5 SMALL CHANGES FOR BIG BUSINESS IMPACT

March 5, 2021

Taking your business to the next level may be easier than you think! Some of the smallest tweaks can make a huge difference when it comes to achieving your business goals. In this post, we’re revealing five simple changes you can implement to build your brand and grow your business in a big way.

SEO Changes You Can Make Now

Ranking high on search results is game-changing for any business, there is a lot to consider when thinking through an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. Keywords, backlinks, deadlinks, long-tail phrases, and more are part of an effective strategy but there is a lot to comprehensive SEO improvements, as this Fort Collins Marketing agency knows well!

But don’t hit the snooze button on your SEO! There are quick and easy ways to already improve your website rankings, and we have some great tips and resources to jumpstart your SEO!

Start with some keyword planning! Think through what your ideal customer is and what niche they might belong to? How would they search for your service? Take a look at what those keywords might be in that search query, and pop them into a free tool like SEMrush Keyword Research.

SEMrush is a great resource for keyword planning, and once you add some of your keyword ideas, it generates a full list of some of the top search queries that are similar or relate to your keywords! Now you have a starting point on what you should consider in your ranking strategy, now it’s time to look at how your site is performing.

As Google crawls your website for related keywords to determine your rankings, it’s also crawling your site to gauge its trust and authority in the combination of those keywords. If you have too many broken links or error pages, it will impact your rankings. Use a free audit tool like SEOoptimer’s site audit. This tool gives you an overview of how your site is performing and gives you some starting points of site fixes to improve your authority.

The last key tip is specific to WordPress sites (though other site platforms have some SEO tools built-in). That key tip is Yoast SEO! Yoast is a free plugin (and offers a premium version) that gives you an analysis of the SEO on that page and gives you suggestions to improve the page. It has great reminders to add a specific keyphrase for a page, include higher-level headings, add keyworded alt-text to any images, and much more – all for free!

Of course, if you’re looking for a deeper dive into SEO for your business, tag in our Colorado marketing agency rockstars!

Planning Your Social Media

Creating a content calendar is a great way to save time, remain consistent with your brand voice, and ensure you’re active across your social media platforms. Start by building a template that makes a streamlined process for posting your content. It may look something like this:

Start by listing your platforms, creating copy for each one, adding tags/hashtags, and including an image for your posts. After the posts are mapped out, it’s just a matter of plugging in your content across your social channels. Planning posts can help you stay ahead!

Rockstar Tips to consider:

Utilize the days when the creative juices are flowing to create multiple posts (this leaves the stress out of creating great content at the last minute).
Be sure to double-check your content before it Is posted. Make sure it’s still relevant, on-brand, and accurate.
Check your social media analytics and make sure you’re posting at the best times to reach your audience.
- Bonus Rockstar Tip: You don’t have to use EVERY social media platform available. Use the ones that perform the best for you and your business. However, it is a good idea to claim a handle (or profile/user name) for your business on popular channels In case your marketing strategy changes.

If you want to take the guesswork out of social media scheduling, you can invest in a program that can streamline the planning process. Programs like Sprout will connect your social media platforms, provide a calendar to draft posts, and automatically schedule content at the optimal times based on audience data. These programs can also consolidate social media messages and comments for “one-stop-shop” social monitoring which can save time and improve customer relations.

Competitive Analysis

Your business isn’t siloed to your niche, you have competitors, and they mean business! Get ahead of your competitors with a simple competitive analysis and strategy.

The best place to start your competitive analysis is simply to start looking at and analyzing the online presence of your competitor. What does their site do for a user? Does the site offer something your site doesn’t? Are there any gaps their site presence or overall service leaves out that you can apply to your business to give you an edge? And remember SEOoptimer’s site audit tool? Use site audit tools for your competitor’s website to see their site performance and rankings.

From their start looking at places where customers are leaving their input. Compare your customer reviews to your competitors and look at any gaps that can be filled between positive and negative reviews that you can apply to your business. Take it up a notch with researching their social media and marketing strategies to see how they are interacting with their customers to better understand their sales tactics.

