With the increasing amount of information readily available to everyone these days, people tend to do their due diligence before doing business with anyone. So whether you operate a business and are looking to get more clients, or an independent contractor hoping to attract businesses to hire you, you have to fundamentally understand and optimize your digital presence in a way where your potential clients would be able to easily find you and trust you.
Reviews and Trust
This mainly comes from social proof. If you’re not asking your clients to give you reviews online, you should be. Although some websites like Yelp strongly advise against it, the truth of the matter is most people are motivated to go online and give reviews only when they have had a bad experience. However, when you offer an incentive, or in some cases, simply as people to do it, they will often do it for you. This helps to establish credibility with search engines like Google and Bing where people are always looking for services, businesses or products.
Also, always engage with the audience and the people who leave reviews for your business online. Even if they are negative reviews, you want your potential prospects to know that you respond to all review and address them from a professional stance. Check out this video from Gary V that talks about addressing negative reviews online
Website Optimization
Secondly, you want to make sure that your website is not confusing to any of the search engines. This means that every page is individually informative of a particular service or a type of service or location. This is one of the most common mistakes that business owners make. They try to squeeze all of their services and locations on the Home page and then wonder why they do not get traffic from search engines. The reason is that search engines are operated by algorithms and math. And when you confuse the algorithms about what your page is about or what locations you serve, they do not deem you as the authority for ONE particular location or service.
Social Media
One of the best things you can do for your business is to take an interest in social media because this is the way of the future for business. More and more businesses are now focusing actively on social media. But a lot of companies often try to take a direct approach to social media by advertising constantly, which often does not get the best results. Social media is not about getting clients immediately or directly. It is about building your brand and your awareness, so that WHEN people are ready to buy, they will think of you before your competitors.
Social media has many facets and you will want to choose one or a couple of platforms for your marketing. And this choice depends on the nature of your business and services. For some businesses that involve personal coaching or service of any kind, YouTube might be a great platform. People find videos much more engaging than black and white text. On the other hand, Instagram and talking through photos might be a good choice for you if you are a personal trainer and help people with weight loss. There are so many choices available in social media, your potential clients are easily reachable through these avenues. You can take advantage of this by providing value to them and not simply advertise and promote your services.
Digital marketing is an ever changing industry and one that you constantly need to be on top of. Strategies change and platforms change, but the marketing of your business remains the same: to find traffic and to engage it.
