Running an online business? Do you have a physical store and uncertain whether it’s worth investing in an online platform?
If you do, you also need to understand why digital marketing and SEO are essential tools in your arsenal.
Don’t fret if they sound foreign or difficult. We’re here to help you understand why they matter and what you can achieve with them. Continue reading our guide below, listing down the many benefits of SEO and a good digital marketing plan:
- SEO Drives Traffic
One of the main reasons you should invest in digital marketing and SEO is to drive traffic to your business website.
Remember that without traffic, your site will become nothing but an empty wasteland. It could be pretty, fast, and sell the best products or services, but that won’t mean a thing if no one visits. The other issue is that a website gains more exposure when more people visit.
Consider taking an SEO and digital marketing course, even if you’ll hire an expert agency to do it for you. Understand the basics to further develop a strong marketing strategy.
- Generate Leads Naturally
The difference between SEO and digital marketing is that SEO focuses on organic search results. The latter is a general term covering SEO, PPC marketing, social media marketing, and more. However, both aim to generate leads.
A lead is a marketing term referring to a potential customer who contacts a business. They have a high chance of becoming a paying consumer since they already establish communication. It’s now all about satisfying their need to get them to convert.
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- Educate and Entertains Your Audience
You need SEO to keep your audience informed. Why should they buy your products or avail of your service if they don’t understand what it’s for? Why should they check out the links to your pages if you focus too much on link-spamming instead of establishing your brand and communicating with your audience?
Engaging with your niche audience keeps them in the loop. It’ll build a stronger community, and the audience will look forward to your next posts.
Achieving all this requires a solid SEO plan and a digital marketing strategy to back it up. Start by mixing keyword-focused blog posts that tackle relevant topics and paid ads. Plan a viral marketing strategy, such as releasing a set of comedic videos on social media to entertain and inform audiences of a new product.
- Attracts Local Customers
A smart digital marketing strategy focuses on local users. Global SEO and nationwide digital marketing are meant for expanding a popular brand. For a small business, your goal is to get people in the neighborhood to walk into your physical store or order things online.
That’s where SEO and digital marketing shine.
Using long-tail keyword phrases that target geo-targeted areas and a marketing plan with a local radius limit, you can prioritize consumers within your local district. This ensures people within your area see your blog posts, your marketing ads, and social media updates. It also reduces the chances of someone across the globe seeing a local ad.
Without SEO and digital marketing, you could end up marketing to the wrong audience instead of attracting those interested. You might not attract people who could buy from you.
- Go Up Against Competitors
Even if you run a business in a small town, you have to stop and consider how many competitors there are within your local neighborhood. Say, for example, you run an HVAC repair company. How many other similar businesses do you think are also within your town, vying for the same customers you are.
For context, there are roughly 30 million small businesses, and that’s in the US alone! Now think how many of those are in your area and how many focus on the same niche as yours.
It’s likely your most aggressive competitor is working with an expert digital marketing and SEO company to aid them with their marketing needs. Don’t hesitate to do the same. Otherwise, you risk playing second base to other businesses, and this means they’ll chip customers away from your own.
- Boosts Branding
Marketing isn’t only about bringing in customers to your site. It’s not only about generating leads and potential conversions. Marketing and SEO also focus on boosting brand awareness.
For example, when someone mentions Amazon, there’s a high likelihood everyone already understands that it’s an online shop with many third-party sellers. People already have the idea that it offers free shipping if an order reaches a certain amount and that you can become a prime member.
The only reason people know about this is that Amazon marketed its brand well. You can achieve the same level of brand awareness and reach with a solid SEO plan.
After all, we already mentioned the benefit of educating and entertaining your audience. If your efforts continue to spread, more people will know and identify your brand.
- Helps Build Authority and Credibility
The more people share your posts, the more credible you become. Google’s algorithms will eventually calculate that people relate to and like your content. The search engine will then mark your site as an authority over a certain topic.
Here’s how SEO and digital marketing achieve this.
Say, for example, you run a dental clinic. As part of your marketing and SEO strategy, you posted a blog post teaching visitors about the different types of floss and how to properly floss their teeth. Some people might see it and then start sharing it on social media and their own websites.
The more this sharing and backlinking happens, the more exposure you get. It also means people are building backlinks to your blog post. Google’s algorithm will identify that page as an authority regarding that one topic.
- Drives Physical Shoppers Too
Did you know a majority of people who prefer to shop physically will still research a product online before heading out?
Remember when we mentioned focusing on local customers? This is exactly why. When your digital marketing efforts boost awareness, letting people know your business exists in their town, they’ll check it out.
But you need to go a few steps further.
For example, with a good digital marketing plan, you’ll fill up your Google My Business page and put up your local contact information on your social media pages too. This ensures people can find your shop on Google Maps and will know how to reach your shop in case they want to make a physical visit. Sure, you’ll gain more customers on your site, but digital marketing and SEO will also mark an increase in physical shoppers too.
- Everyone Goes Digital
Never forget that billions of people use the Internet nowadays. That’s a gigantic market that you need to continue tapping into. You can’t reach out to them without a solid SEO and digital marketing plan.
More people spend time on their computers, tablets, video game consoles, and smartphones. That means you have a higher chance of reaching out to these customers if you have ads and posts that they can see whenever they’re on social media pages or visiting other websites. If they conduct a search on Google, you want your business site to be up there among the list of search results.
That is why you need to consider investing in social media marketing, PPC ads, SEO, and other forms of digital marketing! You’re marketing on the platform most people are in.
- Increase ROI and Profits
There’s no denying that you will need to spend a little on SEO and digital marketing services. However, the good news is you don’t have to spend much. SEO can be a free strategy since you only need to focus on keyword research, writing good and relevant content, and building backlinks based on the content you make.
You will need to spend a little on other forms of digital marketing. You’ll need money for a paid ad campaign, and you do need to invest in tools for a solid social media campaign. However, the return of investment (ROI) for doing so easily outweighs the expenses. Why not invest in something that sees a profit multiple times over what you spend?
Take Advantage of Digital Marketing and SEO Now
Now you understand the reasons why digital marketing and SEO should be a primary concern. Without them, you won’t be able to reach out to thousands, if not millions, of customers. Everyone is online, these strategies build your brand, and they work on educating and engaging your potential audiences.
Of course, understanding the benefits of digital marketing and SEO is only the start.
You need to take advantage of those benefits by taking a step further. Not sure how to find a reliable digital marketing and SEO agency to hire? Uncertain how much you should invest and which digital marketing strategies to try out?
Discover more by reading our other marketing guides today. We have an abundance of guides for you to check out and learn from right here!
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