Digital PR isn't something to overlook as you work to build your brand and grow sales. On the contrary, digital PR is a powerful tactic that helps build brand credibility, ensuring your company stands out in the niche reserved for your products and services.

Used properly, digital PR can help connect people online with your company and create genuine interest, respect, and recognition for your brand.

Let's dive into what that means and why using digital PR to build credibility is so important.

What is digital PR?

Digital PR is not about sales content or any promotional message. Yes, there's a venue suitable for breaking out "the hard sell," but this isn't it.

Instead, marketers design digital PR campaigns to build brand credibility for brands by providing authentic, valuable content to readers. Digital PR also places messages where target audiences are most likely to find and appreciate them. Rather than impose a heavy-handed commercial where it's more annoying than helpful, these messages are a natural extension of the discussion.

In short, digital PR connects traditional public relations with social media, content marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Digital PR builds awareness of your brand.

One of the ways digital PR helps is by providing people with an opportunity to get to know you and your brand. Done right, this opportunity shows up in a low-pressure, low-stakes encounter. If a target customer (a person most likely to want and need your services) does not know your company exists, they cannot even consider that you might be able to solve their problem.

Today's consumer is savvy. Experts estimate that 81% of shoppers will spend time researching a product or service before purchasing it or buying from a company they do not know. With the help of digital PR, it is possible to highlight what makes your company stand out and why you're better than your competitors.

It can provide a boost to your SEO efforts.

You may not realize it, but digital PR also helps by building your visibility in search engines.

That means when people seek information about what you offer, they can easily find you. Search ease helps develop your ability to be seen by prospective buyers.

Remember that digital PR cannot solve problems with products or services. If your products cannot stand up to others, this deficiency will become evident in search results. It will become even more apparent in consumer reviews posted to widely-used eCommerce sites.

When you use digital PR properly online, it suddenly becomes possible to get noticed. You're then a part of industry discussions and articles. This can be an additional signal to Google when you're trying to rank for specific topics and themes online.

Dovetail content with other digital PR marketing efforts.

You've worked hard to build a company that provides quality products and services, consistently-excellent customer service, and great value for the dollar. However, you might be baffled by a lack of online visibility. Worse, you see that competitors with an objectively inferior track record score hit after hit on SERPs. Why does the SEO spotlight shine brightly there?

Scan through industry websites, magazines, and popular sites. In all likelihood, sites that rank high on SERPs appear in industry-specific social media accounts, informative articles, and the like. The job of any successful digital PR and marketing campaign is to garner the attention of these industry voices and obtain links back to your content.

However, the digital footprint you create for your company must be entirely consistent with the messaging you are developing in traditional PR channels.

If you have a solid product or service and consistently send the same messages in your traditional marketing channels as you do online, you will begin to gain domain authority. Simply stated, "domain authority" can roughly be translated to "These people know what they are talking about." It goes without saying that you should provide agenda-free, service-oriented content in the spirit of helping people find solutions to real-world problems.

Social Collateral

Once you start scoring backlinks, you can use those brand mentions as social collateral. Leverage them! Highlight the fact that a credible online site mentioned your business. This aspect of digital PR will help fill your social media accounts with solid content.

When people start digging into your specific market niche, you will appear on those social accounts. You can then promote that you're a credible brand.

Lead Nurture

You can nurture leads or tout your efforts to current customers by showcasing your mentions in your email marketing efforts. Email campaigns help build credibility with both audiences.

Perhaps your audience is on the fence regarding your product or service. At that moment, a shopper sees that a powerhouse such as Forbes mentioned your brand in a positive light. This connection immeasurably boosts your brand.

Build a positive platform for your brand.

At the core of successful branding is using digital PR methods to build an impression on prospective customers about your products or services. That way, when someone mentions your brand, your customers know who you are and what you offer.

Being consistent in your approach matters. Consumers need to hear the same type of message from you every time.

Creating a positive impression for your potential consumers isn't a simplistic process. Consider these key questions.

• Do people think positively of your brand now?
• What are some areas of improvement?
• What are the main themes your audience should hear from you about?

Because it is all happening online, digital PR can help improve the decision-making and opinions of your consumer base. Utilizing the best methods, it's possible to enhance your branding considerably. Even if your credibility isn't where you want it to be, digital PR can help improve it.

Become a leader in your industry.

One of the best ways to conduct a digital PR public relations campaign is to build your presence in that market. That means becoming a thought leader and speaking authoritatively about innovations in your field.

It may mean contributing to the stories that are breaking within your industry now. You could provide tips and strategies or discuss the future of the industry. The possibilities are endless.

This form of digital PR is quite powerful because it allows you, the business owner, CEO, or other leader, to become the face of the industry. That means you can stand out from other companies. When a person has a problem your services or products can fix, they recognize you as the person to trust. That's building strong credibility in the industry.

Your service solves their problem, and they will remember your business favorably. They will likely recommend your products to others.

How does digital PR fit into your marketing strategy?

Digital PR is one component of your efforts to build a robust business model and online presence. Beyond a doubt, it is a core part of your digital marketing strategy. It works alongside your other efforts to build a solid digital PR footprint.

Over time, your digital PR, any traditional PR you are implementing, and other tools you use to develop your customer experience work together. These tools deliver an outstanding outcome for your client. They learn from you. They benefit from you. That leads to their willingness to recommend your business to others and come back repeatedly.

In a world where consumers see brand credibility as very important, especially for online businesses, you cannot overlook putting time and effort into digital PR. In the era of the smartphone shopper, your business (regardless of size) can't afford to let this opportunity go unrealized.

Intrigued? Want to learn more? We're here to help. Find out how our team at Relevance can help your business achieve its digital PR goals and build brand credibility. Schedule a free consultation today.

As more and more people join the ranks of those currently using their smartphones to complete secure business transactions, it's become increasingly vital to get with the content marketing trend. So yes, it's critical that you create high-quality, reliable content specific to your niche. However, if you don't know how to optimize content for SEO, all the great content in the world is unlikely to boost your online visibility.

There is both an art and a science to creating helpful content while balancing that against remembering how to optimize content for SEO even as it is being produced. Today there are plenty of diagnostic tools to help you grasp the basics, such as Yoast SEO. But there's much more to it than just the effective use of tools.

For example, you might use Google Docs and Grammarly to put a spit shine on your writing, but you're going to need more than that. Being talented in one area of SEO is great, but to get a boost in search engine results pages (SERPs), you will need to be highly skilled in other areas. Someone highly adept in only one area is roughly analogous to someone who only knows how to change a flat tire thinking they are a certified car mechanic.

Great Content Fuels SEO-Powered Sales

Well-planned and executed content contributes powerfully to your overall SEO strategy. Learning how to optimize content for SEO makes your website content more readable and enjoyable to consume overall. It also helps readers and search engines understand what you've posted.

There are many simple ways to optimize content for SEO. Below are eight industry practices you can use to help you get started. Think of them as checkboxes that must be ticked, such as including onsite and offsite links, using the right keywords to help you optimize your onsite content, and ensuring you are addressing issues about which people care.

Before you start learning how to how to optimize content for SEO, it will help immensely to put together what experts refer to as a client creative brief. A client creative brief is nothing more than a rough outline of what you hope to achieve. Think of it as a blueprint containing project details, both short-term and long-term objectives, and what you need to get from here to there.

If you are not planning to outsource your SEO project to an agency, you should nonetheless put your ​​client creative brief together. Feel free to modify your brief as your project progresses, but don’t dive in without a roadmap. Getting lost and muddled in strengthening your domain authority and showing up prominently in search engines is too easy.

How to Optimize Content for SEO

1. Use heading tags.

If you are coding your written content by hand, you already know that H1, H2, H3, and H4 tags provide readers with a taxonomy of information. H1 is the coding equivalent that signals Header 1, H2 signals Header 2, and so on. These tags help provide a helpful taxonomy of data for the human eye and for the search engine "spiders" that repeatedly crawl your website, digesting your information.

