3 Reasons to Leverage the Power of PPC for Your Small Business
Pay Per Click advertising, most commonly known as PPC, is an essential component of a digital marketing strategy. Although, it seems like its benefits are often underestimated, PPC plays a vital role in business growth.
There are different platforms for PPC, including Facebook Ads, Twitter promoted ads, Google Ads, even Bing Ads. They all constitute a great way to help you maximize your potential by expanding your reach quickly, enabling you to promote your services or products to a broader audience.
Here are some of the reasons why PPC is a good investment for your small business.
Gets Targeted Visitors Quickly
Traffic is something every online business needs, but it is not any traffic that works. For your sales and business to have the potential to grow, you need targeted traffic. By choosing which keywords to show your ads for, a PPC ad can be displayed directly to people searching for those specific keywords that relate to your products and services. Of course, the success of a PPC campaign also depends on the quality of the products/services you’re offering and the use of high-conversion landing pages.
Helps Identify If Your Products/Service Sell
Two important things that directly relate to the growth of your business are offering products that sell and having a website that converts. But how can you tell if those two things are working as expected? Running a PPC campaign can help. Although it is not a free test to do, it is undoubtedly a smart way to spend money, as it can help you optimize your product offerings and your website to generate more revenue.
Pairs Well with Other Digital Marketing Channels
Since it is such an essential part of your digital marketing strategy, PPC must work well with other digital marketing channels, and it can. You can use PPC to:
Improve your local SEO and get more people through your door or get more calls from people in your area looking for the products and services you offer.
Test how effective your keywords really are.
Get more people to subscribe to your mailing list and boost your digital marketing campaigns.
PPC is a great tool, not just for small businesses, but for any business that can help you create and seize significant opportunities for growth.
Having a contact form is something that is usually advised to business owners when they’re setting up their website. If you’re a business owner, you might have had that conversation before. Some go for it as they consider it necessary, and some others are left wondering why they can’t just leave their email address on there instead.
Although, directing visitors to your email address is not a bad thing, there are better ways for people to get in contact with your business, like a contact form. Here are some of the reasons why it’s worth adding it to your website:
Boosts Credibility and Professionalism
When a website doesn’t have a contact form, it raises suspicion. It makes people wonder whether they should trust your business or not because it looks like something is missing. Putting in a visible place is the best way to not only make it easier for people to get in contact with you, but also gives an excellent first impression.
Makes You Available to Current Customers and Potential Customers
Think of your contact form as your digital receptionist. It takes all incoming queries for you, so you can eventually get back to your customers with an answer. That is particularly useful when you’re a small business owner running the majority of things on your own. You can even set an automated reply to notify the sender that their message was received, and you’ll be in contact with them in X amount of time.
Helps Track Conversion
Probably one of the most important reasons to include contact forms on your website is the fact that it helps keep track of conversion. You can even have a contact form in different landing pages on your website so you can identify which page is motivating more people to get in touch with you. With that information, you can develop better marketing strategies to boost your business.
Whether visitors reached your website through organic search results, a social media post or a paid ad, a landing page is more than just a page that people land on; it is the initial point of contact between your site and your visitors.
There are various types of landing pages:
Advertising landing pages
Lead Generating landing pages
Click-through landing pages
Product/Service landing pages
Product or service landing pages are the most common. Their purpose is to direct traffic to a page that has detailed information about a specific product or service. They are perfect to use in blog posts, social media posts, and even email marketing campaigns. The above are just some of the most commonly used types of landing pages, but that doesn’t limit all they can do. Landing pages can have numerous applications within a marketing campaign.
Make Good First Impressions
Most of your potential customer’s first contact with your brand will be through your website, and they will possibly get there thanks to organic search results. Creating landing pages that offer value to your visitors, and that clearly outline the next steps in the journey, are a great type of front door to your business.
Help Boost Search Traffic
Driving more organic traffic to your site via your landing pages is easy when they are correctly optimized, following SEO best practices and using targeted keywords. Of course, landing pages are living creatures that need fed updated content every so often to keep things fresh and exciting to your audience.
