There are only so many hours in the day that you can spend growing and nurturing your business. When you practice Internet marketing, there are a ton of avenues competing for your interests. The budget may also contribute to the volume of testing you can or cannot do, as companies generally don’t like to throw money at strategies that perform poorly. But as companies dump an increasing amount of money into mobile, one is left with the question of whether search marketing is on its way out.
Copywriting
GrowthWeb puts a simple twist on sorting data by filters with different words to describe the process. Want lowest price flights first with lots of stopovers? Sort by agony. Want hotels with the best annuities for the price? Sort by ecstasy. These turns on words put a humorous spin on the brand and create something memorable about them that people can take away.
That’s opposed to the straightforward branding of something like Amazon. The emails and language are more formal, typical of a big brand retailer, not a hip price aggregator. Your brand’s voice is somewhere in between, and it’s up to you to figure out what that voice is and what it has to say. Working SEO into your content marketing will help ensure your words remain at the top of the search page.
List Building
List building creates long-term income for the business and helps brands leverage an existing customer base into repeat purchases or actions. The advantage of a list is that you can reach out to customers and improve your interactions with new and existing clients through testing. List building relies on search marketing, so while traditional search marketing methods may dip, email marketing remains a strong alternative for businesses seeking alternate income streams.
Reputation
Many marketing companies now focus on visibility and reputation, creating a greater presence around your brand and controlling the outlets where people can discuss it. This helps you keep your ideas and your brand safe from potential competitors looking to strip it of its integrity. It also creates a system for you to measure what people think about you in a given moment and look for ways to improve customer relationships. Your reputation is important:
- Search your brand online. How does it appear, and what kinds of things are said about it on the first page of search results? Knowing this and having control over this is vital. Take note of what 29 Prime says on its blog: “Small business success is virtually impossible without a strong online presence.”
- Lock down social media accounts with your brand name on them as soon as possible; even smaller networks.
- Create a guest posting system to build your brand’s reputation as a source of expertise and knowledge.
Testing Offers
The most important thing you can do is test as many offers as possible. Try looking for alternate products to market to your audience and monetize your existing traffic. Google Analytics features an experiments tool that divides the traffic you send in half, sending some visitors to landing page A while others visit page B. Measure the results of those campaigns, and learn to do true AB testing, where you change only one variable about a landing page to test the viability.
The important thing is not to get lost in those changes. Establish a baseline first, then test your landing pages against that champ.
Branching Out
Creating multiple traffic streams is the best way to ensure that no matter what happens to search marketing, you stay afloat. Look for methods to boost your social media presence, like holding a contest or posting more articles from other sources. You should also consider video marketing if possible. Hosting video content on YouTube that teaches people how to do something can be a powerful marketing tool if you put it in front of the right audience.
