Businesses that aren’t employing some marketing strategy are likely to be eaten up by the competition. And digital marketing is the inevitable weapon of choice by companies ranging from a retail store selling candles and perfumes to eCommerce platforms. Google accounts for 94% of organic traffic.
If you need your business to be noticed by customers, you need to be at the top of Google search results. Whether you are operating a consulting firm from a small town in Utah or New York City, you can’t be on top if you don’t use search engine optimization or social media. To highlight this point, more than 60% of marketers agree that enhancing SEO is a marketing necessity. Experts say that organic SEO will do the work just fine and perhaps more than five times better than paid search ads.
What if your company is a consulting business? Will any of these marketing, digital or otherwise, have an impact on your business?
An Overview of Marketing
The beginnings of marketing can be traced back to the 18th century during the rise of the industrial revolution. With the growth of the machines, big industries were able to mass-produce goods for consumers. And they needed a way to inform them about these products. This need for information drive became more competitive for companies starting in the early 19th century until the 1940s. Fast-forward to the 1990s, 1997, to be more specific, SEO was officially born.
SEO is mainly designing and organizing your website so that when keywords are used on Google, the chances of your website landing on the front page of the search are higher. SEO is just one of the tools used in digital marking. The site itself is part of your digital marketing strategy. Your presence in social media is also essential.
Making It Work For Your Consulting Company
If it’s a tube of toothpaste or the latest shaver or razor, it’s a lot easier to conjure compelling and colorful images. Products are more tangible and visual, whereas consulting to, say, improve an organizational structure to create efficiency, isn’t.
Tradition still works. Don’t underestimate the power of traditional methods like direct mailing. Targeted emails allow you to inform specific customer segments or demographics about your services. You can make it visual by adding an image or telling a short story about your brand. You can put testimonials in quotes with the name and picture (with their permission, of course) of a happy customer.
Content is king. In the digital marketing world, the assertion “the customer is king” will take a backseat behind the concept of “content is king.” Evergreen content as blog entries on your website is more effective as opposed to content that will become irrelevant a day or two or even just hours after. Write content that highlights your services as a way for businesses to solve their real-world problems. Inefficiency translates to lost time and money. “How to create efficiency for a flat organizational structure” is a topic that won’t have an expiration, and something potential customers will find useful.
Analytics and the sales funnel. The application of web analytics means creating content that effectively targets the conversion of mere leads to actual customers. Thus, the marketing strategy must take into account how to optimize the sales funnel.
Your services might not come in a box, but with a robust digital marketing strategy, you can still package your message in a way that attracts customers.