Get Right to the Point
Your site visitors are usually looking for specific information. Landing pages are an excellent means to communicate your brand’s core message clearly and concisely.
Increase Conversion Rates
Adding a form for your visitors to fill out once they land on your website makes the process of coming in contact with your business much more straightforward, which is likely to help generate leads and boost conversion rates.
Long gone are the days when people would look for the businesses they needed in the yellow pages. These days everything happens online, including that. When a potential customer requires a company that offers the type of products and services you offer, they are likely to type in what they’re looking for in a search engine.
Google is the most powerful and most popular search engine in the world, so being on the first page of their organic search results is a big deal, and it all comes down to optimizing your content. Here are three optimization factors you should consider if you want to show up Google organically.
Length and Quality of Page Content
The kind of information you display on your website matters. It should be relevant and useful to your customers and visitors, and it should also be unique content. The number of words per page can vary. Still, the most important things are the quality of your content and whether each page is long enough for people to consider useful and interesting, hanging around longer.
Inbound Links
Having other sites point to yours is essential, but if you can get big websites to link to yours and stay there for longer, that’s a win.
Domain Name Authority
The amount of time you’ve owned your domain name works in your favor. Having your keywords in your domain name is also positive.
Page Speed
Responsive websites designed to work on a variety of screen sizes and resolutions. How long your site takes to fully load is an essential factor to consider.
Everything affectsSEO! Google wants to make sure your site is relevant enough to your audience before they put you on the first page.
Your Small Business Needs a Solid Digital Marketing Strategy
Small businesses need to be smart about how they invest their money. When you’re starting up, it may not be wise to put all your effort into huge traditional marketing campaigns, but luckily, other alternatives can get you the results you are looking for, like digital marketing.
Here are some of the reasons why digital marketing is perfect for small businesses:
Company Size is Irrelevant
Digital marketing is not reserved for large companies. It’s perfect for small to medium-sized businesses to target exactly the type of customer you are looking for and expand your reach, making it easier to compete in the market.
Marketing Technique is Affordable
Cost-effective is a good word to describe one of the benefits of digital marketing. It saves time and doesn’t require you to have a huge team behind it. You’re better off hiring a digital marketing agency to take care of it for you —one less thing on your plate. Besides, digital marketing allows you to measure how cost-effective marketing campaigns are, and you don’t need a huge budget to kick things off. Even with a limited budget, you can get some digital marketing strategy to get you started, like emails, for example.
Conversion is Easily Tracked
The most important thing to measure is conversion, and digital marketing makes that easy —thanks to the internet. Tracking online conversions is much easier than tracking offline ones, and that’s not all. Digital marketing also helps you find solutions that help to increase your conversion rate, as you can easily run tests and find out what is working and what isn’t so that you can make decisions based on that information.
Reputation is Manageable
One of the most important things for growth is having a good reputation. Digital marketing helps you manage your image, so your reputation remains clean, and you continue to impress your audience in a positive way.
Digital marketing makes it easier for businesses to get where they want to go.
New Year Resolutions to Boost Your Business in 2020
This year has come and gone. Ideally, your small business had a good year, and there are many wonderful memories to remember in 2019. Now, it’s time to work on your plans for 2020 —if you haven’t done so already. If you want to take your business to the next level this coming year, you will need to establish goals that will help you get there. Here are some simple yet relevant New Year resolutions that can help you get on the right path for 2020.
Launch Your Website
Digital marketing has been a big deal for businesses over the last ten years. Now that we’re kicking off a new decade, the importance of it is even greater. We’re in the 21st century and having an online presence is a must.
Whether your small business doesn’t currently have a website or you’re starting a new business from scratch, launching a website should be at the top of your priority list. You need a great-looking and functional website that helps you build your brand and allow your target audience to learn more about you. Building it doesn’t have to be complicated, especially if you hire professionals to do it for you.
Write Your Own Content
Blogging is still very much alive these days. It is a great way to engage with your audience and provide value to customers. It also helps build your brand and grow your business. Your blog should be something you work on in parallel with the launch of your website. Define your target audience, identify topics of interest and put together a content calendar.
