Jun 10, 2021 | Harris & Ward, marketing
Are you struggling to draw new clients to your dental clinic, law firm, or small business? You’re not alone. In fact, about 65% of businesses struggle to draw in leads and web traffic.
With the right digital marketing services, you don’t have to struggle! Instead, you can give your business the boost it needs.
Not sure where to start? Keep this marketing services list handy. With these online business marketing strategies, you can set your business up for success.
You can generate more brand awareness, acquire more website traffic, and gain new leads. Then, you can improve your ROI and start growing your business.
Set your business up for growth and success! Get started by learning more about these marketing services for startups today.
1. Branding
Before you start using the rest of this marketing services list, it’s important to consider your brand. Your brand will set your business apart from others within your niche. Without a distinct brand, consumers might not recall your business.
In fact, it takes an average of six impressions before you build even a smidge of awareness. In order to build brand recognition, consistency over time is key.
You can create brand guidelines to ensure your brand remains consistent across all marketing channels.
In fact, consistency could increase revenues by up to 23%.
When developing your brand, take a moment to think about your target audience. What do they care about? Shared values account for about 64% of brand relationships.
Then, determine your:
- Vision statement
- Mission statement
- Unique value proposition
- Logo
- Color palette
- Font styles
- Imagery styles
- Voice
- Tone
- Personality
Keep your branding consistent as you explore the rest of these marketing services.
2. Web Design and Development
In some cases, your website is the first time consumers interact with your brand. It’s important to make a strong first impression. If your website is old and outdated, consumers might leave.
They’ll take their business elsewhere instead.
Consider hiring an experienced web design and development company. They can create an eye-catching, wow-worthy website that will draw consumers in. Your website will host the content you create as part of your lead generation strategy.
Work with a design agency that can create a mobile-optimized website for your business.
More people are exploring websites from their smaller phones and tablets. If your website isn’t optimized, you could lose business. Consumers might struggle to explore your site from their smaller screens.
They’ll remember their negative user experience and maybe even tell others.
3. Content Creation
Start creating engaging, informative content for your website. Content creation is an important step in your online business marketing strategy. You can create content to demonstrate your experience and expertise.
Informative, helpful content will help consumers recognize your value. You can show people you understand the problems they’re facing. Then, you can create content that offers them an easy solution.
You can create different forms of content, including blog posts, articles, eBooks, and infographics. Then, you can optimize your content for search engines to help more people find your business online.
4. Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) can help your website content appear higher on Google and Bing. A higher ranking will position you in front of more customers. When someone searches for your product or service, your website might appear.
About 70% of all experiences online start on a search engine like Google. SEO can help you boost brand awareness and generate more website traffic. Once you draw people to your website, you can use your content to convert them into leads.
Only 0.78% of Google users look beyond the first page of a search, though. Without SEO, you might not reach customers.
Consider working with an experienced SEO agency. They can help you create content with SEO in mind. Then, they can optimize your content based on the keywords consumers use in a search.
Google’s search algorithm changes constantly. If you’re not up-to-date with the latest trends, your ranking could drop. Finding an agency that offers digital marketing services can give your business an advantage.
You can rank ahead of the competition and draw in new leads.
5. Custom Photography and Videography
Consumers can now recognize stock photography on sight. Stock images could make your brand look ingenuine. Instead, work with an agency that can capture custom photography for your brand.
You can use your photos for social media, your website, and other branded materials.
Consider creating engaging videos as part of your content creation strategy, too. A content creator small business expert can help you create attention-grabbing videos for your website.
6. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can also help you reach more consumers online. Consider creating text and visual ads. You can use ads to direct more people to your website.
These ads can appear on social media platforms, other websites, and search engine pages.
Once people click on your ad, they’ll appear on a landing page on your website. Then, you can convert those visitors into leads.
Social media marketing is a great way to keep your customers engaged. Let them know about upcoming deals or events. You can also let them know about your latest accomplishments.
For example, a law firm can mention new additions to the team or accolades they received. A dentist’s office can share before and after photos of their patients.
As people start commenting on your posts, make sure to comment back.
Consider working with influencers in your industry, too. Influencers can help spread the word about your business. You can boost your brand’s visibility and draw in fresh leads.
Give Business a Boost: 7 Digital Marketing Services for Dental Clinics and SMEs
Don’t fall behind the competition this year. Instead, consider these seven digital marketing services. With these marketing services, you can wow your customers and draw in fresh leads.
Get ready to stand out from the crowd with these online business marketing tips today!
Need help developing your digital marketing strategy? We’re here to help.
Contact us today to discuss your web design, SEO strategy, and more!