Nowadays, though, no one needs to learn to code HTML to generate these codes.

WordPress, for example, does this automatically, behind the scenes. Writers leverage a user-friendly interface to raise and lower the status of their headings, subheads, bulleted lists, and more. Once the content has been published or updated, search engines use these automatically inserted tags to answer one straightforward question: "What is this piece about?"

If you publish content without providing these distinctions, it quickly becomes monotonous. Human readers and search engines alike see what you've written as one big, long, perhaps sleep-inducing blob of text. Human beings will quickly bounce as they can't scan your content. A huge part of learning how to optimize content for SEO is making effective use of hierarchical elements, especially heading tags.

2. Include internal links.

An internal link is a hyperlink inserted into your text that links to additional content on the same site. This link should be germane to the topic as you’ve rendered it in the text and images. An internal link communicates an expectation in the mind of a human reader, something along the lines of "there’s more to learn about that subject if I want it."

When you interlink the content on your site, it signals to search engines that you are an expert on specific topics. It creates a web of authority that strengthens the value of your domain. Links should tell readers you know a great deal about a particular niche. If you have great information about a certain topic, this fact will become immediately apparent to readers and search engines. Therefore, pick your links and keywords with the utmost care.

3. Add value with external links.

Avoid trying to be an expert in everything. No one can do this. Better by far to recognize where your expertise ends, and the expertise of another begins. When you hit that boundary in your online content, insert external links to high-authority, helpful content on external websites.

Keep in mind that your site's authority is at stake as you choose the external sites to which you plan to link. Let’s face it; you can probably find something on the internet to back up just about anything you write, no matter how ridiculous (or worse, untruthful). Consequently, it’s critical that you use domain authority tools such as Moz to make sure you are only linking out to high-quality, reliable information. Your reputation is on the line here!

One of the best uses of external linking is to help your readers access information to back up your statements with statistics, charts, and data. When you use external linking to educate and inform your readers, you send a signal to search engines that you are a reliable source. This helpfulness, too, will contribute to helping your site rise in popularity and SERPs.

4. Do your keyword research.

Perhaps the most labor-intensive task in constructing an effective content marketing campaign is not (as many might guess) producing the content itself. That’s a crucial piece of the puzzle, obviously. However, before generating the content, you want to be locked in on your target keywords. Making sure you’ve selected the right keywords will pay off handsomely when you begin the content development phase.

Experts recommend choosing longer-tail keywords that bypass the more obvious choices if you don’t quite have the authority you need for those more difficult keywords. If your onsite content is solid and optimized to a longer-tail keyword, you’re more likely to rise in SERPs specific to your service area and area of expertise. You will want to optimize as much of your content around those longer-tail keywords as possible. You will want to steer clear of what’s known as "keyword stuffing" and opt instead for related keywords only as necessary.

5. Work to match the search intent of your intended audience.

Have you ever experienced an internet "Gotcha!" moment? Did you click on a link expecting one type of content…only to land on a site that has nothing to do with your intended purpose? Chances are better than even that this misdirection was intentional, the result of manipulating keywords and SERPs to nefarious ends. No one likes misleading links. In all likelihood, you bounced from the site immediately. You should expect the same treatment if your chosen keyword in any way defeats user expectations.

Treat your internet audience with respect. Ensure the content you create matches the search intent for your selected keyword.

For example, an educational blog might be best for a keyword if the purpose is primarily informational. A well-built product or service page may be best if the user's intent is commercial. When you work to consistently meet (or exceed) the expectations of search intent, your users are far more likely to reward you with repeat visits.

6. Be sure to include an intuitive URL and meta description.

Believe it or not, many users still scan the entire URL displayed in the dialog box of their web browser of choice. Set up your site's hierarchy and posts to provide a logical "trail" for your users. This practice reinforces the web of authority around the topic or theme and (let’s face it) is much easier on the eye. Which of the two URLs makes the most sense to you? Perhaps more significantly, which URL are you more likely to copy and text to a friend or family member?

• www.xyz-company/products/plumbing/shutoff-valves.php
• www.xyz-company/sv/M8&5aa-pro-sku7y84763/43/dksaaGT5768324%20%Delv%20%Ship4v45

When you begin building links, remember that brevity is the soul of wit. Keep the slug for every page and post as short as possible yet meaningful to human readers. Four to five words are optimal. This will not always be possible for every site. However, it’s a good rule of thumb to implement it whenever and wherever possible.

Similarly, every piece of content you post should include a META description. These descriptions offer search engine spiders a concise overview of the subject matter of your content. Your online content will begin to show up in its niche when your URL, META, and keyword work in unison.

7. Use titles and descriptive ALT text for images.

Making your content available and accessible to the broadest possible audience makes good business sense…and it’s the right thing to do. In the U.S., for example, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990. Yet, even today, many websites implement ALT tags and descriptive language as an afterthought. Sadly, many still ignore these online content attributes altogether.

Search engines, however, have brought commerce to bear on this issue. Many sites to this day consistently lack ALT tags for images. Other portions of the site are inaccessible to adaptive computing equipment. Consequently, those sites are likely to get dinged for it. Today, search engines more or less serve to police the ADA by lowering site rankings and domain authority.

When including ALT tags, use your selected keyword where it makes sense. Again, don’t try to "stuff" keywords into your ALT tags and other hidden fields. Search engines long ago figured that one out. As stated above, attempts at deception will get you dinged. Plenty of online testing tools are available if you’re wondering how your site scores for adaptability. "Listening" to your website content through a screen reader can also prove an enlightening experience.

8. Write for the reader.

At this point, you might well be wondering if you should be writing content for Google or your intended audience. Well…can it be both? If you are doing your job well, your ranking on SERPs will go up if you keep an eye on your customers and search engines. However, if you must fall off the fence one way or the other, fall in favor of your readers.

Over time, as more users begin taking in and backlinking to your site, the usefulness of your content will become apparent, even if you don’t tailor absolutely everything to please the almighty algorithms.

As you write, produce photos, and develop your content, keep the reader foremost in your thinking. Imagine yourself in the position of someone trying to learn more, solve a problem, or find information. As your audience validates your usefulness through repeated clicks and more extended amounts of time spent on the site, your commitment to reader service can only contribute to greater domain authority and positioning on SERPs.

"Cabbie, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Practice, practice, practice!

That corny old joke has become a cliche and stuck around in the collective unconscious for a reason. It points to an enduring truth. You're unlikely to achieve perfection whenever you take your first shot at anything. Whether playing the violin or optimizing content around a longer-tail keyword, you will need to keep at it until it becomes second nature.

Don’t despair if your initial efforts at optimizing content to your niche are less than stellar. That’s completely normal. You need to keep spinning so many plates that it can initially feel overwhelming. Use the guidelines above, refer back to them often as you develop your content, and keep at it!

Even if you plan to staff up in-house, you may need to engage the services of a professional SEO agency on the front end. If you find that you do need help, consider reaching out to one of our sales associates for a no-cost consultation. At Relevance, we eat and sleep SEO, but then we are quick to admit that we’re a bit odd that way.

Small- to medium-sized business (SMB) owners and entrepreneurs are definitely allowed to daydream about taking company success to the next level and beyond. If you aren't doing at least some "Magic Wand Thinking" occasionally, you might want to check yourself for a pulse. If you are serious, a marketing growth plan can help you get there.

There are few things more intrinsic to the mind and heartbeat of an entrepreneur or SMB owner than to speculate on how to boost productivity, enhance visibility, and beef up the bottom line. Motivations will vary, of course, but it's common knowledge that daydreams must be translated into plans at some point.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail" has become a well-known guardrail for running a successful business, and for good reason. To ensure that your marketplace success is more enduring than a flash in the pan, you must set aside time regularly to develop, implement, and fine-tune a marketing growth plan.

Perseverance in the Face of Ongoing Change

Some SMB owners and entrepreneurs are tempted to give up on maintaining a marketing growth plan. The pace and frequency of marketplace changes have become dizzying. Planning and adjusting a marketing growth plan can seem secondary to the everyday demands of keeping all the pie plates spinning simultaneously.