Work on Your SEO
To grow your business, you need to attract more customers and to attract more customers, they have to be able to find you first. That is where implementing strategies that help you drive traffic to your site comes in handy. Optimizing your website for search engines is one of the most effective ways to increase your visibility and improve your ranking.
Leverage Email Marketing
We’ve talked about the importance of email marketing today. It is the primary channel for lead generation for approximately 90 percent of marketers. Besides, email marketing is also a great way to increase brand awareness and reach conversion and retention goals.
Contribute to Your Community
Your business has something that is of value for your community, so why not share it and make a positive impact? Getting involved in your community is a great way to give back while increasing brand awareness. You can share knowledge, support a noble cause. There are many ways in which you can contribute.
Happy New Year! May your business reach new heights in 2020!
With 2020 just around the corner, it is time to start considering how you’ll shape your digital marketing efforts for the coming year —if you haven’t done so already. Every year, there are digital marketing trends to pay attention to keep your efforts relevant and up to date. Here are some of the ones you should consider for 2020:
Implementing AI
Artificial intelligence has been getting more and more attention each year since there is so much that is done with it. There is voice search, sentiment analysis, and online maps. Chat bots, for example, are a great way for small business to include AI in their digital marketing efforts. They can provide 24/7 support and help resolve complaints, assist customers in the process of online registration, provide quick answers, offer additional content and more.
Leveraging Social Networks
If your business is still one of those that “doesn’t do” social media, 2020 is the year to start. Did you know that users between 20 and 35 years of age spend one and a half hours —on average— checking their social networks? That is an hour and a half of the opportunity for you to connect with your audience. To this day, Facebook continues to be the most active social network, so try starting there.
Personalizing Content
Long gone are the days where marketers could treat their audience as if they were all the same person. These days people understand their value as customers and want to be treated as individuals. Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to tailor a different message for every single one of your customers, but you can segment them in different groups, based on their profiles as well as their wants and needs, and approach them from that perspective, which will allow you to offer your products and services in a more efficient manner.
Other trends, like video marketing, are getting stronger and stronger. It’s all about finding what works best for you and your audience. Are you ready for 2020?
The holiday season is officially here. Have you planned your email marketing campaign yet?
Holiday email marketing campaigns are a great tool to promote your small business during the holidays and increase profit. 24% of 2018’s eCommerce holiday sales happened thanks to email marketing, according to Shopify. This is the most important buying season of the year, so let’s make the most of it with a great email marketing campaign. Here are some tips for you:
Be Holiday-Aware
In the US, the major holiday season runs from November to January, which gives you two months to promote sales for your business. That might differ depending on the country.
If you know which holidays have the most impact on sales, use that to your advantage when crafting your holiday email.
Start Sooner Than Later
Even if you didn’t use email marketing to promote your business for Black Friday, you can still do it to promote it for Christmas and New Year. Just be sure to get started in the first few days of December to get people excited about the upcoming deals or new products.
Make Sure You’re Marketing to the Right Audience
Segmenting your list of subscribers will allow you to target your audience better and prevent you from using your efforts on the wrong crowd. You can start segmenting your list as you build it, from the moment someone subscribes so you can best identify what they are interested in.
Get Creative and Put Together a Holiday-Themed Campaign
You might already have a branded and pre-defined email template that you use for email marketing campaigns. However, for the holidays, you have some more creative license to make your holiday email campaigns stand out from your regular email content. Feel free to change the color scheme, the graphics, etc., to make it more holiday-inspired. Just be sure to keep your brand logo intact. That will keep people interested and make it more likely for them to open and read your email.
There’s still time to hop on the email marketing train for the holidays!
Colorado has quickly become one of the fastest-growing states in the US. Based on the last official census, Colorado’s population grew by 1.4 percent between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018. Its current population is estimated to be 5,695,564, nearly 700,000 higher than in 2010, representing a 13.2 percent growth. This makes it the fourth-highest among all states over that time period.
With a wide and diverse cultural city that promotes a healthy work-life balance with plenty of different entertainment options, accessibility to the outdoors, and a well-educated, young workforce, Colorado and especially Denver, have become one of the best and most attractive places to live and start a new business.
