How will you reach your target customers? This is a question on the mind of every business owner. And while some marketing tactics are rather hit and miss, meaning you advertise to anyone out there hoping they’re the right people for your business to work with, there are marketing tactics out there that help you target the market segment you want to reach. Digital marketing focuses on helping you reach your target customers. One big area of digital marketing, SEO, helps you reach a larger audience through organic search optimization.
But why do you need SEO for your business? Can you make your digital marketing strategy succeed without it? Well, let’s look at some of the benefits of SEO, then you can decide for yourself.
Build Trust Online
SEO helps you to naturally rank higher on in searches. These days, Google’s search metrics have become very advanced. The search engine only sieves out the best of the best, so raking high in search results will definitely cement a position for your business as a being trustworthy.
Most of the time, the first page results are what Google saw as being most relevant to a user’s search. As a user scrolls from one page of the search results to the next, the searches slowly become less relevant. What this means for your business, is that showing up high in relevant searches will not only make it easier for users to find you, but it will also make your business seem more relevant to their search.
Reach Younger Generations
Millenials can’t care less about using a phone book or reading the newspaper. It would seem that the new generation lives their lives almost entirely online. Printed media is becoming less and less attractive to younger generations, as they can easily stay in touch with the world around them by reading news website, listening to podcasts and reading blog posts.
And where millenials might see phone books as completely irrelevant, we’re not even sure if Gen Z members even know what a phone book is and how it works!
What this means for your business is that getting online will secure you a future. Online search directories are becoming ever more popular as the traditional way of finding a business, the phone book, is slowly dying out.
Even social media sites, like Facebook, are more popular among the younger generations than searching in a phone book. And it doesn’t matter if the business they’re searching for is local. Young people search the Internet to get information on everything they need, even if it’s local. They don’t care if you own a local pizza place or if you’re an ophthalmologist, they expect to find you through Internet search.
Learn More About Your Customers
Do you know who your target customers are?
While most business owners would say they know who their target customers are, they often assume they know their target customer. To know who your real target customers are, you should know more about, a) the kind of people that are searching for your product or service and b) which of the people searching for your business are more likely to buy from you.
Taking an educated guess about who’s buying from you isn’t truly knowing your target customer. It’s more of guessing game than anything else.
The traffic you get from your SEO efforts can give you some insights into the minds of your customers. By staying on top of your Google Analytics data, you’ll see exactly what your website visitors are searching for and who they are in terms of age, location and gender.
Once you know who’s more likely to search for the product or service your business offers, you can readjust all your marketing to that audience.
Amplify Other Digital Marketing Efforts
Digital marketing has different channels that you can use to advertise your business. Fro PPC and social media to content marketing. With PPC, you pay for advertisements that will get you paid traffic, but with SEO the aim is to make your website more search engine friendly so you can naturally get more traffic without paying for each visitor.
Different digital marketing tactics can, and should, be used together so you can get the most out of your online marketing. That said, a solid SEO strategy is an integral part of what your business needs to succeed online.
SEO is like the foundation of all things Internet marketing. It’s what gets you more traffic without a constant need for spending more money to get new leads. Paid advertising can get some traffic to your website when you’re just starting out, but it’s not a long-term plan for sustainable marketing.
Show Your Authority
Many business owners make the mistake on spending too much for a spiffy website design, only to get little to no traffic.
Good website design is important, but if no one sees how much effort you put into looking professional, it won’t mean anything. By implementing proven SEO tactics, your business can stand out among competitors with a professional website that ranks high in search results.
Here’s to new opportunities to reach your customers! By getting your business online as soon as possible, you’re opening up a whole new bunch of chances for customers to discover you online.