There's no getting around it. All seven of the elements listed below will require the investment of your time and attention. How you find time in any given week to review, update, and inform others will vary depending on the main thrust of your enterprise.

1. Overall Vision and Supporting Objectives

It’s easy for visionaries to keep their “35,000-foot view” of any business undertaking tucked away securely in the recesses of their minds. While acknowledging that entrepreneurs must keep at least some of their cards close to the chest, the primary problem with too much secrecy tends to crop up when employees and other strategic partners come alongside to help implement the vision. If you’re an inventive, free-thinking leader, you can unintentionally believe that other people know everything you do. In all likelihood, they don’t.

Don’t expect your people to become mind-readers. Break out whatever works best for you to get those objectives and plans out of your head. For some, this will mean recording voice messages on a smartphone. Others think best while using a computer and keyboard. Still others prefer to use pencil and paper.

Use whatever helps you crank out your ideas as quickly as possible. As you brainstorm, hold off on judging what pours forth. You can do that later. During this step, your job is simply to see how well you can translate your big ideas into words that others can understand.

Objectives and vision statements don’t need to occupy multiple three-ring binders. In fact, the very best vision statements often take the form of a single sentence. If you can think of your vision statement as a platform, the objectives you come up with to achieve your vision are the undergirding support structure.

2. Niche-Specific Research

Don’t skimp here. This part of the process will likely consume most of the time you invest in your marketing growth plan. In addition to an initial research period, you will want to set aside a chunk of time every so often — weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever — to review, update, and add to what you’ve learned.

Research doesn’t need to be a drag, either. Yes, some hours might be spent feeling chained to a book or web browser, but there are other ways to discover what the “latest and greatest” in your industry looks like. Who knows? You might even find that you enjoy the process of adding to your personal knowledge base.

Extroverts typically prefer to get out of their routine, meet others, attend conferences and events, and volunteer their time serving the community. (You might be surprised to find out how much you can learn about the local business landscape just by serving alongside others.) All of these represent opportunities to gain knowledge, improve visibility, and perhaps even garner candid feedback about your company that you would be unlikely to attain any other way.

Introverted types can spend long hours with a laptop, trade journals, magazines, books, and other “solo” data sources. What’s more, they tend to thrive in that setting. Another suitable self-driven means of research might be watching or listening to industry-specific podcasts, training sessions, DIY videos, etc. Truly effective ongoing research will draw on both learning styles, but the key will be to find what works best for you and augment it with other forms of learning. The main takeaway here is that to keep up, you need to keep at it.

3. Data-Driven "Best Guesses"

By now, most SMB owners and entrepreneurs have already had it drilled into their heads. The era of following hunches is more than likely in the rearview mirror.

True, there will always be a place for novel insights and unique approaches to problems the rest of us assumed had already been solved. However, the catchphrase for the 21st-century marketplace is data-driven.

Data sifting software solutions are evolving at a rapid pace. Many SMB owners might assume that advanced data analytics are the exclusive province of Big Tech and out of reach for the average entrepreneur. While that may once have been the case, this is no longer true. Witness the rise of an ever-expanding array of business solutions offered under the umbrella of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Today, even the smallest businesses capture and generate an enormous amount of digital data daily. Since the onset of the digital revolution, one primary problem has been sifting and sorting through terabytes of information, looking for the tiniest fractions of data that SMB owners can use to hone their products and services to meet genuine needs.

Business owners owe themselves a renewed look at the SaaS services available for every budget. Collecting and analyzing data is in many ways easier today than ever. Armed with previously-hidden insights, you can construct a marketing growth plan that leverages hard facts. And if you want to throw in one of your (data-informed) hunches from time to time, go ahead.

4. Plans A, B, C, and D

How many successful entrepreneurs or SMB owners do you know are still operating profitably with the plan they came up with decades ago? Chances are good that number is zero.

However, this does not mean that it’s not on you to come up with your single best shot at a workable Plan A. What is the default strategy you will use to prosper and grow? Nail it down.

Many business people like to use (read: overuse) buzzwords such as agility and pivot. OK, feel free to use those terms if you must. Still, the underlying idea is to look carefully at your completed Plan A schematic and purposefully, intentionally look for every weak spot. At every potential breaking point, sketch out a backup plan for adjusting your marketing growth plan.

More than a few businesses still go into total gridlock if the internet goes down. If all it takes to wreck your productivity is for a load balancer to blow at the local power company, start over. Come up with an alternative that includes regular service interruptions and even makes allowances for disaster recovery.

You don’t want to send everyone home and shut down your company’s website if, for example, a pandemic forces you to disperse to remote locations. (Perhaps a far more common disaster would be your competitor getting to market six months earlier than you had projected.) Whatever the calamity, don’t allow your overall guiding vision to be obscured by the unpredictable.

5. Inventory of Strengths, Opportunities, Limitations, and Needs

No one knows your business better than you, right? Who better to compile the authoritative list of your strengths, known opportunities, limitations, and needs? Well, not so fast. An effective marketing growth plan often needs to bring more than just your insights to bear.

There really is no substitute for clear-eyed, impartial assessment than someone with no vested interest in whether your company succeeds or fails. While hiring an outside contractor or agency may not be in your operating budget year after year, you should at least consider bringing in a consultant with a proven track record. Once the confidentiality issue is settled to your satisfaction, give your expert permission to ask all sorts of annoying questions, some of which you may never have considered. Here’s a partial list of what you’ll want them to cover.

Strengths

Your company might dominate the widget-building industry, but that’s an obvious strength. Non-obvious strengths might include geographic location, unique skill sets of employees, online reputation, employee perks, etc.

Opportunities

Are there markets for your product or service that you may not have previously considered? Have you recently acquired staff with highly specialized skills? Are other municipalities offering incentives that would significantly reduce your operating costs? All of these (and more) should show up here.

Limitations

Less fun, but listing these out is necessary. If your planned expansion stalled out for lack of capital, that will need to be documented. Are you locked into an unfavorable multi-year contract? Most of us are only too painfully aware of our limitations. However, an objective perspective can help flesh this out, too.

Needs

Needs are not the same thing as limitations. This section of your marketing growth plan can be considered more of a “shopping list” than anything else. They are not obstacles in the same way as a limitation but rather assets you don’t have yet. Which line items will you need to add to your budget this quarter? This year? Five years from now?

6. Risk Assessment: Upsides and Downsides

Most of us prefer to live on the sunny side of the street, but you did not become a successful SMB owner by ignoring the potential pitfalls. Your marketing growth plan must consider both sides of the success ledger. Without allowing yourself to get carried off by unrealistic expectations or becoming overly moribund, strive to find the middle way.

Of course, any enterprise's primary threat these days is the growing risk of hacking, ransomware, and data theft. Digital security is paramount for any business to succeed long-term. Your plan must make allowances for added expenditures to protect both your business and the privacy of those with whom you do business.

Of course, risk management is hardly limited to the digital realm. In early 2019, no one was predicting that a worldwide pandemic would close stores, overwhelm the healthcare field, and send the value of video conferencing software stock over the moon. When conducting your risk assessment, you might find it helpful to open up a casual conversation with your insurance agent and the law firm that represents your firm. One or both of these professionals will likely offer insights you might have missed otherwise.

7. Ongoing Assessment and Revision

In the halls of academia, it’s common knowledge that every Ph.D. student who successfully publishes a thesis is “the world’s leading expert” on that specific topic. However, this claim to fame lasts for approximately one or two days. As soon as someone else publishes another thesis on the subject, that person’s previous work is obviously still relevant but not current.

Keep this concept of obsolescence in mind as you plan and launch your marketing growth plan. You will protect yourself against frustration by beginning the process if you understand at the outset that you will need to update and improve your marketing growth plan.