Denver offers a wide range of opportunities that are not found in all states. The city is rich in culture, with a growing food scene and constant traffic of tourists that keep it fresh and dynamic. Denver provides entrepreneurs and startups, business support and opportunities that are boosted by its traditional customer service culture.
According to Forbes, Denver is ranked as the best place for businesses and careers in the US, becoming a prominent player in the US entrepreneurial scene. Nevertheless, such attractive numbers come with a cost and it is the fierce competition. With more and more new businesses trying to succeed, standing out from the rest becomes quite a task, but it isn’t impossible.
If you are going to start a new project, business, service, product or brand, in a city that shines because of its friendly approach to creativity, art and easy access to technology and customer service, the best thing you can do is using these to your advantage. The best tool, strategy or secret weapon that new business, startup or entrepreneur has to start competing in Denver’s fast-growing markets is SEO.
Denver offers amazing opportunities and conditions for startups
SEO or search engine optimization will not only help you to position your new brand, service or product, while reaching your specific target audience, but it will also provide you with enough information to understand your potential customers habits, preferences, and needs, giving you the leverage required to succeed over the rest of Colorado local businesses.
Creating Your Business in Denver
Before diving deep into the SEO world it is important to analyze Denver business statistics. Colorado and specifically Denver offer a wide range of benefits and opportunities that will help to establish your business. Having a better picture of how its economics are moving today will allow you to have a better idea of what you are going to find in your specific discipline or market area, how your competition flows and what opportunities are at your disposal.
Why Establish Your Business in Denver
Denver simply keeps showing a fast development in basically all-important areas in which a large and successful city should focus and invest in. Providing for your residents, public parks and open spaces are vital for a healthy lifestyle. Downtown Denver has over 150 acres of parks and open space, including Commons Park and Civic Center Park. You can also enjoy over 110 pieces of public art concentrated downtown.
Denver is considered the best place to set a new business.
A city without mobility and public transportation access can’t succeed, but Denver’s robust mobility network boosts and strengthens economic development opportunities, connecting downtown users to surrounding neighborhoods. However, it is interesting how a growing part of the population is biking, walking or using some other sort of alternative means of transportation.
These essential factors allow Denver and the entire Colorado State, to offer a wide range of academic, commercial, industrial, economical and most of all, natural benefits that make it the perfect place to start a new project, brand or business. According to The Downtown Denver Partnership’s 2019 State of Downtown Report, there is an overall city improvement, increasing investment, strong office market fundamentals, a growing and highly-educated workforce, and a vibrant residential population.
In detail the report shows how these specific factors have been behaving lately, providing an interesting blueprint of how it can help or affect entrepreneurs and startup success.
Denver’s Development
Denver’s strong population and job growth keep increasing. Colorado has the 8th lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 3.6%, and by September 2016, the employment growth in Colorado ranked 8th nationally. This has a direct impact on the city’s increasing residential, office and hotel demand, which is expected to represent in 2019, about $3 billion in investment. Forty-eight new projects were recently completed, planned, or are underway, bringing to Downtown Denver a total of 40 hotels, 10,700 hotel rooms, 13,285 residential units, and nearly 40 million square feet of office space.
Denver’s downtown growing residential population also has a direct impact on retail sales. It is stated that retail sales have an annual growth of 6 percent. Restaurants also play a huge roll in Denver’s economics, representing 41% of total sales. On the other hand, tourism and attractions are the main components of Denver’s economics. Downtown Denver welcomes about 17.4 million overnight visitors who spent $5.6 billion. Hotel rooms and meeting places represents $750 million in the economic impact of this world-class destination.
Another interesting statistic to pay attention to is Denver’s high-tech market. Since 2010 the tech workforce has doubled, growing nearly 14 percent per year. This shows a clear trend to Denver’s economic diversification. In fact, the city’s startup scene seems that it is going to be dominated by high tech firms. There are about 12k high tech workers in Downtown Denver and it keeps growing.
