Before You Spend Another Dime on Digital Marketing Read This
My name is Nick Irmo and I am the Founder @ Clicking Awesome. I have spent the last 15 years helping small to enterprise level businesses improve on their marketing, What I learned in the past few years is what I am going to share with you, right now, for free. Why? Because I don't want you to fail where I did. I want you to achieve your marketing goals online as quickly, effortlessly and as affordably as possible.
First, you have to stop spending your money. Period. If you are doing what most companies are doing you are only benefiting the channels by dumping your money into them. These advertising channels are not long term investments and can only go so far to sustain your business. You shouldn't be renting the land you build your house on! You see Google, Facebook, Bing, Twitter all want you to spend your money on paid search, or "sponsored ads" and the truth is most businesses are set up to fail using those tools before they can realize their full potential online.
You need to evolve from a transactional business model to a conversational / relationship connection between your "story" and your customer "persona". Sounds good right?
It is easier than you think. Let's break it down to 3 steps.
First, you want to examine your website. Is it simple to use? Is it mobile responsive? Does it look good? Does it load quickly? Can users find what they want? Does everything work as it should? Is it optimized? All of these things, and the list is much longer, effect the user experience. If users don't like what you website has to offer or they simply can find a better experience elsewhere why would you pay to invite more people into a bad experience? So many companies are convinced that if they spend more money to attract more visitors to their unfriendly unusable site they will make more money. Would you want to eat at a restaurant that doesn't clean the floors? Of course not. Your first goal is to get your site ready for more traffic and make the user experience exceptional. Site structure goes hand in hand with user experience, if you have duplicate content or page issues that run deeper it may be a good time to call for professional help. If you don't have the experience to do this yourself, Clicking Awesome is here to help.
Second, try to tell stories. Simple to say, difficult to accomplish. Try to answer these questions - What is it that your business does the best? Why are you in business? What are your business goals? Who is your perfect customer? This is a good start. These questions should be the building blocks on the content that lives on your site. Make sure that your site can support a blog and start using it - a lot. Connect your fresh, original, relevant content to everything you do online, it should be the basis for your emails, social media posts, your customer journey, even your ads! If you aren't connecting all this work you did together you are missing a huge win. But do this connecting carefully! Make sure that your content is syndicated, keep your internal links / external links corrected with the proper redirects, make sure you are cautious to avoid black hat SEO tactics. When you have all this in order and you are publishing great content on your website find social influencers in your vertical to promote your brand further. Be the "WIKI" on your business!
Finally, instead of spending tons of time and countless dollars on ad buys - try to lower the cost of the service or product that you have. Invest in less expensive channels that will have a better ROI / ROAS. Don't engage with PPC or other paid ads unless they are meeting your goals. Make sure that you enable a email marketing system that allows you to nurture your prospective clients and helps keep your brand top of mind.
Content marketing should come first as you assess what is working well and what areas you need to improve upon this year. None of this happens overnight. The content you build today will serve you well into the future and you can free yourself from the constant worry of buying each future customer. If this message resonates with you and you would like a free analysis of your current online marketing please don't hesitate to ask. All I ask is that if this information serves you well and the content that I delivered to you helped, let's chat.
Kindest Regards,
Nick Irmo
Experienced in franchise systems, small business, multi-unit locations, and enterprise level business strategy, Nick has seen marketing as a staff member, director, executive and as an entrepreneur. He believes that "content marketing" is the only true form of expression that creates a relationship between a customer and a brand.
"The purpose of social media is not to send a message TO someone, but rather THROUGH someone into their network."
Clicking Awesome is a full service creative digital marketing agency, for more information about Nick Irmo please go to BestMarketingGuy.com