Preparation and Flexibility Are Everything

The actual launch of a space shuttle takes less than 10 minutes. However, no one in their right mind wheels a hunk of metal onto the pad and straps a few engines to it. Arriving at lift-off presupposes thousands and thousands of hours of intense labor.

Likewise, your marketing growth plan will require a diligent effort, but make sure to have some fun along the way. If you can assume that not everything will go to plan, that’s more than half the battle. Are you prepared to solicit advice and feedback earnestly? If so, you strengthen your marketing strategy by adding the wisdom of others to your company’s portfolio. Dream big, and allow others to do the same on your behalf.

Developing a growth marketing plan is a critical element of any digital strategy. However, all too often, marketers make common mistakes about the data and insights they have available and the planning and execution of a plan.

Here's a closer look at things to avoid when developing your growth marketing plan.

What Is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is a long-term, strategic approach to marketing that relies heavily on data. The approach helps brands achieve consistent, sustainable, and measurable growth.

An effective growth marketing plan uses an end-to-end approach that looks at every stage of the marketing funnel to attract and entice customers. However, too many traditional marketing approaches focus exclusively on the wide end of the funnel.

The successful growth marketing plan is different. It features a balanced approach that approaches every stage — awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral — equally.

Additionally, with a balanced focus on each stage of the customer journey, your marketing plan will deliver deep insights and data. As a result, this information can help determine how successful a campaign was. Consequently, it can also help inform future campaigns.

Mistake 1: Marketing Without a Plan

You need a well-defined plan in order to start developing a marketing strategy. Additionally, your marketing plan needs to clearly identify your customer personas and each phase of the funnel.

Developing these strategies requires collaboration and perspective from multiple team members. It requires setting priorities, goals, measures, and outcomes.

In addition, it also requires being willing to experiment and testing out ideas, concepts, and new messaging. However, to test out ideas, you still need a plan to measure the outcomes against.

Mistake 2: Failing to Remain Consistent with the Brand

No matter what marketing strategy you deploy, you need to remain consistent with your organizational brand. Brand matters deeply. Consequently, you do not want a marketing strategy in place that does not align with the brand.

In a competitive market, disruption and damage to your brand can have disastrous consequences. Therefore, remain true to the brand and brand guidelines within a growth marketing plan. In addition, if the results of that work dictate taking a closer look at your brand, then do that work separately.

Mistake 3: Failing to Develop a Content Strategy

Content is king. It drives search engine optimization. Content leads customers to your website. Consequently, it reinforces other messages.

Developing a content strategy is a core component of growth marketing. Your content can take many forms — blog posts, videos, e-books, white papers, and websites. This content has several benefits.

First, it answers questions that customers and prospects are asking. A smart content strategy plan knows the concerns, questions, and needs of its customers and provides answers.

Second, a good content marketing strategy positions your brand as a leader, with the knowledge, insights, and expertise within your industry.

Finally, content marketing is versatile. As a result, it can be used again and again to use in multiple formats.

Mistake 4: Ignoring Social Media

Marketing strategies need to be comprehensive. Additionally, they should use as many arrows in your quiver as possible. Social media is a critical component of an effective strategy.

You’ll need to do some research to determine which platforms are best for your brand. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube are among the most popular.

One of the most powerful benefits of having a content strategy plan is the ability to use digital PR to distribute the content in the right places.

Mistake 5: Using 'Black Hat' Strategies

Black hat hacking uses various strategies to trick search engines — and users — to monetize activity. In marketing, that might mean link building to boost SEO results or creating link farms that drive traffic.

These approaches are not worth the time and can lead to unforeseen problems. As a result, you could end up being blacklisted by search engines.

To avoid the perils of SEO, be sure to avoid adding irrelevant keywords to your content just to boost website hits. Irrelevant content can also turn off audiences and lead to increased bounce rates.

Don’t “keyword stuff” by adding too many keyword links to your website in the hopes of boosting your Google search ranking. Google algorithms can detect this misleading practice.

On the flip side, keyword research is essential. Identifying the most relevant keywords and keyword phrases can better inform your messaging, content strategy, and growth marketing.

Mistake 6: Forgetting It’s About the Product

If you want to be successful as you experiment and implement a marketing strategy, be careful to remember one thing. It’s about the quality of your product or service.

In the end, it has to be about providing high-value, highly needed products, and services. Consequently, finding a way for these marketing initiatives to inform new iterations of your products and services is critical.

How? Consider that conversion rates and bounce rates can give you good data about what’s valuable. Understanding what customers are looking for and where they spend time on your website are valuable insights. As a result, this information can help you refine product lines and marketing focus for increased profits.

Mistake 7: Not Knowing Your Competitors

Growth marketing can seem like an insular, internal process. However, it needs to be well informed by what’s happening with your competition.

Consequently, reviewing and analyzing what others in your space are doing can inform how you develop messaging and distinguish your brand.

Mistake 8: Ignoring Mobile

Most people who search for something, browse a website or engage online are using a mobile device.

Mobile-first is no longer an anomaly. It’s a must. As you’re optimizing your messaging and marketing, you have to think about the mobile experience.

Customers are most likely to be using a smartphone or tablet when they are engaging with your brand.

Mistake 9: Setting Unreasonable Goals

Your strategy needs to include goals that are measurable, realistic, attainable, and transparent. As a result, set your goals based on past performance and data-informed projections.

Mistake 10: Not Reviewing the Plan

Your marketing plan should be an organic, ever-evolving tool. Reviewing your plan regularly will help you determine if you are reaching your goals.

Course corrections are perfectly acceptable and will allow you to build a growth marketing strategy that aligns with where you are.

Growth marketing is an excellent way to scale a business by focusing on customers at every phase of their journey with your brand. Learning how to build an effective growth marketing strategy gives you the tools to market effectively for long-term gain.

You can get started speaking to a growth marketing agency specialist today. Book a call whenever you're ready to dive in.

In the wake of the past few years, it's a safe bet that your small- to medium-size business (SMB) is struggling on one or more fronts. The statistics for SMBs that shuttered their operations permanently in the first few years of this decade are sobering, to say the least. The Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to have permanently closed approximately 200,000 more businesses than had been expected. Across the past few years, roughly 600,000 companies went out of business annually.

Assuming your SMB managed to scratch its way through the office worker diaspora of 2020 and a subsequent near-total loss in foot traffic, it's likely you are looking to rebuild your business model to survive an unpredictable future. Of course, one obvious answer is to move an increasing percentage of your revenue stream into online sales. So your first instinct might be to overhaul your website and call it good.

However, launching and maintaining an SEO-friendly website — as daunting as that can be — is really only the first step.

Online marketing is hotly competitive, as anyone will tell you. Taking a "Field of Dreams" approach isn't nearly enough. You can build it, yes, but there are zero guarantees that anyone will come. Effective PR certainly includes maintaining an SEO-friendly website, but that’s just one piece in an increasingly elaborate puzzle. There's a lot more to PR than just getting a noticeable bump in your website analytics.

Finding a PR Agency That Specializes in Small Business

Competing for eyeballs online, in print, and in the local community can be intimidating for SMB owners new to search engine optimization (SEO) and other tools associated with PR. It might feel a bit like you're trying to launch a small personal aircraft using the same runway as an Airbus A380.

You can relax...that sensation of feeling ill-equipped to compete with larger companies that have deeper pockets is completely normal.

Start with the one thing your SMB brings to the table that global retailers and big-box stores can't. Namely, your local presence and the great reputation for customer service you've built up over the years. A well-rounded small business PR agency should be able to quickly discern what makes your SMB special. They will then optimize the entirety of your PR approach as a solid first step toward leveraging those advantages.

Here's what to look for when you sense you might be getting in over your comfort level.

Punchlist for a Small Business PR Agency

1. Find someone who knows the difference between advertising and PR.

If the agency you interview leaps immediately to putting together a beefed-up budget for advertising, keep looking. Far too many “experts” still, to this day, confuse improved public relations with “strategic media buys.” Yes, that’s definitely another part of the equation, but it’s not the whole enchilada, either.