May 19, 2021 | Photo & Video
What will give your business the extra momentum it needs to grow? Marketing plans often promise a lot, but it can still feel like a risk to commit to the strategies. Specifically, custom business photos may seem like an “extra” that your business can do without.
Yet that’s not an area where you want to choose low-quality options. Instead, custom photos are the best choice for your business because they offer a wealth of advantages stock photos can’t match. Take a look below for a full list of why custom photos are a great boost for your company.
Discover Your Business’s Unique Appeal
Your business has something unique to offer your customers that no one else can. So why use photos that everyone else has access to?
One of the pitfalls of using stock photos is that someone else may have the same photo as you on their website or blog post. Worse, that business may be a competitor of yours. What if a customer sees the other business’s photo and thinks they’re booking with you?
You want to stand out so that you win those customers. When you choose custom business photos instead of stock photography, you’re getting a product that you’re sure is unique. You can be confident that you won’t be mistaken for another business and all the customers you gain are meant to be yours.
Earn Clients by Letting Them In
Having a photographer shoot in your space opens your office up to the outside world. Someone who has never visited your office gets a glimpse into your workspace and your personal area. They may learn something about you that convinces them to become a client.
A customer who sees a custom photo for an artist may see a piece they really like and want to purchase. A customer who sees a custom photo for an attorney may see a child’s area of the waiting room and discover you take family law cases. You never know what a personalized photo will reveal about your business that convinces someone to become a customer.
Custom Photos Define Your Visual Identity
In the marketing world, the word “branding” is almost a buzzword. It’s all in the name of helping your business make the best possible impression, though. Potential customers can get the wrong idea from stock images if you’re not careful.
Custom photos can help you define your company’s visual identity and build your brand. Cement in your customer’s mind who you are as a business. Teach them through your photos and clarify in their minds how you can fill their needs.
Make Customers Comfortable with Your Own Photos
When your potential customers see your photos online, you want them to feel at ease with your business. Show them real people in your photos, the actual people they’ll see when they come to the office.
Is your doctor’s office called Johnson-Hughes Family Practice? Post some pictures of Drs. Johnson and Hughes on your website. When customers see online the actual doctors or practitioners who they will see in the office, they feel more comfortable before they’re even shown to the exam room.
They feel like they know you, like they’ve met their doctor already, even if they’re a new patient. Custom photos are humanizing for any industry. If you want to make your customers more comfortable, go with custom business photography.
The Best Reputation
Make a good impression, just like you always clean your house when you have company over or you always wash your car when your dad comes to town. Custom photos can help you maintain a great business reputation, both with existing customers and potential new ones.
Keeping that credibility with stock photos is a lot harder. If they can’t see who you really are and they don’t recognize the office from the photos, it’s hard to appear genuine and honest.
Did you know that what people learn about your reputation later can cause them to remember you differently? Even if you make a favorable first impression, if they see something unfavorable about you afterward, their memories can change.
Research shows they’ll remember you less favorably than when they first met you. In fact, it makes a big difference in the business world, especially as you attend networking events and meet new contacts.
Instead of turning them off, make them see you’re serious about your business. Use professional, custom photos as part of your marketing strategy and ensure you’re known for your dependability.
Marketing Through Custom Photos
You may know a little bit about keyword optimization for web articles and your website. Yet did you know that even images can be part of SEO strategies? Your business photography can be part of your marketing strategy, helping you rank higher in web searches.
Gain traffic from your optimized articles and photos. The more traffic you have, it’s likely the more conversions you’ll see. Using custom photos can be a big part of your marketing strategy.
Reusable Materials
Once you pay for a custom business photo, you have the rights to use it again and again. That means you now have photography for flyers, brochures, mailings, and other marketing materials. They become versatile assets for your business, rather than just another line-item expense.
While you don’t want to repeat photos on your website too many times, you can use them in various places online. For example, using your business photos on your website and then again on social media isn’t too repetitive. It’s actually a great way to streamline your brand and make sure that the crossover is smooth and unobtrusive for users.
When you’re building a marketing strategy, you don’t want something that will get you by. You want the best options because that’s how you’re going to become the best option for your customers. Even if you already are the best option, if they don’t know that, you won’t get the sale.
Using custom photos can help you convince your client base that you’re unique and genuine. Besides that, you’ll have some valuable, reusable assets when you’re finished.
Capture who you really are with custom business photography from Harris and Ward.
Mar 31, 2021 | Harris & Ward, marketing
There are around 31 million small businesses just in the US. That’s to say nothing about foreign businesses that operate in the same space, a common problem for e-commerce businesses and freelancers. In short, you can come up against a lot of competition depending on your industry.
