keywords for which a company does not rank reasonably well organically or for highly competitive keywords and phrases. In the paid search world, the more valuable a keyword or phrase, the higher the cost of placement.

Together, well-aligned organic and paid search marketing programs enable a company’s digital assets to appear higher on the search engine results pages for search terms that are meaningful to a customer or potential customer and describe the mission of the business or product. Appearing higher on a results page makes a company more visible to searchers, thus situating that company exactly where a customer or potential customer is looking for information.

Social Media Marketing: Sometimes mistaken for mere child’s play, social media marketing now classifies as an influential marketing tool fundamental to a modern-day marketing strategy. Social media marketing enriches and substantiates other marketing tactics in numerous ways.

On-brand and on-topic social media profiles appear in search results and offer additional digital properties to attract an audience. Social profiles for businesses that generally rank well on a search engine results page include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn. Social media tools also allow for verification and validation of other content a searcher may find on the internet. In fact, links from social posts to a website, especially when anchored in the appropriate keywords, help Google determine the authority of a web page or site. As well, the ability for a customer or potential customer to see and hear a more fluid, current, engaging and personal “voice” on social media can make the positive difference in a purchase decision.

Similar to search marketing that offers both organic and paid search, social media marketing also offers paid options. In addition to organically attracting an audience to a social media marketing profile, which can be accomplished through hashtags with keywords, likes, shares and other tactics, paid social media advertising is offered by most networks and helps drive additional visibility. Businesses can pay to boost a Facebook post, promote a Tweet, and promote content and create ads on LinkedIn – to name just a few.

Proper execution of each of these elements and alignment across them proves essential. While each of these marketing tactics may be managed in a silo, the benefits of alignment yield exponentially better results. Remember the concept of “you must tell them three times before they get the message?” The same idea rings true here! All messaging and marketing – search results, ads, social media, landing pages, a website and even offline marketing – must be consistent. Ads, posts and even descriptions on search engine results page should match both the content and look and feel found on the landing page on a website. In fact, properly coordinated landing pages increase conversions – the ultimate goal of a business. Marketing resource alignment ensures a business shows up – and shows up repeatedly – as potential customers gather research and decide to engage with a company or solution.

We advocate strategic investment in programs and tactics that ensure a company can be found by customers and potential customers when and where they search the internet. A company’s purpose must be well defined, and keywords must stand out and appropriately describe the company and offerings. Similarly, paid search terms must complement organic search efforts, both reinforcing keywords and also expanding into corresponding – but relevant – ideas and messages. Finally, social media marketing is not just for fun and not just for the kids. On-brand and aligned social media marketing maintains a fundamental position in current marketing strategy and further supports the company’s overarching marketing message but conveys the message in a different, sometimes more visually appealing context.

All of these efforts – from SEO to paid search to social media marketing, and more – allow a company to show up where customers and potential customers investigate a purchase or decision process – in the near and far reaches of the internet. This alignment of marketing tactics allows a business to be considered along the path to purchase and stands out as an imperative for growing and sustaining a business.