Instead, a small business PR agency will know, without being told, that your ad budget is probably already stretched to its breaking point. They will want to know what, if any, ROI you received for those expenditures. They’ll be very interested in the specific data points your advertising outlets provided at the end of your campaigns. (You did ask for data-driven accountability from your media outlets, right?)

2. Look for an enthusiastic willingness to work with what you have.

Similarly, the small business PR agency won’t seek to enter your workplace and start flipping over any tables. Be wary of anyone who brings a cookie-cutter approach they’ve developed and seeks to cram what you do into their new, exciting, proprietary mold. Instead, a truly helpful PR agency will look to elevate your strengths and promote widespread awareness of what you are already doing right.

Yes, you might incur some expenditures as your company expands its outreach efforts. Examples might include new signage, the services of a graphic artist, or subscriptions to automation software packages. You might offload some routine tasks associated with chatbots, answering the phone, social media posts, and so forth. These might all be well and good, but any and all expenditures must undergird the promotion of what makes your company special.

3. You want a PR company that underpromises and over-delivers.

Be wary of over-promisers. There’s a delicate balance to be struck between lowering your expectations too far and guaranteeing you’ll knock Amazon out of first place within two years.

For example, small business PR agencies that know their stuff are well aware that the leading search algorithms change frequently. What works well online today might — or might not — work quite as well next week. And besides…your online performance isn’t the only metric a competent PR expert cares about.

Depending on the niche your company occupies, online performance might not even be the most important metric! Of course, you will want to make sure that you can put numbers to performance both before and after implementing recommended changes, but these might include rate of turnover, on-site foot traffic, events hosted, suppliers added or subtracted, and so forth.

4. Ask your PR prospects to share their understanding of the value of relationships.

Your small business is situated within a community. This is true even if you are working out of your basement with no local office space or retail square footage to speak of.

What investments, if any, are you making in its wellbeing? Does your small business enjoy a favorable reputation with other local business leaders, municipalities, and city officials? Sure, your sales and payroll are contributing to the state, federal, and local tax base, but would anyone care if you suddenly uprooted everything and moved to another community?

One of the most recognizable features of a small business PR agency who knows their stuff is asking for your list of local media outlets, yes, but also opening your eyes to other relationship opportunities you may have missed. The PR agency you want to work with will ask about things such as the number of speaking engagements your team has accepted, who you are connected with via the local Chamber of Commerce, whether your suppliers truly enjoy working with you, and so on.

5. Remain open to out-of-the-box thinking and solutions.

Anyone can open up a web browser and come up with a few new ideas about public relations for the small- to medium-sized business owner. Such an approach might indeed prove fruitful — there’s nothing at all wrong with you conducting some regular research.

However, for PR pros this sort of approach is lazy and lacks imagination. Additionally, it does nothing for providing recommendations that are specifically and intentionally fashioned for your small business.

PR agencies who know what they are doing, on the other hand, take a more methodical approach. They will be slow to formulate their recommendations tailored to your actual needs. They will want to spend more time on the front end asking a lot of questions.

Yes, it’s 100% fair for an SMB owner to ask for a best-guess delivery timeline in the context of an initial meeting. After all, if a consultant spouts off several ideas you can find using Google, why are you thinking of hiring them?

6. A focus on long-term reputation management.

Hustlers tend to show up as  “the new sheriff in town” and make extravagant promises. PR professionals tend to show up and provide information about your specific niche, its penetration in the local and online marketplace, and some relevant case studies they use as background information for your initial conversation.

They bring all this and more to the table before you’ve even agreed to cut a check. PR pros aren’t playing for a temporary boost in your sales. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but it’s insufficient.

The PR shop you want to bring into your stable is playing the game for keeps. They want your SMB to thrive this year, yes, but they also want you to still be in business five, 10, and 25 years from now. They know this will only happen when they help you begin moving toward an ever-improving reputation.

Suppose your business does not enjoy a good reputation for customer service, quality products or services at fair prices, and commitment to causes other than the bottom line. In that case, they will fearlessly share that insight. They will also show you what it might look like to reclaim that turf.

Effective PR? Optimize Everything You’re Already Doing Right!

For most SMB owners, public relations is not what motivated the founding of a new company. Any PR efforts should not in any way detract or distract from keeping the main thing the main thing. You want to commit your products and services to continuous improvement, so effective PR is merely that which takes what’s already true about you and makes more people aware of it.

Doubtless, your PR campaign may cause you to reexamine long-standing policies, practices, and operations. That’s OK. It’s part of the deal.

Keep a journal in whatever medium you are most likely to use at a moment’s notice. You might discover issues that need to be addressed immediately, but these are typically rare. Instead, you can expect to find areas for improvement that you can take on at your own pace.

A qualified PR agency will present ideas and options in an agenda-free manner. They will have done their job whether you accept their recommendations or not. You’ll know you’ve found the right PR professionals when you sense that they genuinely delight in your victories as much as you do.

Your brand’s reputation and credibility is an important part of how you are received by key audiences. A brand that is credible will have better relationships with consumers and a strong loyal customer base. 

Credibility can also help you overcome a crisis faster and gain important word-of-mouth recommendations. Overall, brands that are considered credible have an easier time growing the business and gaining new customers. But building that crucial credibility requires a strong, strategic approach to owned media.

An owned media strategy takes advantage of the content you have control over. That could include blogs, newsletters, personal publications, emails, websites, and even social media. 

Taking advantage of those channels and creating an owned media strategy allows you to build your brand’s credibility. But which types of content are the best options when creating your owned media strategy? Let’s examine the right kind of content to promote while boosting brand credibility.

1. Influencer Content

In today’s world, readers trust influencers more than they trust brands. That impacts buying behaviors, which in turn means that brands need to adapt their owned media strategies. 

Influencers have very loyal fan bases who listen and respond based on what the influencer suggests. Influencer content can be shared on your owned media channels, helping to combine both the power of owned media and influencer impact.

Influencer content can include unboxing videos, product reviews, shout-outs, and even advertisements. When the content on your owned channels includes a recommendation from an influencer, audiences are more likely to listen. 

It also boosts your brand’s credibility. If an influencer promotes your brand, your brand is tied to their credibility and reputation among audiences. The audience of the influencer becomes your own audience, and your content channels gain more viewers as a result.

2. Authoritative Content

Authoritative content is a content marketing strategy that proves to readers that you understand your industry and can provide them with answers. When you demonstrate authority, you become an industry expert. Both search engines and readers look to you as a source of information. 

It can help you grow your content readership and gain more followers across social media. And, most importantly, authoritative content puts you ahead of your competitors and lets you lead the industry.

Examples of authoritative content might include detailed blog posts, educational ebooks, how-to articles, or product and service buyer guides. By giving clear details and insider information to readers, you build up a content platform of authority. When readers want a credible brand, they look for content from industry experts and thought leaders.

3. Shareable Content

Another type of content that is important to boost brand credibility is shareable content. Shareable content refers to content pieces that inspire readers to want to spread that information among their own networks. 

Readers trust their networks and will look to friends for brand recommendations. The more your content is shared, the wider your reach and credibility are among new audiences.

Shareable content is often thought of as social media content. Social media posts have the ability to be shared with the click of a button and can quickly gain traction. 

Optimizing your social content can help improve your shareability. You can try having infographics, images, and videos that garner mass appeal. You could also try posting quick, memorable copy snippets that are more appealing to share than article links or dense paragraphs.

4. Linkable Content

Linkable content is content specifically created to attract high domain authority publications to link to your information. This type of content is more likely to be viewed as authoritative and, in turn, can boost your domain authority. When readers see your content being used externally, they are more likely to trust your brand and its insights. 

In order to be viewed as a credible source, you need to provide trustworthy content. That can include independent research, unique information, and claims backed up with data. Creating well-crafted, well-informed linkable content will increase your chances of being shared and gaining new audiences.

