How and Why to Understand Your Client or Customer’s Mindset
Creating products and services for your target audience is just the tip of the iceberg.
For example, your workout protein supplement is bought by the gym freaks or athletes. The supplement has everything they need to build muscles. Right? This way, you are meeting their needs with your supplement.
But have you tried to read their mindsets?
For example, some of them might question if the supplement is approved. Some want to know if the supplement is suitable for the elderly. Some want to know if women can use it. For some, the prices can be too higher. Some might not be assured about the quality of the supplement. Some married people want to know if this can affect their reproductive health.
If these questions are not answered, your potential buyers might be doubtful over your protein supplement.
A customer is likely to consider many points before buying your products and services. Therefore, selling a product to their need is just half done. Getting inside your client’s mindset can help you retain them forever.
Why Should You Care About Your Customer’s Mindset?
Not all customers or clients are made equal. Within the same store or website, one might be looking for a particular product to meet an immediate requirement, while others might simply be exploring or browsing. Just as they can have various goals when they visit a website or store, the individual buyer might be driven by the decision made by a different mindset. In other words, the mood or psychology of a customer often impacts his or her purchase decision.
Getting to know your clients or customers helps you build a better product or services and user experience. It also helps you stay competitive as well as earn the trust of clients. After all, you are familiar with the ins and outs of their concerns.
Coming out with the products that match their psyche or mindset means you have hit the bull’s eye.
HOW TO READ THE MIND OF YOUR CUSTOMERS AND CLIENTS
Work Over Your Buyer Personas:
Go beyond the usual demographics factors like age, location, and profession. These factors might not provide sufficient information to create messaging that connects with your audience.
Go extra miles by using the Acquisitions tab to check out which social media platform, blogs, and forums you are getting your traffic from. Integrate this data with your personas to figure out where and when to approach them more strategically.
Keyword data can also help to find the terms and descriptions speaking about the concerns of your customers. Use Google Webmaster Tools to create a list of keywords that can drive visitors to your site. These keywords can then be used in the content of your website, social media, and other digital interactions. This will make your business more familiar with your customers and clients.
Consider Their Lifestyle:
Not all of your customers have the same lifestyle. Some might have kids, and their lives might be revolving around pick up times and after-school activities. If they might not have kids, they might have a good time in sports activities, holidaying, and clubs. If they work part-time or just start their jobs, they must be budget-conscious. Everyone is different, so should be your services.
For example, a family person might be worried about his furniture’s safety when mischievous kids are around them. You can offer them a sofa that is durable enough to withstand all wear and tear caused by the kids. A person who is working part-time with a study can be lured by offering an affordable sofa.
Tap into Behavioral Data:
Behavioral data is also a valuable point to understand your customer’s mindset. After all, the behavior is the reflection of their mindset. You can obtain it using tools like Google Analytics to understand how customers engage with your business. This will help you understand what they find easy or don’t prefer. Besides, you can see where they encounter difficulties while exploring your site. Reviews on social media, eCommerce, and other platforms can be the goldmine to find your offerings’ customer experience.
Develop the Art of Listening:
This is one of the skills you need to develop if you often interact with your clients over the phone or in-person. Actively listening to them can hint about their issues and the solution they are looking for.
Active social listening is also essential if you interact with your customers over social media platforms. Explore your review section to understand their pain points. Make sure to activate the alerts when people discuss your brand online.
Figure Out their Whys:
The mindset of clients or customers can be read if you find out some “whys.”
Why are they using your product and services? What brings them to you? Can your product solve their problems?
Last but Not Least—Put Yourself in Customer Shoes:
Thinking like a customer or client is one of the effective ways to understand their mindset.
It is all about feeling what your customers go through.
For example, a wheelchair company owner can take a tour in the wheelchair of his brand throughout any building to understand their customers’ concerns. Do they feel comfortable in a wheelchair? Does the wheelchair come with better control for their safety?
Here is another example—let’s say your app goes down. Think like your customers, and you will find that it is quite frustrating. You would like to get it fixed as soon as possible.
Bottom Line:
These are some essential tips to read the mind of your customers or clients.
I have told you that getting into their minds will surely give you a competitive edge.
You can map out customers’ minds by conducting surveys, polls, and asking for/exploring reviews.
What do you think? Let us know by commenting below!
I searched Google for the causes and treatment of rash.
And the site that topped my search results was none other than WebMD.
We all know that WebMD is an authentic medical domain educating on various health conditions.
But why Google trust it? Why it places WebMD on the top of SERPs related to health and medical advice?
As a webmaster, I can give you several reasons why Google shows WebMD on top.
But one driving factor behind all those reasons is its E.A.T.
E.A.T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
It means that WebMD has got the expertise, authority, and trust. The content is created and verified by medical experts, making it authentic for users.
The users come here, trust it, and share it, making it reliable for Google.
This is just a rough overview of E.A.T to show its role in the search engine results.
LET’S UNDERSTAND E.A.T IN DETAILS
What is E.A.T?
E.A.T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. Launched in 2014, E.A.T has become a key metric of ranking.
It is a framework mentioned in Google’s Search Quality Guidelines that helps people determine how helpful or useful a page is to solve their queries. Google wants to provide users the quality results for any queries, and websites with sound E.A.T are likely to get higher rankings.
Here is a brief explanation of each E.A.T component.
Expertise:
A content creator should be an expert in his field. Although it might not be that critical for gossip or entertainment sites, it really matters for financial, legal, and medical websites. For example, providing an author bio in any piece of writing can help people know about the content’s expertise.
Authoritativeness:
Authoritativeness is referred to as the quality of being accurate and reliable. Google measures that by backlinks, reviews, and mentions associated with your website.
Trust:
Trustworthiness comes into play when a website asks users to provide sensitive information such as credit card information. Therefore, a user should feel safe while exploring your site. The primary way to build trust is by implementing an SSL on your website.
“Proven trustworthiness is really important. While expertise and authority are factors that boost your rankings, trustworthiness, or rather a lack thereof is what can easily tank your rankings on Google.”
Keep in mind that these three components work together to help your website be in Google’s good books.
It might not work if you are an expert and produce low quality or irrelevant content. If you have expertise and authority in your content, then the last thing to worry about is your website’s security.
Therefore, you have to be eligible for all components of E.A.T.