That makes marketing an essential component in any small business plan. The challenge, of course, is how you can make your small business marketing succeed in the face of that competition. Keep reading for tips that can help you get your marketing in the right place.
Make a Plan
Marketing is one area where you can’t throw it together as you go. You need a marketing strategy that informs a marketing plan. That starts with defining your target market.
What kind of person or business represents your ideal customer? What characteristics define that person or business?
Let’s say you run a dental practice. Is your ideal customer a family or someone looking for cosmetic dentistry?
If you want family business, you structure your marketing plan around things like preventative care for kids and essential procedures. If you focus on cosmetic dentistry, your target market is likely adults with disposable income. For those customers, you focus your marketing on lifestyle and aesthetics.
Once you define your ideal customer, you build a plan around them and their needs or wants.
Set a Budget
Marketing can and will eat as much money as you throw at it, regardless of results. That means you must set a sustainable marketing budget before you begin.
Sustainable means different things to different businesses. For a cash-strapped business, that might mean a couple of hundred bucks a month. For a high-profit business, it can mean thousands of dollars.
Rather than think of your budget in numerical terms, think of it as a percentage of revenue. Assuming you can afford it, a good rule of thumb is around 7% of your revenue. If you can’t afford that, crunch the numbers until you find a number you can afford and work with that amount.
Now, let’s look at specific things you can do.
Professional Website
Your business operates in an Internet-connected world. That means you need a website as a focal point for your business marketing efforts. More than that, though, you need a professional-grade website.
Customers these days regularly interact with websites built by Fortune 500 companies that poured millions of dollars into their site development. Those websites inform customer expectations about look and performance in any given industry. While you can’t compete with the budgets of those companies, you can get a website built by professional website developers.
That means you end up with a site that performs well and meets customer expectations for your industry. It also means you get a website that natively offers any industry-specific features you need.
SEO
It’s difficult to separate search engine optimization from any small business marketing plan, as it’s a core part of digital marketing. SEO is a set of tactics that help your pages on your website rank better in search results. If your site’s pages don’t rank well, people looking for businesses online simply won’t find you.
The most familiar elements of SEO for most business owners are keywords and link building. In essence, keywords are specific terms that people use when searching for products or services. By incorporating keywords specific to your business, you improve your odds of ranking well.
If you focus on a local market, location-specific keywords can help you even more.
Link building takes on two main forms: internal and external. Internal linking focuses on creating a web of links on your site between related content, which tells search engines that your site focuses on a specific product or service. External linking focuses on connecting your site to high-quality resources, which demonstrates you understand your own industry.
Custom Images
Many businesses rely on stock images for their websites. This is a cost-effective tactic, but it’s not an ideal one. There are a finite number of stock images for any given industry, which means you run the risk of using the same images as a competitor.
Custom images help you overcome this problem by ensuring originality. As a bonus, people respond to images in a more meaningful way than they do solely to text on the screen.
Video
Video does the same thing for your that custom images do, but even more powerfully. They let you speak directly to your visitors, which can help solidify an emotional connection. People also recall information from videos better than information they get from skimming written content.
Video has another advantage. It’s an ideal way for you to reinforce your brand message.
You can do slice-of-life videos from inside your company or office or offer messages from the owner. Assuming your brand message is authentic, it’ll shine through in the videos. If people liked your brand messaging before, you’ll reinforce that emotional connection.
Let us not forget the 800-pound gorilla that is social media. Very few businesses possess the staff, budget, or know-how to maintain a presence on every social media site. Yet, a small business social media presence is essential.
Dig down into the benefits and pitfalls of different social media platforms. Then pick a maximum of two platforms to focus on as a starting point. Look for sites that play to your business’s strengths.
If your business has lots of products, an image-focused site makes sense. If your business relies on personality and in-person services, lean more into sites that let you leverage those factors.
Small Business Marketing and Your Business
Small business marketing matters as much as big business marketing for the long-term survival of your business.
That means you need a plan that focuses on your ideal customers and a budget you can sustain. It also means leaning in to the reality of digital marketing.
You need a pro website with solid SEO. Your marketing should use custom images when possible, and video if your budget supports it. Your business also needs a focused presence on social media.
Harris & Ward specializes in small business digital marketing and site development. Have a larger project? We offer enterprise SEO and marketing services.
Feb 12, 2021 | Search Engine Optimization
Studies show that less than 1 percent of Google searchers click on sites beyond the first page of results. That means you need to get listed on that first page if you want to get any new patients from web searches.
Search engine optimization (SEO) will help you get your website ranked in the top results. Let’s look at how you can use SEO techniques to drive more patients to your practice.