5. Interactive Content

Another example of content you want to boost is interactive content. In today’s world, readers have a relatively short attention span. In order to capture their attention and spread the credibility of your brand, the content you create needs to be engaging. Interactive content doesn’t mean it needs to be loud and bright, but it does need to be interesting.

Interactive content like quizzes and calculators on your website has high engagement rates with users. You can also use videos, GIFs, and graphics to gain the attention of readers and increase engagement. 

This content is also more likely to be viewed, commented on, and shared on social media platforms. That increases the reach of your audience and allows you to control the message you send to viewers. When you have control over the content, you can use that to improve your brand’s credibility.

Own Your Industry with Strategic Content

When you have the right owned media strategy, you own your industry. By taking advantage of the owned media channels you have, you can build your brand’s credibility. 

Rather than letting another source tell your story, you can have control over the content. And, when you have control, you can ensure that the content you share is authoritative, shareable, linkable, and engaging.

Being visible online is now crucial for every business. No matter if you only work locally or sell goods worldwide, you need to stand out in the crowd of competitors. You need to reap the beneficial results of content marketing. For this reason, many companies invest in effective SEO services performed by experienced and skillful professionals for their marketing efforts.

A skilled marketer or PR agency uses many techniques when building a marketing strategy. Some strategies are applied to the website itself. These typically involve combing through Google Analytics, conducting a content audit, overhauling blog posts, and optimizing all existing content for crawling by a search engine.

Others are performed off-site to achieve the impressive results of content marketing in the digital age. Among the off-site methods, there are two that are usually considered to be the most significant: digital PR and content marketing. Thanks to them, you can improve brand awareness, reach a wider audience through enhanced content distribution, and appeal to a potential customer by providing more engaging content that addresses the felt needs of your target audience.

Most companies profit considerably from a combination of social media marketing, PR efforts, media placements, publishing a white paper, media placements, journalist relationships, and more.

Additionally, those strategies can have both short-term and long-term effects on your business. Read on if you'd like to find out more about creating B2B content, how B2C marketers leverage relevant content as part of a comprehensive content marketing campaign, and why inbound marketing is beginning to eclipse more traditional marketing practices.

Digital PR

As the Digital Marketing Institute explains, "Digital PR includes a wide variety of marketing possibilities such as being interviewed by online publications, increasing your online presence, and using the interactive power of social media for further growth and recognition."

Digital PR is similar to traditional PR, focused on networking with journalists. The big idea in the content marketing world is to encourage them to feature a particular brand in magazines, newspapers, radio, and television. Consequently, digital public relations specialists search for coverage with articles on online news sources and websites or on social media and blog posts.

Digital PR Tactics

Nowadays, many digital PR tactics are used to improve a company's visibility on the internet. These include:

• business profiling via sharing B2B content;
• developing relationships with bloggers, B2B content marketers, B2C marketers, and online journalists to get press coverage;
• creating online press releases and soliciting other forms of media coverage;
• arranging online reviews and interviews on a targeted media outlet;
• blogger outreach and influencer marketing aimed at being more visible on blogs and social media profiles;
• posting online content to improve reputation, brand mentions, and receive valuable backlinks; and
• ensuring that press releases are well-optimized with high-quality links leading to your website to boost your search rankings.

Short-Term and Long-Term Benefits of Digital PR

Digital PR provides a business with many short-term and long-term benefits. However, to track its performance, an expert content marketer or full-fledged PR firm will recommend you set the goals for your campaign before you start it.

Some results that can help inform your goals and content marketing efforts might be as follows.

Improving Website Traffic

If many people read about your company as you share your branded content on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media, you are likely to get more visitors to your website. As a result, every point of contact with valuable content represents a chance to enhance your company's brand awareness (and profits) through content promotion.

Enhancing SEO and Rankings

As your business engages in content creation and gets mentioned on high-authority websites and in other B2B content marketing, it allows you to receive valuable links that work excellently for SEO. Consequently, when Google rates your site higher, it can rank higher for keywords associated with your industry. As a result, the savvy B2B marketer knows that you will get more traffic in this way as well.

Boosting Sales

One of the most significant benefits of any public relations practice is increasing sales. Therefore, when a company sees ROI from their online marketing investment, they know it is a crucial sign. It shows that all the marketing efforts were worth it and eventually paid off. Keep this in mind as you establish your marketing budget!

Generating Leads

Thanks to an excellent digital PR strategy, your great content will reach a relevant audience that's interested in your services or products. As a result, the more people that read about your offer and click through to your website, the more potentially valuable leads you will get.

Building a Trustworthy Brand

Similar to traditional PR, this digital counterpart aims at gaining your client's trust. Thanks to a lot of positive references online, your brand will definitely grow its reputation. Additionally, if your content creation efforts consistently yield an excellent blog post adapted to SEO standards, search engines perceive your website as a reliable source of information.

Content Marketing

You may think that content marketing is an on-page SEO tactic, focused on creating and publishing content on your company's website. However, in fact, this term is much broader. Instead, it involves both on-page and off-page methods. The successful marketing team typically uses a combination of email marketing, blog content, Google Ads, video content, and more to help boost their content marketing ROI.

Obviously, these days content creation means a lot more than firing off a random blog post every now and then. Yes, it's vital to create quality content on your site to increase your brand awareness. However, you should also remember to provide excellent, engaging assets to maximize the results of content marketing. (Seek to publish these authoritative resources elsewhere, too.)

Content Marketing Strategies

The most common practices used by content marketers are as follows:

• infographics;
• guest blog posts;
• eBooks;
• whitepapers;
• research papers;
• surveys; and
• case studies.

Experienced B2C marketers closely associate any content marketing effort with PR, link-building, and social media. As a result, these all become part of a successful content strategy and contribute powerfully to the process of building a reliable brand. Consequently, content creation and a healthy marketing budget represent twin necessities for taking your business to the next level.

Short-Term and Long-Term Benefits of Content Marketing

Social media is quite ubiquitous nowadays. Consumers are starting to expect unique and interesting content on various channels from every company. Consequently, any PR pro will tell you that it's worth following this trend as part of your overall content strategy and marketing efforts.

Whether you work with an agency or have your own in-house PR person, great content marketing can provide you with many short-term and long-term benefits.

Increased Reach

With content marketing, you can be wherever your customers are likely to appear. Your PR content can answer comments on social media, point them to a blog post or press release, or respond to questions on forums. You do not have to limit yourself to creating content for your website only.

Higher Authority and Credibility

Creating a lot of reliable content shows your company's expertise in the industry. In this way, you can appear as a credible provider who really knows a lot in their field. You can do it through publishing, for example, case studies, webinars, downloadable resources, or blog posts. This is what many PR professionals mean when they use the term inbound marketing.

Boosted Website Traffic

Similar to digital PR, content marketing sources can significantly improve your website traffic. This is because relevant and useful content (among other PR activities) will encourage your audience to come back to your website for compelling content and more.

Retargeted Audience

When you analyze your content's performance, you will gain the data necessary to retarget your audience. Content marketing success means providing them with the information they need. After taking a look at the users who viewed your content, you will know which display ads to retain in your content strategy to maximize the chances of making a profit.

Wrapping Up

Both digital PR and content marketing can provide your business with a lot of benefits. The obvious results of PR and content marketing are both obvious and quantifiable. Consequently, it's well worth combining them as part of your content marketing strategy. And yet, according to the Content Marketing Institute, more than half of businesses reported that their company had yet to put together an integrated digital marketing strategy.

Don't let your business become a content marketing statistic! Taking care of public relations and building a positive brand image has never been more crucial. As a result, numerous companies are fighting for the same audience, employing content marketers to help grab eyeballs online. You should do your utmost to stand out and attract them to your product or service. If you haven't done so already, start putting together a marketing budget and a content marketing strategy.

Thanks to content marketing and digital PR, your website will rank higher in search results. As a result, you will get more website traffic as just one of many results of content marketing. Additionally, your business will appear more relevant and trustworthy.