However, EAT is not a ranking factor as confirmed by Google’s Danny Sullivan—
“Is E-A-T a ranking factor? Not if you mean there’s some technical thing like with speed that we can measure directly. We do use a variety of signals as a proxy to tell if the content seems to match E-A-T as humans would assess it. In that regard, yeah, it’s a ranking factor.”
But it can’t be denied that it plays a vital role in getting your website recognized by Google.
WHAT IS GOOGLE’S QUALITY RATERS GUIDELINESOR QRG?
E.A.T is essential for the success of your website in search results. It helps build your website’s credibility among the users.
Well, Google QRG is a 166-page long document that contains essential guidelines to rate a website.
This document has been provided to 16,000 human raters employed by Google just to check every website manually. After all, humans can assess the value of the content better than any machine.
But these raters don’t have the power to rank the website based on their ratings.
Instead, they report to Google’s engineers, who then assess their algorithms based on the information provided.
Simply put, the raters’ feedback is used by Google to adjust its algorithm.
“ Quality Raters are spread out all over the world and are highly trained using our extensive guidelines. Their feedback helps us understand which changes make Search more useful.
Raters also help us categorize information to improve our systems. For example, we might ask what language a page is written in or what’s important on a page.
We use responses from Raters to evaluate changes, but they don’t directly impact how our search results are ranked.”
You can download the complete Google Quality Raters Guidelines from HERE.
Broadly speaking, Google Quality Raters’ Guidelines works on four things to rate the website:
A.T
Needs Met (does your page satisfy the users?”
Your Money or Your Life (Important content related to life, money, and health. It calls for utmost expertise.)
Page Quality (Misleading titles, ad-blocked content, and obtrusive ads might harm your ranking.)
“They don’t tell you how the algorithm is ranking, but they fundamentally show what the algorithm should do.”
– Ben Gomes, Google’s VP of Search, in an interview with CNBC over Google’s QRG
The Relationship Between E.A.T AND GOOGLE’S QRG
Again, quality raters cannot influence the rankings of your website.
But Google surely leverages their reported information to show the high-quality website first in the search results.
“These ratings do not directly impact ranking, but they do help us benchmark the quality of our results and make sure these meet a high bar all around the world.”
Many of these websites lack E.A.T; traffic went below when the core update is released, and Google’s ability to detect E.A.T enhanced.
How to Create E.A.T Friendly Content
So far, you must have read that GOOGLE’S QUALITY RATERS GUIDELINES is more or less based on E.A.T principles.
Google is likely to tweak its algorithm based on the report of these guidelines.
Therefore, the message is clear—only an E.A.T friendly website has good chances to rank, no matter what algorithm comes.
There is no right time to update your website according to the E.A.T norms. Do it now.
Here’s how…
Create Quality Content That Stands for Expertise:
Whether you write medical content or run a recipe blog, make sure it has the reflection of your expertise. Otherwise, it is better to get it done by an expert of that field, especially if it is related to medical, finance and health, or any other area of Your Money, Your Life (YMYL)
However, formal expertise is not required in the content related to life experience or everyday expertise. For example, someone mentioning his experience with depression in any form won’t be penalized. Because Google thinks that the person is sharing his knowledge, not expertise.
Here’s what Google guideline says about it.
“Consider this example. Here, forum participants are telling how long their loved ones lived with liver cancer. This is an example of sharing personal experiences (in which they are experts), not medical advice. Specific medical information and advice (rather than descriptions of life experiences) should come from doctors or other health professionals.”
Use Authentic Sources:
Make sure to link your facts and statistics to a credible and accurate source. This makes your content looks authentic.
Google pinpoints this thing in its guideline—
“High E-A-T news articles should be produced with journalistic professionalism—they should contain factually accurate content presented in a way that helps users achieve a better understanding of events.”
Look for Positive Reviews:
One of the E.A.T rules is to gain positive reviews on your content. It will improve your page quality as well as build a reputation. Positive reviews are triggered by high-quality content that helps your audience.
Besides, you should take care of negative reviews by trying to know their problems and providing solutions accordingly.
Make a Wikipedia Page:
For Google, Wikipedia is a reliable source.
Joshua Hardwick, the head of content at AHREFS and the founder at the SEO Project, opines—
“News articles and Wikipedia articles can help you learn about a company and may include information specific to reputation, such as awards and other forms of recognition, or controversies and issues.”
In fact, having a Wikipedia page for your business can help you gain authority and trust to some extent. It is also worth mentioning that Google extracts information from Wikipedia for Google Knowledge Graphs, which is a critical point in improving your online reputation as well.
OVER TO YOU:
Google Search Quality Raters’ Guidelines impact algorithms. And E.A.T is going to be a crucial factor in that. Therefore, optimize your content according to E.A.T so that your website can easily pass an algorithm test on any given day.
What do you think? Let us know by commenting below!
There may be a name in notoriety too. Still, today more and more consumers are making brands and companies accountable for their marketing tactics and policies, especially in the digital marketing world. The exposure of the marketing choice on digital media is many folds more than in offline marketing. This makes controversial tactics exposed and means that sooner rather than later, they will be called out for it.
Let us look at five of the most prominent recent examples of controversial marketing tactics in the digital marketing world.
BIC pens Digital Marketing Controversy
One of the biggest names when it comes to pens and stationery products that are reliable and sturdy. This has been true for decades. With everyone moving to digital marketing, Bic has been behind in this in any aspect. Their brand name has only benefited from these for sure, like most brands worldwide across industries.
However, a recent campaign, which was likely made with great intention, backfired royally. The digital marketing campaign led to a lot of controversies as soon as it hit the social media channels.
Credit: https://www.theguardian.com/
The campaign read:
“Look like a girl
Act like a lady
Think like a man
Work like a boss.”
This was launched on Women’s Day to honor working women. The internet was full of memes and commentaries on this. This led to the company withdrawing the campaign hours into releasing it.
McDonald’s Digital Marketing Controversy
Credit: Cnet.con
The controversy isn’t always caused in a negative sense as hard as it may be to be believed. If precedence is to be seen through, a controversy even if it begins well for the company doesn’t necessarily end well. Positive publicity can lead to disappointment and broken promises for the company later.
A recent example of this is McDonald’s when they wanted to publicize their one day return of their 1990s fame Szechuan Sauce in limited outlets. To publicize this, they worked with the peak popular Rick and Morty show to advertise this online.
It became clear soon that the company underestimated the response they would get to this ad and the sauce return. It isn’t that their ad was not clear enough on the details of the return of the sauce or its availability. What just happened is that they did not see the return being this successful.
