Internet use is nearly ubiquitous in America. Only 10% of Americans do not use the internet. 77% of Americans own a smartphone. To put it simply, online is where you are going to find your buyers. Or, rather, where your buyers will find you.
How have you adjusted your marketing and sales programs? How are you going to continue adjusting?
While Americans changed their media habits, their buying behavior also changed. With traditional marketing, the marketer dictated the message points and information available to the buyer. Today that has flipped around resulting in online buyers having information from an almost limitless number of sources. This change put buyers in control of information gathering to make their purchase decisions.
Your challenge as a marketer is to get the information about your products in front of your potential buyers where they are looking online. That’s no small challenge. Let’s explore strategies to increase the chances that you will be successful.
Start with knowing your buyer
Go beyond demographics (sex, age, income) and dive into their lives. What is important in their day-to-day activities? How do they like to buy? What are their buying concerns? What are the buying triggers that will motivate them to buy from you?
E-Power Marketing offers a methodology to aid you to better know your buyers. It’s our Persona Development Guide. We have versions for both consumer and business-to-business marketers. You can download it here:
Use your personas to help you attract customers online
By understanding your buyers’ demographics and lifestyles, you will know what topics and what concerns to address when developing content. Having content that speaks to your buyers is a difference-maker in attracting them and building their interest in your brand.
You can also determine where on the web they are likely to spend time. Review these social media demographics to decide where you should be active.
Make yourself visible on search engines
Search engines remain extremely popular by internet users looking for information. 89% of buyers start their purchasing process on search engines and Google handles an incredible 4.3 billion searches every day.
There is no doubt that you have to have strong programs if you want search visibility. Remember, with so much audience to reach, countless marketers are making dedicated efforts to grab their share of search visibility.
There are several ways to have visibility on search engines:
- Search engine optimization. Done well over time, SEO generates quality website visitors looking for what you offer. To be successful, you need a long-term commitment to developing content that attracts your target audience. If you think your SEO is not working, here are tips for effective search engine optimization.
- Local listings. Google My Business and Bing Places for Business are free to list for any business. The process to list is simple. The result is your business will appear in search results when your business is searched or when there is a relevant local search.
- Digital advertising. You can pay to be on the top of search engine results. Both Google and Bing offer a variety of ad programs where you can be quite precise in targeting which searches your ads appear in. Measurement tools are excellent so you can compute the value your ads are delivering and optimize your program to continuously improve ROI. I must caution you that the money can go fast if your advertising program is not precisely set up, managed, and optimized. You want experts doing that. If you are running digital ads and not sure if you are getting the payback you should, contact E-Power Marketing and we will provide a free digital marketing audit.
For more strategies and insights on lifting the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategies, download “Is Your Marketing Strategy Good, or Just Good Enough?”