A content marketing strategy is vital as many people nowadays are exceedingly wary of online fraud. Therefore, investing your resources in PR and content marketing and leveraging off-site SEO techniques can really pay off.

Market share is one of the biggest indicators of business success. A larger market share can be used to measure the effectiveness of various revenue-generating efforts. These include marketing campaigns to product developments, expansion, innovation, branding initiatives, and so much more. All of these can be leveraged to increase market share.

In contrast to total retail sales, market share is simply the percentage of sales a company has in the overall market. For example, if a company's sales for the fourth quarter are $1 million and the industry's total sales for the same period are $200 million, their market share is .05%.

A high market share corresponds to profitability. In a study conducted by Harvard University called Profit Impact of Market Strategies (PIMS) project, business scholars identified 37 key profit influences, of which one of the most important is market share.

Market share can be the most reliable way of judging the effectiveness of your revenue generation plans. It can point out whether your marketing campaigns, branding initiatives, or CRM programs are progressing as planned or need any tweaking or a mid-course adjustment.

Market share is also a great way of measuring the success of your enterprise vis-à-vis your competition. Based on your share of the total business in a specific niche, you can measure the effectiveness of your strategies and their strategic execution over a given forecast period. These projections will later serve as valuable touchstones when considering any company's compound annual growth rate.

The Importance of Market Share

Yet, despite its apparent and critical importance, market share is not given the importance it deserves.

There are many companies that keep their focus fixated on factors such as brand awareness and loyalty, customer satisfaction, sale numbers, leads, and other internal metrics. This is, however, not a reliable way of judging your business performance or growth, especially if you are operating in a highly competitive field.

Internally focused metrics can often be deceiving because the findings might comfort you in terms of the internal performance of your enterprise. But when you stretch the comparison to include competitors' performance too, the same findings may reveal a current market share that is solidly below-par.

It goes without saying that a high market share puts a company at a competitive advantage. Because they are able to produce more and sell fast, they benefit from lower operational costs and speedy ROI.

If you're looking to scale your company and focus on profitability, you should really pay attention to increasing your market share. And here's how top companies do it.

1. Stay Relevant Through Innovation

Let's talk about Google, which currently holds a 90.8% market share in web, mobile, and in-app searches. (Yes, you read that right.) Talk about a large market share! You might be wondering, "How does Google manage to monopolize the market and can't have a real competitor?"

The strategy lies behind staying relevant through innovation. The company invested so much in making local searches so easy and fast for everybody. This in turn enabled them to operate at an insane level of 3.5 billion searches per day. They created additional platforms such as Google Trends and apps that make searching the easiest thing ever.

It doesn't matter what people are looking for, whether they're on the hunt for reputable retail stores that offer free shipping, companies that offer online cash advance, or clinics that could take online booking appointments. Everything they need is at the tip of their fingertips. Their strategy is that wherever users go, conducting a Google search is fast and easy.

Let Others Brag About Your Product or Service

It may sound bizarre, but really, the best people equipped to contribute to your product growth and make it popular are not the marketing agencies, consultants, or salespeople you've hired. Instead, they are the ones who actually purchased your product and thereby fueled demand. But being able to turn your customers into effective advocates for your brand requires great customer engagement strategies.

Take it from Zappos, a top-selling company when it comes to nifty shoes, clothing, accessories...and total sales. They own a 19.8% share of the global market, slightly ahead of Amazon (at 19%). More than its quality products, Zappos is known for its Customer Loyalty Team (CLT) which sincerely engages customers via phone, chat, and email. Obsessing over their customers, they offer unlimited call times (with no scripts), friendly, solution-oriented representatives, a 365-day return policy, free shipping, and returns...and absolutely no upselling.

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2. Embrace Flexibility

After the turbulence of 2020-2021, one thing is clear. We can be at our most creative selves when we have a more flexible working schedule.

And for that reason, many companies have deviated from enforcing a 9-5 shift and adopted a more generous, carefree work environment for their employees. In today's tight labor market, more than giving them competitive salaries, helping your people achieve a life-work balance is essential to employee retention and growth.

Take it from these companies that value "fair" and "flexible" work environments. No wonder they have some of the best talents in the world. Not incidentally, these practices have contributed to the company's market share.

3. Practice Promotional Innovation

Mint, a financial tracking startup, proved that it's possible to stand out from the competition and achieve growth by adopting well-executed online marketing strategies.

Entering the saturated financial management industry is never easy, let alone dominating it. But by publishing hundreds of quality content, from informative blog posts to helpful infographics and viral videos, they found new customers and grew their business.

4. Develop a Unique Brand Position and Be Consistent

Copyright © Coca-Cola. All rights reserved.

We can all agree that Coca-Cola is one of the most known brands in the world. That red and white color has been known across the world for over 130 years. And that level of consistency, from their products to their marketing strategies, has made them stand out.

Coke has created lasting inroads both in both fast food and quick service restaurants, consistently garnering the lion's share of the fast food market size. Owning 48% of the beverage market share, Coca-Cola managed to produce numerous products under different names and brands.

However, all the while, their iconic can of Coke still remains untouched.

That can shows up in all of their advertising campaigns, and with good reason. This is true not only in the United States, but also in all of North America, Latin America, South America, Asia Pacific, and beyond. Their brand awareness shows up just about everywhere in the global fast food market. Coke did not become the market leader by changing its approach every few months.

5. Acquire a Competing Company

Mergers and acquisitions are commonplace among big companies these days. Perhaps the easiest way to increase your market share is to snap up your competitors.

However, if your business doesn't have the means to purchase another company, consider acquiring their salespeople. Sometimes, customer loyalty resides with the company's salespeople, not the brand. Another way that is not really acquisition (but has a similar effect) is to purchase a competitor's customer list if they are closing soon. This gives you an even bigger customer base and can rapidly increase your market size.

6. Market to Smaller Groups or a Niche

It may seem counterintuitive to target a small market when you are looking to increase your market share. But one thing many businesses don't know is this: "The money is in the niche."

When small markets are combined together, the revenue really starts to add up. Focusing on one product, one idea, and one group at a time helps you find real customers and thereby secure market growth.

You might think of Apple as a tech giant. Most of us would hardly be able to tell that it's a company that specializes. But actually, Apple iOS only accounted for 12.9% of the market in 2013 because most people are buying Android phones.

Bad news for Apple? Not really. That is because they make 56% of the total profits in that industry. Apple concentrated on the ideal customer, i.e. people who want the best quality phones. That means if you want the best smartphone, you buy Apple. Their marketing efforts helped them achieve an impressive amount of brand loyalty.

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7. Planning an Increase in Market Share

Quite obviously, increasing the market share of a brand in particular or that of the organization, in general, will be one of the most important growth metrics any top management will be striving to achieve.

However, achieving a growth trajectory is not going to be an easy task. Ask any successful entrepreneur, and they will reveal that the process of reaching potential customers and increasing a companys market share is a long and never-ending one. It starts with a deep dive into market research and website analytics.

Fast growth is very nearly an oxymoron. Your growth rate is a function of consistently pleasing your existing customer base and leveraging those loyal customers to become de facto brand evangelists. Growing fast for market share alone is a shortsighted strategy. Instead, customer retention is one of the tried and tested ways of ensuring a larger share of the market for your business.

8. Engaging with Customers

When seeking to increase market share, you must make customer satisfaction and engagement a part of your core business practice.

It doesn't really matter what your product type might be. Increasing market share means communicating effectively with your target market. Engagement through your social media platform will not only help in maintaining the existing customers but can also attract new customers at a fair pace.

Use effective communication strategies and mediums to post customer service content through direct contact platforms such as social media and email. For example, during recent supply chain problems, the companies that moved quickly to communicate accurate information earned customer loyalty even as deliveries were delayed.

Encourage your current customers to respond by sharing or commenting as part of the online sales process. Use surveys smartly for feedback. User-generated content is one of the fastest ways to increase market size and let your loyal customer serve as a brand evangelist.