What followed the ad was unending lines on all McDonald outlets for the sauce. This threw the outlets that did not have it completely off. Even the ones where it did make a return ran out of it within the first hour or so of the day opening. This meant that almost all customers who visited the outlet left disappointed.
This backfired as many were very upset with the company for such a short return or limited outlet return compared to the scale and popularity of the ad partners.
Star Sports Digital Marketing Controversy
Controversy, at times, strikes even when you may not be at fault. An ad for the Cricket World Cup 2019 by ICC stirred up a lot of controversy in the Indian subcontinent for Star Sports.
This controversy is a reminder to brands that not all trending topics are up for grabs when it comes to the sentiments of people.
To be fair, the company did not directly cause the controversy, but seeing the timing and what had recently happened, this could have been avoided.
They came out with an ad for CWC2019, including Father’s Day, in the narrative for a jibe at the neighboring country for India with respect to cricket. A company there hit back with an ad on the issue with an ad-based around Wing Commander Abhinandan. This was not well, obviously. While most of the hate targeted the Pakistani channel, Star Sports was also dragged into the same due to their connection.
Bud light Digital Marketing Controversy
Credit: entrepreneur.com
Often controversy is not what a company or brand sets out for, but their obvious oversight on one aspect or another leads to disastrous results.
The beer in question recently came out with a series of ads in the digital and traditional marketing formats that completely missed the point and were swamped with negative responses.
The ad portrayed the idea of “up for whatever” in terms of willingness and spirit by ads showcasing a man taking on daring tasks. Their tagline of “the perfect beer for removing no from your vocabulary for the night,” however, sent the worst possible message across.
People saw this as a link to how often alcohol is used or abused for rape, and the campaign faced the social media heat at a peak. The company apologized and pulled their campaign based on the reaction.
Dove Digital Marketing Controversy
Many a time the controversy of an ad isn’t misperception or a second meaning seem into the ad. While there is no denying that such things should be overlooked or avoided by the brands, there is a much bigger category they need to care for.
The last example, for now, is one where the brand marketing team put across a blatantly disturbing thought process, and this was approved or overlooked by the giant that is the company until it blew up.
The case in point being discussed is a digital platform released ad by Dove (a brand by Unilever) in which the advertisement shows a black woman remove her dark top and turn into a white woman by using Dove. This was a clearly racist ad but was somehow approved and launched.
The backlash was immediate and unrelenting until the company apologized and pulled the campaign, but not before they had received a lot of hate over this.
Bottom Line:
From the above examples, you can see that in these times of the great digital footprint everything leaves and where it is impossible in one way to take away once something is put out there, while also being unable to know the extent to which it would become viral; it is crucial for brands to be more than careful of their campaigns. What a brand puts out there on the digital forums goes beyond geographical boundaries and can have a previously unseen level of response to it.
His story is a paradigm of entrepreneurial visionary creation: Steve Jobs co-founded the company- Apple in his parents’ garage in the year 1976, was sacked in 1985, resurrected to save it from severe bankruptcy in 1997, and until the day he died, in October 2011, he had established it into becoming the world’s most profitable business. He managed to help transform several sectors along the way: animated movies, music, personal computing, retail stores, digital publishing, tablet computing, and phones.
With a successful venture into Pixar’s computer animation, Toy Story was produced as such a high-quality film that industry powerhouse Disney decided to pick the company. Steve Jobs’ last invention was the iPad, a portable device to replace the Desktop. Jobs needed a device to increase cognitive computing capacity for all the information in the world accessible on a smaller screen.
Steve Jobs, John Alan Lasseter & Pixar
When Steve Jobs decided to purchase Pixar in 1986, a talented animator named John Lasseter had to rope in Jobs for an animated short film. This was Lasseter’s first formal encounter with his new boss. Jobs only had a suggestion—”make it great. “The short film, Tin Toy, ended up winning the very first Academy Award ever granted to computer animation and laid the standard as to what eventually became Toy Story. Lasseter, who has become the chief creative director at Walt Disney Animation Studios (and Frozen’s exec producer), claimed it was the most in-depth guidance he’s ever got.
The company’s biggest achievement began in 1991 after Disney announced an investment in producing and releasing Pixar’s first motion picture. Initially more interested in NeXT’s prospects, Jobs immediately entered into negotiations and helped work out a three-movie contract for 12.5 percent of box office revenue. While Lasseter and the design team progressed on what would become Toy Story, Jobs recruited CFO Lawrence Levy to hammer through the mechanics of preparing the firm for a public offering.
In an interview with Steve Jobs in 1996, Lasseter said- “What Pixar does it so extraordinary that we have taken a look at this new technology- computer animation and we don’t look at it as a way to replace any of the creativity or any of the art of filmmaking we still we look at it as these are just not great new expensive pencils you know that’s what it says is this artist using these computers as a young artist at Disney use a piece of paper and a pencil and because the focus of what we do is still where it’s most important and that’s with the story and the characters I think toy story is a success not because it’s computer-generated, it is a success because it has characters of Buzz Light year and Woody and in the storyline that really has captivated audience.”
Jobs scheduled an IPO date following the release of Toy Story during Thanksgiving in 1995, linking the company’s future to the global box office performance of its first sizable endeavor. It turned to be a profitable game, as the convergence of Pixar ‘s technological wonders, a heart-warming movie, and Tom Hanks and Tim Allen’s voices steered Toy Story to an incredible $30 million opening weekend (on the way to a $365 million international revenue). Days later, following its first trade day, Pixar closed at $39 a share, the once-struggling business soon priced at $1.5 billion.
Tell a compelling story, unpredictable components that keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
Populate the story with really appealing and memorable characters and put that story in those characters in a believable world, believable for the story.
Do not go realistic; one should not be interested in reproducing reality.
Jobs acknowledged creativity, originality, and inventiveness was the result of unexpected gatherings. He believed, “You run into someone and ask what they’re doing. Then you realize the connections, and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.” The atrium of the Pixar building laid the groundwork for unplanned encounters. Official structures need to establish connections with sparks to fly and facilitate wondrous spontaneity.
The success of Apple Design
“What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.” – Jony Ive
Jobs had only just decided to return to Apple in 1997 and intended to reignite the company’s groundbreaking and inventive soul. He needed the design to be at the center of this regeneration. Because Apple was a tech corporation at that point, anyone might have anticipated Jobs to have been searching for an experienced machine designer — someone among the industry’s most regarded.
