Today’s global marketplace has come a long way in the way businesses are operated and managed. Entrepreneurs understand that in order to grow their businesses successfully, they must leverage the online marketing tools and techniques available to them.
To be successful, a business’s website needs to provide its target audience with valuable and relevant information, services, and/or products. It also needs to be visible and usable. Furthermore, the website needs to have sufficient ranking within a search engine for it to even show up in organic searches. So how does a business establish the ranking, visibility, and usability of its website? Then, how do they improve those aspects if necessary? With a technical search engine optimization strategy, also known as a site audit. First, let’s review some important terminology leading up to what a site audit is and why it can benefit a business.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Higher Education Institutions
Choosing a higher education institution is one of the most important choices someone will make in their entire life. Considering an increasingly large percentage are under the age of 25 and have been raised with technology, it’s understandable that 67% of prospective students choose online search engines as their source of information regarding higher education institutions. But did you know that 9 out of 10 prospective students have no idea what school they want to attend when they are beginning their search?
Brands implementing an omni-channel marketing strategy experience 90% higher customer retention rates and almost 18.8% higher engagement rates than those that don’t. Considering that multi-device users switch between four different devices on average every day - 213 million adults around the world are accessing the internet with more than 3 devices daily - it’s clear why spanning your marketing efforts across all the channels that are specifically relevant to the buyer’s journey is a wise business decision.
Building profitable customer relationships requires marketing managers to be innovative in how their companies grow their influence and often that means new initiatives. These initiatives should focus on enabling customers to convert on any platform or channel. This allows a business to effectively reach more people because each customer (and potential customer) has his or her preferences. Omni-channel marketing embraces personalized messages to the consumer which builds longer-term loyalty and value. Without omni-channel marketing consumers notice a disconnect in their path to purchase which can, in turn, dissuade them from purchasing at all. Customers don’t evaluate a brand with the idea of “channels” in mind. If they can get free shipping through a brand’s Facebook shop but not from the same brand’s website, it just doesn’t make sense to them.
The benefits of omni-channel marketing are continuing to gain prominence for brands around the world. If implemented correctly, omni-channel marketing can lead to greater customer satisfaction, increased brand visibility, and can also generate new avenues of interaction with both prospective and existing customers.
The world is continually changing and evolving, and so is our audience. Keeping up with the latest marketing and communications trends can seem like a daunting task, but it's vital to do if you don't want to get stuck in a brand standstill.
How do you get your advertisement seen when someone does a Google search for something in your industry? How do you get your ad to stand out? What can you do to enhance your ad rank and placement so it doesn’t get lost in the ocean of competition? Google recommends using a component called ad extensions.
We've talked a little bit about account-based marketing here on the Spherical Strategies blog before. We discussed the difference between inbound and outbound marketing and talked a little about why account-based marketing is an important part of the marketing world. But you're running a business and you've probably been marketing that business for a while now. How do you know when it's time to incorporate account-based marketing into your mix?