Executive Summary 

This is our 2nd time attending the Small Business Expo in Boston, and they have never disappointed. During our time at the Expo, we made impactful connections with several businesses, such as our partner Constant Contact and the Black Economic Counsel. We also attended insightful workshops and a Keynote presentation on SEO. This presentation highlighted why SEO is so essential & getting a deeper insight into Marketing strategies. 

Addressing the Knowledge Gap as Marketers 

“Once you’re in Business, Marketing is your business”

The Types of Digital Marketing

Let’s talk a bit more about the Types of Digital Marketing which will help your business have a wider reach:

1. Social Media Marketing – utilizing scheduling tools like SharpSpring and Constant Contact help automate your social media posting. Increasing efficiency with content calendars your team can use to schedule content a month or more out. Using social media platforms to connect with your audience, build your brand, and increase sales by driving traffic to your website. Having a good marketing mix is key.
2. Content Marketing – this marketing strategy is used to attract, engage and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and infographics. Give value to your audience and not to keep selling them. What to do is free, but how to do it is not free. What makes you stand out is the HOW!educational information, blogging about topics related to your brand, who you are, and how you can help.
3. Email Marketing Campaigns – a targeted set of individual personalized email messages to specific user/contact lists sent out during a specified period for a specific purpose (CTA). It maybe for a promotion your brand is running or a new product launch and more.
4. Blogs – Such as this one, help provide your users with resources on topics of interests. Keeping them engaged in your business and helping you build trust.
5. SEO – or as it’s called, Search Engine Optimization is the act of optimizing your website with keywords and phrases to drive traffic. Google helps us find what we are looking for; hence we utilize the words and phrases people search for online. It is the mainly the process of improving your site to increase visibility when users search using Google, Bing and more for products and services they need. The better your visibility the better you rank in the search results.
6. PPC (or Pay-Per-Click) – simply put is an online advertising marketing model where an advertiser pays a content creator an agreed upon amount every time an advertisement link is clicked on by users on their site.
7. Online Advertising – it is really the digital alternative of adverting offline. You reach a much wider audience as over 6 billion people are online day searching for different products and services. It also allows you to retarget users who have visited specific pages on your site but didn’t action a purchase. This should be strategic as it can be wasted advertising dollars.
8. Usability/UX (User Experience) – This encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with your brand, services, and products. It highlights the ease of use of your site including how your website visitors go through the customer journey. Having a seamless user experience makes your site more appealing to your users, encouraging them to come back time and time again,
9. Digital Strategy – the act of optimizing your website with keywords and phrases to drive traffic.
10. Mobile Marketing – similar to email marketing but using SMS & MMS to reach your customers on their phones. You get more of the face time with your customer. This marketing, like email marketing is King.
11. Analytics & Data – This is the study of data to evaluate marketing activity performance and understanding your customer base. You must know what your customer wants. Anticipate what they like, their moves, etc. Understand what your ideal customer wants in order to make content around those wants.
12. Ecommerce Marketing – Is the practice of driving traffic to your online store, converting that traffic into paying customers, and creating relationships with those customers post-purchase for recurring sales. Offering a digital store, should be a seamless experience. Your customers learn who you are, they make a sale with you and offer you their email.

Areas of Growth in Marketing

All of the marketing above are important to generating leads and HLTV (High Lifetime Value) customers. This is why the industry itself is evolving from Specialist to Generalist. People are looking for people expertise in all of these different marketing components. As a brand, it is important to learn about all of these types of marketing and their benefits, making sure that no matter which you choose to use, always have a call to action. You should get a return on that marketing strategy. Help your audience through their customer journey. You need to connect that content to make sales. Groom that relationship into a buying relationship.

Why is SEO Important?

They’re 50% of new searches every day; also, an increase in searches for “Businesses near me” For persons who want to support local businesses.

Consumer journeys are very unpredictable. They are going outside of their specific brand to get small businesses. Post pandemic has changed marketing behavior; hence integrating software for automated marketing and training your staff well for the best customer journey is crucial.

Google Local Pack (Google Maps) – physical location (Both) – shows up first.

1. Google my business profile (GMB)
2. Ranking factors – GMB -36%, 17% Reviews (review scores, #of reviews, content of the reviews-very important) 16% On-page, 13% links, 7% behavioral, 7% citations, 4% Personalization
3. Reviews, on-page optimizations, and links are all tied for 2nd
4. Since 2013 Google my business has been the most crucial factor.
5. Social media profiles/signals are not a ranking factor and will not help it.

Google Localized Organic Results – online virtual companies

1. Ranking factors: 34% On-page, 31% Links (backlinking), 11% Behavioral, 7% Citations, 6% personalization, 6% GMB, 5% Reviews
2. Click a competitor that comes up higher, see the amount of content they have, and the optimization.
3. On-page includes volume and quality of content on the entire website
4. Links other authoritative and quality inbound links
5. If you search on yourself and don’t click on it – you lower your position

Google Search Console – gives you information before googling analytics. It’s about people searching.

Our Partner Programs

With our partner Zendesk, we can smoothly and effortlessly create that incredible customer journey that will boost your customer experience, resulting in outstanding customer reviews that will impact your google search ranking. On the hand, our partners, Constant Contact & SharpSpring, has programs designed to market your company and keep your customers on their toes with your content. These platforms utilize all the types of marketing listed above; you can program all your socials and emails to boost your visibility to already existing consumers and would-be new clientele with both platforms.

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Are you interested in learning more about Digital Marketing options? We at A Gratton’s Edge Inc can help. Call us at (855) 424-3462, email us at contact@agrattonsedge.com, or visit our website and fill out our online form to get started.