Well, he did not. Ive had been an independent design consultant in London before he joined Apple. His business, Tangerine, became engaged in the planning and designing of household products (for instance, Tangerine had been an advisor for Ideal Standard, then a dominant figure in the plumbing and bathroom industry). The young designer relocated to Apple in the year 1992, but his projects prior to 1997 just weren’t particularly successful. Hence, choosing him as senior vice president of industrial design at that point seemed like an arbitrary decision. Steve believed in looking into the future and not the past while collaborating with innovators. In hindsight, this turned out to be a brilliant decision. Jobs did not hire someone to create and design another beige box.
The very first product designed under Ive’s supervision was the iMac G3, which was launched in 1998. It was hailed as among the most innovative desktop computers ever launched, with a design layout that was completely unique to the sector: a pleasant shell in translucent reflective plastic and an ovoid design that defied the prevailing model of unpopular beige frames.
The gadgets designed by Apple under the guidance of Ive, with all their simplicity and elegance, have reiterated that design is all about fantastic people creating incredible stuff. By launching these smartphones or tablets and computers on a scale of splendor, they are enshrining the elitism of intricate design.
Steve Jobs excelled in the production of compact systems that smashed computing performance hurdles. Jobs’ interest was extended to both big and minor problems. Several other CEOs are fantastic creative geniuses, while some believe that God is in the detail. Jobs contribute to the legion of the true pioneers, inventors, and visionaries of America (and the world), alongside Nikola Tesla, Walt Disney, and Thomas Edison. Neither of these people was a paragon of virtue, but even after their identities are lost, history will recall how they implemented their ingenuity to technology, business, and engineering.
“Hypnotized people are marching towards the central hall where they are being addressed by a televised Big Brother. A blond girl in athletic shorts and a white tank top enters with a hammer. She runs towards the screen and hurls the hammer towards it. There is a huge explosion as the hammer hits the screen. It is followed by scrolling black text—“On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
That’s how the script of 1984 ad for Apple Macintosh goes on the screen.
Aired in 1984 during Super Bowl American football tournament, the ad aimed to create buzz for Apple Macintosh to be launched shortly.
The TV commercial is also appeared to be a spoof on the monopoly of its arch-rival, IBM.
The 60-second ad was directed by Ridley Scott who has already shot into the fame for Blade Runner and later made Alien and Gladiator.
1984 was inspired from George Orwell’s 1949 novel of the same name which depicted a dystopian future “ruled by a televised Big Brother”. George Orwell in his novel opined how computers would control the world like Big Brother. But the ad showed the end of that “control”.
Interestingly, the ad wasn’t well-received by experts who declared it a great flop. Thanks to its futuristic approach and strange plot with keeping the product in suspense.
John Sculley, then CEO of Apple, recalled the moment after the ad was showed to the board—
“The others just looked at each other, dazed expressions on their faces … Most of them felt it was the worst commercial they had ever seen. Not a single outside board member liked it.”
Even the marketing firm that was testing the ad declared it the “least effective” ad they’ve ever worked on. The average score for a commercial was 29, but the 1984 ad managed to score only 5 in their testing.
And this was the same advertisement that stunned the entire nation when released.
The impact was so huge that people used to rush to electronic stores across the nation to buy Macintosh.
The next three months after the Super Bowl witnessed the sale of Macintoshes worth $155 million.
While the ad made Mac one of the best-selling computers of its time, it helped Apple turn into a computing giant.
It also made into the list of the greatest ads ever made. In fact, 1984 is credited to start the current era of Super Bowl ad, in which ads are as popular as the game itself.
Why Apple 1984 was a dream success? How it influenced people to buy Macintosh?
The success ingredients of the ad go beyond those cinematic experience and futuristic approach.
It hit the bull’s eye because of these factors…
Rebellious Nature of Apple:
IBM used to have a monopoly over the computer market in the 1980s.
This was also the time when many new computer companies came into existence.
In the wake of all this, Apple, which rose from an electronic and hobbyist background, was looking to capitalize on its first commercial success, Apple II.
It was challenging to do in the market being dominated by IBM. IBM was alleged to remove “obstacles” in its way of glory.
The triggers of this ad can be sensed in the speech of Steve Jobs at the 1983 Apple Keynote—
“Apple is perceived to be the only hope to give IBM a run for its money. Dealers, once welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future! They are increasingly and desperately turning back to Apple as the only force that can assure their future freedom!
IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control – Apple! Will ‘Big Blue’ dominate the entire computer industry?”
Instead of adopting a mild strategy, Apple decided to take on IBM with its 1984 TV commercial. In the advertisement, the Big Brother is supposed to be IBM while the followers are its users.
Walter Isaacson, the author and journalist, said,”
“What the ad did was in Steve Jobs’ DNA into the soul of Apple. It became a company that was rebellious. That was for misfits and round pegs in square holes but people who wanted to control their own destiny.”
The theme of the ad was freedom vs. control and stagnation vs. innovation. And this message just clicked with the customers.
The Creative Vision of Steve Jobs:
Steve Jobs was a great visionary. He not only made his company grabbing market share from rivals but also revolutionized the way people work and communicate with Apple’s offerings.
No wonder that such “out of the box” ad was envisioned by Steve Jobs.
Talking about the work methodology of Steve Jobs, Brent Thomas, then art director of the Chiat/Day on the 1984 project, said—
“If the people that you had to first present to hated it, Jobs was going to like it. And conversely, if it went the other way, you knew Steve would kill it.”
Steve was a risk-taker and didn’t afraid of making a mistake.
Lee Clow, creative director of 1984, quoted Steve Jobs’ challenge,”
“I gotta introduce Macintosh. It’s gotta be dramatic; it gotta be famous, it gotta be different. I want something that nobody else would do.”
His creative risks can be seen in his approach to design, marketing and leadership. And 1984 ad was no exception.
The Promise of Innovative Technology:
The role of technology, according to Steve, is to empower people, not to control them.
His mission for Apple is better explained by Tim Cook as he says—
“His vision for Apple was a company that turned powerful technology into tools that were easy to use, tools that would help people realize their dreams and change the world for the better.,”
1984 ad seems to be the reflection of this vision.
The athletic girl throws a hammer at the screen—or in the face of Big Brother. It means that Apple Macintosh would break stagnant technology to provide innovative, fresh and useful devices to people. As stated in Steve Job’s speech, people were looking to overcome “dominated and controlled future” by a handful of computer companies.
