Digital Marketing Services That Work for Dental Clinics and SMEs

by harrisward | 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 If your website is old and outdated, consumers might leave.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.

7. Social Media Marketing

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!

How to Succeed at Small Business Marketing

by harrisward | 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.

Social Media

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.