It is that time when one year wraps up and another starts. For business owners it is a time to determine next year’s focus and budgets. Most business owners know what they need, the right tools. A strong SEO campaign, a new ‘engaging’ mobile website, and Reputation Management.
Terms like meme, infographic, and video marketing are all becoming common place as a new generation base becomes the prime consumer base. These consumers grew up with cell phones and wifi.
They are less likely to purchase a brand name, unless all their friends are buying it. They probably have no understanding of terms like ‘the American dream’ or ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. They never belonged to a community club, and have no desire to be on a board. Instead, these consumers are active in social groups online, and share their lives via Pinterest, Facebook, and Tumbler.
So how do you market to a generation that were raised to value entertainment and social groups more than moving ‘up the ladder?’
This is a question that has plagued marketers for the last five years. We have some answers, based on statistics and data we’ve collected over the last 2 years.
1. Reputation Marketing
Most business understand the term Reputation management. It involves trying to clean up damage caused by negative reviews.
Reputation marketing is a strategic approach to preventing those bad reviews, and gaining the 5 great reviews that statistics claims will increase your business’s sales.
Reputation marketing is part SEO, part local marketing, and part psychology. There is no formula. There is no set of links that can be built to defend against bad reviews. It takes a strong marketing team and good understanding of consumer behavior to customize a campaign for every website.
2. Local SEO
Local SEO is becoming more valuable as the number of consumers using cell phones to make a purchases exceeds 50% in 2014.
But make sure your marketing company understands Google’s local boundaries. Many companies actually experience a drop in traffic and revenue because their company doesn’t understands, and they are placed on the wrong side of a boundary. This means that Google doesn’t consider their listing when someone (only a block away) asks for the nearest or a local company.
3. Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO is more mathematical and complex than the results sent to a browser. The browser based SEO takes into account personal search. Each PC browser takes 1gig from your hard drive and tracks what you are currently searching for. It uses this information to bring you more relevant searches.
Example: 2 people in the same city can search for the same item. One person is ready to make a purchase, and the next person can be just looking or comparing prices.
Personal search may list local businesses in the top 3 positions, and send the second person to some local businesses and some comparison sites.
This doesn’t work on mobile. On mobile you receive the most local sites, and the ones where the SEO has ‘weighed’ the keyword groups and has built ‘relevance’ for the search.