The idea of Apple “to bring freedom, not control” worked. Apple really lived up to its promise as Macintosh turned out to be a game-changer of its time.
Bottom Line:
1984 was really an ahead of a time TV commercial. But that is not the only reason behind its success. The advertisement stands for the vision of Apple—to provide innovative and user-friendly technology. The theme of the ad was to break the shackles of monopoly and control to move towards freedom.
Apple has always stepped ahead of its competitors due to its belief in giving the world something innovative, something better, and something that can change their life.
The ad also teaches some valuable marketing lessons, from implying a fearless approach to aligning the product to the company’s vision.
What do you think? Let us know by commenting below!
How to optimize your content for improved traffic and visibility?
Generally, you insert keywords, create a meta-description, use heading tags and share it on other platforms.
Apart from ticking all these SEO boxes, you should do one more thing.
That’s optimizing the user reviews or feedback received on content.
User reviews speaks about the experience of visitors with your content. Some reviews can be good. Some can be negative. Whatever reviews you get, make sure to optimize them to improve your content.
For example, some readers ask you to update certain parts of your content. Or some are looking for video or some more tips. Once you make all these required changes suggested by your visitors, your content sounds better and efficient.
Here you will learn why and how to optimize user reviews to improve the performance of your content in SERPs. Let’s get started!
HOW OPTIMIZING CUSTOMER FEEDBACK CAN BENEFIT YOUR SEO?
The suggestions by your audience are useful in making your content relevant and potent. When your content sounds relevant and better, it can improve its ranking and visibility on the SERPs.
That’s not the only benefit associated with optimizing your customer reviews.
Have you ever thought that the reviews, whether they are good or bad, include certain keywords?
For example, a review that contains the phrase “the best SEO advice” can make your blog rank for the same keyword.
This also helps Google identify your blog or business, letting it to improve position in the SERPs.
As an added bonus, user reviews contain semantic keywords that are also useful.
Secondly, responding to the comments signifies to Google and users that your business cares for feedback and opinions.
You Don’t Have User Reviews? Here’s How You Can Generate Them
There is no shame in admitting that your blogs have little to no reviews on them. But it also prompts you to boost the engagement so that it attracts feedback from the readers.
Here are 8 tips that can help you in getting reviews on your blog.
1. Using CTA at the End of the Content:
Asking for feedback can be as simple as asking them for their thoughts at the very end of the blog. For example,
“Looking for your valuable opinion on this piece of writing!
It will encourage the readers to drop their feedback on your content.
2. Via Email:
Using email to ask for reviews is an effective approach. This is because over 90% of users open their email daily. And 58% of them check their email before doing anything else. Some readers might have subscribed to your blogs. If not, then you can go out to your user list.
Send emails to all of them asking for their feedback on your blogs or other pieces of content.
The message can be crafted like this:
“Hello Sam (it’s better if you personalize the mail using their name)!
Positive feedback from amazing readers like you helps us improve our blogs. Could you take a couple of seconds to go to this LINK and share your experiences? We will be grateful!“
3. Social Media:
Sharing your content via social media not only prompts the users to drop reviews but also encourage them to leave the feedback on the post.
4. Writing on the Trendy Topics:
Over the years, Quora has become a goldmine for webmasters to search popular queries posted by users. You can use these queries to create content.
5. Reddit:
Reddit is a great source of interesting and popular topics to choose from.
6. Email or Online Thread:
Ask your subscribers about their concerns so that you can create a blog on that. Online community or thread can be created to keep track of the most talked about things among your audience.
7. Competitor Research:
Look at your successful competitor’s to find out what keywords are they targeting to create content. The comments on their blogs can also help you figure out the relevant topic.
8. Google Search Console:
Last but not least—check out article’s queries in your Google Search Console to see if people are looking for your topics.
How to Run User Reviews Optimization for Your Content
We hope that the above-mentioned methods will help you attract feedback from the customers. Once you get sufficient amount of reviews on your content, it is time to optimize them.
1. Go through All the Comments:
There are many steps of optimizing reviews on your content. The first one is to analyze them. You need to read them all to get some key findings.
Are users happy with your contents? What are the points they do not agree with? Do they make any suggestions?
2. Respond to The Comments:
Whether the feedback is negative or positive, make sure to reply to all the comments. If some users are not happy with the details, assure them that you will make the relevant changes. And it costs nothing to say thanks to the visitors who appreciate your content. This will, as we have said before, will show that you care of your audience.
3. Make the Suggested Update or Changes:
Based on the feedbacks, add the relevant content as required by your audience as well as remove those irrelevant parts.
To understand this point better, let’s go through this example.
Your blog is on useful tips to create SEO friendly URLs. But some part of it becomes dated over time. Some readers are making you aware of this concern. However, that doesn’t mean you jump on making changes suggested by them.
Find out if they are right. If you conclude that their suggestions are worthy of implication, inform them that you have made or will make the required changes.
Otherwise, you can clarify to them why those changes can’t be made. Do it politely so that your response doesn’t seem rude to them.
4. Run the Feedback Optimization every 3-6 Months:
You can perform feedback optimization every 3-5 months as you get sufficient amount of review during this timeframe. Periodically optimizing the reviews of your audience will keep you content relevant, updated and fresh.
Bottom Line:
User reviews are one of the crucial parts of SEO. However, feedback optimization is not known to all webmasters. Only reputable digital marketing experts are using this strategy in best possible way.
Responding to your user reviews to create content accordingly not only keeps your content relevant but also keeps you in the good books of Google based on user engagement.
After all, your content is meant for your audience. Targeting their queries will make your content naturally engaging for them. If your content has a lot of feedback and you haven’t optimized it yet, the time has come to run the feedback optimization process. If you don’t have sufficient reviews, encourage your audience for the same through emails, CTAs and social media. One more thing—always choose a trendy topic to create your content. It will increase the chances of engagement over your blogs. Sharing is also important for user engagement. Here is some additional tips you can go through that will help your content to stand out in 2020.
What do you think? Drop your valuable feedback to the comment section given below!
You will find a stark difference in their creation.
A 2014 blog is an absolute textual blog and lacks references, visuals or sources. Talking about 2020 blogs, it includes all details, stats, and visuals to look appealing and engaging.
But they have one thing in common—both are created according to the content trends of their respective years.
The point is here that content creation has changed a lot in the course of these six years.
Content strategies that worked in 2014 will not work in 2020.
This is because the search engines have become more user-oriented while people like you and me look for a quick solution that appears as soon as we key in the query.