It’s All About Keywords
The foundation of all SEO work is keywords. Those are the words and phrases that someone looking for a chiropractor would likely type into the Google search box.
Terms like “chiropractor near me” or “chiropractor in city name” are logical searches for someone looking for a local chiropractor. On the other hand, a search like “what does a chiropractor do” probably isn’t someone looking for your services.
You can use tools like Ahrefs and the Google Keyword Planner to develop a list of keywords to target. Once you have those, work them into the content on your website to help it rank higher.
Focus on Local SEO First
Your chiropractic practice likely serves local clients for the most part. If that’s the case, it doesn’t matter how you rank for someone searching for a chiropractor in another part of the country.
Focusing on local SEO will help you reach the people who are close to you and most likely to become patients.
There are several important steps to optimize your website for local searches, including:
- Complete your Google My Business profile
- Use a consistent NAP (name, address, and phone number) everywhere on your site and other pages like Facebook and Twitter
- Create a separate page on your site for each service you offer
- Get reviews from your existing clients
The local search results in Google show a map with your location, review ratings, and other details right in the listing so it’s important to make sure it’s all available to Google.
How quickly your website loads is important for a couple of reasons. First, studies show that people will click away from your site within a few seconds if it doesn’t load immediately (known as a bounce).
A slow website means you’ll lose a lot of potential patients before you even have a chance to connect with them.
Second, a high bounce rate will negatively affect your search rankings in Google. If someone clicks on your site in the results and almost immediately clicks back to try another one, Google can see this happen. If it happens often, it tells Google your site isn’t a good solution for searchers and it will stop showing it in the top results.
Make sure you use a high-performance web hosting service. It might mean paying a bit more but it’s worth the cost if it helps you get more patients.
Build Backlinks to Your Website
Another fundamental component of chiropractic website SEO is what’s known as backlinks. These are links from other sites pointing to yours.
The original PageRank algorithm that was the basis for Google’s search engine used backlinks as the primary way of determining a website’s value. The idea was that links pointing to a web page were like votes — more links meant the page must be more valuable.
Google’s algorithm has evolved to consider far more than just links but they’re still an important part of the calculation. Getting links from local websites like Chambers of Commerce, community pages, and other businesses will help your site rank higher.
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are a great way to connect directly with your current and potential patients. You can use these websites to answer questions, share your knowledge, and drive traffic to your website.
Google doesn’t give links from those sites as much credit as links from other places but they are still backlinks. And having more people commenting and sharing on your posts there helps create “buzz” which Google does take into account in its ranking algorithm.
Create a Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is one of the most effective long-term SEO strategies. This is the process of sharing information, both on your website and through other channels like social media and other blogs.
Content is usually text-based, such as blog posts or articles written for other websites, but it also includes things like YouTube videos, Instagram and Snapchat posts, and podcasts or other audio.
There are lots of ways to come up with ideas for things to create content about, such as:
- Answer common questions from your patients
- Write about health-related topics in the news
- Weigh in on local news or events
If you publish new content on a consistent schedule, it helps “train” Google to check your site more often. Fresh, valuable content is another factor that Google considers in its algorithm.
Track Your Results
Once you start optimizing your website for better rankings, you’ll start to see your traffic increase. But unless you’re tracking the results, it’s hard to know exactly what’s working and what isn’t.
Use a tool like Google Analytics to track the visitors coming to your website. It provides details like:
- Where visitors are coming from
- What pages they visit once they land on your site
- Which pages have the highest and lowest bounce rates
When you change something on your website, give it enough time to gather some data and then compare the results with the numbers before the change. This type of A/B testing will tell you what’s working and what isn’t so you don’t have to guess.
Where to Get Help With Your SEO Strategy
Healthcare SEO isn’t a complicated process but it does take some time to implement. And Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm so you need to stay on top of the latest changes if you want to keep your rankings.
If you’d rather focus on your practice and leave the SEO work to experts, Harris and Ward is here to help. We offer a range of SEO services to help improve your search engine rankings and bring more patients into your practice.
Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help your practice grow.
Jan 26, 2021 | Dental Marketing, Google, Web Design
Are you a small business wondering how to go about designing a website?
You might be relying on your Facebook page as a substitute, or even wondering if you need a website in the first place. Have you considered the price you’d pay for not having one?
Website design and development involves a large devotion of time and energy, but the rewards are huge. Shockingly, almost half of entrepreneurs still don’t have a small business website. Furthermore, only a third of those who do, use their website to communicate news to customers and leads.
If you don’t want to see your small business screaming into the void, it’s time to consider a website. If you don’t have one, how will you win customers from the half of your rivals that do?