Becoming a Startup or Entrepreneur in Denver
Denver has focused on strengthening Colorado’s startup scene. Besides hosting the largest startup event in the US, Colorado is predominantly made up of small businesses and it is especially welcoming high tech industry ventures. According to Colorado’s Small Business Development Center, at least 97.6% of businesses in Colorado are small businesses, employing about 1 million people.
According to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, also known as the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship, which is an indicator of new business creation in the United States, shows that Colorado’s startup growth is at a rate of 74.1%, ranking the 5th best state for startup activity. Experts explain this as a consequence of Denver’s highly educated workforce. At least 72% of adults hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. In addition, the city’s officials quite rightly push startup growth, making it a little bit easier to launch a new project in Colorado in comparison to other States.
Colorado creates more small businesses than most States. Nevertheless, they seem to be smaller than the average nationally small businesses. If fact, a larger percentage of them seem to fail than in the U.S. as a whole. So this is an interesting and essential element to keep in mind.
It is stated that at least half the startups in the U.S. fail. However, Colorado businesses fail more frequently. This can be explained as we mentioned at the beginning of our post, because of the fierce competition. Good developing conditions will bring a larger number of startups and small businesses that dream of succeeding, and when applying effective SEO will make the difference.
Using SEO to Succeed in Denver
SEO is your best option to compete and succeed in Denver.
You might think that I am jumping right into conclusions assuming that you or your business is interested in having an online presence, but of course, I am! If you think that online presence isn’t required for your business to succeed, you will prove yourself wrong the hard way. It is virtually impossible to achieve success in a timely fashion, without having a presence on the Internet.
The marketing and branding power provided for having an online presence is incomparable. According to Google, at least 34% of users who conducted a local search on their computer visited a store within a day, and at least 50% of the consumers did it after searching on their smartphones.
However, it is vital to understand that online presence isn’t even enough. You need to hit the first spots in the SERP or search engine results page and that is precisely what SEO does. Most search engine users will click on the top five sites suggested by the engine, and nearly 33% of the users click on the first ranking page.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and as its name suggests, it allows search engines to look and find faster your Website, at the same time it decides that it is more valuable or related to the answer of the search engine user’s queries. Therefore, not only having an online presence but also hitting the top positions in the search engine result page, is a rule of thumb for any business or site that wishes to succeed.
Breaking Down SEO
Search Engine Optimization is understood as a set of rules, tasks, steps, strategies, and tools converging all together to boost the possibilities of hitting a first place or top position in the SERP. In simple words, it is the process that allows websites to become visible to Internet users. The higher ranked your webpage is on the search results page, the more visitors and eventually potential customers it will receive. But it doesn’t end there. SEO provides a lot more vital and juicy information.
When applied correctly, SEO offers a wide range of diverse data that can be translated to significant ROI or return on investment. You can have access to different metrics and stats that provides a clear map to set up the best strategy and approach to your users and potential customers. You can understand and identify those users or potential customers that are more prone to convert into a sale. Knowing exactly where to find and how to reach your target audience will give you leverage over your competitors.
SEO can also help to make your webpage more user-friendly, faster and easier to navigate while increasing its quality. You can control and also increase your webpage traffic, engage with your visitors and strengthen up your relationship with them. SEO can also be used as a powerful tool to promote and strengthen your brand awareness. However, search engine algorithms, rules, and ranking methods are not only complicated and sometimes even unclear, but they also tend to constantly change. Therefore, it is best to look for a professional SEO company or SEO service provider to help to establish your new company in Denver.
Selecting an SEO Company in Denver
Tips to choose the best SEO Company in Denver.
So, we are clear that Denver is the place for startups, entrepreneurs, and new small businesses to jump into the race for financial independence and success. In order to achieve this, it is essential not only having a presence online but also implementing effective SEO strategies. This way you will have a clear opportunity not only to establish your brand but also to stand out from your competitors.
Now, designing, developing and performing an effective SEO strategy is not that simple. On the other hand, who says that the others aren’t applying SEO in their marketing strategies. Especially, if it is so effective. This is why it is imperative not only hiring but also selecting the best SEO company in Denver.