In 2020, content needs to be engaging, authentic, and “problem-solving” to ace the ranking game.
Avoid Writing Thin Content in 2020:
Review this piece of content:
“Are you looking for the best software development and consulting services? We are the best software development and consulting services.Our best software development and consulting services are available at reasonable prices.”
Being stuffed with unnecessary keyword usage, this piece sounds ridiculous. Isn’t it?
Interestingly, such pieces of content used to get good ranking before the advent of the Google Panda algorithm in 2011. This algorithm aims to drop the rankings of “thin content” or low-quality content.
However, spammed or thin content hasn’t gone out of practice yet. In fact, it has evolved in other forms like scrapping. Scrapping involves duplicate content or the content that is rehashed or manipulated with the use of synonyms.
But keep in mind that thin content only hurts your ranking and nothing else.
Cautioning against such practices, Todd Friesen, director of digital strategy and SEO at Salesforce, opines,”
“It’s (thin content) not going to work anymore in the content world. Everybody’s content has gotten good. I can go who wrote this piece of crap and they’re gonna move on because you know the bar has been set.”
The number one content strategy to imply in 2020 is to avoid thin or low-quality content. Instead, create the content that can boost engagement and prompt users to take action.
Here are some basic ways to ensure the quality of content:
Avoid keyword stuffing. Use semantic keywords.
Say no rehashing or sentence manipulation.
Read the content for relevancy and quality.
Address any plagiarized content issue.
Best Content Strategy is to Address the Pain Points of Your Audience:
Have you ever thought why most of the search results are Quora answers?
And this is even surprising when your 2500-word article doesn’t rank for the same search query.
The reason is pretty simple—Quora covers the solution for that query which your blog fails to do.
When you do not get solution in a 2500 word blog
Here we got our content strategy no. 2—the content should find and solve the customer’s problem. Most users expect blogs or any form of content to address their concerns.
It is worth to quote Carolyn Shelby, manager of SEO at ESPN, in this context:
“People are that impatient and crazy so the trick is just to make sure that you know what your users, your target audience wants and hand it to Google on a silver platter and make it easy for Google to ingest it and dice it up.”
She means that the content should be logical, easy to understand, and exceed the user’s expectations.
If your content is all about making tea, cover the points what to do when tea becomes excessively sweet as it can be a common problem associated with the tea prep.
Secondly, you should know how to present your information. It not only helps your content to be captured by Google but also makes it searchable for voice assistance devices or tools.
Therefore, present the key points with headings, bullet points, and short sentences.
Above all, you should be aware of your target audience and their problems. It will help you find the right solution as well as the way to present them.
Use Best Content Curation Tools as Part of Your Content Marketing Plan:
Content curation is another important part of your content strategy.
It is the process of gathering information from a variety of sources, including stats, expert quotes, and citations. This way, it helps determine the reliability and authenticity of your content.
And it is also true that this process is quite cumbersome. Maybe you need to burn your midnight oil to find the right sources for your content. Needless to say that such an exhaustive process can hinder your “creative juice” as well as time to create content.
That’s why using content curation tools makes up as our content strategy no. 3!
Content curation tools automate the content curation process. They help you locate relevant content or help you with new content ideas.
For example, there is a tool called Anders Pink that crawl millions of webpages to create daily briefings. These briefings can be then be sorted out for specific keywords.
And who can forget Buzzsumo that provides you a list for the most shared content on the subject you are looking for. Plus, you can sort the list using categories like content type, follow authors, date, and more.
As an added bonus, you can find out the latest trends as well as the most shared content. You can then use all these insights to create relevant and authentic content with all the latest information.
Even Buzzsumo helped me curate content for this topic. Here’s how…
Flipboard is also counted among quality tools for its ability to fetch content from reliable and trusted sources.
Freshen Up Your Old and Dry Content:
This new content strategy also requires you to work over your old and dry topics which can be as simple as “How to Plant a Tree” or “How to Choose Headlines.”
This is because such topics are available at thousands of websites, giving your visitor a range of options to choose from. Why one would read your blogs if they have thousands of such pieces at their disposal?
One thing you can do is to freshen up those old pieces by using infographics, quotes, podcasts, visuals, and videos. It will make your content attractive enough to encourage the audience to get engaged with it.
Optimize Your Content Marketing Approach for Voice Search:
Hello Siri, how to do push-ups? And Siri displayed these results—
Well, many people use voice assistance like Siri or Amazon Echo to get help with their daily tasks. Using such devices make sense as they are quick and simple than typing.
According to one study by Forbes, nearly 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020.
It simply means that your content should be activated for voice search. After all, voice search is becoming a key ranking factor.
Here’s how to optimize your content for voice search…
Look for phrases and longtail keywords.
Focus on natural language (the way we talk is different than the way we write.)
Make it easy to read as well as scannable.
Create a FAQ section or blog around conversational but specific questions associated with your industry.
Optimize your content for Local SEO keywords such as “digital marketing agency near me.”
Add Content Based Videos to Stand out in 2020:
Over the years, a video has become an integral part of content strategy.
Video content is more appealing and shareable than its textual counterpart. This increases the chances of high organic ranking in search results and better conversions as well.
One of the key benefits of video content is that they make complicated concepts easy to understand. For example, explainer videos can be used to educate the users on your products. Or reviews can be made more authentic with videos as users can see a person using them. Facebook Live can be used to launch your new products.
Last But Not Least — The Frequency of Content Publication in 2020:
How often should you publish the contents?
Well, there is no straightforward answer to this.
Some say that quality is important. Some advocate for quality. However, the fact is that both are important for a fruitful content strategy.
It will be challenging to gain any traction with a sluggish or inconsistent publishing schedule even for your great piece of content. A single piece of great content might not benefit your business or brand in the long term.
Having a consistent content schedule and publishing frequent content can help you make the most of your content marketing.
HubSpot has found that the publication of four blogs per week can increase the traffic up to five times more than those that publish once a week.
But that doesn’t mean you need to work as a content mill. Providing quality and value in the content should be your topmost priority.
Over to you:
So these are some key points to be included and implied in your content strategy for 2020 and beyond. It is all about understanding your users and their needs and create content accordingly. Besides, you need to prioritize videos as well as optimize your content for voice search. Once you are done with all these parameters, make sure to create a realistic content publishing schedule.
What do you think? Let me know by commenting below!!!