Lastly, with all these new insights into your competitors perform your own SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis compared to your competitors. Once you have identified these key components of your analysis, you can apply them to an effective strategy, or have our team create that key strategy for you.

Simple Social Advertising

Digital advertising can be complicated, and even though our rockstars make it easy, there are still some easy opportunities to apply digital marketing with simple social advertising opportunities.

The easiest way to start with social advertising is with Facebook, and if you don’t have a business page it’s time to create one, and you can get started here. The next step is adding more tools for your business by creating a Facebook Business Manager so you can unlock insights into your page and unlock ad capabilities and performances and ad payment information so you can start running ads.

Once you’re set up on Facebook, a simple easy-to-use option is to start boosting posts! This can be incredibly effective for any content that you want to spread the news about! Boosted posts have some simple but effective audience demographics to reach new customers.

Considering creating specific Facebook posts to highlight a new service, event, giveaway, or more and boost it to an audience of new customers outside of customers who are already aware of your service. It’s easy, cost-effective, and a great intro to digital advertising!

Ready to get into social advertising? Before you hit ‘go’, work through some considerations on how you should set your marketing budget.

Low Cost or No Cost PR

Public Relations is a great place to start with your marketing. Often misunderstood and underutilized, PR is all about managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics through creating and maintaining relationships. Aside from traditional public relations and media outreach, there are many other low-cost or no-cost ideas to consider when working with a limited budget or just getting started in PR.

Draft a press release and distribute news to the media

Many newsrooms have editor contact information on their website and/or a submission form for news tips and press releases.

Create an engaging social media post to tell your story

With the continued merging of PR and social media, online channels have become another great platform for brand publishing and storytelling.

Distribute an email newsletter

Is your email list under 2,000? MailChimp offers free resources and even basic email marketing templates so you can send out a polished campaign.

Host a contest or giveaway

These can help you collect email addresses for future email campaigns, engage with your customers in new ways and get people interested in new products or services.

Share content on your blog

Use a blog to promote what makes your brand special and broadcast your news. Blogs also help build your search engine optimization (SEO) credibility when you use relevant keywords.

Partner with bloggers or influencers to share your story

Reach out to find out what they are working on and talk about what story ideas you offer that speak to their audience. Can you offer them a product/ service to share with their fans?

Seek out co-marketing opportunities for cross-promotion

Think about asking like-minded brands to share content on your business, maybe through their email marketing or social media channels. In turn, you promote their business through your channels.

Comment and share industry articles on social media to establish a presence and credibility

Tap into what’s happening in your market by keeping a pulse on your industry’s trade publications, professional organizations, events, etc. You can do this from your business channels, but also your personal channels too.

Attend networking events for word-of-mouth marketing

Tap into your local chamber of commerce or industry groups to get your name out there. Collect business cards and follow up with everyone personally via email and connect on LinkedIn.

Leverage your network

As your friends, family, previous co-workers, neighbors, etc. for help to share your news on their channels. As you grow your LinkedIn connections (or other platforms), there are great opportunities to reach out to people personally to ask for their support. See the “who you know” exercise below for some great starting points to get you heading in the right direction to build a list of a least 100 people.

The benefits of using PR tactics are endless! There can be an impressive snowball effect with ongoing PR efforts. Meaning as you get started, your brand awareness and mere media mentions will be small but as you get rolling you will pick up more and more “snow” (media coverage, awareness, interest, etc.), gain momentum, and ultimately see success.

Make Your Marketing Impact

Improving SEO, planning your social media content, conducting competitive analysis, investing in social advertising, and utilizing free/low-cost PR are five small areas of your business that can make a big impact when it comes to bringing your business to the next level. With these simple steps, you can build brand awareness, beat the competition, and reach your goals.

Need some additional guidance? Feel free to contact us or check out our book, Change. Adapt. Rock. available for purchase on Amazon.