9. Use a Referral Program

Finding and acquiring new customers can be a time-consuming process. That's why referral programs are a key marketing strategy being used by many B2B businesses.

Even a small business can establish an effective referral program and roll it out as quickly as possible. Use that program to foster rapid growth, improve existing customer relationships, gain new leads and ensure greater conversion. Your market share will also increase in the process, slowly but steadily.

10. Spring Out with Something Special

A number of factors can impact the market share of an organization. Finding a need and filling that need or, in other words, leveraging product innovation to address a specific need of the market in a simple way can help create a distinctive position for your brand. How does your new product or service answer an unmet need? What makes you stand out against your direct competitors in a specific market?

A touch of exclusivity in everything you do (especially in your marketing campaign) can help attract audience attention and do wonders for your sales numbers. Make sure your sales team is able to articulate clearly to prospects what sets your company apart.

Your marketing team must work out of the box to create a distinct image for your brand and position it exceptionally. Then communicate your forte at every opportunity. This will make it easier to attract new customers and also keep the existing ones hooked.

The process of increasing your company's market share is a long and continuous one. By employing some of these tried and tested strategies of some of the most successful businesses in the world today, you can also scale your company, achieve a higher market share, boost total sales, and bring more profit to the table.

Content marketing is nothing without a content marketing strategy. Content marketing strategies are critical to have in hand before you commit to a social media platform, engage in email marketing, develop interactive content, hire marketers, or even just conduct a brainstorming session for content ideas.

You can have the most interesting, thought-provoking piece of interactive content out there. You might have the world's greatest content marketer on staff. However, it's all for naught if it can't be found by the right people. Likewise, professional marketers know that great content means nothing if it doesn't reach its target audience.

No matter what stage of your content creation process you're in, whether you're in pre-planning - deciding on content format, conducting a content audit, or finishing up and wondering how to present your blog post to the world through social media marketing - now is the time to start thinking about the best content marketing strategy for optimizing and distributing that content to your audience.

Seasoned marketers know that the world's greatest content production workflow and search engine optimization tactic means nothing in the absence of a documented strategy. Similarly, content marketing strategies help convert existing customers into unpaid brand loyalty cheerleaders.

Do I Really Need a Content Strategy?

Yes! The point of your content is to be seen, read, heard, and, most importantly, shared as part of the average customer journey.

But what good is your high quality content if it's never seen? Why develop any top-notch content asset if it doesn't gain any traction in the marketplace? Research by the Content Marketing Institute has shown that countless brands who succeed at digital marketing develop and follow a content marketing strategy. As a result, they consider their content marketing efforts to be more successful and found content marketing, in general, to be less challenging.

Significantly, these companies were later able to justify a higher content marketing budget that allowed them to invest in higher quality content.

What Does a Successful Content Marketing Strategy Look Like?

Your content marketing strategy should be a part of any content creation your company does.

While there are no defined "rules" for building a content marketing strategy, it's important to include these nine key components in any content marketing effort. Make sure you address all nine of them before you create content, sink considerable resources into video marketing, build a content calendar, or engage in any form of content promotion.

1. Understand your audience better with a buyer persona and research.

Every piece of content your brand develops should be created with someone in mind.

A potential customer is more likely to make a purchase from a brand they identify with. Consequently, relevant content begins and ends with that brand demonstrating a keen understanding of its audience. Valuable content gets shared via social media and starts moving up in search engine results.

Understanding your target audience includes very basic factors such as their age, gender, education level, and even income. However, it also goes deeper than that. What does your audience want? What problems are they facing? Which social media channels do they seem to prefer? How can your product or service create content to help solve those problems?

Don't just assume. You won't hit upon an effective content marketing strategy by spitballing. Research your target audience and see who's already engaged with your brand. What content type hits home consistently? Can you create content that answers felt needs?

Additionally, you can even set up simple online surveys to send via email marketing to your current audience. Build audience profiles and your content calendar based on the results. Begin to have your creative types sketch out some content marketing examples they think might be seen as in tune and responsive. However, your audience won't fit a single category. On the other hand, research can help you develop a primary "buyer persona" that fits the profiles of much of your audience, as well as several secondary personas.

2. Conduct some keyword research.

Now that you understand your main audience, place yourself in their shoes as you consider various content marketing strategies.

What are they searching for when they need your product or service? Make a list of basic keywords surrounding your brand, as well as any variations: "New York painters" and "New York painting," for example. You know your niche well, so draw from all possible terms used for what you have to offer.

Once you have these keywords, you're ready to do some digital marketing. Integrate them into your content. Here are a few reasons why.

• Integrating keywords into blogs and other online content is good for SEO and generating organic traffic.
• It allows your audience to figure out quickly whether or not they've found the content they need before moving on.
• It establishes your brand as an authority in your field.

3. Identify effective content.

Next, you need to ask yourself, "What sort of content will my audience respond to? What content format are they looking for?" If your audience is more likely to read a blog post, would you waste time creating a video? Do they enjoy email marketing more than SMS texting? In the same vein, if they want how-to guides, will they spend hours looking at case studies that only tell them "Why?" Probably not.

Identifying the most effective content starts with identifying and listing to your audience. However, it will likely also include some trial and error as you experiment with different types of content to see what works for you and your content strategy. In short, the most common types of content include:

• blog post, articles, how-to guides;
• infographics;
• video content;
• eBooks and white papers;
• email newsletters;
• social media posts;
• podcasts; and
• eCourses and webinars.

4. Decide on placement.

Another reason to develop an understanding of your audience is to determine where they're looking for online content.

Are they searching YouTube for the latest videos on your niche...or do they spend most of their free time browsing Instagram for great photos? Similarly, are they likely to respond to (often expensive) Facebook ads?

For content such as blogs, articles, and landing pages that lead to additional content, implementing an SEO strategy is a good place to start. However, it's also important to maintain active business pages for any relevant social media platforms. Likewise, influencer marketing can be another effective way to expand the reach of your content and build brand awareness.

5. Develop your brand's voice.

The most successful brands develop a "personality" that their audience can recognize and identify with. This is often overlooked in content strategy, but it's also one of the most important aspects of a brand.

As with every stage of your content marketing strategy, start with your buyer personas. What sort of personality will they most identify with? Is that voice friendly, formal, or silly? What sort of language and terms will they understand? Where does this crowd gather when on social media? Additionally, what do they not want to hear about?

6. This one's tough. Stay consistent.

The key to knowing whether your content strategy is effective is to stay consistent.

If you publish one post per month on Facebook, it shouldn't be surprising that your social media presence isn't growing very quickly. Develop a content schedule and stick to it.

7. Analyze the results.

Whether it's weekly, monthly, or quarterly, never leave your content without tracking the results.

This can include monitoring view and click rates, reading customer comments and responses, social media likes and shares, or even tracking eCommerce stats in relation to your content releases. Data tracking will allow you to analyze the results of your content marketing efforts and learn what's effective...and what isn't.

8. Revisit and revise.

Why track the data if you're not going to utilize the results? Collecting data by itself won't affect even one search engine. You need to leverage what you've learned.

It's a good idea to sit down with your content marketing team at least once per year, if not once per fiscal quarter, and go over your current strategy. Take note of what worked, what didn't, and where you'd like to improve. What do your website analytics reveal? Which social media campaigns received the best response? Adjust your existing content accordingly.

9. Try new things!

Research is great, but it never hurts to try something new if your content marketing timeline (and budget) allow for a little experimentation.

Jump on social media trends, try out new technology, or reach out to your audience and ask them what they'd like to see. This is where maintaining a content calendar will really pay off. Just make sure you're always tracking the results so you can revisit and potentially add something new as part of your successful content marketing strategy.

Now that you've developed and followed your content marketing strategy, it's time to go through the entire process again!

Content marketing strategy is a never-ending process that needs to be followed, analyzed, and revised on a regular basis if you want your strategy to be effective at capturing leads for your business. Engage, refine, and rework on a regular basis, and your content marketing efforts will show better results consistently.