Ever Since its outbreak in late 2019, Coronavirus pandemic has shocked the entire world with its severity and crumbled the economies all around the globe. The horrific virus first appeared at the Chinese city of Wuhan and slowly clutched many countries in its deadly grip. Sadly, not only had it cost billions of lives worldwide, but also, it has shaken up and altered the natural living standards and habits of the people around globe.
While any nations are in lockdown and following strict social distancing policies with other precautionary measures, many businesses are fighting for their survival. One of the major reasons for drastic fall in business, apart from the deadly infection itself is the fact that consumer’s shopping habits and their way to approach things have been deeply affected. Not only the pandemic and self-quarantine have left them economically challenged, but also people are immensely stressed with disruption to their daily routines.
Why SEO will dominate during Covid-19 time?
Apparently, the marketing seems to be the only ray of hope for many big or small scale business industries. The marketers currently are expecting low budget with high goal achievement as low cost Digital Marketing seems to be the top choice rather than other costly options such as paid media and reduction in headcount ratio.
In this situation, lowering down the budgets, limiting the channels and reduction in the staff numbers is eventually becoming one of the top concerns for many firms. Majority of marketers are considering that SEO services are way more beneficial during this time.
Moreover, despite the lower budget 40% out of total of 72% entrepreneurs predicted that their marketing goals will be increased while 32% of them anticipated that their goals will remain same.
Source: The Impact of COVID-19 on Marketing (2020)
Likewise 58% of marketers told that they will lower the budget and on the other hand 34% of them seemed to be more inclined toward investing in low cost channels like SEO.
Additionally, 63% of enterprises are predicting that SEO will be a prominent aspect in the current marketing scene.
In addition, the latest search results from Google have also corroborate the rising importance of SEO services as the searches for term “SEO” is rising at substantial pace.
With over 66% of markets reported that SEO was also the top most performing channel in last year, leaving behind other marketing channels in competition with a large margin.
Conclusively, Digital marketing and low cost channels like SEO are turning out to bet the major focus for many marketers worldwide and more than half of the firms are turning to the digital content for brand building as it seems more efficient, safe and high gain approach during the time of self-isolation and social distancing.
In my career since 2004, I have read many books. My favourite is the “The Art of SEO” all editions. Directly or indirectly, all articles and books have some similarity i.e. they talk about role of human mind and behaviour in the list of SEO activities.
Recently, I also started reading “A textbook on General Phycology” to explore more on the topic of psychology and get an in-depth knowledge.
However, I would lay my emphasis on below 4 pointers that relates to the importance of SEO and Psychology in 2020:
Keyword Research and Searcher Psychology
Creation of content and human Psychology
Link Building and Psychology
Website architecture and audience behaviour
Keyword Research – Understanding the searcher psychology:
Considering that, the short term phrases which were used by human has been replaced by long term queries.
Example: A person looking for a pizza shop in 2004 in Manhattan, New York – Would have simply typed on Google.com “Pizza Manhattan” whereas in 2020 the human mind with the growth of technology and AI would have searched or spoken to Siri “Best pizza restaurants near me with 5 star rating”.
This clearly shows how human psychology and searcher intent has evolved over the time with the growth of technology in terms of keyword interpretation and research.
What is the best strategy for keyword research in 2020?
We have one of the best tools like SEM Rush and Answer the Public for researching or spying on competitors.
However, if I have to talk about psychology and list one particular strategy that stands out for me then it will be using “Google Auto Complete” feature to get best maximum number of keywords based on searchers intent.
The process is simple: For example, if I have to search for possible search phrases that have been searched for my targeted term or niche i.e. “Plumbers in Manhattan”
I would simple type in Google search “Plumbers in Manhattan” as below:The screenshot showcases the auto complete listing of keywords:
2. You can further elaborate by using “A-Z” combinations in front, middle and Back of the keywords to get a possible list of best keywords for the niche.
Crafting a story that is rich in keyword topics and covers your targeted audience sentiments:
In order, to make your website content stand out:
You need something that can touch the right sentiment of the audience. In our in-house experiments at KVR Web Tech, we are using Google AI and sentiment analysis tool. The tool help us to get good insights VS competitors content and thus improvise.2. You need perfect amalgamation of selecting the right keywords and topics.
Example: Business selling insurance to Sole traders in Australia.
In order, to have a perfect list of topics that should be covered in the content, simply again used “Google auto complete” feature and make a list. Review, what type of topics are being covered. See below snapshot:
It clearly shows that I have to incorporate topic about cost, cover, comparisons and talk about sole trader cleaners, contractor and consultants.
Again, you can run different set of combinations to get a list of topics.
3. Researching on top competitors – Yes, what is their winning formula. Try to get an idea of how the top 3 competitors on search are drafting their content and how you can be unique in your own story and idea.
Important tip: For uniqueness, Gather stats and conduct surveys on relevant forums, groups on FB which covers your targeted audience to get high level data and convert that into statistical data.
4. Trending Data – Incorporating the trends in your story will surely help to stand out and gain exposure. We use “Buzz Sumo” to find relevant trending stories, sort them out and make a list of what will entice a reaction among our targeted audience.
Understanding the psychology, developing relations and garnering links
In 2004, when I started my link building career, we use to send emails for outreach, have conversations and then after developing a bond exchange links.
It was a clear process that had emotions and one loved to follow the process and get success that could last long from SEO prospective.
However, in later stages link building was bombarded by commercialization and paid schemes, which resulted in link farms and slowly Google and reliable website owners changed their outlook towards the same.
So let’s talk about 2020, the things have changed so have the strategies. We are somehow getting back to where we had once started.
Influencer Outreaching is not that simple now days. If you want to outreach a strong influencer in your field, you need to study them, understand them and then win your race towards getting a brand mention for your website. Below are some point that can help:
Follower Wonk, is a tool that you can use to get a list of top influencers.
Study them by reviewing their social profiles. Create a list of their like and dislikes.
Prepare an outreach pitch on an email that can get a reaction on the first go!
Generate a conversation by using your pitch elements i.e. “list of likes” and make sure you stay away from the “dislike list”
Provide a free giveaway if your business supports the model
Understanding the visitor behaviour and changing the website architecture:
I like Neil and had a great interview session with him. I believe he has contributed a lot towards our field of SEO. One of his contributions that I have been using since so many years is “Crazy Egg”. The tool we use to understand how the audience react to the various elements on our website.
The basic purpose is to:
View and analyse, if we have the placed all the elements correctly i.e. Call to action, images content and videos
View and analyse, A/B testing of which colour suits my audience in the best particular way.
