Back to the Basics of Marketing

I’m going back to the basics, and I’m taking you with me!

I just got back from a conference in Los Angeles hosted by Connie Ragen Green. She and I teach a course called How to Market for Small Business and we gave a jam-packed presentation about marketing for small business to a room full of smart, ambitious entrepreneurs.

While preparing for the presentation, I was reminded that it all comes back to the basics, blocking and tackling. So I am going to go back to the basics myself and I am going to write about them as I implement. I hope you’ll come along with me and implement the ideas alongside me.

Let’s Start With the Blog On Your Website

The best way to get new eyes on your website is to have continually updated, relevant and useful content. The easiest way to display this content is with a blog. Businesses that blog generate a lot more traffic to their website than those who don’t. It’s just a fact. According to HubSpot.com, businesses that blog have more inbound links, higher ranking and up to five times the traffic of businesses that don’t blog.

Get More Traffic

The way search engines work is that a human enters words into a search bar, clicks Enter, and then is returned with what are, hopefully, relevant results that give them the information they want. The search engine uses code to compile a list of results, based on keywords and a bunch of other factors in hopes of giving the human results that are useful. A blog will help you deliver more useful content with appropriate keywords.

Increase Your Page Rank

The more relevant your website is (determined using an algorithm that considers keywords, links, and more), the higher your website will appear in searches. Having a higher page ranking will cause you to get more traffic to your website since most people don’t look past the first page of results to find the information they’re searching for. A blog will help you get more clicks due to having more keywords.

Keep Your Audience’s Attention

People have no reason to view your website more than once if there is a finite amount of information. A blog enables you to keep the relevant information flowing to your website so that your audience wants to keep reading the new information that you put on your blog. The blog keeps your audience’s attention by providing new reading material, as well as new content for the search engines to crawl.

Become a Local Expert

The more you blog, the more locals will begin to see you as an expert. If you blog about issues related to your niche, teach beginners something new, and share what other experts are saying, you will start to become the go-to local expert in your niche. The more you blog, the more you share, and the more you promote what you’ve written, the better.

Finally, writing a blog will help you build relationships with your audience in ways you may not have considered. As your blog becomes more popular you’ll be able to get to know your audience better, and thus you’ll be in a better position to offer them products and services that they truly want and need.

If you want a content-rich course to jumpstart your local business marketing efforts and would like to have my support on an ongoing basis, I recommend you consider How to Market for Small Business. We’ll be starting a new season soon and I’d love to be able to help you.