5 Smart Marketing Strategies For 2021
Transcript Below.
Hi, this is Gary from 3Bug Media and today we're going to talk about marketing strategies for 2021. Now we're still in the beginning of the year and hopefully you already have most of your plans in place and already starting to execute them. But I want to give you a few things to think about when it comes to online marketing. Things change really quickly, especially when it comes to Google and search engine optimization. Things that worked well last year or the year before may not work at all this year.
And one of the longer term trends is that Google is starting to look at businesses more holistically, looking at not just how many links they have or not just social media. It's looking at a lot of different factors to determine if that business is valuable enough to show in the search engine results.
So that means you need to start looking at your online marketing and your business more holistically as well. So I want to give you a couple of things to think about. And the first one is build a great business and that may sound very simple, but building a great business makes everything else easy. If you have a good business with a good reputation, good quality customer service, and good quality products, it makes everything else really easy. It becomes easy to get online reviews, easy to get people talking about you and sharing and liking your stuff on social media.
It just makes everything easier. And the inverse, if you have a poorly run business, it makes everything else really, really hard. It's hard to get reviews, hard to get people to talk about you online, things like that.
So the easiest thing you can do and the most valuable thing you can do is to really commit to building a great business with a great reputation.
The next one is build a brand. Most businesses online are commodities. Whether you're a dentist, a lawyer, a plumber, a real estate agent, it doesn't matter. You are one of several hundred options for a potential customer. So you're literally lumped in with everybody else. When you build a brand, you start to separate yourself from that pack not only in the eyes of potential customers, but also in the eyes of Google, where they start to look at you as something different than everybody else.
And that usually happens when people start to really talk about your brand and your company online. And that could be through positive reviews, could be people searching the Internet about your company. It could be social media. People are talking about your company, talking about your brand, things like that. And as you start to build that brand, Google starts to recognize you as a brand and not just another commodity mixed in with everyone else. So you need to decide what are you going to be known for.
It's going to be customer service, the quality of your products, your professionalism of you and your sales team, things like that. Figure out what's going to separate you from everybody else and really start to incorporate that in your everyday business. Separating yourself will start to build your own brand in the eyes of potential customers as well as Google.
The next one is creating content. You can do that on social media, on your website, or Google My Business. This can be done via blogging, if you like. The content can be done with video. If you want to use YouTube or other video platforms or if you're comfortable creating graphics for social media. The key is to create content.
Online marketing today is all about inbound marketing.
So inbound marketing is when the potential customer decides when and how they want to interact with your business it is no longer about you pushing out an advertisement or pushing out a postcard or a newspaper ad and everybody reacting to it. People now pick and choose when they decide to contact and interact with your business. So the easiest way to get your message out in front of people, to show people your value, to show people what your brand and what your business is all about is creating content.
So pick the mediums that are best suited for you. So if you like blogging, this is a great option. If you like video like I'm doing right now, video could be a great option. Or maybe you just like to create graphics, you want to make sure you're sharing them on social media, that you're sharing them on your website, you're sharing them on Google my business. And that gives you that reach to bring these people into your brand, to get them to know what you're all about and hopefully contact you to learn more.
But it all comes down to creating content. You need to create value first in this new online marketing world where people know and understand what you're about and then they can decide how and when they're going to interact with your business.
The next one is Google My Business. Now, I've been doing this for about twelve years now and Google my business has been around for around ten, it used to be called Google Places, but one thing that I know is that Google my business is taking more and more businesses' search traffic year over year. So in the past, where most of that traffic would have went to Google and then they went on to your website to find out more about your business, get directions, and learn more about your services. But now a lot of the traffic stays in the Google search results.
Every year, Google does more and more to try to keep people in the search results. And they do that because that's how they make their money. The longer they can keep people on Google, the more likely they're going to click on an ad or do some action that they're going to make money on. So what they're starting to do is they're starting to incorporate a lot of features that normally people would have to go to a website to get, and that could be contact information, directions, more information about your services, things like that.
But Google is even now scanning people's websites and taking information from those websites and pulling them directly into the search results. So more and more traffic is staying inside Google, which makes your Google My Business listing very, very important. In fact, most of our clients, unless they have a really fantastic content marketing strategy, actually get more visibility, and more views with their Google My Business listing than they do with their website. So take Google My Business seriously, concentrate on getting positive quality reviews and also maximize the new features that come out every year.
Every year. Google is going to push out new features, make sure you stay on top of those new features. Make sure you execute on them. You do them. Because what happens is most businesses don't realize these new features are launched. And usually it takes several months or even a year or two before everyone catches on to these new features. So if you're aware of them it gives you the opportunity to jump on that right away and gain a competitive advantage over your competitors.
And lastly, be consistent, commit to doing it all year. None of this is going to be any good if you simply do it for a month or two and then fizzle out by the time the summer comes.
Whatever you're going to do, you don't need to do everything here, but pick which ones are important to you and pick which ones you think you can execute on and commit to doing it the whole year.
And I guarantee you'll have excellent results by the end of 2021. So good luck in 2021. If you have any questions, you can contact me here.
Gary
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