Understanding your audience behaviour and improvising on the design is a must, if you have to win the race of getting quality conversion from your qualified organic traffic.
In a short summary, the above all topics can have their own articles. I have tried my level best to give you an overview and will keep posting more extensive information on the same.
Are you having a local business and struggling to get an online presence?
The below 5 pointers are the key to success. It will really help you to layout a plan and then strategize your local marketing efforts on the path to success.
Management of Local Listing and Local Directories
Local Search Engine Optimization
Creation of Landing Pages tailored towards your audience
Online reputation management
Paid ads and Social Media Presence
Now let us dig deeper to get more insights on the above points.
Steps to manage your local citations and business directories for local marketing:
The foremost step is to set up your Google My Business account. The set up and verification process is easy. You will need a valid address, phone number and a registered business name. To validate the same, Google will send a postcard which will contain a 5 digit code. You will receive the same on your provided registered address.
Once the Google My Business account is active, you need to know the meaning of the term NAP. Name, Address and Place (Location address). The NAP has to be consistent wherever you register your business in the 3rd step.
Research now starts, search for local business directories orcitations in your area. Make sure, you are registered with high authority and reputed websites.
Example – For US owners Yelp has been the most effective business directory and similarly for India Just Dial has been performing very well.
You can also be specific to your niche. For example, for home improvement owners and interior designers website like houzz has been doing really good.
How to find directories in your local area? You can use the below search parameters on the search engine to find directories, I am going to use an example of an Electrician looking for directories in New York.
For Industry specific directories use below operators:
“Industry” directory – Example “Electrician” directory
“Industry” inurl:directory: – Example “Electrician” inurl:directory
“Industry” intitle:directory – Example “Electrician” intitle:directory
“Industry” inurl:links – Example “Electrician” inurl:links
Note: The 2 points here is to understand that relevancy to your business and location is a necessity with usage of same NAP that you have used in your GMB account in 1st step.
Now once you are listed in the business directories, it is time to manage all listings. There are 2 ways of doing the same.
Considering the budget involved you can use tools like bright local and yext to manage the listing in different countries. These tools run automatic scans on all listings and will provide you deep insights on errors and rectification under a single dashboard. However, there is a cost involved as they offer different packages.
Another way, is too do it manually i.e. maintain a list in an excel file and give it a review once a month.
How to use local SEO to boost your local marketing efforts?
Search engine optimization of your local business is a must, if you want to excel in your business and stay in front of your competitors.
We are going to divide this into three topics:
On-page local SEOThis part of SEO deals with the optimization of your local website. It lay emphasis on optimizing your localized website pages with targeted location based keywords, having localized content that serve your users and making use of local schema and other applicable structured data to stand apart in search results.
Off–Page Local SEOGetting local awareness through communicating with local bloggers and raising brand awareness via directories, events, sponsorships will help in getting high authority links and votes towards your website, thus helping in keyword rankings and organic traffic from search engines.
Update CitationsKeep your GMB and local business citations updated with latest videos and images. Make sure you use all features of these websites to maximum potential. For example: GMB itself allows you to post description, hours, appointment url etc to your account that can be big conversion factors for your audience.
Creation of Landing Pages tailored towards your audience:
You have got traffic, your marketing strategy to get qualified traffic is working well. However, a website landing page which does not solve its purpose of conversion of qualified traffic, will result in a dead end and a waste of investment in terms of both time and money.
So, It is very important that the website landing pages should talk to customer in their language.
Below are some of the pointers that you can keep in mind while creating a landing page for your local business:
Make your content localized to the best possible extent i.e. use images that speak to local customers, add content and location based keywords that your audience can easily relate to and make sure you describe your marketing pitch clearly.
Make use of local reviews, accreditations to gain trust of the user. Remember, Trust is an important factor of conversion. You can embed reviews from GMB and other profiles.
Appropriate use of CTA (Call to Action) buttons for conversion. Track your forms, phone number and email using Google Analytic. Set up Goals, monitor conversion path and then improvise on the landing page elements.
Videos speak larger than words, make use of videos in order to gain attention of your local audience. It can be a customer review or a marketing pitch video by the owner or his team itself.
Make sure the page loading speed and the mobile user experience is good.
Online Reputation Management – Handling reviews and Brand Reputation for local marketing
Customer service does not only cater to getting positive reviews but also replying to the negative feedback of your customer.
Remember, all accounts and business profiles including GMB are open to reviews that can be posted from your customers.
The below points will help you to streamline your business goals and acquire a positive word of mouth for your brand:
Make sure you check all the portals, social media websites and business profiles where your business is listed and reply to all negative and positive reviews., this authenticates that you are a responsible business owner.
Encourage your customers to post reviews to your social media and GMB account. More positive reviews will help you outrank your competitors in terms of brand awareness and expertise.
If you are running a local store, shop or restaurant then incentivize your local employees to ask for reviews in store.
Using Google Paid Ads and Social Media for Conversions and Brand Awareness in local marketing:
Paid ads is a tool which can not only help you in getting instant conversions but also in making enhancements in your business strategies as per your buyer reactions.
If you have a budget and I would surely suggest you to initiate with a trail to understand the local market and business demands.
Based on your goals, you can use Google Ads for Local Businesses to target Google search. It is an easy to use tool, where you can set your daily and monthly budget and will be charged only if someone clicks on your ads. The interface allows you to track conversion and even give you the entire data and suggestions for conversions.
In some part of countries, especially US “Google Guarantee Ads” are really helping local businesses to stand out. You can read about more information here.
Another parallel strategy that you can club with Google ads for brand awareness is posting on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest, whatever suits your business needs and interests. Below are some important points that you can incorporate in your social media strategy:
Have a Facebook Business page, Instagram account that have all required business information.
Post regularly on the selected mediums – Have a post schedule and set up a calendar. You can experiment for time and days based on audience reaction.
Boost your website content, reviews on these channels. Yes, you can use a little paid budget to grow your targeted reach. Facebook and all other channels has a sophisticated ad manager that can help you to circulate your brand voice to your selected niche of audience.
Note: Other than this, there are other channels that can be good from lead prospective. For example Yelp in US, Justdial in India and Houzz for home improvement businesses all are open for paid ads and can get you some good lead prospects.
Conclusion:
The above insights will surely be of great use if it is targeted correctly. You need to be innovative and have a fast approach in order to succeed in this ever evolving competitive world.