What to Look for in an SEO Company
Before selecting your SEO Company to help to establish your business, company or project in Denver, you should first make an internal analysis and think of the goals and objectives you want to achieve with your SEO campaign. Remember as we mentioned earlier, SEO provides a wide range of benefits besides hitting the first positions on the SERP. Therefore, take your time and consider whether you want to increase your website’s traffic, boost your sales awareness, increase your engagement, or simply boost your website’s performance. Knowing exactly what you want will give you leverage when scouting for SEO companies in Denver.
This is important because, many SEO companies out there will offer all-set-up strategies, which are supposed to be fail-proof. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a secret weapon in SEO. In fact, SEO is a mid to long-term process that requires constant updating and redefining, until perfection. So, regardless of your SEO objectives, if a company offers you secret formulas, you can scratch that one out.
Look for an SEO company that will begin by sitting down with you and perform an interview to understand your needs. Only this way, the SEO service provider will be able to develop a tailored strategy for your business or project.
A good SEO Company should have knowledge, expertise, and skills in both SEO faces; on-page, and off-page SEO. On-page SEO or on-site SEO is everything involving your webpage content and other elements found on your site. Through the use of essential tools like the composition and narrative’s structure, titles, headings, texts, keywords, images, videos, infographics, menus, internal links and everything at your disposal, you will be sending clear signals to search engine algorithms so they can interpret the meaning of your content accurately.
Off-page SEO techniques and strategies are mainly based on backlink building. When a user arrives at your site via a backlink from another trusted site, your site will rank higher on the search engine result page, especially if the link is coming from a well-known and respected site. This strategy is often and mistakenly underestimated by many startups and businesses. However, it is a significant and important step to perform.
A good SEO Company should be more than happy to show their results and how they work with each of their clients. Ask around and look for references. Even though we live in the digital communication era, nothing compares to asking a trustworthy source. Another tip to selecting the best SEO company in Denver is asking for certifications. Even though there are all sorts of certifications out there, the most significant ones come from the most significant Search Engine Providers, like Google or Bing.
Succeed in your Colorado market of choice. Take your time. Do your homework and trust your project or new business to the best SEO Company in Denver.
Recommendations for a Great Small Business Website
If you’re starting a website from scratch for your business or revamping your existing website, be sure to take the right direction, so the results are worth it. You want a great website, not just an OK one. You need a website that represents your brand, captures the attention of your audience, generates leads, helps get good search rankings, and plugs easily into your other digital platforms.
Websites are incredibly important for small businesses. Did you know that 92% of business owners agree that a website is the most effective digital marketing strategy? 83% of those small business owners who do have a website feel like they have an advantage over their competition. Here are a few essential tips so you can build a quality website for your small business.
Go for a Simple Design
Design a website that’s true to your brand without going overboard. You want to draw people in, and people tend to be attracted to clean and elegant designs. Putting too many elements on your site can be offputting and even confusing. You want it uncluttered and uncomplicated.
Make It Responsive
We’re in the digital era. A time when everything is accessed mostly via mobile devices, so make sure you make it responsive. Your website should look just as good in a mobile device as it does on a desktop device. That will allow you to reach more people and increase traffic.
Apply SEO
If you want your website to rank well on organic search results, your website needs to be optimized with your keywords and met other criteria. That will help Google understand that your website has information that is valuable for users searching for a particular type of content.
Create a 404 Page
It might come as a shock, but 404 pages are one of the most visited pages on any website. Either the server goes down, or someone makes a mistake typing a URL, and they end up on your 404 pages. So why not make it look nice? Take that opportunity to add some of your business’s personality, maybe add a form to capture leads, or perhaps offer some helpful links within your website. A little creativity goes a long way.
Include Social Sharing Icons
First of all, if you have no social media presence yet, you should. Social sharing icons are an essential part of your website, especially when you have a blog and are continually producing valuable content for your audience. That gives them a chance to share your articles with others and give you more exposure.
Creating a quality website on your own can be time-consuming, which is why many business owners postpone this initiative. Outsourcing this responsibility can free you up to focus on other things that matter, while a professional team works on a website that will help your business grow.
Apply SEO