We’ll explain how to know your audience, develop a strategy, hone your content, and track the results. Read on!
Know Your Audience
When you’re designing a website, the first thing to keep in mind is your target audience. If you have anything less than a crystal-clear image of your buyer persona, then you need to first invest time in researching the profile of your typical customers.
Once you have established a firm understanding of who you are aiming your website towards, you are better able to be in-sync with them. Successful website design and development will require accurate information to feed every stage of the process.
When you’ve internalized a personification of your average buyer, creative decisions, like tone, color, and imagery, flow with relative ease. If your small business has never conducted audience research, then the results will uncover a wealth of knowledge to define or evolve your brand identity.
It’s important to note that after defining and establishing the tone of your business, you should be consistent throughout the website. Staying “on brand” ensures that your message resonates with clarity and cohesion. Website visitors are all too easily distracted and don’t need much of an excuse to get confused and leave.
Research the websites of your successful competitors, who will have invested resources in honing their messaging already. Identify what is working for them, but also uncover gaps in their strategy. You can incorporate these findings to meet and exceed the competition.
Mood boards are useful to visualize creative approaches and see how well ideas communicate.
Develop a Strategy
Website design strategies that work focus on one primary goal and secondary goals that reinforce the main-agenda.
The primary goal of a small business website might be to turn leads into customers. A secondary goal could include turning existing customers into repeat business. The third goal of your website may center on engagement – encouraging your visitors to share your content on social media, for instance.
A simple layout wins in nearly all cases at capturing the limited attention of your target audience. It’s important to have a responsive website design. This entails having your website optimized to resize and restructure for various browsers and platforms.
Desktop users were once the majority of website visitors, but now, the lion’s share of site viewers will use various mobile devices. Tablets and phones of all shapes and sizes mean that a flexible and adaptable design is essential.
Map out the buyer journey when conceiving the structure of your website. Create a flowchart to prototype your site so that important pages are easy to navigate. Later, a more detailed sitemap can come together as the structure becomes more fully formed.
Attention, Interest, Decision, and Acquisition (AIDA) is a principle that can help shape the buyer funnel.
Focus on Content
There’s another variant of the AIDA principle: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. This can work within the website pages themselves to ensure that all selling pages are effective at driving action.
A website built in a content management system (CMS) like WordPress will make it easier to create, delete, and maintain content.
Choose appropriate keywords that are popular in your industry, and build your website content around them. Use them in the title, meta descriptions, and headings, but don’t over-insert them awkwardly. Your copy must have a human linguistic flow so that search engines can easily read and index your pages.
To improve your rankings, implement a
successful SEO content strategy that focuses on regular keyword-driven content to increase organic visibility. Your goal should be visibility high in the results on the first page of Google, for your industry and in your area. Regular articles, written in a blog format, are very effective at accomplishing this.
Create regular content with a focus on your keywords to increase your organic search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. Your goal should be visibility high in the results on the first page of Google, for your industry and in your area. Regular articles, written in a blog format, are very effective at accomplishing this.
When developing a website, make sure that the information on each page is presented in an easy-to-read fashion. Good use of white space is important, so as not to overload the eyes.
Break up the copy so that it is most effective in a hierarchical sense. Frequent one-line spaces between paragraphs make the copy easy to scan. Keep paragraphs 2-3 sentences long for the same reason, and make good use of headings, subheadings, etc.
Track Results
Winning website development strategies often treat all pages as if they were landing pages. Sometimes, unexpected pages may rank very well, causing high numbers of visitors to land on them.
By tracking your results using Google Analytics, you can optimize these pages further still. Website speed is important so as not to lose visitors who might get frustrated by the loading time. Website analytics are useful at monitoring performance and engagement.
It’s a good idea to have a call-to-action (CTA) at the top of pages, perhaps in the menu. This CTA is intended for buyers who are further along in the decision-making process. A second and more prominent CTA would be well-placed near the end of the page contents, with the rest of the page built around it.
A/B testing involves serving up two slightly different pages to a split audience. The page style with the best results wins.
Remember, the goal of any website geared around selling is to win out over the competition. Competitive analysis tools are useful in website design and development to serve this objective.
Finally, you must always evolve and tweak your website because a successful website is never a finished, static entity.
Website Design and Development
We’ve shown that website design and development requires careful planning if you want to hit your goals. Don’t be overwhelmed by the hard work that’s necessary to beat your competitors.
If you’re a small business owner developing a website, we can help you. We specialize in website design and provide creative marketing services to small businesses across the nation. Our core services are web development and hosting, but we also offer custom photography, videography, and search engine optimization (SEO).
Contact us today, and we’ll connect you with your audience.
